spiritual formation
practicing friendship
* this is part 2 to the last post: let’s be friends. oh wait, we don’t know how to!
i wish learning new things were as easy as taking a class, watching a youtube instructional video, or reading the perfect how-to book that provides all of the answers. for fixing kitchen sinks, it probably works. for cultivating long lasting intimate friendships with others, not so much.
there’s no clear instructional manual for these kinds of relationships because they are complex. at the same time, the Bible has solid guidance on how to better love each other. colossians is one of my favorite books for that. when my kids were little, we used to have the NIV kids club videos & cassette tapes (yes, my kids are getting old) that were all about “singing the Bible and having fun.” i can pretty much sing the whole chapter of colossians 3 to you if you ever want a laugh! when it comes to friendship, though, there are some excellent words in there. the passage that comes to mind today is “therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourself with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience” (v. 3:12).
compassion. kindness. humility. gentleness. patience.
these are important ingredients to sacred friendships. they help cultivate grace, love, and acceptance, which are what so many of us long for in our relationships.
here are some practical ways i think we can nurture these qualities in relationships with others and bravely enter into new friendships–men with men, women with women, men & women together.
be honest about our fears. the more we can say out loud “um, i don’t know how to do this very well”, the better. it’s so much better than trying to pretend we’re good at something we’re not quite yet. in our community, we have so many people learning how to be friends for the first time we talk a lot about it out loud and just call it for what it is. honesty creates compassion because we can relate, we know the feeling, too.
lower our expectations. even though i love to dream big, i also believe in small baby steps of change rather than always expecting (and often demanding) giant leaps for ourselves & others, too. if we don’t shift our expectations, we can become mad all the time because things aren’t going the way we want them to be. meaningful friendships take a long time to cultivate. they don’t come quick, especially in the midst of our brokenness & busy-ness. this is why patience is such a necessary ingredient.
take responsibility for our own stuff. this is humility, a willingness to look at our own log instead of focusing on others’ specks. it requires soft hearts open to God’s spirit & getting honest about the patterns we might tend to bring into the friendship. as we acknowledge it to ourselves & God first, we can then be honest about it with our friends–”i am sorry that i….when i get scared, i sometimes act that way.” this helps us practice becoming safer people.
remember, everyone’s human, just like us. it’s a magical, beautiful thing that somehow God can bring broken, jacked up people together in love & unity. it really amazes me. but at the same time, our messy human-ness is always going to be at play. we will get hurt. we will get annoyed. we will get confused. we will get uncomfortable. the beauty is in respecting not only our humanness but others’, too.
don’t always do everything in groups. groups are great. community is awesome. but sometimes it’s really important to spend quality time together that doesn’t have all the wackiness of group dynamics. i think we can hide behind it, too, always going to “men’s groups” or “women’s groups” but never just hanging out in a more intimate setting. make time for it. it’s always worth it. eye to eye, heart to heart makes all the difference over the long haul & helps us become more comfortable in our own skin in the relationship.
get some help when we need it. this is one of the things i love most about our community. we practice friendship and get help when we need it. this looks like getting a few more people in the conversation to talk about how to do friendship better, what’s working, what’s not, how we can help honor each other more deeply, where we get stuck, and how to keep moving toward healthier connection. it’s what the body of Christ is supposed to be about, helping encourage and challenge one another!
check in. every relationship is different, but i do think that regular check-ins can be helpful in developing friendships. how are we doing? how are you feeling in relationship with each other? what’s working? what’s not? in developing cross-gender friendships, it’s extra important.
adopt a philosophy of “practice”. one of my favorite phrases is “we’re just practicing.” we expect ourselves to have so many things in this world nailed down when the truth is we are just learning & trying & practicing as best we can. to get better at something requires practice; it also means we will flub things up and blow it and need to get back on track. this helps with conflict in relationship because we can be honest and say “i’m practicing how to actually engage in a conflict with another person and not have it be devastating!” sometimes, too, we may practice with people who we end up not being able to be in long-term relationship with for all kinds of reasons. that’s okay. every time we make ourselves vulnerable and risk in relationship, we are practicing & learning & growing. that’s what matters.
i am sure there are many others, but these are some off the top off my head. when i read back over these, i can really see compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience embedded in each of these practices. yeah, without these, meaningful friendship just isn’t possible.
what are some others you would add?
God, help us become people who cultivate compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience into our friendships.
