Emotions Archives - Invitations to Ascend

October 13, 2020October 14, 2020

Lessons from birds: the invitation to live free from anxiety

If I had to describe the dominant emotion of this year, I’d call it anxious. This year has been marked by bouts of intense collective uncertainty and rapid change as we’ve faced the initial, and then further, outbreaks of Covid-19. Between those bouts, the persistent hum of heightened tension about the pandemic locally and globally has become our soundtrack.

Here in New Zealand we have been in the enviable position of being Covid-free for long stretches. Though we’re currently in a state close to normal (albeit a normality awash with sanitiser, tracer apps and daily Ministry of Health updates), we are undeniably still living under a cloud. We know our world could change at any time.

September 8, 2020October 1, 2020

Gifts in the grey strands

This year, after a 25 year habit of covering my greys, I stopped dying my hair. Now mostly white and silver hair grows from my head, rather than the dark brown I was born with.

My first grey hairs sprouted when I was about 13 years old. The grey hairs seemed one more indication to my young teenage self that I was faulty. Whether from bad genes or poor stress management, I was broken (oh the things I now wish I could tell that girl-self!). Not long after, I began to cover the greys with hair dye. I was happy to do it for a long time, and kept up the pretence of all-brown hair.

My grey hair may seem a strange topic for a blog about drawing close to God. However, when you realise that God is an alive and diligent participant in all of life, it may not be such a surprise.

July 23, 2020September 18, 2020

Belonging part 2 – an interior work

The need to belong is a fundamental and intrinsic human need. But for some of us we can be our own worst enemies in inhabiting a place of “unbelonging” rather than belonging. Nowhere is this more acute and destructive than in the church, the very collective organism that Jesus described as family. I am asking God to shine a spotlight on what is going on internally within me. I long for the inner rewiring and renewing that I need to move firmly out of a mindset of unbelonging and into belonging.

Alicia recently wrote this beautiful post about belonging. I deeply identify with her longing to belong and her outsider feelings, especially in gatherings. I’m well acquainted with that floundering self-consciousness among a crowd who seem to know a secret to connection I’ve somehow missed. It’s been there as long as I can remember – from the shy, awkward child to the new mum trying to navigate fitting in amid the chaos of little ones. These thoughts, and the feelings of loneliness and self-dissatisfaction that inevitably attach, come up in all settings – work, social situations, and certainly also in church.

June 10, 2020September 17, 2020

How’s the serenity?

One of the lessons of 2020 that is already loud and clear is that the circumstances of life, from personal to global, can be relied on to be stormy. I shouldn’t be surprised by this, after all Jesus himself did say “In this world you will have trouble.” But this year it’s abundantly clear that we cannot rely on our external world to give us peace. There is much that could be said about trials and troubles, but one thing that is drawing my attention is the invitation to serenity.

Serenity is the quality of being peaceful and calm, and cheerful with it. To be serene is to by marked by utter and unruffled tranquillity whatever is going on.

April 21, 2020September 17, 2020

Lament: an invitation

In these times of the coronavirus crisis, I’m finding myself drawn to the practice of lament.

A lament is a passionate expression of grief, often in a creative form, like a poem or song. It is an honest, unfiltered, intense offering of hard, painful thought and emotion to God. It is clearly something that a reader of the Bible like myself should be no stranger to. After all, the whole book of Lamentations is a series of laments about the destruction of Jerusalem. It is estimated that two thirds of the Psalms are laments.