I want to say yes to this invitation, and also, how? How do I notice the bracing and the accompanying fear, and let go? How do I turn my attention from the reality of suffering, mine and others, back to the eternal, loving gaze of the Divine? Not to escape, but in a way that lets me remember what is true alongside the suffering.

Will I allow my heart to expand yet again, increasing the capacity to hold both?

As much as I would like an actual formula, I can only imagine it as a dance with Creator, Christ, and Spirit. A continuous movement from receiving to giving, from full to empty, alive in the flow that exists whether I’m aware or not.

As a pastor and as someone who’s learning to accompany others on the spiritual journey, I have fewer and fewer answers and more questions. I am seeing less clearly and feeling my way through the dark, even as my heart moves back and forth from braced to open. What happens in this movement, I wonder?

As I attempted to hold my braced heart with some compassion last week, I sat and reviewed my notes from year one of my spiritual direction cohort with the Companioning Center. I’m entering year two, feeling a bit parched and rusty after summer. As I read my notes from our sessions together, I stumbled upon a sequence of life-giving words from one of our beloved contemplative saints and words I accessed within myself as a response.

Julian of Norwich

Faith is nothing else but
a right understanding
of our being -
trusting
and allowing things to be;

a right understanding
that we are in God
and God
whom we do not see
is in us

An openhearted response…

Here is the word allowing, so close to consent
Will I allow?
Will I consent?
The question returns again and again
The allowing is not passive
it’s partnership
participating in the Divine Dance of life
allowing the flow to lead and guide the steps
trusting that the missed steps and stubbed toes
are covered and mended by grace
for the flow is grace
I am in the flow
held by grace
Yes, I will allow
Yes, I will consent

As I read these words months later, feeling myself bracing, I can also see myself held. I find myself returning once again to the question of allowing. Will I unwrap my heart and open myself to the Divine Dance that I have come to trust as fully capable of guiding the steps and caring for my stubbed toes and missteps along the way?

What are the practices, or steps, if you will, that will lead me back to center in this season? In the fleeting moments of stillness, in the wonder of creation, or in the beauty of being accompanied by another, can I listen for Wisdom, who is surely whispering the next step?

May my answer be yes and amen.

As always, take what’s helpful and leave the rest.

Karissa

If you’re just joining us, welcome! These writings explore the themes of awakening, transformation, and integration. Some are letters to my past self—what I wish I had known. Others arrive as poems, prayers, and reflections on the unfolding work of healing, presence, and becoming. Each piece can be read on its own, in no particular order. If you’d like to read from the beginning, you can find that here.

If these reflections resonate with you, you’re welcome to subscribe and join me here.

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There’s paradox here, and there and everywhere. I can feel the tenderness of birthdays and the wonder of celebrating this life that I get to call my own. I don’t have to ignore one for the sake of the other. I can hold both, trusting reverently that each has something to teach me. They offer up their own unique alchemy of humanity, life, love, beauty, healing, and redemption. Surely God is present in it all. I don’t have to look very hard or even very far, but I do need to look. I must see what wants to be noticed.

This is what wanted to be seen this year:

I feel my age

All 41 years

Each one

a witness

to survival and resilience

working and loving

growing and changing

endlessly becoming

Whole

Healed

Integrated

New

And yet older

Wiser

Kinder

Free

to rest and play and create

Each new day

a page

in a wondrous story

unfolding in a way

that invites me to celebrate

to savor

and give thanks

because I feel

my age

As always, take what’s helpful and leave the rest.

Karissa

If you’re just joining us, welcome! These writings explore the themes of awakening, transformation, and integration. Some are letters to my past self—what I wish I had known. Others arrive as poems, prayers, and reflections on the unfolding work of healing, presence, and becoming. Each piece can be read on its own, in no particular order. If you’d like to read from the beginning, you can find that here.

Almost 6 years ago I said to Jean, “I don’t like to play. I don’t even know what that looks like.” Since that moment, it’s been a slow slog of waking up, inviting grace into the places that needed compassion and tenderness, and then patiently experimenting with what’s actually fun.

When survival requires and demands that we grow up before our time, we can wind up with a complicated relationship with play. We learn to anticipate, plan, and work. We never learn how to inhabit our body—the present moment. We live in the future. We dream and imagine our way out of the awful, or we think our way through every current and projected problem.

This way of living shuts down the desire for playfulness and whimsy. We turn away from anything silly or childlike so often that we wake up and forget what play looks and feels like in our body. When we are constantly braced and guarded, we can’t access the playful parts of us.

The movement toward compassion, towards welcoming the parts of us that learned to survive, is what opens us up, calms and settles us, and eventually allows for curiosity. Who knew I would discover so much hidden delight inside. A whole world of wonder waiting to be explored, enjoyed, and celebrated. When I find myself deeply present to playfulness and wonder, my body breaks out in what my husband has named my “happy skip.” There’s an unself-conscious squeal of delight, followed by a very literal and child-like hop-skip. What was missed and stolen is now being discovered, awakened, and enjoyed.

As my judging parts learn to trust and soften within, there is new opportunity and time for trying new things. Who knew I would put down the non-fiction books and discover worlds of imagination and wonder inside of stories that move me to laughter, tears, and inspiration? Who knew I would enjoy painting–poorly?! Who knew I would enjoy gifting those poorly painted cards to my loved ones as offerings of my delight in them? I’m like a child who reads and creates not for performance but for the joy of creating, experiencing, and sharing the gift.