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let’s be friends. oh wait, we don’t know how to!
“there is nothing on this earth to be more prized than true friendship.”
- st. thomas aquinas
remember that book, “all i ever needed i learned in kindergarten”? sure, some of what we learned when we were five would be helpful to us as grownups. but i’m also going to make a supposition that even by age five, weird friendship stuff may have already seeped in. some boys stop playing so freely with girls. the power dynamics of who rules the playground kick into full swing. cliques form. the weak are often already culled out. it looks different for everyone, and there’s no question we are a lot purer when we are five than when we are 35, but the same fact remains–friendship is hard!
cultivating healthy, strengthening, encouraging, equal friendships is an art, not science. and a very lost art at that.
in fact, i feel quite sure an honest poll would reveal that most people don’t have the kinds of friendships they long for. that most don’t really know how to do them in a way that works long-term. that some feel as inadequate now as we did when we were in junior high, even though they fake it better. that many don’t even know what healthy friendship is supposed to look or feel like. and that it seems there’s never enough time to develop them. i am also going to take a leap and say that in the christian world, it’s even worse. there are countless other weird dynamics at play in christian friendships that even further complicate what’s already complicated.
i know the feeling. i used to stink at real friendship. i’ve always had a lot of friends. i am a loyal person and have always hung on to friends–both male & female–through thick and thin. but it wasn’t until i was in my late 20′s that i started to become comfortable enough in my own skin to actually be the kind of friend i wanted. the kind that receives instead of just giving. the kind that is honest & raw instead of holding back all the time. the kind that makes a really concerted effort to nurture the relationship instead of expecting it to drop out of the sky.
18 years later, I’m still learning. it’s not the easiest thing for me to do. at heart, i like independence, not interdependence.
and real friendship requires interdependence.
a give-and-take. grace. intention. vulnerability. risk.
in church, we are taught a lot about believing, knowing, and worshiping certain things and acting certain ways. even now, with a lot of focus on missional living emerging in many churches, which i think is a good thing, a crucial ingredient is usually often missing– how to just be a friend.
an honest friend.
an equal friend.
a vulnerable friend.
a long-haul friend.
there are a lot of forces working deeply against friendship (not just cross-gender friendship but all forms–men with men, women with women, and across ages & differences, too.)
power. we know how to be under people or above people but rarely do we know how to live beside them. it’s a natural force of our Genesis 3 human-ness. often without thinking, we look for someone to control us or someone to control. if we feel “less than” or “more than” others it messes with real freedom. this is so unconscious for us that we don’t even know we’re doing it.
shame. sometimes we are scared to be fully known because if people really knew us we’re quite sure they wouldn’t want to be friends anymore. we give part of us but not all of us because full honesty is too risky. but honest sharing with a friend who can honor it brings one of the greatest rewards of friendship–the experience of grace. also, some people feel embarrassed that they never learned how to develop healthy friendships and it feels weird & awkward to be trying now. (it’s never too late, i know that for sure!)
independence. many have learned through damaging past experiences that “the only person we can really trust is ourselves.” and even if we don’t trust ourselves, we at least know what to expect. a “trust God and God alone (by yourself)” mentality is especially pervasive in christian circles.
fear. we don’t naturally like to make ourselves vulnerable . we don’t like to get hurt. and somehow we know we will if we get too close to another person. our natural tendency to avoid pain is always at play. i’ve lost a few friends along the way, and it hurts. a lot. but it was still worth it in the end because of what i learned through them. in cross-gender friendships, fear is even higher because for the most part people say it isn’t possible without sexual weirdness.
yikes, those are some strong forces working against us! when i look at this list, though, i have hope. i have seen it up-close-and-personal in my life & many others–healthy friendship is so possible! but much deeper than only my experience, these four things–power, shame, independence, and fear–are what Jesus calls us to break down so we can get to the better thing–love.
humility, grace, trust, and peace are all part of love and antidotes to power, shame, independence, and fear.
that’s really what friendship is–loving another human being more freely, more purely, more honestly, more fully. and being loved by another more freely, more purely, more honestly, more fully. it’s about loving and being loved.
and that, my friends, is scary stuff!
we’d much rather talk about almost anything else. and do most anything else.
and it’s probably why we need to focus on it the most.
i think a task for the body of Christ is to begin actively showing people how to be friends in all kinds of shapes & sizes. men with women, men with men, women with women. to break down systems of power and honor what it means to be equals, created in the image of God. to find ways to really heal from shame instead of just talk like we have and become more free & healthy human beings. to learn what it means to be interdependent instead of independent or codependent. to have courage to push through our inadequacies & fears and stumble & bumble into new ways of living together as friends. friends with God, with others, with ourselves. they are all mixed up together.
oh there are so many beautiful things to learn alongside each other!
what are you learning about friendship these days?
