Listen, I know you’re not really on the Internet right now. You’re just popping on for a minute while the cookies bake or the derby pie sets or as you stand in line at Target or wait for the grandparents to arrive. I’m right there with you.
This year they’re all coming to our house. And while I’ve been enjoying preparing Him room in my soul over the past several weeks, today is a day to prepare actual room in my house for my family. I’ve been looking so forward to having them here. We’ll eat, unwrap, watch some old home videos, catch a few scenes of The Polar Express.
We’ll remember and dream and talk about 2014. We’ll laugh. We’ll fight some, too. It’s hard to get together with your family of origin and not resort to the same habits you formed when you were kids. But we’ll work on it.
We’ll try on grace and practice loving, one conversation at a time. I’ve found when I plan to have a full house, it helps to start the morning off holding an empty bowl in two needy hands, whispering an honest prayer for help, for perspective, for joy, for a light heart.
It’s okay if your soul needs a little room to breathe, especially since maybe you’ve been running and bustling and doing that thing you do, all those many things. It’s okay if you meant for this Christmas to be different than last Christmas but so far it’s feeling exactly the same – busy, rushing, and a little frazzled.
But it’s good and right to carve a little time to sit in the silence, stare off at nothing, and consider the place where you are right now. Not to figure it out or to make an agenda for change, but simply to consider it, to be with what’s real, and to bring it all into the presence of Christ.
Sometimes that will hurt and other times you’ll be so thrilled with life you can’t possibly be still. Most times it will seem so dreadfully boring or painful or frustrating that there doesn’t seem to be a point in dwelling there.
Maybe that’s the idea – your soul already is there. Maybe it’s time the rest of you acknowledged it so you can move on.
As we enter 2015, I hope to be a kind companion for your soul, a partner in creating space in your interior world.
I know you can’t think about all that right now, you’ve got cookies in the oven and 25 kids in your living room making forts with wrapping paper and sleeping bags.
But soon, you’ll need to take a deep breath in or let a long one out and I’m here to help.
No matter our schedules, our sorrows, our joys, or our ambitions, I want to cultivate the still place deep within – a sure place from which to move and speak into the lives of others with compassion and hope.
To do that, my soul needs room to remember, to be loved, and to breathe. I bet yours does, too.
To receive help creating space for your soul to breathe in 2015, sign up here to sit on the bench with me. You’ll immediately get your first free resource, Seven Little Ways to Live Art. You can start that in the new year. After that, I’ll send monthly reminders, questions, and perspective to help cultivate the space your soul needs to dream, to be present, and become more fully yourself.
This is not a luxury, this is a lifeline – for our families, our homes, our ministries, our work, and our relationships. Let’s make 2015 a year of living from a place of love and not fear.
Merry Christmas. I’m thankful for you.
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