It was a balmy 80-degree day in mid-June when I stopped at a vineyard in Suttons Bay, MI on my way back from a writing retreat. The once-shy vines, timid during bud break like a small child hiding behind her mother, had now exploded into full, wild extroversion.

The leaves spread flat and broad, and the branches threw out leaves and lateral shoots in every direction, resembling a teenager with an untamed mop of hair. Tendrils wrapped around the wire trellis, curling as if preparing for another leap toward the sky.

Dave, dressed in a clean cream linen collared shirt, pointed to the wildly growing vines and explained, “From bud break until it flowers, a vine can grow inches a day. It doesn’t even recognize the fruit it’s hanging. It is only focused on growing.”

Emergence

After the vulnerability of bud break, there is a sudden shift. Those first leaves, drawing photosynthesis from the sun, propel the plant forward rapidly and abundantly. When we emerge from seasons of dormancy and face the late spring sun, we find ourselves collaborating with God and others in expansive, wild, and free ways. We open ourselves up to the world, receiving the many gifts of sunshine, rain, and warmth, filling us with energy and light.

We all have moments like this, right?

• It’s getting so engrossed in a project that you forget to eat.

• It is the surge of energy you feel when you finally get in the saddle at a new job.

• It’s the great bursts of light and energy of children at play.

• It’s the joy and anticipation of beginning to share your ideas and gifts to serve those around you.

These are the days when you wake up with a spring in your step. The depression lifts, your vision clarifies, and you try new things, build new relationships, and start new, God-inspired ventures. You’ve passed through the winter season, and now you’re ready to produce fruit. The long dark stretch of winter is still fresh in your mind, so you must allow yourself the freedom and joy of opening up the gates to run.

Unhindered Growth

During the growing phase, the vine isn't concerned about the fruit or the end results. Its sole focus is on growing up and out without restraint. The vine doesn't worry about the harvest; it has the freedom to grow, try, and risk without fear. It’s not about the outcome but about trusting the process, letting go of what we have to “show” for ourselves, and surrendering to the creative flow of life.

Growth happens when we let go of others' opinions and take risks. We grow by listening to that inner voice and allowing the creative flow within us to express itself. Explosive growth doesn’t come from striving to produce fruit but from yielding to become what we already are.

John O’Donohue beautifully captures this: “When we are creative, we help the unknown become known, the visible to be seen, and the rich darkness within us to become illuminated. Each of us is emerging in every moment. When we discover our creativity, we begin to attend to the constant emergence of who we are.” – Beauty, the Invisible Embrace

Creativity and Abundance

In the growing season, the vine focuses on growing up and out, participating in life’s abundance. Hildegard von Bingen calls this “viriditas,” the greening power of the Divine. It’s the creative power of life that flows within all things, the Spirit of God.

Consider the Spirit’s flow in Scripture:

• In Genesis 1, the Spirit hovers over creation, and with a word, new creation emerges and multiplies in all its forms.

• At the start of Jesus’ ministry, the Spirit rests upon him like a dove at his baptism, setting off explosive growth that teaches, heals, and delivers thousands.

• In Acts 2, the Holy Spirit rests upon the disciples at Pentecost, empowering them to take risks and share the Gospel, resulting in three thousand baptisms.

Whatever your place of creativity; the place your true self thrives, you need to know that there is a wellspring within you that is infinite. Because it is fueled by the boundless love of God that can never be tapped out, never run dry. The Spirit is always hovering over us, yearning to creatively express His love through your life in abundant, multiplicative ways beyond what you could ever envision. So many more possibilities than you could ever even actualize in your lifetime.

In the growing season, we become a channel for God’s love to overflow a wellspring of creativity at will. Our real work is to participate in the Spirit’s flow. As Joseph Chilton Pearce states, “We must accept that this creative pulse within us is God’s creative pulse itself.”

Which means painting on miles of canvas.

Or writing thousands of pages that may never get read.

It’s planting lettuce and watching it multiply faster than you can possibly eat.

It’s generating so many ideas in the workplace that not all of them can be used.

It’s coming up with multiple creative solutions to the same problem.

It’s coming up with hundreds of new ways to love people.

It’s generating millions of lines of coding.

It’s discovering 1,000 ways not to make a lightbulb.

Embracing the Growing Journey

The creative life force of the Spirit often comes in fits and starts, manifesting in wild, unruly, and confusing ways. If you’re a writer or artist, you know it takes thousands of hours or pages to understand a piece's shape and direction. Instead of seeing this as a waste or failure, we can reframe it like Thomas Edison, acknowledging that sometimes it takes 10,000 attempts to create a lightbulb.

Don’t let fear stop you. Don’t let the fear of wastefulness stop you from opening yourself to the creative force within that wants to get out. Our work is designed to be an expression of God’s love in the world, an overflowing and generous offering to those around us. And, as we tap into its flow, it is cleaning you out as it goes, like running water through a drain that has been clogged for months and has finally broken free.


I love what Brenda Ueland says about this, “Why should we all use our creative power…? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold, and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money.”

When we are allowing God’s abundant love and creativity to flow through us, we become more fully who we are and who we were made to be. If our identity is in the source of the vine, not the grapes, we can grow without knowing where it’s going. Trust the loving vinedresser who knows. Your job is to grow, become, unfold, and unfurl into who you already are.

Guest Blog Post by - Carloyn Watts

Now that we’re a few weeks into the new year, how are you feeling? Excited and motivated? Empty and flat with the mid-winter blues? Weary? Is the excitement of the new year lingering, or do you just wish winter would hurry up and turn to spring?

Life’s full of ups and downs, isn’t it? Stretches of hard work followed by seasons of weariness. Days of excitement, then of emptiness. Some of us may experience more sadness than joy, or vice versa, but for most of us, life is a complicated alternation of gladness and disappointment, fullness and emptiness.

Once Advent and Christmas have passed, how do we continue to live the startling mystery of the incarnation and of Christ’s ongoing life in us during the ups and downs of the new year?  More specifically, how do we live well in seasons of weariness, of emptiness? It’s a question I’ve had lots of opportunity to ask:

• When chronic illness returned and I had to trade my work as an obstetrician in Afghanistan for months and years in a bed back in Canada.

• When I returned home after a couple of beautiful and difficult weeks with a dear friend who was nearing death, her body eaten away by cancer.

• And again recently, after a busy season of sending my first book out into the world and finding myself emptied out by the work and the vulnerability of it all.

How do we live well in these seasons?

There is, of course, an important place for self-care and community and rest and doing what we can to heal and be restored. But also, what can help us welcome life’s ups and downs and encounter Christ within them rather than merely trying to fight or fix them?

As I ask these questions, I find myself coming back again and again to the following words that I wrote a decade ago after my stay with my dying friend, words that made it into the pages of Risking Rest, words that still hold the reminders I need when I feel empty.  Whether you’re currently in a season of hope and energy or weariness and emptiness, may these words be a gift for you, too.

“Don’t you believe that Christ is in YOU?”

In the days that followed my stay with my friend, I began to trace the theme of God in us through Scripture. It was hard in those days to feel the truth of what I was reading, hard to believe it.

I was exhausted, empty, listless. I was alone again without strength to write or desire to read. I hadn’t found the energy to unpack or the will to empty the overflowing garbage cans. I had no one to serve.

And yet God kept drawing me back to the idea that Christ was incarnate in me, challenging me to believe it. One day the apostle’s question showed up in a blog post I read: “Don’t you believe that Christ is in you?” (2 Cor. 13:5). Do I?

Do I believe that Christ is in me? That he is in me all the time and not just in those rare moments when I feel strong and able?

When we’re carrying Jesus, there are times we feel full. Joy and belonging, the richness of being known and loved and those privileged glimpses of our own hands being the hands of God as we serve others—these fill and satisfy, making it easy for us to believe that Christ is in us. But when I feel empty? Then I wonder what is wrong. How can I feel empty when I’m carrying within me the One in whom all of God lives? I expect the discomfort of pregnancy to be that of uncomfortable fullness, not painful emptiness. I forget that the One filling me is himself both the fullness of God and the One who emptied himself.

Often it is easier for me to see the love that flows through offered emptiness when it shines in the lives of others than when I’m living it myself. Two years before, my colleague, Louise, continuing to offer her own fullness and emptiness in another part of Afghanistan, had allowed me to include in a blog post her experience of sitting helplessly with a young mother losing her only child.

I sat with her today, and held her hand as she cried, because there was nothing else I could do. The words “Khudawand meraban as” stuck in my throat, not because they aren’t true, but because just at that moment that seemed like a cruel thing to say. “God is kind,” so . . . he will take away your only child? And I had heard those words said over and over, like a mantra, by those around me—the same doctors and mothers of other children who were also telling her not to cry, there was nothing to cry about. The kindness I wanted to tell her about was the kindness of a Father who was crying with her.

Then her husband came in, followed by two other male family members. I watched as this tough Pushtun man quietly cried as he touched his little girl, and I watched as her uncle, only young himself, maybe in his late teens, pulled back her hat and laid his hand on her head, as in a prayer, as tears rolled down his cheeks. And inside I just felt like screaming at the injustice of it—five-month-old girls should not be yellow, should not leak, should not be gasping for breath. Especially not when they came into hospital with a tummy bug that developed into pneumonia and sepsis.

“God is kind.”

It’s one of those things that even God, who formed worlds with words, knew could be heard only through the single wordless Word who curled himself small and helpless and came into the mess of our real, uninsulated lives, surrounded by the pungent scent of fresh dung.

Coming as an infant (the Latin root means “not speaking”), coming, without words of condemnation, into the mess: it’s the way he speaks the truth that it’s not the ideal me that is loved. It’s the real me. It’s the messy, beautiful, fearful me who longs after him, but not nearly enough. The me who loves and struggles and tries to do what only he can do, and then remembers and lets him bring me close again. It’s how he comes right into the places where we feel past knowing what is the truth and wraps us tight in arms that declare, “This is the truth.”

“This is the truth. I am the Truth.” He silently cries it, submitting gladly to the dark crampedness of our inmost spaces. Surrendering to the violent pains of our birthing through his own. Opening those places wide with the bloodied speaking of the speechless Word so we can receive the truth long hidden in the spoken words and know that God is kind. That he is Love.

Five-month-old girls should not leak from old intravenous sites, should not be yellow, should not gasp for breath. No. Nor should the God-man suspended between heaven and earth leak blood-sweat and strain for each breath. But to speak only words into our daily pain would have been futile. So he let himself be spoken, the Word wordless for a while, Creator in created flesh, the Strong powerless, so we could bear his coming near. He gave himself to be cuddled and cared for so he could return our baby embrace with his stronger, truer one, the embrace that had held us from the beginning but from which we, in our fear, had run. This is the truth, arms that lead us through that valley where his death and ours unite in the hope of death swallowed by love.

Want more help resting in God’s love?

If you find yourself weary or empty and longing to draw closer to the One who lives our weakness with us, you may be interested in Risking Rest. You can learn more here or order the book here.

Questions for Reflection:

• When have you experienced yourself weary and empty?

• How might it help to remember in those times that the One filling you is both the fullness of God and the One who emptied himself

• What does it mean to you, especially in your moments of weakness and weariness, that Jesus has experienced our human vulnerability and dependence himself?

A Prayer:

Oh, God, in the moments we feel ourselves weary and empty, hold us especially close. Remind us that feeling weary and empty doesn’t mean we’re failing. It may be a normal part of participating in the life and work of the One who is both the fullness of God and the One who emptied himself, who first took on flesh in Mary’s womb and now lives in us.

⁠

Maybe like me, you see 2024 as a fresh start. After a relentless couple years of change and grief, are you a little more hopeful for this new year? Maybe?

But how do we start? As the famous saying goes, “Over and over, we begin again.”

And to begin again, we have to approach life with a learner’s posture and with intentionality. Here are some questions that have helped me “begin again”. I hope they help you too.

1. What lessons did I learn in 2023 that I want to bring into 2024?

In order to move forward, we have to look back. Our stories and memories are rich with so much wisdom if we only give God a chance to teach us something through them. Did you know that most of our learning happens in the debrief, when we reflect back on our experience? We grow when we build on what we have learned, and reflecting on the past year is a great way to start.

I created a special guide for this called Prepare the Way. You can get it here or by signing up button below.

Lessons Learned from Last Year:

As I spent time reflecting with this guide, I uncovered some lessons I learned that I want to take with me into 2024, particularly about rhythms. I hope these will help you too:

• When I stop painting regularly, I get out of whack emotionally and start trying to control everything. Painting helps me to surrender to God. For more on this, check out this post.
  
  What is something that brings you joy that also helps you practice surrender? Be gentle with yourself and carve time in your schedule for activities that help you let go. Your loved ones will thank you for it!
  
  

•  When I stop doing regular artist dates (scheduled play) is when I start to lose sight of what is important and live like a machine instead. An artist date is a concept coined by Julia Cameron in her book, the Artist Way. Whether you are an artist or not, artist dates help us slow down and tap into the eternal pulse of things through beauty, play, and wonder.

  
  Some of my favorite artist dates? Contemplative walks noticing beauty, watching Disney movies, taking a leisurely bath with candles, dancing to worship music, essential oils, getting take out at one of my fav. local restaurants.
  
  

• When I don’t pay attention to the rhythm and season I am in and respond accordingly, I crash. I want to embrace the rhythms and boundaries that will allow me to thrive. For example, after I finish a major project, I have to remember to give myself some time to recover before launching into the next big project. I also need to protect seasons for hidden work - the slower, but critical seasons where new ideas germinate out of the public eye and where God does the inner work in me. I need to make space to slow down for this, listen, learn, experiment, etc. before I start thinking about sharing it with others or turning it into a “product.”

  
  Maybe for example, remembering that you are in a season of motherhood or caregiving can help you adjust your expectations of yourself. These seasons have extra demands and limits that need to be named and acknowledged. Or maybe this is a season of fruitfulness - press in and enjoy it! For me personally, after the intensity of ministry during Advent, I am taking January off to slow down and do the inner work. I am hoping God will help me enter a season of dormancy, and that new ideas will slowly germinate naturally on the other side. Pay attention to the season you are in and give yourself grace to embrace the limits of that season.

2. Who am I becoming?

Who has God already been shaping you to be? What has He already done in you? You have made it through some of the hardest years of our lifetime and you are still here. Well done.⁠

When you look at yourself through the lens of your beloved-ness, who do you see God shaping you to be? Let’s take a moment to celebrate who you already are. Look how much you’ve grown! Practice Visio Divina with yourself right now - where is the divine manifesting in you?⁠

When I look at myself through this lens, and how God has grown me…⁠

• I see a woman who is learning to trust the inner voice that calls her to create, even when no one is asking her to.

• I see a woman who sometimes gets buried under the drive to perform and perfect, but who is learning to notice when this pattern shows up and make some necessary adjustments.

• I see a woman who has been pressed through the wine press that God is using to make new wine.

• I see a woman who has been broken by pouring that wine into old wineskins that are bursting, but is discovering new wineskins that expand and welome me and my work.

• I see a woman who is actively seeking the face of Jesus through those who are marginalized and being transformed by the Jesus I am discovering there.

When you look at yourself through the lens of compassion and beloved-ness, who do you see you are becoming?⁠

3. Who do I want to become?

What if you started 2024 knowing that God cared more about who you are becoming than what you do?

In the end, it is who we are that endures for eternity - not necessarily what we do. When we approach life with the perspective of who want to become vs. what we want to accomplish, it will change the choices we make. But more importantly, it helps us be aware of our WHY behind our choices. Our motivation impacts who we are becoming - and if we can start with the right heart posture, we are on the right track to become more like Christ. So let’s start dreaming with God about who we want to become and name the daily choices we want to make as a result.

Who do I want to become in 2024?

I want to be like a servant at the wedding in Cana in John 2.

A few years ago, when I asked God what role He wants me to play in His Kingdom, he gave me the image of the servants at the wedding at Cana. As I spend time in loving union with Him, behind the scenes I am gathering His living water into the “jars” of my creative work. As I pour it out in love for others, I trust that He will turn this creative offering into new wine that brings delight, beauty, and taste of the Kingdom of God.

This year, I want to become that servant. The one who hears Mary say, “do whatever he tells you” (John 2:5) and does it. Who is not afraid to go behind the scenes in the studio to create in the secret place with God. Who is willing to pour out my worship in the unseen and uncelebrated place, gathering the living water of God’s love into jars.

