If loving God with all your heart means offering up to him your emotional self, and loving God with all your mind means cultivating a quiet mind brought into obedience to Christ, what does loving God with all your soul mean?

First, becoming justified. Then, sanctified. 

There is no topic more paramount than the justification of your soul. Through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Satan, sin and death were conquered. And a pathway was opened wide and clear for this fallen world to be reconciled with God. Your part to play in this is a simple yet profoundly critical choice. The only choice that matters. Will you take the free gift of salvation offered to you by the sacrifice of Christ? 

I have an atheist acquaintance who once got into a friendly debate with me over this topic. He said if he had sinned against another person, he understood them taking offense. But why would some God somewhere care about what he'd done? He hadn't sinned against that God, so why does he owe that God anything? At the time, I was unable to answer him. 

A couple of years later, the answer came to me while listening to the message that Pastor Caleb Campbell was giving at Desert Springs Bible Church. Caleb said that when God created the universe he poured out his love into it. You can see the care and creativity put into all things, from the grandiose galaxy down to the veins of a leaf. God is truly the muse for every artist there ever was, inspiring all human creative endeavors from Day Six on with the immeasurable beauty of the universe around us. 

And no creation was more favored than mankind. We were given a soul, and animated by God's very breath. He made us in his image. Every day he walked with us in the Garden, wanting to savor his relationship with us. We were loved and cherished. 

But we invited evil here.

When you have a child whom you love and adore, and you raise them with great care, and then they choose to invite evil into their lives.... it hurts. 

If you think of it from his perspective, he has had to sit and watch evil inhabit and destroy from the inside out that which he loves and holds dear. Because he gave us freedom, as unconditional love requires, we had a choice. We made the wrong one. And he was most definitely the offended party. 

Once evil took up residence here, we got what Adam and Eve wanted. They knew the difference between good and evil. But I bet they regretted the choice. Yet they had no power to take it back. 

But God did not sit, victimized, and feel sorry for himself. He made a plan to get us back. He decided to send his son to become flesh and take on our punishment so that we could be reconciled to him again. So he could take back that intimate relationship. That is why Jesus Christ, the Good News for All Mankind, came to us. That is why he lived, that is why he died. He paid for our sins so we could be justified, evil could be eradicated, and all could be forgiven.

So if I have the opportunity to see that atheist acquaintance again, I now know the answer to his question. When you sin against someone's cherished child, you sin against them. When you sin against God's beloved creation, you sin against him. What mankind owed, and what Jesus paid, was an enormous debt.

If you have never been reconciled to the Father through the Son, I invite you to do that now. HE invites you to do it. It is only a matter of choosing to believe and trust in him. Of saying, "God, I have sinned against you, but I want to be reconciled. I want you to save me and dwell in my heart. Please give me the gift of salvation made possible by your son, Jesus Christ." 

Salvation and eternal life with God are a gift. You can only have a gift if you accept it. A gift offered to someone who refuses it remains with the giver. It's up to you to accept. The opposite of salvation and eternal life are damnation and everlasting death. That is why there is no choice more critical and no subject more paramount than this. Your eternity is at stake.

But God is not finished with you once you have been saved. Justification is the dawn, and sanctification is the rest of the day. Once you've let in the son-light, he begins a good work in you: bringing you to Christlikeness.

If God has saved us, aren't we done? Shouldn't we live our lives as we want, and look forward to eternal life? Paul asked the same question in the book of Romans:

And again in 1 Corinthians 6:12:

As well as Galatians 5:1:

Sanctification is the process of cooperating with the work of God in your life. It means that his goal of unity with you is also your goal. That his will in the world is also your will. The process is not an easy one, because the strongholds of sin and selfishness take a siege like no other to pull them down. But it is not your work. You can't remove even a single stone. The warrior responsible is God, and you are the prize inside that the enemy is hiding away. Your only job is to allow him to attack the stronghold. Let go of your attachment to patterns of sin, lies, and attitudes against the Spirit, and let him make you wholly new.

In the yoga community, there is a lot of talk about enlightenment. About the attaining of a state of being where you are free from suffering, free from the selfishness of the egoic mind, and perpetually united to divinity in bliss. The Yoga Sutras, which are often used in teacher training, explain the "steps" to achieving the goal. You could say it is a twist on works-based righteousness.

In Old Testament times, the people had the law to tell them what to do and not to do. If they could follow the law perfectly, then they would be in no need of salvation. But none of them could achieve that. So, they would offer sacrifices for their sins, giving a spotless, innocent animal as recompense.

No matter where you go, no matter the religion or creed you hold dear, there is this idea that if you follow a strict path you will achieve righteousness. You will find God. You will regain what we lost when we invited evil here.

But hang around on planet Earth long enough and you will discover what all human beings, reaching back through the ages, have already known: nobody's perfect. The systems we've erected set us up for failure. God is not attainable that way.

It is a good thing that human beings are not the only ones working on the reconciliation of God and man. We cannot attain God by scrambling to climb heavenward, but he can reach down and pull us up. The secret is the surrender of our desire to do it ourselves, to be the author of our own salvation. The secret is to let God help you.

He created us to be in perfect unity and everlasting relationship with him. He created us so we could be loved by him, love him completely, and love those around us unconditionally. Allow him to reach down and pull you up. Cooperate with him in this work of reunion he began in you.

