Settled.

My 1 word is working me. Every year in January, Mentor My Sister Participants choose 1 word to carry throughout the year. Amazing .. the power of words . Taking you can express an intention, use a word to offer you direction, and things just take flight. Before 2020 ended, I was able to find a word I really needed in my soul for the soul’s sake.🦋

I just really, really needed a word that could help me through the year – feel “together”. I’d relocated and needed to have a place to rest.

Rest can be illusive, so that’s why my ‘great ask’ was to be settled… then “Placed.” Settled was something I needed more as I’d been uprooted from everything I need as community, awesome church home, great friends, work I really loved doing, (yet not perfect and ideal…) and just an overall sense of contentment. Yet I’m realizing that  contentment is not often enough.

There’s also joy.

You can be happy; yet not have fulfilling work. You can be content without feeling as if you’re fulfilled. When you’re settled, you have this inner joy that lasts. It just helps to be in a place that feels like good shoes. Like those you never want to let go.

(Have you ever had those kind of shoes?) Yes….

Am I speaking of peace, or something else?

Not sure yet. I’m not quite there . The closest I’ve come has been ‘inner joy.’

And hey… I thought I had it all…

Oh well… keep li in’ they say…

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Chaplain Contemplations: Freedom.

I was trying to think of what walking in my calling looks like. So I began to think about for the first time in my life, my ” heart feels full.”

I mean, I get this full feeling sometimes to the point I cannot even explain the emotion, and then I emotionally feel as if I’m about to explode …with sheer joy.

It’s happened more than once. It really has.

And just recently I looked up the definition of heart”; in the Vines dictionary and found this which so explicitly explains my feelings…

Heart is referred to as:

1. The seat of physical life
2. The seat of moral nature and spiritual life
3. The seat of grief
4. The seat of the affections
5. The seat of perceptions
6. The seat of the thoughts
7. The seat of the understanding
8. The seat of reasoning powers
9. The seat of the imagination
10. The seat of conscience
11. The seat of the intentions
12. The seat of purpose
13. The seat of the will
14. The seat of faith

ALL of this.. is in our hearts!! No wonder “out of it flows the issues of life!”

Of our sense of purpose , decision-making , our faith and intentions are all tied up in our heart- even our sorrows – that means everything meaningful flows out of the heart!

That why in that same scripture we ask you to “guard it with all diligence”.

What does it look like for you to guard your heart? It means you watch over everything that concerns your purpose and your sense of well-being. All your hope, all your destiny and all your exchanges in life- with people, friends, family and your children .

What’s in your heart is meaningful and should be kept secured in faith.

Because faith has substance you know. It can take root in your soul and change your lifestyle and change your outlook and perspective in life. It can encourage all those around you and help you to become a more rooted and grounded person.

Selah.

#chaplaincy #chaplainlife #lifeofachaplain

“We Are All Like Trees.”

“We Are All Like Trees.”

I’ll never forget how her face lit up when she said these words. I was in South Africa, Kuma, South Africa, in fact. I was teaching in a classroom of South African teenagers, and I was on cloud nine, (naw ….101..)

Her words were so simple and freeing.

Powerful, yet pensive, contemplative yet colorful.

Description causes me to attach meaning to sometimes things I barely notice. I know I’d always loved trees. Yet the trees in South Africa spoke to me. I remember having spoke to this classroom brill of teenagers and then coming back to a Johannesburg and spending time with my new friends  and their friends. I stood quietly in the backyard just thanking God for the experience of being in a South Africa, eating dinner with such focused and thoughtful people. There was a tree in that backyard that spoke to me.

Inlistened to her words all over again: “We are all like trees.”

And  then it hit me: Our strength. Our endurance. The people we are, and continue to become. We dream, we hope, we encourage , we teach.

And yes, I am one of those Trees.

Yes indeed I am.