I want to then go forth boldly, lifting those heavy jars full of paint and water and words and pour them out in loving obedience, trusting that God will turn my offerings into new wine. A fresh encounter the boundless love of God.

In 2024, who do you want to become?

4. Given who I want to become, how will I define success in 2024 - at work, home, and in community?

“If the only two metrics we measure everything by is efficiency
and productivity, we are going to miss out on our deepest creativity.”
- Allison Fallon

A few mantras I am attempting this year to remember my definition of success based on what I want to prioritize:

At work: PROCESS OVER PRODUCT

Product and perfection may be the way the world measure's success - but what do we become when we live by these standards?⁠

When I focus on productivity - I dehumanize myself and others. I push myself to reach beyond my limits and my work ends up becoming empty and lifeless.⁠ ⁠

But when I focus on the process at work, I remind myself to enjoy what I do. I trust that joy and play are part of the process and I stop taking myself so seriously. ⁠I pay attention to the rhythms and seasons I am in and adjust accordingly. I show up to love and create and I surrender the results. I become a joy-filled person who creates because I love to create, not because I have to or because I need to meet some kind of standard.⁠

At home: PRESENCE OVER PERFECTION⁠

When I focus on presence over perfection at home, I am more likely to put down the cooking and cleaning, stop the to-do list and just look my family in the eyes and really see them.

Really behold them.

And my life is so much fuller and richer this way.⁠ I have delighted in holding my boys close and treasuring cuddle time this last week.

⁠In community:
PEOPLE OVER PROJECTS | PEOPLE OVER PLATFORM

When I remind myself that my focus is to serve real people, it helps me to not get sucked into the fame and affirmation drugs in order to truly love like Jesus. I can shift my focus off building my own kingdom, to start building His kingdom through focusing on his most valuable resource - people.

These mantras will be tricky to uphold given the intense pressure at every turn to produce at work, be perfect at home, and prioritize projects and platform over people in the creative world. But these outlook shifts are entirely necessary to engage in for the creative work and way of love I was made for. You too.⁠

What are some mindset shifts you're attempting in 2024?⁠

5. What are some boundaries I need to set for myself in order to become this person?

This is a key one. Let’s get really practical here. What are some boundaries you might need to create in order to become who you want to be - who God has made you to be? What might you need to stop or start in order to start living into this person? Here are some of mine I have set around how I spend my time:

• I have started spending my mornings during workdays on morning pages, artist dates, prayer, Scripture, and creating

• I plan to take an artist date 1 X a week

• I have committed to detaching from email or social media before 11am or between 5-8pm. YIKES!

• I am choosing to disengage from social media on Sabbath - Sundays

• When I have finished a major project, I plan to budget 2 days off to restore my soul

  These are going to be really hard for me, friends. I’ve already broken these rules. But I’m reminding myself to try, to give myself grace and invite the Lord’s help. Baby steps, people. Baby steps. Also - seeing how difficult it is for me to keep these boundaries reveals just how attached I am to certain things - like workaholism and social media. This is drawing me deeper into the heart of Jesus as I realize these things.

Closing Prayer:

What are my desires for 2024? Turn this into a prayer of surrender. Here is one of my prayers:

Lord,

I want to be the kind of person who builds Your Kingdom, not my own. Help me to be faithful to show up and stay true to the slow, inner rhythms that build into the long-term eternal thing You are doing. Help me to slow down at Your pace - to see and behold beauty, to be captivated by wonder, and create from a place of true belovedness and belonging. May I find You the process of creating, in the presence of those You love, and in serving Your beloved children imbued with your presence and stamped with your image.

Amen

Don’t forget your “Prepare the Way for 2024” Guide Below:

It was 2019 and I had two kids in diapers. We were driving home from my parents’ house downstate when a terrible realization caught me by surprise as I was scanning my inbox…

The BIG Shutterfly sale ends at midnight.

I had made it a tradition to make my family members calendars with our pictures from the previous year. Everyone LOVED them, and so naturally, I wanted to fulfill their hopes again year after year.

Immediately my heart rate went up and I thought, “I need to finish these calendars by midnight.” When we got home in the afternoon, we quickly unpacked, started a load of laundry, and put the kids down for a nap while I frantically uploaded pictures.

When they woke up I thought - you know what? Today would be the perfect day to get a Christmas tree. So with a toddler and a baby in tow, we went Christmas tree shopping.

But of course, when we got home, we needed to DECORATE the tree. And while we’re at it, we might as well decorate the whole house.

I found myself decorating the tree with fragile ornaments scattered everywhere all over the house shouting at my toddler every five seconds, “don’t touch that!” while my 10 month old was climbing up my leg wanting to be held.

After bedtime, I went back to working on the calendar until he woke up to nurse. While nursing him, I worked on the calendar with one hand and submitted the order just under the wire at 11:50pm.

The morning after this explosion of a day, I woke up with a deep sense of loss. I wondered, “Is this how God wants me to enter into celebrating His birth - as a disheveled, distracted mess?”

Can you relate to this scenario?
Please tell me I’m not the only one.

If you’re anything like me, I tend to put a LOT of unrealistic expectations on myself during the holidays.

But, often these expectations dictate my behavior and I end up running around like I am driven by an invisible whip. I push past my limits, hustle through to get it done, and usually miss the moment and the meaning of the season. You too?

Is there another way?

If you are looking for a way out of this pattern, the good news is – there is another way. The world tells us that we need to push past our limits in order to make the holidays a success. We must over-extend ourselves, over-eat, over-buy, and over-commit.

But, let’s consider a woman who, faced with overwhelming expectations and the reality of her limits, wondered aloud with all of us, “how will this be?”

If you’d like to have a little pause to ponder more on this concept, I’ve created a little guided prayer practice for you:

Mary simply brought her limitations to God and asked, “how?” And the answer?

“I will overshadow you. I will fill you with myself.”

God did not ask Mary to be superwoman. He did not ask her to push past her limits to do what He asked. All she had to do was surrender the limits of her humanity and say, “yes.”

Is there a way we can embrace and surrender our limitations to God like Mary did?

The challenge is, the expectations that cause us to push past our limits are often firmly ingrained in our brains. We have learned them over time from either our family of origin or some other way. And so in order to form a NEW, healthier pattern in response, it is going to take some intentionality. And, it’s going to take practice. A lot of practice.

So I'm writing this for me - and for you, to help us learn a new pathway. One that helps us to embrace the limits of our humanity in this season and to enter the season more mindfully!

So, here are 5 ways to embrace your limitations during the holidays:

1. Reflect on Your Priorities:

Before launching into the chaos of the season, ask - "What really matters in this season of life?"

Write down or keep a mental note on what you want to focus your time and attention on THIS year. You are in a different stage of life every time Christmas comes around. So what is most important to you and your family this year?

Maybe you have a relative that is sick, and you want to intentionally take time to be with them.

Maybe your church community is going through a crisis and you want to be available and present.

Maybe you are about to be an empty nester and this is your last chance to spend Christmas with your kids before things change forever.

I don’t know what it is for you, but taking the time to determine the season you’re in can help you set your priorities.

Last year, for example, I wanted to intentionally disciple my kids and church community to love the most marginalized. Thinking through these things ahead of time have allowed me to narrow my focus on these things and do step #2...

2. Practice Saying No:

Family and church expectations can run especially high during this season. Allow yourself the grace to say "no."

No, I don't need to go to ALL the holiday parties.

No, I don't need to bake 12 dozen cookies for the Christmas event this year.

One year, I was liberated by simply saying to myself, "No, I don't have to put up ALL the Christmas decorations."

Setting boundaries empowers you to say yes to the things that truly align with your values. Consider: what might you need to cut back this year in order to be more fully present in the moment - to God and to others?

This year, I've decided to gift my family members "experiences" instead of physical gifts because this aligns more with my 3 priorities:

1. I want to be conscious of my buying choices and whether or not they are equitably sourced (this is really hard to do on most physical products), a gift card experience is a safe bet.

2. Doing “experience” gifts instead of physical gifts frees me up to spend less of my time at a hurried pace, frantically searching for things and more time on the things that matter most.

3. PRESENCE is a priority to me, and I want to give my family a gift that will help them be more present - which experiences can do :). We will see how it goes!
   
   

3. Slow Down:

Embrace the pace of the season. Instead of rushing from one task to another, savor moments of rest and reflection. It's in these quieter moments that you may experience God's presence most deeply.

I used to have a rule that there were NO Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving. While good in intent at the time, I had this rule when I was in my twenties and so setting up all the decorations over a weekend with my parents wasn’t a big deal.

Now that I have young kids, just setting up the Christmas village itself is a full day event with breaks and snacks and constant reminders to teach my kids how to be careful with porcelain figurines. So, trying to set it everything up on a weekend feels like a mad dash. By the end of the weekend I am exhausted, irritable, have yelled at my kids, and have a pile of broken Christmas decorations to prove it.

This year, when my youngest, Winston begged me to put up the Christmas village on November 8th, I said, “you know what? That would be lovely. Why don’t we put up just one part today, and then save the other parts for other days?”

Starting the decorations a little earlier has allowed us to slow down and to savor each step, taking in the beauty of one of our favorite parts of the season and not losing our minds as we do.

What choices can you make now that will help you slow down and enjoy the rest of the season at a more manageable pace? Packing less into your schedule and finding other options for decorations and gifts is a good place to start.

4. Ask for God’s help:

Seek guidance from God in prayer. Ask for wisdom in how to manage your limitations and make room for His work in your life. Trust that God can bring about something beautiful even in your constraints.

The same year of the Shutterfly explosion, I was really convicted that I needed to spend more time building relationships with those in our community who are poor and marginalized. I wanted to find ways to meet these people, but I often felt so limited by being a Mom of two very needy young children. How could I find the time and energy? And how could I be present to these people when my kids were so demanding of my attention?

One day, I simply surrendered my limits to God, confessing that I didn’t know how to build relationships with marginalized people in my community in the midst of my family’s limitations. I simply asked, “how will this be?” and asked him to show me how.

A few weeks later, we had the opportunity to deliver Thanksgiving baskets to families in need with our church. One of the families we met was a man named Rich and his son, Milo. They let us into their small apartment and the boys played together with Milo’s toys while Rich, my husband, and I talked. Rich told me that he liked to take Milo to Busy Bodies Bounce House every once in a while - a large facility packed with bounce houses.

The next day I thought, “I’d really like to keep fostering this relationship with Rich and his son,” and it occurred to me, “what if we just met at Busy Bodies?” So on a whim, I called Rich up and asked if he and Milo would like to join us. They said they would love to! While our own busy bodies were busy jumping on inflatables, we had a great conversation with Rich that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Because God had made a way in the midst of my limitations, I had the honor of walking with Rich through some of the most difficult days of his life when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. In those sacred and critical days before his death, I met with Rich in the hospital multiple times.

We were given permission to take his hospital bed outside and had an ice cream party out in the hospital parking lot. I got to meet his family and share some of the most beautiful moments with him before he died. Those are moments I will never forget. They were infused with God’s presence - not because I pushed past my limits to make them happen, but because God came to dwell in the midst of them.

When you consider the call God has on your life, where do you feel your limits most severely? Where do you feel like you don’t have enough? Not enough time? Not enough resources? Not enough energy or vision or gifts?

Could those be the very places that God wants to dwell with you and create something new? Could He take those limits and do something miraculous?

What might happen if you simply asked Him to help you and to make a way where it seems there is no way? In my experience, God LOVES to answer those kinds of prayers.

5. Listen to your body.

Remember that God chose to enter our world through the limits of a human body. Often, when I push past the limits of my body to try to meet expectations, I think I need to overcome my limits and become super-human. Ironically, when I do this, I end up living less human. I become a machine that functions and accomplishes things, but is void of a soul. A mindless, driven beast lacking presence. Instead of looking deep into the eyes of my little ones to truly see them, I see past them to things, projects, and tasks. I cease the ability to see the eternal qualities of God dancing within their eyes as the breathtaking imago dei. I miss the wonder of the present moment.

What might happen if, instead of trying to bust out of the limits of our bodies, we chose to inhabit and embrace them the way Jesus did?

What might it look like to rest when your body is telling you to rest?
Or take a deep breath when you feel overwhelmed?
What would it look like to say, “enough is enough,” and leave the dishes unwashed, the laundry un-folded, and the project incomplete - at least until morning?

Maybe you try paying more attention to your body through things like breath prayers, focusing on one of your five senses, or taking a walk.

Sometimes it helps to have a tool or a guide to lead you into the presence of Jesus because we are often so distracted this time of year. If you would find that helpful, I created a couple prayer resources for you below.

My prayer for you this season, is that you can find ways to embrace your limits. That you will surrender them to God as an invitation, and as you do, that you will discover God dwelling with you in the flesh.

Transform your Advent from mindless hustle to mindful contemplation with these 2 Advent Prayer Resources:

My car jostled along the dirt road of Ten Hands Vineyard Estates on a chilly mid-October morning. The morning fog had just cleared and left a substantial dew along the grass and vines. My pace quickened at the opportunity to harvest grapes for the first time as I joined the group in the vineyard.

Several people with gardening gloves were already gathered near a collection of empty five gallon buckets, and Tom Petzold, the owner, stood in the center commanding the group like a ship captain. He explained the ins and outs of harvesting as he passed out small clippers.

As he dismissed us, I stood in front of a vine flush with grapes. It was looking lively that morning, but like a farmer slumping into bed after a hard day’s work, it yielded its grapes to harvest with a sigh. The leaves had turned from a vibrant green to a mustard yellow speckled with spots of burgundy, revealing the strain of ripening.

The grape clusters were like a handful of large marbles glowing from the inside out. You could almost see the seeds beneath their translucent leathery yellow skin.

As I set myself to the work of clipping the grapes off the vine one by one, the experience of harvesting was pregnant with so much meaning I couldn’t take it all in. Over the last few weeks, I have been uncovering layer by layer some of the rich symbolism inherent in harvesting in the Kingdom of God. 

The Fulfillment of Time

In the Kingdom of God, the harvest represents the consummation of a process that unfolds over time. It is the result of many seasons of God’s faithful cultivation of us and our world that ripens us individually and collectively into who we were created to be.

• It’s the long winter spent in silence and solitude as we face our false selves and die to them. 

• It’s the emergence of new dreams and visions as we awaken to our true selves within. 

• It’s the risk of vulnerability as we show up in the world in bud break. 

• It’s the giving and receiving in mutual respect for one another’s gifts to cross-pollinate and set the fruit

• And it’s the stress of ripening the fruit we are called to bear in the world that finally yields a fruit worth harvesting.

  But - what is the fruit we yield in harvest?

Character:

The reality is, in the Kingdom of God, the harvest isn’t always “out there,” as though we could somehow tangibly measure or collect into baskets the fullness of what God has done. But the harvest is often “in here,” through the overflow of who we are becoming individually and collectively as a beloved community. When we abide in the vine and surrender to the loving cultivation of our vinedresser, we become the visible expression of Christ in the world. When we bear the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, we reveal what he is like. 

As Philippians 1:11 MSG puts it, “Live a lover’s life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God.”

The Expression of Our Unique Design: 

The fruit of the harvest is also an outward expression of our unique identity, ripened into love for others. Harvest is the gift of ourselves generously poured out in the other's focused, self-giving dance of belovedness and belonging. The fruit we bear multiplies into eternity, becoming both seed and wine, continually giving and maturing. 

When my first book, Making Room in Advent arrived at my house, a devotional with my paintings and writings on Luke 1-2, my husband and I were just about on our way out the door for a date night. It had been left on the doorstep and he noticed it while I was getting ready. As I came out of the bathroom and made my way to the door, I asked, “You ready?”

Steven leaned against the counter trying to suppress a smile as he casually shifted the box towards me and in feigned indifference and said, “Sure, I just thought maybe you might want to open this first.” 

I burst out with a scream and yelled, “It’s here!?” and ran towards the box, gripping it in my hands. I set it out on the table on our back porch and frantically cut open the box, my whole body jumping up and down with excitement. And as the box popped open, I quickly grabbed the book, held it in my hands and studied it, running my hand over the embossed cover beaming ear to ear.

