“Thou, O Lord, art a shield about me. Thou art my glory and the lifter of my head.” –Psalm 3:3

It was the beginning of my first school year teaching all four of my children at home, and we were still working out the various hiccups in our schedule. My twins needed to learn to read and write. My daughter had forgotten most everything she knew about multiplying multiple digit numbers. My oldest had slipped back into old habits of inattention and distractibility. And we were all still getting our bearings with the new school-year schedule and its far more structured and rigorous demands than our summer schedule.

As I managed the chaos and confusion and the conflicting needs of my children, God’s transforming work in my life was patently evident to me—I was far more patient than I ever could have been a year or even six months before. Still, my long history of anger, impatience, and anxiety had created habits that were deeply rooted in my brain and body, so while I marveled at the patience I often exhibited, I also sometimes fell back into those old habits. When the conflicting demands on my attention became imperious, or when I was tired, and especially when both happened on the same morning, I would become increasingly frazzled until by lunchtime, I was fried.

One noontime, Jane was still struggling with her math, I was trying to get lunch on the table, my twins were whining about how hungry they were, and Jack was finishing his writing.

“Mama,” Jane wailed. “I don’t understand!”

Luke said, “I’m hungry!”

I brought sandwiches and carrots and a jar of applesauce to the table.

Jack slid his essay across the table to me. “Can you read this?”

Ben said, “I want yogurt with my applesauce.”

Jane said, “I need help with my math! I don’t understand!”

Suddenly it was all too much, and I snapped. I grabbed Jane’s math book and slammed it shut. I took it to the kitchen and slammed it on the counter. I yanked open the refrigerator, grabbed the yogurt, took it to the table, and slammed it down in front of Ben. “There!” I barked.

Then I stalked to the kitchen, squatted on the floor in front of the dishwasher, wrapped my arms around my shins, rested my forehead on my knees, and felt simultaneously very sorry for myself and very angry with myself. The harpies started to sing and purr with glee. Poor sad tired tired sad sad you. Horrible horrible woman, stomping around like that, slamming books and food around like that. Taking the stuff that you feed your children’s minds and bodies with and turning it into barbed weapons of anger. Shame on you.

But I had been practicing habits three (silencing the harpies) and four (lashing myself to the mast). I knew those voices weren’t God’s. I knew God loved me, even in the midst of my bad behavior. So I asked myself, If God were to say something to me right now, what would He say?

Immediately words of comfort and love flooded my mind: Kimberlee, I love you. I am right here with you. My arms are around you. My grace is sufficient for you right here, right now.

My head snapped up from where it had been resting on my knees. I blinked away the tears in my eyes. God loved me. He was holding me. I was not alone in this mess of a day, this mess of me. I unfolded myself and stood up. I took a deep breath, inhaling the love of God who promised never to leave me or forsake me. I expelled a deep breath, surrendering all the stress, chaos, anger, impatience, self-pity, and self-loathing I was feeling into the hands of Jesus to do with as He pleased. Apparently He pleased to burn it up in the fire of His holy love, for after a few moments I was able to go back to the dining room and apologize to my children, receive their forgiveness and their apologies, and enjoy eating lunch with them.

*****

This story contains several key pieces to understanding and implementing the habits of silencing the harpies, lashing ourselves to the mast, and lifting up our heads. First, it shows the beginning stages of changing that soundtrack in my head from one of condemnation (silencing the harpies) to one of unconditional love (lashing myself to the mast). When we are ashamed of ourselves or our actions (and sometimes we should be!), Jesus doesn’t double down on us and drive the shame deeper into us. No! He came and lived and died and rose again so we would not have to live with the shame of our own wrong-doing. He asks us to give Him our shame so He can crucify it and set us free from it and replace it with His love!

In order to do this (or let Him do it), we must stop cowering in the corners of our kitchens and our souls. St. Augustine called this curled up posture incurvatus in se, a Latin phrase that literally means curving in on one’s self. Most of us live most of our lives in this posture. It is the posture of the woman in Luke 13:

Now Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, ‘Woman, you are set free from your ailment.’ When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.

Like this woman, we are bent over and curved inward. Simone Weil once wrote, “Sin is not a distance from God; it is a turning of our faces in the wrong direction.” Incurvatus in se is the wrong direction: we are looking not at Jesus and what He has done, but at ourselves and what we have done. For some people this looks like curling up in a ball in the corner of whatever room you’re in and giving in to thoughts of self-pity and self-condemnation and self-hatred. For others it looks like a sly, admiring grin in the mirror and thoughts of self-aggrandizement and self-congratulation. For still others it looks like both, sometimes simultaneously!

Regardless of what it looks like, the focus is on self. And that is the wrong direction. When we focus on ourselves, we become the only thing that we can see. Every injury and insult looms large when all we can see is ourselves. All our faults and flaws and failings get magnified as in a funhouse mirror. Even our good points get distorted and end up betraying us.

When I find myself spinning in my thoughts in a cycle of self-focus—whether that’s visions of grandiosity and grandeur or a death spiral of self-pity and self-loathing, I find it helpful to stand up straight, take a deep breath, and stretch out my arms. This posture is the opposite of incurvatus in se. It’s the posture of Jesus on the cross, His arms stretched wide to embrace the world. In this posture, I can look up—and see Jesus. I can look out—and see my neighbor. The one person I don’t see in this posture—is myself.

