I am always intrigued to see what the next Godspacelight theme might be and the direction in which it might send me. This most recent one, Time to Heal, sent me spinning more than a little.
Let me explain. It will say more about me than those who decide the theme, but I heard it in a particular way – as a command, rather than an invitation. Rather like an irate parent who declares, after much procrastinating on the part of a stubborn child, ‘Time for bed!’ I heard something I am sure was not intended – an expectation that we had had quite enough time to feel our pain and needed to get on with our healing.
I know that is not what was meant. It is a script which comes from childhood years, where I was encouraged to not make a fuss, and suffering was minimized as a protection for my parents. So I easily hear to get on, not to dwell, lest I be holding my own pity party.
But I’m not ready to move on from this season. Here in the UK, numbers are still catastrophic. Lives and businesses have been lost. Children are missing school friends and growing up with words like ‘lockdown’ at the front of their vocabulary and trying to ascertain whether the adults behind masks are smiling. The corporate anxiety is palpable. Living on the outskirts of a city and not allowed to travel, I’m longing to see the sea, always my place to encounter God. At times, I’m indescribably sad, though at others I can distract myself in various ways.
So I had decided I could not contribute this time. Until I suddenly realised there is another way to hear that phrase. Not ‘Time to heal – hurry up!’, but ‘It takes time to heal’. Of course! Yes, that I understand only too well. A lot of time. Much more than people think.
William Worden describes the tasks of mourning, a more helpful way to think about it, in my view, than the rather linear way that the oft-quoted stages of grief can appear to be. The first is to accept the reality of the loss: which in this pandemic is not just the tragic toll of death, but so much more. Loss of confidence, of hope, of connection in so many ways. You will have your own list. Take a moment to voice it. The second is accepting and working through the pain. This takes equal amounts of courage and time. Courage not to plaster over the cracks but allow ourselves to feel all that is there and find honest and real ways to express it. Time both because we will not be able to face it all at once and because things will slowly emerge we have not yet seen. Only then can we begin the equally brave task of adjusting to new ways of being which comprise Worden’s next two stages.
God, it seems to me, never rushes us. Jesus walked with his disciples on the road to Emmaus and heard their story, only then putting their sadness in the context of the greater picture of God’s story. So wherever you are on the journey to recovery from this pandemic, or if like me you have not even started it, know that you are held in the arms of a gracious God who holds all your tears in His bottle and who knows your story – past, present, and all that is yet to come. He will help you write the next chapter.
Prayers for the Season of Lent and Easter are now available as a download for only $6.99!
by Tom Sine,
Are you one of those whose life has become totally DISRUPTED BY THESE TURBULENT 2020s?
Would You Like to Join Those Looking for God’s Best in 2021?
Creating your best life-making?
Creating your best community-making?
Creating your best neighborhood change-making?
Creating your best church-making for times like these?
Let’s be clear… we will continue to deal with all of the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, the closure of schools, parents searching for food to feed their children and Zoom worship instead of gathering with friends.
Now all of a sudden, we find ourselves racing into 2021. We invite you to shift your focus from all the disruptions and join those who are finding healing in going for their best. This is your invitation to join those going for their best!
2021 RU Ready?
This is your opportunity to start a Zoom study group of friends to not only anticipate the new waves of change that you, your family and friends are likely to face in 2021… but also ways you can join those shifting from anxiety to healing by Creating Your Best in 2021.
Start a Zoom creativity group to not only discuss: 2020s Foresight: Three Vital Practices for Thriving in a Decade of Accelerating Change.
You and your friends will focus, as the book does, igniting your imaginations to:
Create your best life-making?
Create your best community-making?
Create your best change-making?
Create your best church-making for times like these?
Tom Sine and Dwight Friesen wrote 2020s Foresight : Three Vital Practices for Thriving in a Decade of Accelerating Change to show you how God can ignite our “shalomic imagination” to create new innovative ways to join those going for their BEST in 2021!
First, we will provide a free 45 minute webinar called 2021 RU Ready?, in which Dwight and Tom will introduce you to the focus and format of 2020s Foresight. In this webinar, we will show you:
How to anticipate some of huge waves that are likely to come our way in 2021 and beyond;
how to join those creating their best life-making, community-making, change-making & church-making in these turbulent times, and how to create innovative ways of going for your best that reflect the Way of Jesus.
Second, Tom Sine will also be available to do one Zoom visit with your group, at no charge, to discuss your group’s creative ideas of new possibilities for your lives and communities. Simply arrange a time for him to Zoom into your group. Remember, there are questions at the end of each chapter to enable you and your friends to move easily through 2020s Foresight and as you go for your BEST in 2021!
