Photo Credit: Curt Brinkmann
Living out faith in the everyday is no joke. If you’re anything like me, some days you feel full of confidence and hope, eager to proclaim God’s goodness and love to the world. Other days…not so much.
Let me say straight up: I wrestle with my faith. Most days I feel a little bit like Jacob, wrangling his blessing out of God. And most days I’m okay with that. I believe God made me a questioner and a wrestler for a reason, and I believe one of those reasons is so that I can connect more authentically with others.
More recently I’ve been learning to listen to my soul, which means actively practicing what I call intentional rest: silence, solitude, contemplation and quiet.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a Triple Type A, “make it happen” (my dad’s favorite mantra) striver and achiever (I’m a 3 on the Enneagram, which tells you everything you need to know), but these days my striving looks more like sitting in silence on a park bench, my dog at my feet, as I slowly learn to let go of the false selves that have formed my identity for decades and lean toward uncovering who God created me to be.
This is the topic of my latest book — True You: Letting Go of Your False Self to Uncover the Person God Created — which releases on January 1, 2019 (a timely topic to kick of the New Year!). You can read more about True You here.
I’ve also written three other books – Katharina and Martin Luther: The Radical Marriage of a Runaway Nun and a Radical Monk; Spiritual Misfit: A Memoir of Uneasy Faith and 50 Women Every Christian Should Know: Learning from Heroines of the Faith (you can learn more about all three books here) – and I write a monthly column for the Lincoln Journal Star.
A native New Englander, I now live in Nebraska, where I discovered the Great Plains, grasshoppers the size of Cornish Hens and God. I’m married to Brad, an English professor who reads Moby Dick for fun. We have two teenage boys (hold me), the laziest beagle/Corgi in the history of all dogs, and a lizard named Frill.
If you’re curious about learning to listen to your soul along with me, click here to subscribe to my weekly blog posts and/or to The Back Patio, my monthly newsletter. When you subscribe you’ll receive:
- Thoughtful, engaging reflections about living out faith in the everyday and learning to listen to your soul
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- My free e-book, Learning to Listen to Your Soul: 5 Tips for Beginning a Daily Practice of Intentional Rest.
Thanks so much for stopping by. I look forward to getting to know you!
Grace and Peace,
Michelle
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