My six year anniversary is coming up at the end of this month (December 27th to be exact) and I am so excited. Six years of life and joy with the man of my dreams. He truly is that.
As I have been contemplating this day arriving I have started to tune into my hopes and expectations around anniversaries, special days, holidays, those types of things. Lately, Jonathan and I have spoken much about how we were raised, how that impacted our hearts, and how we can blend our lives together to create something new together. I have been thinking about the inner thoughts of my soul around these types of days and holidays. It took me back to when I was a little girl ...
Remember at the beginning of Disney's "Peter Pan" where Mr. and Mrs. Darling are getting ready to go out to their big party? The children stay at home in their cozy pajamas, tucked into bed with a babysitter watching closely (who cares that it was a dog). Maybe the Darlings were going somewhere grand like the London theatre or a dinner party, or a ball. It had to be somewhere amazing. Her dress was stunning, his tux, exquisite. I love that opening scene. It still resonates in my heart to this day, and I haven't glimpsed the movie in many, many years.
That is how I saw my own parents as a little girl. They (it seemed to me) would go out fairly often. My mom would be dressed up, or at the least, dressed very nicely. My dad as well. We had one of our fabulous babysitters come to watch us (human, not dog). My mom always, always smelled amazing. Her skin was always soft and smelled of beautiful lotion. As a little girl I used to love to go to her dresser and smell her perfumes and lotions. I knew one day I would have some of my own fancy things. My dad's suits were crisp and cool against my skin, his fancy loafers clicking on the old wood floor of our homes. He would warm the car up for my mom before they left to go out. I love my memories of my parents in this way. It spoke to my young heart of romance and intimacy. It made me feel safe.
Another place I return to is of my dad buying gifts for his wife. He gave great gifts. Beautiful jewelry ... well-made clothing ... fancy lingerie even! One Christmas I remember my mom opening box, after box, after box of sexy lingerie! Right in front of us kids! We thought it was so funny! My mom was probably mortified, but maybe a little excited, too? I'll have to ask her. One of the last Christmases I spent with my dad, or maybe it was that very last one, he took me shopping with him to pick out my mom's Christmas presents for that year. We were visiting family in Chicago and went to my mom's favorite clothing store on that Eve of Christmas. I watched quietly as my dad spoke to the saleswoman, explained to the her that my mom was "about your size ... slightly thinner" (I'm sure she loved that) and proceeded to buy the outfit on the mannequin in the front of the store. The latest, most beautiful style that was out. I loved doing this type of errand with my dad. I loved seeing him as he picked things out for my mom. He was decisive and sure, masculine and in love. I got to wrap all the boxes when I returned to the house that evening, as I often did for my dad who was inept at that sort of thing. My mom loved the clothes when she later opened them up. I love this memory.
Just as I see the Darlings in "Peter Pan" I have the same sort of image of my own parents. They were grown ups who did grown up things. Am I becoming one of those? It seems like it. But my soul enjoys being in both places. Being a little girl who observes romance and intimacy, and being a woman playing the starring role in her own romance. I love that I am blessed with both.
I still love seeing my mom, my Marmee, dress up in fancy clothes, smelling beautiful. I only wish she was still being escorted by my dad.
I love dressing up and going out with my prince charming as well. Feeling beautiful, feeling grown up. I wonder what this anniversary will bring.
It took me nearly eight months to settle on a name for my blog, which will also double for the title of my yoga ministry and business. With the help of friends and family, we came up with at least five names that fit fairly well. Yet, I still didn't feel the 'aha!' moment happen though. I decided to wait instead of rush into naming anything. To me, it is a huge decision. What word or words will describe my ministry, my blog? I couldn't decide. I finally had that moment in the car a few months ago.
My husband is an INXS fan from back in the day. Me, being soooooo much younger then his own 35 years of age (just kidding, honey), I am not as big of a fan. However, about 3-4 years ago there was a one-hit-wonder reality show that played on TV. I truly do not even remember the title, but an American Idol-type feel to it; the gist was for the band INXS to find a new lead singer from the loads of talent vying for the position. This would allow the band to regroup, and more importantly, heal from the tragic loss of their own lead singer. Jonathan definitely enjoyed the show a bit more then I did, but I was gripped by several of the soloists on the show. Each week they would perform for the audience, which would then vote and eliminate player after player until only one was crowned the new lead vocalist of INXS. We were elated when our favorite singer did in fact win the title and went on to tour and release a new album with the original INXS band members. The CD ... so-so. A few great songs on there, and a few not-so-great songs on there. However, one of the greats goes by the title "Afterglow".
