aspiring to humility

I've been wanting to write about humility for several weeks now but have been stalling.  The truth is, thinking about humility theoretically is good, but it is not enough.  Writing about it is not enough.  Every moment I spend time pondering the extraordinary quality of humility, I feel called to turn my thoughts into action, to move from the cerebral to the practical.  And while humility is a quality I want my life to be defined by, I realize that there are no short cuts to becoming humble.  From my experience, the best opportunities to actually practice humility hurt.  We can practice humility when we've been wronged or treated unfairly, when we've been misunderstood, when we find ourselves clinging to the applause of some or shrinking at the disapproval of others, when we are faced with the choice to assert ourselves or put others first.  All of these opportunities and many more like them seem to have one thing in common: they come in times of difficulty.

hu-mil-i-ty 

noun        

a modest or low view of one's own importance; humbleness

Humility is beautiful, but it is not weak.  Humility is not to be mistaken for low self esteem or an inferiority complex.  In fact, the portrait of humility I find in the Bible, especially in the person of Jesus, requires immense strength of character and an ongoing commitment to choose love every time. The bible issues a wild challenge to every follower of Christ:

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:  Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death --even death on a cross!  (Philippians 2: 5-8  NIV)

Humility requires of us.   

It requires forgiveness, mercy and kindness.  It requires self-control and a willingness to step down in order to elevate others.  It requires speaking softly or not at all, when it feels more natural to raise our voice and be heard.  It requires listening, caring and for most of us, it requires a lot of practice in consciously choosing to do the hard thing.  

I wish it were otherwise, but the practice of humility does not come naturally to me. I constantly struggle internally with things that work against humility:  insisting on my right to be heard; my over-concern with what others might think of me; my desire to set the record straight, to be understood and accepted; my tendency to put myself on centre stage rather than being content as supporting cast. 

And so.... I've been praying A LOT.  I've been asking God to help me change my mind, to help me choose to think and respond differently than what comes most natural.  The bible has a really cool term for this whole process, it is called the "renewing of your mind."  In Romans 12:2 Christ followers are encouraged in this way:

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is --his good, pleasing and perfect will. (NIV Romans 12:2)

There are different ways to understand the phrase "pattern of this world" but I think the easiest way is that it simply represents the road that most of us travel naturally and easily:  the ME-first road.  In this verse, I think believers are being challenged to choose the hard way -- the way that requires a different model of thinking, literally a new mind on the matter.  And as for what is God's "good, pleasing and perfect will," that can be answered easily:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.  And what does the Lord require of you?  To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8 NIV)

Oh goodness!!  Even as I read and write in this moment, I let out a heavy sigh.

I have such a long way to go in this process.  And the hardest part of all is that practicing is really hard.  Am I willing to commit to this kind of rigorous training?  Is the outcome, a life characterized by humility, something I am willing to keep in my sights?

If I truly want to walk daily in humility, I know it means facing difficult things.  It means summoning the courage to invite opportunities, submit to this growing process, and to remind myself:  Don't just think about it.   DO IT!

(come visit me on instagram at "whisperingsoulstreams" and please take a moment to share my blog with others by clicking one of the share icons below)

words and images (unless otherwise cited) © copyright melody armstrong 2016

summer sweetness & seasons of the soul

It's breezy today and there is a soft grey cloud cover filtering out the strong, hot rays of this past week.  For the fair and freckled, like myself, the day is perfect.  I've opened the doors at either ends of the house to allow the faint scent of the river to flow through and mingle with the humid air drifting in from the lake.

I am sitting alone in my room luxuriating in the delicious solitude of this moment.  The rest of my family left for home a few hours ago and I will join them again in a day and a half.  But in the meantime, I am enjoying quiet; not necessarily silence, but the kind of quiet that lets me hear wind rustling through the leaves, the honking of rowdy geese flying low over the river, two little girls giggling at the park, the rhythm of my own thoughts flowing uninterrupted, and maybe even those whispers of God as He leans in close to share words that nourish my spirit and prepare me to move into the next season as it unfolds. For whether I am ready or not, summer is coming to a close soon.

I've just completed Mark Buchanan's book Spiritual Rhythm: Being with Jesus Every Season of your Soul.  With the carefully crafted words of a poet, Mark takes the reader on a stroll through the four seasons and the activities that characterize them, and then uses them as an analogy for the spiritual seasons of our soul.  Since it's summer now, I've especially related to the observations he makes about this time of year and how it corresponds with a summer of the soul...the beauty, the bounty, the energy, the leisure, the warmth. Who doesn't love summer?