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ps: next post is part two and is a little more practical, but i wanted to get this out while it was swirling around in my head.
pss: my friend dan brennan is an advocate and teacher for sacred friendships. he continues to call people to break down the walls that divide us and bravely engage in deep, intimate friendship with one another. in april the first sacred friendship gathering centered on cross-gender friendships is happening in chicago; i feel privileged to be sharing there and would love for you to come be part of this important conversation! if you can’t attend but would like to help someone else have a chance to go, scholarships are greatly needed so that as many people as possible can be challenged to consider the practice of deeper friendship. also, they are pulling this off as a labor of love on a shoestring budget, so let dan know if you can help!
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linear: never was, never will be
* this post is part of the january synchroblog, a bunch of bloggers writing on the same topic. this month is being hosted by provoketive magazine and is centered around the theme of hope. the provoketive link list is at the bottom. that’s a lot of hope!
* * * * *
Even before I became a Christian I had the crazy idea embedded inside of me that life was supposed to be pretty clear and easy if you did certain things. Maybe it was growing up with a single mom who struggled and scraped and believing that “if I got a college education, it wouldn’t be like that” or “If you don’t rock the boat, you can keep everyone happy.” The message of “Do this that and you can get this or that” was engrained in me from early on, and this was long before I became a Christ-follower. I sort of think it’s human nature.
Once I made the leap toward Jesus in my early adult years, the message was actually more strongly reinforced, only with a little twist of adding “God” to it: “If you do these things, believe these things, memorize these things, God will _________.”
Really, this kind of thinking makes an assumption that life is supposed to look like this:
It’s ladder-like living where we keep moving forward and don’t look back. One rung after another after another, somehow expected to forget what’s behind us and keep pressing forward to what’s ahead. With enough faith, forgiveness, prayer, and fortitude, we’ll keep rising higher and higher and getting better and better. It’s formulaic and if you just do the right things, the right things will come together.
Yeah, it didn’t work so well for me. As much as I secretly long for “linear” my life was anything but. In fact, my life has always felt a lot more like this:
Look familiar?
About 16 years ago I heard a very wise woman named Jan Frank speak at a women’s retreat. I have no idea what she’s doing these days, but I will always remember this imagery. She shared that even though we long for life to be linear, and to be healed quickly from things in the past or negative messages about ourselves, it just doesn’t work that way. Rather, over the course of our lives we will continually hit our “stuff” over and over again, but each time at a new place.
The model she shared looked like this:
The spiral is bringing me hope right now. Sometimes longing and hoping and wishing and begging for life to be linear can be so frustrating. I don’t want to still be saddled with the same messages I have struggled with for years. The ones that all-roads-lead-to for me are “I’m not enough” and “I’m really on my own.” As much healing work as God has done with them, as much as I know they are not true, as much as I can put them in their proper place, they still show up in my heart and my head and relationships. Meanwhile, I keep consciously and unconsciously expecting them to be done, in the past, and happily moving up the next rung of the ladder.
But I am reminded, yet again, as this new year begins that life is so not linear. It never was and it never will be. I am going to hit my woundedness again, and again, and again over the course of my life, but each time at a little different place. Instead of expecting the messes to be gone and being angry at myself and God for not taking care of it as quickly as I’d like, I am learning to lean into God’s ongoing transformation in my life. I will continually bump into these core messages, especially during times of trial and challenge, and each time God will work to heal and restore yet another layer that needs tending to.
Linear expectations of ourselves, of God, of other people tend to lead to shame, self-hatred, and anger. I think a lot of our church experiences have subtly and directly taught us that linear living was possible. In this model, we always fall short and end up feeling bad about ourselves. It eventually leads to hopelessness.
Thinking that life is just a chaotic, crazy roller coaster ride with no rhyme or reason to it isn’t very hopeful, either.
Accepting the spiral-ness of life leads to freedom, hope, and peace. It lets God off the hook and helps us notice “Yep, there it is again, rearing its ugly little head, trying to teach me something” instead of being royally ticked that we’re still struggling. This infuses me with hope.
