Unforced Rhythms of Grace

At the beginning of the year I embraced Intuitive Eating.  Some of you have asked what this is.  To really understand you can check out the website of the original Intuitive Eating creators Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch.  For me this was about making peace with food.  It is also about accepting my body and that I don't need to look a certain way to be healthy. The first principle of intuitive eating is to reject diet mentality.  In order to do that, I decided to step away from the gym for a while.  I also gave myself permission to eat whatever my body was asking for.  In the beginning, I did really well with intuitive eating.  I found my body was asking for a wide variety of food and I was feeling pretty good. In the month since I returned from my vacation I have travelled for work and been sick more than once.  I have found that instead of figuring out what my body wanted, I would just eat so that I was no longer hungry.  The thin...

On a social media platform one of the people I follow asked about whether we considered ourselves resilient and if we didn't, what got in the way.  I stopped and thought for a moment.  The answer is complicated because my view of resilience has changed without me noticing. In my early life I had more than my share of trauma.  People always said I was strong because I would keep on functioning at some level.  In a way, that is a form of resilience, the ability to keep on going in spite of what happened.  I honor that part of me.  The thing is, that keeping a stiff upper lip cost me in many ways.  So that even though I continued to function, I would be really struggling on the inside.  I didn't take the time to process what happened, so those events would creep up on me when I least expected it. Recently I have found that when something happens, I have the capacity to deal with it.  I find space to allow myself to process.  I reach out...

Note: I received access to an extended excerpt of this book as part of the HarperOne as a member of the launch team.   In the year 2000 I did the Jesus prayer thing and started figuring out next steps.  One of the first things I did was purchase the TouchPoint bible at the church I was attending at the time.  It is written in the New Living Translation (NLT).  The NLT is a very readable version of the bible although it is not known for being the most accurate translation. I have purchased a number of bibles in other translations since then but, that TouchPoint bible remains my favourite.  At the time I loved it because it had bible promises for every issue I could think of.  Look up anger at the Helpfinder and it gives you a bunch of questions to think about and several verses like: "Stop your anger!...Do not envy others -- it only leads to harm."  Psalm 37:8, NLT I think I like it now because it is old and familiar...  and it is the ...

When I tell people that I have been exploring faith questions and that has lead me to leave the church community I was going to, the automatic question is something like 'so are you questioning your belief in God?'  They want to understand what I mean.  At the beginning I wasn't even sure what I meant.  I momentarily experimented with the idea of not believing in God.  I remember the moment in my car.  I was waiting for the light to change at the corner of St. Anne's and Bishop Grandin.  The experiment didn't last the light cycle.  Before the light turned green, I was back to believing in God.  I couldn't imagine life without believing in something bigger than me.  I believe that a higher something has some positive impact on the world. My big sticking point was the concept of sin.  I have found that by trying to avoid sin, I just made myself miserable.  The things I was doing that I labelled as sin were really just coping mecha...

At the beginning of 2018 I set a goal to read 12 books and listen to 12 books.  I read and listened to many more than that.  Here are some of my favourites: The Obsession - Nora Roberts: I devoured this book while I was on vacation.  The story depicts a horrible coming of age for young Naomi as she learns her father's secrets.  As an adult the events still haunt her and of course, her nightmares start to become real. The Very Worst Missionary - Jamie Wright: Jamie's memoir about her experience as a missionary is honest, funny, and heart-breaking at the same time.  It opened my eyes to an 'industry' I didn't know anything about. Before We Were Yours - Lisa Wingate: I picked this one up on the recommendation from someone's list last year.  This book follows the story of children who were taken from their parents and basically 'sold' for adoption.  It is based on the real life scandal of the  Tennessee Children’s Home Society.   Th...

As a business graduate I know the value of specific goals.  If you have taken any course on goal setting you have heard the acronym SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, results-oriented, time based).  SMART goals are important in the business world.  They provide direction.  They make determining whether the team has met them is objective.  Motivational speakers apply the same principles to personal growth. It seems to work for a lot of folks.  For me, they can't be applied to personal growth without leaving me feeling overwhelmed and guilty when I don't meet them.  I am tired of judging myself against a specific goal.  I don't want to be numbers driven for my personal life. That doesn't mean I want to completely check out from thinking about direction for the next year.  Instead of resolutions or goals I refer to them as intentions.  Here are the ways I am thinking differently about intention than resolutions: 1.  It doesn'...