The woman who was bent over for 18 years, unable to straighten herself, lived in her body what many of us live in our spirits, and whatever else that story is about, it is also about Jesus healing us from being curved in on ourselves. He longs to straighten us up—to straighten us out—so that we can live with our arms wide in embrace and praise, our heads up, and our eyes on Him.

Lifting up our heads allows us to see Jesus clearly, and in seeing Him we can see ourselves and our own situation clearly. We see that we are not alone, that Our Lord shields and shelters us (Habit 2). We see that the voices of condemnation are lying harpies (Habit 3). And we see that we are deeply and unconditionally loved (Habit 4).

It is almost impossible to see any of this, let alone receive it, when we are curled into a tight little ball inside ourselves. Instead, we must lift up our heads and look at Jesus—for when we look at Him we see the perfect love that casts out fear, and we are in a posture to receive that love.

That is Habit 5: stand up straight, fling wide your arms, and lift up your head. The King of glory comes—to you.

Art: “Faith” by Faye Hall.
 

We were late for library story time. Again. We were always late. For everything. As I pulled into the parking garage—it was almost always full at story time—I started praying for a parking spot. And God heard my cry and listened to my supplication. There was one spot left. Blazoned across the concrete floor of the garage in the middle of this spot was the word “compact.”

I drive a minivan.

But I was going to park in that space if it was the last thing I ever did because we…were…late! I nosed into the spot and backed out of it and nosed in and backed out and nosed in and backed out and nearly smashed the passenger side mirror into one of the concrete support posts and swore, loudly.

My daughter, who was five at the time and ever the helpful child, ventured to tell me that there was now another spot available and maybe I should try to park in it instead?

“Shut UP!” I yelled at her. “Don’t talk to me right now! Can’t you see I’m trying to park?!?”

Five years have passed since this incident, but I could tell you a hundred—or maybe a thousand—stories very like this one, stories in which I was anxious and harried, hurried and angry and unkind. That was the story of my life. Oh, sure, I had moments that weren’t rushed, but the overwhelming reality of my life was that I was usually somewhere else—or feeling like I ought to be somewhere else, doing something else. I wanted to be present in my life—and sometimes, thank God, I managed to be—but mostly I felt like I didn’t have time; there was simply too much to do. No matter where I was or what I was doing, it wasn’t where I was supposed to be or what I was supposed to be doing, and I felt anxious and hassled and frustrated and guilty.

I was wrecking on the rocks of all the shoulds clamoring for my attention—because I wasn’t lashed to the mast.

*****

In The Odyssey, Odysseus, on his way home from the Trojan War, meets with all kinds of perils and adventures, one of which is the island of the sirens whose song, he’s been warned, is so irresistible that on hearing it men fling themselves from their boats in their mad desire to reach the singers—only to be dashed by the waves against the cruel rocks of the island’s shore. Their bones lie bleached on those rocks, a testimony to the danger of the sirens’ song.

Odysseus, being who he is, decides he’s going to have it both ways: he’s going to listen to the siren’s song and he’s not going to die doing it. He gives his men wax to plug their ears so they can’t hear the song and orders them to tie him with thick rope to the mast of the ship and not to unbind him for any reason whatsoever until they are well past the island of the sirens. His scheme works—he gets to hear the sirens, and though he desperately tries to break his bonds to heed their call, his men cannot hear his cries to be unbound, and they row to safety. Lashing himself to the mast saved his life.

There are sirens in contemporary life, and they are every bit as alluring and deadly as the ones Odysseus heard. One of them is the siren of busyness. Another is the siren of hurry. Still another is the siren of restlessness, or acedia, that insists real life is happening somewhere else. I’m sure you can think of plenty more. These sirens lure us away from the safety of our boats and wreck us on their rocks. I lived my life for years, decades even, in wretched response to their lying clamor.

But not anymore. Now I know to lash myself to the mast. As a Christian, my mast is Jesus. I have to stay close to Him—I have to stay beyond close. I have to remain in Him. Of course I do. He Himself said, “Abide in my love. Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:9, 5). Indeed, apart from Him, I will die, wrecked on the rocks of the sirens.

I wish I could remember what started me lashing myself to the mast on a daily basis, but I don’t. Maybe it grew gradually out of other practices. However it came about, it seems to me this is the foundational practice for a happy life, and it’s very simple.

All you have to do is get yourself alone for a few minutes in a relatively quiet place (this may be the hardest part, yes?). Hide yourself in your closet or your bathroom if you have to. Sit in your car in the garage or a parking lot. Whatever it takes. I like to sit cross-legged and face east, toward the rising sun—to remind me of the risen Son—but this isn’t necessary.

Once you’re alone in a quiest(ish) place, close your eyes and take several deep breaths.

With each inhale, I imagine that I am breathing in the love of God. I imagine that love filling me from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.

With each exhale, I ask God to take everything in me that would block His love. I exhale my fear, anxiety, anger, pride, perfectionism, envy, self-righteousness, self-pity, scorn—anything and everything that restricts the flow of His love in my life, all that prevents me from receiving and living in His love (and it living in me!).

Sometimes I imagine Jesus before me, breathing on me as He breathed on His disciples—“Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). I imagine I am inhaling the Spirit that Jesus exhales.

That’s it. Simple, right?

But not easy. My thoughts are unruly and wander all over the place. I start thinking about other things and forget to consciously and deeply inhale and exhale. I start composing essays and stories in my head. I remember that I have to do x or y today or that I forgot to do x or y yesterday, and suddenly I feel anxious and harried.

