Let My Life Speak

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“Blessed are you who take the risk of standing still right at the point of change, though uncertainty and stress want to propel you forward.”

— Kate Bowler, A Blessing for When You’re Forced to Rethink Your Life

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My tendency is to move. For example, we’ve decided we’re ready to find a new house — we’ve outgrown, in many ways, our current home. As soon as we made that decision, I started packing. Mind you, our house isn’t on the market and we haven’t found the house we want to buy. But, I started packing. I put away extraneous picture frames and knick-knacks on the end tables. I pulled down some decor in my sewing room and boxed up extra fabric and other sewing supplies.

I felt really accomplished with this packing.

Until it was a few weeks or maybe a month later and I couldn’t find what I needed to complete a customer’s sewing project.

I didn’t pack because I wanted to be prepared — though that was some of it. I packed because I was stressed and uncertain of what was to come.

What if we find our new house tomorrow and our house isn’t ready to list and then we can’t sell our house… my brain is SO GOOD at coming up with stories! But not in a good way. My mind can spin and spin and spin, like the wheel of death on Macs. It spins stories that are so far out there no one else would believe them, and yet somehow my mind has come to accept them as truth.

I want to take a risk and stand still.

I want to push back against the uncertainty and stress that tell me I MUST DO ALL OF THE THINGS RIGHT NOW.

Standing still doesn’t mean unproductive. (And so what if I’m not always productive?! But that’s an essay for another time!) Standing still means taking some deep breaths before I act on the most recent story my mind has created. It means taking some deep breaths, quieting my mind, and listening for my soul to speak up. She has a hard time being heard over my mind’s chatter. I have to get really quiet and wait for her to feel safe before she’ll come out to speak.

Parker Palmer puts it this way: “The soul is like a wild animal—tough, resilient, savvy, self-sufficient and yet exceedingly shy. If we want to see a wild animal, the last thing we should do is to go crashing through the woods, shouting for the creature to come out. But if we are willing to walk quietly into the woods and sit silently for an hour or two at the base of a tree, the creature we are waiting for may well emerge, and out of the corner of an eye we will catch a glimpse of the precious wildness we seek.” (A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life)

Standing still means waiting patiently for my soul to share her wisdom with me. This can look like going for a walk sans earbuds and paying attention to what I see around me. Or it can look like lying down in my hammock to read and then falling asleep. Sometimes my soul speaks when I’m watching the hummingbird bounce from bloom to bloom or when I see my dog sleeping soundly in her bed.

The point is that I’m slowing down in order to let my life speak to me.

I’m not letting uncertainty and stress run the show. They are doing their best to protect me, which I appreciate, but my life isn’t in physical danger. I can thank them for their efforts and then release them of their duties.

It’s easier said than done, of course. This requires intentionality on a regular basis. And lots of grace. Letting them take over is easy and natural and doesn’t require nearly as much work (until they convince me to start packing!). Just like when I’m meditating and I find my mind going off on a tangent, I notice and gracefully return to my breath. I just keep returning over and over again. That’s the nature of the mind — to be easily distracted. The nature of the soul is to acknowledge the distraction and return to the silence.

I’m grateful for wise writers, like those I’ve shared in this essay, who remind me that I’m not the only one being propelled by uncertainty and stress. That I’m not the only one stomping through the woods yelling for my soul to come forward. I believe these are just conditions of being human.

I think my tendency will always be to move. And that’s okay. I just want to be more intentional about how and why I move. Is it because my soul asked me to or because stress did? If I keep this question close by, I bet I’ll start to notice some important adjustments in how and why I move. I’m ready to let my life speak.

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