Decide you will choose the best instead of the good: "'All things are lawful for me,' but not all things are helpful." (1 Cor 6:12)

Decide you will not be dominated by sin, but dwell in freedom: "'All things are lawful for me,' but I will not be dominated by anything." (1 Cor 6:12) "Do not submit yourselves again to a yoke of slavery." (Gal 5:1)

Decide to walk in newness of life, and let the dead stay dead: "...in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." (Rom 6:1)

Did you ever notice that the pursuit of happiness is the goal of every human being? Deep down, achieving lasting happiness is the motivation for everything you do.

Rejoice, because happiness is what you receive when you cooperate with God. It is his goal for you. But he has no illusions as to what will make you happy and what will cause that happiness to last forever. He knows that when you are in union with him, you will be happy. That is what he created you for:

Joy, unending joy.

Peace that passes understanding.

Hope that does not disappoint.

Love that endures forever.

Faith that can move mountains.

Life, and life abundant.

And he has promised he will bring that work to completion.

Be encouraged, brothers and sisters in Christ. Putting sin to death in your life is a painful, long and trying process at times, but cooperation with God leads to rewards that far exceed that pain. Let his Spirit, alive in you, give you rest. Rely on his promises. Fight the good fight, run the race. Keep his words always at the forefront of your mind:

The vast majority of the human race is utterly given over to compulsive thinking. Whether they are playing out some fantasy, worrying over some imagined future, reliving a past event or simply trying to remember what they have to do that day, the typical person has a non-stop diatribe rolling in their heads. In fact, we spend so much time thinking about something other than what we are doing that it could be said we are on automatic pilot. We flit and buzz from place to place, and if nothing interrupts us, we will hardly notice the motions we are going through. We aren't really awake; we aren't really dreaming. It is a stupor and if we stopped doing it we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves.

The whole phenomenon reminds me of the movie Dune, where the members of the Spacing Guild, previously human in form, had so long taken in so much of the rare Spice that they had mutated. The Spice gave them the ability to fold space, that is move between time and space, which made it possible for people from various planets to travel great distances in an instant. But the price they paid is that they now were nothing but floating brains swimming about in large glass containers filled with orange smoke.

I invite you to quit being a floating brain.

The Master tells us:

But how do you love the Lord with all your mind? If God is the great "I AM", then he is not part of your imagination. However you may conceive of him, it does not contain even half of what he truly is. Not only that, but notice the present tense. "I AM." He's not the great "I WAS" or "I WILL BE" because the only thing that is real is the present. The past is a vague conglomeration of inaccurate memories and the future is fiction and conjecture. Only the present is real, so it makes sense that that is where He is. Of all the attributes he could have chosen as his name, he chose his present existence. But are we in the present? No, we are lost in the labyrinth of our brains.
The first step towards surrendering the mind to God, towards loving him with "all your mind", is to be where he is. Here and now.

The idea that you are your mind is quite common and a lie. Your mind is simply a tool. You are something much more splendid than all those thoughts that plague you - namely, a soul. Yes, your mind is a part of you, but your soul is what lives on when the mind dies.
Many of us long to connect in a more substantial way to God. We know that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19-20) and that the Master Teacher has said, "But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth," (Jn 16:13). But if we never cultivate silence within ourselves, how will we hear his guidance over all the noise?

Jesus himself tells us how to do this in Matthew 6:6:

It can be difficult to quiet the mind, so that is why finding a meditation technique that works for you is so helpful. One of my favorites is to use a breathing verse. Take Psalm 103:1, for example: "Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!" As you slowly breathe in, think, "Bless the LORD, O my soul," and as you breathe out, "and all that is within me, bless his holy name!" Let your inhales and exhales be slow and even, and let the verse wash over your mind and clear away any thoughts that intrude. Invite God into the space you make.

But this is just one of many meditation methods. Here is a small sampling of some others:

• Focus on the breath
• Listen to the sounds of the world around you
• Focus on the body and any sensations it gives you
• Focus on a word you repeat to yourself, like "Jesus", or "Maranatha" (Greek for, "Come, Lord Jesus!")
• Focus on opening the heart

My recommendation is that if you are new to meditation, start off slowly. Try a couple of minutes before you start your day and before you go to bed at night. If you have a prayer and Bible reading routine, work those couple of minutes into the beginning of that. Take time to, "Be still and know that I am God," (Ps. 46:10).

But learning how to quiet the mind and be present with God is only half the equation. God is interested not only in the quantity, but the quality of your thoughts. Consider these words from the Master Teacher:

Jesus uses strong, striking language to convey how serious the sins of the mind are. But how seriously do we take them? It is easy to spend countless hours in the downward spiral of resentful, hateful thoughts and justify it because we believe the other person to be wrong. Or to let our lust lead us down a path of fantasy because we lie to ourselves and say we are sinning in secret. It is equally easy to claim victimhood as our identity, holding onto depression and despair like they are desirable. Christ died on the cross to set us free from slavery to such thoughts. We need to claim that victory!

You may long to connect to God. How can you hear what he has to say when there is a cacophony of thoughts in your mind? And how can he show you his good, pleasing and perfect will when it is your ego and its desires running the show? Love him with all of your mind by giving time to him in stillness and by putting to test every thought that arises. Then you will connect with the God who came to Earth so that you may be transformed, heart, soul, strength and -- by his grace -- mind.

