Hey, my friend! Where’ve you been? 

Oh, wait. That’s right.  I’M the one who’s been absent.  Sorry about that!

Carving out this little piece of internet real estate for my wonderings and for glimpses of the Divine in the mundane, has been a labor of love. A long-held dream made real. But since its launch, I’ve discovered something unexpected. A hesitation…a reluctance…a faltering.

Putting words into the realm that is the internet has felt both freeing and daunting. It’s birthed in me a self-defeating habit of starting pieces but never feeling they are quite “finished” enough to share.  The few posts that have found their way onto this page have been reworked and rearranged many, many times. My hard drive is literally littered with pieces that just “aren’t there yet.”

Yet, in this season I find myself wanting to embrace the sacred in the unfinished. And enjoy the beauty of the incomplete.  And my hesitations raise some questions.

Do my words, though imperfect, offer a valued voice? Are these thoughts ever really fully developed?  Can questions dangle, unanswered? And might they have meaning just in the asking?

I think these are worth considering…

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I looked out the window as I sat across from my Spiritual Director. My drive to her home had been hurried and I walked in flustered.  But it wasn’t until we’d sat together in silence, in the gift of this space she was offering, that I realized how un-quiet my soul actually was. 

After a few minutes, I’m not sure how many, I heard them.  The ticking of the clock. The mechanical whoosh of the dishwasher. The beeping of the UPS truck in her cul-de-sac.  These murmurs of everyday life had been there all along but my racing thoughts and heart rate had drowned them out.  

That’s the invitation in Spiritual Direction – to turn down the noise of everything else to be able to listen to the Lord. 

About seven years ago, at a time when I was weary and drained from living at the whim of my circumstances, a friend first helped me experience contemplative habits and Spiritual Direction.  I’d been moving through life so fast that when I finally slowed down, my interior life was one I barely recognized. These slower, more thoughtful ways of being have been a spiritual speed bump, keeping me from careening out of control.

Spiritual Direction is a quiet practice, soaked in solitude, with one person being attentive on behalf of another. It is holding prayerful space and offering the gift of just being with the Lord. 

I sat in her parlor that day on the downhill side of a particularly busy season of life and ministry. The carousel was spinning out of control and had become more like a funhouse with distorted mirrors and laughing clowns. I just wanted off.

But in the quiet, she listened with me and the Lord was there.  God the Father, revealed through God the Son, through the power of the indwelling God the Spirit. Immanuel, God with us – His love and nearness more real than the things we can see and touch. At every moment of our lives, He extends the invitation…just to be…with…Him. That day, His invitation to me was calm, even in the middle of the chaos.

Spiritual Direction is like clean water straight from the source to a thirsty soul.  It can offer clarity in seasons of transition and comfort in times of grief.  It’s the gift of space for your soul to breathe. 

Because I’ve tasted it myself, I’m eager to offer this gift to others. I’m becoming a trained Spiritual Director so that I might companion with those who want to be attentive to the Lord in their own lives.

That day with my Director, as the clock ticked its metronome tocks, and the dishwasher whirred, I sensed this truth: there is holiness and treasure in this present moment. In this very second.  There is goodness to be savored and beauty to be beheld…because He is there.  I oftentimes miss the magic of the moment because I am in such a hurry to rush onto whatever is next.  

But this sacred point in time isn’t just the means to an end, it’s an end in itself. The journey is as meaning-packed as the destination.

From now on, I’ll look at posting on this blog through the same lens — embracing the sacred in the unfinished. I hope my pieces can be as much about the stirrings they might evoke as any completed thoughts they might espouse.

May our journey together be less on the way to somewhere…and more just where we are.

I hope so.

I hope we can meet here more often.

And I hope you won’t be a stranger.

MORE TO COME ON MY NEW SPIRITUAL DIRECTION PRACTICE!