Indwelling (and other internal thoughts)

I’ve been researching motivation and behavior for somewhere going on …. at least six years.

This has been in parallel with the other forms of self-discovery that’s been happening ever since new life claimed me in 2003.

Often, there has been this low-level discomfort or disconnect. Kinda like the subtle tension I’d always feel as a Christian living in a world that was no longer my home.

On the one hand, the “upbringing” I had when I became a Christian was fairly “science light”. On the other, my whole entire life experience had been deep and interesting dives that peered beyond the surface.

Science, if not a friend, was never a foe. It was something to be accepted and pondered along with all of the rest of the wonderings about the world and the universe.

“What meaning could I attach to my discoveries?” – beyond the acknowledgment of limited human constructs and man-made understanding – are questions I ask myself with nary a fear for the “loss of my faith”.

“Who we are vs who we’re meant to be?” That, I wrestle with all of the time. It nags and gnaws and says all kinds of things inside my brain that my spirit sometimes has to spit out – like in the form of a blog post. 😉

SIDE NOTE: I’d like to hook my brain up to scanners and have scientists study where the bones of “belief” collide with or are affected by all of the other factors that color a human life. A little dip into the causation/correlation pool, so to speak.

The more I see, the more I ask. The more I ask, the more I settle within myself some “truths”. The more I settle upon these “truths”, the more I see that:

We’re either makers or we’re consumers.

We’re either rulers or we’re subjects.

We’re either intrinsically motivated or we’re extrinsically motivated.

(and, we’re all a product of the time and place in which we were born, live, and die, which is just a tiny blip of a life throughout all of world history)

These things are brain-based facts that point to our inherent dispositions (although they can, and have, been shown to have the ability to be changed, switched, adapted. We may be finite creatures but we’re pretty capable of change.

Except … if you add the “indwelling of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 3:16) to the human condition, what in the world does that do to how we shape our knowledge of human potential, and who is going to study that with a scientific lens? Where, in all of the literature and research on neuroplasticity and behavior-based structures, does the roll of God and His affects upon our outer vs our inner person (2 Corinthians 4:7-18)?

Body (of) Work: Craving Pink

I think it was around June or maybe July but there was a night and then a day where I was craving the view of pink. Salmon pink, peach, soft blush pink.

I remember waking from a soft sleep in the middle of the night and needing to see these colors.

It was intense.

Just like the times where I’d have dreams I was drinking water and wake up absolutely dehydrated, it was as if my eyes were desperate for the feeling I just knew being able to rest them on these colors would bring.

Like a soul is described when it absorbs the glory of God or a musician when reaching for an instrument to share an inner feeling that begs for release or expression, that was my late-night need for pink.

I know it sounds crazy, or at the time it did, but in order to survive and calm my brain, for that was what I believe was in pain and what woke me, I opened up Pinterest and started searching for these colors.

“Ahhhhh! Yes!” This was what my body, my whole body seemed to be saying as I gazed on bedding and framed pictures in peaches and pinks.

An itch, scratched. A thirst, slaked. A sigh, exhaled.

I was soothed by gazing on these colors.

I felt like I needed more though and there was a limit to what I could find when searching on Pinterest so I tried Google. I tried a few department stores. I tried a few websites I hoped would be able to help.

The more I looked, the more the sense of calm was replaced with a sense of need.

I needed peach sheets. I needed soft pink bedding.

I needed them in a way I can’t explain other than to say I felt like if I weren’t to find and then purchase these things so that when they came I could take to my bed and have them wrapped around me in the softest of cocoons, I would not be alright mentally or physically.

That was more than five months ago and I have, from time to time, felt that same need pop up; the one in which my eyes needed to see something in order for my brain to not hurt.

I would gaze through Pinterest boards or watch interior decorating shows for glimpses of these colors, these environments, these feelings of colors through visual stimulation like I used to reach for my Headspace app and rely upon mindfulness to ease and calm me.

It always seemed strange to me, how my eyes craved a color.

And then I stumbled upon a Youtube video which led to the discovery of a researcher who I think might know the “why” behind this weirdest of weird things.

And so, I will reach out and ask about it because part of my new “Body (of) Work” involves allowing myself to seek answers to the questions I have about the ways in which body is represented and what lenses I’ll let myself explore and interpret it through.

One Year Ago

One year ago, I stopped the daily writing I had committed to as an act of intention, an act of discipline.

If lifetimes could be explained in the course of 365 days, surely there would be no words needed to say and to share and to show.

