Sacred Geometry, or "Why You Cannot Reverse Engineer Your Influence"

This pine tree manifests the brilliant art of its Maker just by growing.

Its branches and its seed (pine cones) do that beautiful, spiral, "sacred geometry" thing.

This made me think of when I was interviewed for a podcast. Stay with me, here. There’s a mighty point to the story, I promise. Before the podcast interview, I sat down to pray, to ask the Lord to "give me the right words" because I want everything I do to point back to Him. I also want to help others.

So for seemingly good reasons, I was angsting a little bit, wanting to be wise and generous and very much hoping to inspire.

It was then that the Lord interrupted my thoughts and said, "You are at your very best, and you glorify Me the most, my daughter, when the good that you do is unconscious. Shalom, Sheila."

BOOM. The angst was gone! Honestly (please don't take this the wrong way) but I knew I was done praying. Not only in that moment was I at a place of full-on Shalom, but I have gone out to meet LIFE with more joy since that day.

After all - and I say this all the time - what we impart is NOT what we think we have to say. What we impart is the cumulative result of all our secret growings…or shrinkings. We impart to others our essence - we impart to others who we actually are, not how we want to be seen. We can only give to others what we first OWN for ourselves: which is whatever we have faithfully been in secret for YEARS. Not months or days. I’m talking about a way of being that can’t be reverse engineered.

This pine never attempted a Fibonacci sequence. It didn’t see its neighbor doing a spiral pattern, and then decide it was time to do the same thing. This pine did not admire its friend, and rush to its desktop to buy a website called “thegoldenmean.com” to try to become an iteration of its best pinegirlfriend. It did not read about another pine tree’s experience, and then write a blog post with borrowed thoughts on Divine Proportion. It wasn't going for Sacred Geometry.

Yet, there it is. Breathtaking and inspiring and yes, I laid flat on my back to grab this shot. This pine is who it naturally, unselfconsciously GREW to be, over many years.

Gosh, we can both rest in that, and be convicted (in a healthy way) in areas where we need to do and be differently. The results accumulate over much time. Which way is your tree growing? Who are you when no one is watching?

My Riches Are Real

The only way to have a friend is to be one. Be one relentlessly.

Love appropriately (which simply means respecting boundaries, cherishing quirks, managing/eliminating expectations) and unconditionally.

Most of all, think well of your friend.

Your entire experience of that relationship equals the sum total of your thoughts about the person. Seriously, it isn’t even your memories together, it is not what she said or what she did. The quality of your relationship to anyone equals the quality of the thoughts you choose to think about them. Your experience of your friend is the story you have told yourself about her.

Why choose a story that devalues the friendship? Why choose a narrative that makes you feel offended (you did know that you always offend yourself, right…no one can offend you, if you don’t offend you with what you decide to believe) Why let love die, when you can choose a story that keeps love kindled.

A brief but vital aside: I’m talking about when a relationship is under any kind of normal circumstances. And “normal” has a wide, wide range. Only very extenuating circumstances create the exception, not the fact that your friend never calls you. Addiction, moral or ethical failure that goes on without repentance, unmanaged narcissism, flagrant weirdness, or when someone relentlessly devalues YOU in their thinking - all these change the landscape. Those things mean that all bets are off.

But under any kind of normal circumstances, we choose how we think about someone. We choose what we believe about them.

Historically, this has been an area of God-given strength for me. My tendency is to tell myself the story that will make me love you.

My family and husband can bear witness to the fact that I try very hard to be careful about how I even THINK about others. The other sad thing they can also bear witness to is that this is not always returned. (Pssssst: it’s okay. That, in my opinion, is a spot-on sorting mechanism.)

Did you know that your relationship to me is EXACTLY the sum total of the thoughts towards me that you have entertained? Your thoughts will dictate your experience of me.

Have you ever had your care or concern or good intentions seemingly “bounce off” of the person you were trying to encourage? This is why. They literally do not feel your love. They absolutely can’t see the small gestures that normally are noticed and cherished. When someone is determined to choose a story that offends them, nothing you can do will change the perception.

Every single one of us chooses our lenses through which we see. Every single one of us chooses how we hear - not just what we hear, but how we hear it! This is why Jesus said, “Be careful how you hear…” (Luke 8:18). Another word for this combination of how we see and how we hear is our “perception”.

I will never forget someone saying to my husband (who was attempting to restore the relationship, while not compromising his own integrity within himself - so often, a leader has to let go of a relationship with “the one” when hanging onto it means possible harm to “the many”) this person said, “Well, Tim, you always said that someone’s perception is their reality. My perception is my reality.”

This person thought they had my husband “dead to rights”. But what they did not know that we had long ago been taught by a seasoned leader, that when someone begins to use your own words against you, they are likely committed to their offense. It’s what the teachers of the law did to Jesus - no pastor is the exception, if Jesus was not the exception. (Matt. 26:61)

In that moment, the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, “So be it.” And a great weeping came over my spirit for them. How horrible, to be limited to your perception of reality.

I have no control over your perceptions. They will be your reality because your mind will always find proof for what you are thinking.

But (here’s the good part) I have exquisitely beautiful authority over my perceptions. I can choose what I think about you.

The goal: No one will believe better about you than me. They might believe AS I do, but they won’t believe sweeter or better. I see in you such gifts and strengths and possibility.

You’d have to prove me wrong - and trust me, a handful have done that. However, they’ve had to go out of their way.

But having come all the way out of a season of separating the precious from the worthless (Jeremiah’s words in scripture), and finding out who was going to prove me wrong, I can feel my heart coming full circle.

Still believing the very best, most beautiful things concerning the ones God has placed in my sphere. You should be someone who feels so blessed to be one of those women! That’s my goal in this life of tending middle friendships. Riches truly do not consist of the things we have or in our savings accounts, but in the friendships we possess.

If I’ve been thinking about my friend in ways that lower her value, if I have given voice to those thoughts to anyone else - well, then I really do not deserve that friend in the first place.

Whatever it is that she did or did not do, I have chosen how I will think about her, if I have made circumstances mean something devaluing. I am the one who chose a response that isn’t friendship at all.

The only option I have is to fix it fast (life is short) or lose something of unfathomable value: a clear conscience where it concerns a friend, and thus I have lost the friendship.

That’s poverty.