A while back I wrote a post called 4 Steps to Living a Spacious Life. It was about an epiphany I’d had after I attended the Jumping Tandem Retreat. When I came home from that exhilarating, inspiring, exhausting weekend, I read these verses in 2 Corinthians:
“I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life…The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way…Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively.”(2 Corinthians 6:11-13)
I knew right then, that was my dream, my goal: to enter the wide-open, spacious life and to live openly and expansively.
I tend to live small. I live inward, as I wrote in that blog post — a cramped existence, crumpled into myself, in a place crowded with expectations and insecurities, a place fraught with comparison and fear. But I haven’t let go of that dream or those words since I first read them last April. I believe they hold the key to living authentically.
I believe God wants each of us to live in that wide-open spacious place. I believe he desires that carefree, liberated, unburdened existence for us. But in order to get there, in order to move from that cramped, inwardly focused place into wildly abundant spaciousness, we have to trust.
Last Saturday I received a complimentary and kind email from an agent. He’d read a bit of my blog, he said, and simply wanted to encourage me to keep up the good work. I sat stunned as I read his short email, which began, “You don’t know me but…”
It wasn’t true. I did know him.
Four years ago I had queried this same agent for the memoir I’d written, and four years ago he had rejected my pitch. He had given a number of reasons (which, I should add, was more than I received from most queries), and I had cried for days, because that’s what I always did when I received a rejection.
Four years ago I would have have given my left arm for the email I received from him out of the blue this past Saturday. It would have been nothing short of a miracle to receive an unsolicited email from an agent, and I would have interpreted it as a very, very good sign.
I laughed when I told Brad about the email. Well, I laughed and I kvetched a little bit, too. He knows what an email like that would have meant to me four years ago. But, as I told Brad — and I believe this deep down in my heart — “2009 wasn’t the time.” The time for this book wasn’t back in 2009, no matter how hard I pushed and pulled and tried to wrestle it into being, because God wanted 2014. If only I had known that then. If only I had listened and trusted.
You see, I can’t live carefree and liberated, I can’t step into that wide-open spacious life unless I trust God and hand every last bit of myself and my dreams and my goals over to him. Choosing to live tyrannized by my wants and expectations means I live small and defeated, afraid and weak and angry. Choosing to trust means I live in wild, carefree abundance, free to pursue what God wants from me, rather than what I want, in that moment instead.
The smallness you feel comes from within, Paul says – not from her or him or them. Not from your job, your family, your past, your present circumstances or even your life as a whole, but from yourself, from within you. Want to live freely and authentically as who God made you to be? Then turn outward and upward, away from yourself. Look out and up at God and step boldly into openness.
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Thank God for moments like that! It’s as if he gives us a peek into his secret plans. Like he’s saying, “See? I know what I’m doing. Really, I do. I believe in you! I’ve got your back!”
Thanks for unpacking that verse, Michelle. It is a small world inside of me, and I get all cramped and achy when I focus inward only. My grandmother always used to say, “Keep looking up!” Great advice, then, and now.
Love your grandma – wise woman!
Today, I drive up to Portland for my weekly (almost) Retracing Sequence Method session where systematically I have been going after the core negative beliefs that have driven this life and essentially driven me into the cramped quarters that I have lived in. . I process and diffuse them in partnership with my RSM practitioner and the Holy Spirit and then and this is the best part … I get to imagine what I would LIKE to believe … I get to actively collaborate with Holy Spirit and rewire a new paradigm into my brain … into all of my brains …heart, mind and gut … Thank you so much for this space, again, Michelle!! I love how God brings us along side each other … we who have never met … but who are all connected .. through His Word (2 Cor 6: 11-13 in this instance 🙂 )
Blessings and deep JOY to you … and to all of us here !
I have to google that RSM – sounds pretty cool, Deborah. Man, that negative refrain is hard to get rid of. I did my own chanting during my run this morning, “Create in me a clean heart, O Lord.” Four miles of that, and I felt a lot better!
I love that God led you to this space, Deborah – it’s a joy to connect with you in this way – an unexpected gift!
My word or goal for this year is “Trust”. I hope it does open up my life. I like the idea of living spaciously! I agree that expectations can ruin things. Fear also keeps me in a box. Somehow I need to grow my trust in God enough to move past my fears. Has anybody done that? What helped you do that? I would like to know.
Oh Janet, I still am very much up to my eyeballs in the fear, victim of my own expectations, and still trying to claw my way out of that inwardly focused space. I pray about it always. I make some progress, with God’s help. But it’s a constant struggle. I wish I had an answer for you – but this blog post is as much a prayer for myself as it is meant to be inspiration for someone else!
That is what is so amazing about blogging and following blogs, we share what we feel, what we struggle with, what solutions have helped, and we all grow from it. Thanks for sharing your prayer/inspiration with us!
Oh Michelle, this is so very good! I need to hear this message over and over again. I’m transferring it to my “Michelle File”. I live very small too, very “safe”. I was just out to breakfast with my two best friends, and they were talking about their travels this past summer. I felt very left out because my husband and I never go anywhere. There are definitely some places I want to see, but it just never seems possible. I often lament my ordinary life. But then, what can I expect when I never take chances or have faith to believe in those things that seem impossible. I no longer lay my hopes and dreams before the Father. But I should! I should believe for the seemingly impossible, because WITH GOD ALL things are possible. Your entire second-last paragraph describes me to a T. I think I need to resurrect some old dreams and lay them before Him.
Oh, Jillie, I know. It’s a battle, a struggle – two steps forward (some days), one step back. As I just said to Janet above, this blog post is as much a prayer for myself as it is I hope inspiration for others. Because I am still very much in the small, inwardly focused place on most days.
I lay my hopes and dreams before God, but then I get mad when it seems like I am backtracking or not making any progress! I do think it’s a process and not a one-time solution, you know?
{giggling over the “Michelle file.” }
I’m serious, Girlfriend! I have one, I really do! 🙂
If I’ve learned anything over the past several years, it is to depend completely in God’s timing. I know how it feels to have writing be rejected; I had many of them and almost gave up on having my book published. But, God wouldn’t let me give up and, in His time, the publication happened. Powerful lesson and great message here, Michelle!
Blessings!
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