There was something so profoundly sacred for me in this moment. It wasn’t just the book itself that made it feel so significant, but it was the fullness of something that had ripened over a decades that made this moment so powerful. Like a vine that grew slowly through various seasons of life, death, and resurrection, deepening roots and surrendering to the cultivation of the vinedresser, I had been on a lengthy journey to get me to this point. 

It was the moment in second grade when my teacher commented that I could be an author and illustrator someday. It was thousands of hours spent in the studio or on the page to hone my craft, the countless ugly paintings and crappy first drafts to craft the right sentence or just the right shade of blue. It was the moments of wanting to throw paintings against the wall and the moments of mysterious breakthrough when it would reveal itself.

It was the many years resisting my calling as an artist and trying to blend in and then the courage to finally own it. This book represented so much of who I had become as I yielded to the mysterious and winding progression of the work layer by layer, and word by word. My true self had been unfolding in profound intimacy with God in the creative process, ripening into the work itself. 

For me, when I opened the box of Making Room in Advent, I was able to finally hold in my hands and see with my eyes the tangible fruit of this unfolding journey. As I stood there on my back porch, I experienced an embodied encounter of harvest that filled me with overflowing joy that I could not keep to myself.

Sometimes we need palpable moments like this. Moments when we experience the physical culmination of a harvest worth celebrating. 

We experience these occasions in all kinds of ways in our lives:

• It’s the birth of a child after seasons of infertility or loss.

• It’s the acceptance letter to the school you had been preparing to get into.

• It’s the celebrations of birthdays and graduations and weddings.

• It’s the moment of baptism when your faith is made public.

These celebrations mark not only the moment themselves, but the deeply profound journey leading up to that point. Every stage of our lives, from childhood dreams to moments of surrendered waiting, contributes to the harvest. And when we finally reap it, we can’t wait to share it with our community. Because the harvest is not something that can be experienced in isolation. Harvest, by its nature, is a communal experience of interdependence, joy and celebration, and an expression of God’s justice. 

Interdependence 

As I looked around during harvest time at Ten Hands Vineyard, I saw a whole community of family members and friends sitting on those five gallon buckets in front of the vines like farmers milking cows. They were delicately, but rapidly clipping clusters of grapes and dropping them into a second five gallon bucket nearby.

There were even several vineyard owners who came to help from other vineyards. Unlike many industries characterized by a spirit of competition, they knew each other’s name and welcomed one another to help. You just knew - they took care of one another. Undoubtedly, when it came harvest time on their vineyards, Tom would be out there with his baseball cap and Carhart jacket, harvesting away. 

As they harvested together, they shared tricks of the trade; when they pruned and why, how they treated mildew, and what they did to care for the soil. There is something about harvesting that opens up to the fact that we need each other. Even when we are harvesting the fruits of a journey that was largely taken in solitude, we cannot harvest the fruits of the work God has done within us alone. 

Joy and Celebration

The act of harvesting is not only about hard work; it's a time for celebration, laughter, and shared joy. In the Bible, harvest is characterized by uncontainable joy and celebration. Psalm 126 describes how those who sow in tears reap with songs of joy - singing together in celebration of the harvest. Joy thrives in the presence of a community that loves and supports one another. We need one another to take it all in, to harvest the wild complexities of a journey and to glean its wisdom. Sharing in the harvest means we also share freely what we have freely been given. It means choosing to surrender in generosity the abundance we have received from God with others, especially those who are in need.

A Just Harvest

In the Old Testament, the Israelites were commanded to harvest in ways that protected and provided for the most vulnerable. The Mosaic code in Leviticus and Deuteronomy prohibited farmers from harvesting their fields to the very edges to allow the “poor and sojourner” or foreigner to glean and provide for their families.

This command and the Israelites faithfulness to it would reveal what God is like. A God who cares deeply for the care and well-being of all, especially the poor and marginalized. Conversely, when the Israelites failed to live into this call to care for the poor in harvest time, God had strong words:

“It is you who have ruined my vineyard;

    the plunder from the poor is in your houses.

What do you mean by crushing my people

    and grinding the faces of the poor?”

declares the Lord, the Lord Almighty.”

-Isaiah 3:14-15

Like the Israelites, when we harvest in ways that elevate our own profit, prestige, or power, it leads to the oppression and exploitation of the poor and vulnerable. But, in God’s Kingdom, the way we harvest is just as important, if not more so than the harvest itself. 

The harvest is an outpouring of all God’s good and heavenly gifts - tangible and intangible. We are responsible; therefore, with how we steward this abundance in ways that mirror God’s design for the flourishing of all creation. This means we harvest in ways that see the entire farming system as one integrated whole. When one part of creation suffers, the rest of creation is impacted - plants, animals, and humans included. Justice emerges when we know deep down in our bones that we belong to one another and so act accordingly.

The act of harvest is a profound and sacred journey, mirroring our spiritual growth and the qualities of God's kingdom. It is a joyful, communal, and just endeavor that reveals our interconnectedness in the community of creation.

As we engage in the harvest of our lives, may we be mindful of the wisdom it imparts, the joy it brings, and the justice it calls us to. Like ripe grapes on a vine, may we embody the qualities of God's kingdom and offer our lives generously to others, multiplying the fruit of our labor for the glory of God. In this way, the act of harvest becomes not just a seasonal event but a lifelong calling to live out the fullness of God's work within us.

Questions for Reflection:

1. What is a harvest you are reaping or have reaped recently from God’s work in your life?

2. How might He be inviting you to share the harvest with others - both in the work of harvesting and in the joy and celebration of it? 

3. Consider the concept of a "just harvest" and how it relates to your actions and decisions in life. How can you ensure that your pursuits and achievements align with God’s vision for the flourishing of all his creation, especially the most vulnerable?, 

A Prayer:

Lord of the Harvest,
As we contemplate the concept of harvest in our lives, we thank you for the growth and transformation you've nurtured within us throughout all seasons in our lives. May the fruits we bear reveal your character in the world - your abundant and overflowing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Help us recognize the interconnectedness of all your creation as we harvest, stewarding the abundance you have provided wisely and justly - toward the flourishing of all.
Amen.

After months of dedicated pruning, the vine undergoes a transformation, channeling its energy away from growth and towards the ripening of the right fruit. This transformative phase is known as veraison, where the once vibrant green grapes begin to shift in color, typically turning red, gray, or yellow depending on the vine's variety. The ripening process turns acidic and tart grapes sweet. However, veraison brings with it a unique form of stress for the vine.

Verasion

Veraison represents a crucial point in the vine's life cycle, marked by a delicate balance between growth and ripening. It is a pivotal moment, often referred to as the most astringent phase in the vine's journey. Good vinedressers will tell you that in order to produce a quality wine that is unique and dynamic, vines need to undergo a certain level of stress. Some languages even employ terms like 'suffer' or 'struggle' to elucidate this concept.

When we think of stress, we typically associate it with the overwhelming demands of our modern world. It often stems from taking on too much, striving for excessive output, and succumbing to the pressure of heavy workloads, tight deadlines, and lofty expectations. This kind of stress, linked to the productivity mindset of overproduction, can lead to chronic stress and its associated health issues, including high blood pressure, fatigue, anxiety, depression, burnout, and impaired performance. This detrimental stress is commonly known as 'distress'—a type of stress that negatively impacts both the body and mind.

But this is not the kind of stress our loving vinedresser has intended for us. Remember, the goal of a loving vinedresser is not to force the vine into a state of overproduction, which could ultimately harm the vine. The goal isn't quantity but rather quality. If we have yielded to the loving care of the vinedresser during the preceding season, he has already undertaken the rigorous process of pruning us back, allowing us to channel all our energy into ripening the right fruit according to our unique design. This type of stress emerges from the essential challenges and real-world obstacles of living into our true selves and producing the fruit we were created to yield.

This form of stress is aptly termed 'eustress,' defined as 'physical, mental, or emotional tension caused by something positive or psychologically and physically beneficial.' The results of this kind of stress are that we have matured, grown a particular skill, and a sense of invigorating engagement.

It’s also important to note that this stress is short-lived, stemming from the specific challenge of focusing our energies on ripening a particular area. We were not designed to exist in a perpetual state of veraison.

In the process of ripening, we encounter stress that stems from the act of living out our unique expressions in the world—loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30-31) and loving our neighbors as ourselves. What does this entail? It involves giving ourselves wholly to God and our neighbors through the healthy exertion of these faculties. When stress affects the heart, mind, soul, and strength in the pursuit of loving God and others, it leads to personal growth, maturity, adaptability, and the development of sweet, enduring fruit.

The stress of the heart 

It’s the stress of loving a family member who suffers from physical or mental illness that matures the soul in selflessness and compassion.

It’s the stress of sitting in someone else’s pain when we don’t know what to say or do that strengthens our empathy muscles.

It’s the stress of breaking up fights and enduring the wild chaos of children that grows our patience and self-control.

The stress of the soul 

It is the stress of living into our true selves and diligently pursuing our calling that matures our efforts into fruit that is eternal. 

It is the stress of pushing past our comfort zones as we take the risks of following Jesus that cultivate courage and dependence on God. 

It is the stress of embarking on creative projects that develops our craft and yields meaningful, unique, and enduring work in the world.

The stress of the mind

It is the stress of learning a new language or skill that forms new neural networks in the brain, enhancing its adaptability.

It is the stress of rigorous study and research that challenges the brain to grow with new material, preparing us for our vocational callings. 

It's the stress of launching a new business or ministry, riddled with uncertainty and obstacles, which fosters new skills and increased resilience.

The stress of our strength

It's the stress on the body during marathon training, which causes our bodies to grow in endurance and strength.

It's the stress on muscles during a long day of physical labor that increases muscle strength, endurance, and flexibility.

It's the stress on the heart during physical activities like running or hiking that promotes a healthier and more resilient cardiovascular system.

Good Tired

These various forms of stress on our heart, mind, soul, and strength contribute to our growth and the maturation of our work into lasting fruit. The stress we feel, which leaves us with that 'good tired' sensation at the end of the day, leads to a profound sense of gratitude for a job well done that we can enjoy in satisfaction like savoring a fine wine.

When I was in college ministry, one of the most intense seasons of the year was during new student outreach. Studies show that in the first couple weeks of school, college students make choices about who their friends are and what organizations they will get involved in that will impact the rest of their college career and - the rest of their lives. It is a critical moment in college ministry when we have the opportunity to welcome unsure students looking for a place to belong into a loving community where they can be accepted, loved , and supported to grow in their faith.

During the last couple weeks of August through mid-September, we would be on campus sometimes 12 hours a day, setting up tables, having conversations, welcoming new students and helping them find community. As an introvert, I vividly remember coming home during those times with swollen feet, an exhausted mind, and hands filled with contact cards and tabling materials. Despite the fatigue, I consistently felt the same way—'That was a good, hard day of worthy work.' These were the days when I sensed the Spirit's affirmation, 'Well done, my faithful servant,' as I descended into sleep.

When we spend ourselves on behalf of others, when we love sacrificially, when we ripen the work we were created to make, it is worthy work.

Good Stress or Bad Stress?

I can reflect on moments in my life when I experienced stress due to juggling too many responsibilities, preventing any one of them from fully ripening and maturing. Conversely, I've also endured seasons that felt intensely demanding but felt more like the loving vinedresser’s invitation to dig deep and work hard to ripen something worthwhile. 

The foundational question we have to ask ourselves as we seek guidance from our loving vinedresser, is whether the stress we are presently encountering is derived from the 'distress' of overproduction or the 'eustress' of ripening.

As always with the vinedresser and vine, this is a relational discernment process. So how about we pause for a moment and ask our loving vinedresser what He thinks about the stress we are currently under? To aid in this discernment, here are several questions to consider:

• Is this stress inducing anxiety, high blood pressure, tension, or depression, or is it invigorating, empowering, and fostering growth?

• Is this stress short term due to the nature of this season or is this prolonged stress that has no end in sight?

• Is this stress a result of channeling my energy and attention into the work God has called me to do? Or am I experiencing the stress from trying to please too many people or putting undue pressure on myself

• Is this stress helping me grow in character, perseverance, maturity, strength, or the skills I need for the future?

• Is this stress leading me deeper in dependence on God so I can draw the nutrients I need from Him? 

• Is the fruit of this stress quality or is my energy fractured in too many directions to make a real positive impact in one area?

A Prayer

May my energy be channeled into the work You have uniquely called me to do. Guard me against striving to appease others or seeking validation, which often leads to the distress of anxiety, fear, and shame. As I wholeheartedly dedicate myself to the work I was crafted for, may the stress of ripening cultivate in me character, perseverance, strength, wisdom, and joy. Through me, may You produce the enduring fruit that reveals Your glory.
Amen

It was an unseasonably cold and windy day at the end of June when I arrived at the Harbor Pavilion jutting out to the East Bay of Lake Michigan in Elk Rapids. Several white haired women scuttled their way inside for the monthly Elk Rapids Garden Club meeting where Dave would be presenting on biodynamic farming. 

When I spotted him, he and his sister Elizabeth were making their way inside carrying several cardboard boxes of wine and supplies. Dave was wearing his typical navy baseball cap donned with sunglasses and a short sleeved farmer’s plaid shirt. As they made their way towards the back of the room, we worked together to lay out a charcuterie-like spread of wine from their wine garden, several books on biodynamic farming, a cow horn, small white bowls of soil prep, and handfuls of white yarrow and nettle. 

We snapped a few pictures, made a few introductions, and then Dave began with his lecture with a captive audience of gardeners on the edge of their seats. And I, who cannot even count myself a gardener, was right there with them. Even though I had known Dave from the several interactions we had over the course of four years in the vineyards, I was eager to listen in to discover more. Dave began,

“Rudolf Steiner gave a three day series of lectures in 1924 to a group of dairy farmers in Germany. It became the foundation of biodynamic agriculture, one of the first forms of modern organic farming. In the wake of the industrial revolution after World War I, the implementation of machines and synthetic fertilizers were becoming a concern. 

Farmers were already seeing an impact on the quality, vitality, and health of their farming system, and they were wondering, ‘where is agriculture going and how can we respond to the changes that are going on?’ So, Steiner gave these lectures as a response. He believed the principles of biodynamic farming would help heal the earth that was already struggling in the wake of industry.

Steiner was a student of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who studied the process of transformation and the interdependent relationship that plants have with each other. But because what Goethe was teaching wasn’t empirical, because it was relational, it fell by the wayside and Isaac Newton’s way of empirical science (aka Chemistry) won out.” 

A Clash of Cultures

What Dave was describing here was a clash of cultures, a clash of worldviews emerging as a result of the Industrial Revolution and the ripple effects of the Enlightenment. As the Industrial Revolution’s way of machinery and Newton's approach to empirical science won out in history, we became more and more shaped by rational, pragmatic, and systematic approaches to farming and life. As a result, we also became more disconnected from the land. We lost the wisdom of creation and the art of cultivation. Crops and soil have been diminishing in health, quality, and vitality ever since. 

The Industrial Revolution was not bad in itself. But it was the motivation and means of the industrial revolution that made it so destructive to the land. Beneath the drive for the efficiency and ease of machines and fertilizers was a desire for power, profit, and prestige. These forces create a culture in which products, metrics, and progress (outcomes) are more valuable than the intangibles of transformation and relationships. Psychologists call this the “ego.” Activists call this “empire.” And theologians call this “the rulers, authorities, and powers of this dark world” (Ephesians 6:12). For our purposes, we will call this, “the productivity approach.”

In the productivity approach, even in ministry contexts, fruitfulness is often defined by measurables and outcomes. We ask questions like,

• “How much fruit was produced?” 

• “What is the value of the harvest?” 

• “How efficient is the harvesting process?”

When this is a primary value in our culture, we are always striving.

Ever striving for numerical growth. 
Ever striving to go up and to the right. 
And what defines success? Quantity.

Makoto Fujimura describes the effects of this approach in his book Culture Care: Reconnecting with Beauty for Our Common Life, 

“Success for a large part of our culture is now judged by efficient production and mass consumption. We often value repetitive, machine-like performance as critical to bottom-line success. In the seductive industrialist mentality, people become ‘workers’ or ‘human resources’ who are first seen as interchangeable cogs, then treated as machines - and are now often replaced by machines.” 

The methods of the productivity approach have a dehumanizing effect. It forms us to push ourselves, others, and creation towards measurable outputs like the machines we operate on. Our relationships become transactional at best, and oppressive at worst. 