Every time I become aware (there’s the gap!) that my thoughts have wandered away from Jesus and are striking out on the waves for the island of the sirens, I take a deep breath and once again consciously inhale the love of God. I exhale the distracting thoughts into Jesus’ hand. Sometimes I ask Him to burn them up in the fire of His holy love. If I find myself chastising myself for being so distracted, I give those thoughts to Jesus, too—they just get in the way of receiving His love—and take another deep, full breath, inhaling the Holy Spirit in whom I live and move and have my being.

I’ve found it helpful to pray Scripture as I consciously breathe in God’s love for me. (Here are some of my favorites.)

Remember habit 2? We talked about how God surrounds us like an atmosphere, like air. Just as the air around us enters our bodies and gives us life when we breathe it in, so too, Christ lives in us and gives us life when we breathe Him in. Lashing myself to the mast makes me aware of this reality. I’m always breathing, but I’m not always aware that I’m breathing. Christ is always with me and within me—but I’m not always aware of His presence. Taking full, deep, conscious breaths in which I imagine I am breathing in His love and mercy and grace—this helps me to remain present to the fact of His presence. It helps me to live more fully right where I am. It helps me to be happy right where I am because it helps me to see that God is present and active, right here, right now.

That’s habit four: lash yourself to the mast. Start every day with a deep breath of God’s love. During the day when you realize you’re feeling anxious or harried (habit 1) or the harpies are breathing down your neck (habit 3), stop and take a deep breath. Remember you live in Christ (habit 2), and breathe in His love like oxygen—because like oxygen, it is the vivifying force of your life. Over time, you will be surprised by the joy you find because you’re abiding in Christ.

Art: The Long Leg by Edward Hopper, 1935

{Caveat lector: This post is long. Do not proceed if you are in a hurry.}

I was 13 years old when I let the harpies in. I didn’t even know I was doing it. I couldn’t know how much damage I was wreaking on myself by opening the door to these shrieking uglies. Of course, they didn’t start by shrieking. They wormed themselves along the lines of my devotion to God. “God hates the proud,” they said. “Are you humble enough?” And then they whispered words of condemnation, words that in my youthful naivete I thought were wise words, words meant to humble me and rid me of my pride and draw me closer to God. I could not have said this then. I did not know what I was doing, or what the harpies were doing.

Twenty-six years later, they had become part of me, the ugly soundtrack in my head. They screeched with delight over my every failing. Every time I raised my voice or, God forbid, actually yelled at my kids, they’d keel over in gloating glee. “You yelled at your precious children? These creatures God entrusted to you! That’s awful. That’s terrible. You’re a horrible mother.”

Every time I questioned my calling as a writer, they’d cackle and cry, “Writing is a waste of your time. No one reads your words. Clearly, you’re not very good at this. You’re a fraud, a poser, a loser.”

Every time I felt overwhelmed by my life, they’d spit poison in my ears. “See,” they’d hiss through their blood-red lipstick, “you can’t hack it. You’re weak and pathetic, and you’ll never be any better than you are now. You’re a joke and a failure.”

My thoughts ran their constant litany of accusation, fear-mongering, self-pity, self-loathing, self-flagellation, and condemnation.

My spiritual director, Margie, had been telling me for ten years, “Kimberlee, you know that’s not the voice of God, right? You know that God’s voice is a voice of love.”

And I had nodded and said yes, which was true. I knew that God loved me. Of course I did. I was a cradle Christian. I’d been actively trying to follow Jesus my entire conscious life. How many millions of times had I sung “Jesus Loves Me” or some other song that proclaimed the love of God? Of course I knew those ugly voices weren’t God’s.

Except I didn’t. And I didn’t know that I didn’t know until one December morning when Margie said something that turned my thought-life upside down. Or rather, right side up.

If the scene were a cartoon, we’d be pictured sitting in the small room at the back of Margie’s house, where we’ve been sitting and praying every month for a dozen years now. Through the windows at my back and hers, you’d glimpse the bare branches of trees against the gray winter sky. In a speech bubble coming out of Margie’s mouth would be, “blah blah blah crucifixion process blah blah blah.”

Seriously. At the time it felt as though I had cotton in my ears that suddenly and only for a moment got pulled out so I could hear those two words: crucifixion process. But those two words were what I needed.

I started up in my chair. “Margie!” I interrupted her. “That’s it! That’s it!” I stared at her with wide, wonder-filled eyes, trying to articulate the blinding flash of clarity her words had wrought in me. “All my life I’ve thought those voices in my head were the crucifixion process. I thought they were keeping me humble or—or somehow sanctifying me. I thought they were the path of salvation, the way of dying to myself. But it’s the voices that need to be crucified!”

Words cannot express the revolution that had just taken place in my thinking. If I had a personal devil whispering the harpies’ words into my mind, he would have been writhing in agony at that moment, cowering in fear because I’d found him out, gnashing his teeth in anger that his days of power over me were drawing to an end.

*****

On another gray December day a year later, I woke feeling anxious. At that time, anxiety was still not uncommon for me, but it had been a long time since I’d woken up feeling anxious. The day devolved from there. By mid-morning my heart was pounding and my hands were shaking.

There was nothing to be afraid of. No saber-tooth tigers lurking outside the door. No ugly emails in my inbox. No school, even. A day off! Yet all I wanted was to curl up in a ball in my closet and cry.