In a culture built on independence, the word surrender isn't a positive one. And although independence is quite healthy in many ways, sometimes it can mask the human need for others. In all things we need balance, and when we refuse to ever reach out for help, we can do ourselves a great deal of harm. But no harm quite so great comes from stubborn independence as that of losing our souls. The very act of repentance and a surrender of our will to be subordinate to God's can be so counter-intuitive to some that they refuse to ever do it. It is like they conjure in their minds an image of putting up a white flag and giving in to the enemy. Yet freedom, another celebrated American virtue, is not possible without surrender.

Even for those who have taken the outstretched hand of God and found freedom in Christ, we hold back a total surrender of the self. Pieces of our hearts, minds, souls and physical bodies are left under our control; we don't want to face whatever fear or work giving them up might entail. But, we know, because of the conviction of the Spirit at home within us, that we are called to a total surrender. God wants our love in heart, mind, soul and strength, no holding back.

'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind' Luke 10:27

If you look at the above verse, named by the Master as the Greatest Commandment, it can seem a little one-sided. But, from personal experience, I can tell you truly: with each bit of yourself you succeed in handing over, a flood of love comes back from the other side. A person fully surrendered to God is a person full of the love of God, who cannot help but spill that love onto all that he/she meets. A life lived abundantly is a life of surrender. Surrender is not only a positive word, but a word that can change your life in the most profound way possible.

In this four-part series, we will study how to surrender in love every part of the self. As Jesus said, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments" (Jn 14:15) and the Greatest Commandment should be foremost on the list. Our surrender of will to his perfect will is not always straightforward. When considering this topic, we usually dwell on the decisions we make. But it can be more subtle. It can be in the attitude of the heart, the thoughts inundating our minds, the disposition of the soul, and the way we treat our bodies.

Emotions are a compass for the soul. They are there to communicate with us whether or not we are on a path to life or death. Whether love or hate, peace or fear, hope or despair, they are expressing to us the depravity or health of our souls. We have a natural desire to be rid of negative emotions and seek out what would cause the positive ones--what is commonly described as the pursuit of happiness. And because of this, we have a chance at discovering God, the origin of good. Emotions, like much of creation, help us to achieve the purpose for which we were all created: unity with God.

Unfortunately, emotions get little respect in this society that has long been driven by logic and the left brain. They are considered almost as if they were a pest; like something to eradicate. The impression can be left that they have no use except to disrupt what would otherwise be a smooth-sailing life.

My daughter recently came to me with overwhelming emotions and an inability to deal with them. In trying to help her process them, I gave her this analogy:

Consider emotions to be like a classroom full of middle-schoolers--the most emotional creatures imaginable--and you are their teacher.  One by one they start to raise their hands, wanting to be heard. But there's not much time left and you want to get finished with your lesson. You are trying to ignore them.

• Fear wants to tell you she's not sure she can remember all this for the test.
• Anger needs you to know that the test is unfair.
• Urgency wants to go to the bathroom.
• Impatience wants to know what time they can all go home.
• Frustration feels like he will never understand what you're saying.
• Boredom wishes you'd talk about something interesting.
• Bitterness is still upset about the grade you gave her last time.
• And Hatred can't stand school to begin with.

Attempting to ignore all the upraised hands is futile. The more emotions are ignored, the harder it is to deal with everyday life. They get piled up and backlogged, and eventually cause some kind of breakdown--whether it is mental or physical. If the heart cannot be heard, its influence will leak over into a part of you which you cannot ignore. In the end, we have to deal with our emotions.
 
Society gives us self-help books, meditative techniques, psychologists, drugs, etc, to help us feel better about our emotions.  And it encourages ignoring the emotions by giving us an endless array of distractions on the television, computer, phones, tablets, etc.  Often people will fall into addictions to try and assuage their ailing hearts: drugs, alcohol, sex, video games… the list goes on and on. But like Paul said of love in 2 Corinthians 12:31, "And now I will show you the most excellent way."

Stop what you are doing for a minute and let each have their say, one by one.  And then, as you are hearing them out, make an offering of them to God.

I taught my daughter this meditation to help her deal with her overwhelming emotions:

It is important to let go of thoughts about the emotion's origin. When we get wrapped up in such thoughts, they generate more of the emotion we are trying to hear out. Thoughts are more capable of giving birth to negative emotions than anything else. There is a time and a place for talking things out so that you can avoid the situations that will cause more of the negative emotion. But that is not the exercise we are attempting here. We just want our emotions to have a voice so that they can be dissolved.

Some emotions are strong and deeply rooted. They may be from traumatic past experiences or long-held resentments and sadness. It may take more than one session like this for them to pass. But doing this for even a couple of minutes a day will eventually get you through them.

God wants us to willingly share with him how we feel. He knows all things, but he still desires us to share with him because we are his children. If one of your own children was never willing to share with you their feelings, would you not consider that relationship to be fundamentally broken? But we have a God who is not only a willing listener, but a healer of hearts.
So lay bare your heart before the Lord. As Proverbs 38:8-9 puts it:

And again in Romans 8:26:

And rest in the assurance that a surrender of the heart to God's love will result in healing, peace and joy.