Who knew I would dance again? Not for anyone else, but for the way movement and music allows goodness to flow in and through my body. This body that I love, appreciate, and care for more than ever.

Who knew I would write poetry? I’m not even sure writing is the correct word for what’s unfolding. It’s more like who knew that poetry would write me? That it would come out of the wonder of experiencing the fullness of time?

Who knew I would stop and stare? At the birds, at the flowers, at the bark of a tree. Playing with my Creator in creation as worship bubbles up out of presence.

Who knew I would feel such tenderness for the parts of me that missed out on so much for so long. Who knew I would move forward with every intention of staying awake, open, and curious to the playful? Who knew I would say yes to the invitation to playfully imagine with God a new way of being in community with others? Who knew?

Who knew the strangers and the tulips would cause me to stop and stare and clap my hands? Aware of the playfulness of God, inviting me to join in.

Can we talk about the tulips?

The ones I’ve missed

for 40 years or more

No, not the ones you buy in the store

but the ones waving hello to me

today

from the dirt

in someone’s yard

Planted haphazardly

in the desolate months

without any signs of life

Until they arrive

singing of beauty

and delight

Thank you

to all of Boston’s quiet strangers

who planted without certainty

small bulbs of life

buried in darkness

now dancing for me

and you

in the morning light

As always, take what’s helpful and leave the rest.

Karissa

You are finding freedom and wholeness in new and deeper ways with each turn of the season.

Survival is first. You will work hard, push through, and do what needs to be done in order to resist the heavy pull toward death that circles around you.

Then you will begin to build and heal. You will create a life that can hold you. You will establish relationships and rhythms that bring safety, security, and confidence. This, too, is work.

You will continue to move toward the Life that draws you. You will courageously examine what needs to be seen, held, and gentled into. You will allow healing to reach the places you would rather leave hidden and unexamined.

And then, somewhere along the way, you will begin to notice a shift.

You are not quite so driven to build and heal. You are invited to allow.

To allow what is, and whatever will be.

So you find yourself walking, practicing the rhythm of centering prayer. And when the rain comes suddenly, you pause and consider:

Will I allow the rain?

Will I wait for what I cannot control

Will I watch with wonder
as signs that point to life arrive

Around
within
without warning

As clouds roll in
will I hunker down
or venture out

As wind blows
will I listen, still
will I notice it in the trees
or close my eyes
immovable to the sway
or run away

As the first subtle drops begin to fall
will I cover and hide
or will I open and allow

The feel of life
drip dripping on my skin

The smell of new life
awakening my imagination

The sound
a constant, encouraging
symphony of hope

The taste of goodness
that only arrives as gift

Grace

Will I allow the rain
to refresh
to fill
to supply

My soul
my longing
my lack

As always, take what’s helpful and leave the rest.
Karissa

New life is on the way, just as surely as the blooms unfolding before your eyes. Allow the lilies and the cherry blossoms to remind you of the hope that is your inheritance. Just as the seasons come and go each year, your life will be filled with the rhythm of its own seasons. You will learn how to give and take, hold and wait, plant and harvest, and rest and recover in a way that becomes more and more natural to you. As you learn and live the pattern (again and again) the waiting, the darkness, and the hard soil of life will not alarm you the way they have in the past. You will come to trust that beauty grows in the dark and in the hard places. You will come to anticipate the budding blossom of beauty and goodness that is invisible in the soil but pushes through when you least expect it.

There will be times to give and to give generously without regard for self. Along the way you will become mindful to balance the giving with receiving. For it’s in the receiving and giving, in the dance between the two, that you participate with the Spirit of God. We are created for connection and mutuality, which means that there must be a flow of give and take. If we only ever give, we shrivel and harden, and if we only ever take, we become bloated, isolated, and centered on ourselves. Life is found in the mutuality of life with God and life with others. Seasons of giving, seasons of receiving, seasons of a balanced mix, and times when one is more intense will surely unfold before you.

The holding and waiting will challenge you the most. Even as I write the words I find my body taking a breath and releasing a sigh. You are wired for action and enjoy accomplishing tasks. This is good and can be a source of life, but when the action becomes compulsive and frantic, we have left the dance with life and traded it for things that fill but do not satisfy. We must learn to hold – the weightiness of disappointment, grief, and sadness. Anger too. We must hold and allow the hard. I know it will seem as if this will keep you stuck, but it integrates, heals, and is necessary for life. Then there’s the waiting. What is it about waiting? It seems to pick at your insecurity and your fear. Your ego really does not like to wait. It’s as if the ego would rather take ineffective action than sit in the waiting. Let’s be kind to those parts of us as we remind them of all the seeds that sprout in the darkness and waiting. We learn to trust the slow work of God in the waiting. We learn that much happens in the waiting that doesn’t require us to lift a finger. We can trust that God is working and tending to the life that grows as we wait.

The planting and harvesting will come most naturally to you. You will learn to notice the energy of your body, the ideas and strategies, the clarity of focus, the ability to move into flow. Enjoy the seasons of action, and don’t forget to rest and play. Trust the energy and clarity to arrive according to sacred time. Celebrate and give thanks for their arrival. Remember they will come and go, and you don’t need to force the flow. Even as you find yourself enjoying the flow of action, return again and again to the truth of your inherent value and dignity.