I have been thinking about re-starting my blog and I thought maybe I should re-brand, change the URL, start something new.  So I came back to this one. I read the description at the top. Have you ever met someone for whom kindness and faith seem natural? I know it may not actually be effortless for them, in fact I know it isn’t. But there is a difference between moving forward and pushing forward. I want to be the kind of woman who lives in unforced rhythms of grace. I am not there yet. Perhaps I never will be. My intent is to invite you along for that journey. Be forewarned that it will be a road with lots of bends and perhaps a little bit of traveling in reverse. I still want to emulate the people I know who show the Unforced Rhythms of Grace.  The articles I wrote are still true.  So what has kept me from writing for so long? For several years I have been posting sporadically, if at all, because I was trying to become someone I wasn't.  I was trying ...

For a long time I have referred to some of the struggles in my life as ‘brokenness’.   I don’t say this anymore.   I am not broken.   The bible says we are ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’ (Psalm 139:14).    Do this mean we won’t struggle?   No.   We will struggle.   What we do to cope with this struggle can be labeled as brokenness. So I have been learning to reframe brokenness as ways of getting along that I perhaps no longer need.   Either I have new tools, or the assumptions about what I need are no longer valid.   My so-called brokenness is not brokenness at all.   It is strength.   It got me through a difficult time when I had no other tools available to me.   My previous self wasn’t broken.   She was courageous and strong. If you stop looking at yourself from a framework of brokenness, it gives you power.   You suddenly realize that, with God beside you, you can handle way more than you think. ...

I have given up on keeping a gratitude journal about 10 times.   I would try.   Stick with coming up with 3 things I was grateful for every day for a month.   Then I would stop.   It never really made me feel better.   The only thing it accomplished was to check off another ‘should’ from my list. Honestly keeping a gratitude journal just gave me a reason to feel bad about myself.   I would think: “Why is it so hard to come up with my three things?’ “How long before I actually feel grateful for this stuff?’ “Why am I so ungrateful for the gifts that God has given me?” “What’s wrong with me?” “I am a bad person.” Okay that is a bit dramatic but I do know that actually trying to keep a gratitude journal and having it fail did make me feel bad.   So I stopped trying years ago.   The issue was that people I respect would say that gratitude is a requirement for living a fulfilled life.   I believed them.   It makes a lot o...

I was really excited when I heard Jillian Michaels was coming to Winnipeg.  If you don't know who Jillian Michaels she is the trainer that is known for being on the Biggest Loser.  Jillian's contestants are often the winners of the Biggest Loser (as was the case this year with a contestant who had everything against her in the beginning.)  The reason I like Jillian is not because of her training skills.  It is because she has an ability to get to the heart of a contestant and figure out what it is that is getting in the way of their goals. When she came on stage see was instantly endearing.  She swapped her high heels for flip flops saying that she felt like she had done her duty by coming out in them.  She broke down what she was going to talk about - nutrition, working out, mind.  She was real about the fact that many of the people who came to see her, wanted to know how to lose weight so she spent the first hour talking about it.  The second ...

A woman in the crowd had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding, and she could find no cure. Coming up behind Jesus, she touched the fringe of his robe. Immediately, the bleeding stopped. Luke 8:43-44, NLT The story of the bleeding woman has been my favourite story about Jesus since I came across it.  Last night I was thinking about the story and all of a sudden I heard, “I want more for you than to keep touching the hem of my robe.”  I have been reeling ever since. Yes the story is about the great faith of the bleeding woman.  The reason it is my favourite story is because Jesus stops and validates her action by saying: "Daughter," he said to her, "your faith has made you well. Go in peace." Luke 8:48, NLT I always thought that Jesus did that because he knew that, given the culture, she would spend the rest of her life wondering if she had defiled Him.  He needed to validate what she did.  So He stopped in the middle o...

Today is a day to think about resolutions.  I know I definitely had some plans this time last year.  I thought that I would weigh less, be more physically fit, contribute more to those around me…  It seems like so much more than a year ago that I ran the resolution run.  I said that was the first of many 5k’s.  It was the only 5k I ran last year. The plans I had seemed like a good, logical next step in my life.  The thing is, I don’t think I asked God what He wanted for my life.  This year, I have no idea what to resolve to do because I really can’t figure out what my next step is.  I have been living day to day.  I have been blessed and found provision.   I think that resolutions have had a place for the past couple of years.  This year I need to be okay with not making any.   So I guess my only resolution this year is to ask God what’s next today and to go where He leads. ...