On Guiding my Soul’s Worth through a Winter Season.

Right now, in the quiet, I find some tears. The remnants of disappointments trying to dig me into the tunnels of the past memories in my mind.

I take my red tape and seal that burrowed tunnel out of respect for the work already done...Healing work, excavating memories for parts of my soul buried as though mining for diamonds, rubies, and pearls. I mark the map of my neuropathways where a day’s catches or snags of the soul led me to these tunnel entrances. Then I fix my eyes ahead instead. Yes, I see what led me here and know what is inside them. Yes, I acknowledge I am sad.

This sadness may be communal and not my own.

Maybe I don’t need to write a story to understand why. Maybe I just need 90 seconds of recognition for this emotion to ground my feet in the ahead. Who I am becoming is the habits I build today, and I’ve chosen to work with the tools of grace and gentleness: Kindness and a quiet mind.

Seasons change, and I’ve quieted myself to listen. Silence offers me a familiar yet ancient tune, in which I find the voice of my own soul, whom I’ve forged a friendship with.

Because my soul loves quiet like my eyes love beauty.

The plea to keep a slow pace is in the rolling waves of my heart. What is in my soul is to make beauty and to enjoy. This may be an invitation to the healing of a different type. If I listen, if I yield… what will be?

Why slow, my soul? I don’t like slow.

It takes 3 years to build something, I remember. Because what I make can then be sustainable. I can help prepare those who don’t yet grasp the vision. And another tunnel entrance needs my red tape to prevent more doing and self analysis. Maybe allowing a slow pace isn’t fearful, but it’s wise. Perhaps my own soul will grow at this pace rather than my projects.

Why savor, my soul?

Because I want a life where I am no longer fixing things and I can rest. This may be the forward yet present mindset I am hoping for. This hope alive in me, and me restored, yet in process. I cannot forget that I am not who I was in the present. I cannot be impatient and miss the grace given to me for who I am now. Caught on the vision of becoming whole, have I been unkind to you my soul?

Is that why I want the slow?

In my gut, I know this slow and savor longing will only produce strength. Enjoyment is the fruit of love, and it is its own perspective. I want to be present in my moments of grace with it. And maybe, just maybe, my mind won’t be so loud. Because underneath the noise of the should-do’s and responsibilities is this courageous practice of quiet in which I remember:

I am not what I do,

I am not what people say I am.

I am of origin an ancient idea in one giant cosmic God brain.

Maybe in keeping this rhythm, I am launching the ultimate protest, against what culture markets as valuable and what worldview takes glory in. I am a woman of grace and of the recognition that I am still being put together. I have learned to value myself over the fields of culture.

In guiding my soul, I ask the Lord to teach me to be at rest and settled in the gaze, for I find it hard to remain quiet and still with the attention. I so easily break connection and hide. The rest in the gaze trait combines the slow, the savor, and the soul’s worth... in one perfect celebration of the loved, with the lovely, the worthy, with the seeker of worth, the choice to be free and the choice to remain, and the valuable, the seen, the heard.