It all begins with you organizing your group, ordering the books and contacting Tom Sine to send you the webinar and setting a time for his Zoom visit. Contact Tom here.
by Lilly Lewin,
In January, my FreeRangeFriday posts have been about GIFTS… the gifts we need to give and open for ourselves as we go forward into this New Year. We’ve opened the gifts of Compassion, Rest, and Grief…
And now I invite you to open the gifts of GRACE.
Grace for ourselves…
Opening the gift of GRACE rather than the Box of Failure!
If you know me well, you know that I’m really hard on myself. While I have lots of grace for other people, I have a lot less grace for myself.
I am a recovering workaholic and perfectionist.
Maybe you are too.
We’ve all been through a very rough year….
Many of us expected to get a lot done, be more productive, make a lot of bread like some of our friends on Instagram, or clean out all the closets.
I will confess that I have gotten less done, been less productive, been more messy and not felt much creativity. I suffer from anxiety and covid shut me down many days in 2020.
When I don’t feel productive, when my house gets really cluttered, when I feel the weight of SHOULD… like “I should be ok and not anxious,” “I should be more organized,” ” I should__________.” Just fill in the blank! I go automatically and open the FAILURE BOX.
What I’ve realized in the last few weeks is that I tend to open that box a lot!
And I put lots of things that happen in that box.
Stuff other people might think of as no big deal, I automatically put into the failure box.
My husband said, “you know there are other boxes don’t you?”
I don’t think I did know this…
I’ve used the Failure Box for so long that I had never even processed or thought about other boxes!
When I brought this up with my therapist, she asked me what the other boxes might be? She asked me to think of the colors of the other boxes. As a visual learner and an artist, this concept actually inspired me! I drew a few boxes on a piece of paper and thought about what boxes I use… and colored them in.
What do your boxes look like?
Along with the Failure Box… I also have a big box of shame, a box of comparison, a fear box, one named “not enough”, and of course, the performance and perfectionism boxes.
What are the negative boxes you’ve been opening lately?
Just drawing out the boxes helped. And showed me that I really need some NEW BOXES from Jesus! So I went to the Dollar store and bought some actual gift boxes. Tangible Boxes to look at and use for the NEW BOXES… the NEW GIFTS God wanted to start using in my life.
Some NEW boxes
I also read an amazing chapter in Practicing: Changing Yourself to Change the World by Kathy Escobar
She actually has a chapter called “The Practice of Failing”! What?!! You mean it’s ok to fail? It’s ok to be human? It’s ok not to be perfect? To actually realize that failure is a part of being human and I AM JUST HUMAN! Kathy quotes her friend, Joanna, “Self compassion is embracing our humanity, owning that we are a muddled mix of dust and divinity.” WOW! THAT IS TRUTH and FREEDOM!
This allowed me to start naming the NEW BOXES….
I asked Jesus to show me what these new boxes might be! Success, Enough, Creativity, Trust, Safety, Loved Unconditionally, and my new favorite, the IT’S OK TO BE HUMAN BOX!
What are your NEW BOXES?
And this led me to realize that I need to open the gift of GRACE for myself. To allow myself to receive this gift…to really stop, to pause, to open the box of GRACE and unconditional love of Jesus! And not just open this gift once, but daily and sometimes I need to open this gift, this box hourly.
What NEW BOXES do you need in your life? Take some time and ask Jesus to show you! Maybe you need some actual boxes to envision this.
What does the GIFT of GRACE look like in your life…? Do you need to open it?
What if you created a gift of grace box to remind you of God’s great love for you and his amazing grace!
Receive the beautiful gift of GRACE and LOVE from Jesus today so you can continue to move into 2021 as a year of healing and wholeness one day at a time.
Receive the Gift of Grace
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:8- 9 NIV
Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! Ephesians 2: 7-9 THE MESSAGE
©lillylewin and freerangeworship.com
Available now in our store! Check out our New Lenten Bundle which includes the downloads of A Journey Into Wholeness book, Lent/Easter Prayer Cards, and 40 Daily Ideas Guide for Lent!
Believe it or not, it is time to get ready for Lent which begins with Ash Wednesday on February 17th. The Lenten season is quickly approaching so we wanted to keep you up to date on the resources that we have to share!
