Taking Risks

I’ve been a little AWOL from my blog recently. It hasn’t been intentional but it has been necessary. I’m in the middle of a major change in my life and my bandwidth has been a little lower than normal. In a few of my other posts I have alluded to the fact that I have been in transition and today I wanted to share some of the details. My OneWord for 2014 is Risk and boy am I about to take a really big risk.

In 2002 I moved to Charlotte, NC, where I currently live, to help plant a church. I had no idea what I was getting myself into but I had a very clear directive from God that moving here to help was exactly what I was supposed to do. The last twelve years of my life have been the craziest, most insane years of my life. Folks, let me tell you, church planting is not for the fainthearted. But God is good and through His faithfulness the church has grown from 4 people meeting weekly for prayer to a thriving church serving hundreds of people every week. During that time my role shifted from that of Church Administrator to serving as the Executive Pastor, a role I have been in for the last six years.

At the end of 2011, I started to sense that a change was coming for me. I didn’t know what that would look like but suddenly my life stopped making sense and I went through a long wrestling period with God to figure out what was going on. It has been a long journey filled with lots of praying and fasting but now after 12 years, I am stepping down from my staff position. As of June 1, I will be transitioning into my own coaching and consulting practice.

I have this passion to help people live the stories they were born to live. I believe there is a unique seed of Divine greatness inside each of us. I want to help people learn how to rise into their unique greatness. In my coaching practice, I hope to serve those who feel as if they are meant for more but can’t figure out what’s keeping them from stepping fully into that more. The consulting arm of my services will be for churches and possibly non-profits that need an outside voice to help establish the systems and leadership structure they need to fulfill their vision.

The common thread for me in all of my services is people owning their voices and their story. People, business owners and even church leaders are prone to looking at those who are successful around them and then trying to imitate what that person, business or church did hoping to duplicate someone else’s success. I want to challenge you to discover YOUR unique seed of greatness so you can rise fully into that and become the best version of YOU possible. This principle works for businesses and churches too.

My website is in the works and as soon as it is ready I will share it with you guys. In the meantime, if you would like to be among the first to hear how things are coming along, including when my website is live, I would love for you to subscribe to my mailing list. My goal is to provide once a week updates to my subscribers until I’m done and then I will send you unique content before it hits my site so you can always be in the know.

Click here if you’d like to sign up. Thanks for following along with my musings so far. Hope to see you on my new adventures too 🙂

Changes Are A Brewing

Last Tuesday in a moment of inspiration, I decided to change the look and feel of this blog. I am a little bit in love with this new theme, it feels so much more like me. When I first started blogging, the theme I chose fit for where I was at that time in my life. But over the last few months some things have been shifting and changing for me so it was time for a new look.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be making some more changes, bringing more focus and consistency to my posts. I’ll be wrapping up the 52 Photos Project in a little bit so, for now, those posts will remain. I’ll also continue to link up for Holley’s Coffee for Your Heart series but I will also be adding some fresh, original content around some of the things that are running around in my head and heart these days.

I’ll be focusing my energy on building something new here. I hope you’ll join me on this new leg of my blogging adventures.

Much love,

Makeda

Feeling Fragile

I was going to do a post on Centering Prayer since I am so over due to put up something of an explanation. But as I came to write I realized that I need to own the space I am in and admit what I am feeling, and what I am feeling tonight is very fragile. I’ve talked before about feeling fragile but this time it is different. My frailty this time is centered around the changes that are coming for me. I’m still not at liberty to fully share but as plans become more finalized I find myself questioning the path I am taking. I wonder if I’m really supposed to be making this change and fear threatens to take both my breath and my courage.

Tonight as I did my Centering Prayer practice, I realized that I need some support for this space. The places I would normally turn to for support cannot be there for me because they don’t understand. My changing means HUGE changes for them so they are unable to hold space for me here. They pose questions and make statements that sound supportive but really their words are the primary triggers for me questioning my decision. I want them to understand, to accept and to be okay with me changing but I don’t think they can. I also don’t think I can explain my need for this change in a way that will make sense to them. I only know that to not do it would mean slowly ceasing to truly exist. I have fought…am fighting too hard to find my voice and own my truth and I cannot afford to back away from the fight simply because others don’t get it.

I recently wrote out my Life Manifesto. One of the statements in my Manifesto is “people will question you, own your truth anyway”. I’m trying to hold on to that in this space but I know I need some extra support. So if you are someone who prays, would you mind praying for me as you think of it. Pray for peace as I continue down this path. I’ve walked with God long enough to know that clarity doesn’t always come when and how we want it but His peace can still be present even in the fog. So please pray for peace. Please also pray that I will find others who will understand this place I am in and who can help offer me support as I make these changes. And finally, please pray that as my fears rear their ugly heads, I will turn and face them and not run from them. Lots of fears are showing up and I realize that is necessary part of any change but I want to use my fears as stepping stones, not stumbling blocks.