Maybe holding and waiting isn’t the hardest? It may actually be rest and recovery. You will learn and learn again the rhythm of rest. You will find that recovery becomes necessary more often than you want to admit. Sometimes rest and recovery require short bursts, and other times you need longer pauses. Listen to your own intuition. Your body will be a helpful advocate as you listen for the rhythms.

Sometimes the rhythms are forced upon you and other times you have more freedom to flow in and out. There is more than enough grace for it all. Return, over and over again, to grace. Whatever season, remind yourself that you are connected and held by Love. Grace fills in all the gaps, weaknesses, missteps, and mistakes. Return and rest in the reality of that Love in every season. The deep center is present to you, no matter where you find yourself. When you find yourself in the depths of the dark and hard places, you can remember that the lilies and the cherry blossoms will bloom again. New life will bloom within you again.

As always, take what’s helpful and leave the rest.

Karissa

You will learn to trust the signs of new life, even when your eyes can’t seem to find them. Right now everything is dark, and you feel lost without direction, but you will not remain there forever. You will, however, find yourself there again and again, and with each return to the darkness, your ability to trust what you cannot see will grow.

New life eventually arrives with surprising clarity. Its ease and joy are a startling contrast to the difficulty of waiting. It may not be true for everyone, but you will begin to notice that your life is a pattern of seasons. Working and planting, waiting and darkness, light and life and an abundance of joy. Over and over again you move through with increased capacity to hold the unknown, the uncomfortable, the tenderness of disappointment, and vulnerability of smallness.

In each season, you are learning to return to center, to “center down,” as Howard Thurman would say. The seasons come and go, light is disguised by darkness, certainty is lost, the way is closed, and yet you find that you can return to Presence. You can attend to the One who lives within you and fills in all the gaps around you. You can choose to abide in Love. Sometimes the returning, attending and abiding are filled with a felt sense of what’s true. There will be a tangible, palpable, and totally ineffable experience of it all. Other times, you will return, attend and abide in total darkness. The felt experience will dim, God will seemingly hide God’s face, and you will wonder at the shift.

When this happens, it will be helpful to read the experiences of the saints, mystics, and desert mothers and fathers. In their stories, you will come to understand that when God seems to hide, you are often on the threshold of new life. You are learning to walk by faith. You are learning purity of heart. Allow their stories and experiences to give you a handle to hold in the dark. Allow them to remind you that you’re not lost and you’ve not done something wrong.

You are fertile soil holding the seeds of new life, and today that requires darkness. You may not be able to see, or feel, but you can trust.

You can hold what history has gifted to you, while attending to the present moment, and holding space for hopeful anticipation. You are learning how to live in the fullness of time. So where do you find yourself? Trust that you are where you are meant to be today, and that the rest will unfold in time.

As always, take what’s helpful and leave the rest.

Karissa

P.S. This is part one of a two-part series. Part two will be available to you next week.

Eventually, you will learn rest. This will not come naturally to you, but with time, attention, and practice, you will come to trust its tug on your soul. Your body and nervous system have truly only known one way of being, which was less about being and more about doing. As you come to trust that you are safe, you will discover what it looks like to shift into a new gear, a way of allowing yourself to simply be a human being.

You will wonder at the pull to rest. You will resist it, you will deny it, you will even try to silence it. The voice of fear says that you must keep going, working, and producing in order to be valuable. The inner voice of love speaks softly and gently in the moments of quiet, inviting you to pause, rest, and know God. As you learn to listen to the inner voice of love, you will learn to trust the narrow way.

Truly, rest requires trust. We must trust that our value is inherent and not earned by incessant activity and productivity. We must trust that our anxieties will not become realities the moment we pause our effort. We trust our bodies to help us notice when our weariness needs gentleness and compassion.

All of this is counterintuitive to the way you have learned to survive. You will worry that slowing down, practicing a Sabbath, and listening to your body’s cues will turn into laziness. You will wonder about losing your drive, your energy, your ability to get things done. Trust the inner voice of love that invites you to rest. Trust that you do not need to earn the pause. The pause is a gift of grace. There are many things that will wear you out and wear you down. The invitation to return to the inner voice of love, to the living waters that won’t run dry, and to the Spirit of God within you, is always there. No matter what you face, or where you go, the invitation follows. Rest, dear one. Remember that you are a beloved child of God. That is your inheritance, the gift of grace that cannot be earned.

Return. Rest. Repeat.

You will find that the practice of rest feels like a stretch in the beginning. Your body is doing something new and different that it doesn’t quite understand. After a while, it becomes a habit that you ease your way into over and over again. A time comes when you begin to see the freedom that is yours when you no longer resist. You slowly begin to return and respond almost unconsciously and without hesitation. There’s an inner yes that answers on your behalf. Remember these subtle glimpses when you inevitably find yourself filled again with judgment and doubt in the face of your need. Listen and trust the voice that whispers, “Come to me when you are weary and burdened and find rest.”

As always, take what you need and leave the rest.

Karissa

P.S. The inner voice of love is a phrase that comes from Henri Nouwen. I find it to be a lovely way to describe the voice of God/Spirit/Divine within all of us. You can find his book by that title linked here. I highly recommend it.

