The Spiritual Side of Sleeping in the Car

Sounds like an enormous sacrifice doesn't it? Sounds noble, sounds self sacrificing. Kinda sorta is. Except for two things. First of all, my office space is pretty deluxe. I keep getting gifted with weekends away and housesitting jobs, and...
the front seat of my car is way better for my back than a big ol' bed.

When you have an L4-5 injury you spend the night tossing and turning to keep the pain at bay. Sleeping is an endurance experience. It takes ten hours in bed to get eight hours sleep. Stretching out means curling up in fetal position with a pillow between your knees and everytime you turn, that pillow has to be readjusted.

In the car? The seat envelopes me at just the right angles. I am not stretched out straight. I find myself sleeping four or five hours at a stretch in a deep deep sleep.

Plus, the place where I sleep is wildly secure and protected. A bathroom is at hand for middle of the night runs, although I sleep so deeply I find I frequently just sleep through the night.

Who knew?

So...I agree to this plan God puts in my heart and I end up with a better quality of life than I ever could have imagined.

This shared workspace building is a dream. Simply a dream. I know and like half the people here already from very pleasant associations. I'm eating better than ever and losing weight, much desired, at a very rapid pace because I cook and eat better at a more regular rate. My office has stairs that are involved and so I am getting more exercise than I ever would have imagined.

All of this goes together to generate some of the best work I've ever produced. I'm more relaxed, less stressed, more creative, feeling more safe than I ever thought possible. I can't wait to get to work each day from my morning shift.

Ah...the morning shift. I finish and then I have an incredibly beautiful place, again, completely safe, where I can go for a long morning nap before I head for the office.

The connections the Lord created are stronger and I'm getting more positive feedback than ever before.
So...here's the lesson. What is God calling you to give up to get a better quality of life? What is God calling you to do that you don't think is possible because you haven't surrendered what you don't think you could give up?

God has set a new standard of living for me. It is not one I thought possible. I have no doubt that in a year or two or three I will be able to purchase a home and have a bedroom with proper closets.

When that happens, I will have a whole new habit of living, a whole new standard of living.
And my trust and surrender of the Lord God on High? Off the charts...just off the charts. I never ever thought I would be so provided for.

Yes, I look back and try to see where I could have had better if I'd surrendered more but you know what happens? It's as if God jammed the channel. Looking back rarely brings good results in moving forward.

So for today, I rest in each moment. I cherish the provision of each hour. I do my best to make the most of it. I rejoice. I say thanks. I relax and go to the next moment with an open heart.

That isn't what you thought I was going to write/say is it?:)

The Church and Me

So yesterday I found the evaluation sheets from a job I took for sixteen weeks during the summer of 2005.

The word I get to use now that I'm just a business woman who happens to be a Christian is pissed.

I wish I could have seen everything clearly when it was all happening. My innocence and naivete astounds me. Just clueless.

Why? Well, for some odd reason that I will only know in the afterlife I suppose, I always see things from an eternal perspective. I see health in people who are really unhealthy. Meaning I see the possibility of them as whole and functioning. I see the possibility of growth in stagnant situations. I see what 'healed' looks like in the wounded.

To every person, I speak into their best life. If Haley whatshisface saw dead people, I see life. To the detriment of my own protection.

Sometimes I think God has kept me where I am, without opening any escape hatches, so that I could lose the rose coloured glasses.

The interconnected enmeshment of the denominations in which I have moved and had my being is beyond belief. It's incestuous. They are men who are faking it and not quite making it. Company men they used to call them in the denomination of my childhood. The business of religion.

So here's me, on this Donna Quixote like quest for spiritual maturity and life abundant saying, 'Hey gang! This new life we are offered is so cool. Don't you just want to get to the core of your pain and fear and turn it all over to God and let it be washed clean and given new meaning?" And their like, well, really we're in this for the applause and affirmation and leader worship we can receive because it feels really safe and comfortable.

You would think it would lead me to hate wouldn't you? But it doesn't. It can't. Because in November of 1993, I took vows to hold God's people in my heart. I'm supposed to love them even when they hurt me. So, my default is always , after I've set some limits, to go into teaching mode.

I spent all day on a book I've been working on since the mid nineties which if written with excellence and read properly, has the possibility of leading people to a deeper relationship with themselves and a closer relationship with God. That could be revolutionary. It will not have any patriarchal aroma to it. That might be different, freeing for some hopefully.

Then tonight, I spent my hours working on my spiritual memoir.

In both instances, I have had an opportunity to see with hindsight, what my spiritual journey has been. It's enough to make you believe in God.

Now, I'm not going to keep my experience from the summer of 2005 a secret. It was the singularly most defining time period in my life outside of the Spring of 1969 in Cambridge England when I surrendered my life to God. And no doubt, as always happens, when I speak my truth, people who are embarrassed about their behavior might see it as an attack or criticism.

But I am, at this point in my life, fully confident that God is working in their lives as well, whether they want God to or not. Good will come of me telling my story.

And this day, this most incredible day when I am reaping the blessing of a  thousand moments of small obediences to the nudge, the whiff that has been my pillar of smoke and fire, I wish that for them. I wish healing and awareness and increased closeness to the eternal love that shapes and molds us for the best we can receive.