I never take it lightly when others choose to pray for me. So thank you. From the bottom of my heart, your prayers are deeply appreciated; they are a gift for which I am extremely grateful. Thank you!

Saying Yes

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark. In the hopeless swamps of the not quite, the not yet and the not at all, do not let the hero in your soul perish and leave only frustration for the life you deserved but never have been able to reach. The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible. it is yours” Ayn Rand

I’ve never read anything by Ayn Rand but this quote has found me on more than one occasion. It most recently re-presented itself as I’ve been contemplating the next steps in my life’s journey. I’ve alluded to the changes coming in my life and I’m still not at liberty to speak of them in detail but as I have considered the massive upheaval about to come to my life, fear has been nipping at my feet. I started thinking maybe I shouldn’t do this after all. Maybe I should just stay put and not risk saying no to a life that no longer serves me in order to try to find a life that honors the best of who I want to be. What if I fail? What if I just end up settling for some other iteration of my life that is still not authentic but pays the bills? What if….? The list was endless running around in my head. Top of the list of reasons why I needed to stay put was thinking I was too old. Too old to start over. Too old to begin again. Then these words found me and they stoked the waning embers of courage in my soul, reminding me that to not make this change is to risk never becoming the best version of myself I’m capable of becoming.

I had a really hard week and by the end of it my heart felt incredibly raw. To help my wounded heart I decided to art journal. I had not art journaled in awhile but I know art heals and my heart desperately needed some healing. There is no right or wrong way to art journal. Some people paint in their journals, some people draw, others use it as a way to capture their thoughts through art. For me art journaling is about uncovering the secret messages my heart is trying to whisper to me. I believe my heart is always speaking but usually I can’t hear her over the noise of other people’s voices and expectations. Art journaling gets me out of my head and into my heart.

I created four art journal pages last night. This is one of them

Reinvent Your Life

The picture of this woman just caught my eye because she looks strong and confident but in an understated way. As if to say “don’t underestimate the power of me”. The quote I wrote on the bottom says: “she believed who she could become was worth the risk of letting go who she was”. And I love that question, what will the new you say to the old you?

Through this page I hear my heart asking me to take the risk to discover who I can become. I hear my heart reminding me of the CS Lewis quote “you’re never to old to set another goal or dream a new dream”. I hear my heart saying feel the fear and do it anyway. Reinvent your life because who you will become will be more than worth the risk of letting go of this less than life you’re currently living. So even though fear is still nipping at my heels I’m going to say yes to reinventing my life. I will intentionally choose different so that I might have different. Nothing will change unless I first choose to change. So this is me declaring that I will take the risk, I will say YES!

“It’s what we say YES to that determines our life. The No’s just lead nowhere. Playing it safe is risky business” unknown (at least by me)

OneWord 365 Check-In

Every year instead of making New Year’s resolutions I choose OneWord around which I want to frame my year. My friend Alece introduced me to the idea and I have been doing it now for the last 3 years.  You can click here to learn more about how the OneWord concept works. This post is long overdue as it is meant to be a 6 month check-in on how I’m doing with my word. Seeing as it’s practically August, I’m clearly a little late getting this post done. Oh well, better late than never, right? 🙂

This year my word was Change. Every year as part of my end of year ritual I create a vision board to help me visualize the upcoming year. This year I created my board around my OneWord.  Here is a full shot of my board (pardon the blurryness of these pics I took them with my iPad as my regular camera was otherwise detained 🙂 )

Here is a close up of the top

And the bottom

My vision board has never been this large before but that tree was begging to be put on my board. On one piece of poster board it took up too much space so I just decided to break out of my normal way of doing things and I used two pieces to create this year’s board. Breaking out my normal way of doing things has definitely been the theme of this year. That tree is a several hundred years old Sequoia tree from the Redwood Forest. As old as it is, it is still growing, still changing, still discovering the full essence of what it is meant to be.

This tree was very symbolic of what I believed 2013 would be for me. At the very top of the tree I put my favorite quote by CS Lewis “You’re never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream” I am on the verge of making a pretty radical change in my life and at 41 years old I feel a little too old to be making such a big change. This tree and that quote help remind me that age is just a number and as long as I have breath in my lungs then anything is possible. My greatest wish for all of us is that we rise into the best version of ourselves possible. This year I am determined to hold on to the conviction that It is NOT too late for me to discover the full essence of who I am meant to be. If this Sequoia tree can do then I can do it too!

