MollyMadonna.com

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graceful December.

I felt it welling up all too soon this year: the bustle of the holidays tip toeing ever closer, the pen and notepad begging me to make lists and to categorize my Christmas spirit into checked off items and piles of gifts wrapped beneath the tree. Not unlike the Grinch, my heart toward the holiday season was waning. With weeks to go before Thanksgiving, and December no more than peeking over the horizon, I’d already lost the twinkle in my eye about the holiday I’d once most dearly loved and longed to celebrate.

I couldn’t help but spend some time reflecting on what’s happened to Christmas inside of me. While I still see so much beauty the celebration of Christ’s birth come December 25th, I’ve spent the past number of years losing the depth and breadth of Christmas in the preparation for it and the things surrounding it. So much of what the season has become in my life is not at all what I want this season to actually be…

-Too many “Yeses” outside of the home have led to “Nos” where my time and heart ought to reside–celebrating with and teaching and loving on Henry and Eloise as they learn why Christmas is truly something to celebrate.

-I’ve made too many last minute trips to the store and had too many great expectations–for every last gift and every last detail to be perfect and perfectly wrapped.

-I’ve chosen hustle and bustle over resting and peace, demonstrating more to my family that the holidays are about getting things done than that Christmas is all about what God has done for us.

-I’ve made list after list and checked them all twice, overestimated my time, and underestimated my need for margin.

-And I’ve tried way too hard to please too many others at too high a cost. This is such a hard one to admit. When you love people, you want to make them happy. But sometimes happy for them means miserable for you, your spouse, your kids…and somehow, the holidays seem to bring out the best of the worst scenarios in this area.

When 2015 began, the word I sensed God putting on my heart for this calendar year was “intention.” To me, this meant applying intention to every aspect of my life and doing my best to steward it well. As this holiday season has come about (and all of the above challenges with it), I knew I needed to do something differently to exercise intentionality. So when I started to feel like Christmas was welling up in a hardened way in my heart, it was long past due that I spend time in reflection and prayer on the subject.

And something beautiful happened.

God gave me two words: graceful December.

Not gracious December or grace-filled December (although I believe God desires those things for us, too), but graceful December. Like the kind of December that moves fluidly and peacefully in and out of days–not hustling or bustling, but embracing, savoring, evolving, becoming more lovely as it goes.

I began hearing these words together day after day, and as December edged closer, they were moving in my heart and spirit in a big way. I’m delighted to enter into this month today, because it means graceful December has arrived! And as I’ve prayed about what that looks like for me and for our family, I’ve recognized that it begins with an invitation to all of you as well.

Welcome to a graceful December! I’m so glad that you’re here.

This month, I’ll be writing to you daily with words of encouragement as I discover things anew in the practice of living a graceful Christmas season. I’m SUPER excited to have some of my sweet friends joining me in this endeavor, and I cannot wait to introduce you to their beautiful hearts in the coming weeks as they post here as well.

I don’t know entirely what the month with hold, and I’m grateful for that. In these days when we all take less and less for granted, we hug tighter and longer, we pray more boldly and more often…we also welcome an invitation for graceful living like never before.

Let’s create space for breath and margin and whole, wholesome living and celebration this Christmas season, shall we? I know I’ve needed this graceful December to arrive in so many ways. How about you?

Off we go, leaning into grace together!

molly madonna

P.S. As you find yourself in moments of beautiful grace, let’s share them together and inspire more joy in community using #gracefulDecember. I can’t wait to see this undeniably graceful month unfold!

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the world needs a breathing treatment, and i’m no exception.

I remember the cold rush of relief that came as soon as they opened the door and carried me, bundled, out into the stinging winter night. I remember that first gasping breath–sharp air coming into my lungs in a hurry, abating the tension I’d shouldered just seconds earlier. I was little. Three or four or five, and no stranger to the steam bath, this late night mid-winter routine, the scurrying into the car on the way to the hospital for another holy, life-giving breathing treatment. Croup and pneumonia loved to take up residence in my tiny body. I could tell any doctor that the dynamic duo was back before the tests would prove it.