When tangible products, metrics, and progress (outcomes) are valued higher than the intangibles of transformation and relationships, we will see, like these German farmers did, that the result is trauma that gives way to disease and death. The soil of our bodies, souls, and communities become malnourished; inactive and closed. The quality of life diminishes under the demand for quantity. 

Maybe, like me, you can feel this in your bones. The feeling that along with creation itself, something has been diminishing in health, quality, and vitality within you and the communities you are a part of. Perhaps you feel the dissonance between our culture’s value for efficiency and measurable outcomes and the resulting experience of striving, depletion, and isolation. Maybe you long for a more holistic and compassionate approach that fosters flourishing in your life and relationships.

The good news is, biodynamic farmers like Dave have been working hard to re-imagine and re-train the farming systems back to the way they were designed. While farmers are now beginning to embrace cultivation practices based on the wisdom of creation, these practices are anything but new. Some of the best biodynamic farmers are indigenous peoples who have always had a deep appreciation for the land and have employed sustainable cultivation practices long before biodynamic farming was a trend. We have much to learn from those who have led the way in creation care and land stewardship. 

The vision of biodynamic farmers, like our Father vinedresser, is for the flourishing of the whole farm system. It is an approach to farming that looks a lot more like the Kingdom of God, because ultimately, it is an approach founded on love. 

A Foundation of Love

Vinedressing is a lot of work that yields slow and meager results. But good vinedressers don’t do it for the money. They do all the hard work to cultivate vines because they love vines. They love to watch things grow. When the motivation is love, vinedressers willingly invest their time. They will seek the long term thriving of the vine over quick results that may compromise its health. 

Dave often reminds me that Jesus could have chosen an olive tree or a fig tree to describe our relationship with him, but he didn’t. He chose a vine, one of the most high maintenance plants around. Why? Because God doesn’t want to stay at a distance with long absences between visits. No, he wants to be an active participant in your life and formation. Because he loves you. Love is not only the motivation for good vinedressing, but the methods and means as well. 

As we walk alongside Dave, we will get a glimpse of cultivation methods that are informed by love. We will see evidence of a loving vinedresser who is actively at work to cultivate his vineyard with the values of his kingdom. We will discover an entirely different value system from the productivity approach rooted in ego and power. If we are to surrender to the loving cultivation of our vinedresser, we must carefully identify the differences between these two ways of life. 

Contemplation Over Exploitation

One of the primary components to biodynamic farming is observation. One might even go so far as to say, good vinedressers contemplate their vines. Dave studies his vines carefully, getting into the vineyards regularly to behold them with a sense of wonder and attunement to their needs. 

He takes multiple passes through the vineyards throughout the growing season. He feels the leaves and can tell by touch whether or not it is well watered. He knows which ones need to be pruned back because they have experienced winter damage, or which ones are ready to hang fruit. He gives careful attention to the different needs of each branch, and responds with small, almost imperceivable changes to help them flourish. 

In his new book, The Life We Are Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World, Andy Crouch quotes Leean Payne, “we either contemplate or we exploit.” He explains, “exploitation asks ‘what can this person, or thing for that matter do for me? Contemplation asks, ‘Who or what am I beholding without regard for their usefulness to me?” 

Unlike the productivity mindset which views us as machines to be exploited, love beholds. Love contemplates.

Unlike machines that need to be managed, Jesus tells us we are more like branches on a vine that need to be cultivated (John 15). God is not some boss who is putting the squeeze on you to achieve more fruitfulness. He is not transactional with you. He is not sitting on his throne fretting about the yields you produce. God doesn’t have a profit margin that he needs to make every year. He isn’t interested in making something lucrative from you. He is interested in making you beautiful. Making you whole. Making you like him. He wants you at your best. The kind of vine that produces $300 bottles of wine - not for the profit of it, but for the beauty, the richness, and the fullness of it. And because it reveals his glory. 

God beholds his creation without regard for its usefulness to him. He is deeply attentive to his creation, cultivating the necessary environment for us to thrive. This is the culture of his kingdom. It’s how he designed all of creation to flourish; by beholding one another in loving contemplation.

As his image bearers, we reflect his image when we see one another not as objects to be used for some kind of gain or profit, but as image bearers who reflect the beauty and glory of God. As we take this approach, we will see creation (including ourselves) not as a problem to be solved or an object to be controlled, but as a sacred masterpiece that must be beheld. And as we do, we will do whatever is within our power to cultivate one another to thrive in all the beauty and glory we were created to be.

Empowerment Over Control

On one cloudless morning in July, a few friends and I spent time with Dave in a vineyard in Elk Rapids where the vines were just starting to ripen grapes. He drew our attention to one particular vine that had no fruit, and explained that the fruit had been taken off because the vine wasn’t healthy enough to bear it through the harvest season.

As he said this, my heart sank. I felt in my body the times in my life where I wasn’t strong enough or in a healthy enough place to produce fruit. I felt that for the church in the West as it experiences rapid decline. I felt that for the many dear ones I love going through trauma or loss who couldn’t produce fruit in the way they wanted to because of grief.

But then what Dave shared next as he gestured to this vine gave me so much hope, “This vine has been stripped of its fruit this year. It’s just not healthy enough to bear it. But you better believe I’m going to do everything within my power to cultivate it back to health.”

My throat caught for a moment. “Everything within my power to cultivate it back to health?”

What if the very places we feel ashamed for not producing fruit, for being weak and in need of healing, God looks upon us with this same kind of compassion as Dave with his vines. With this same kind of mercy that says, “I see you there struggling. And instead of forcing you to produce fruit that will cause you to burn out, I am going to strip your fruit from you for a while. And I’m going to do everything in my power to make you healthy again.”

When vinedressers are motivated more by power, prestige, and profit, they will approach their vines like a top-down management line and develop tight systems of control. Instead of beholding their vines like a mystery to be embraced, they treat their vines like problems to be solved. 

But, unlike a productivity approach that yields power over vines for the sake of an output, the loving vinedresser leverages his power for his vines for the sake of their flourishing. 

God did not create us as robots. He doesn’t want predictable and systematic machines. He wants a relationship with us. He wants partners. And He has called us such. He has called us ambassadors (2 Cor 5:20). Friends (John 15:15). And even, lovers (2 Cor 11:2). 

Love does not control, but empowers others to thrive at their best. Instead of treating us like machines that need to be fixed, managed, and pressed for an output, God empowers us with the necessary wisdom, skills, tools, and resources for the sake of our health, quality, and vitality. And the results will be drastically different.

A productivity approach may yield a large quantity of fruit, but it will crash the vine in the short term. The flourishing approach may take longer to produce fruit, but the vine will yield enduring and quality wine from a vine that thrives over the long haul. 

Consider for a moment:

1. How has the productivity approach shaped your worldview? Do you see threads of this approach in how you look at yourself, God, and creation?

2. In what ways might God want to free you through his approach towards flourishing? How does it change your view of God when you see He is more interested in empowering you than controlling you? And beholding you than exploiting you?

3. How might this change your approach to your relationships?

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you,
you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” - John 15:5

As we talked in a vineyard, I asked my vinedresser friend, Dave, about what he thought Jesus was referring to in this passage. He reached down and grabbed the sturdy part of the vine that goes underground into the roots, his fingers inches apart from touching, “This is the vine,” he said, and then he reached up and gently wrapped his fingers around the two branches hanging on the trellis like limbs, “and these are the branches.”

The vine is the anchoring place that draws up all the nutrients and water. It provides the branches with what they need to grow and to bear fruit. The vine is the life source for the rest of the plant. Christ, the rootstock, is the one in whom we find all life and sustenance to thrive and bear Kingdom fruit.

The kind of relationship Jesus describes here is a deep, intimate union with Christ. It’s akin to what psychologists call “relational attachment.” Jim Wilder and Michel Hendricks describe relational attachment from a neurological perspective in their book, the Other Half of Church, as “a life-giving forever bond with no mechanism in the brain to unglue us.” Does this not sound like what it means to abide or remain in Christ?

Relational attachments are formed on the right side of the brain, which “integrates our life, including our connections to loved ones, our bodies, our surroundings, our emotions, our identities, and our community. Character formation flows out of these connections.” -The Other Half of Church

In other words, for us to be transformed into Christ’s image, we cannot just remain in him in theory. We must experience a tangible, real, and felt experience on the right side of the brain.

I love the way David Benner describes this in his book Surrender to Love,

“What we need is a knowing that is deeper than belief. It must be based on experience….it comes from sitting at the feet of Jesus, gazing into his face and listening to his assurances of love for me. It comes from letting God’s love wash over me, not simply trying to believe it. It comes from soaking in the scriptural assurances of such love, not simply reading them and trying to remember or believe them.”

Bearing the Fruit of Christ’s Image

Just as the branch that abides in the vine naturally produces fruit, so our loving union with Christ will naturally yield fruit in love for others. When we abide in Christ, we are transformed into His image. 2 Corinthians 3:18 (NIV) puts it this way,

 “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” 

When we spend time beholding Christ, contemplating His love, and being saturated in it, the result is that we become like him. His motives become our motives. Jesus says of this process, “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” - John 15:8

This word for “showing yourselves” is also translated “arise” or “to become.” The fruit is not what we produce, it is who we are becoming as we abide in Christ.

When we abide in Christ, the sap of His love wells up within us and matures into fruitfulness that reveals His character in the world. And this brings the Father glory. When we bear this kind of fruit, we reveal who we are. The term for “Christian,” is derived from the term “little Christs.” Who we love shapes who we are becoming.

 Jesus goes on to describe how this happens,

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” - John 15:9-13

Like the attachment we form with our first caregivers, Jesus invites us into this beautiful trinitarian dance of attachment between the vine, the vinedresser, and the Spirit who is like the elements moving in and between all things. As we enter in as His beloved and join the dance, abiding in Christ’s love, it ripens into the fruit of healthy relational attachments with others.

Our loving union with Christ naturally creates something new in the form of sacrificial love for the other. A kind of love that overflows into the character of Christ through the fruits of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. Our obedience; therefore, is not something we muster up through striving, it comes as a result of abiding in Christ and allowing His love to overflow through ours.

What if fruitfulness was not an outcome we pursue, but instead a natural result of abiding in Christ?

What if the greatest thing we offer the world is not the influence we have, or the outcomes we achieve, or what we produce and we sell in the marketplace, but something far more valuable?

The fruit of unbreaking, eternal, and sacrificial love that ripens from a deeply intimate relationship with Jesus into love for others. 

The kind of fruit that flows from our secure attachment in Christ into secure attachments we form with one another. A community that reveals to the world who Jesus is by the extension of His embrace of us to our embrace of them? This is the fruit of the Kingdom of God. And this is the kind of fruit that will last and multiply for eternity.

Abiding in the Vine Sermon

Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Dave as a part of a sermon I gave on the Vinedresser and the Vine. To watch, click the video below.

As the weather warms up, the sap begins to flow back into the branches of the vine. Life and movement are being channeled from the energy stored up in dormancy and are on the verge of explosive growth. On the verge of resurrection.

Like the vine, as we journey out of seasons of dormancy and loss into spring, we feel alive again and begin to see more clearly. The life-force of the Spirit begins to flow through us and awaken us out of a spiritual slumber. 

So much energy is stored up, ready to break through in spring. We have hard-earned lessons that we want to manifest above ground. All the hidden work in the darkness of the soil has refined us into a new creation brimming with vitality, vigor, and vision. We are ready to grow and bear fruit for the kingdom.

But according to Jesus, explosive growth begins with pruning. I know…isn’t it the worst?

Pruning

I happened to get to a vineyard one cold March day when migrant workers were pruning. They sheared aggressively without restraint, stripping the cut branches from the throngs of the wire trellis and tossing them carelessly on the ground. Hundreds upon hundreds of branches were piled up in each row.

Against the frigid cold, I clutched my phone, taking photos and documenting the losses that hit too close to home. I had solidarity with those cut vines as they remained lifeless in the snow. I’ve had my share of pruning moments over the years, and they all suddenly came back to the surface as I watched the clipping pile grow.

• The pruning of an unfruitful relationship.

• The pruning of an opportunity I had my heart set on.

• The pruning from an organization I deeply loved.

• The pruning of a sin pattern that I didn’t want to let go of.

And that gnawing, biting, exposing feeling when the vine is pruned is all too familiar.

When a vine is pruned in late April, it is open to the elements without a single leaf to hide its twisted form. It looks to the untrained eye barren and unprotected. Vulnerable. Raw. Naked. It looks and feels like death. This was what I felt for these exposed vines as I looked at the discarded branches on the ground; barren and stripped of all visible signs of life. 

And yet, as I watched vinedressers prune, I never got the impression that they ever mourned the loss of what might have produced from the branches that hit the ground. Why? Because vinedressers prune with an abundance mentality.

As Jesus said about the Father vinedresser, “every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.” - John 15:2

Abundant Life-Source

Vinedressers know that when the vine is pruned, it will still multiply more branches than can keep up with. There is no use hanging onto the past when there is an unlimited channel of growth from within.

Yet, so often when it comes to pruning, I have a scarcity, fear-based mentality. I don’t want to let go of opportunities that served me well in the past, or partnerships I had once thrived in, or relationships that had once given me life, or resources that once fueled my family. I want it all. And so I hold on tightly to control, refusing to let go out of fear that I won’t have enough. 

But - pruning requires us to surrender and trust in God’s abundance; in God’s generosity. We must trust that when we are pruned, it makes way for growth that we cannot yet see. 

• It’s the future opportunity you have not yet considered when you’re grieving this pruned opportunity.

• It’s the spiritual maturity you deepen when you let go of an unhealthy relationship.

• It’s the community waiting to celebrate and receive you when God leads you out of your current one.

• It’s the quality and lasting impact that flourishes when you allow God to prune away the work you weren’t created for.

• It’s the character of Christ that grows in you when you allow Him to prune a sin pattern.

• It’s the abundance that emerges years after you have allowed God to prune your resources for the sake of another.

What fruit might be on the other side of the pruning that only God can see? 

What abundance, joy, or harvest will one day break through years from now from the very place you are currently grieving pruning?

Limited Form

In pruning, we must trust that the vinedresser knows not only which are the right branches to prune, but how few are necessary in order to bear quality fruit.

If vines aren’t trained and tended to through pruning, they grow rapidly wherever they want. If left alone, they will try to produce fruit from buds that remained from the previous year - sometimes up to 200-300 buds. So in the spring, vinedressers prune their vines back to just two branches or “canes” and around 6 total buds. 

Let that sink in for a moment. 300 down to 6. That is aggressive pruning. Why?

While the life force of the vine is abundant, the branches are limited. Pruning acknowledges the limits of the vine’s ability to ripen quality grapes. If a vine were left alone to produce the amount of branches it wants, it would not be able to both grow and ripen grapes into maturity. Good pruning means striking a balance between the abundant life-force of the vine and the limited channel for that energy.

As with us. We have the resurrection power of the eternal Spirit at work within us. We have a limitless, powerful God flowing through our veins that can channel abundant growth. But - the vinedresser knows we are human, that we are limited.

We cannot channel resurrection power into an unlimited number of opportunities or relationships and expect them all to be thriving and healthy. We cannot offer unlimited love, attention, and resources to all things. The more we take on, the more we will compromise on quality. 

So a vinedresser cuts the vine back and ties it down to a trellis to channel growth into the right place.

Cutting back.

Tying down.

Chosen Restraint.

This is a posture of chosen restraint, something we in the West have developed little theology around. We don’t know what limits are. And we definitely don’t know what chosen restraint looks like. Like the vine that will grow rapidly wherever it wishes, so will we. 

When I have been on the threshold of breakthrough in my life, I have lots of ideas on how I want to grow and bear fruit. Usually, it involves as many opportunities as possible with as many relationships as possible. I want to partner with God to make the greatest impact, right? 

But, often, just as I am starting to feel the sap fill my limbs with hope for opportunities ahead, I will experience some kind of rejection or door closed. Pruning.

During these times, all my insecurities surface in heaps of self-pity, self-justification, and anger that look as gnarly as those pruning clippings. 

Hildegard von Bingen, a 12th century German Benedictine abbess, compared the way vine branches were bound to a wire trellis to the way Christ was tied to the cross. 