I have fully embraced my word this year. I set about taking the small steps that would help me make the really big change that I need to make. On my board are the words “before you take care of everyone else, take care of yourself”. Shifting to care for myself first is probably the biggest, small change I’ve made this year. I’m learning to make self-care a priority and figuring out what that looks like for me. I’m setting new boundaries and learning to say NO to others so I can YES to the things that honor my soul. As I have learned to listen to my heart more intentionally, she has gently guided me down this road of change and it is both exciting and scary all at the same time. The biggest change is yet to come and as I step into that change I will share more. For now I will say that this year I’m breathing in the courage I need to make the changes my soul so desperately needs. They’ve been baby steps so far but as my friends Teresa and Mandy remind me, baby steps count.

How about you, do you have a OneWord for this year? If so, how are you doing with your word so far?

A Peek Into The Unraveling

So I initially had this as part of my 52 Photos week 13 post but it ended up being too long and too off topic so I decided to turn it into a separate post.

These are all the books I am currently reading and each in some way is playing a significant role in my story right now.  I have already admitted to having a problem reading multiple books at once. In this case, however, the books are complementing each other really well and providing a great backdrop for this season of my life. But since awareness is the first step to recovery….Hello my name is Makeda and I seem unable to read only one book at a time 🙂

Anyhoo, here is a pic of my current reading list again, followed by a brief description of how each book is impacting me and contributing to my unraveling.

In no particular order:

Immortal Diamond by Richard Rohr – I have really been drawn to a more contemplative approach to spirituality lately and people like Rohr, Buechner and Keating are all authors I’ve taken to reading lately. What drew me to Immortal Diamond was the idea of excavating the True Self. I feel like that is a perfect description of my journey right now. From Chapter One

“I promise you that the discovery of your True Self will feel like a thousand pounds of weight have fallen from your back. You will no longer have to build, protect, or promote any idealized self image. Living in the True Self is quite simply a much happier existence”

See why I am in love with this book?! This is a slow read and I am taking my time to digest his words. I borrowed this copy from the library but I will definitely be purchasing my own because it is taking everything in me not to underline every page in this book

Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero – I am only a few chapters into this one. A friend recommended it to me awhile ago but I only recently felt as if the time was right to read it.  This book deals with the idea that spiritual maturity and emotional health go hand in hand. If we try to do all the activity typically associated with spiritual maturity without dealing with the emotional stuff, we will end up feeling burnt out and exhausted. The trick is that true emotional health can only be achieved at a deep level and the author argues that contemplative spirituality is really the best way to get there. I did not realize this book was about contemplative spirituality so it was a pleasant surprise to pick it up now and discover this fact. Love when God does things like that.

The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning – I have owned this book for awhile and honestly thought I had read it but when I picked it up recently there was not a single mark in it. I don’t read books without making some sort of mark in them so clearly I had not read it yet. This book is all about the radical message of Grace that the Gospel is really all about. I struggle to give myself grace in the areas of my shortcomings so I’m reading this book along with What’s So Amazing About Grace to help me discover what it looks like to offer grace to myself.

Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening by Cynthia Bourgeault – Centering Prayer is a new spiritual discipline that I am just beginning to explore. I plan to do a whole post on the idea of Centering Prayer because it really does deserve its own special attention. I will say this though, this discipline has probably contributed the most to the unraveling I am experiencing and while it is scary I love what is happening in me as a result.

To Be Told by Dan Allender – Dan Allender is most known for his work The Wounded Heart. But in this book, he offers up the idea that God is inviting us to co-author our futures with Him. If we listen and pay attention to the themes that are already present in our story we will discover how God is leading us into the rest of our story. It’s been a really powerful book for me and helped me see certain threads in my story. I’m not done with it yet so I don’t know how the threads will tie into my future story but uncovering the threads was HUGE for me. I will share more soon I promise 🙂

What So Amazing About Grace by Philip Yancey – I haven’t started this one yet but as I mentioned above, it’s in my pile because I believe it is a tool that can help me rediscover what grace looks like in my own life.

Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me by Ian Morgan Cron – this is my current light read. I fell in love with the author after reading his book Chasing Francis, see below. He is funny and his writing style is VERY easy to read and understand. I am really enjoying this “memoir of sorts”, as he calls it. My goal is to have at least one light read in the middle of all this deep reading I’m doing. Sometimes a girl just doesn’t want to have to think so hard 🙂

My iPad – I had to include my iPad in this pile because I have a digital copy of Chasing Francis on there and that book has been INCREDIBLE!! It is by Ian Cron, the author I mentioned above, and seriously I felt like my inside were coming alive as I read each page. It is a work of fiction that tells the story of a pastor who goes on a pilgrimage where he learns about St. Francis of Assisi.  If you get a chance, you should read it. Trust me, you won’t be sorry.