You are well-acquainted with fear. Your body understands terror. Even still, you will try to talk yourself out of feeling afraid. You’ll do your best to rationalize your way out of anxiety, but your body is holding and remembering what you weren’t ready or able to face before (along with all of the new things that get piled on top.) Your instinct will be to run, and then when that doesn’t work, you will freeze and numb. The invitation unfolding here is to gently allow your body to feel, express and move through the fear. You will learn to appreciate the signals–a racing heart, tense shoulders, and shallow breath, as ways your body is working to get your attention.

Your invitation is to listen, notice, and gentle in. In the beginning, you will try to work through all of this on your own. After that doesn’t work (again and again), you will come to accept that you need the support of a trusted professional to partner with you in the listening. The tools and practices you learn will go with you into the future where there will be cause for more fear and anxiety. You will come to see that they are not your enemy. They are signals, working to get your attention while protecting your most vulnerable parts. A day will come when you learn how to listen to your fear, to feel it, learn from it, and then lead it back to peace. This will happen over and over again so don’t be alarmed. This is part of the reality of living with your unique experiences in a world mixed with horror, grief, beauty and goodness.

You will find courage as you learn to allow God to accompany you in your fear. You will come to understand, by experience, that “do not fear”1 isn’t a commandment you’re failing at, but a kind reminder of what’s possible when our life is lived in awareness of Presence. You will learn to pause, to check in, to breathe, and pray2…

Breathe in…

Even when we feel

Breathe out…

Afraid

Breathe in…

We are held and known and loved

Breathe out…

By the One who holds the world

Some days will require you to give this practice intentional focus and resolve. Some days you will feel carried by grace. Most days will be a mixture of both along with a growing trust that all shall be well3 regardless of what you do or don’t do. You will come to trust more and more that all of us are truly held and known and loved.

As always, take what’s helpful and leave the rest.

Karissa

As we welcome in a new year, I’m writing to you with a mixture of emotion. I’m carrying a sense of heaviness and grief and also a hopeful anticipation of goodness to come.

Richard Rohr’s latest book The Tears of Things was a helpful guide for me last year as I carried mostly heaviness and grief at the beginning of 2025. At the beginning of the book he writes that if you do not transform your pain and egoic anger, you will always transmit it in another form. This transformation is the supreme work of all spirituality and spiritual communities. Those communities offer us a place where our sadness and rage can be refined into human sympathy and active compassion.

As I hold my own anger and sadness, and a small part of what I see as collective anger and sadness, I understand it is vital that I continue to participate in communities like Rohr describes above. While I trust that my own personal, contemplative prayer practice is important, I know it must also be practiced within the context of a loving and diverse community if I want to put love into action.

I have discerned two ways I am to participate with Love in the coming year: one I will attend and one I will begin.

I will be attending The Black Contemplative Prayer Prayer Virtual Summit and I want to invite you to join me. I want to participate in a spiritual community that I know has much to teach me about compassionate, non-violent resistance (and more.)

I will also be starting a gathering I’m calling Church for the Rest of Us. I began to sense an invitation last year to create a faith community for folks that are wandering and wondering if there’s a place for them within the Christian church. There are so many of us that want to practice the way of Jesus with others, but there isn’t always a faith community in our neighborhood that is in alignment with our evolving faith. If that’s you, this may be something to consider. I don’t know exactly how it will unfold, but we will begin meeting together in virtual, relational, and highly interactive spaces soon. Here’s an excerpt from what I wrote yesterday…

What if Jesus meant what he said when he extended the invitation to come to him when we are weary, tired, and burned out on religion. What if he meant what he said when he spoke about not putting anything ill-fitting or heavy on us? What if we get to learn a new rhythm of grace that goes against the grain of all we’ve known, but speaks a resounding YES into the deepest longings and desires of our heart?

If you’re curious, if this new expression of church resonates with you on any level, I would invite you to subscribe to the newsletter here. That will be the space where you will have access to information about values, theological distinctives, and eventually plans to gather. You are also welcome to pass the information along to anyone you know that may be interested.

My hope is that Church for the Rest of Us will become a space where we practice the way of Jesus together and allow the Spirit to transform our anger and sadness into empathy and compassionate action. This is holy and good work and I think we need one another to accomplish it.

On Transformation (this newsletter) will continue to be a space where we discover together what it looks like to experience growth and transformation, and I’m honored to be on that journey with you.

As always, take what’s helpful and leave the rest.

Karissa

You have come to rely upon a critical and judging internal voice, and with good reason–she’s kept you in line for decades. The voice that warns, critiques, and constantly finds ways for you to improve has helped you create an image that you’re quite proud of. In many ways this internal voice helped you survive that which should not have been. Now that you’ve come through to the other side, you’ll have a decision to make. Will you trust this new voice that whispers within you?

The new voice is gentle, kind, and compassionate. It stands in stark contrast to what you’ve been used to, and it’s easy to miss or dismiss. You will fear that this new voice will make you soft, weak, and more prone to failure, but that’s all illusion. The voice of compassion will lead you into tender spaces that open you up to experience the fullness of your human life. It’s in this fullness that you’ll encounter the presence of Christ in new and unexpected ways. (Not to mention joy and all the other good stuff too.)

Part of the exhaustion you feel is tied to the driving force of the internal critical voice you’ve known all along. She cannot stop or rest, so you are not allowed to stop or rest. She will be wary of any talk of feelings, gentleness, or other soft words. Thank her for being on alert all of this time, and invite her to take a breath and pause. Can you be curious together about what this new voice has to say? Can you consider the possibility that compassion is a gift you’re meant to receive?