In order to properly tell the story of my journey to becoming an "Evangelical Catholic", I need to add in here an additional element.

Underlying the church hopping my husband and I did for ten years was some deep work God was doing in the secret places of my heart. You see, I had a problem with entitlement. After my Catholic first-confession, when I first experienced the power of the Holy Spirit, I knew I wanted to fully belong to God. But I didn't like the idea of being God's servant. I felt like servanthood and - even worse - slavery were beneath me. I would hear others describe having a servant's heart, and a part of me would cringe. The title of God's Adopted Daughter or the Princess of the King I could embrace fully. But a servant? A slave? I really didn't want to get my hands that dirty.

Fortunately, the Spirit convicted me about this enough that I repented of my attitude and asked God to help me change it. How did he respond?

He sent me into the desert.


Instead of forty days, I stayed ten years (I'm a slow learner). My spiritual experiences all but dried up, and my heart languished under the dry and unforgiving atmostphere. Doubts invaded; depression set in. I felt like the psalmist in Psalm 42: My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”

That said, let us return to the main story. Ten years had passed, and my husband and I had finally quit church hopping and weren't attending church anymore.


Then, one Sunday morning, I asked him if he wanted to try again.  I suggested we try a non-Catholic church.  The idea was neither new nor unknown to us.  Over many years with my husband, he would have us do a double-dip on Sunday.  We would go to Catholic mass, and then attend a service from some arbitrary Protestant church.  His purpose was to immerse himself in the mind-set of Protestants, to help understand why there was so much strife between Catholics and Protestants.  In the past, these non-Catholic experiences had two major themes: give us money, and Catholicism is evil...right down to condemning the use of stained-glass windows and candles.


Obviously my husband held no optimism about the idea.  He agreed we could try an arbitrary church, but he warned me that whatever place we visited would assuredly be a "no repeat."


So I sat down at my computer, went to Google Maps, and typed in "Church, 85050". Up popped a list of churches, and one of them read "Desert Springs Bible Church." For someone coming out of the desert, it sounded like a much needed drink of water. It had a website, so I clicked on it. I asked Brent about going there, and he simply requested that they don't have obvious signs of anti-Catholicism.


I scoured that website. I read every article. The message I kept recieving was one of loving us where we were, not of trying to push us to change. That didn't mean there wasn't an element of anti-Catholicism that wasn't apparent on the surface, but we decided to give it a try.
Words cannot explain the vastness of the gap between what we had been experiencing the past ten years and what we experienced that Sunday at DSBC. The Christ-centered focus of the message we received overwhelmed us from every angle.  In the sermon, in the music, and in the people.  We came in starving, we came out filled. We literally didn't want to leave the physical premises of the church grounds.


Indeed, we sat outside on the patio chairs with a happy giddiness until they were locking up the place. We wanted to pitch a tent and live there:

Our fears of someone trying to "convert" us were lessened, and we came back a second Sunday. And then a third.  By the fourth Sunday of success, my husband was beginning to think it was not just "luck" that this little church was targeting our hearts so well.

 
That was April 2008. Never once while we attended there did the bible church suggest Catholicism or its doctrines are evil.  They even casually reference Mother Teresa as a Christian model. Instead of bashing our heritage or life experiences, they have been constant in telling us that Jesus is the answer; our background is irrelevant.  When they said they'd take us as we are, they meant it.


I asked my husband if we were now Evangelicals, or Protestants. He said no, we remain Catholic because the usual distinction between Catholics and Protestants, the doctrine, was not the issue for us. The intent is what matters, and we as Catholics share this holy intent with the Evangelicals with whom we have made a spiritual home. 


With a nod to our unusual circumstances, my husband calls himself a Catholic Nomad. I say I'm an Evangelical Catholic. Call us what you will, but we are not being two-faced when we "test everything, keeping what is good" (1st Thess 5:21).  


And what happened to my unwillingness to serve my God? That first Sunday at Desert Springs I begged him to be his slave, if he would just grant that I could never part from him again.


I live to serve him. Now I work in Christian ministry, having been called to teach Christian Yoga. I have never led such an abundant life, with such a heart of thanksgiving. To serve the Lord is to find happiness.


God is freedom, God is joy, and if he has you in a desert right now, do not despair. If there's anything I'm sure of its this: He knows what he's doing. Rest in that. Amen, JESUS!!

After my conversion to Catholicism, I went through a honeymoon period in my faith. The Holy Spirit was content to woo me with many blissful and mystical experiences. My Father God was elated every time his baby daughter looked his way, and let her know. I was avidly looking for opportunities to meditate and pray. In my spare time, I composed prayers and spiritual writings out of an outflowing of adoration for Jesus that I could not contain.

At the time, my boyfriend and I were attending Our Lady of Perpetual Help Byzantine Catholic Church. It was the ideal place for someone new to the Catholic faith to gain understanding, since the pastor's heart was entirely given over to the work of the Lord. His name was Father Chris, and despite his many ailments, which usually kept him wheel-chair bound, when he got behind the pulpit to preach on Sunday morning he inspired, challenged, educated, admonished and conveyed the love of Christ to his parishioners. His caring leadership was a blessing to everyone he encountered, and his endurance of the pain that wracked his body was honorable and awe-inspiring in a Pauline sort of way.