My Bible – The New Living Translation is my current translation of choice . I alternate between it and NKJV but for the moment the NLT has my heart so this is the hard copy I use when I would rather not look at the digital version 🙂

Last but certainly not least is my journal. This is where the magic happens. I read a quote once that said something along the lines of when I journal it’s as if my pen has eyes that see into my soul. This is how I feel about journaling. Every single time I put pen to paper I learn something new about myself. I typically start a new journal with the start of a New Year but when January 2013 rolled around this journal didn’t feel complete so I kept going. It has now been almost a year that I have been writing in this one and I am grateful I took the time to document my journey these last 12 months. It’s been neat to see how God has been preparing me for the change coming for me. It’s also been good to see how I have moved from total angst over this whole situation to complete peace. God is so good!

Well there you have it. This was a much longer post than normal. I still plan to talk in more depth about my unraveling. A lot of it I can’t share yet but until then I wanted to share a little peek at some of the tools helping me to navigate this space. Thank you for patiently reading through this post.

How about you? What books are you reading right now?

52 Photos Project – Week 13

This week over at 52 Photos the prompt was Layers/Stacks. Seeing as I have stacks of books everywhere in my house (I have a small problem) I figured it would be an easy choice to just snap one of those. I still opted to go with a stack of books but decided to share some of the books that I am reading right now. I tend to read multiple books at once; it’s a problem, I’m in therapy 🙂 but I digress. I mentioned in a previous post that I was on the verge of an unraveling in my life. Well each of these books is contributing to that unraveling but in a positive way. Here is my pic for this week:

The little statue was handmade in Kenya and was a gift from a friend. I call him The Thinker and having him in this pic just makes sense given all the thinking these books are prompting. Lighting candles as a way of centering myself is something I am just beginning to tap into but the label on this candle says Care and it also felt appropriate for this picture. I have another post coming that explains in more detail how these books are contributing to my unraveling. I started to include it in this post but it felt too off-topic. So I changed my mind and made that into its own post. Come back later this week to read more.

To see the other pics in this week’s gallery you can click here. And despite my best efforts I am still getting this post in just under the gun. One of these weeks I will make it well ahead of schedule. Next week’s prompt is Down Below. No idea what I’m going to do with this one. Here’s hoping some serious inspiration hits me this week. Until next time, thanks as always for stopping by to read my random ramblings.

Learning To Let Go

The theme of letting go has been echoing in my space for the last couple of days. I’m on the brink of a really significant change in my life. When I think about making this change, I alternate between fear inducing anxiety and excitement over the possibility of a new adventure. Change is hard for me and I have been navigating this particular change for almost two years now.

Initially I was just tired; I felt stuck in the mental and emotional space I was in and couldn’t figure out how to get out. I realized I had a choice to make, I could stay there or I could be courageous and choose different. I wanted so desperately to choose different but it all felt so big and almost too much to wrap my head and heart around. I tried taking baby steps but that only made me feel more lost than ever. I had all this angst and I didn’t know how to navigate myself through it. I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. I created this art journal page during that time. Everything just felt so chaotic and all I wanted was some peace.

seeking peace for the in-between

Finally I decided to let the process unfold in its own time and space. I stopped trying to figure everything out and decided to just walk out the journey as it was laid out in front of me. I stopped forcing the change and instead let the change unfold naturally. I was on vacation when I finally let go of the need to figure everything out.

pay attention to the journey

That was back in November and I’ve been slowly unraveling ever since. In the last month or so the unraveling has picked up speed. At the beginning of June I felt God call me to a 30-day fast. When I asked Him what He wanted from me during this time I heard Him say to let this be a time to hold space for the unraveling. I am three weeks into the fast and boy have I been unraveling. The details of my unraveling deserve a post all on its own so I will do that some time in the near future. No worries though, I’m not losing my mind just finding my heart again which is a really beautiful thing to experience.

As the next step of this journey into change gets closer I find myself wanting to hold on tight to the familiar. I don’t want to let go; I want to cling to what I know because the unknown is so scary. But I know that to have what I truly desire means letting go of what I have. It’s not easy but I believe it will be worth it. So this morning I am starting my day with a renewed commitment to hold loosely to the things and the people in my life. Hold loosely to this life in general because in a lot of ways I have settled for a less than existence up until now and I believe there is a different way I am meant to exist. A different way I am meant to engage God, live out my faith and be the best version of myself I am capable of being.

worth the risk

What about you? How are you at letting go and embracing change?