I’ve found myself revisiting and relearning old truths about who I am and who God is and what this means for how I ought to spend my days. And this can be such a source of frustration for me at times, because while I understand that learning involves mistakes, I don’t like to repeat the same ones. I long for new truths, for bursting growth above ground, but God seems to keep drawing my attention back to my roots. I want to learn efficiently, but God gently guides me toward the slow and steady. I detect the not so subtle ways that our consumer driven, productivity obsessed culture is shaping me as I think, We’ve already learned this lesson, let’s move along. Haven’t we already done this bit on patience? Next lesson. And yet, here I am, still relearning lessons that apparently my self from four years ago knew when I first composed this prayer.
The busyness of life is astoundingly disorienting for me. One moment I can feel deeply rooted and confident in God’s ability to sustain me and the next I am desperately trying to take control and usher in the world’s definition of success and contentment. My spiritual self resonates deeply with the character of Dory from Finding Nemo. It doesn’t take very much for me to lose track of my thoughts and intentions (and it’s far less endearing when it happens to me). The struggle is not always one of deliberate disobedience, but a genuine inability to remember.
I find some encouragement in the fact that I am not alone in this. The Bible is full of stories of people who are prone to wander, prone to forgetfulness. But God continues to draw near and offer grace to those who make themselves available to receive it. I think of the commands God gave them to aid their remembrance:
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9, NIV)
Forgetfulness is not a problem created by or isolated to our modern culture, but it has certainly not been helped by it either. But God’s response to the problem of forgetfulness is to shape our rhythms and routines, our homes, our spaces, ourselves in ways that bring us back to remembrance.
As I began to seek out practices for remembrance, I found myself composing a letter to myself to read daily that would draw me back to the intentions and truths God has placed in my heart that I want to guide my days. I know that I am easily swept up in the ways of people pleasing and impressing, of following whatever instructions are loudest. But I wanted to remember the words God speaks over me and my life, even more than general words of reassurance and grace, I longed for words that remind me God sees me.
I use this prayer three ways: 1. I keep it in a note on my phone. 2. I keep it on a note in my Bible. 3. I made a voice recording of myself reading the prayer aloud to listen to in the car, if that was the only time I could manage.
MY OWN PERSONAL CENTERING PRAYER
This was the prayer I wrote four years ago. There is still a lot of it that is anchoring for where my heart feels prone to wander. But that was also pre-motherhood for me, so I’m currently in the midst of creating another prayer with this new season in mind. I share it because while our journeys are different, portions of them intersect from time to time and perhaps there is some encouragement for you here as well.
Today is a new day. Notice the details: the way this sunrise differs from the last, the first sip of coffee, the morning words exchanged. Don’t overlook them. Open your eyes to the things often unseen, the things our mind has learned to relegate as white noise. Pay attention and notice that life is abundant.
Choose to participate in this gift of life. Choose to be engaged in it. Choose to be a giver of life and not one who endlessly consumes. Make your life a work of art that constantly embraces creating and recreating. Be passionate about this life force at work in yourself and in others and in the earth.
Guard your heart. Make certain that your passions remain ever rooted and ever centered in God. Remember that sometimes the very good things are the most dangerous in our lives, as we unknowingly turn them into idols. Don’t allow yourself to be swayed into making your life a pursuit of a particular agenda. Hold your passions as gifts, as tools and disciplines that further cultivate the heart of God in you. Allow God to infuse it all. A seamless submission.
Allow yourself daily to be made whole, so that you can offer your whole self to others. (And remember that wholeness is different than perfection.) Hush the toxic misconceptions that say you have little to offer, that say you are not adult enough to matter, that say you are redundant, that say you have not prepared enough yet to engage with the world. This thing that we’re doing isn’t practice. It is the real thing. So celebrate and fail and laugh and experience and relish all that it means to be human. Silence the lies that inhibit you from living and allow truth and life to blossom in a radical way.
Rest in this moment. Appreciate it for what it is. For the good gifts and for the seemingly undesirable ones. There is a place to aspire for more. But for this moment here, rest in gratitude and contentment. List the things one by one.
Look for the people who feel unseen and unheard and under appreciated…and let them know you see them and hear them and appreciate them. Pay attention to each person that you interact with today. Intentionally strive to empower and encourage rather than control. Choose vulnerability and sincere relationship over distance and disconnection. Choose to extend grace, rather than judgment. Choose to look people in the eye and allow yourself to be surprised by them. Rest in wonder of them. (Especially with the people you see daily.)
Embrace the wonder and mystery of God and God’s love. Resist the urge to reduce God to something comprehensible. Dare to begin from a small place and approach your day in manageable pieces, making one life-giving decision after another and give thanks.
QUESTIONS FOR CREATING A CENTERING PRAYER
1. Where do you feel shaken and insecure? Where does the world slowly lead you astray over and over?
2. What truths do you need to remember about yourself? What truths does God long to speak over your life?
3. What are some of your recurring struggles? (Comparison, lack of confidence, cynicism, laziness, lack of presence/mindfulness, gluttony, control, consumerism, selfishness in relationships, etc.) And what are the truths that you need to remember daily to overcome them?
4. What are the truths that you want your life to be governed by?
5. What gifts do you want to give to the world over and over each day?
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