Like Christ, in pruning, we allow ourselves to be cut back and tied down with a posture of surrender that says, “Even though I have my own plans and ideas on where and how much I want to grow, I will surrender to your way that embraces my limits and leads me to the Cross.”

It is often months or years after the anger has fizzled out over an area I have been pruned, that I see clearly how one closed opportunity allowed me to bear better quality fruit in another area. Only God has this kind of foresight. 

Surrendering to the One Who Holds the Long View

My vinedresser friend Dave tells me that in pruning, the vinedresser is “setting the intention for the vine,” meaning the pattern for growth. The vinedresser is giving careful thought to the next growing season - to where he wants the vine to grow and which branches. 

And so, in pruning, we must surrender control of a certain outcome to God’s intention for us. We must surrender our time, our energy, our commitments, our relationships, and our character to His pruning shears. 

And as we do, we put our hope in the only one who holds the long view. The only one who knows just what needs to be pruned back in order to channel his life-giving energy into a flourishing life that yields the best quality fruit for the kingdom.

The reality is, this kind of fruit doesn’t show up right away. The growth is slow and the quality of the fruit cannot be measured on a graph that goes up and to the right or quantified in the number of buckets spilling over with grapes. But, the results show up in “fruit that will last.” - John 15:16

When Jesus meets us on the verge of bud break, we have a choice. We can either allow ourselves to grow in whatever way we wish - wildly throwing out branches at will, channeling our energy into more opportunities, relationships, and commitments than we can reasonably manage.

OR…

We can surrender ourselves to the costly and painful process of pruning, trusting that He knows best how to focus our energy and nutrients into a quality vine that bears fruit that will last. 

Reflection Questions:

1. Is there an area in your life God is asking you to surrender to His pruning? What might it look like to surrender this to him?

2. Is there anything you need to grieve that has already been pruned? Take some time to journal about that now.

3. Think for a moment about one area in your life that has been pruned. Imagine what might grow out of this very place months or years from now? Ask God to show you what kind of quality fruit He wants to bear that you cannot yet see?

As vines descend into the roots during post-harvest, vinedressers dig up the soil and replenish the vines with fertilizer. The context of descent is through shovelfuls of manure. There is no sugarcoating this.

From creation we see that what was once waste; the stinky, debased, undignified, and flat out nasty parts of life give us the nutrients we need to become the thriving new creation we were meant to be. 

But, for most of us - when we encounter the manure; the darkness, hiddenness, and ugliness of death, we do what comes naturally: we plug our nose and want to run away.

We run from suffering and try to escape it.
We fight death and try to overcome it.

But Jesus shows us a different posture than fight or flight in post-harvest descent. As he descends from the harvest of healings, conversions, and spiritual transformation, these begin to die off and during holy week, he descends into the manure.

Let’s consider the fertilizer into which Jesus descended:

• He was handed over to death by one of his closest friends.

• He was oppressed by political leaders who abused their power.

• He suffered grave injustice at the hands of religious leaders.

• His closest friends fled during his greatest time of suffering.

• Rulers sneered at him.

• Soldiers mocked him.

• Even criminals hurled insults at him.

• He was stripped naked, exposed and assaulted while his mother stood by helplessly watching.

• He experienced excruciating pain on the Cross.

• He felt the weight of all evil, suffering, and death upon his shoulders.

• And finally, he descended into death itself.

In the face of such suffering, He could have fought. He could have fled. But he didn’t. Instead, HE SURRENDED.

Surrender: The Posture of Descent

On the night of his betrayal, we see Jesus wrestling with God in the garden. He struggles to receive the cup of suffering before him and he prays,

“Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me…” (Luke 22:42)

Jesus wrestled with God in the midst of sorrow as he anticipated his death. He asks for the Father to take the cup of suffering from him. Here, we see Jesus’ humanity; when we face suffering, we too want a way out, don’t we? 

Jesus feels the impulse to run from suffering like the rest of us, but his response is clear: fleeing is not the way. Instead, he surrenders to it with these words, …”yet not my will, but yours be done.”  -Luke 22:42

When Jesus says this, he isn’t just choosing to surrender something (his life), he is surrendering to someone. He is surrendering to love himself, the only one worthy of our surrender.

“Surrender involves too much vulnerability to be a responsible action in relation to anything other than unconditional love. Ultimately, of course, this means that absolute surrender can only be offered to Perfect Love. Only God deserves absolute surrender, because only God can offer absolutely dependable love.”

― David G. Benner, Surrender to Love: Discovering the Heart of Christian Spirituality

After the garden, Jesus faced every temptation to take control of his life. He was violently taken by force by the chief priests, the officers of the temple guard, and the elders. He could have fought back, but he didn’t. Even when Peter cuts off one of the soldiers’ ears, Jesus rebukes him and says, “no more of this” as he heals him.

Jesus is clear: fighting is not the way.

When Jesus was crucified, those watching viewed his surrendered posture as a sign of weakness:

• From the religious rulers who sneered at him, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.” (John :35)

• From the soldiers who mocked him, “If you are king of the Jews, save yourself.”

• Even from one of the criminals who hurled insults at him, “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”

Save yourself.
Save yourself
Save yourself.

Notice how those hurling insults at him connect the act of saving himself with his identity as Messiah and King:

• Aren’t you the Messiah, God’s Chosen One? Save yourself.

• Aren’t you the King of the Jews? Save yourself.

• Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself.

To the religious leaders, the Messiah was a King who would re-establish a monarchy for the people of Israel. He would vanquish his enemies and establish the reign of the kingdom of God forever over the whole world.

To the soldiers, a king seizes the throne through power expressed through violent overthrow in order to establish an empire. In Rome, their reference point for a king was Caesar, described in that day as the “savior of the world.” 

In this view of reality, suffering is failure; something to be overcome. Something that must be avoided at all costs because it threatens one’s identity and power in the world. This is a posture of control. When enemies oppose you, fight, overcome, and succeed. If you don’t, you’re not really a king, because you have no power.

The insults and mocking invocation for Jesus to save himself exposes their view of salvation. In their mind, a real king and real Messiah doesn’t suffer, but saves through violent force. On the Cross, Jesus redefines what salvation looks like in the Kingdom of God. 

Jesus shows us that the Messiah saves not through overcoming suffering with violence, but through surrendering to co-suffering love.

Jesus shows us that a heavenly king does not achieve power and victory through the blood of his own enemies, but through his own blood shed for his enemies. He establishes his reign as King not by the sword, but by the cross. 

As Brian Zahnd puts it in Beauty Will Save the World, at the cross, Jesus “Absorbs our hate and hostility, vengeance and violence into his own body and recycles it into love and forgiveness.” 

It was love that held him there. 
Not duty, not obligation. Love.
Out of love for the Father.
Out of love for you, for me, 
Jesus surrenders control of his own life with the words,
“Father, I entrust my spirit into your hands!” 
And with those words he breathed his last. 

Choosing the Path of Surrender

In cross-like moments of descent into suffering, failure, loss, or grief, like Jesus, we may get thrown heap-piles of manure from scoffers, rulers, mockers, and critics (on the outside and in) who will yell, “Save yourself!” 

Our identity will be called into question:

• Aren’t you supposed to be skilled at this? Why are you failing? Save yourself.

• Are you really loveable? Then, why did he leave you? Save yourself.

• Why are you struggling with depression if God is supposed to be your healer? Save yourself.

The temptation amidst the scoffers is to do just what they say; save ourselves. To save ourselves is to fight - to overcome our enemies through vengeance, to prove our value in this world through self-fulfillment, excellence and achievement. In the kingdoms of this world, it is these things that make us worthy of love and belonging.

But, on the Cross, Jesus not only saves us from our sin, but He saves us from the ways of the world that lead to destruction by showing us another way. And in so doing, it exposes the ways of the world as bankrupt and faulty.

• When Jesus takes the posture of surrender through relational trust with the Father, it exposes the transactional nature of our relationships that are based on control and power. 

• When Jesus demonstrates a self-sacrificing love to build an eternal kingdom, it illuminates our self-aggrandizement for its temporary results in the kingdoms of this world.

• When Jesus radically forgives, it shines a light on our bloodthirsty drive for vengeance.

• When Jesus co-suffers in love for his enemies, it reveals just how violent and oppressive our pathways to power often are.

Could it be that when surrendering to love looks like failure and death to the world it is actually the very power of God?

When we take the posture of Christ and surrender to God in the midst of a cross-like moment in our lives - a powerful exchange occurs. 

Shame is transfigured into glory. 
Suffering is transfigured into joy. 

The manure meant to humiliate us is transfigured into fertilizer that nourishes us into the image of Christ. And like the vine descending into dormancy, those nutrients are stored up for a harvest in the next season - even if we can’t see it yet.

Pause for a moment and consider: 

• How have you recently experienced loss, suffering, rejection, or persecution? 

• Where have you been tempted to “save yourself” by the ways of the world?

• What fears surface as you consider surrendering yourself and this situation to God? Name those to him and ask Him for the grace to entrust yourself into His care.

Prayer: Consider trying this posture prayer as a way of practicing surrender to God. For the full prayer, go here: https://infinitumlife.com/daily-prayer

“Christ and the soul must die. Christ and the soul must rise. That pattern must happen many times before we understand it.” - Richard Rohr

Lent is a time where we re-orient ourselves around the death and resurrection of Christ. A time of transition where we descend from the life of Christ into the death of Christ. We begin this journey with Ash Wednesday as we remember the dust from which we were made and the ground to which we are returning. And we end the journey as we pass through the death of Christ, sit with him in the tomb, and wait for resurrection.

We see this transition all over the created order, but one of the greatest parallels is in the transition from the fall harvest to winter dormancy. 

When I met with a vinedresser friend of mine in a vineyard in Traverse City, he told me what happens to vines when they make this transition from life to death. The season of harvest and outward production is over; the fruit has been taken to the wineries and the vine shifts its focus away from ripening grapes to a new focus: the roots.

Before the leaves start to change color, they soak up the remaining energy they can grab from the sun and push the energy into the roots in order to prepare for bud break next year. 

Like lent, it is a season of descent. 
The fruit descends off the vine.
The energy descends into the roots.
The focus descends into the soil; 
into what is unseen and hidden.

During this descent, the color withdraws from the leaves and all its externals are stripped away. No more fruit. No more green. To the outside world, it begins to look barren, even dead. 

This is the journey to the Cross. The great descent into the grave. We know this pattern don’t we? We pass through this phase many times throughout our life. Consider these transitions and how they too, reflect this transition:

The end of a work project
The loss of a loved one
The fallout from a failure
A divorce or break up 
The ending of a season of ministry
The transition into parenthood
The transition between jobs or leadership
The beginning of a sabbatical

In all of these patterns, something that was once alive is dying or ending. All the externals are stripped away and we too, feel barren and lifeless. Some seasons through this transition impact us more significantly than others, but when we allow ourselves to surrender to Christ under the shadow of the cross, these deaths are where He does His most transformative work.

Notice the Inward Turning

While in harvest months, we may rightly be preoccupied with the activity and celebration of harvesting, as the leaves turn to beautiful shades of gold and orange, our energy must channel inward. We deepen our roots into the soil and channel our attention toward unseen growth. I love how William Bridges describes this in his book, Transitions: making Sense of Life’s Changes:

“It’s not the events outside us that make the transition; it’s the inner-reorientation and meaning-redefinition we make to incorporate the changes.”

In other words - it’s not the external changes of the fruit being stripped away or the change in color that make the change significant. It’s what happens on the inside of the vine, and within us that causes the greatest amount of change.

When the fruit is gone, we have a chance to focus our energy and attention on our foundation, the true source of our growth and our identity. Transitions from life to death are an inner-reorientation opportunity. 

A chance to remember who we are and who God is. A time to wrestle with the meaning and eternal weight of what God is doing during these times. 

This hidden growth under the soil is what propels us into fruitfulness for the next season.

It’s the deepening of our souls when we go through a loss. 
It’s the turning towards Christ when we fail or sin.
It’s the surrendering of our attachments to what we produce.
It’s the forming of our attachment to the true vine.
It’s the anchoring of our belonging in Christ after we have been rejected.

I love how Terry Walling describes the inner work that happens in us in these seasons of transition:

“Individuals consolidate past learning, process issues of character, deepen convictions and values, and are prepared for the next phase of their development.”  - Terry Walling: Stuck! Navigating Life and Leadership Transitions

In lent, we descend with Christ into the depths of darkness, death, and human suffering and He leads us to the cross. He meets us here in this time of solitude, silence, and the hiddenness of the tomb and transfigures our pain into something beautiful in the resurrection.

In this inward turning, we must have the courage to let Christ shine a light on the condition of our hearts and the broken condition of our world. Here, we become keenly aware again of our need for a savior.

At this time, the Father says to us, “Return to me. Repent.” We return, in repentance, to the soil from which we were created as we remember our frail human condition. We re-anchor ourselves in the love and forgiveness of Christ as we see more clearly our own  And here, we follow Jesus as he descends all the way to the grave.

Jesus knew that the way up is down. He lived this pattern. The way to resurrection fruit is through post-harvest descent into dormancy. And like vines, this season is essential in order to bear the kind of fruit that is eternal.

Why We Need Season of Descent

In our industrial culture, we have forgotten this art of dormancy. We have forgotten the necessity of slowing down to channel growth inward and downward to conserve energy for the next harvest season. We tend to live as though it is always harvest time. We fix our attention on fruit bearing and live like everything always moves up and to the right. We are always producing. We must continue to bear fruit. 

But this is not the way vines were designed. They can’t always be in harvest season. The time of descent into dormancy for plants is critical for life to flourish. They need times of withdrawal, rest, and restoration in order to prepare for the next growing season. Vines are not machines that produce fruit in all seasons, and neither are we.

While our culture perceives withdrawal, descent, and slowing down for seasons of dormancy as a sign of failure, the created world teaches us that this way is natural. Life does not progress on a linear graph, but through a circle where we repeat the pattern of life, death, and resurrection many times over. And each time through, we hopefully grow more into Christ-likeness. We bear better, more quality fruit.

Reflect:

• Are you in a season of loss, transition, or descent in some other way?

• How might God be at work in this season where you cannot see?

• In what ways might God be preparing you through this season of inner growth for the next harvest season?

A Prayer:

Lord, As I descend with you into the grave of loss,
humility, and suffering during lent,
help me to open myself to Your work there.
Help me to not see this season as a waste,
but a time you are being incredibly intentional to form me into Your image.
Thank you for going there first so I know the way. 
Amen

“What’s a mixed-gender partnership that you appreciate from literature, movies, pop culture, etc.? Why do you appreciate it?”

I was asked this question by the hosts of the Mutuality Matters podcast, Rob Dixon and Layla Van Gerpen. This question inspired me so much that I’ve hung with it for a while. The immediate answer that popped into my mind was: “Wonder Woman” the 2017 film based on the DC Comics featuring Gal Gadot.

But why? It felt like a holy invitation to watch the film again - even if it was a bit self-indulgent! But when I watched it again from the vantage point of mixed-gender partnerships, I was awe-struck by the insights that surfaced.

As I watched Diana Prince storm into male only conference rooms, I thought, “this is what it looks like for a woman to show up in a room when all she has known is that women are strong, powerful leaders, and a force to be reckoned with.”

Diana Prince walks into these spaces without hesitation and without fear. She stands her ground and speaks with bold confidence. She is not distracted by the fact that she is a woman. She blows through cultural norms of how a woman should behave. She pays no attention to where she is not welcome. She is not even slowed down by the many men in the film who tell her “you can’t do that.” or “you can’t be here.”

No - she leads confidently out of who she is, and without the internal doubt that many of us female leaders face when walking into a room full of male leaders. Diana is freed up to solely focus on her mission - to bring peace.

I could feel a sense of longing rise up with my blood pressure as I watched Diana Prince sweep through each scene fully aware of her own gifts, her own power, and offering them to the world so generously on behalf of the most vulnerable.

I sighed as I thought, “Oh if only. If only women all over the world could live like this. If only women could grow up knowing their gifts, their value, their power and leverage them for peace - our world would be so much better.”

Into the Trenches

As the film progressed, I watched the development of her relationship with Steve Trevor - and beyond the romantic connection, I saw true partnership emerge. Diana boldly asked Trevor to take her to where the fighting was most intense, and he took her to the front, to “no man’s land.” On the way in, she is disturbed by the frightening signs of violence and trauma. One woman stops her and begs her to help, “we are starving,” she said, “they have taken many of us as slaves.”