You see, the harpies were shrieking ugly words in my ears—words like fool and failure, like poser and imposter, like greedy and grasping and hypocrite. And they were flashing ugly visions before my eyes—visions of public humiliation and everyone laughing at me and me too stupid to realize it, visions of my children as adults scorning and vilifying me, visions of a future marked by failure after failure after failure. And of course, they wrapped all this ugliness in a veneer of spirituality, making their fear-mongering words and images seem like Visions from Heaven, like foreknowledge from God Himself.

The harpies were loud that morning, and they only got louder the longer I covered my ears and pretended not to hear. The worst thing to do was the very thing I most wanted to do: cower in my closet and cry. It makes them so gleeful when I curve in on myself, and when they’re gleeful, they’re even more spiteful. So I put on my tennis shoes and took a walk. I breathed the crisp cold air and noticed the frost-covered leaves lining the sidewalks and jaunted down to my favorite little park with a bench overlooking the Sound.

Even as I walked, part of me was still curled up in a corner of myself, cowering in childlike fear of the harpies. Part of me was holding the cowering child, crooning over her and cradling her the way I’d cradle my daughter if she were scared.

And part of me was standing between those two and the harpies—a warrior queen defending her people from shrieking, fear-mongering, spiteful, wing-flapping hags. That part of me was wielding a sword—the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God—which she had drawn from its sheath in the belt of truth. I had learned a few things in the year since I’d had that epiphany in Margie’s spiritual direction room, and they were slowly seeping into my heart, slowly becoming the truth I lived by, and I knew that the only way to get rid of the harpies was to grab them by the throat and look them in the eye and fight their lies and and half-truths and less-than-half-truths with Truth:

• God never discourages. Take heart, Jesus said. To take heart means to have courage. The God who commands us to fear not, to take heart would never dis-courage us.
• God’s voice is never a voice of condemnation. Conviction, yes, but never condemnation. These accusing, condemning voices drive me into myself. God wants to draw me out of myself.
• These voices scream and shrill and harp and ridicule. God speaks in a still, small voice. God is gentle and does not break a bruised reed or snuff out a smoldering wick.
• God loves me. And these voices definitely do not.

That was my last big battle with the harpies. Oh, they flap around a bit every now and again, especially when I’m tired or stretched too thin, but I’ve got their number now, so they can’t make the inroads they used to. They can’t blind me with their lies. They can’t curve me in on myself in fear and trembling—because I know that God loves me and upholds me and strengthens me (more on that next week).

That is habit three on the journey from anxiety to joy: silence the harpies. They will kill you if they can—and God is not willing that any of His children should perish. When the harpies start clamoring in your head, cut out their tongues. They are not you.

And they are certainly not from God. Cut them off. They cause us to turn inward, to live in fear. And God says, “Fear not!” God says, “Come forth!” God says, “I love you, and nothing can separate you from My love.”

Say it with me, friends: God loves me. Say it till you believe it. Say it till you receive it.

God loves me.
God loves me.
God loves me.

Say it till the harpies in your head shrivel and die.

Photo credit: Bells of St. Andrews, St. Andrew Orthodox Church, Riverside, California.

For my 35th birthday my dear friend Susan gave me a beautiful old copy of Streams in the Desert, a 19th century devotional book. A week later my twins were born. One of them was in critical condition at death’s door. His lungs kept collapsing, and he had to be ambulanced to Seattle Children’s Hospital. As I lay in bed, weary from labor and delivery, and helpless to help my baby, I picked up the book Susan had given me a week before and opened to the day’s reading. The words could not have been more perfectly timed:

“No matter what the source of the evil, if you are in God and surrounded by Him as by an atmosphere, all evil has to pass through Him before it comes to you.”

That image was deeply comforting to me in those dark, scary days, when we were not sure if Ben would live or die. Looking back, I see that it was true: God surrounded us and strengthened us. We could have been so much more frightened than we were. With babies in two different hospitals and two young children at home, we were stretched thin, but we found strength to endure the days of uncertainty and copious driving from hospital to hospital to home.

Ben lived, thanks be to God (and to the dedicated doctors at Children’s!), and I never forgot that image of God as atmosphere, buffering the hardship and difficulty that comes into my life, not unlike the way earth’s atmosphere burns up meteors. But it took five years before I began to appropriate the truth of it and actually live as though it were true.

Two summers ago, Susan and I were talking about how life hits me so raw, about how I so often found myself in the middle of a reaction before I’d had time to contemplate how I wanted to respond. It had been a few months since my aha! discovery that the important thing about minding the gap was minding it, not where it was. Still, it was exhausting, all that anxiety and anger and fear coursing through my veins and me running to catch up with it and stop it in its tracks.

Susan said, “Cast a circle, Kimberlee. Take your reaction and put it back outside yourself. Create space between you and your reaction so you can see it.” She stretched her hands arms-length in from of her, palms out, like a double palm strike to block whatever was flying at her. “Make a shield,” she said, “and put the reaction you don’t like on the other side of the shield.”

Her words and the image of God as an atmosphere that I’d carried with me since the day of the twins’ birth clicked together in my mind. God is the shield around me, and everything that reaches me goes through Him first. If I feel I can’t handle it—if it’s making me super anxious, say—I can grab it and place it outside what I have come to call my Jesus-shield.

And so I began to intentionally inhabit the image of God as atmosphere. I imagined—and I continue to imagine—Jesus surrounding me. I imagine myself standing in the circle of His love. I remind myself that whatever comes to me comes through Him.

