I keep trying to get my day started, business as usual. It’s well into the afternoon… clearly, I am not tasting the sweet success I longed for today. Managing the precious gift of time around my neatly organized to-do list, my Sephora return and the new furniture coming is now making me physically ill. And so the tears begin to roll. For the first time, I just can’t get my heart to ignore what happened in Charlottesville and what is happening in this world – especially the country that I call home. It’s a face-in-the-mirror kind of place to be. If I no longer ignore and carry-on business (my life) as usual because it isn’t my problem, then my only other option is to be part of the solution. That feels daunting and heavy. What could I possibly do from my comfortable home in my very privileged white world?

Words feel like the only weapon I have against this evil that is cloaking the beautiful world we have been given to travel. I so desperately want to string words together and have them create answers or a formula that creates a switch to make it all go away. I want this disruption to disappear and my world view to go back to the land of naivety. A magic wand to wave to just fix it, so I can get back to my life… selfish, isn’t it?

From the deepest ache in my heart, I want to be able to spill out of my lips an antidote to cure this swell of hate that is rising. And as I type those words, I am overcome. We have the antidote, don’t we?

Love.

The switch I so long to discover and share with you isn’t mine to give. It is yours to take. It is Love. It is a de-layering process and it lies inside each of us. We have each been given a dash (beginning and end time on this earth) and an earth suit to travel this world. How much simpler it would have been had God given us clear suits and even better, skip the anatomy. But instead we have a vast array of suits and I fear that we are so, so busy getting jacked up with the suits that we have forgotten that the only thing eternal is our spirit. Our earth suit will drop to the ground when we die. It is a vessel we have been given to use to travel this earth. Just imagine – if we could change our own hearts to get past the suit so that we would truly see and invest in the spirit in each and every person we encounter… well, we’d bring heaven to earth and we’d be experiencing eternal living.

And yet our focus is on what the world can see and we are so attached… hence my Sephora return and my Facebook feed where I wonder daily if I am selling myself short by not investing in Lash Boost from Rodan+Fields. (Sorry R+F, just sharing what is coming out of my heart) How much time do I spend quaffing and painting, putting on my armor when the only beauty that is True lies within?

But we have another problem lurking in the weeds. I believe that the reason that all of this hate is swelling is that we are a bit of a mess. We have a lot of tending to do in our own yards and we simply don’t love ourselves the way God intended. If we truly loved ourselves, we wouldn’t be trying to project ourselves into this world and trying to push others below us.

If we are going to turn our eyes out into this beautiful world and see clear suits, we first have to stop all the judging and condemnation that we are heaping on ourselves. I am convinced that the same sword of the enemy that we use to judge others stems from a place of judging ourselves. My gosh, we have an entire religion that is based on deeming everyone broken and on a journey to slay all of the sins in their lives. It’s exhausting and unattainable. But do you know what is attainable? Love. Waking up each and every day and learning how to navigate this world believing that you have a Creator that is WILD about you! You are fully loved, fully approved, AS IS before your feet even hit the floor. That is where freedom lies and it is the difference maker in the chaos erupting in this world. It’s where the buds of walking through this life seeing clear suits can begin to take hold and it is the birthplace of the fruits of the Spirit: joy, love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. It is grace filled Love from the Spirit. It is the healing this world so desperately needs and it begins with that beautiful face, staring back at you in the mirror. You are God’s child and you are so, so deeply loved.

But do you know what is attainable? Love. Waking up each and every day and learning how to navigate this world believing that you have a Creator that is WILD about you! You are fully loved, fully approved, AS IS before your feet even hit the floor. That is where freedom lies and it is the difference maker in the chaos erupting in this world. It’s where the buds of walking through this life seeing clear suits can begin to take hold and it is the birthplace of the fruits of the Spirit: joy, love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. It is grace filled Love from the Spirit. It is the healing this world so desperately needs and it begins with that beautiful face, staring back at you in the mirror. You are God’s child and you are so, so deeply loved.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven… clear suits. This time on earth is about seeing your neighbors, your family, your friends in clear suits. Whatever is getting in the way of Loving yourself, it is your job to do the hard work of digging in and looking inward to remove it and restore your heart. That is the journey of the soul, the reason we are here and the key (not a switch) to making progress on a journey we call faith in the wake of days like today.

I’m leaving you with my go-to (Carrie Underwood – How Great Thou Art), praying the stirring of the Spirit over us all and sending so much Love. xo

 

clear suits