Hope that I’m not a total screw-up.
Hope that there’s a bigger story unfolding.
Hope that God is always at work, transforming, rebuilding, renewing, restoring.
No matter how many times I hit the same stuff.
Hope is remembering that every time I bump up against my weaknesses and painful parts of my story, it is at a new place, there to teach me something really good about what it means to be human in need of God’s help and hope in a messy, broken world.
Yeah, life is not linear. Never was and never will be.
* * * * *
more hope here:
- The Trouble With Hope: John Ptacek
- Hope = Possibility x Imagination: Wayne Rumsby
- Little Reminders: Mike Victorino
- Where Is My Hope: Jonathan Brink
- Hope for Hypocrites: Jeremy Myers
- Now These Three Remain: Sonny Lemmons
- Perplexed, But Still Hopeful: Carol Kuniholm
- A Hope that Lives: Amy Mitchell
- Generations Come and Generations Go: Adam Gonnerman
- Demystifying Hope: Glenn Hager
- God in the Dark: On Hope: Renee Ronika Klug
- Keeping Hope Alive: Maurice Broaddus
- Are We Afraid to Hope?: Christine Sine
- On Wobbly Wheels, Split Churches and Fear: Laura Droege
- Adopting Hope: Travis Klassen
- Hope is Held Between Us: Ellen Haroutunian
- Hope: In the Hands of the Creatively Maladjusted: Mihee Kim-Kort
- Paradox, Hope and Revival: City Safari
- Good Theology Saves: Reverend Robyn
- Linear: Never Was, Never Will Be: Kathy Escobar
- Better Than Hope: Liz Dyer
- Caroline for Congress: Hope for the Future: Wendy McCaig
- Fumbling the Ball on Hope: KW Leslie
- Content to Hope: Alise Wright
- Hope: Oh, the Humanity!: Deanna Ogle
3, well 4, christmas-y things
well here we go, the last few days before christmas. it was 67 degrees here in colorado yesterday & snowing today! it has been a really wild & crazy refuge week with several of my most favorite events–serving dinner at joshua station, a beautiful transitional housing program in denver that we love, our 6th annual refuge single moms crazy christmas brunch (with a visit from mrs. claus, in rare form), & our annual refuge christmas dinner celebration together, carols & games & great food together. a local grocery store helped us provide gifts for a bunch of families connected in some way, shape or form to the refuge, so it was pretty fun to get to play santa, too. yesterday i woke up really happy & grateful for our little wild community and also relieved that now it’s just cruising toward christmas eve. my kids are all off school & my son’s coming home from college tonight & i’m looking forward to a lot of movies & just hanging out together for the next few weeks (and hoping the 67 degree weather will return, ha ha).
i wanted to share a few christmas-y things before i sign off for the week.
first, here’s a video reflection from our saturday night’s gathering centered on God’s stories, our stories. it’s funny how 6 minutes feels so long in our fast-paced world but how nice it was to take the time to just soak in and be quiet. i also have no idea why the part that shows at the beginning is “is it a story of pain?” but i guess youtube somehow knows me too well?
second, tonight at 9pm eastern time, in honor of advent & Jesus entering into the world in the flesh, i’ll be having a twitter conversation with my throwing parties & telling stories friend steve knight about “incarnational vs. missional” we’ll converse on twitter & then have a skype chat afterward. would love for you to be part if you can. the hashtag is #missionalchat.
lastly, i thought i’d share this fun picture of my family because it makes me happy. i don’t share a lot about my kiddos here on the blog because they already have to put up with a lot of annoying things about me but i knew they wouldn’t mind this one! it’s our christmas picture this year & the good news is i’m jumping, although obviously not as high as jose. a year post-back-surgery it is a huge blessing. my kiddos range from almost 20 down to twins that are 12. life’s good.
i’ll close with this beautiful prayer from christine sine’s gorgeous advent liturgies and reflections–waiting for the light. we used it a few weeks ago at the refuge. i guess that’s actually 4 christmas-y things!
Come Down, Come In and Make Us Whole
This is a season of watchfulness.
We watch for the One who hears our cries and shares the suffering of our world.
This is a season of promise.
We wait for the promised coming of Emmanuel, God with us, God for us, God in us.
This is a season of reflection.
We expect to be transformed so we can be bearers of light in God’s kingdom.
So Come, Jesus, Come.
Into our troubles and weaknesses.