A couple of years after converting, Brent and I were married. Because he was a Software Engineer and Albuquerque was not exactly a technology town, we ended up taking a job that moved us out of New Mexico. That also meant leaving Our Lady of Perpetual Help behind. And it was there that the trouble began for me.

Before continuing, I must caution you. I wish only to honestly tell my experience of what took place, and not to attack anyone. If you are Catholic, look at the following as an opportunity for ecclesiastic introspection. If you are not, please do not judge. Sin is present in every church and every denomination, because humans are present. Rather, take these stories as an opportunity to discern. Pray for those who are finding it hard to see God for all the distractions within the body of Christ. Pray that they find a place to worship where they can be fed and grow, and where they can reach out and serve. With the compassion and understanding of our Master, read on.

With our move to Colorado Springs, my husband and I began an arduous spiritual journey, searching for the right church. My Holy Spirit experiences seemed to dry up, and I found myself in the desert of my faith walk. This journey lasted ten long years, and through it all we longed for a drink of God's Spirit, or any sign that he was still out there.

Our first church in Colorado Springs was a Byzantine Catholic mission church.  It had the form of prayer we preferred, but the "why" of the worship had been misplaced.  The minister was endlessly wishing he was elsewhere, and the congregation was preoccupied with procedures and rubrics rather than the Gospel.  We finally were forced to make another choice, because the mission closed after several months. 

The next church parish we attended was Roman Catholic.  It loved to emphasize how "We are the body of Christ!" At first, this was a message that hit home and reminded all present how they need to actively reach out and play their role as a member of that body. But it began to get a little weird when months went by and the same message was repeated, without the actual person of Christ ever being mentioned. Were they ever going to talk about Jesus? Did the pastor forget that that body he was so fond of mentioning had a head? I caught on that the real point of the message in their eyes was that everyone should volunteer their time, talent and treasure to their church.

Things took a really sour turn one Sunday morning when it was time for the Gospel reading. The Gospel is a sacred part of the mass, and Catholics hold the reading in reverence. But, for some odd reason, as the lector started to read, a kid with a big boom box blasting music was making his way down one aisle. My husband got up to tell him to stop when we noticed a woman talking loudly on her phone, pacing around before the pulpit. Then, next to the sanctuary up front, we saw a big screen TV, and a kid playing a noisy video game.  The video game audio was piped into the church's sound system - as if the boom box wasn't loud enough.  It became clear that this was a skit to teach us how life distracts us from God. But it was ill-timed. If there is one thing Catholics understand, it is reverence for the things of God. The Gospel reading is too sacred to mar with the kitsch of a skit. My husband had us get up and walk out.

That event caused us never to return to that church. Instead, we hopped from parish to parish, hoping to find one that felt more like home. What we found was that no church wanted to preach as if Jesus and his resurrection were real. They wanted to talk about whatever was lighthearted and trivial, whatever was sure not to offend. And they seemed to think the mass needed fixing. It was much too old-fashioned, and so they endlessly needed to spruce it up. Furthermore, priest after priest gave off the impression that they weren't the ones running the place. They had given their leadership role to a committee of lay people.  These lay ministers clearly had no education about the liturgy and worship which they were butchering.

It was then that I became aware of an internal battle going on within the American Catholic Church between those of a more liberal mindset and those who were conservative. The liberals wanted married priests, women priests, and an endlessly re-invented, better mass. One with a rock band. They wanted to look and act more Protestant. The conservatives wanted their Latin mass back, but if they couldn't have it, at least they didn't want to mess with the traditional Irish sweet-song hymns and the general respect for the sacredness of the mass. This is an over-generalization, of course, but it was these kinds of attitudes we kept encountering. Everyone was more interested in pushing on the Church their personal agendas rather than growing in or spreading the Gospel. They thought that if they could just have it their way, the people leaving the Catholic church in droves would come running home.

What those people who left needed was Jesus. They couldn't find him in the Catholic church, so they left. If the Protestants are attracting huge numbers, it's not because of a great band and more modern service. That might get a person in the door initially, but what holds them there is when they encounter the Living God. Preach Jesus, and they will come! In fact, what I found to be so confusing was that a perfect opportunity to share the Gospel arose every mass -- after the Gospel reading! But time and again each priest would not even mention the words just read in scripture, nor related concepts, nor a sign of any personal faith in Christ. They'd talk about the crazy weather we were having or the latest Cosmopolitan article, but never the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Eventually, life events took us from Colorado Springs to Phoenix, Arizona. We began to attend another Roman Catholic church there, but encountered the same watered-down, irrelevant message as we had in the previous ones.

The only respite came from a guest priest, Father Nacho, who would sometimes say mass.  Every once in a while, you encounter a Spirit-filled person whose very being emanates the triune God. This visiting priest was that way.  "A prophet," my husband called him.  He once announced at mass "I am hearing complaints that I preach the Gospel too often, but I say, I will not cease to preach it because you still don't understand it!"

We looked forward to the Sundays when he would preach, because we knew we'd come away from mass profoundly touched by the wisdom, mystery, and power of God. But, as all guests do, this priest left within the year. And because we had no other cause to stay, and in fact felt very disconnected from that community, we looked for a church home elsewhere. Said poetically, the color gray tends not to attract. True, it won't offend, but neither will it attract. It stands for nothing.

