Author: truedefiance

A Retreat Tale

Posted on by truedefiance

Last night’s sunset on the beach. It’s been a hot second since the last time I got away for a WHOLE week on a personal retreat. That first time I actually was at a place, just around the rocks from where I am now. 

A place where God began teaching me the beginning of learning to rest in love, not strive for it. To let go of what others thought about me, to let go of the expectations I had picked up on my journey of what it looks like to be an “acceptable” Jesus follower. 

 He keeps peeling back the layers, showing me how deep my trust issues go. So thankful he is slow, and gentle. Yup, two years later we are talking about the same things, trusting him and shedding my fears of pleasing people.

 This morning after breakfast I heard his quiet whisper, inviting me to come for a morning swim in the ocean. No one was out there. The water was clear and warm. I wanted to swim around the rocks and see the shoreline at the last place I stayed, but I was too afraid to go that deep, where I couldn’t see what was beneath me. I felt his invitation to explore my fear. I stood on my tip toes, water at my neck probing different angles of my fear. 

The invitation to trust him was there in front of me. Then I found my body moving forward, without my mind’s consent. 

He’s still leading me where my trust is without borders…

Waiting again

Posted on by truedefiance

The advent season is coming, it is probably the one consistent time we welcome over a month of waiting and anticipation. We press into the reminders each day with stories of how he came as a baby to take on that chasm between us and God and shatter it for all eternity. We go back to the beginning of mankind, hear all there struggles in the same dark and broken world, and look for the sparkling seeds of hope that redemption is coming. We hang the ornament each day, waiting for the Jesse tree to fill up.

This season I wait on God’s slow unveiling of where and what he will lead our family into. I sit with the discomfort of not knowing. I resist the urge to plant my own roots, conjur my own plans. In his sweetness he gives me small glimpses of what he is doing in this waiting. A growing child is learning to navigate there world of childlikness with a pull toward adulthood. Learning to balance, learning to communicate, learning to reach deep into relationship for reminders of truth and wisdom, learning to say “I’m sorry”, and learning to give beyond themselves. Another is wrestling with purpose and identity, how the two are linked but so different. Learning to surrender to God’s molding. Those are just a couple glimpses of what he is doing in our family.

And then there’s me. What does he have for me in this waiting? Glimpses of his rebuilding trust, and rebuilding a trellis. Where the wild untamed vines of my heart can be guided toward purpose and in lean deeper to love and learning to be, not do.

In the soft glow of the red splashed throughout our home I find comfort in the tradition, the emotion, that symbolizes the cost of my connectedness to God. I ache for connectedness to family, that is on the other side of the world, in a different climate, different culture, different space.  For there presence in our families lives, for the chance to “just be” alongside them.

I wait toward that day of remembering that that baby brought us all together in unity with our creator, and I continue to wait more until that day when I will know separation no longer. Where a weary world rejoices.

Waiting

Posted on by truedefiance

My life has been full of so much transition. Living overseas has invited a rhythm of moving in and out of seasons more than I think I ever anticipated. Navigating through visas to stay in a country not your own, receiving community to live alongside you, and watching them go sooner than either of you anticipated, making moves that are better for the health of your family. These are just a few ways in which you can find yourself navigating through a transition period yet again.

In our early years in India we kept anticipating closing those unpredictable and groundless chapters. We said to ourselves, “it will be easier to have consistency with stillness and dedication to exercise once things settle down”. But we kept finding that things never settled down. We moved from one transition to the next all the while feeling unanchored.

After awhile we sensed that God was calling us to explore what thriving in transitions looked like , and learning to wait on him in transitions instead of hoping they would pass quickly so we could feel more “normal” and “in control”.

No sooner than we embraced this idea that God indeed had something for us in the waiting, that it wasn’t idle time, than he gave us another transition to press into waiting and find him in it. We returned back to the states to change our visas and they were denied. Two months turned into 9 months and we fought against the feeling of being left floating out to sea, uncertain of the future.

 Time and time again as we sat with God we released these feelings and practiced keeping our hands open, reminding ourselves that though this season was not in our plans, He was not surprised by it. We practiced asking, with our hands still open, “what do you have for us in this wait?” And we watched as he created space in our lives to rest, and to exercise, to build back in healthy habits that would anchor us in the waiting. We learned to say “I trust you”, and then an hour or two later when we felt ourselves longing to be grounded again or moving forward in our creativity, pioneering and desire to do, opening our hands again and saying , “ I trust you, I trust you, I trust you.”

How has waiting been for you? Does it come with a sense of anxiety? Have you ever asked in the waiting, “God what unexpected gift do you have for me in this?”