When I feel anxious or afraid, I no longer run or get busy or freak out or even try to figure out why I feel anxious (anxiety will create a reason for itself, and the reason is almost always a lie or a blind, so it’s usually counterproductive to ask why). Instead, I acknowledge it: “Wow. I’m feeling super anxious right now. That’s interesting.” And then I listen to my body: I notice where the anxiety is—usually it’s in my chest, sitting on my heart like a weight, but sometimes it’s in my gut and sometimes in my throat or on the top of my head—and I touch that part of my body and imagine I am grabbing hold of the anxiety and lifting it out of myself.

Then I stretch out my hand as Susan showed me and, imagining Jesus standing before me (because He is!), I place the anxiety in His hands. “Lord, I don’t want this, but I seem unable to get rid of it, so I’m giving it to you. Would please burn it up in the fire of Your holy love?”

In the beginning, I had to do this a lot—sometimes I did it many times a minute. I will be honest: at first, it was exhausting. But within a month, I noticed I wasn’t having to grab the anxiety nearly as often, and by the end of a year, I could go whole days without feeling the least bit anxious!

This is not to say I’m never anxious—I still am, sometimes—but I found that (over time) the more I gave the anxiety to God, the less anxiety I felt. And when I do feel anxious these days, it doesn’t hound me the way it used to—ramping me up, keeping me busy and moving, anything to try to get rid of the horrible feeling that plagued me and insisted something catastrophic was about to happen. Giving that awful, overwhelming feeling to God over and over and over again robbed it of its power. When it comes, it’s far less overwhelming than it used to be, far more manageable. I am no longer at its mercy because I know what to do with it. I know Whom to give it to—and I know that He is trustworthy and will do far more to help me than I can ask or imagine. I know this, because He has, and does.

That’s habit two: cast the circle. Imagine Jesus standing before you, surrounding you like an atmosphere—because He is! Make the motion if it helps: hold your arms straight out in front of you, palms turned outward. Then move your arms out to your sides, as if you’re creating a barrier an arm’s length away from your face and body. Let this motion remind you that Jesus is standing about you as a hedge of protection, and that everything that comes to you passes through Him first.

{Last week you practiced minding the gap—that place where you have the freedom to choose your response. Now, when you get to the gap, and you realize you’re feeling anxious, grab the anxiety and place it outside your Jesus shield—as often as you have to. When we live in the circle of God’s love, we know peace and joy like we’ve never known before. But don’t take my word for it. Cast the circle for yourself and see.}

Photo by Claudia Heidelberger, Creative Commons via Flickr.

As I was heading out the door to take my husband to the train station, I grabbed my cell phone. Immediately a cascade of anxiety washed through my body and with it the remembrance that a friend was angry with me. I stared at the phone in my hand, remembering our interaction the night before.

In years past, I would have fallen asleep with that phone conversation gnawing at me, replaying it over and over again in my head, and I would have woken up with it weighing on my chest. I am a people pleaser, highly sensitive to other people’s responses to me, and I do not like friction in my relationships. Of all causes of anxiety, relational friction (whether real or perceived) has always been the most common for me. But I’ve experienced so much healing from anxiety in the past two years that it wasn’t until I picked up the phone that I even remembered about that unpleasant situation, and by the time I’d dropped my husband off at the train and was headed home—a mere ten minutes—I was fine. The anxiety was gone.

*****

Three years ago, I found myself directing my homeschool co-op. I had zero leadership experience, and I realized pretty quickly that if I didn’t want to fall flat on my face or ruin the co-op and my relationships there, I was going to need some help. So I turned where I always turn when I need advice or encouragement or wisdom: to books. The book that matters for our purposes here is 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, which I’d read in my 20’s and which still sat on my shelf. Re-reading it in my late 30’s created a paradigm shift from which all the other habits I’ll discuss fairly quickly cascaded.

Covey’s first habit is “Be Proactive.” Part of that chapter is a discussion of Viktor Frankl’s discovery in a German concentration camp that in a dire situation in which he was cruelly and brutally mistreated, abused, and even tortured, he still had control over one very important thing: himself.

Reading Frankl, I was reminded of an old Buddhist story I’d heard in grad school about an army general bursting into a monastery and finding an old Zen master sitting calmly on a rock in the garden. The master remained unperturbed as the sword-wielding general advanced. “Why aren’t you afraid?” the general demanded as he sliced his sword through the air. “Don’t you know who I am? I’m the man who can cut off your head!”

“Yes,” the Zen master replied. “And I’m the man who can let you.”

At the time I both marveled at and was appalled by the story. But it’s a story similar to Jesus’s—He Himself said He could call down a legion of angels to deliver Him, but instead He let the Romans crucify Him. His choice was harder than the Zen master’s—He had power to fight back and win, and He chose instead to submit to what looked like loss and suffer all that entailed.

How, I wondered, reading Frankl’s words again, how do you get to be like that?

Covey, following Frankl (and countless others), insisted that there was a gap between stimulus and response, that you could choose how to respond. This was not new to me. For years—decades, even—I had been told, “You can’t control what happens to you. You can only control how you respond to what happens to you.” And while I acknowledged the theoretical truth of that claim, my understanding remained only that: theoretical. I had little, if any, experiential understanding. It seemed to me that I was already responding before I ever had a chance to choose how I would respond.

When I picked up my phone that morning, anxiety flooded my body before I could even think about choosing a response. So how exactly did one access that supposed gap between stimulus and response? For me there was no gap. The stimulus and my response to it were simultaneous.