You might consider suggesting a trial run where you look at the fruit of your experience as evidence. Will allowing space for your feelings actually sabotage all of your hard work? Does acknowledging your humanity and human experience turn you into someone that no longer contributes in meaningful ways? Is this kind and gentle internal dialogue going to set you up for utter disaster? Who are you and what will you become when you stop listening to the driving voice of critique? What becomes of you when you surrender and soften to the voice of Love within you?

These are some of the questions you will face in the middle of night and in the quiet of the day. They will keep you doubting yourself and the possibility of what’s unfolding within you. This is when we trust the fruit. Not only in this practice, but in all of the growth and healing to come. When you feel pulled outside of what you’ve known, when you’re no longer comfortable, when you’re afraid of a misstep, trust the fruit. Are you moving closer to Love? As you experience the anxiety of change, do you sense an undercurrent of peace in the quiet moments? Are you finding yourself surprised by joy? Do the small things grab your attention and take your breath away with a sudden inexplicable jolt of awe and wonder? Are you finding yourself stretching further and further in patience with yourself and others? How about kindness? Are you startled by the kind words flowing internally? Notice the way your internal dialogue becomes a spring that spills out to the people around you.

As you practice kindness towards yourself, you will inevitably have more of it to extend to others. What about gentleness? You’ll find this is directly connected to mindful presence. You can gentle into feelings and sensations, allowing them to be felt and acknowledged in a way that brings wisdom and clarity. Feeling and listening with gentleness allows for integration where in the past what’s been ignored, stuffed, and numbed eventually leaks and what comes out is most definitely not gentle.

Have you ever wondered why self-control is last on the list of fruit of the Spirit Paul writes about? You have prided yourself on self-control for as long as you can remember, but you are discovering a new way of being. Self-control is no longer harsh and demanding, but life-giving in a way that allows for freedom and openness, mistakes and missteps, and grace and joy. The critical voice got you here, but she does not have the ability to lead you into the new life unfolding within you. Let’s honor her and thank her for her hard work and loyalty, and then let’s free her to experience all of the goodness this new voice of Love is offering.

As always, take what’s helpful and leave the rest.

Karissa

Remember when Jesus talked about the birds? There were also lilies, coins, seeds, leaven, bread, and sheep. I know there were others, but those are the ones that are top-of-mind in this moment. Jesus was a brilliant teacher, and he used the stuff of our everyday life to help us begin to notice the loving care of God surrounding and filling our moments. When we allow them to, these ordinary items become tactile and tangible reminders of the unseen presence of God. They remind us that Presence is always lovingly and tenderly at work in our lives.

Does a day go by when you don’t hear or see the birds? It’s more likely that days go by without noticing the presence and music of the birds, but they’re always there. Days go by when I forget to notice and attend to the presence of God, and then all of a sudden the stuff of life jolts me back into awareness. These moments lift us, even if temporarily, out of the darkness, the chaos, and the mundane and realign our hearts with the steady rhythm of God’s loving care.

Remember the birds, and how all of their needs are met? How much more does God care for you? Is there a detail that goes unnoticed? Is there a moment too insignificant? If the hairs on our head are numbered, then surely the details of our lives are contained within Presence. There will be times when this truth feels so real you can almost taste it. The veil will part and there will be glimpses of beauty, peace, goodness, and an assurance that all shall be well. Savor those fleeting moments. Store them up like a squirrel with a mouthful of nuts because most of life will be lived with long stretches in between those glimpses.

It may not be so for others, but you will have long stretches of darkness and desert where it seems as if the presence of God has suddenly left the room. The dryness will keep you longing for the One you know to be good and true. Stay with the longing. When the days are long, and dark, and dry, it will be even more important to notice the birds. Allow their presence to remind you of the Presence that’s temporarily hidden from you. Allow their song to stir your heart to awe and wonder. Allow their freedom to inspire your courage to pursue your deepest longings. The veil will part again, the desert won’t last forever, and the darkness cannot put out the light. Until then, allow the birds to become friends, ministers, and sacred reminders of the Holy holding this very moment.

Practicing Presence:

Consider taking 5 minutes to walk or sit outside. Notice the stuff of life that reminds you of the unseen Presence Jesus taught us about. Ask God to help you remember a time when the veil parted and you sensed the loving care of God in your life. Take a moment to remember, savor and give thanks for what comes to mind.

As always, take what’s helpful and leave the rest.

Karissa

This isn’t all or nothing, jump in the deep end, get it done fast kind of work. We ease in. If we knew, truly knew, the extent of the work, the depth of the pain, the time it will truly take, we likely would never get started. So we gentle in, we ease in, we take one small yet ridiculously brave step. We begin, and then we begin again until we wake up one day with a confidence in our Self and in God that we didn’t have before. We ease into the tender places, we look with eyes squinted at the pain because to look at it in its fullness is like being blinded by the sun or swallowed by the darkness.

Don’t let anyone convince you to go fast and hard. Your body knows the way. She is your guide and your advocate, and your greatest support. Whether in her strength or in the way she yells for your attention, she is working for your good. Ease in and listen to what she has to tell you. The mindfulness of this work becomes a partner in the journey towards healing. In the beginning she is speaking a language foreign to your rational mind and difficult for you to understand. Go deeper. Keep listening. Along the way you will learn to understand the language of the heart and body. Little by little you will become aware of what she’s carrying for you. Hopes and dreams, fears and insecurities, warnings and premonitions, groanings and sensations. All of it carries meaning that’s deeper than words. Your rational mind will want to push and prove and criticize and compare, but the invitation to ease in remains. Let’s listen. Let’s rest and pause and come up for air when the weight of the work feels like a punch to the gut that takes your breath away.