What I didn’t know then was that this pattern–this strain for deep breath and the desperate need for relief, time after time, was something my body would overcome. I didn’t know that my lungs would grow strong, that too many nights of breathing treatments would come to an end. I also couldn’t see back then that these very clear memories from childhood would someday serve me metaphorically in adulthood.

Holding Our Breath

I don’t always notice it at first, but in the tense moments of my life, I hold my breath. Subconsciously, I stop allowing air to fill up my lungs. I put a hold on this very natural and necessary pattern in my body, instead restricting life-giving, essential air from moving through me. When I do breathe, my efforts become shallow–I stop receiving the fullness that my body was created to involuntarily accept. I can only imagine what this does to everything within me…systems operating on less power, blood flowing without the same clarity that it should, my nervous system going into fight or flight mode instead of existing in a restful, peaceful state.

Without meaning to, I send myself back to that place of desperately needing that late night gasp of cold air. I’ve grown so accustomed to this that often, I don’t even realize I’m tensing up in every way.

I go back to old patterns and behaviors because I’ve not yet conditioned myself to step out of them–to find sweet breath in what I know, and to accept sure footing over instability.

Saturday Morning Yoga

In the depths of winter this past year, I was trapped in another season of perpetual breath holding. Jason had been hit by a truck only months earlier, and we were still recovering from that when my doctor told me we needed to run a whole host of testing to rule out two different types of cancer in my body. I’d never felt more completely like the wind had been knocked out of me. I waded through weeks of unknown, holing up inside of myself, lacking breath, begging God not to allow this type of circumstance into my life when I was so committed to mothering our two small, precious babes.

I’m not sure how my body hung on through this season. By a thread, I think. My shallow breathing and the restricted air that defined those days made everything feel dark, shaky, in desperate need of restoration. In a place of total brokenness and instability in my soul, I said yes to a Saturday morning Holy Yoga class for some hopeful relief. My dear friend had recently become certified, and she promised this time on Saturday mornings would be set on worship and prayer and seeking out God. I needed all of those things, and so, with a new mat and a struggling spirit in tow, I wandered, broken, into class that first, chilly Saturday morning.

Having done yoga a handful of times at this point, I had no idea whether I’d love or hate it. I felt completely vulnerable in every way. As it turns out, this was exactly how I’d needed to come to my mat that day, and it’s been exactly how I’ve needed to come to my mat so many Saturdays since. It’s hard to describe what happens in a Holy Yoga class, because there is nowhere else in my life that I lay mere inches from strangers and pursue God in such a deep and reverent way. (Ok, there is nowhere else in my life that I lay mere inches from strangers, period, which I figure is probably a good thing.)

On my mat, I am completely focused on letting the rest of life fall away while I welcome healing and filling up from the Holy Spirit. Sometimes I cry weep. I feel stripped of pretense. And I breathe. Not only do I take in breath and push it away, but I do so deeply. It’s an exercise I think my body had completely forgotten.

As with any healthy habit, I have to practice this deep breathing day in and day out. Yoga has helped me to figure out how to do this, but I still have to go back each week and ingrain the pattern a little deeper into who I am. I believe it’s working for the reason that it isn’t just a physical work. These deep breaths come along with me giving up what I know to be true about myself and my circumstances, instead replacing thoughts about my reality with meditations on the reality of Christ.

As it turns out, and despite any realities I may face on a given week, the truths about who God is–his character and how he sees me and loves me–are way stronger than the fears and truths I believe about who I am, about this fleeting life here on earth.

In order to be physically human in this world, I must breathe. But in order to live in the fullness of life I’ve been given this side of eternity, I must breathe in Christ.

Our Need for Air

A week ago last night, we were going to bed late when we heard Eloise breathing over the monitor. The sounds coming from her little body were all too familiar. Just after midnight, I climbed our stairs to find her awake and struggling for air. I brought her down to our bed to keep a closer eye on her, hopeful that her lungs would resolve and she could get a peaceful night’s sleep. Instead, after a little while of watching her patterned breaths become more and more shallow, we decided she’d need to go to the ER. Her little legs tremored. The look in her eyes was pleading and scared. I flashed back to those nights as a child, remembering that feeling of desperation and the way my parents came to the rescue with help each time. We bundled her up and I took her in.