By this time we were experiencing a crisis of faith.  We desperately needed life-support from a pastor who understood our spiritual needs. We thought maybe it was time to try the Byzantine Catholic Church in Phoenix.  Perhaps it would give us a home, since our first positive encounter with Catholicism had been at a Byzantine church. Roman Catholicism in the Southwest had not fed us, so perhaps the difference lay in which Catholic rite you attended (for an explanation of Catholic rites, click here.)  

Instead, we found a church that cared more about the importance of upholding their cultural tradition than the message of Christ.  Our crisis need for our faith to be fed was met with the pastor starting every single homily with a bazooka joke.  My husband said that it was slowly turning his faith into a joke.  

Still, we tried to reach out to this community. At one point, I invited every young family there to a children's cookie decorating party. I thought it would be a good way to fellowship with them. But Catholics are notorious for avoiding fellowship, and apparently these Catholics were no different from their Roman counterparts. Not one of my many invited families showed. I ended up calling in all of the neighborhood kids, and made a party of it anyway.  I couldn't help but think of the wedding parable:

My husband's disillusion was intensifying.  Absent the Gospel message, he just couldn't stand to hear one more joke from the pulpit. I don't think it normally would have been a problem, but the accumulation of negative experiences was beginning to get to him.

This time, we attended a Melkite Catholic Church. Unfortunately, this church was caught up in the lie of a works-based salvation. One memorable homily was on the parable of the wedding feast already mentioned above.  The focus this time was on verses 11-12 which, if you recall, had one guest thrown out of the feast to "wailing and gnashing of teeth" because he had not worn the correct wedding garment. Well, the deacon was giving this particular homily, and explained how it meant that if you didn't wear a coat and tie to church, you were in grave sin. My husband later wondered aloud about how poor people obviously do not have enough money to spend time with God.

But the final nail on the coffin of us attending this particular Melkite Church came one Sunday when a woman in the front pew collapsed. She had been in a horrible car accident just a few weeks earlier, in which her husband had been killed. Though over 90% of her aorta was severed, they managed to save her life. So, to see her collapse was a cause for great concern. Her family in the pew around her quickly gathered near, and talking was going on. Everyone was alarmed. What did the priest do?

Well, her collapse had interrupted his homily. He faced away, and silently stared out a window while rocking back and forth on his heels.  This lasted long enough for an ambulance to arrive and take her away.  As the stretcher started to move down the aisle, he turned back to the congregation and said "Isn't it funny how I was teaching on patience, and here we are, having to be patient?"

No prayers were offered for her as she was wheeled out. Not one word of concern, nor even a glance was afforded her. For someone trying to be God's representative on Earth, this priest lacked the compassion of Christ so much that he couldn't be troubled by the incident in the least.

It should not surprise you that this started a period where we didn't go to church at all. My husband began to repeat the same jaded statement, "You know, we live on Mars." And when you'd ask him why, he'd say, "There's no churches on Mars, so we must be on Mars."

At first, our motivation for staying home was to save our children for growing up in an environment which called itself Christian, but preached something else. We thought they'd grow up to say "If this is Christianity, I don't want to be Christian."  Ironic that to preserve our children in the Christian faith, it was necessary to prevent them from going to church.

Our intermittent church attendance was finally punctuated with one last dire church experience.  Based on a recommendation, we attended yet another new Roman Catholic parish. We only lasted four Sundays. This new church had a tradition of waving their fists in the air during the Alleluia hymn - a slower version of the Arsenio Hall one-handed fist pump. We thought it was a bit strange and unreserved for Catholics to be doing such a thing, but we simply tried to ignore it. That worked until the Sunday when the priest made the whole topic of his homily about the fist pumping. He told his parishioners that people who refused to do the fist pumps were "people of fear." He called them, that is us, "Sadducees."  My husband was very offended at the message, and actually shouted out at the end of the homily "Don't call us Sadducees!"

In three separate and private conversations with that priest after the mass and in the days that followed, my husband was seeking an apology from the priest. The priest, in turn, wanted nothing except for my husband to understand the gravity of the crime he committed by speaking up during mass.  

My husband noted that the notion of Jesus over-turning the tables of the money-changers at church was entirely lost on this pastor. We stopped attending mass.

We worried for our faith. My husband struggled with believing in a God who didn't seem to be active in his own church. He thought maybe he was becoming an agnostic. Meanwhile, I began to sense the presence of God in yoga class and spent my time with him there. My whole yoga routine became worship of Jesus. In this way, the Holy Spirit seemed to be saying, "I am still here, do not be discouraged."

God sometimes chooses the strangest tools to bring you to where he wants you to go. For us, when he was ready to give us the church home we had been seeking for ten years, he used...

Google.

If I were to tell you I am an Evangelical Catholic, you might think it was an oxymoron. But truth can be stranger than fiction. In fact, I grew up a Missouri Synod Lutheran, and never thought I would be anything but that. But my life took an unexpected turn.

During my first semester of college at the University of New Mexico, I met and fell in love with a Catholic young man named Brent. I knew that one day we would get married and that when people decide to marry, it is not all that unusual for one to convert to the other's faith. But that is not the way it happened for me. I had no intention of becoming Catholic, and thought instead that eventually I would be successful in converting Brent to Lutheranism. After all, that had happened with a couple of the uncles in my family - why would it be any different for me?