I never thought about the word "afterglow" before this song. It's not a oft-used word in the English language, is it? I mean ... when was the last time you heard it used in an actual sentence? Yeah, me neither. But it grabbed a hold of me somehow. I liked the sound of it. And I LOVED the song.
One day when I was driving one of my two weekly trips from Colorado Springs to Denver, Christ brought this word to my attention once again. It had been years since I'd heard the "Afterglow" song, the CD now just one of hundreds in our CD tower. I asked Him what He wanted to say about it. All I kept hearing was, "afterglow ... afterglow ... afterglow." What did it mean?
I came home, popped the CD into the player and got lost in the song once again. You'll know what I mean when you hear it. It has an ethereal feel to it. It's stunning. I then looked up the actual word in the English dictionary.
Afterglow:
1. The glow remaining after a light (Capital "L" anyone??) has gone, as after the sunset.
"OOOOhhhhh, cooooooool .... keep reading," I thought to myself.
2. The pleasant feeling one has after an enjoyable experience.
Oh my. This was it. This was the title, the name, the definition of what I wanted for my yoga; but more then that, this word describes so much of what I want FROM my time of yoga (which, remember, simply means "to yoke, or union").
The next leg of my "afterglow" journey took me to the Exhaustive concordance, a MONSTER of a book, yes? I love that book! I fell in love with it when I began my studies in Holy Yoga. I use it almost daily now. I looked up the word "glow" (which wasn't in there since my concordance uses the King James version of the Bible ... ugh. I eventually found a word similar to "glow" though.) My search ended at Exodus 34:29. The New Living Translation reads, "His face (Moses') glowed because he had spoken to God face-to-face."
Yes. This is it. The afterglow. It's real. It's true. It's my desire for my own life, for the lives of the Saints of God. It's what I want to help facilitate in each of my classes, and through my life.
As I've settled on this word, I see it evident in nearly anything God and his beauty and light touch. Few examples:
Last week brought one of the hardest days of my illness, emotionally that is. That evening I had my Monday night yoga class--my favorite of all my classes I get to teach. The mood in there is so serene, so holy, if you will. I love that class and look forward to it all day. Except this Monday, I was so raw, I didn't know if I could do it. My playlist for the class was outstanding, filled with songs of passion and honesty; scores and melodies that move the soul ... my favorite music for yoga. Tears filled my eyes several times as I called out the movements to my students: "Open the heart space, soften the hips forward, melt your shoulders away from the ears" ... things of that nature.
After the class was over, once I was alone, I felt it. The afterglow of being with God. It came tied in a bow of brokenness but it was there.
I felt the glow this weekend, too. In a different way. We hosted some of the best friends over to the house for our weekly Spiritual Direction group. This group laughs, studies, prays, eats, sings, sits in silence, discusses, (and more) in a way that reveals Christ in no other church setting I have ever been in. I love these people. I truly love them. And after they emptied our little home in Colorado Springs, I felt it again ... the afterglow.
There are a million ways to feel it, aren't there? For me, it comes after time with my God, during and after a yoga session, after time with friends, in the arms of my lover Jonathan, after hysterical laughter, or gut-wrenching sobs, in music, in beauty. It's there, because God is there.
The Afterglow.
You must hear the song, though. Go look it up on itunes or something. Here is a taste:
Touch me and I will follow,
In your afterglow.
Heal me from all this sorrow ...
I will find my way
When I see your eyes,
Now I'm living,
In your afterglow.
Why is that when you're sad, it's so hard to write? It might not be that way for some people. When I read certain writers and poets, their language sounds extremely depressed. These are actually writers that I am not drawn to at all. Who needs to be depressed by reading? Not me. Maybe depression actually HELPS some; allows their creative juices to flow. Not so much for me. I'm the opposite. Depression is making me feel a numbness that I didn't know I possessed. Maybe that's what I need to write about. Numbness.
I could write about the fact that my hands and feet literally do go numb at times. It's sort of funny. They either turn completely white or completely blue. It is a condition called Raynaud Syndrome. My feet and/or hands don't get proper circulation at times, resulting in a loss of blood flow and turn blue. Awesome.
My heart feels like that right now. It's not getting ... something. Life maybe. I feel shut off, and shut down. Lost in the endless rituals of doctors appointments, medicines, pills, herbs, teas, loneliness, heartache ...
I actually hate complaining about it, too. That isn't me. I hate complainers so I certainly don't want to be one.