And then it dawned on me: I wasn’t responding; I was reacting—and my reactions were knee-jerk, reflexive, emotionally overwhelming ones. I was right: there was no gap. I was immediately anxious or angry (or whatever). I couldn’t stop a cortisol or adrenaline response in my body—that reaction was so tightly bound up with whatever prompted it that I was in the middle of it before I even knew it had begun. I couldn’t choose that reaction.

But—and here’s where the paradigm shift happened—I could choose how I responded to that reaction. I could not choose not to have those emotions—but I could choose how I responded to them. And the craziest part is that as I consistently chose my responses to these unwanted emotions, the emotions themselves gradually lessened!

At first, it was hard. I would often be well into an anxiety reaction before I even realized what was happening. I was on auto-pilot, doing what I’d habitually done for years: being anxious. Often it would take hours before I clued in. But when I did, that was the gap. At that point, I had a choice to make. Would I continue to react in this anxious way, feeding the anxiety with frantic activity or worried thoughts? Or would I breathe deeply and give the anxiety to God? (More on that next week.)

As I practiced noticing my emotional reactions and responding to them in a thoughtful, rational manner, I began to see a fundamental shift in my way of being in the world, a shift from knee-jerk anxiety to calmness, collectedness, peace, and joy. A shift that enabled me to experience victory the morning I picked up my phone: I felt anxious, yes, but there was an “I” greater than the anxiety, who was able to quickly, easily, and effectively respond to that anxiety and move forward with joy into the rest of my day.

That is the first habit for a happy life: Mind the gap. It might not be where you think it should be (or where you want it to be), but it’s there. Once you find it, pay attention! That’s where your power to choose lies. At that gap, you can choose how you will respond, whether to the stimulus itself or to your own knee-jerk reaction to that stimulus. Either way, there’s a gap. Mind it.

{Next week we’ll talk about what to do once we’re aware of the gap. For now, simply practice being aware of it.}

Photo by Anders Adermark, Creative Commons via Flickr.

Dear Friends,

As many of you know, I struggled with chronic anxiety for much of my adult life. In February 2015, I wrote in my journal, “180 days to joy. That’s what I want, God. JOY. I am sick of living in fear and anxiety. I WANT JOY.”

Then I promptly forgot about it. But God didn’t. Over the course of the next year, my anxiety levels plummeted through the floor. In the 30 months since I wrote those words in my journal, I have experienced what I can only call a miracle of healing. As I’ve talked with various folks about this transformation from anxious to joyful, I’ve felt nudged to write down a bit of the story. Over the course of the next eight weeks or so, I’ll be sharing several of the practices (now habits) that have aided me in overcoming anxiety and enabled me to live with more joy than I used to think possible.

Anxiety is a complex thing, involving the physiological, psychological, and spiritual. Our problem in contemporary America is that we tend to focus almost exclusively on the physiological aspect of anxiety, which is at best only one-third of the problem. It is a crucial third, of course, and it’s therefore imperative that we deal with it. If you need medication, please be sure you get it! We don’t expect diabetics to roam the world without insulin; we don’t tell them it’s all in their heads and they should just get over it. In the same way, we should not expect people with anxiety to just get over it. It is in part a physiological problem, and medication can be an important part of healing.

Adequate sleep, exercise, and proper nutrition are also crucial components of mental health. We live in an overfed and undernourished culture that is chronically sleep deprived. If you struggle with anxiety, a large part of your work of healing is going to be to take care of these three basic areas. You are an embodied soul. Without your body, your life as you know it ceases. It is imperative that you care for your body. Feed it wisely and well. Get it moving (preferably outdoors). Give it eight hours of sleep every day. These are foundational habits for a happy life and will go a long way toward helping you overcome anxiety.

To reiterate: if you need medication, take it. The habits I outline are not meant to take the place of proper medication. Sleep. Eat well. Exercise. Dealing with the physiological causes of anxiety is crucial.

That said, it is not enough. We are not just bodies. We are spiritual as well as physical beings, and it the spiritual side of things that is grossly neglected in our materialistic culture. Now, simply eating well, exercising, and getting enough sleep may have a dramatic impact on your emotional well-being. But healing work must go deeper, and the deepest part of us is the spiritual.

The solution to our anxiety ultimately lies in God. At the very least this means we need to address spiritual reality when we tackle anxiety. For me, medication helped. Talk therapy helped. But it wasn’t until I stopped running about and sat like Mary at the feet of Jesus for hours on end and listened to His voice and gazed upon His face of love that I finally knew a release from anxiety.

Truth be told, I don’t know how beneficial the practices I outline will be apart from God’s grace and help. Certainly they can’t hurt. But the radical transformation I’ve experienced has been largely (almost entirely?) a result of God’s grace upholding and undergirding the practices I’ve undertaken. Faith and trust are the bedrock on which all these practices rest. Without God’s action to uphold and heal, all my work is for naught. At the same time, if I don’t do my part, I won’t be able to participate in the work God is already doing. Faith is the foundation because it causes me to act in certain ways, which in turn opens me to the healing work of God.

The order in which I share these practices in the coming weeks is (with one exception) simply the order in which I discovered them. Each habit led to the next, and together they created a scaffold or trellis upon which I could lean my life so it would grow. I hope and pray that they will prove to be as life-giving for you as they have been for me.