This combination of Self, Soul, body, and Christ in you is worth trusting. Allow them to set the pace, which is always slower than we’d like. When you feel overwhelmed, unsure of where to begin, or how, turn within. Ease into a gentle awareness of breath and Presence. Resist the lie that you must work and will your way to healing. Yes, there’s work involved, but it’s always a work of grace in partnership with Self and Spirit. You will find in time that it is less about willing your healing and more about surrendering to it. Easing into it. Clearing out the grief and pain to make room for peace and joy. There’s a holy exchange. We grieve and lament and process our pain, and the Spirit transforms it into joy. The darkness will feel vast, capable of swallowing you whole, but the darkness cannot drive out the light. Even in the darkest night, and the most horrific places, the light of Christ shines. You don’t have to plunge deep into the darkness, in fact, that likely isn’t wise. As with all things that are big and scary and intimidating, you can ease your way in, trusting that you are never alone. Even as you face the darkness, you can trust that it is in Christ that you live and move and have your being. Trust Presence. Even when your feelings tell you of absence, allow your breath, the sun, the breeze, or the rain on your skin to remind you of Presence. This is faith, and even the faith of a mustard seed can move the mountain of your pain, creating space for unspeakable, indescribable joy. Ease in and trust.

One of the practices you may find helpful as you ease in is a breath prayer. I’ll invite you now to take a couple of really good deep, cleansing breaths. Breathe in through your nose, pause at the top, then slowly release the breath.

(Breathe in) Be still and know

(Breathe out) That I am God

(Breathe in) Be still

(Breathe out) and know

(Breathe in) Be

(Breathe out) Still

(Breathe in) Be

(Breath out) -

Repeat on your own as needed.

As always, take what’s helpful, and leave the rest.

Karissa

Above all, trust in the slow work of God. And it is slow. This will frustrate your driven, achievement oriented, mostly type A personality, but learning to trust that the best work lingers and unfolds within you slowly will lead to more freedom and life. At first, slowing down will feel like a punishment, a consequence, a pain that you want to fix, but with time your relationship with slowness will evolve into a (sometimes) non-anxious presence. You will suddenly find yourself mindfully present to the moment, with others, yourself and God in a way that startles, baffles, and then delights you.

Grace will be the only explanation for the way the hidden, slow work of God makes its way to the surface of your life. It will open you up and leave you tender. From this place of tenderness, you’ll begin to learn how to return to the place of God within you even when there are people, projects, and problems threatening to force you out. One day you’ll wake up to find yourself savoring your life in a way that used to seem impossible.

Surely surrender is at the heart of the matter. You will spend much of life in a flurry of activity doing whatever you think will help, fix and heal, but there will be joy that comes from learning the slowness of God. Trusting the slowness of God. Time is a funny thing, and you will feel as if you are always behind and always rushed. Learning the slow work of God will teach you to become aware of time stretching into something that expands and lingers and surprises you with unexpected delight.

Of course right now you’re exhausted, stretched thin, and desperately clinging to the bits of hope you find shimmering in the chaos of the day. Allow all of that to be, practice compassion for yourself, and trust the grace unfolding before you. Trust the God that works and wills for your good, and is present and active in the secret and hidden places of your life. The work is slow and the work is good. You can trust in the slow work of God.

A Prayer by Pierre Teilhard de Chadin, SJ

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

We are quite naturally impatient in everything,

to reach the end without delay.

We should like to skip the intermediate stages.

We are impatient of being on the way.

to something unknown,

something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress

that it is made by passing through

some stages of instability–

and that it may take a very long time

And so I think it is with you;

Your ideas mature gradually–let them grow,

let them shape themselves, without undue haste.

Don’t try to force them on,

as through you could be today what time

(that is to say, grace and circumstances

acting on your own good will)

will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit

gradually forming within you will be.

Give Our Lord the benefit of believing

that his hand is leading you,

and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself

in suspense, and incomplete.

As always, take what is helpful and leave the rest.

Karissa

You don’t get to choose what happens to you, but you always get to choose your response. That’s where you’ll find access to freedom, joy, and peace. This isn’t escapism or denial. All the awful emotions you’re trying to keep under wraps must be acknowledged, felt, and moved through.

Your response begins in the space that opens up after you’ve felt what needs to be felt. This is the space where you choose not to stay stuck in the pain. You choose to do what you can. You choose the next helpful thing. Running from, sitting in, or moving through are all difficult in their own way, but only one path leads to life.

This is where the grace of God meets our partnership and expands within us and through us. Sometimes my next helpful thing was asking a friend or professional for support. Sometimes it was picking up a book that taught me a new way of seeing, a new way of being in the world. Sometimes it was a nap, saying no, or saying yes. Sometimes it meant getting lost in a story or enjoying a nourishing meal.

Part of the work is learning to mindfully consider what we need in order to move through our pain and disappointment. Trust me when I say that the deepest part of you already knows. Your true self knows and has access to this wisdom. Our job is to pause and allow the silence to still our hearts long enough to listen. It’s in the listening that we learn to trust our deepest longings.

