How Wonderful Could It All Be, Really?

One of my favorite songs EVER, is Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World”.

I can never hear it, but what my heart doesn’t beat faster, and I feel my nervous system uncoiling itself into joy.

Truly, this world is a wonderful world. My life is a wonderful, wonderful life. And all of it begs the question:

How wonderful could it be….really?

If my life equals the sum total of my thoughts about it, if my feelings about this life are equal to my opinion of God’s goodness towards me, how wonderful might it all become if I changed my mind?

How wonderful could my experience of my life be if:

I stop letting other people determine how far I believe I can go…

if I stop trying to fix myself, as though something is broken…

if I stop wishing for past events to be different…

if I stop thinking that my body is anything less than the miraculous marvelous home of a beautiful eternal soul?

How wonderful are we allowing God to be to us? What if we women could re-wild ourselves from rules to the riches of grace? What might our day be like, moving from martyrdom to true service, out of well meaning religion and into a well being that flows like rivers of living waters from our still-expectant bellies?

How wonderful, how abundant, is it all meant to be?

How wonderful does God want your marriage to be? How wonderful does He want your creative expression to feel? How wonderfully impactful could your small business be?

I’ve come to a place where I am convinced that my original design is far better than what “wellness” as a modern-day industry can ever offer me. My original design is beyond “body positivity” - it is more than simply loving myself even if I was overweight or unhealthy. My original design might include, but in its full expression is actually better than anything any book or functional medicine guru can teach me.

My life lived at the right hand of God, seated in heavenly places, hidden away in Christ, puts me out of reach of diet dogmas, extreme protocols, and even “food freedom”. Divine life is life at a whole, other level - a level in which my life force doesn’t have to be dissipated by chasing what most women chase.

When I am able to receive the life of God into my whole being, including my body, the profound good news of it lets my nervous system “un-grip” itself. Parts of me get to come out of hiding and into full acceptance.

Placing myself in integrated alignment with the goodness of God directly impacts my whole experience of life: my creativity, my abundance, my spirituality, my physicality, every last part gets to come into favor.

Unearned, and undeserved favor.

“For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14: 17)

This kingdom I am living in really is not about “food and drink”. It isn’t about wellness rules, religious rules, mental health rules, social media rules, or your unspoken rules pertaining to me. This kingdom has zero to do with cultural expectations. Rather, this kingdom really is about righteousness (being made as I ought always to have been, given to me as sheer gift) peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.

{ ::voice lowers to a conspiratorial whisper:: “Hey queen. What would it look like for you to reign in life, not rein-in your life?”}

How wonderful could it all be….really?

Beware {...A Bit of Oswald Chambers For Your Tuesday...}

Beware of isolation; beware of the idea that you have to develop a holy life alone. It is impossible to develop a holy life alone;

you will develop into an oddity and a peculiarism, into something utterly unlike what God wants you to be.

The only way to develop spiritually is to go into the society of God’s own children, and you will soon find how God alters your set.

God does not contradict our social instincts; He alters them.

My Utmost for His Highest - Oswald Chambers

Sunday, Sunday - I have so many reasons to love you. There are other days and other ways I can (and do) gather with the body of Christ, but thanks to Revelations 1:10, we know that Sunday has been special since the new covenant began.

“I was in the Spirit on The Lord’s Day…” ~the apostle John the Beloved

It isn’t “being religious” to gather on Sunday, any more than it would be being religious to buy my husband a gift on his birthday, or eat tacos on Tuesdays.

Nothing has blessed my life and fueled my creativity and challenged my selfish ways half as much as being an integral part of a local church.

Jesus = embodied God. The God who came to be face to face with. If Jesus could set aside heaven and come be with humans, I can set aside my petty offenses, my agendas, my busy-ness, and two hours on a Sunday. I’m not too mature for it.

And so, with all its supposed institutional imperfections (I see them, too) the whole point is to become an embodied expression of the Kingdom of God in the earth.

However imperfectly.

The very act of walking up the wide stairs of Harvest Church is a rebellion against plugged-in virtual culture. It removes me from false urgencies and puts the Beautiful Triune God front and center.

I get to live beyond timescale and to-dos and even my own efforts to remain relevant - to join a timeless culture of heaven, where all is NOW, and the lamb of God is worthy, and the bride of Jesus exists in reality, in a glory that shines like the stars.

Oh, for sure. When you take your imagination of faith to church with you, this is every bit what the embodied act of gathering and worship feels like…and in fact, is.

As an artist, I don’t see any other way to go to church, but with a faith imagination! I get to call things that be not as though they were, and for me it becomes so.

Things become for me, according to my faith.

I get to gather with a bunch of people who aren’t a bit like me, I get to do my worship - like the King is risen, dancing in my 55 year old body like I am “not drunk…as ye suppose”, praying for the saints of God like Jesus hears me.

I could wish no greater wealth for anyone.