Adam was mere dust until God first breathed into his nostrils. Likewise, a newborn baby cannot cry until she has taken her first great gulp of air, a breath that unfurls her lungs like a sail and begins a process that will last as long as her life.
Punk Monk
Recently, we took time in the mountains to hear from God. We took ten days aside. It didn’t make any sense. The weeks leading up to leaving, I kept questioning how it was wise to go. Between our main work for One River, we hadn’t had a paying gig for Tim’s animation land, and it wasn’t looking like this month was going to add up. How could we take 10 days aside to pray? We should have been digging deeper into networking and committing to the grind. But there was this small voice that kept whispering that what we needed more than a gig was the space to hear His voice. I realized, even then, that the most needful thing was the space to gaze on Jesus’ face, and just breathe.
And I’m so glad that we did.
Do you ever feel like life is in fast motion and the to-do list is higher than the hours allotted to the day? I know I can’t be alone in that. Our world seems to just get faster and faster with each generation, decade, and year. I’ve realized that my response when I notice myself getting tired, flagging in the race, and the mountain of to-do’s is still present before me…is to run harder. I hold my breath. I bear down and barrel through. I get stressed. And frustrated. And it doesn’t lead to a peaceful or productive day.
I hold my breath.
Well, this past week we just returned from a ten day prayer retreat with one main objective: Breathe. Breathe deep breaths of mountain air, fill up those lungs, and let it out. Breathe deeply of God in prayer, with no agenda other than Presence and Love, and then return to the world, breathing out His Life in the action steps He whispered between words sweet as honey and soothing as a salve.
And I wish this was normal! I so ache for this to be the normal rhythm of the Church. It feels so countercultural, and it feels so counter even to what I feel is responsible and right before I choose it and jump. But in it, when I’m receiving His love, His redirection of the places I’ve missed it, His healing of the places I didn’t even realize I was wounded, His co-laboring in the places I didn’t realize I was carrying the load alone, and His unmistakable stirring and call to love His Church in the ways He specifically has for us to, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that no decision made more sense than coming away with Him. And on the other side, now that I’m home, I find tears in my eyes when I think of what would have been if we hadn’t chosen to go. It was so worth it. There are no words for how worth it.
Celtic saints would often have a cave, an island, or an isolated hut in the woods where they retreated regularly to be alone with God before launching back out as those sent forth to preach, plant monasteries, cast out demons, or perhaps even advise Kings and queens.
Punk Monk
The Broom Tree Refuge is available to everyone who works in any sort of Christian ministry. Their ministry is so beautiful. They “minister to those who minister.” And they don’t ask anything from you – they just give, and love, and host a space of rest, prayer, and healing. They recommend everyone who comes to stay longer than a week, and I understand why that is so important. It takes several days to truly find your breath. It takes several days for the clenched hurry of life to relax, the running to still, the noise to fade, and breath to easily flow in then out. And it is only after those days of needful letting go that we can really get to the heart of what the Holy Spirit is trying to share with us.
Tim and I have a routine worked out for prayer retreats that actually works with littles. Our first day we just settle in. We explore the grounds together. We play and rest. Then we start rotating mornings from after breakfast until lunch. One of us will go out to pray and be alone with the Lord, however that looks. The afternoons are loose family time. And the evenings after the kids are in bed, we pray together. It works out that there are four mornings that each of us gets to have up to three hours of unstructured prayer, going out wherever we feel led and praying about whatever topic we feel God is bringing to the forefront. I can’t even begin to tell you how life-giving that space is. We record what we are receiving along the way – the verses that bubble up to study, the places where He so kindly is bringing us to repentance and redirecting our steps, and the leadings we are getting for the vision ahead to walk in, both practical steps and broad strokes. On the last day, we compiled it all into categories. And then when we got home we put it up on our wall to keep before us as our days sped up and the pace resumed!
We are home now, with restored vision and anticipation for all He has spoken. We are walking with steadier steps and fuller breaths. I want to ask you to consider what this process of breathing might look like in your life? Tim and I are in a year of preparation to take vows to join a dispersed monastic order, the Order of the Mustard Seed, which is why so many quotes from Punk Monk are listed here. We were reading through that book in our down spaces on retreat. One line really stuck out: “Life begins with breathing in, but unless we breathe out, we die!” The point of retreating isn’t just self care. It isn’t pampering, privileged, or bougie. I want to challenge that it’s needful. If we don’t take inward breath with the Lord and retreat (however that looks in your context and in the way He is drawing you to it) then we will miss the mark in how to breathe out and love the world well as His hands and feet. As I was praying on my last day out alone, I was impressed upon that we are on a long journey, with a purposeful end in sight that He intends us to get to, but that the journey is a hard one. He said that along the way, He has planted times and places for us to retreat and rest with Him, to be restored. He said it would be easy to feel like that was the wrong choice, but that if we didn’t choose it…we’d never make it where He had for us to go. Maybe those Celtic saints had the right idea? I don’t know, but I’m pretty down to find out.
Bless you all in your journeying. I’m so psyched to see all the incredible works He has prepared for His kids.
Top Verses that Stood Out
A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” (Isaiah 40:3-5)
“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves…“Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. Matthew 10:16, 37-39
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Colossians 3:15
As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one.[f] Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” Luke 10:38-42
Apart from these external trials, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not burn with grief? 2 Corinthians 11:28-29
mavrokefaloo
