Enrichment Journal’s spring 2012 issue focuses on coaching for life and leadership. To learn more about Christ-centered coaching, the power of coaching in the local church, why great ministry leaders need a coach, and more, check out these helpful articles:
Enjoy!
Life’s pain is rife with invitations. Paradoxes of life and death, joy and mourning, hope and despair, invite us to spiritual and emotional growth, if we will only stop to listen and respond.
The sun peeks over the horizon as I drive into the empty parking lot at work. I squeeze my silver Camry between the white lines, shut off the engine, and pause to catch my breath. A few minutes later, I open the driver’s door, put one foot on the pavement, and then the other. I take a deep breath and hoist myself up to a standing position, an involuntarily gasp escaping from my lips.
I cannot deny that the pain has been worse lately–although that is precisely what I have tried to do for the last few months.
After living with rheumatoid arthritis for more than 15 years, you would think I would be used to it. The weight of uncertainty about my future is hard to bear; but in its midst, I hear God’s invitations—to feel and acknowledge my pain, to choose wisely, to live intentionally, and to share my story.
Pain in life is as certain as the rising and the setting of the sun. Why then are we surprised when it strikes?
“Authentic worshipers seek God in desperate realities: body racking pain, exile, earthquakes, oppression, disease, poverty, heartbreak, betrayal, and warfare,” Adele Ahlberg Calhoun writes. In her book, Invitations from God, Calhoun points out, “Jesus related to God through tears, and he invites us to do the same. Even a cursory look at Jesus and his teachings reveals a God who is at home in the watery world of tears.”
As I am learning to live in the paradoxes of life and death, joy and mourning, hope and despair, I accept several invitations hidden in the shadow of distress.
Life is rife with invitations. Yet, in our frantic busyness, we miss most of them. Pain is an invitation to slow down and respond to God’s invitations for something more, to experience resurrection life in parts of our lives that have been dead for far too long.
*Complicated grief occurs not only with the death of a loved one but can also occur with any major loss–illness, loss of dreams, the death of a friendship, and more.
Here’s a quote that was shared during today’s critique group. Let it speak to you today.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”~ Maryanne Williamson
How is it with your soul? It’s possible to gain the whole world yet lose sight for what really matters. Discover the unhurried rhythms of grace with soul care.
While having coffee with my friend Kathryn this morning, our conversation drifted to the cultural differences that exist between South Dakota and Northern Virginia. Although she lived in the Washington suburbs for years, she recently sold her home and moved to South Dakota.
What’s in South Dakota? You ask.
Not much of anything really, and that is precisely the point.
Life moves at a slower pace in South Dakota. People have time in their lives and schedules to forge meaningful relationships. Here on the East Coast, we can barely squeeze in time for our spouses much less time with friends and family. Our debt is deep, and our relationships are shallow. Our homes are large, but our families fractured.
Souls are living, and like all living things they thrive or wither, based on the care we give it. In Renovation of the Heart, Dallas Willard writes, “Our soul is like an inner stream of water, which gives strength, direction, and harmony to every other element of our life. When that stream is as it should be, we are constantly refreshed and exuberant in all we do, because our soul itself is profusely rooted in the vastness of God and his kingdom, including nature; and all else within us is enlivened and directed by that stream.”
Kathryn’s soul is thriving. I see it in her eyes and the lilt in her step. Like the daffodils in spring, Kathryn is coming into full bloom. And it is beautiful to see. She has just returned from a writers’ conference in Tucson, and the writing she shared with me left me breathless. Waves of creativity washed over her; one idea flowed into the next, as her words and heart became a tool for transformation, chipping away at my fear and discouragement.
The wide-open spaces of the Great Plains have been good for Kathryn.
While we all can’t move to South Dakota, we can carve out more space in our schedules to discover the unhurried rhythms of grace, to cultivate compassion, and to give ourselves time for reflection and rest.
Kathryn is tending to her inner life, and it shows.
How is it with your soul?