But I was curious about Catholicism. I had a lot of misconceptions about their beliefs. Brent was very educated about his faith, so he passed on his knowledge to me. Even though this cleared up my misunderstandings and did a good job of explaining the reasons behind Catholic doctrines, it had no effect on my desire to remain Lutheran. Why would I change? The Catholics could believe as they wished. I was happy in my church.

Often times Brent would go to Confession, and I'd tag along and wait for him. I asked him about it, and he explained that Catholic priests claim to speak on behalf of Christ when they announce your sins to be forgiven. It grew on me. I wanted to hear the words, "You are forgiven," with my own ears. Then I thought that the closest thing I would get to hearing those words from Jesus would be to hear them from someone trying to represent Jesus. So, I asked Brent to take me to Confession.

Brent wasn't sure if I was allowed to go, since I wasn't Catholic and wasn't planning to be. But he took me anyway, and explained the situation to the partially bemused and baffled priest. After the entire line of people went through confession, I went to take my place - only to find the priest emerging from the confessional and beckoning me to meet elsewhere. He was a kind, endearing man with a sweet face. He told Brent, presumptuously, that I wasn't seeking confession - just counseling. And yet he engaged me face to face, which evidently is required for a first confession. He took me into the cry room at the church and sat me down.

I'm sure he was quite shocked when the floodgates opened. I had a lot of sin for which I still carried the guilt and shame. I dumped it all before him, and he realized immediately I was giving a genuine confession. He gave me the sacrament. The moment I heard the words of absolution (e.g. "...I forgive you of your sins, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit"), I was filled with the Holy Spirit.

Because I had never had a spiritual experience like that before, I didn't know what was happening to me. All I knew is that I didn't want to leave the church. I sat down in the pew for a few minutes, but the priest approached us and said it was time to lock up. So, I was forced to go. Then Brent asked me how it went, but I said, simply, "Not yet."

In Brent's car, I sat staring off into space. Brent said it looked like I was either going to burst into joyous laughter or tears. When we got back to his apartment, he asked again how it went.

Finally I erupted in an effusion of joy. The desire to sing hymns of praise came over me. I began singing Christian hymns that I knew from my childhood. It became clear to me that I was experiencing the Holy Spirit. I (errantly) concluded that the Holy Spirit was exclusively for Catholics, and that they must be the One True Church. I decided that moment that I'd become a Catholic.

I had taken my first steps on an unpredictable, amazing journey - and I never could have predicted what happened next.

Our Master did not lead a life in the comfort zone. He did not fit in to any mold already established: he was neither a Pharisee nor a Sadducee, and loved sinners but never sinned. In this way, Christian yoga teachers emulate our Lord. We do not fit into pre-established molds: we are not a fully accepted part of the yoga nor the Christian communities. There are those in both communities who understand the value of practicing yoga as a Christian spiritual discipline, and so support us. But you might be surprised at the venom that can sometimes come our way.

A few days ago, I looked up "Christian yoga" on YouTube.com and found a video called: Christoga - Christian Yoga. It is a short advertisement for a Christian yoga video. It is amazing the reactions it elicited.

Some claiming to represent yoga said:

• "Here's another example of how Christians take someone else's hard work and steal it and then slap their name on it."
  
• "Yoga is stretching. If you hallucinate while you're stretching, well, that's a different issue."
  
• "I find it sad that people are associating yoga with religion, yoga is just a vehicle for worship and wellbeing not a religion, if it was a religion you would have less people practicing it."
  
• "You see many religious people have been sucked in to this new false belief that it's ok for a Christian to practice yoga... the two don't and never will mix... one does not support the other...if religious people do actually support yoga then they themselves have been deceived... simple as that."
  
• "Great... let's take two of the world's richest spirititual traditions and combine them to make money from ignorant western retards!!! This is soooo sad. I'm a Hindu... stop abusing my traditions you western imperialists."
  
• "The creators of Yoga - Hindus - did not label it and gave it free to this world but now @#$%^&* Christians using words like Christian Yoga????"
  
• "Christians are like dogs. They need to pee on everything to mark their territory. Predatory culture!"

Some claiming to represent Christianity said:

• "First ask yourself what is yoga, what do the different poses represent... Yoga is in itself a belief system as yoga doesn't follow God's teachings [so] it should be pretty simple...Christians are told to not practice anything from different religions it's as simple as that."
  
• "Christians should not be involved in yoga. It is a form of spiritual meditation. Anything spiritual that is not of God is demonic. What a huge deception this is. It would be the same as getting involved in witchcraft and then calling it Christian witchcraft."
  
• "YOGA MEANS: DIVINE CONNECTION. CONNECTION WITH A GOD. THE ONLY WAY TO CONNECT WITH GOD IS TROUGH "JESUS CHRIST" IF THERE IS [AN]OTHER WAY, THEN MY FRIENDS HE DIED IN VAIN! WAKE UP YOGA, NEW AGE RELIGION IS THE SECRET DOCTRINE OF LUCIFER!"
  
• "Wow, I guess you can't be a born again spirit filled Christian...because if you were you would recognize straight away that some spiritual practices are forbidden and are also dangerous... maybe you should pick up a Bible and read it.... you may learn something..."
  
• "The two women look rather like some Oprah Winfrey educated new age temple prostitutes [rather] than Christian women."
  