Right up to the ER doors, Eloise was panicked. She shook as I took her out of the carseat, reminding her over and over that she was ok and that the doctors would help. No sooner did we cross the threshold than her breath became even. Her struggle slowed. Her body relaxed in my arms. Even at two years old, it seems, we recognize where help comes from and we can rest when we know we’re in good hands. Observing the change that came over Eloise that night, I realized that, inherently, we all just want to know how the next breath is going to come. 

Feeding Fear or Breathing Love

I’m currently reading Sara Hagerty’s book, Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God in All Things. I’m taking it in as I’m able, a chapter here and a chapter there, and this morning her words blessed me so deeply as I’m working through this idea of breath and breathing rightly:

“Adoration is exploration. The Father loves to be explored. We underestimate the power that our knowing Him has in moving His heart. We underestimate the power that our moving His heart has on our lives.

Fear loses oxygen when every moment suspends itself under the purpose of bringing Him glory, of knowing His name and His nature.

Sometimes, instead of leading us up and out of those fears, big and small, He lets us live them. He gives us over to them. Because it’s in this giving over to our fears that we find the perfect love that frees us from them. Forever.”

Fear loses oxygen when we live our lives for the purpose of bringing God glory. Isn’t that beautiful?!

I don’t know about you, but in the wake of recent events in Paris and all over the world, I have struggled to fight back fear and, in moments, to pursue the perfect love that frees us from it. I hate the evil that swirls around us–sometimes so obviously, and sometimes so subversively that we might miss it if we’re not pressing into God when it comes lurking.

But here is what I know. We were created to breathe love, not fear. God doesn’t offer us a spirit of fear at all. He offers us life-giving, life-saving breath. Just like that rush of cold air in the middle of the night, just like that feeling of walking past those ER doors and closer to help, the breath of life offered to us is just beyond a threshold. We make choices in our thoughts, in our conversations, in our prayer lives, that dictate how close or far away that relief might feel.

There are millions…billions of people in the world right now who are holding their breath. Or they are taking in shallow air because they don’t know how their next breath is going to come. They are broken, grieving, worrying, lost, homeless, displaced, ill, alone, confused, enslaved. And they are men and women and children, all made by a Creator who loves them and grieves with them–who wants to meet them in their places of pain and offer them life-rescuing breath.

Sometimes it is our task to be the hands and feet that usher this new breath into life. Sometimes this breath comes through prayer, but more often than not, I think it also comes with a desire to help and the call to pursue tangible ways of offering Christ’s love to our brothers and sisters.

The globe is so divided at this moment about what “help” should look like. I think we’ve made this so much more complicated than it needs to be. We are called to breathe love and not to feed fear. When we ask God how we should respond to others, we must check our spirits and ask whether we’re operating from a position of fear or freedom. If we truly believe that God know our days, our breath, our hearts, than we must trust him with them, too.

In another season when shallow breathing could easily become my M.O., I have to get on my knees again and ask for air. I have to ask God to carry me over that threshold, to meet me on my mat. And I have to steal oxygen away from fear and put it in it’s rightful place–deep in my lungs, where the Creator of the Universe has offered me–has offered all of us, breath.

In through the nose, out through the mouth. This is how we begin. I pray we are all able to find and to offer deep, deep breath to ourselves, to strangers, and to one another in the days to come.

mm

For a little more encouragement, I have loved the following over this past week. I hope these links bring lightness to your soul:

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Affiliate links used in this post.

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…you have to change your world first. (part 2)

I just absolutely love Sunday afternoons. I didn’t used to–not before we discovered a cadence to the space that takes shape after church and lunch, right in the midst of quiet times and naps. The house gets still, and I feel little guilt about taking time to rest. That’s what this time of the week is for…to pause, absorb, process, draw inward, be.

I used to be a doer. All of the time.

This didn’t change much about the trajectory of my days, save the fact that there was always something in front of me as tangible evidence that I could produce. I had something to show for my time. I could keep up quite beautifully in a world of movers and shakers. I thought this was progress. And I thought my work determined my worth.