The surface compulsions feel different from a true response. They’re driving and polarizing and motivated by anxiety and self-protection. The deeper longings are like a subtle drawing, a lingering invitation that continues to whisper in the stillness. They sound like compassion and feel like peace. Can you tell the difference?

Maybe your next step is learning to pay attention to the difference between compulsions and invitations. When we act from compulsion, our lives get smaller, but when we respond to invitations we inevitably open up and expand. When Jesus talks about dying to self, I think this is part of what he meant. Dying to these compulsive parts and saying yes to the true self that leads to life.

Pay less attention to the activity and more to the motivation behind it. What’s at the heart of your desire to work, please, serve, give, protect, play, or plan? Is your compulsion to act driven by fear and anxiety, or do you sense a gentle invitation that comes from a deeper longing and feels like peace and contentment?

This is a muscle we learn to exercise, and none of us gets it right all the time. This may be where grace is most needed in our journey, the place where we’re learning a different way, longing for it, yet still fumbling along. Even in failure, there’s the choice to start again, to try again, to keep going.

Our growth, any kind of growth, is not linear. It’s cyclical. We circle around and around, feeling like we’re taking two steps forward and one step back. We may find our footing for a season, only to be thrown deeper into the same themes we thought we’d conquered. In that place we’re faced yet again with the invitation to dig deeper. We uncover new layers that need compassionate attention and gracious healing. The work doesn’t end or necessarily get easier, but we do get stronger.

Consider taking a moment to gentle into the quiet, listening deeply. What invitation do you sense? What is your next helpful thing?

As always, take what’s helpful and leave the rest.

P.S. A lovely book I read that is titled “The Next Right Thing” by Emily P. Freeman may be what inspired the title and some of the content of this essay. If you’re in a season of discernment, I would recommend checking it out.

Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying that a relationship isn’t possible until you find your way home. Of course that isn’t true, and your experience up to this point tells you so. What I’m saying is that Christ lives within you. Just as the prodigal son returned home to the Father, we must return home to Christ who waits within us. The work of embodiment and reconnecting with our bodies expands our capacity for intimate awareness of what already is: the reality of Christ within us.

Can you imagine being awake to living in the reality of Christ, what the Apostle Paul describes in the New Testament, while spending most of your moments outside of your body? Can you imagine what it would be like to spend your time, energy, and attention chasing the things that numb and distract you, only to discover that you were also numbing and distracting yourself from the reality of God within you?

And what about all of the ways we’ve been taught and conditioned to look for God outside of ourselves? We’ve been conditioned to look to someone else for spiritual authority, discernment, and wisdom. This is another way we run away from our inheritance and our home. Of course others play a vital role in a healthy spirituality, but we lose something precious when we hand over all of our attention and trust to someone else’s interpretive experience. Reconnecting with our bodies allows us to reconnect with an embodied experience of God.

All of this is necessary for your healing and transformation. Everything is spiritual because you are a spiritual being. You are human, yes, but you also carry the Spirit of the living God inside of you. Now, please don’t misunderstand. That doesn’t mean the Spirit is only in you. The Spirit is wise and playful and takes delight in being found in the most unexpected of places. So until you find your way home again, you can trust that the Spirit will meet you wherever you are, gently inviting you into deeper awareness of love.

You may hear leaders teach that therapy and trauma work are not necessary for healing and spiritual growth. That may be true for them, but I would tell you that they are vital for us, even if they are also wholly incomplete. Your ability to live awake to the reality of God within you and around you is tied to the integration and healing your body is crying out for. You have had beautiful encounters with God. You have experienced what is Real, and you are hungry for more. You know deep in your being that you have barely scratched the surface of the breadth of God’s love. Trust that intuition. There will always be more to this life with God.

It’s possible that others may not need the same things you need. Allow them the freedom of discovery, and shift your attention back to the work of God in your own story. As you come home to your body and allow the work of therapy to heal and integrate the parts crying out for your attention, a new spaciousness opens within you. Can you imagine how the Spirit will begin to breathe life into all of that new space? You may not be able to see it yet, but I can hold that vision for you with a hopefulness that brings tears to my eyes.

Suddenly, instead of running away from home to numb and distract yourself, you’re willing to return home. It’s in the returning that you find the loving embrace of the One who always was, always is, and always will be. Here you suddenly find that the invitation to silence and solitude feels like balm for your soul instead of blaring alarm. This new capacity for silence and solitude ushers you into a fuller awareness of what Paul meant when he wrote about being in Christ. You begin to experience, in your body, that it is in Christ that we live and move and have our being. That experiential knowing comes to you through the gift of therapy, embodied practice, theological learning, and contemplative prayer. They are all gifts, and each of them is necessary for the journey.

As always, take what’s helpful and leave the rest.

Karissa

What I experienced, and what I’ve seen in others, is that this disconnection was a gift that served us really well, up to a point. But eventually, there comes a time when the body works hard to grab our attention. This often happens around midlife if we’ve been privileged enough to create a bit of safety and security. It’s as if we’ve proven to our bodies that we’re truly out of survival mode, and so the body begins to trust that we can finally handle what’s been hidden, ignored, and overlooked.

