Your life experience is a sacred text too.  Listen to what it has to tell you.  – Christine Valters Paintner

The other morning I was driving the girls to school when I glanced over at my 13-year-old in the passenger seat. She was calmly putting on mascara using the visor mirror. And I had to do a double take (and slyly capture this photo!). I had so many questions like…

When did she start wearing make up? Does her mother know? Wait, how old is she again?

But if I’m being honest, it wasn’t really about the make-up. It was about the time, and the realization that my not so baby girl was growing up. As I turned around and looked at the other three girls, I realized that she wasn’t alone. They’re all changing, right in front of me. Have I been paying attention?

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Recently our small group started reading Give Me a Word, and we’re on this shared journey of paying closer attention to what our lives are saying to us. The idea is simple in theory, but hard to practice: if we slow down enough, our lives will actually teach us how to live them.

This morning, I was reminded just how difficult this practice can be. I found myself tossing and turning in bed thinking about all the worrisome things I have to accomplish for the day. It wasn’t even yet 6:30 and already I was overwhelmed by my to do list. I found myself thinking… ugh… why is life so hard.

When I feel this way, my default setting is to push harder, do more and move faster. This leads to creating the illusion of productivity. Like I’ll declutter a drawer before I face my inbox, that kind of thing. I’ll reorganize something instead of addressing the thing that actually needs attention.

But, this morning instead of jumping out of the bed to immediately get to work doing something, instead I felt a gentle nudge to pause. I grabbed my phone and opened my photo album. I started scrolling through the last two weeks.

There we were in the mountains.
There we were climbing over rocks in a creek.
There we were sitting by the fire, soaking in the hot tub at the cabin.

My breathing slowed.
My shoulders dropped.
And a new thought replaced the anxious one:

You know what? My life is actually pretty good right now.

Five minutes earlier I was spiraling. What happened?

I changed the lens through which I was seeing my life, and suddenly it got brighter.

Later during my quiet time I came across this quote (which I’m paraphrasing from the book): We often don’t see the sacred within our lives because we are distracted, we live with dulled vision and so we only see the surfaces… the anxieties and the struggles of daily living.

That doesn’t mean that the other stuff wasn’t still there. In fact, when I opened my computer to write this reflection, I faced a few of those molehills that I’d made into mountains.

And that’s the thing, our problems, worries, and stresses are so loud. But just because it’s loud doesn’t mean it’s right or most true or even the complete picture. There’s more to our lives than the noise, if only we can listen more deeply to hear it.

It’s like my favorite quote says, urgent things shout, important things whisper, listen to the whispers.

My prayer for both myself, and anyone else out there who is in a season where life feels full, sometimes too full to handle, is that we give ourselves permission to pause.

To scroll back (either mentally or through your own photo capsule).
To breathe.
To notice what’s already good.

Because your life experience is a sacred text too.

And it’s still speaking.

SDW3