There has been a shift in me in this regard, and it’s taken it’s time to evolve. In part, becoming a parent has caused me to discover value in intangible progress: dirty dishes in the sink and toys everywhere, but kiddos whose hearts are forming daily and babies who are growing physically and spiritually at the same time. Sharing life with little ones kind of forces you into letting go of all of your to-dos on a regular basis. In a good way.

More than raising a family, though, the agent that’s caused the most change in me is the Holy Spirit–the presence of Christ in my life and the ability to ask for wisdom and discernment about all things, so long as I’m willing to invite the idea of a higher power and a mighty God into my life. If you’re reading from a different faith perspective, I hope I don’t lose you here, but that you’re open to me sharing my heart just as I would welcome dialogue about what’s going on in yours.

It’s taken a long time for me to realize that I’m not nearly as effective at anything as I am when I am inviting the Holy Spirit into my days. When I’m diligent about this, my production looks far less like checked off lists and far more like a willingness to bend to whims and changes, and an acknowledgment that my life is not my own, but borrowed time.

When I operate with the understanding that I have a responsibility to steward my time and thoughts and intentions well, not only do I feel the difference in my heart, but I see the fruit of this choice in my life. My relationships flow more naturally and carefully. My children snuggle closer and draw nearer in the soft spaces of the day that didn’t used to exist. When I sit down to write, or I head to the kitchen to make dinner…when I drive Henry to school or I talk with Jason about the meatier things going on in our lives and the world, I just have more peace. And I feel like God is willing to use me differently than when I’m overly concerned with the physical output of my day.

Enter Allume, and the ways that four days in South Carolina realigned my priorities and emphasized the work that God has been doing in my heart as of late. I love when this happens–it’s just so beautiful how things work together!

“If you want to change the world, you have to change your world first.” Remember this thought from last week’s conference? I shared a bit about this on Monday. While there’s so much more than a few blog posts worth of information and inspiration to unfold, it’s all coming in bits and pieces that I hope will trickle into my words here for some time to come.

Where do I begin to change my own world, so that I can change the world? For me, that place is in my commitment to intentional times of quiet, prayer and rest, which is why Sunday afternoons are a significant and worthy part of my life these days. Everything within me is richer when I rest, listen and pray.

For me, the listening part is the hardest, and also the most fruitful.

I started to draft a book proposal before heading to Allume. This was my first go, and a very challenging but rewarding process. I hadn’t planned to take this step even a few months ago, but sometimes things come at us and surprise us in a really beautiful way. In my case, a book proposal was the sweet and soul-refining exercise I needed to head into the conference with completely open hands and a wildly open mind. I didn’t know what God was doing in any part of the process.

Every time I sat down to the keys, I prayed first, but I spent more time just being quiet. And the more I did it–the more I surrendered my own thoughts and wants for the space to listen for God’s, my heart was refined. I stayed up, energized, so many nights in a row, not knowing where the road was taking me, but enthralled with the possibility of finding out.

Overlapping this time, I felt prompted to reach out and ask for prayer and support of a dear community of women around me, and goodness, did they show up! Day after day and prayer after prayer, these beautiful souls covered me and engaged with me, trusting that God could do something good…and he did.

He did. And he is, and I know he’ll continue to, so long as I keep giving my time and words and heart over to be refined and shaped. Under my own power, what I can produce in this lifetime pales greatly to what God can do when I invite him to show up. I am amazed at this process.

To be honest, I’ve been a little gun-shy about sharing it all here. Not because it doesn’t excite me, but because I know that talking about God and the Holy Spirit and both moving in my life and heart might seem a bit too etherial. This is true, in part because I can’t do any of it justice with my own thoughts or words.

What I can say is this: my Sunday afternoons and places of rest produce far more good and fruit in my life than any of my own human striving ever could. And whatever God has for my life and for me to do in this world matters way more to me than risking it all by not sharing it, by not prioritizing it, by not making it obvious to my kiddos or the people around me out of fear.

If I want to change the world, I have to change my world first.