Ok, back to life. Back to figuring out how to get rid of the numbness.
I'm reminded during this Advent season that Jesus came, Immanuel showed up. "God With Us" invaded the earth. Why? "I have come that they might have Life," he says. "I have come that Sara might have life." It feels easy when I break it down to that. Christ is here. In the mundane, ordinary, secluded world that I am living it. He's here. He is Life. That is enough to get me through this evening.
Sometimes when I am doing my yogic breathing, I link a word or phrase to the breath. It is so powerful; an amazing way to meditate on God. You should definitely try this practice. When I breath in and out, I say (in my head/heart) a phrase or word. In this case, I think I will try "I have come" on the inhale, and "To bring Life" on the exhale. After doing this for 5 minutes, I know my heart will feel more alive.
Have you ever uttered the words when confronting a tough situation, “Well, part of me wants to … (fill in the blank), but another part of me does not”?
Part of me wants to reach out to a hurting person, but part of me does not.
Part of me wants to start eating right, but part of me does not. And won’t.
Part of me wants to go after the job I really dream of, but the part of me that lives in fear of the unknown absolutely does not.
This list for what we desire to do could go on and on—confront a situation, exercise, get more organized, quit a smoking habit, stop lashing out in anger, stop turning to an addiction, stop running frantically throughout the day, practice a little patience.…
I wonder how you would fill in the part-of-me-wants-to gap.
What is this thing in me—and perhaps in you too—that isn’t quite on the same page with the other parts of me? Some of me wants to, while some of me doesn’t—what is that about? What are these places in us that are broken, fragmented, divided? And is that how we were meant to live? It doesn’t feel right, that’s for sure. I hate the sensation of wanting one thing and doing another. It makes me feel lost, like I’m a mini-me floating above my own out-of-body experience. Likewise, though, when I live and walk in the way my heart longs to do, I feel more alive, more “myself” than at any other time.
I find God’s mission for me clear: “Long before he laid down earth's foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love,” says Ephesians 1:3, “to be made whole and holy by his love,” (MSG).
He came to make us whole. Then holiness will follow—I will actually begin to look more like Jesus Christ in my life. I will begin to live the same kind of life he lived. They come as a package, don’t they? The more “whole” are our hearts, lives, minds and souls, the more that holiness or living as God desires us to live will follow.
I think it’s this sort of truth that made the psalmist declare, “I run in the paths of your commands for you have set my heart free!” (Psalm 119:32). Talk about a free man! Someone who runs after God’s commands—a pursuer of holiness—is someone who hides nothing, fears nothing, smiles, laughs, loves, lives. Doesn’t that sound enticing? It certainly does to me.
I have always loved God, but I have not always known wholeness in my life. At times I felt fragmented, disjointed, dis-integrated in some sort of way. I longed for something to unite me further, deeper with God. I knew he lived in me; that I had been united with Christ, one spirit with him. Yet I wanted a deeper understanding and working-out of that truth. I wanted a more substantial integrity—an inward one—to define my life in different ways. I found what I was looking for in an unexpected place; the furthering was found in yoga.
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The word yoga actually means “union; to yoke, to unite.” Of course! Precisely what I was longing for.
Yoga is counter-cultural because it brushes against the grain of what today’s norms drive us to do—to be driven. Rush around, get as much done as you possibly can, take care of everyone and everything, be busy. What’s the first thing someone says when you ask them, “Hey! How are you?” If your sphere of influence is like mine, the response is some variation of, “Oh, I’m sooo busy.” But busy isn’t what God invites us to be.
Running contrary to society’s stream, yoga allows us to stop, breathe, stretch, elongate, stabilize, strengthen … and the list goes on. Not just our bodies, but our hearts, minds, and souls. There are a million wonderful effects from yoga, each as different as the person practicing, but the number one reason I do yoga is to connect, to unite me with the rest of myself, me with my Father above.
Yoga was created in ancient cultures to prepare oneself for meditation. A true yoga practice is done to allow the mind to center on God in a deep way that can only be accomplished from yoga. Ask any yogi: They know this to be true.
God tells us in the Bible that the most important thing, the biggest thing to focus on in all of the Word of God is to love him “with all your heart, with all of your mind, and with all your strength.” Sounds pretty central, pretty important, to me, but how does it actually get done? I think the start is uniting them—heart, mind, strength—so that they then may unite with him.
