Striving and diving

This week, I am so so aware of the need to enjoy. I am a worrier. I have a cluttered mind. If you know me, you know how true this is. But this week, I told myself, everything I do I am going to enjoy. Not that a lot of what I did was enjoyable, but I was going to make joy the anchor of my situation instead of letting my situation anchor my attitude

. This is a newer practice. Like any physical muscle being worked, emotional and mental muscle exhaustion took effect.  My heart had DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) from its workout this week.

Recap of the easy enjoyments and one not so easy one this week:

 

Meet Austin. He’s my best friend. My partner in crime. My love. This picture pretty much sums up our life. Laughter and craziness. And our awesome pup, Tank! He is living up to his name… He’s terrifying. Kayak date.

This is me saying goodbye to dairy for a long long long long time…. After going off dairy for a month for my asthma, I soon found out when I reintroduced it that I am most definitely intolerant. This one was hard saying goodbye to.

But I got to try a new pizza crust recipe using coconut flour. So good! A little eggy, but definitely no wheat belly. 

How cool is this little garden chapel? Amazing. I love stumbling across this on my runs. This definitely helped anchor my joy when I started to get tired.

Can I get an “Amen!” for fruit in the summer? Every single piece is perfectly ripe. 

 

This was a hard one this week, but when there’s just two of us everything turns into a date. Weeding: so messy but so beautiful, right?

These colors are out of this world!! I know hydrangea colors come out based on the soil acidity, but how do you explain four different colors in one??

 This week is the start to many weeks working on my “joy” muscles.  One of the muscles involves resting and stillness.  That one is so hard for me.

Isaiah 30:15 says:

“…”In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.'”

Diving…. It just has a ring to it. There’s really nothing I’m touching on about diving.  So let’s just DIVE into “striving.” (See what I did there?  That’s a good pun right there. Sorry, cheesiness comes with the territory.)

Striving (in Kayla’s words): Muscling through, pushing through, attaining a goal set before you… being good enough.

I’m going to be brutally honest.  It’s not very nice.

You are not good enough.

Listen to me all the way before you make assumptions. You are not good enough for anyone on this earth. You are not good enough for the critics, that job, your family, your friends, your followers in the media. Your performance is not good enough. It’s not.

Your performance and your fame will always be fleeting and conditional.  It will never last.  It will never stay.

It will never be enough.

Striving is aiming for a goal that is always out of fingertips’ reach.  Let me tell you. I know this fully well. This hits so close to home. I am the queen of degrading goal setting. I will never reach these goals. Why? Because, to be honest, I want and design it that way.

I love putting a goal on a hook out of arms reach and letting it swing in front of my face. Flinging my arms out aimlessly, I “strive” to my goal. No. That’s not goal setting. That’s just cruel.

Let me tell you a truth that will be so eye-rolling boring.  You are good enough.

You. are. good enough.

You are good enough just as you are. Just being.

What?

Jesus always meets us where we are at. He does not ask us to do a checklist and then comes to us. Nope. He meets us in our disgusting mess. When I say disgusting, I mean atrocious mess.

In Zechariah 3, Joshua the high priest (think of the most moral, upstanding, best person you can possibly think of who can do no wrong in your eyes) stood before the Lord in dirty rags. I don’t mean “Moooomm my soccer Jersey has a grass stain on it again!” dirty. I mean “Dirty Jobs” would not even host this scene. It’s a disturbing picture, but stick with me.  Joshua’s garments were filled with feces, pee, vomit, and even female menstrual excrements. Sorry, I know that last one was really hard to swallow, but you need to get this picture.

The most moral and sovereign person on earth at the time was worth, well, poop in front of Holy One of Israel.  Joshua stood accused by the Devil, but with compassion, kindness, and lavish love, the angel of the Lord said to Joshua in verse 4 “‘…I have taken your iniquity from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments.'”

So we have Satan breathing down our backs saying we are not good enough and God on the other hand saying he wants to clothe us in linens worthy for him to wear.

What? Why?

Joshua didn’t do…anything. He just stood there. He hadn’t performed a checklist. He hadn’t made his eloquent “Please, forgive me.” speech. Nothing. He did nothing. He just was. He was broken. He was gross. He was sinful. Did I mention he was gross?

This is where we are at.  Who’s the audience you are looking to for the defining line of being good enough.  Are you listening to those voices all around you who seek your performance? Then, no, you are not good enough, and good luck trying to get there, let alone stay there.

What about the audience of the Holy One?  That’s the hardest one. Why? Because you just have to be you. Isn’t that the hardest place to be? Actually be who you are?

I talked about my “joy” muscle and working it, but what about it just resting.  If you workout, you know your rest days are as sacred if not more than your training days.  In rest and stillness,they build and grow in endurance. The next workout is more efficient. It seems so counter intuitive. But no.  It is VITAL. Vital to your fitness.

So are you striving?  Are you muscling your way to holiness? To perfection?

Take a rest in the Holy One’s presence.  Your strength will multiply. Your joy will abound. Your works will be His.  Let breath (let the Holy Spirit) lead you into the hard place of just being.  Just be.  Because there…there you are good enough.

With joy and laughter,

Kayla

Why rooted strength?

Congratulations, you are reading my first post EVER!

Why is this page call rooted strength, you ask?  First of all, it sounds cool. That’s just the sad truth.  I thought it sounded… cool. But if you want to dig a little bit deeper, it means so much more.

In plant life roots are everything.  You can have shallow roots with a large trunk that grows beautiful and abounding foliage, but a small storm may come, and death to the unnourished tree follows very quickly to everyone’s surprise.  On the other hand, a new sapling may have a thin trunk with very little green, but the roots are as steady if not greater in growth and width and breadth and length than that of its shoots.  It may not show for decades, but that sapling will turn into a wise oak known to outlast centuries of trees.

The best visual I can think of would be this…

 

Paul prays in Ephesians 3:17-19 (ESV–insertions and emphasis my own) “…that [we] being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend…what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that [we] may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

So where am I coming from?  I seek to dwell and root down my foundation on Jesus’s love so I can love him better and love all people better.  His love is the source of my nutrition. My roots grow down, soak it up, spread wide, and spill out to the shoots.  I absolutely do not do this perfectly. It’s my aim though.  It’s my aim.

In the Message version, Eugene Peterson writes “…with both feet planted firmly on love…”.  I love this! Love it.  In Holy Yoga, we say, “Root down on all four corners of your feet.” Without it, you get poor posture, achy knees, and stumbling.  Where is your foundation? Where is your strength coming from? Root down, so you can rise up and spill out.

So in the end, my strength comes from someone much bigger than myself.  It’s locked, secured, and anchored.

With laughter and joy,

Kayla