So what matters to me? What do I spend my time on? My money on? My thoughts on? What fruit exists in my friendships, my home, my family, my daily life out in the world? Am I thinking in earthly terms, caring so much about the physical things that I forget to give time to what actually matters most?

I’m asking myself all of these questions and taking time for introspection because it matters. Because I really do want to change the world. Because I really do believe that God has something mighty to do, and that he is inviting me to share in a little part of it.

What more could I want or ask for in this life?

I want more of God, and I’m not afraid to say it. I want more of honoring him and pleasing him and serving him, and it starts with Sunday afternoons. I pray that they bleed into the fabric of my whole week…into the very marrow of my being. I pray that the more I’m able to change my own world, the more the world around me will change for good. And I pray that however God wants to use me, I’ll be open to it and hear it clearly.

He makes beautiful things out of the dust. He makes beautiful things out of us. What might he want to make out of me, or you, that could be far more beautiful that we would otherwise dare to imagine without him?!

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love from this quiet space on a sunday afternoon,

mm

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if you want to change the world… (part one )

You know the feeling: you’ve just finished a big race, or wrapped up a huge project, or celebrated a big event. All of the heart and energy and gusto you poured into said occasion was carrying you right through it. You gained momentum and rode the wave of adrenalin straight on to the end. It was exhilarating, exhausting, beautiful. And then it was over.

When we pour ourselves into something with everything we’ve got, it’s bound to impact our lives. But coasting on a spiritual or emotional high can only last so long. What happens when Monday morning rolls around and it’s back to a rhythm of normal, adrenalin-free days?

Today is a very Monday-ish Monday morning for me, as I adjust back to the cadence of routine after a beautiful time away at Allume this past weekend. Oh, to be able to translate all of the wisdom and spiritual encouragement from that space to this little space here!

In a nutshell, Allume is a women’s conference for writers/bloggers/artists “that offers a gathering place for kindred spirits to connect, learn, grow, and be refreshed so they can persevere in being a people who bring hope to the world through the social media medium.” Allume was all of these things, but this little summary doesn’t do it justice. Coming away from the conference, I’m doing my best to rest in a prayerful space, hopeful that the wisdom I gained through incredible speakers and God-fearing women will not fall on rocky soil.

I want to be good soil that God can use to reap a strong harvest.

After a race, we always need to recover. After giving birth, there is necessary time for processing and healing. When we come through any significant event in our lives, it’s important that we allow ourselves space to rest and reflect.

I feel like I’ve been training for a marathon, and that the gun has gone off and I’m out of the gate. Post-Allume, now I’m somewhere in the quieter stretch of miles…the necessary time alone on the path to pound pavement and let my mind wonder at my surroundings along the way.

This next season of days or weeks will hold much-needed processing time. As much as I want to just dive back into what I’ve been working on, or to see progress in leaps and bounds right. this. very. moment., it’s really not what God is calling me to do.

On Thursday night, Logan Wolfram ushered us into Allume with this important message: “If you want to change the world, you have to change your world first.”

How true it is! And how much I do want this! But I don’t want to change the world under my own power. I want to be a world-changer and story-teller the way that God ordains. In his timing, and with his guidance. The ultimate story of my life will be so much better that way.

Already God is moving where I invite him in. He is pressing me on all sides, and it is beautiful. As I process so much more from this past weekend and along this journey, I’ll keep sharing here. There’s so much more I want to tell you, but in the right timing.

This morning, I’m rocking my favorite new shirt and the reminder that I am FREE INDEED. I’m just going to live right here and soak that up for a little while. If you have found freedom in the presence of Christ in your life, will you celebrate this Monday declaration with me, too? You don’t have to wear the t-shirt to believe it (although I’ll admit it’s super comfy;)

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I pray that the sun is shining on your part of the world today, and that you are able to find time to rest in God as you ask him to change your world.

enjoying recovery mode,

mm

P.S. Stay tuned for more Allume recapping this week. It was just all too good to fit into one post!

P.S. If you have not yet subscribed to mollymadonna.com, an easy way to keep up on the latest here is to jump on over to the sidebar (or below) and add your email:) No spam from me, I promise. Just a little love from yours truly in your inbox when I post. I’d love to journey with you in this way!