Lately my attention has been absorbed by a book by Agnes Sanford titled, “The Healing Light.” In it she writes, “In order to fill ourselves with His whole being, let us think of Him, imagining His presence, seeing Him with the yes of the mind, trying to love Him with the heart. Let us beseech Him to come and dwell within us. Let us ask Him to enter into our spirits and fill us with His own consciousness of the fatherhood of God; to enter into our mind and think within us His own thoughts; to enter into our hearts and feel through us His own love, directing it to those who need it most; to enter into our bodies and build them up according to the pattern of His perfect holiness; making us more and more fit channels for the inflow and outflow of His life.”
Agnes’s words are one example of an inner musing, a prayer of the soul, for use in meditation or contemplation. Yoga is a vehicle to intimacy with God in every single facet of our lives. Can we even fathom the truth of being made in the image of God? How complex and wonderful our Creator is! And how complex and wonderful are his creatures … what dignity he bestows upon us. I love having an outlet for thinking on such marvelous things.
This is what this practice of stillness and “being” is truly meant for: uniting us with God. God makes his home inside our heart, and we are one spirit with him. In yoga, we unite and allow his life to flow more fully inside of us. The fruit that comes from simply allowing this to happen is mind-blowing, its effects altogether altering to life.
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Since late 2007 chronic illness has halted my pace of life in a way I never knew was possible. It disrupted my world one day, and I have not been the same since. If I’m honest it hasn’t all been bad. Truly I wouldn’t change the effects I’ve known for anything else in the world, even as the alterations I’ve been asked to make stretch my capacity thin. I have always been one to maintain a measured pace, to nurture the introverted soul inside me that loves people contemplatively and solitude even more. Yet I was destined to learn an even deeper sort of stillness than comes by way of being home, saying “no” to requests, retreating, or reading a good book.
Illness forced me to my knees and then to my back, at which point the couch became my dwelling place. Weakness sapped the last of each day’s energy supply, most of which was spent walking from one waiting room or another into one doctor’s office or another. Who wants to be social when that’s what your life has become? Still, I felt so alone. Alone and afraid and sad.
But then came yoga.
Yoga awakened something in me that I’d never experienced before—simply being with God. I wasn’t speaking, praying, thinking, singing. I was simply being with him. My body was moving in worship, and I was offering a deeper part of myself to him. No words could have been uttered to express what my heart was expressing; in fact, words surely would have cheapened it. My heart was expressing something, conveying something to God, to the One I love and who loves me, and something big was beginning to happen. I started to feel more like myself … the woman God crafted me to be.
My yoga teacher constantly encouraged me during my schooling to become a yoga instructor for whom “the being is the becoming.” What she meant by this was that simply being—not striving, working, planning, projecting—will allow for more transformation than my mere mind could fathom.
Settling down, silence, meditation, quiet. We need these things desperately and yet our jam-packed days balk at the idea. But when we carve out requisite space, oh the power that unfolds! How could God not respond to your cry for more of him? More wholeness, more holiness—he’ll always supply our demand.
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When tragedy happens in a life the common response is to rush to its side and try to evict it as soon as possible. For that matter, whenever anything uncomfortable comes our way, don’t we move swiftly and efficiently in order to thoroughly do away with it? Welcome to the human experience, I suppose, where there is little tolerance for being burdened by things like waiting, frustration, or pain of any sort. Fast and effective and perfect and neat—this is what we aim for, even if God had something altogether different in mind.
The atmosphere most receptive to the life God wants to live in us and through us comes via a different path—the way of waiting, the way of being, the way of yoga, union with God and union with one’s own heart.
Sue Monk Kidd writes in her book, When the Heart Waits, that a monk once said to her: “I hope you’ll hear what I’m about to tell you. I hope you’ll hear it all the way down to your toes. When you’re waiting, you’re not doing nothing. You’re doing the most important something there is. You’re allowing your soul to grow up. If you can’t be still and wait, you can’t become what God created you to be.”
If you are new to the concept of yoga, here is a great place to start: Simply come to the floor and sit on your knees, opening them a comfortable distance apart, your legs tucked underneath you. Fold your torso forward over your legs and rest your forehead gently on the floor, or if it is more pleasant, tilt your head to the side and rest your temple there. Let your arms stretch out in front of your head, or rest them by your sides, palms facing upwards in receptivity to what God has. Rest here for five minutes without moving. Be still here. You are experiencing what is called Child’s Pose. Think about being God’s child as you take several full, deep, slow breaths. See what happens. It’s just five minutes. But better is five minutes in his gates than thousands elsewhere.