One final caveat: healing takes time. It was a good three months before the habits began to do their work in me and free me from anxiety. And it was almost a year before I realized with a sudden shock of joy that I was hardly ever anxious any more. If you don’t see immediate results, don’t be discouraged. Hold onto hope, and persevere. “We will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” The harvest is there, but we have to sow before we can reap, and the growth of what is sown takes time. Be patient with yourself. And when you fall (which you will), remember that you fall into the arms of our loving Lord, who will help you up and set you back on the path and walk every step of it with you.

Here’s to the journey to joy, friends!

Warmly,
Kimberlee

Photo by David Bush, Creative Commons via Flickr.

I am hereby giving you notice that you will be hearing from me weekly for the next two months.

Beginning next week, I will be running a weekly series called “Anxious No More: Habits for a Happier Life.” If you struggle with anxiety as I have, this is for you. Even if you don’t struggle with anxiety, you’re welcome to read along; these habits are healthy for everyone!

For today, I wanted to let you know of two essays I wrote last month that are now available for your reading pleasure:

“Come, Taste and See,” a reflection on joy, a children’s novel, and the goodness of life, is over at Grace Table.

“Consider the Birds,” a reflection on Ordinary Time, is over at Velvet Ashes.

Also, if you are a writer, and particularly if you live anywhere near Ohio, please take a look at the Refine Writers Retreat. It’s next March, and I will be one of the speakers. Other speakers include my dear friend Kris Camealy, exquisite wordsmith Christie Purifoy, writing coach Ann Kroker, novelist Vinita Hampton Wright, and the prolific Christin Ditchfield. If you are able to come, it would be lovely to see you there!

As the fall lengthens and night falls ever earlier, may sunshine find you and brighten your days.

Until next week,

Kimberlee

Dear Friends,

This may be a record, even for me, sixteen weeks without a word. I apologize. My commitment to this space is waning, has been waning for a year now. I have no vision for it, and without a vision, I find it very difficult to keep walking the road. I see glimmers of… something… along the horizon, but they’re faint, and I can’t quite make them out yet. I’ve been standing still for a long time, squinting into the darkness and hoping to see more clearly. It’s not working. I think this way is made by walking. Dang it.

For those of you who have been faithfully hanging out here and reading my words for lo these many years, I once again say thank you. Thank you for reading what I write, for encouraging me, for sticking around even when I don’t, and for giving me a reason to keep coming back.

Though I have been silent here, I have been writing elsewhere, and I wanted to pop in and let you know. That feels presumptuous. But I am setting aside my fear of presumption (I’m working on setting aside fear entirely, but God has a lot more work to do in that department!) and letting you know anyway:

First, an essay about Ordinary Time for Velvet Ashes. It’s a celebration of small victories…though I begin to glimpse that no true victory is small.

Second, a revised version of my essay “The Stories Are True” has been published at The Cultivating Project. I have wrestled with this essay for three years, and I am still not happy with it; it does not crackle with the life and light that infused the experience about which I write. After so much rewriting and revising, I am afraid I may have leached out what life was in it, but I let it go imperfectly into the interwebs and pray for the grace to become a better writer.

Third, a sermon I preached back in July on the parables of the treasure and the pearl, which talks about anxiety and small (and not so small) victories (along with a few other things).

But if I were you, I’d skip that sermon, and listen instead to “Go,” the sermon that Jeff VanDuzer preached the week after I did. I’ve been listening to his sermons for 24 years now, and they never fail to point me to God and exhort me to action. This particular sermon resonated with me on so many levels, starting with the one-word title right through to the promise from Revelation with which it ends. Especially if you’re feeling stuck or discouraged, please listen to it.

In closing, I want to share one of my favorite quotes ever, from Lilias Trotter, who gave up a promising artistic career in the late 1800’s to become a missionary to Algeria (if you’ve not read her story, you really should). It’s been a touchstone for me for the past two years, and it fits perfectly with Jeff’s sermon (which you really need to listen to!):

When it comes to prayer for the personal needs of our souls, we do not come again and again to wring an unwilling answer out of our Father but to search in His Word till He gives a promise which meets our case and then to step out on it in the bare faith which believes that it receives.

My friends, on this late summer day, may the sun warm you and breezes cool you and God be always in your heart and mind. And may we all step out on God’s promises in the bare faith that believes that it receives.

With gratitude,
Kimberlee

When it rains it pours! After a month of not much activity on the publishing front, I have an essay and an interview out today, and a podcast interview last week.

First, the essay: Love and Adore is a reflection on Psalm 131, about living deeply rooted in the circle of God’s love, and how that leads us to adoration. Most of us need to remember again and again to remain like that weaned child on her mother’s breast, safe in the circle of the everlasting arms. That’s a lifetime’s lesson.

Second, the interview: Lancia Smith of The Cultivating Project asked me to be her featured writer for May. I was honored and flattered and, truth be told, puzzled. Why me? I still don’t know why she asked me, but I do know this: Lancia has a gift. Forget Barbara Walters. Lancia Smith knows how to interview people in such a way that they shine. When I read the interview, I hardly recognized myself. She made me look good, better than good, certainly better than I actually am. If you know me in real life, maybe don’t read this. You’ll think I’ve been holding out on you.

Third, the podcast interview: my dear friend Emily Allen launched a website in March and a podcast in May. She also has six children. Whom she homeschools. I’ll spare you all the other amazing things she does. If I didn’t love her so much, I’d be green with envy over her initiative, stamina, godliness, wisdom, and just general awesomeness. Her heart is full of love for others, and seems to be endless in capacity. I count myself blessed to call her friend and be enfolded in the circle of her capacious blessing. For her podcast, Emily and I talked about the out-of-doors life with children.