The Blessing of Obedience

Today was a day filled with the pay off of blind, faithfilled obedience. I spent a lifetime learning to discern the voice, the will, the nudge, the hint, the whiff, of God's communication with me, God's leading, God's intended good will towards me.

Yet, so often I sabotaged my own blessing by not trusting that growth, that proces. Today was a 'yes'.
And I sat in the good pleasure of being alive and unbounded creative energy and peace with who God has made me to be all day long.

I would wish for you a day like I had today. It encourages me to be moreso.

Faith Based Living

The journey to my current faith walk has been so extraordinary, it inspires, in me,awe for the living God

Coming from a family of lip service and non belief, head knowledge and denigration, that the Spirit would break in on me at such a young age and I would continue to have urgings to search and clues to follow into the deeper in and higher up, is remarkable.

This weekend, when I examined my current fascination with Joel Osteen's material that retrains my brain to think in terms of a God who desires to bless me, I saw a parallel to my respect and desire to learn from Joyce Meyers. I was working from unbelief to belief with her and now I am working from Spiritual riches to riches in the natural with the Osteen teachings.

Both of those are so extraordinarily far from my foundational experiences in the church. I come from mainline club status. Rules and rituals girding the loins of a closeted faith enmeshed with an organization and building that neither breathes in nor expires in faith.

I am astounded to find that unbelief is not an issue for me anymore.

So too, I know soon, the issue of wealth and opening myself up to monetary blessing in a big way from God will eventually be a non issue for me. It will be fun to be past that as an obstacle.

Also this weekend I thought about being a church reject. It hurts. I love the Body of Christ so much and it pains me that people with less faith are able to be gatekeepers of faith. I don't like not being recognized.

Sitting in the wonderful Norman Cathedral that is St. Mark's, on the side wall today as I came in late, I marveled at my willingness to go to yet another path. But clearly God has been leading me in ways that culminate in liturgical worship.

I wish pastors would let me teach them. They are missing so much. They spend time only with their own congregations. They have to wear the mantle all the time. The collegiality frequently breeds familiarity.

None of the Dove. None of the Lion. I want to help them develop a relationship with the Dove and the Lion.

So, I will pay very close attention to the thin silence and not jump ahead but only act on that which I discern. And maybe.....who knows... that might be where I end up after all.

What's at the Center of the Great Adventure

Unwrapping my theological core in the beginning of this adventure seems a little complicated.

So, some people call it intuition. But it's more personal than that. Some people call it the voice of God but sometimes it's only an impulse. Sometimes it is a voice but that kinda freaks people out.

Sometimes it's just a feeling of alignment and there are other confirmations that I am on track so I continue in a certain direction.

Sometimes it's a feeling of enormous resolve.

At any rate, a couple of weeks ago when it became clear the latest landlord was going to arrange things or fix things to find any excuse possible to pressure me out of the house, I just said 'enough'! Five times in a row I  made the mistake of looking for domestic stability so I could write what I feel called to write and get the words to market, finish the website so I could solicit teaching and speaking engagements and get my podcasts recorded.

I had this idea. Those ideas I always attribute to God because they have my best interests and most visibility of my faith. The idea I had was to call this place that did work space rental and take my work out of the mix of my domestic situation. I just couldn't move again until it was to unpack in a permanent place. People say one thing but do another all the time. I needed to remove my work from the hands of unpredictability as far away as I could.

From that lead, the other pieces of  the question, 'How do I lead a normal life that is productive and fun and fulfilling without having a home where it all happens?" fell into place.

I believe God supplies answers when a set of positive events fall into place together.

My faith had been bolstered this summer by a concentrated time of study in retraining my brain to think of God as a God who blesses. My whole view was framed by asking the question, 'Does this idea bless me or my situation or my possibilities of providing for my family.?"

As I explored the option of the office and found it provided more than I thought possible, I moved on to the next dilemma and the next. Each time, right before I needed it, someone suggested a solution.

Taking each step as an act of faith made a collective move in the right direction.
As I read this back, I see I have created an incalculable number of questions about what is good for me, what am I called to do, and what does God have to do with all of this. For now.....this is the start of explaining what it's like to be inside my faith. Best I can do.

I must remember to talk, sometime, about the difference between and the decision to make the leap between the ministry ( the pastorate) and being an artist and a business woman.

Great Faith

Having never written about my actual faith walk in a detailed way, in a public place, finding the end of the thread as a place to begin is challenging.

I'm not sure this is the "right" or "proper" place to start, but presently I am thinking about the chasm between me and established church leaders. From many of them I am hearing, and have heard, "stop saying you hear God". I always wanted to say to them,"of course I hear God! I'm not busy with minutia like you. I'm not worshiping the gods of other scholars. My physical circumstances are not comfortable. I hang out with non believers. How could I possibly NOT hear God??!!".

The only difference in my life right now is acting boldly on what I hear.  I have parced out the pieces of my life because God is running an end game around church leadership in providing me a forum to speak of my faith: how I came to know of it, how it came to be, and how I trust it will grow.

That much I know right this moment. More will come I'm sure.

Eventually, this will be the blog where I record the faith walk elements of The Grand Adventure.
Tonight, I am exhausted from the changes and will simply commit publicly to the dedication of the space for that purpose.

I wish I knew how to change my masthead. But then again, perhaps such an exposition is indeed the building of faith based leadership. If enough leaders make it about faith, it will become faith based.

And now. Good Night.