Compelled by her passion for justice, on behalf of the vulnerable women and children who are starving and abused, she courageously steps forward to reach the village to help. But - she must cross “no man’s land” to get there.

Do you feel this already? Me too.

There, Trevor tells her that it is called no man’s land, because no man can cross it. Men have been in the trench for over a year and haven’t gained an inch.

But, Prince is not swayed. She simply lets her hair down, takes on her armor and moves towards the crisis. As she does, Trevor tries to stop her, saying, “This is not something we can cross, it’s not possible…this is not what we came here to do.”

And she candidly replies, “No, but it is what I came here to do.”

In this pivotal moment, Prince is clear on her calling. She allows no amount of naysayers or resistance to stop her. She refuses to give in to despair and hopelessness. She refuses to give in to the agendas of those around her. She moves forward from an inner voice that urgently calls her forth. And she responds.

Oh how I wish that women, particularly women in ministry would get this. No matter the despair that tries to drag us down into hopelessness, no matter the critics who tell us it can’t be done, that something would well up within us that says, “this may not be what you came here to do, but this is what I came here to do,” and boldly move past the resistance to face the mission before us on behalf of the poor and oppressed.

No Man’s Land

So into no man’s land she goes - alone. She boldly moves forward into the face of violence and crossfire. She moves forward with confidence and rises into her own power. But - soon all the guns are turned on her and as she takes the fire. She stops - hunkered down behind her shield.

My heart sank. Now seeing the film again in the context of male and female partnerships, I felt this scene on a gut level.

When women step up as leaders in the church, we go into battle and we take a lot of heat. So much so, that sometimes all we can do is hunker down behind a shield and hold our ground. We can barely move forward at times.

But - what gives me hope in the scene is how Steve Trevor responds, “she’s taking all the fire - let’s go.” He sees not only her predicament, but an opportunity to advance together - and he joins her. While all the guns are pointed at her, Steve and his team come alongside her, taking out the guns that are firing at her, and together they move forward.

I wonder - what would happen if male leaders really saw what was happening to women leaders - saw the heat they are taking from the evil one, from their own church, from opposition on so many levels, and said, “she’s taking all the fire - lets go.”

What would happen if men stood alongside women so that they don’t have to take all the heat all on their own? How could we move forward together when we are both distributing the heat of the fire equally?

Taking On the Sniper

After they cross no man’s land, they come upon the village under siege. A sniper disrupts their ability to get civilians out. None of the men with Diana have the ability to reach the gunfire - not even their own sniper.

It’s worth noting that the sniper is hidden within the church; a painful reminder to me that sometimes the most resistance we face as women in ministry comes from within the church. The enemy often twists and distorts systems where leaders (both men and women), often unaware of their gender bias - unintentionally (or sometimes intentionally) fire at women.

But Trevor remembers something in that moment. He remembers seeing one of the Amazon women yell, “shield” as she lowered herself beneath it - creating a platform for another woman to be lifted where she needed to go to vanquish her enemy.

Trevor sees that Diana is the only one who has the gifts to be able to handle this situation. She is the only one in their little community who is uniquely equipped for this task. So, when he sees a large piece of debris, he calls the men in their company to get beneath it. The men create a platform for Diana to rise to do the thing that only she can do. She rises and takes out the sniper.

Gosh I long for this kind of partnership. Where leaders group together to create platforms, lifting women in her unique gifts to get where she needs to go.

What if women didn’t have to do this battle alone? But were empowered - literally lifted on the backs of male leaders willing to help her ascend into her calling?

Side note: I also love how Trevor chooses to use something from Diana’s own culture to elevate her. Instead of creating a scenario where she would need to conform to one of his cultural practices, Trevor chooses one that would have been natural for her. Isn’t that a lesson for us in empowering people?

Mixed-Gender Partnerships

What strikes me about Diana’s relationship with Steve Trevor is how, even though he is a spy and is powerful, he is not threatened by her power. The entire film, Trevor follows Diana into battle. She leads, and he follows. He recognizes that it is her gifts that are needed in given moments, and rather than competing for power or being envious of it, he lifts her up to do what only she can do.

Yet - Diana doesn’t totally overshadow Trevor’s role in the story. They are good partners because he challenges her too. When Diana has a naive perspective on the world and sees things only as black and white, good or bad, Steve confronts her with the truth that the world is more complex than we would like it to be. He confesses that there is both good and bad in all of us - including himself.

Trevor demonstrates excellent leadership. Even though he knows he is complicit in the problem of evil, he is willing to go into the fight to seek peace because he so desperately believes in it - so much so that he is willing to sacrifice his life for it. This inspires Diana to continue to fight injustice as Trevor did in order to seek peace for all people.

A Dream for a Better World

As I reflected on Wonder Woman with the podcasts hosts, I was invited to dream about a future where women and men can thrive and equal partnership. And here is what I dream:

I dream that one day it is so normative for women to be in rooms where decisions are made, that their presence is never questioned.

I want to see women step into the room like Diana Prince, confidently, not doubting herself or second guessing, but showing up to lead fully out of who she is because she grew up seeing women leading at every level of leadership.

I desire that one day women are so unafraid to live into her true identity and calling that they move boldly forward toward injustice to seek peace despite those who tell her, “you can’t.”

When she faces the heat of the battle and starts taking on the heat, I want to see men rise to the challenge and join her so that she is not alone. I want to see partnerships emerge between men and women that are mutual in our advancement of God’s Kingdom on the earth.

And I want to see men willing to hunker down beneath platforms, calling “shield” so that women can be lifted by their power to arise into the call they have been given - for the sake of the Gospel.

What about you?

Like Luke, I am in awe that I get to tell the story through you.
May you go forth and multiply - inviting thousands to know your Source.
May your words and images create a contemplative beholding of the Son.
May they find themselves in the story, and may His word become flesh in them.
As it became flesh in me through you.

Like Zechariah’s benedictus, you emerged from the places I had been silenced
in painful waiting for a promise - longing for new life.
But over time you showed me how to channel my grief into creating.
And now, I am bursting forth with my own benedicutus; my own canticle of praise.
May those who hear it be astounded, and like Zechariah’s relatives,
be “filled with awe” by what they hear.

Like Elizabeth, I have found you in the barren waiting.
In the months of longing, deepening my hunger for God as I searched for him
through whites and burnt umbers and phthalo blues….
You stained my hands and clothes,
leaving your impressions that would not rub off.
And here I am - beholding you in awe. Saying like she did,
“He has taken away my disgrace,” because of you.

You came like Gabriel,
and asked to dwell within me
and allow the Most High to overshadow me
and create something new.
Gabriel told me, “you are highly favored,”
and indeed I am. Favored to tell the story.
Favored to have my Lord come to me,
and ask me to tell His story this way.
Through my flesh, through my body
through color and form that weaves its way into souls
and awakens something new.

And as you were crafted, you taught me how to descend
Descend into the depths of silence and solitude
Unseen - like the zygote hidden and vulnerable
You invited me to descend like Jesus,
into what it means to be human.

Like Elizabeth, may the world know your true name.
You are not Zechariah. You are not a priest like so many expected you to be,
You are not the ways the story has
been told by those who hold power.
But you are a prophetess that uncovers hearts
and leads people to light and repentance.
Like John, may the Holy One
“shine on those living in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace” through you.

May you go and prepare the way like John the Baptist did.
Prepare hearts to receive Him. Prepare the way for His coming.
May you weave into the homes of those who encounter you.
And invite them to make room for the light.

So here we come to the release - where through labor
You were born into the world. The part of transition
between you and I being known only to one another,
and the part where the world will get to see your face
and behold you as I have.
Where you will leave and breathe on your own
and create spaces of beholding and belonging
wherever you go.

May the angels go on ahead of you,
and give an invitation to those on the margins
to behold the Savior - who is born to them.
May they behold him through your pages,
May they be so astonished by His beauty,
That they cannot help but spread the word.
And may all who hear how He transforms them through you,
“Be astonished.” Including me, who like Mary will no doubt,
Treasure up all these things and ponder them in my heart.

Thank you for choosing me to create you.
You held space for me to be human, for me to find my way
Through the hidden work in the studio and on the page.
So now as I release you,

May you breathe life into those who hold you
May those who meet you find their chests rising and falling
with the rhythm of their breath
May they find themselves coming alive at your gaze.
May they discover how to embody the story,
Like you taught me to.

We have been on a journey chasing after and learning about beauty this last month. I hope your soul has been awakened to beauty in a profound way. I know mine has! Thank you for joining me along the journey!

God has been leading me on this journey of chasing beauty for the last two years in order to understand it, perceive it, and create it.

 I thought it might serve you to let you in on what books have most deeply shaped my view of beauty the last couple years. May these five truths, quotes and books bless and encourage you as you continue to chase beauty in your own life! I hope they awaken your soul to beauty as they did mine.

“The Beautiful stirs passion and urgency in us and calls us forth from aloneness into the warmth and wonder of an eternal embrace...Yet beauty’s visitation affects us and invites us into its rhythm, it calls us to feel, think and act beautifully in the world: to create and live a life that awakens the Beautiful.

- John O’Donohue in Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

“Beauty points beyond itself, beyond survival to satisfaction. We think of it as the opposite to narrowness, scarcity, drudgery, and constraint. We think instead of what is expansive, generous, abundant, connected, and expressive. Beauty also connects us with the why of living.

“It points to discoveries waiting to be made about the creation. It points toward questions of right relationships, of ultimate meaning, and even of eternity. It points backward and outward and forward to our ultimate Source and Sustainer. When we encounter beauty, we want to slow down and partake of its refreshment, to let it reorient us to our deepest longings and reconnect us to our deepest selves.”

- Makoto Fujimura in Culture Care

“Physical seeing is a doorway to spiritual seeing,” - Juliet Benner in Contemplative Vision

“We need to recover the true form and original beauty that is integral to Christianity, we need an ideal form, a true standard, an accurate template, a faithful model to which we can look, to which we must conform.

For historic Christianity this has always been Jesus Christ upon the cross...the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, which attains in retrospect an eternal glory and beauty through the resurrection, is the axis of Christianity around which everything else revolves. Thus the cruciform (the shape of a cross) is the eternal form that endows Christianity with its mysterious beauty.”

- Brian Zahnd in Beauty Will Save the World

“Beauty welcomes us in the sense that it is invitational, vulnerable, and unhurried. It tells us we are wanted in its presence…beauty in art welcomes our broken parts as well as those with which we are more comfortable. Beauty leads us to worship by enabling us to live in the real world, the world of trauma and shame that is so pervasive, and then to see through it.”

- Curt Thompson, MD in The Soul of Desire

Again, I hope these five truths, quotes and books bless and encourage you as chase beauty in your own life and as you awaken your soul to beauty all round you.

Recap of the five books on beauty:

1. John O’Donohue - Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

2. Makoto Fujimura - Culture Care

3. Juliet Benner – Contemplative Vision

4. Brian Zahnd – Beauty Will Save the World

5. Curt Thompson, MD – The Soul of Desire 

Do you remember that part in the story, The Grinch Stole Christmas? It’s my favorite part - when the Grinch’s heart “grew three sizes that day.” He stood there with his Grinch feet stuck in the snow and then waited. For what? To see what would happen when the Who Village realized that their packages, boxes, and bags had been taken away.

But instead of the anticipated “boo hoo'' ascending the mountain, a song did. The Who’s song reached him…with unexpected beauty. The song wasn’t beautiful because of the sound or even the words necessarily. I mean, who really knows what “Dahoo Dores” even means? No - their songs were beautiful because they emerged from something that couldn’t be packaged in a box. Something eternal.

It was then that the Grinch had his epiphany, “Maybe Christmas doesn’t come from a store...Maybe Christmas is a little bit more.” The Grinch had an encounter with beauty and his heart expanded three sizes to take it in…because that’s what beauty does.

Like Dostoevsky, and Brian Zahnd, who wrote the book, Beauty Will Save the World, I’ve been really pondering this question. What if beauty, true beauty, really could save the world?

The Soul-Shrinking Crisis

I think for many of us, this past season has left us feeling a little like the Grinch - a little cynical. A little bitter. And maybe our hearts have shrunk two sizes smaller than they ought to be.

Let’s face it - we are in a soul shrinking crisis. An epidemic of lives bombarded by hate, disappointment, and injustice that continues to make our hearts constrict.

Do you feel it in your own chest? I know I do.

We are surrounded by anxious systems overwrought with trauma. Many of us are deconstructing and coming out of a time of great loss. The political season, the pandemic, and the exposure of injustice and abuse rampant within the church have left us heart sick.

Many of us are questioning what we believe. Can anything be good? Can anything be beautiful?

According to Dr. Curt Thompson, MD, we tend to want to respond to trauma with left-brain ways of dealing with it. Logic, reasoning, and control.

That’s what the Grinch did - he tried fixing the problem of his pain and loneliness by taking, grasping, and controlling. And if I am honest, my first response to trauma is pretty Grinchy too. When anxiety presents itself in soul-crushing needs, pain, and injustice, I try to fix, manage, and problem solve. I try to defeat despair, evil, and injustice with my own control. And so far that hasn’t been working out so great for me.

Usually, the harder I try to grasp for control, the more these issues control me.

But what if the soul-shrinking crisis in our world wasn’t a left-brained problem that required left-brained solutions like control, certainty, or even a robust theology?

What if the way to transform an anxious system that causes trauma isn’t by working with the anxiety on its own terms, but subverting it with unexpected beauty?

What if the greatest thing we can offer an anxious system is the beauty we create within it, and even in spite of it?

Isn’t that what happened for the Grinch? When he came to the end of himself and stood there alone and in despair - beauty came to find him. And it surprised him.

As John O’Donohue puts it, “the wonder of the Beautiful is its ability to surprise us with swift, sheer grace. Iit is like a divine breath that blows the heart open.

The Grinch had his heart blown wide open by beauty. Perhaps we all need moments like this. Moments that blow our heart wide open to accommodate the vastness of divine love.

Because beauty is love made visible.

I can’t think of anything that more clearly displays this than the incarnation and the Crucifixion, the two events we celebrate and study the most in the Christian story. You want to know if beauty can save the world? Let’s just take a look at how God chose to save it himself.

The Incarnation

Scholars have unpacked the incarnation with many words, but the incarnation is a concept beyond our ability to grasp with rational knowledge. God didn’t just speak about his love for us (a left brain function) - divine love became visible in the body of Jesus (a relational, right brain solution to the problem of evil). Divine love became manifest and dwelled among us.

The word “recognize” here in John 1:10 can also be translated, “perceive.” It is also the word used for knowing or feeling. It is a highly relational word. A highly right brained word. The kind of knowing beyond words or logic or rational thought.

We have all heard it said: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

Perhaps there is some truth to this because we can only behold beauty if we are willing to see it. And not just to see it, but to behold it and let it have its work on us.

Do you know who models this kind of sight in the Christmas story? The shepherds.

The shepherds were on the margins - left out of all the places God was presumed to be. Their work prevented them from worshiping at the temple because they were considered unclean. They were the outcasts of society.

But here, love chased them down in the darkness, ventured out to the outskirts of society with a heavenly invitation to behold him. Love was born to them. And they had to see it for themselves.

And you know what? When they beheld infant Jesus, incarnate love and the manifestation of beauty himself, I’ll bet the hearts of the shepherds grew three sizes that day. They were seen, known, and loved by God in that moment. And it transformed them.

And so, the shepherds did what we all do when we encounter beauty and let it fill us with wonder, worship, awe, and astonishment - they shared it with others.

Beauty was changing the world.

Then, we have the other most critical form of beauty the world has ever seen:

The Crucifixion

On the Cross, in this subversive act of defiance against shame and evil, God offered us the greatest act of beauty we have ever known. He submitted himself underneath all of our shame, trauma, and anxiety and subverted it with love.

I love what Brian Zahnd has to say about this,

This is just what love does. It takes evil, hate, shame, and injustice and transforms it (and us) into something beautiful.

So, do I believe beauty can save the world? Yes. Because apparently God did.

God’s approach to solving the evil and problems in the world were not logical, analytical, or even pragmatic. He chose an approach that was relational, creative, and expressive.

A love beyond words.

