I have a deep passion and commitment to the ongoing development of spiritually strong and emotionally healthy individuals, marriages, families, leaders and cultures, helping you achieve your God-designed and appointed destiny.
All in Journey
The coming and leaving of those we love, the experiences of love and betrayal, the witnessing of birth and death, care and indifference, generosity and stinginess can actually be our pathway to true freedom. All of these tensions can result in a deep, deep yearning for full freedom that is beyond the structures of our world.
Drinking the cup of Salvation involves emptying the cup of sorrow and the cup of joy, so that God can fill it with pure life.
This idea of slowing…ruthlessly eliminating hurry from our lives…is nothing short of extraordinarily counter-cultural. Society deems faster is better, waiting is wasteful, and slow is lazy with every message it can muster.
With this in mind, over these next weeks, in true Coach and Spiritual Director fashion, I hope to share with you ideas, concepts, questions, and possibilities that could help you on your own journey, as you seek to become closer to the One who loves you most, the One who delights in you, the One who has so much to show you, as you chose to wake up to the beauty of slow.
Growing and changing into the person we want to become doesn't "just happen." If you fail to plan, you can plan to fail. Set yourself up for success in 2021! Listen to this quick 2 1/2 minute video and discover how to make a plan that works for 2021!
With all that is going on in our culture - Covid, politics, endless opinions and never-ending conflict, our energy levels are struggling! Listen to this quick video to discover one change you can make to get some of your power back!
Based on our individual personalities and makeup, we all have different Orientations to Time. Never heard of this? Think of Orientation to Time as a type of filter through which we process, plan, envision, shop, negotiate, even budget. Some function in the world from a place of the PAST – taking into account all that has been. Others operate in the PRESENT – dealing with what has been dealt. Then there are those, like me, who are orientated to the FUTURE, always planning and dreaming about what can be (can I hear a “whoop whoop!” for Enneagram 8’s?).
Throughout our lives, we pick up false beliefs that actually affect our soul and well-being, preventing us from moving ahead. For the next 4 weeks, we will dismantle 4 Core False Beliefs, replacing them with 4 Truths that will set us up for the life we desire!
In this demanding, over-stimulated and over-scheduled world in which we live, Soul Weariness is epidemic. It’s destroying lives, families, careers and churches in its wake. Anxiety, loss of enjoyment of life, and depression are the result. Many are just hanging on, when they want to move ahead. Some are in a deep rut, or even paralyzed, as clarity of purpose and vision have vanished. With this in mind, how do you know if you are Soul Weary? What are the symptoms? And once identified, what do you do?
Recently, I was a bit taken back by the Facebook post of a former high school classmate. I believed it to be more profound than could be understood at first glance, causing me to mull it over for a couple of days. It made me want to have a conversation regarding the deeper meaning. Some may have thought it was just simply sweet. I thought it was more than that.
Above this picture of two happy, handsome, middle-aged men – one black, the other white - were these words written by Bryan Pittman:
I come from the belief (and experience) that friendships can be really, really good…or so troublesome that they make you want to hightail it to somewhere off the Appalachian Trail, completely off the grid, and live a life of total and complete solitude without TV, social media or Diet Dr. Pepper. It’s that’s serious.
I hadn’t asked myself what I wanted in life, my marriage, my pursuits, and as a woman in…well, maybe never. It seemed as if I had always piggy-backed on other people’s wants, needs and desires. As a good Christian wife and mother, isn’t that was I was supposed to do?
There I was again – too much to do and too little time to do it. Honestly, it seemed to be the story of my life these past months. You’d think with the kids grown and gone; I’d be getting more - not less - done. In the past it wasn’t a problem. I was practical a machine! Being someone with what seemed to be endless energy, each day would begin with a mental, or better yet, written list of all that needed to be accomplished. I always knew how much I could get done, almost down to the minute. I considered myself to a Time Management Master.
What is this source of conflict between frustration and exhaustion that happens when we attempt to muster with every bit of our strength, an offering to give to God that, by our standards, is both flawless and acceptable? Then when we fail (as we inevitably do), we spiral down the “Christian Shame Vortex”, giving up completely. “It’s useless. I just don’t have what it takes. I can’t get this thing right.”
We beat ourselves up about fear, especially when we know that God tells us we have no need to fear. We can be really hard on ourselves, convinced that there is something very wrong with us. “If I trusted God enough, I wouldn’t be struggling with this! Can’t I just get over it? How many times do I have to turn this over to God?!”At times, shame and guilt can seem to overwhelm us because we fear.
When I walk…I walk fast. Not speed walker fast, but fast enough that some of my friends to refuse to walk with me. “Slow down!” they say. Really? What’s the use of walking, if you don’t walk fast? I mean, burning calories is the goal, right?
“To be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody but yourself – means to fight the hardest battle which
any human being can fight – and never stop fighting.”
Why do we do it? Why do we compare? We know it’s a black hole. It won’t help, nor will it solve any issues. In fact, it makes issues much larger and bigger than they already are! So why do we insist on carrying on this love affair with comparison?