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lessons from the moon.

The moon ushered me home the other night. I was driving back late, alone in my car, and I had prayed for God to speak. I wanted so much to hear him. I was practically straining to hear him. And no audible words came, until I remembered this verse from the lengthy and beautiful psalm: “Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.” (Ps. 119.105) Was it really that simple? The message God had for me on the way home? Admittedly, I wanted it to be more than this…more than one verse. I was taking time out for God. I wanted a revelation.

Instead, that pesky moon followed me all the way to my front door–always at my left, just out my window. Isn’t it something that the world is even created this way, that the moon can even do that? On that last stretch of road home, my iTunes radio on random shuffle, a song came through the speakers. The words “Singing, you are holy, great and mighty. The moon and stars declare who you are. I’m so unworthy, but still you love me. Forever my heart will sing of how great you are,” poured right over me.

“The moon and the stars declare who you are.” Was God actually showing me more of his character and I hadn’t even noticed? Was he answering my prayer, just not in the way I’d expected?

moon and stars declare

Sometimes listening for God feels so hard. I want to be used and be moved, and often, I just really want an answer–not weeks or months later, but RIGHT NOW.

It’s so normal. And so many things in life feel instant these days. We have programmed ourselves to expect results immediately. At the risk of coining a new phrase, I think I’ll call it “Google Syndrome.” When we want the answer to something, it’s pretty much at our fingertips. Henry asks me a question and I find myself saying, “I’m not sure, buddy. Hang on. I’ll just google it.”

The concrete, factual things in life have instant answers in this plugged in, turned up age. But the hard things? The emotional and spiritual ones? So far, I can’t seem to google those. Can I just say, I think it would be devastating if I could.

Plugged in. Turned up. These seem to oppose the space I need to create for myself if I want to really connect with God. Remember last week when I talked about my journey of learning to listen intentionally, but not mastering it perfectly?

In order to make space for God to move in my life and in my heart, I must be intentional about carving out separated space and quieter time.

Not rushing around time, not falling asleep at the end of the day time (although I do this, too), but real, full, focused time. When I do make God a priority in my days, he moves. And over time, this dance we’ve done: God waiting for me and me slowly learning just how much I crave and need him, has moved me to love and trust him and crave him even more.

Like anything else we train for, listening for God is an exercise for me. It isn’t a random marathon dropped into the middle of my week, but instead, countless moments, hours, months, years of practice runs that have stretched my faith and built muscles that I depend on for strength when the race days do come.

I am very much in a season of listening and waiting on God these days. It is hard, certainly, but there is a sweetness about it that I don’t taste when I’m not so committed to perking my ears. I come to him desperately, openly, full of curiosity, hope, stress, challenge, joy. In my efforts to listen, I trust that God sees I am willing. And as I keep coming back for more, he entrusts relationships and stories and prayers and journeys to me that I know I would otherwise miss. He allows me to do life alongside people around me in a different way.

Please hear me when I say that I have so little figured out. But this fullness of God that is pressing into me is something I’ve missed before and that I really don’t want to miss again. Clearly, I’m human and stubborn, still placing my own ideas in the way of what God might have for me sometimes. Like so many other things, I have to talk to God about helping me through my stubbornness, too.

I had something to learn from the moon the other night, and I could have missed it. It’s completely ok for me to wait expectantly on God. And it’s completely ok that his response to me would be to rest in him and reflect on him in worship and nothing else. Maybe it’s better than ok.

bright moon

In a Google Syndromed world, it’s hard for me not to want answers in an instant. But God doesn’t operate on instant, worldly time. He operates on a time all his own. And if I truly trust him with my life…the one he so lovingly gave me…then I will learn to trust his timing, too.

“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts,” [he declares.] “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but it will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace…” Is 55.9-12

As we journey together in life and faith, I pray that we will be able to carve out sacred time and space for God to speak to us. Sometimes in a whisper, sometimes in a way we never expected, but always for his glory and for us to be drawn closer and closer to him.

grace and peace,

mm