And I believe if we, like the shepherds, can behold beauty and let it transform us, then we can’t help but spread.

Because beauty begets beauty.

When we experience the beauty of divine love in our lives, it germinates within us and multiplies into the world. When God’s love dwells with us (the incarnation), it’s like a seed that is planted within us that grows, taking on our flesh and expressing itself through our talents, gifts, and relationships.

When we have experienced the self-giving, sacrificial love and forgiveness of the cross, it’s catchy. We may just find ourselves laying ourselves down in others-centered, self-giving, sacrificial love, and forgiveness too.

And when this happens, it can change the world.

If you’re looking to behold beauty this Advent, I invite you to order my new book, Making Room in Advent: 25 Devotions for a Season of Wonder. It includes original paintings, breath prayers, and reflections on Luke 1-2 to help you slow down during Advent and perceive, with awe, the beauty of the incarnation. If you pre-order before Sept. 13, 2022, submit this form to receive several bonuses including an audio guided visio divina practice with 4 of the paintings from the book to help you slow down, breathe, and perceive beauty in your midst.

When I was invited to the Beauty and Formation of the Soul Retreat with Curt Thompson, MD, I just knew - beauty was calling for me. By the time I arrived, there was a real hunger in me. A question wrestling within me:

“What do I do with this longing and desire to create works of beauty in the world?”

And beneath that question was the deeper one, the more universal one: “Is beauty essential?”

The gift I received from Dr. Thompson those few days was a resounding, “YES!” But not just any yes. It was a yes grounded in neurological science. A yes that emerged in the space between the left brain facts and my right brain intuition.

At this retreat, Dr. Thompson shared some of the foundational work from his newest book, The Soul of Desire, explaining that when we encounter beauty, it evokes:

• WONDER - we are captivated, fully present, and have a right brain experience of surprise and speechlessness.

• WELCOME - we want it to stay forever. We are welcomed by God in beauty. This space of welcome allows us to be transformed and healed by God.

• WORSHIP - we feel compelled to throw ourselves at the feet of what is happening in that moment, with a real sense that what we are experiencing is bigger than ourselves. It orients us to the creator and originator of all beauty, God himself.

As Dr. Thompson was talking, it struck me how much I experienced these things, not only when I encounter beauty, but when I am creating it. I raised my hand and asked, “I’m an artist, do you think artists experience these things in the creative process?”

He abruptly replied, “You’re the artist. You tell me.”

And I just knew. I just knew that I knew that I knew. We are both transformed in the creation of beauty as we are in the encounter of it, and that there is a deep connection between them.

How Beauty Emerges

Dr, Thompson explained Dr. Dan Siegel’s theory of attachment. In order for beauty to emerge, we need to feel: seen, soothed, safe, and secure. He stated,

“When I live most fully into being seen, soothed, safe, and secure by God, I become more fully alive to who I really am - the beauty within. It is when this beauty can shine that we become like the true evangelists we are - shining who we are on a hill.”

So why aren’t we all shining like a city on a hill then? In a word: trauma.

The Impact of Trauma & Shame on Beauty

When we experience trauma, our left and right hemispheres are dis-integrated from one another. Dr. Thompson explained,

“Shame is operationalized in trauma, and it is shame that keeps us from seeing our own beauty and creating new and beautiful things.”

These words jostled around in my head all the way to my friend’s house that afternoon. In the back seat of the minivan, it hit me:

Shame is what has kept me from creating.

For months, I had been asking myself why it was so hard to get into the studio, even when I had the time to do so? Why did I frequently put things like email in front of this longing even though creating is what I deeply desired?

If my true self can only come out when I am seen, soothed, safe, and secure - I have not experienced these things from the world.

• I had not been seen and known as an artist in the ways I needed to be.

• I had not been soothed in the areas I had been wounded.

• And the world had not been a safe or secure place for me to create.

I recounted all the ways throughout the years where I was asked to produce, but not to create. Asked to achieve, but not to behold. Asked for my accomplishments, but not my beauty.

Even in ministry, I was supposed to be the achiever Bette who could meet deadlines and objectives. The Bette who could lead and deliver. The Bette who could perform.

When Western culture values efficiency, productivity, and numerical success, what it asks from us is material, pragmatic, and marketable. When I encountered the pressure to perform on these standards, the true self within me - the part of me that creates works of beauty, hid in a corner because she did not belong. Because in a pragmatic, consumer-driven culture, beauty hides. She is not welcome. Because beauty does not operate on these term. She belongs to the eternal realm.

When I had this epiphany, I prayed this earnest prayer in my journal that night,

Jesus, I am asking you to bust down the door of shame and help me to come out.
Help my artist soul to awaken and be seen - if only by you at first.
Create a holy unfolding in me.

The Antidote to Shame

The next day, God began answering that prayer with another truth that hit me with such force. When Dr. Thompson said it, I felt like gravity double downed on me, sinking me into my chair…

“Beauty is the antidote to shame. And beauty is one of God’s most effective tools to free us from shame.”

I could feel my heart racing as he put words to what I had always known, but couldn’t articulate. Then, the barrage of questions erupted:

• Could beauty really heal trauma?

• Could there be true neurological merit to the way I have seen beauty impact the soul? The way it has impacted my soul?

• Could beauty free me from the shame that kept me from creating?

Allowing Beauty to be Seen

As Dr. Thompson articulated the role beauty plays in healing and transformation, for the first time in a long time, the beauty within me was invited to come out of me and be seen.

She was told she was wanted. And there, my true self was soothed, safe, and secure as a creator of beauty.

For the first time in a long time, I felt free.

My true self rose up to advocate for herself. She began to challenge the assumptions that had kept her hidden. The lie that what the world needs right now is solutions, practical approaches, and production.

My soul remembered that we are so much more than the daily influx of these things. We are mortals infused with the infinite. The aim of beauty is to expand our souls to accommodate the divine within us - to enlarge and receive what is so much greater than our souls and bodies can possibly contain - the love of God.

Beauty & the Eternal

In an encounter with beauty, we experience the consummation - union with God himself. When we experience loving union with God, all the shame falls off and we are liberated with the truth.

Beauty, true beauty, when embraced, can set people free from shame and anxiety. It can be the living empathy that draws people out of despair to become more fully themselves.

Maybe like me, there is a part of your soul that has been hiding in shame. The part of you that longs to create, longs for beauty, longs for union with God. My prayer is that beauty will find you and break down that door and liberate you with the presence beautiful One in your midst. This is my benediction - my prayer for you, for me.

A Benediction for Beauty

May you place yourself at the door of beauty
and find yourself welcomed in.
May her expansiveness widen you
and may her richness deepen you.
May her lavish love liberate you
even as her glory pierces you.
May she stir within you the power
to love freely, to live generously,
and to create abundantly. Amen

A Message on Beauty

Last year, God invited me to give a message at Kensington Church on beauty through the story of Mary and the Alabaster jar. If you’d like to go deeper with this idea, I encourage you to check it out (sermon starts 26 min in)

As I stood before the spiral labyrinth, it occurred to me that the last two times I had walked this same labyrinth, I was pregnant - once with Isaiah, and once with Winston.

I arrived early, before the retreat, as I wanted to walk the grounds again in a place I had come to love so much. The Hermitage Retreat Center was where I spent my retreat days in ministry; I had always heard the Spirit speaking and confirming my call on this sacred ground.

On this particular day in early October 2019, as I approached the narrow winding path through the grass, I sensed the spirit say, “You are pregnant again.”

I knew it in my body as I took those first, slow steps into the labyrinth:

• The timidness.

• The hesitation to move forward.

• The vulnerability accompanied by the first few moments of panic, shock, and wonder reeling around in my stomach and making me walk more gingerly.

I had the profound sense that something was shifting in me. A shift in my soul and my body that I would never return from. And I was frightened like Mary at the Annunciation.

Just days before, I had written this prayer in my journal:

“It feels like You’re on the verge of unleashing something new in me - a new dream, a hope, a wonder; a desire to grow and expand to share with the world what You create through me. Help me to stay attentive to this, Lord, and to explore with You the gifts you long to bring incarnationally through my voice.”

I was indeed pregnant…
Pregnant with possibility.
Pregnant with the Spirit of God weaving something new in me.

And while I was frightened, I also felt the loving protection of the Father who reassured me, “as I am in you, you are in me.”

There I was, in the womb of God, protected and safe. But I had no idea just how much those first few steps into the labyrinth would catapult me into a season of new birth. My true self would incubate in the womb of God until she was strong enough to be born into the world.

With each of the three spirals of the labyrinth, I meditated on the three terms of pregnancy. God began speaking to me about what He wanted to do in each stage - which creative work he wanted me to take on next, how He wanted me to germinate within him in the process, etc.

I knew this journey of unfolding in God had something to do with beauty. I was, after all, just about to attend a retreat called Beauty & the Formation of the Soul led by Curt Thompson, MD (more on that in the next post).

But it was more than just the knowledge of beauty that God wanted to teach me. He wanted to show me; show me through deeply embodied experiences of what beauty can do to heal, transform, and awaken us in his presence.

Receiving Beauty’s Embrace

As I spent time on the grounds throughout the retreat, everywhere I went became a thin space. The curtains of heaven seemed to open with the glow of the setting sun. The tall waving grasses transformed into an undulating ocean of gold. Every blade of grass became illuminated with the weight of glory.

I walked every labyrinth on the grounds (the one above is a traditional “Chartres” Labyrinth, patterned after the Chartres Cathedral.) At every turn, I gasped aloud as another wave of God’s presence washed over me. I kept my hand pressed to my chest to steady myself. Everything around me was pregnant with the infinite and I could sense it.

I could hear him with the chorus fall leaves rustling. They burst into persimmon and crimson flame on the edges of the labyrinth. His nearness was so thick and heavy, I found it hard to take a step.

That evening, as we ate our silent meal, I chewed more slowly. I savored our silent dinner in ways I never had: the lentils in the stew, the warm crisp of the freshly baked bread, the tartness of the freshly picked apples. I kept my eyes closed to soak in the beauty unfolding in my mouth.

It was as though God wanted me to deeply embody the message He was speaking during the retreat: In the presence of beauty, we experience the consummation; union with God. And it is out of the consummation that new creation is born.

It became clear that the most valuable contribution I offer the world is the beauty of intimacy with God. It is out loving union with God that my creative work is expressed. And when others experience it, they too experience the consummation in ways that create new life within them also.

Since this retreat, I have been a beauty chaser. I have studied the impact she has on the soul and I have experienced healing in her embrace. And I invite you to join me in the chase.

Becoming a Beauty Chaser

This month, I am sharing the best insights I have discovered about beauty, and I will intentionally place myself on the path of oncoming beauty. Will you join me?

1. Sign up to receive my newsletter as I send out practical tips, resources, and invitations to awaken your soul through beauty and wonder.
   

2. Join me on a beauty hunt on instagram. Tag @bette_dickinson with a picture of where you are encountering beauty.
   

3. Chase beauty and become mindful of her presence through walking a labyrinth yourself. Locate a labyrinth near you using this labyrinth locator!

“You’re crossing over a threshold. ”

When she said it with her New Zealand accent, her words carried an authority with them that made me stand up straighter. I had asked for prayer, but what Tarn Cross had given me was a vision that would deeply shape my life.

As she leaned toward me to be heard over the praise band, her dark auburn hair provided a shield from the gaze of the room as she spoke these words, “ Like Peter, Jesus has asked you to step out of the boat. You are crossing a threshold into new territory where you will trail blaze a way forward.”

I knew then that she was right. God had been asking me to trust him in launching out on my own for months. But these words from a year ago burned like warm embers in my chest. They still spark within me when I consider what I am about to do. What I am doing.

Stepping Out of the Boat

It is an extraordinarily vulnerable thing to cross a threshold. We have to let go of what was, but we are not sure yet what will be. The sting of loss is still with us, and the way through is unfamiliar and unsteady.

Our footing may not be as sure as it once was. But regardless, we must trust the voice on the water that says, “Come.” Come out on to the water. Come out onto the waves.

And what can we do but try? Perhaps we will sink, but also - perhaps we will do something supernatural. Perhaps we will walk on water.

I knew that God was calling me into a season where I would need to take a risk. He called me to launch a ministry (Awakening the Soul) where I would create, write, speak, and make spaces that would awaken the souls of ministry leaders. But stepping out of the boat is a lot more inspiring at a distance. When the wind isn’t sending waves crashing in our direction. It takes on a whole new form when we have to live it. When we, like Peter, like me, begin to sink.

In the week I left InterVarsity, a ministry I had been serving with for 18 years - 11 as staff, to start this ministry, the ground began to shift beneath my feet. I had stepped out of the boat, and I could sense the waves threatening to pull me under.

Tad J. Blackburn calls this, “the messy middle” of transition. He names how chaotic things get during these times,

“We experience an intensification of stress. Problems are exaggerated. Behavior is exaggerated. Emotions are exaggerated. We experience loneliness, anxiousness, grief, and profound disappointments.”

And…I experienced all these things at once.

Submerging into Chaos

Not only did the waves of grief hit me from what I was leaving behind a ministry that profoundly shaped me most of my life, but the transition was rocky and abrupt. Then, several opportunities I had been counting on to launch and sustain the ministry fell through in the same week.

This began to trigger past wounds. I started spiraling in disorientation, grief, and anger. I didn’t know which way was up - or forward, and I started to submerge into an inner chaos like the raging sea.

I lost sight of the horizon, and more importantly, I lost sight of Jesus. I couldn’t see Jesus because I was drowning in grief over what I was losing. Relationships. Stability. Organizational identity. A clear view of the future. As these things started slipping away, I tried to grab a hold of something - anything to buoy me up. The problem was - the more I tried to hold on to control, the deeper I began to sink.

It struck me later that perhaps this unsettling feeling; the fear, the sinking and submerging into the chaos of the sea is part of what it means to walk on water. To go where our feet have not yet gone. And to do something supernatural.

Learning to walk on water requires the risk of sinking. And likely, we will. But, we must come face to face with our helplessness in the face of our fears. Like everything else - we risk failing when we try something new.

When Jesus called me onto the water, he knew I would sink. But maybe he wanted me to know my helplessness too. Firsthand. To experience a level of desperation where I would know for sure - only he could save me from drowning.

A Word of Promise

Shortly after my transition out of InterVarsity, I took a timely trip with my husband to Canada. We didn’t know then how much I would need to get away, how much I would need to right size everything with the distance from home.

How much I would need space to grieve and process - not only the loss of leaving an organization that has shaped me the majority of my life, but the resistance I would encounter in trying something new.

As we made our way across the Canadian border, I was still spiraling emotionally, grieving with my husband all the ways I felt small and if I’m honest, expressing my anger and rage as well. My husband Steven just calmly listened and held space in the car for the tornado of emotions that were swirling around and bouncing off windows.

We chased storm clouds in front of us the entire way downstate and crossed the Canadian border just as the sun was setting behind us. As we passed through the rain, the storm passed over us and there it was - the end of the rainbow resting on the road in front of us.

We saw this same rainbow for several minutes until the sun set. The next day, on the way to our next destination, we saw another one. And another. I think in the first few days of our trip we saw 7 rainbows. I have never seen so many rainbows in my life. I sensed God was trying to get my attention.

A rainbow is a symbol of crossing a threshold. A space between heaven and earth. A bridge between the storm of the past and the path before us.

The Revelation of Rainbows

When a rainbow appears, light creates a prism through the water droplets still present from the storm. They are like a portal - revealing what was hidden in the light that only the storm could illuminate. God was calling me to see something in that threshold space I could not see in the midst of drowning in the sea. As John O’Donohue puts it, “every rainbow is a revelation.”

So what was God illuminating in the storm with his light? I sensed him say,

“Beloved, it’s ok that this start feels a little rocky, a little wobbly. It takes time to learn how to walk on water when all you have learned is how to stand in a boat - but more than anything it takes faith. It takes belief in the one who is calling you out onto the waves. And it takes an assurance of my love that I won't let you fall. You are learning how much you were dependent on the approval of others and your organizational identity.

But - the only way to stand on the waves is to stand on my love. You cannot stand on your own accomplishments. You cannot stand on the thoughts or opinions of others. They will not hold you. You must stand on my love alone. Trust that it will lift you up.

