Temperance

As I work through (and boy, do I need to take it all in slowly) Mere Christianity I found Uncle C.S was writing the words of my heart.

"One great piece of mischief has been done by the modern restriction of the work Temperance to the question of drink.  It helps people to forget that you can be just as intemperate about lots of other things.  A man who makes golf or his motor-bicycle the centre of his life, or a woman who devotes all her thoughts to clothes or bridge or her dog, is being just as 'intemperate' as someone who gets drunk every evening.  Of course, it does not show on the outside as easily: bridge-mania or golf-mania do not make you fall down in the middle of the road.  But God is not deceived by externals." 

C.S. Lewis

First off... I am an idiot and do not think drink when I see the word TEMPERANCE... I think of the character on Bones, but maybe that's a personal problem and an issue I will deal with in the week I give up TV.  

It is that last phrase that, God is not deceived by externals, that frightens me and calms me all at once.  This week I am giving up sweets, treats, and extras.  It's a little cliche but I am glad it is where I am starting because it is making me aware of the moment.  Making me aware of my own hunger, my own needs, my own life.  When I threw in "extras" I was pretty vague with myself.  I now know that for me it is all those moments I feel something and decide to turn to food to feed it.  Joy.  Fear.  Anxiety.  Love.  I feed each with carbs and chocolate.  Target also fell into the world of extras.  Don't ask me how, but you probably get it... roaming those clearance end-caps lets me turn off the world and escape.  I've found that as life has gotten crazier the Target charges have gotten more frequent.  But a little extra chub and lots of Target bags are par for the course for a new mom.  I'm not falling in the street drunk.  I'm buying cheap groceries and clearance linens so to the world I just look like another mom sucking down her soy latte decorating her house.  

But God is not deceived by externals.

I know that God laughs at it, that She rubs my back and says, "Nice try, Emily, but no clearance end-cap is going to fill that hole.  Just invite me in a little more often.  Sit with me.  Feel that hunger and react to it don't feed it.  It's a comfort to me that God is not deceived by my armor.  It comforts me that I can't trick God in to thinking I've got it all together or that I know what I'm doing.  It's freedom.  It's knowing that it is okay to be hungry.  It is okay to feel like being a mom is just the hardest most beautiful thing that you can't handle and want more of all at the same time.  It is okay when you don't have the right words for that students or you have to tell their parents a hard truth that will be good for them in the long run... promise.  It is okay to be lost and question and celebrate and know all at the same time.

Just

BE

BE LOVE & 

BE BELOVED.

I find true calm when I dwell in the knowledge of being fully known, loved, and celebrated by my Creator.  That to be fully loved, to be beloved, I don't need to change a thing but I need to simply BE, and more often than not I need to just BE STILL and stop running from the powerful love of the one who can love me perfectly.  

So today I say 

thank you 

thank you 

thank you 

to my fellow lay minister and anglo/episco friend C.S. Lewis for speaking the words that ring true in my heart today and reminding me that even when the world may be fooled, our God is not deceived by externals!

Bring it, Brene.

Fasting.

Does that word make you as hungry as it makes me?

It's that beautiful time in the liturgical season when Lent is so close you can taste it and you start eating everything you are contemplating giving up in mass quantities just in case you decide to give that thing up.

But then if you are like me, you never actually give it up.

I have been of the I don't give something up for Lent because I choose to take something on club for many many years. What that has really meant for me is I love excess and have horrible impulse control so instead of doing something difficult like fasting from any part of my fluffy life, I will just add more to my overcrowded plate... but I will phrase it in a way that makes me sound spiritually evolved.  

Guess what, friends.  I am not spiritually evolved.  I am spiritually numb.

I am reading Brene Brown at the moment and she speaks about the importance of vulnerability so I am practicing it now.  This Lent.  With you watching.

“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.” ― Brene Brown

So this Lent I am saying... Bring it Brene!

Vulnerable confession: My life is so loud that I am having a really hard time hearing God lately.  The loud is my own doing, my own planning, my own turning on when I should be turning off.  I have felt  both numb and dumb to the movement of the Holy in my life.  This disconnect is both embarrassing and real for people working in ministry.  It's the unspoken demon that many of us battle with.  The battle of our own faith when we spend day in and day out working to nurture, reflect, and honor the faith of others.

As Lent has drawn near I know that it is time I get real with myself and my relationship with God.  It's time I start giving up some of the things that I enjoy (and that temporarily fill the hole in my soul that God desires to occupy permanently) and make room for the spirit to move through me and use me.

It's time I give something up.

A few years ago I left Facebook behind.  It was the one and only time that I have given something up for Lent and it was hard and beautiful and needed.  I am in desperate need of something hard and beautiful right now.

A few weeks ago Jay asked me, why are you never happy anymore?

Ouch.  And true.  And pretty painful.  I mean he is the grumpy one and I am Miss Mary Sunshine.  How dare HE call ME out on being down.  

Once I stopped being angry about what he said (only furthering his point, which was more annoying than anything) I started to take a good look at me.  This life of mothering and ministering should bring me much more joy than it is... but because I have packed it so full there is no ROOM for joy but only room for the next thing.  There is no room for Holy because I'm not giving the Holy room to move through me.  There is no room for the unknown because I've tried to schedule the unknown right out of my life. I have found that God tends to draw closest and move most powerfully through the unknown.  I have basically been boxing God out of my own life while try to infuse Her in to others' lives.  

When I give up control, when I stop planning every minute, those are the times in my life I feel a deep sense of the presence of God, yet those are also the times I feel most uncomfortable vulnerable.  

So, I am planning for a Lent of vulnerability   

I am FASTING.  I am cutting out one thing each week of Lent. One of my major time suckers.  I am seeing what happens when I remove all the little gods from my life and give God a minute to move in me.  

What are my little gods?  I bet you can guess them...

Gym 

TV

Spending

Internet

Sweets/Treats/Extras 

Sleep 

Note: I am not saying that sleep or the internet or working out are bad things, but in my own life they become things that take away from the Holy.

From Monday-Saturday each week during Lent I will eliminate one of these things.

Pray for Jay.  And AG.  And maybe for yourself if you cross my path on week I give up going to the gym.  

I will be writing about my experiences through the week.  Why those things hold so much weight in my own life.  What spaces are being opened up and doors are being open and how God is using my fasting to feed me, which I know She will, she is only waiting for the opportunity.  I am praying that this the numbness fade and my eyes open again to the presence of Christ in my life.