For most of us, there is a unique sweetness about summer that makes us want to savour every moment the way we would savour the taste of a lush, ripe plum picked right off the tree and eaten while the sun's heat still permeates its skin.  (I got to do that for the first time ever this summer.  What a treat for a girl from the praires.)  Yet we know deep down, even as the sweet juice drips through our fingers and off our chin, that we must be present to the moment, giving thanks for these summer gifts even as they occur.

We help ourselves to the plums and enjoy.  If we hold onto them too long, they spoil.

I have to remember this as I try not to hold too tightly to the dreamy stretch of weightless days that have allowed us all to drift and daydream a little; to pause from the rushing, racing, accomplishing we do all year.  There have been so many "ripe plum" moments:  sitting in candlelight out on the front deck listening to my younger son play guitar till midnight, riding bike quietly under the stars with my daughter, walking and splashing along the lake shore with my mom and sister, savouring a few quiet mornings alone with my mocha and my Lord, going for a long swim up the river with my husband and a night swim out on the boat just the two of us, listening to each of my children share personal things that have been significant and meaningful to them this summer, cheering my brother on as he wake-surfs in his 60's (sorry for telling!!) and my 10 year-old nephew do the same for the first time, observing and respecting my oldest son as he becomes a man - making his own choices and stretching out into his independence, watching my kids with their cousins laughing and having fun, delighting in the deep heart-to-heart talks with a life long girlfriend during her visit,  playing volleyball in the sand until it's too dark to see, preparing and enjoying meals with a multitude of family and friends, eating ice cream with gramma and grampa and all of us, laughing at teenage boys dancing to house music beneath pulsing speakers out on the boat....all of this and SO MUCH MORE.  My heart is full to the brim and spilling over.

A year and a half ago I starting collecting letters to make up the word "nourish" to put over a collage of family images at the lake.  This summer I finally completed it and put it up on the wall.  It turned out perfectly, for I knew that our times together at the lake would be times of nourishment, for our bodies, yes, but especially for our souls.

As I spend my last few days here at the lake, I find myself thinking ahead to what next summer is going to be like, hoping for many more wonderful family times together, yet knowing that our oldest son will have graduated from high school by then and be getting ready to leave for collage in another province.  My heart aches at the thought of it.  It will be another kind of letting go and I'm not sure if I've had practice enough to do it very gracefully.  In the words of one of my favourite authors Katrina Kenison:

I looked around...and tried to memorize the moment, to burnish it by my own attention into a keepsake that I might store away now and retrieve later, on a day when the sparkle and intimacy of the holiday had long since vanished from the house...The irony, of course, is that every moment of our togetherness contains the seed of a farewell, that life is always a dance of coming together and moving away again.  Somehow we must learn to be nimble in our steps, to welcome both togetherness and solitude, to move boldly, easily, out into the world and to honour as well the soul's requirements for rest, replenishment and reflection."  (p. 249  The Gift of an Ordinary Day)

So today, in the peace and contentment of some sparkling alone moments, I thank God for all the sweetness and nourishment he has provided this summer, for the summer season of my soul right now, and for the year ahead that is full of possibilities and beauty -- even in the letting go.

words and images © copyright Melody Armstrong 2016 (unless otherwise cited)

needing a little spring?

::: 

wishing you a few moments

of happy

and

spring smiles that spill over

into laughter

maybe even a carefree afternoon 

to take a long walk

listen to the birds sing

and enjoy a little sun

on your face

:::

(I wish I could give proper credit to the photographer who took the image of the women above -- which I absolutely love.  I tore this image from a magazine but forgot to note the artist.)

fresh starts...happy 2016

My favourite moments of the Christmas season are those I spend alone or with loved ones, reflecting on God's gifts in my life.  The most immeasurable, indescribable, invaluable of all being God's gift of Himself to me -- to all of us. 

He is the gift of fresh, new beginnings; the gift of forgiven mistakes, forgotten pasts, and clean slates.  He is the gift of freedom for our souls.  

A couple thousand years ago, at just the perfect moment -planned before the beginning of time-

God did the impossible.  He became small.

The creator and mastermind behind all that we might wrap our wildest imaginations around, willingly inserted Himself into time and history, in the form of a helpless baby, born to a peasant girl who was engaged to a carpenter.  And His birth was announced to the shepherds, of course.  God lit up the heavens with stars and angel-choirs singing -- a show for the lowly and lonely and overlooked.  

This is what God always does.  He comes to those of us that want and need him most.  

He becomes small enough to be born in us,  if we choose to make any room at all for Him in our own soul's manger -- right there in the mess of it all.  

And then the Miracle grows in us.  God fills us and spills out of us.  We get to be transformed daily, if we choose, because the Creator is lovingly at work within us.