We’re good. We’ve left the demons behind, stuffed them in a box, sealed it shut, locked it tight, and hidden the key in the deepest recesses of our minds. We likely have a place of comfort and safety to return to each day, a small circle of trustworthy friends and loved ones, and a healthy amount of success that has helped restore our confidence. It’s in this season that the body begins its attempt to reconnect.

There are many ways the body speaks to us. In the beginning, it often looks like gentle nudges and small inconveniences, but because we’ve trained ourselves to disconnect, we don’t notice. That’s when the body begins to poke and prod, then shout, then push and shove. And it’s usually at that point that most of us finally go: “What the hell is wrong?”

This might look like chronic headaches or pain, digestive issues, autoimmune disorders, anxiety, depression, or panic attacks. I didn’t know it at the time, but my body started with headaches, moved on to stomach issues, and then marched right into anxiety and full-blown panic attacks. It was the panic attacks that finally caused me to stop and ask what was happening. It was out of desperation that I began to consider what kind of support I would need in order to move forward into healing and freedom.

After the panic attacks, I returned to therapy and received a PTSD diagnosis. I can still remember the first time my therapist asked me, “Where do you feel that in your body?” I looked at her like she had three heads. It’s an emotion. What do you mean, where do I feel it in my body? I literally had no idea how to answer that question.

As I look back, I can see how that moment was the beginning of finding my way home. I began stumbling my way back into my body after more than 30 years away. I began to see all the nudges, the pushes, the small pains, even the panic, as invitations to come home to myself. Invitations to become mindful, to be present in my body. Invitations to listen, to feel, to respond. Invitations to pay attention to the places within that need compassionate care.

In a lot of ways, it felt like opening Pandora’s box. There was so much there, and I was scared. I was scared of being overwhelmed, scared of not knowing how to find my way out, and terrified that I’d discover pain or memories that would leave me broken and unable to function or show up for my people.

But what I found instead was a paradox: that two seemingly opposite things can be true at once. I discovered that coming home to see the darkness and pain that had been hidden created space for light, healing, and joy. I discovered that every courageous choice to see, to feel, and to acknowledge led to a new spaciousness, a lifting of the heaviness.

It’s almost like when something heavy falls on your foot. To relieve the weight, you have to bend down, work your way underneath it, and lift it off. It’s like that with the pain we carry. It feels like something crushing us, but we can’t just kick it away. We have to dig deep, bend low, get underneath the heaviness, and lift with our whole being to find relief.

So, my friend: what has your body been trying to tell you lately? What have you been feeling or experiencing that you can’t seem to fix?

Sometimes this is a signal that emotional wounds are calling for our attention. You might be thinking, “What wounds? I’m fine, life is good, everything’s fine.” But is it? Or might there be some things stirring within you that deserve your curiosity? Sometimes it’s old wounds crying out for compassionate care, sometimes it’s weariness clamoring for rest and margin, and other times it’s a long-lost dream or desire waiting for space to blossom.

There are a million different messages our bodies may send over the course of our lifetimes. Now is the time to start listening. Now is the time to reconnect, to become mindful, to take your place in your body.

Now is the time to come home to yourself.

As always, take what is helpful and leave the rest.

Karissa

P.S. If you are curious to learn more, here are links to some of the books that I found helpful as I began to reconnect and listen to my body.

The Body Keeps the Score by van der Kolk

Burnout by Nagoski

When the Body Says No by Maté

The Wisdom of your Body by McBride

It doesn’t really matter what the work is. Enneagram work, therapy, leadership development, trauma work, spiritual growth…I always want to know when I’m going to see results. I want to know when I can check off the box and move on to the next goal or project. I also want to feel less alone in my story. I want some proof that another human has lived to tell the tale of a story like mine. I want proof of a happy ending. Hell, most days I would take proof of a mediocre ending.
This could be my own unique flavor of neuroses popping up, but I don’t think I’m alone here, at least not completely.

I began writing at the end of 2024. After almost eight years of my own intense internal work, I felt drawn to put words to my experience in a way that might help answer someone else’s questions. I began to wonder if I could give away something I wished I’d had. Could I give words to my experience in a way that might help another feel less alone in the middle of their story?

On December 9th, 2024, the first words I wrote to you were: “This might be the hardest and most courageous work you do.” I’m not sure what the details of your particular work are (and I probably won’t ever know,) but what I wrote is still yours to hold, if it’s helpful. What I can do is imagine the heaviness that you carry. I know you’re working so hard to carry the pieces, do the things, and care for your people. In the midst of the exhaustion of day-to-day survival, maybe you even find a minute to process what’s been screaming from the depths for your attention.

What I began to write and continue to write is what I would say to myself. If I could cast a spell on the words and have them arrive in my mailbox all the way back in 2017, this is what I’d say:

I can’t tell you when the work will be done, and I can’t tell you that it gets easier, but I am here to tell you that healing is on the other side of whatever you have to work through. I can tell you there will be new life, and joy, and ease that you’ve likely never known before. I know you can’t even imagine it most days, and on other days, it feels so vague and impossible that you’re tempted to give in to the despair.

I won’t be giving you the details of my story. I find that details often lead to comparison, and that has never been helpful to any of us. What I will offer to you is a sense of what I felt and experienced. I will humbly offer up what I learned along the way and what I found to be helpful. I will say the things that I now trust to be true, but that I couldn’t grasp onto before. I hope to write in a way that helps you feel less alone and less lost in your pain.

As always, take what is helpful and leave the rest.

Karissa