Last year, the end of 2021, was the first time in MANY years that I did not take some time for end-of-year reflections. We were dealing with Covid in our family and I just didn’t have it to sit down and work through my usual end-of-year questions. You can find the list of questions that I have used as a starting point here.

This year, I thought it would be interesting to review my journal and create a post highlighting some of the thoughts and themes that have been with me this year. Still a practice in reflection, but a bit different. My next post will be a review of the year’s event highlights, and there were alot of them this year.

Here are some of the predominant thoughts and themes that emerged through my journal writings:

Holding Paradoxes Together is Wholeness

I’m sure that getting older enables me to see more clearly that approaching life with grace and maturity means learning how to hold seemingly opposites together. To that point, the Genesis story of creation spoke to me this past year of what seem like opposites- day and night, for example- are held together for there to be wholeness. God didn’t just call the light good or the dark good. Together the dark and the light made up a day and it was good.

Life is learning to hold in tension those things that seem like paradoxes. This past year has been a journey in better naming the tensions and paradoxes more honestly and holding them together side by side. I wrote in my journal:

The older I get the more clearly that I see how life IS the paradoxes and tensions that we find ourselves in. The goal is not to deny them at worst and manage them at best, but to truly embrace them, to give ourselves permission to acknowledge both the dark and the light, the challenge and the opportunity, the awakening and the death, the lie and the truth because it’s all part of us. To deny one over the other is to deny a part of our own selves. Mature spirituality is learning to give witness to all of it, not just what seems good and agreeable. Just like Japanese sumo wrestlers who come together at the center of the mat and bow to each other in respect and recognition, I too can bow in acknowledgement to my own paradoxes. And, welcome and respect the wrestle that will undoubtedly ensue.

When we allow our souls to be stretched wide enough to encompass the paradoxes- the seemingly opposite tensions- we rid ourselves of expending unnecessary energy on bringing resolution to the tension. Instead, we allow the tension of the contradictions to actually expand us and make us more authentically human. Gregg Levoy writes, in his book Callings, that paradoxes may sit at opposite sides of the table, but beneath it, their legs are entwined. I love this metaphor.

Outsider Art

In February we visited Chicago and while planning for the trip I came across a very small museum that featured Outsider Art, a term that was not familiar to me but caught my attention. Through my research, I discovered that Outsider Art is created, as it sounds, by people who did not develop their art through the usual pathways of art school. In fact, these artists often had to overcome great socioeconomic barriers like poverty to be artists and to have their work displayed. Outsider artists are self-taught and are often considered visionaries.

This completely captured my imagination because the temptation is always to think that in order to do something meaningful in the world one needs more education and credentials, the right experiences, the right references, and all of the things that provide a sense of a stamp of approval which then gives one a sense of legitimacy and authority.

Outsider Art says you can do whatever you want to do and bring forth who you are in the world and not have to go down certain prescribed pathways to get there. Obviously, there are some pathways where you absolutely do have to jump through prescribed hoops. You can’t one day decide to be a medical doctor without going to med school. But there are other ways of showing up in the world that does not require as much hoop jumping as we like to believe.

Too easily we say, “Who am I to do this?” but often what we fail to realize is that our very being is tied up in this thing we are meant to do, whatever it is. Waking up to our own lives, and not living at a distance from our own lives, may sometimes mean taking that next step in spite of what we feel we don’t have the right to do or to be. In fact, some of the best, most meaningful work in the world has been done by people who found themselves on the edge of the establishment. (i.e Jesus himself). The people who light us up aren’t the ones looking over their shoulders wondering if they will be found out. They are the people who are showing up fully to their own lives, shaking off unnecessary limitations.

I highlight this concept here because I think it has implications for all of us to at least consider. Is there something that you think you can’t do because you’ve been told it takes this or that to do it? Perhaps reconsider that belief and evaluate what a next step could look like even now. I think much more goodness could be shared with the world if we recognized that we have something to offer right now, just as we are.

Right around the time of exploring the concept of outsider art, I listened to this powerful podcast by Rob Bell which speaks so well to this invitation to step fully into your own life. I encourage you to take a listen.

Callings

Wow, has this ever been on my mind this year, in part because now that all three of our kids are fully launched it presents a very different season for me. I know as wives and mothers we often put parts of ourselves on the back burner to keep home and family moving forward in good ways. While I always tried to stay true to who I am and how I believed I was to show up in the world outside of our home and family, I also did that in a more measured kind of way.

So now I am asking myself afresh What is a call? What does a call look like as one in their late 50s? How is my understanding of that different from when I was 20? What are we even talking about when we talk about a call? Who or what is calling? Seasons shifts and changes are a good time to ask afresh these kinds of questions.

I used to be that person who preached and taught others to figure out what they were called to do as if there was one single path to get on. Find it, and do that I would say.

If only it was that simple.

First of all, that line of thinking implies that the call is more external, coming from somewhere outside of my own soul. Find it. Figure it out. As if you have to search for it.

And that becomes the first problem. I believe God implants within us those things that we are drawn to, curious about, and interested in. A call comes in knowing your own self. It’s closer than we even know. If the call feels like something you should do, or are expected to do, or worse, don’t want to do, I can tell ya sister it ain’t a call. If it’s a call coming from a true place, you can’t miss it.

Implied in the language of call, at least as I heard it, was this sense of having a single most important call that one focused on throughout his or her life. This is the second big misunderstanding. Sure, there are those few people who will find the thing and do that for many years. More true and common is that a call will likely take on various forms of expression throughout one’s life depending on a lot of different variables (season of life, curiosities, opportunities that come along, or doors shut, etc.)

This past year I read a book by Greg Boyle. In it, he talks about the Will of God, but he could also be talking about a Call:

There are many cages that hold us still. The Will of God, for example, is never different from what we most deeply want. Ensuring then that we are never strangers to ourselves will give us access to our deepest longings. God doesn’t put stuff on our hearts, but rather opens our hearts so we know what we most deeply desire.

Greg Boyle, The Whole Language

That’s so good. And so much more accessible to all of us.

What’s on your heart? What is on mine? What am I curious about? What is capturing my attention? What is stirring my imagination these days? What does my own soul long for and desire at this point? I’m working on identifying some of these things by listening to the heartbeat of my own soul at this new juncture and opening up my heart to the light of the Spirit.

So, there it is. These are just 3 of the topics from my journaling this past year. There are more but for now, I will let this be it. I’d love to hear from you. What was a theme or topic that emerged for you this year? Something that you either wrestled with, were curious about, or took up some space in your heart and mind? Please leave a comment!

Photo by Moritz Knöringer on Unsplash