But, that’s not how it works, this way of living in this place and time we inhabit so I will set up another new schedule, a daily discipline taking place each night, of sharing the Word in the way it is shown to me.

Ten, less Two

“Ten days” was the phrase/number I had in my head as I made the decision to sit down to write today’s post, only, looking at the date displayed on the upper right corner of my laptop, I realized I was off by two.

In ten days, less two, I’ll fly back to a place I used to call “home”.

In ten days, less than two, I’ll set foot on land I haven’t seen in three and a half years.

In ten days, less than two, I’ll smell my son’s head and crush him in hugs and sit next to him and lean my head against his shoulder.

In ten days, less than two.

The Things That Must Be Said

Where do you land on this; the idea that there are some things you simply cannot leave unvoiced. That there are words and phrases and paragraphs of thoughts and feelings that need to be said?

Be it to another, to your God, or to yourself, how do you approach giving voice to what might remain silent?

I Think I Forgot

This morning, scrolling through my emails, I saw that someone had “liked” one of my posts here. That’s when I thought about yesterday and realized I think I forgot to post.

Like, plumb clean forgot.

Like, never once entered my mind.

But, I did remember something else yesterday, or should I say, someone else, and maybe that’s better than posting on a blog every day.

🙂

Inte Idag

Inte idag is Swedish for , “not today”, which is “Leanne” for, I have no desire to say or share anything here.

Not little, not big.

Nothing to place in this daily posting space.

*but I smell apples and a baguette is baking in the oven, soon to be topped with Cambezola. i can share that.

🙂

Rich

Years and years and years ago, when securing enough food to put on the table for my son and myself was a weekly struggle, we happened upon a perfect saying, “Bread rich”.

It came from my son after I had used a coupon, punch card and “daily double” special to buy approximately FIVE bags of bread, bagels, pastry, etc. for only FIVE dollars.

This largess came from a bread outlet about a 45-minute drive from our home.

Pulling into the grass and gravel covered driveway on the side of our tiny rental house in the country as we returned home, my son started carrying the bags inside.

When I had placed all the items from the bags on our worn out Formica counter top, my son said in awe and delight, “Mom, we’re bread rich!”.

🙂

❤

And he was right.

And I loved that he had learned how to see “wealth” in this way and that bags of day-old bread (that would be put into the freezer to save until we needed them) could thrill him as much as I imagine Disneyland thrills kids who haven’t experienced scarcity. 

From then on, whenever poverty came calling and/or I would start to feel lack, I’d look around at all the ways in which I was rich.

About ten days ago, laying on my sofa and knowing I needed more – contact, interaction, help with daily life and the living of it – I reached out to some of my friends both here, in Sweden, and in America via Skype.

The lies that had been circling in my brain about not fitting in, not having worth or value, not being loved or connected, pretty much floated away as soon as my friends and I started talking.

And, I knew I had forgotten what I had already possessed all along. 

I continued reaching out. SMS’s, phone calls, emails. I readily extended and accepted invitations to connect.

Which, oh, thank You, Father God, saved me yet again.

Looking through one of my prayer notebooks, I saw that I had listed FOUR pages of names, just here on the islands alone, of people to pray for. These were people I knew liked me and that I liked, too. People, not all of them yet but a handful, whom I could be honest with and share my heart with.

I realized I was “friend rich”. 

On Saturday, three of them came over just to hang out and brought a plastic shopping bag full of apples and a plastic container full of hand-picked blackberries. ❤

After they left, I placed the apples in a large glass bowl and set them in the middle of my table.

They were so beautiful. Yellow and light green on top of pine wood and against the backdrop of white walls, accented with soft blue curtains and green plants on the window sill looking out against a light-filled sky.

The beauty filled and soothed my soul.

But, there’s more to tell, because that same Saturday, just an hour after my first visitors had left, another friend came by to go on a bike ride with me and she brought another plastic bag full of apples; these, blush red and spring green!

I took out another large glass bowl (I have three of these, making me “bowl rich”, too) and put the apples in them and placed that bowl next to the other on the table.

That’s when it hit me. “I’m apple rich”, I said to myself with a soft, deep, soul-settling smile.

And later on, at Sunday evening prayer service, I spoke up and out (in automatic Swedish! :O ) and told the group of believers what I’m typing just now (except the part about bread rich and the history of the term), how I was struggling, how I reached out, and how I remembered how “rich” I was and how large a part their love and acceptance of me had played a part in my healing.

❤