As always, friends, thank you for subscribing to my website. If you read the interview with Lancia, you will know how important you are to me. Even if you don’t, I want you to know that your faithfulness in reading is a large part of the reason I am still writing. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

May you know today how high and wide and long and deep is Christ’s love for you.

With warmest gratitude,
Kimberlee

Dear friends,

Heading into Lent, I had grand plans of launching a newsletter, of starting a Facebook group, of creating a Movement. I was going to call it Read Upstream, a gathering of people who like old books and treasure the wisdom they contain. Over the course of Lent, those plans got dismantled. I’d like to say it was God who dismantled them, but it might have been me. Either way, I’m not terribly disappointed. I’m not sure I’m Founder-of-a-Movement material anyway. I lack confidence and that je ne sais quoi we call charisma.

I’m still working on the newsletter (technical difficulties abound!), so for now I’m posting some of what would go in said newsletter here on my blog. To wit, a list of books I finished in April (some of which took me many months to read) that I think others–you!–may enjoy or benefit from (both, I hope!).

So here is my April in books:

City of Bells by Elizabeth Goudge (1936)

I discovered Elizabeth Goudge four or so years ago, and I’m slowly reading through her body of work because I love her books so much that I want there always to be another one.

City of Bells is one of her mid-career novels. It’s good, but not as good as her later books (which is exactly as it should be). As with all Goudge novels, the city is as much a character as the people (though the sense of place is not as rich and developed as in her later books), and her sympathetic portraits of the people of Torminster are engaging and delightful. Her prose is delicious, and her insight into human personality is as helpful as it is profound. For those of us who are introverts, nine-year-old Henrietta is a wise role model.

George Muller: The Guardian of Bristol’s Orphans by Geoff and Janet Benge (1999)

The Benges have written several series of middle grade biographies. This is from their Christian Heroes series. The writing is…not excellent. But the content more than makes up for paucity of style. This book is a quick read, but I found myself stopping periodically in wonder at the faith of George Muller and praying that God would increase my own faith. For that alone I think it’s worth reading!

The Winter Seeking by Vinita Hampton Wright (2003)

I picked up this book at the library because I will be speaking at a writing retreat next March where the author is keynoting. I figured I ought to be familiar with her work. This novel is set in December and is ostensibly a Christmas book, but it’s fine to read in April.

It was particularly helpful for me, as I begin to explore again my desire to write novels (one of the things that came up during Lent that led to the dismantling of my Movement). It is a simple story about a young woman in a difficult time who meets Mary and through her, Jesus. It helped me see that a book can be good even if it’s not Great Literature. It helped me see that even a simple story is worth writing. And it is helping me listen to the characters that have been making cameo appearances in my head for the past eight years, with the intention of finally writing down what they say and do.

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1932)

I read this aloud to my kids for our winter literature selection. It’s a re-read for Jack and Jane, but so good it’s worth reading again and again. Wilder’s re-creation of her childhood in the Big Woods of Wisconsin delights me every time I read it. It delights my kids, too. An added bonus: there’s a fabulous story about the importance of obedience (without being preachy) that serves as a great springboard for discussion, even with six-year-olds.

Julius Caesar by Plutarch (c. 100)

For this I give myself the Championship Reading Award. Plutarch is difficult, to say the least. But Charlotte Mason insisted upon him for all children over ten, so I read this with my two oldest, two or three pages a week for 20-some weeks, and we finished it. Woot! Woot! But it wasn’t just that we finished it; it was that we met and got to know Caesar, one of the most famous of all Roman leaders, and the mixed bag of motives that he was. We had great discussions over those 20-some weeks about nobility, motivation, means, and ends…which is probably why Mason included Plutarch in her curriculum. This story just begged to be talked about and pondered.

Paradise Lost by John Milton (1674)

My friend Lisa and I started reading Paradise Lost in September. We’d read two of its 12 books every month or so and then meet at a local coffee house/bookstore to discuss it. We finished reading it and discussed the last two books–about Messiah’s reversal of the Fall through His death and resurrection–during Holy Week. How very apropos. This is easily my favorite literary adventure of the past decade. Milton’s poetry staggers, his vision of God boggles the mind, and his portrait of Satan was painfully apt, containing as it did so much of human self-importance and self-will.

I highly recommend finding a friend who’s game and reading this book together. It’s amazing. Rich in image, idea, and allusion–so much to talk about!

A Man in Christ: The Vital Elements of St Paul’s Religion by James S. Stewart (1935)

I read this book slowly and savored it. Stewart was a scholar as well as a pastor, and though his writing is accessible as only the clearest thinking can be, it is not easy. Sometimes he includes the Greek and doesn’t translate it, assuming that I as the reader know Greek. Right. But apart from that (even including that!), this book shimmers. Multiple times I was moved to tears. (When was the last time a book of scholarly exegesis did that to you?) Even more times I was moved to pray.

This book awoke in me a deep sense of gratitude and awe for all Christ has done for me, which was (says Stewart) the driving force of Paul’s life. Stewart does a remarkable job not simply of capturing the love and awe behind the apostle’s life of abandonment to his Lord but of casting that vision forward, too, into my life. This is one of those soul-shifting books; after reading it, I am a different person than I was before.

~

Not that I need more books on my To Read list, which is already a half-mile long. Still, I’d love to hear what you’ve read recently that sparked your plug.

For the joy of good old books,
Kimberlee

 
Photo by Beth Jusino, Creative Commons via Flickr.