Into the barren places of our souls, Come Lord,
Come down, come in, come among us and make us whole.
Into the war torn and the refugee,
Into those who live in conflict, Come Lord,
Come down, come in, come among us and make us whole.
Into the homeless and the unemployed,
Into those who feel abandoned, Come Lord,
Come down, come in, come among us and make us whole.
Into the sick, and the disabled,
Into the struggling, the wounded, Come Lord.
Come down, come in, come among us and make us whole.
Into the lives of loved ones,
Into those from whom we are estranged, Come Lord.
Come down, come in, come among us and make us whole.
Into our struggles and our fears,
Into our joy and celebrations, Come Lord.
Come down, come in, come among us and make us whole.
Come down, come in, come among us and make us whole.
Amen.
merry christmas, my friends, enjoy a beautiful week. may God’s hope & peace be near.
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it’s a beautiful, messy story.
i do not like shopping. i do not like crowds. i do not like commercials and all of the nutty emphasis on buying stuff. and i definitely do not like cold december weather.
but i do love christmas.
i love christmas because i love the christmas story. i love the wild & crazy way God reveals himself to the world, in a way that most everyone would never expect. i love that angels announced Jesus’ birth first to the the shepherds & the pagans and they were strangely drawn toward this light from the very beginning. i love that the earthly parents God chose were basic people with basic jobs and a basic faith. i love the reminder that from the beginning of Jesus’ life, power was trying to destroy him but never fully prevails. i love that the story of Jesus is a beautiful, messy one not a clean & sterile one (even though that’s usually how the storybooks make it sound).
the christmas story wasn’t neat and tidy.
it was messy. and beautiful.
like ours.
for this season of advent at the refuge we have been focusing on our stories–God’s story, our stories, and how they all intersect. on the first week of advent my friend karl shared how “every Bible story is a christmas story.” i’ll add “every one of our stories is a christmas story, too”.
here are the elements i think are present in the christmas story and in our stories, if we look carefully:
1. pain and struggle
2. something that doesn’t make sense in our own or others’ eyes
3. some kind of redemption, hope, or healing
4. a reminder that somehow, someway, God is emmanuel, always with us.
when i look at almost every Bible story i can think of, these 4 things apply. when i consider the weird twists and turns in my own story & many others along the way, these 4 things are somehow always present.
i want to focus for a minute on #2 because i think it’s the one that might give us the most trouble–”something that doesn’t make sense in our own or others’ eyes.”
we humans have a desperate need to make sense of everything. we want it to “work” the way we want it to work. we want to understand things we’re not supposed to understand. we want to cram God’s weird & wild ways into our own boxes so we can feel more comfortable. we want neater, tidier, easier.
i know i do.
but the christmas story reminds us that some things just don’t make sense in our eyes or other’s eyes. the Jesus story sure didn’t.
two contradicting things can be present at the same time.
the christmas story is beautiful & ugly. filled with faith & doubt, peace & confusion, fear & courage. these things living together don’t make sense in our linear-little-brains. but part of redeeming our story and participating in God’s story more fully requires us to open our hearts to letting both exist at the same time. and like all things of faith, this is a heart-journey, not a head-one. our brains can try to rationalize “sure, both dark and light exist in me” but still do everything in our power to clean it up and make all be good, “right” or okay or go the other direction of leaning completely into only the dark side where everything is hard & ugly & painful.
we can easily become focused on the dark & blinded to the light.
or we can do an excellent job of pretending like everything’s light and dismiss the reality of our darkness.
a lot of our church experiences haven’t helped us to live more comfortably with paradox in our own lives, either. black & white thinking has often morphed into black & white feelings, too.
we did a little exercise a few weeks ago at our weekend gathering, to open ourselves up to remember that light & dark exist at the same time in our stories–and in all of God’s stories, too. part of cultivating hope this advent season is living in the tension of both existing but straining to see the light, the good, the beautiful because these are often more difficult for us to see in ourselves.
here’s the exercise we did:
choose one word from the left hand column that describes this season for you. then choose one word from the middle column. if the words that come to mind aren’t on this list, use them instead.
right now, my story is ________ & __________.
my two words are “strong & fragile” and those usually don’t make sense together. in my humanness, i only want to be strong or i only see my fragility & weakness. the beauty of the christmas story in me is seeing that both can exist at the same time, and they don’t have to make sense. and like most all of them, my story is one of pain & struggle and redemption & healing & God-with-me-in-the-thick-of-it.
yeah, all our stories are christmas stories.
i’d love to hear what words describe your story right now.
