Prayer, Silence, and Kneading
Week 3 into “Sacramental Baking” course I’m taking online and finding this week particularly tough… and it’s only day 2 1/2 since we’ve received our assignment.
Week 1 was particularly sweet, because it was the epitome of everything I wanted to get out of the course – take me out of my comfort zone (baking bread) and quiet myself (pray while kneading and practicing examen prayer). My time of kneading and praying was so sweet. It’s something I want to do every day, except that I would have so much bread I wouldn’t know what to do with it all.
This week, even though I’m an introvert, I know is going to be difficult for me. We are to practice silence.
I’m okay with learning how to quiet myself, as long as I am doing things that come pretty easy to me. I’m such a hypocrite. Really.
My parents and my brothers are here in Arizona, staying in my house, until Thursday. My dad and my brother are very extroverted, needing to be around people to get their energy While my mom thinks she’s an introvert, she nowhere near the introvert I am, so my house is very noisy this week. I used to a pretty quiet house (so I thought) until I realize just how much I DO have noise in my life. Music is almost always on, if the TV isn’t. I listen to music while I read, clean, etc. Goodness, I even have a noise machine that I claim to have purchased to drown out the incredibly loud sound of the crickets in the summertime. But I still use it during the other months.
My life just isn’t silent. So for this week, when it’s especially not silent due to visitors, I have to laugh a little. This is just such a God thing… he knows how stubborn I am. He also knows I’m pretty ready for a challenge (at least, most kinds) so I just know he really wanted to make sure that the week I would struggle with the most he would put more obstacles in my way. This is how I learn best. I don’t learn just by trying and practicing something. I learn by uncovering all the stuff that lies on top of the thing I need to learn. I have to dig in order to “get it.”
Oh, Heavenly Father, you really get me, don’t you?
my umbrella for 2013
In many ways, I am happily leaving 2012 behind. In other ways, I’m scared for what this means for 2013.
My first two years in vocational full-time ministry have been painful. They’ve been a struggle. But I have never loved Jesus more in my life. So it’s impossible to say that I, in some way, have screwed this up. But I sense some pretty big changes ahead. I’m not sure if they will be for me personally or if they will be for this church I serve, but big changes I know will come. As a creature of comfort, change is a scarry thing. As an introvert, there are plenty more things that scare me.
This is why my word for 2013 is what it is.
Let me back up – I’ve been inspired this year to have a word. A word that challenges me, a word that is a prayer, a word that I intentionally allow to play out in my life in 2013. I’ve seen a few other female bloggers do it and I like the idea. For me, I see it like the umbrella I no longer get to hold (I live in the desert now, for heaven’s sake).
But I can still picture myself with a polka dot umbrella over my head, my hand extended to feel it all and this word landing with a thud and then running over the sides of my umbrella and surrounding me.
ANYTHING.
I am completely committed following of Jesus Christ, but there are still some parts of my heart that I keep off-limits to him. For 2013 I pray that I will not only do anything he asks of me, but that I will embrace the anything he asks of me. Even if it pushes me into the dark places of my heart I am not ready to expose, even if it scares every inch of me, even if I am not ready. I will be and do anything.
ANYTHING.
Sensing Jesus: Life and Ministry as a Human Being Book Review
I had the privilege of reading Zach Eswine’s book, Sensing Jesus, through Net Galley, this winter. What a privilege it was.
Not only does Eswine help you understand the emotions behind what it means to be a ministry leader and a follower of Jesus, but he builds a solid foundational base on scripture by which to stand as one. The author talks you through all the feelings of being broken and beaten-down in ministry and reminds you that Jesus is where you hope lies.
I felt like, as I got further and further into the book, that I was getting to know Zach as a friend and brother in Christ. His writing style is personal, poetic, and reads much like a memoir (my favorite genre of books).
I truly felt that not only was I not alone in experiencing what I had in ministry (the ups and downs) but also felt as if I had a true friend in the author. A book that gives me a sense of who the author truly is, rather than how they want me to see them, is the best kind of book. His authenticity and transparency is remarkable.
Zach is a great writer, who writes with deep feeling and honesty. He writes with a poetic soul, the words more like a symphony than a sentence, reminding us that we are highly creative beings, made by a wonderfully creative God.
This is a must-read for another going into the ministry and a wonderful balm for the soul for those who’ve been in it for a while. Zach truly has an understanding of the human heart, and isn’t afraid to be open and honest about the struggles we all go through as we seek to serve God in the local church.
Values vs. Inanimate Objects: How We Shouldn’t View the Newtown Tragedy
This is not about guns… primarily.
This is not about values… primarily.
From Grief to Blame
It’s also hard to simply let yourself heal.
My therapist in seminary told me I move on too fast. I hadn’t thought about that before, but I realized she was true, especially once I had the experience of grieving through a loss before then seeking answers. I thought seeking answers would help me heal.
It didn’t.
Moving on is the natural instinct in a situation like this, because we just want to the pain to be over. But by not feeling the pain, we are stunting our emotional health and most importantly, our hearts become hard.
The news is making me very angry tonight. Investigative reporters are pushing, pushing, pushing to blame, blame, blame. Blaming the mother, blaming the school’s lack of security. They are even analyzing the statements made by parents of those who lost children and asking physiologists to tell the world how the parents should be reacting. WE GET IT.
But stop. Seriously, stop it.
Let us grieve. Let us process the nature of this evil and the children who died senselessly. It will not help us to hear about why this killer’s mother had so many guns. It will not help us to hear that the killer was mentally ill. It will help us to hear about the children who died. It will help us to hear about the heroic acts of the teachers inside that classroom.
Let us cry. Let us grieve. Stop giving us answers, stop assigning blame and start giving us hope.
Stephanie Nelson 