And just like Mary, who said "yes" to being a vessel wherein Christ could dwell, we have the same choice to make.  Are we willing to say yes, even the tiniest yes, to having God dwell in us?  Are we willing, even when we don't know what it means, when we're afraid, when we doubt, when we're confused and lost in our messy lives, to say yes?  

If we are, if we're willing to make any room at all for God in us, I can't help but believe that we might finally experience a widening of our imaginations and catch a glimpse of Christmas' true meaning.   

May 2016 be a year for fresh starts and saying "yes" to the best Gift of all.

Love and Hugs,

Melody

H A P P Y    N E W    Y E A R   T O   A L L    O F     Y O U!!!!     FROM ALL OF US!! 

all words and images © copyright Melody Armstrong 2016

the weeds in me....

My sister is a wonderful gardener, a real gardener, not just a wanna-be like me.  Last spring she gave me a truck load of transplants to kick start my new flower beds and I couldn't wait to put them in. 

But before the planting....before a flower bed can start to take shape, I know I've got my work cut out for me.  The ground is hard and full of weeds.  The soil isn't ready.  

For the record, weeding is hard.  It's tedious and pain-staking.  It's also critical to a beautiful garden.  So....I dig.  I bend and pull.  I turn soil and follow the roots right to their beginning.  I don't let one little weed go, because if I do, I know it will reproduce faster than anything good in that ground.  

That's the way it is with weeds.  If we don't deal with them, they take right over and choke out the beauty. 

Before long, my back aches and everything inside of me screams that there must be an easier way.  But no!!  There is never an easy way to true beauty.  So I keep on going, adding to the weedy pile of ugly but tenacious roots till the soil has all been turned and the weeds are gone.

Then comes the HOPE -- I can finally plant those seedlings of hope that become the BEAUTY I dream of all winter. 

Tender shoots finally have a place to be planted, nurtured and grow.  

But the hard stuff comes first.  That's spring for me -- that season of dealing with the hard stuff, even while glimpsing the gifts of new beginnings around me.  

So...I hope you will permit me a bit of a rant, just in case I'm not the only one who struggles in spring.....

Many people count spring as one of their favourite seasons.  Not me.  I don't mean to be a spring scrooge.  I am grateful for all the precious gifts that come with spring like longer daylight hours, kids playing later in the neighbourhood when I should be sending them to bed,  birdsong through newly opened doors, buds forming on every branch and crocuses scattered along the walking path.  I'll be the first to admit that something magical happens in me when those first shades of green begin spreading like blankets everywhere, and there's no question that the gentle fragrances of rain and apple tree blossoms and lilacs are some of life's most sensual gifts.  But for me, spring can still be hard.

Where I live, a good part of spring is brown and cold.  And, it's the season when all my running and rushing and commitments catch up with me and I feel dog tired.  Instead of spring cleaning and diving eagerly into new projects, I'm often scraping bottom -- dragging to complete what I've already started.

It's the season where all the weeds I've left unattended in my life, begin sprouting up everywhere and I'm forced to take a closer look at those things that need to be pulled up.  I know that I'm going to have to dig deep and feel the pain.

I don't want the beautiful things God is doing in my life to be choked out by deep-rooted weeds of sin.

So, I call out to the Master Creator, the Designer of my life, the Maker of my dreams, the One who calls me His own.  I know it's only His loving hands that can truly tend the garden of my soul.   

I come to the end of myself, to that place where I just can't do any more, that place where I'll just never be able to measure up and fix all the wrongs, that place where no matter how much I try, it's just not enough to pull out of the hole I've dug myself into -- and there I find Jesus.  There I find the One who saves!  

I grew up hearing the phrase "Jesus Saves."  And now I get it -- after all these years.  Yes,  there is One who saves, who rescues, who delights in making right from all the wrong....who heals my brokenness and turns my mourning into dancing, who lovingly breaks up the hard ground and digs deep enough to get the weedy roots while tenderly protecting the beauty He sees (even the stuff that's still to surface.)

When friends used to tell me that my christian faith was just a crutch, I used to disagree.  Not any more.  I've lived enough years now to realize that it doesn't take long to reach the end of myself, the end of my independence, the end of my own strength, the end of my own strivings.  Yes, do I ever need a Savior to lean on!  I really don't want to live any other way.

And so......please try to be patient with me, even as I try to be patient with myself.  No doubt, the weeding process can be a little ugly.  But join me in keeping a look-out for the flowers He's planted-- they'll be in full bloom before you know it.

With love,

Melody

words and images © copyright Melody Armstrong 2014

spring rain today

I stood under a blanket of blossoms

in the rain.....breathing apple blossom purfume 

and giggling that a girl with a matching pink umbrella 

walked into my photo at the perfect time.

had to bring a little spring with me!

text and images © copyright Melody Armstrong 2013