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comfortable in our own skin
one of the things i’ve always tried to do here is write from my heart. to be as honest as i could. to not worry about who would think what. it’s pretty hard to do! there are so many different tribes out here in online-land with different passions & people & ways-of-living-out-their-faith. for the past five years, i have always struggled with not fully connecting with any of them. for some folks, i’m not sufficiently theological or liturgical or serious or christian or universalist or denominational or missional enough..to feel like i’m tracking all the way. i love & value them all and appreciate the various expressions more than i can say. but sometimes it can just feel..weird. off, somehow. like i don’t fully have a place in any of them.
and at any moment something i say here can bug pretty much any of them for one reason or another.
this is a really familiar feeling for me. all through middle & high school & college & pretty much all of my adult life i have always been friends with a bunch of different people that rarely all come together in the same place. i love it because i know such beautiful, diverse, amazing people. but it can also feel unsettling & uncomfortable. i miss some of what you get when you are deeply embedded in a particular tribe. i think one of the things that i appreciated about being on a mega-church staff for those couple of years is that it’s so big that you don’t really need anyone else. it’s its own island and a really clear tribe with no room, or apparent need, really, for much else. now, out here floating around on a lifeboat for the past five years clinging for dear life i have had to learn something that i knew i needed to learn–how to be comfortable in my own skin.
my skin.
not someone else’s.
not what this group is doing or that group is doing. not what this church is doing or that church is doing. not what this ministry is doing or that ministry is doing. not what this person is doing or that person is doing.
i’m learning to become more comfortable with what i believe.
not what this group believes or that group believes. not what this friend believes or that friend believes. not what this blogger believes or that blogger believes.
yikes, it’s hard to do! the systems of the world are built upon people conforming to each other somehow. my friend & awesome refuge teammate karl always says that we mistake uniformity for unity. true unity is diversity, bound together with a common thread. to me, when it comes to issues around “church”, that thread is God. but we’ve built systems that call for uniformity, that we need to be like “them”, whatever the them is, in order to belong.
i do not think that any of the things i believe are really very heretical! they’re just one expression of faith that i feel dearly and passionately about, and stem from how i view the gospels & the Bible & what God has stirred up in me through the years. my point in my last post, yep, i guess i’m a heretic, is that by believing & practicing these, somehow i’m “out” of certain circles because of their interpretation of theological truth. that’s so bizarre to me. and sad.
but alas, my responsibility is not to change that system or anyone’s minds.
my responsibility is to learn to be comfortable in my own skin.
my skin, not someone else’s.
but the skin God made that’s me.
this is maturity. this is healing. this is transformation.
and this doesn’t have to have to be perceived as something that only has to do with faith or church or anything “spiritual”. it has to do with becoming better human beings, stronger, more secure, more free men & women, who discover who we each are in deep places of our hearts & practices.
one of the things i love about the christmas story and this time of year is the reminder of Jesus’ humanness. he had to learn to be in his skin just like us. and obviously, many, many people didn’t really like his skin. he had to have his feet on the ground & his head in the clouds in order to walk out the journey he was on here on earth. he had a huge advantage, being God and all, but i take great solace in knowing that Jesus understands humanness.
in all its mess & all its glory. in all its struggle & all its joy. in all its reality & all its beauty.
the wise & prophetic father richard rohr says that other “a” words for advent are: alert, awake, alive, attentive, aware. i’m not big on alliteration but i love these words! this season i am trying to be awake, aware, attentive to my story, God’s story-in-me.
and i think it’s a story of growing up somehow, of learning to be comfortable in my own skin. learning to be be less codependent & independent and more interdependent. to be more free. to be less afraid. to be more clear, even if its only about a few important things. to be more brave. to be more weak in some areas & stronger in others. to care less about what people think & more about what God might think.
God knows our struggle to be comfortable in our own skin. God is E/Immanuel, with us. here, now. down here in the muck and mire of our real lives, our real struggles with life & faith & relationships & all that it means to be human, created in the image of God, living in this broken weird wild world.
enthusiastically wanting to teach us to be comfortable in our own skin.
i’m trying to listen.
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ps: i stumbled upon this original advent song this weekend by matt staniz. i loved it & thought i’d pass it on to you today as we reflect on our skin, God’s skin.
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