Standing on the Waves

God was inviting me to release everything to which I had been clinging too tightly; my need for approval, my striving for control, my striving for success. We cannot walk on water while holding onto these things.

When all we have known is the boat that used to hold us up in the storm, it takes practice to stand on God’s love and faithfulness. It takes a new level of faith to believe His promise. His ability to save. And that might feel totally unfamiliar to us.

But while stepping out of the boat may be frightening, there is beauty there too. Because threshold moments are always latent with the possibility of birthing something new. They are spaces of invitation.

A threshold is a welcome opportunity for the Spirit of God to hover over the chaos within us and say, “let there be light,” and illuminate the storm with a word of promise.

Wasn’t the chaos the very birthplace of creation in the beginning? In day 1, when the Spirit of God hovered over it and spoke, what happened then? Creation was formed.

When God spoke, “let there be light,” I’ll bet a rainbow appeared that day; a colorful pathway where creation would unfurl under his very words.

Maybe like me, you are in a threshold right now too. At the very least, you sense that our world is in the midst of one. We are on the edge of a storm that has just passed. The sun is setting on an era behind us that will never be again. And it is a critical moment where we must decide who will become, and where we will ultimately place our trust.

Will we allow the light to transpose through the storm to see the beauty and color hidden within it all along? Would we lean in and see the path before us alive with his promise and latent with possibility for new creation?

Maybe something within you is stirring inside and telling you it is time. Let me encourage you to take the risk. You may fall, but also - you may just walk on water.

I long to live with a soul awake to God, free to answer his call to co-create with Him. You too? But sometimes I’m so weary that the first step to having my soul awakened must be re-learning to rest. This was true for me when I returned from four years working as an obstetrician in the mountains of Afghanistan. At times I’d been the only doctor for 150,000 people. By my final weeks there, I was answering radio consults and writing protocols from bed, so sick it took two tries to drag myself on hands and knees to our outhouse-style bathroom, but still so driven to help meet the endless needs that I was unable to rest.

Early in my time in Afghanistan, I knew God was calling me to rest. I’d even led a study for our team, sharing what I heard of God’s heart through some of the 300+ mentions of rest in the Bible. Many of the verses held commands to rest. Others offered promises that God would bring rest. I knew Jesus included me in his call, “Come to me, all you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”

I had first come to him decades before, but as my body and soul both ached to rest I needed to keep coming, daily, living as close to his heart as I could. But how, how could I come and rest? What did that look like when faced with unending lines of sick and needy patients?

Learning to live in the rest that Jesus offers will be, for me, a life-long journey. But through these past dozen years of chronic physical illness and PTSD and a shift from practicing medicine to writing and offering spiritual direction, I’ve experienced Jesus calling me, again and again, to come and rest. (I’m so grateful for his gentle persistence!) And one small step at a time, I’m learning how to more easily receive and enjoy the rest that God longs to give his children—no matter what’s going on around us.

A Few Days in Paradise

One of the steps in my journey to rest in Christ’s love came a few years after I’d arrived home from Afghanistan, after I’d finally accepted that my body wasn’t going to be able to return to the 24 hour shifts and hours of standing that obstetrics required, and had given up my license to practice medicine.

I’d begun to study theology part-time, eager to dive deeper into who God is, listening for his call to me in the time of transition. As a new term was about to begin, I accepted the invitation of family friends to visit them for a few days. They called the section of coast where they lived “paradise” and, aside from the daddy long legs stalking me in the shower, it pretty much was.

When I arrived, my hostess led me to a soft yellow and blue bedroom with hydrangea blossoms on the dresser and a rocking chair in the corner. Lounge chairs waited by the waterfall in the back garden, and a kayak sat ready for a paddle among the islands. These were all part of the gift, helping me rest, but for me they weren’t the heart of paradise.

The heart of that paradise—the gift that, more than any other, drew me into rest—was the freedom to be my true size. 

A lack of urgency resided there. A comfort with being human—with beauty and mess, hunger and joy, fatigue and tears and laughter. Dirty dishes and fruit flies were part of life, taken care of in their time, but coexisting quite happily for a while with sweet nectarines and gouda sandwiches and fresh blackberries capped with ginger yoghurt cream. On the days that I could, my hostess was happy for me to wipe the crumbs off her counter.  When illness took hold, she knew how to make a bed in the warm air where I could listen to the bees and watch the sun set the maple keys aflame. She had often done it for others; she would do it for me. There, I felt in my body and soul the truth: I am human and small and it’s okay. Life is not an emergency and I can lay down control.

Back to the real world?

I was sad to leave that place, to start back to the busyness of fall. I feared being pressed and pulled by the world ungently, urgently, forcing me to the center where I do not belong, driving me (by dint of my exaggerated self-importance) to shoulder burdens I was not meant to carry. 

Urgency takes my eyes off the One who has everything under control, blinding me with the belief that the well-being of the world is up to me. It tricks me into thinking that the world of the urgent is the real world and rest is a brief and tantalizing illusion.

But Jesus speaks:

 In the original Greek, “I will give you rest” is actually one word, better translated, “I will rest you.” 

In other words, rest isn’t something Jesus gives us, separate from himself. Rest is what comes as we learn to live our true size in Jesus’ love: small and fragile and (rightly) dependent, and cherished and made great in his love.

It’s a permanent offer, and one without condemnation. No fear of our humanness. No shame or embarrassment or impatience with our need to rest. Just invitation. “Come. I will rest you.” Those days apart I tasted the real world, the world of welcome and invitation and the love that invites us into rest. 

Can It Get Any Better Than This?

It’s hard to find better news in this hurried world than a genuine invitation to rest, and someone both able and committed to helping us enter and enjoy it. But it does get better, because Jesus doesn’t stop with the invitation to come and rest. He shows us how to keep living that rest even while we work.

This is the bit that challenges me.

It’s one thing to settle into rest when I’m on the Sunshine Coast, tucked into a rocking chair in a cool, quiet bedroom, or lying outside feeling the warm air on my face and listening to the whir of hummingbird wings. It’s quite another to live that rest with a stethoscope around my neck or a keyboard and a deadline in front of me.

But this is also where I learn the foundation of true rest: living close to the one who is gentle and humble in heart. And not just living close to him, but learning from him. Listening to his heart that beats with love both for those I serve and for me. Learning, over time, to let my own heart beat with humility and gentleness along with his.

Gentle and humble: This, I think is why we find rest as we take Jesus’ yoke and learn from him. He is not in a hurry. He has nothing to prove, is unpretentious, non-competitive. Over and over, in my fear and slowness to change and struggle to trust, I find Jesus gently inviting me to come closer, or, when I’ve been too afraid to do that, reassuring me that it’s okay, that he will wait, that he knows and loves me and I am safe in his love. 

Gentle and humble: It’s why it’s safe to come to him, to be honest with him in our weariness and fear. It’s also, I think, how Jesus helps us rest. As we learn from him, learn in our bodies and souls the safety of his love and his welcome, we begin to find that we are safe enough to live gently and humbly. We don’t need to race through our days, trying to prove our worth, for we are already loved.

It’s a life-long learning, as I’ve said. Sometimes, for me, learning to live gently looks like remembering that Jesus fed multitudes with a little boy’s lunch. He doesn’t ask me to bake twenty loaves, just to offer him the five small loaves that I have. Often it looks like paying attention to my body’s demands for rest, my soul’s need to be still with God, and choosing to pause and receive God’s good gift of rest. It means bringing the anxiety I may feel about my incomplete do-list to Jesus and letting him gently remind me that it’s okay, he doesn’t expect me to be God. That’s his job.

And then it’s stepping out again in the small ways he calls me to step out, often returning to this list of ten simple reminders that help me live in the freedom of smallness while stepping out. Or these few words that encourage me to just do what he tells me and trust the results with him.

It’s a life-long learning, but we have One walking with us who is committed to leading us beside still waters and restoring our soul as part of guiding us in paths of right-relatedness with himself, ourselves, and this world that he loves.

And, wonder of wonders, God bringing his people into rest—whether in the days of Moses as he led them through the Red Sea or now as he leads us deeper into the gentle love of Jesus—is a great part of how he brings glory to his name:

Thanks be to God.

P.S. If you’d like to soak a little longer in Jesus’ invitation to come and rest, I’ve created a five-day prayer guide that I’d love to share with you. You can find it here.

Maybe like me, you see 2022 as a fresh start. After a relentless couple years of change and grief, are you a little more hopeful for this new year? Maybe?

But how do we start? As the famous saying goes, “Over and over, we begin again.”

And to begin again, we have to approach life with a learner’s posture and with intentionality. Here are some questions that have helped me “begin again” in 2022. I hope they help you too.

1. What lessons did I learn in 2021 that I want to bring into 2022?

In order to move forward, we have to look back. Our stories and memories are rich with so much wisdom if we only give God a chance to teach us something through them. Did you know that most of our learning happens in the debrief? When we reflect back on our experience? We grow when we build on what we have learned. And reflecting on the past year is a great way to start. If you missed it, I created a special guide for this called Prepare the Way for 2022. You can get it free via the button below.

Here were some lessons I learned about myself that I want to remember for 2022, particularly about rhythms. I hope these will help you too:

• When I stop painting regularly I get out of whack emotionally and start trying to control everything. Painting helps me to surrender to God. For more on this, check out this post.

  What is something that brings you joy that also helps you practice surrender? Be gentle with yourself and carve time in your schedule for activities that help you let go. Your loved ones will thank you for it!

• When I stop doing regular artist dates (scheduled play) is when I start to lose sight of what is important and live like a machine instead. An artist date is a concept coined by Julia Cameron in her book, the Artist Way.

  Whether you are an artist or not, artist dates help us slow down and tap into the eternal pulse of things through beauty, play, and wonder.

  Some of my favorite artist dates? Contemplative walks noticing beauty, watching Disney Movies, taking a leisurely bath with candles, dancing to worship music, essential oils, getting take out at one of my fav. local restaurants.

• When I don’t pay attention to the rhythm and season I am in and respond accordingly, I crash. I want to embrace the rhythms and boundaries that will allow me to thrive. For example, after I finish a major project I have remember to give myself some time to recover before launching into the next big project. I also need to protect seasons for hidden work - the slower, but critical seasons where new ideas germinate out of the public eye and where God does the inner work in me. I need to make space to slow down for this, listen, learn, experiment, etc. before I start thinking about sharing it with others or turning it into a “product.”

  Maybe for example, remembering that you are in a season of motherhood or caregiving can help you adjust your expectations of yourself. These seasons have extra demands and limits that need to be named and acknowledged. Or maybe this is a season of fruitfulness - press in and enjoy it! Pay attention to the season you are in and give yourself grace to embrace the limits of that season.

2. Who am I becoming?

Who has God already been shaping you to be? What has He already done in you? You have made it through two of the hardest years of our lifetime and you are still here. Well done.⁠

When you look at yourself through the lens of your beloved-ness, who do you see God shaping you to be? Let’s take a moment to celebrate who you already are. Look how much you’ve grown! Practice visio divina with yourself right now - where is the divine manifesting in you?⁠

When I look at myself through this lens, and how God has grown me…⁠

• I see a woman who has been refined in the years of sowing in tears who is now reaping with songs of joy. (Psalm 126).⁠

• I see a woman who is fully leaning into her gifts instead of stifling them. I see a woman who is flying where she used to be afraid to try. ⁠

• I see a woman who is standing on her identity and call, not holding back, but fully pressing in.⁠

• I see a woman who sometimes gets buried under the drive to perform and perfect, but who is learning to notice when this pattern shows up and make some necessary adjustments.

• I see a woman who is learning how to press into the work of understanding racial justice and is working towards loving her neighbors and lead others in that work.⁠

When you look at yourself through the lens of compassion and beloved-ness, who do you see you are becoming?⁠

3. Who do I want to become?

What if you started 2022 knowing that God cared more about who you are becoming than what you do?

In the end, it is who we are that endures for eternity - not necessarily what we do. When we approach life with the perspective of who want to become vs. what we want to accomplish, it will change the choices we make. But more importantly, it helps us be aware of our WHY behind our choices. Our motivation impacts who we are becoming - and if we can start with the right heart posture, we are on the right track to become more like Christ. So let’s start dreaming with God about who we want to become and name the daily choices we want to make as a result.

In 2022, I want to be someone who...

• Chooses radical generosity over scarcity, because I believe God is a God of abundance.

• Chooses to loosen my grip on control because I believe God is the one who does the heavy lifting and is capable, not me.

• Chooses play instead of workaholism because I want to create from an overflow of my beloved-ness and belonging.

• Chooses to embrace my limits as a way of clinging on to God's limitless resources.

• Chooses to honor the dignity and humanity in others - including myself. Someone who does not treat people as transactional machines, but human beings with limits.

• Chooses to behold the divine presence in others - who sees others as image bearers and is filled with awe and wonder at their beauty.

• Chooses the way of the upside down kingdom - who lives with integrity in the small things and seeks to love the last, the lost, and the least.

• Chooses to be present to God, myself, others, and creation instead of pressing through to produce like a machine.

• Chooses to faithfully show up on the page and in the studio to steward the gifts God has given me to worship him and serve others.

  In 2022, who do you want to become?

4. Given who I want to become, how will I define success in 2022 - at work, home, and in community?

“If the only two metrics we measure everything by is efficiency
and productivity, we are going to miss out on our deepest creativity.”
- Allison Fallon

A few mantras I am attempting this year to remember my definition of success based on what I want to prioritize:

• ⁠At work: Process over product

  Product and perfection may be the way the world measure's success - but what do we become when we live by these standards?⁠

  When I focus on productivity - I dehumanize myself and others. I push myself to reach beyond my limits and my work ends up becoming empty and lifeless.⁠ ⁠

  But when I focus on the process at work, I remind myself to enjoy what I do. I trust that joy and play are part of the process and I stop taking myself so seriously. ⁠I pay attention to the rhythms and seasons I am in and adjust accordingly. I show up to love and create and I surrender the results. I become a joy-filled person who creates because I love to create, not because I have to or because I need to meet some kind of standard.⁠

• At home: Presence over perfection⁠

  When I focus on presence over perfection at home, I am more likely to put down the cooking and cleaning, stop the to-do list and just look my family in the eyes and really see them. Really behold them. And my life is so much fuller and richer this way.⁠ I have delighted in holding my boys close and treasuring cuddle time this last week.

• ⁠In community: People over projects, people over platform

  When I remind myself that my focus is to serve real people, it helps me to not get sucked into the fame and affirmation drugs in order to truly love like Jesus. I can shift my focus off building my own kingdom, to start building His kingdom through focusing on his most valuable resource - people.

These mantras will be tricky to uphold given the intense pressure at every turn to produce at work, be perfect at home, and prioritize projects and platform over people in the creative world. But these outlook shifts are entirely necessary to engage in for the creative work and way of love I was made for. You too.⁠

What are some mindset shifts you're attempting in 2022?⁠

5. What are some boundaries I need to set for myself in order to become this person?

This is a key one. Let’s get really practical here. What are some boundaries you might need to create in order to become who you want to be - who God has made you to be? What might you need to stop or start in order to start living into this person? Here are some of mine I have set around how I spend my time:

• I have started spending my mornings during work days on morning pages, artist dates, prayer, Scripture, and creating

• I plan to take an artist date 1 X a week

• I have committed to detaching from email or social media before 11am or between 5-8pm. YIKES!

• I am choosing to disengage from social media on Sabbath - Sundays

• When I have finished a major project, I plan to budget 2 days off to restore my soul

  These are going to be really hard for me, friends. I’ve already broken these rules and it’s only the first week in January. But I’m reminding myself to try, to give myself grace and invite the Lord’s help. Baby steps, people. Baby steps. Also - seeing how difficult it is for me to keep these boundaries reveals just how attached I am to certain things - like workaholism and social media. This is drawing me deeper into the heart of Jesus as I realize these things.

Closing Prayer:

What are my desires for 2022? Turn this into a prayer of surrender. Here is one of my prayers:

Lord,

I want to be the kind of person who builds Your Kingdom, not my own. Help me to be faithful to show up and stay true to the slow, inner rhythms that build into the long term eternal thing You are doing. Help me to slow down at Your pace - to see and behold beauty, to be captivated by wonder, and create from a place of true belovedness and belonging. May I find You the process of creating, in the presence of those You love, and in serving Your beloved children imbued with your presence and stamped with your image.

Amen