We are delighted to offer these prayers for the season of Lent & Easter as a new resource on Godspace! As we consider Time to Heal on our blog, we wanted to provide yet another avenue to aid in the healing process for this time before and during Lent. Available in download form, this set of 10 cards spans the season from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. Each card consists of a prayer and short reflection which provides a focus for your week, enriches your spiritual life and draws you closer to God. There is one for Ash Wednesday and one for each of the 5 weeks of Lent as well as one card for Palm Sunday, Holy Week, Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
Sampling of some cards
Lent & Easter Resources
Because our resource lists are expanding, we have a new page for Lent & Easter Resources! This page will show you everything from Ash Wednesday, Lent, Holy Week, and Easter activities, prayers, liturgies, and at home ideas which have been updated for 2021! Please comment below if you think another resource should be added to our lists! We are always looking for new material to share!
New Downloadable Lenten Bundle
Included is A Journey Into Wholeness book, the new Lent/Easter Prayer Cards, and newly updated for 2021: 40 Daily Ideas Guide for Lent. This downloadable bundle is available for $12.99 (saving you $2 from purchasing individually). Click on the image below to view the bundle details.
FREE Downloads
These free downloads are now available and updated for 2021, so check out Hungering for Life and 40 Daily Ideas Guide for Lent!
Hungering for Life provides a different word as a focal point for reflection each week of Lent and encourages the reader to take photos, draw pictures or write poetry that expresses these reflections. We plan to use this activity during Lent and hope you will join us.
- Ash Wednesday: Preparation
- Week 1: Hunger
- Week 2: Fasting/Penitence
- Week 3: Hope/Promise/Expectation
- Week 4: Thanksgiving/Joy
- Week 5: Darkness/Death
- Week 6: Resurrection/Life
Did you miss our earlier post, Why Do My Prayers for Healing Never Work? Definitely worth reading! Thank you, J. Thomas!
by J. Thomas
I definitely do NOT have the gift of healing. Whenever my wife is sick with a cold, she asks me to pray for her. Actually, when she feels like a cold is coming on, we pray preventive prayers that she would not get sick. Inevitably, she gets sick, and we pray for a speedy recovery. The result – extra two weeks of runny noses and achy muscles. Then, we pray for complete healing, and the cold gets worse, passes back and forth in our household and before you know it, she’s sick again. I pray in faith and invoke the name of Jehovah Raffa, God the Healer. I pray with persistence, with fervency, and based on Scripture and activated by love and Holy Spirit, but I do not feel confirmation in my heart that my prayers had any positive impact. This has happened time and time again for 17 years over dozens of colds, flu-like diseases, and a handful of mystery ailments. I’ve now come to the conclusion that healing is not one of my spiritual gifts. I have others, but for the gift of healing prayers, God has chosen to use another part of the body.
If you read the title of this post and hoped to find answers to praying more effectively for healing, I am sorry to disappoint you. It’s more a question I ask out of frustration. I have some acceptance that I can’t have every spiritual gifting, but I’m really disappointed. I want my prayers for healing to be effective. That’s my hope and goal, and no matter how hard I try, I do not feel a win. Maybe 2 or 3 times, I can claim in faith, but that is a hugely losing record. I can’t answer the question above, but I can share with you how I’ve moved to deeper acceptance and knowledge of the Healer. A perspective that has transformed my relationship with Him, myself, and others.
photo by Oleg Illarionov on unsplash.com
Through the prophet Joel, God says, “I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten.”
Over the last 7 months, I have been experiencing a different type of healing directly from the Healer. Healing from emotional wounds, and specifically, childhood emotional wounds. There is supernatural healing going on in my life. Let me explain. I think the first 20 years of my life was about being inflicted with a host of emotional wounds and forming maladaptive ways of dealing with the resulting pain. I’ve self-diagnosed myself with Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN), where my parents raised me, gave me food and shelter, kept me safe and even helped pay for college. For some reason, my emotional needs were not met. When it came to meeting emotional needs like feeling loved, valued, and important, there was a cultural, generational, and language gap. I think about how I never expressed to my parents how I felt sad because I didn’t know the word for “sad” in Korean. I grew up in emotional survival mode and got my validation needs met by performing well academically and coping with my loneliness with fantasies of meeting a wife at age 14. I taught myself how to ride a bike in fourth grade. And it wasn’t even until college that I learned that I should brush my teeth in the morning AND at night before going to bed. Those are the humorous symptoms of my CEN, but my family system wounded me with false core beliefs about myself and what’s lower than very low self-esteem? Right, NO self-esteem.
Over the next 20 years of my life, the negative fruit of these emotional wounds came up, and I had to deal with them and pay the consequences. As I worked on issues in therapy and with God, I might have worked through and received healing from two, maybe three, of my core emotional wounds. Three in 20 years is not bad at all as the deep work of self-reflection, reliving childhood trauma, and forming a new mindset is a life-long process.
But here’s the thing, over the last 7 months, I’ve gone through maybe 7 major healing moments resolving a lot of the emotional baggage and receiving an outpouring of God’s perfect parenting – the way he intended before family sin patterns worked its way down for generations. To go to a medical doctor, there is no reportable physical healing. I still catch colds, my body aches, and my right leg is still longer than my left. In the unseen depths in my psyche, there are emotional bullets being extracted, atrophied muscles of self-care getting stronger, and the wounds from beating myself up are on the mend. And even more, the habit of beating myself up is abating one day at a time.
The reason I can testify that these have been miraculous healings is from understanding the way our bodies and God works. With proper medical treatment and rest, our bodies really heal on their own. Common colds work their way through our systems and the most we can hope is to manage the symptoms. Broken bones heal on their own when the bone is set properly. Even emotional wounds have a natural way of healing when we form healthy relationships as adults. The Healer works through natural means and regular people like my therapist, friends, 12-step sponsor, and pastors. The Healer works through the proper administration of medication from professionals.
So where’s the miracle? I see the miracle in two ways. First, when the healing that takes place that might normally take 40 years takes place over seven months – that is the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. Second, that I can claim in faith that it was the Lord Almighty that did the work in me, that faith is a gift from God. I rarely claim a victory because I don’t want to jinx it. But as for me and my household, I am claiming that the past emotional wounds have been healed. Of course, there is more to come. In the meantime, I am watching God as he restores the wasted years.
Through the prophet Joel, God says, “I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten.”
Feature photo above by Brett Jordan on unsplash.com
Prayers for the Season of Lent and Easter are now available as a download for only $6.99!
by Carol Dixon
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
Words: Alfred Lord Tennyson, Music: Percy Fletcher
The Healing Power of Music
This wonderful poem by Lord Tennyson is a great way to welcome in the new year, particularly after a year like last year! I first remember learning the poem as a song with our Girls’ Grammar school choir. We were taking part in the annual Schools’ choir competition in our area and this was one of our set pieces that we had to learn and be judged on. We didn’t win but I will never forget the finale when all the choirs sang it together in Newcastle City Hall on the stage that had been occupied by the Beatles the week before – enough to set teenage girls’ hearts fluttering anyway. At the end, were amazed as the lights went up on the auditorium to see the entire audience, including our proud parents, rising to their feet, clapping and cheering in a way that no-one did in England in those sedate days of the early 1960s. It was such an uplifting experience for everyone that we all travelled home in a golden glow of sheer joy at the wonderful power of music.
Many years later, I was to discover the healing power of music personally in my own life after many months of debilitating illness when I was laid aside from all my usual activities and had to give up all my church commitments, including leading & singing with our church folk group. Yet in this exile from normality, I ‘learned to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land’ when God gave me the gift of hymn writing. Listening to music stood me in good stead a couple of years ago too, in long nights while waiting months for a hip replacement. I listened to healing music on my handheld tablet and took these beautiful tunes with me into the operation which was done under local anaesthetic and listened to the uplifting songs as the sawing, hammering and grinding went on to remove my old diseased hip and replace it with a new plastic and metal one which works and is free from pain. One of my favourites was Aileen Gilchrist’s ‘I see Jesus’.
One of the reasons I love Tennyson’s poem is that for me it seems to take on a new life when set to music and the marriage of words and harmony seems to underline the message of hope and new life not only at the early part of a new year but for any new start. Hopefully this year will bring a new beginning for us as more vaccines become available to combat Covid and free us from the restrictions of the pandemic so we will be able to embrace loved ones again and rejoice together for the freshness each day brings, remembering with thankfulness the sacrifice of those who have worked so tirelessly to care for us and the light of God’s richest blessings in the dark days we leave behind.
In times of sorrow and joy, I find music a great comfort to me and one of the hymns God gave me as I recovered from my bout of illness I often pray in my morning devotions. I hope you enjoy singing it.
Every new morning God gives us freely
Hears that are thankful, strength for the task,
People who love us, joy in our service,
All we have need of if we but ask.
God will be with us in all our thinking,
in all our speaking, in all we do;
and as we praise him by all our actions,
God will be with us, seeing us through.
God in the morning, God in the noontide,
God in the evening, throughout the day;
God is within us, and all around us,
behind, before us all of the way. © Carol Dixon
photo by Carol Dixon
poem and photo by Talitha Fraser,
This came out of sitting in front of a computer too long… the lines between home and work are so indistinct when they are the same place, the same room. Take breaks, reconnect with your body, breath, Creation and the Creator…
Did you miss the other post from earlier today? Check out Wounded Healer by Sheila Hamil.
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