• "What planet are you on? Because it's not Earth.... You obviously aren't a born again Christian.... that part is obviously clear... If you have any brains the answers you got would tell you stop."
  

As with any proposed idea, two common causes of resistence are fanaticism and misinformation.  I cannot address fanatics, since fanatics are emotionally attached to the outcome of a debate and feel threatened by the idea of considering positions other than their own. But to remedy the problem of misinformation, I'm taking time to write this post.

What is yoga?

Like meditation, Yoga is a spiritual discipline. Yoga combines three practices: breathing exercises, meditation/contemplation, and physical postures. Yoga originally began with more emphasis on meditation and less emphasis on postures. The practice of yoga dates as far back as 5000 BC. It predates Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, but it has been adopted by all of these religions. Like other spiritual disciplines (i.e. prayer, fasting, etc.), it can be used in any religious context, and does not belong to any one religion. Hatha yoga, which are the postures, can be removed from a religious context altogether and be used solely as a form of exercise. In fact, that often happens in cases where organizations are trying to appeal to a large, general demographic, like gyms and fitness clubs.

What is Christian yoga?

Christian yoga takes the breathing exercises, meditation and physical postures, and adds in Jesus Christ. The Bible is read throughout, personal witness is given and Christian or instrumental music is played. Christian yoga begins in prayer, and its aim is the worship of and contemplation of the Triune God. There is nothing about it that diverts in any direction away from Christian doctrine or devotion. It is instead a unique way to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength" Mark 12:30.

Why do people object to Christian yoga?

From the yoga camp:

Although yoga predates the religions which have adopted it by at least 1500 years, nevertheless practitioners of those religions will sometimes object to it being adopted by Christianity. This is understandable, since it has been part of their religious tradition for as much as 3,000 years! In some cases, this can lead to feelings of their faith being trampled upon by ours, whether or not they are aware that yoga is something that predates them. But this is not a universal reaction. In most cases, people are more open-hearted about it, and indeed, yoga has often been called, "India's gift to the world." BKS Iyengar, the founder of the Iyengar yoga school, stated in his book, Yoga: The Path to Holistic Health, "Yoga is for everyone."

From the Christian camp:

In a lot of cases, fear and ignorance lead people to reject yoga. Because yoga is practiced by other religions as a spiritual discipline, it can sometimes be misunderstood to be a religion in itself. Yoga is as neutral as meditation, prayer or fasting - three other disciplines practiced across many religions - and can be applied as easily in a Christian context. But, thankfully, as the years pass and it becomes more clear that Christians who practice yoga are not harmed by it, this fear is dissipating. It also helps that doctors and other authorities are now recommending yoga for its health benefits to their patients. This has added substantially to its acceptance in the West.

It is true that in rare cases, when you enter a non-Christian yoga class, you may encounter philosophies that disagree with Christianity. This is because of the history and traditions being passed down by that particular teacher or studio. It may surprise you to know that the teachings can vary substantially from studio to studio, or sometimes from teacher to teacher within the same studio! But with Christian yoga, there is no room for anti-Christian thought. If you enter a Holy Yoga class, you enter a class led by Jesus and for Jesus. Brooke Boon, founder of Holy Yoga, summarizes it well:

I have attended non-Christian yoga classes at many studios of differing schools of thought. I rarely encountered teachings against my Christian beliefs, but if I did, I ignored them, and instead lifted up my practice as a gift to my Savior. If any chanting went on, I would chant to myself, "Jesus, Jesus" instead. Still, I obviously wished for a yoga practice that was free from such distractions.

When I discovered there was such a thing as Christian yoga, I was elated, since I had been using my yoga as a prayer to our Lord for years prior. Yoga has always been a way for me to contemplate my God and abide in his Spirit. With yoga, Jesus has guided me towards physical health, which had previously eluded me. My body is the temple of his Spirit, and my soul longs to be still and know him. In both ways, Jesus uses my spiritual discipline of yoga to heal, strengthen and mature me. It has been one of the most significant blessings in my life.

I believe Christ himself not only approves of Christian yoga, but called me and those in my ministry to teach it. In each and every Christian yoga class I have taken or taught, his promise has been demonstrated: "For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them” Matthew 18:20.

Hindsight is 20/20. And when I stand where I am now, holding the hand of my Savior, and look back over the landscape of my life, I can see clearly his constant call to me to be authentic. It is not the only call he has sent me, but it has been a never-ending theme. Why? Because it does not come naturally to me.

I was born a peacemaker. It doesn't sound bad; in fact, when Jesus preached his Sermon on the Mount, he said, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God" Mat 5:9. But like any good gift, it can be twisted.

Peacemakers have a tendency to be sacrificial in nature. My life is a story of endless occasions where I let myself become the door mat in order to keep the peace. Peacemakers also believe in the value of others, but can forget their own value. In my case, I have defined myself by how others view me for as long as I can remember. The result? Little to no self-esteem, broken-down or destroyed personal boundaries, and an identity that is so small and so lost within that it can barely be heard.

My greatest struggle with authenticity is also my most recent one. It was ten years long, but for a good reason. Now that Jesus has thrown me a line and dragged me from that quicksand, I can stand beside it, breathe and know without a doubt that authenticity is a gift I will cling to and cherish for the rest of my life.

The date was September 9th, 2011. Two days before the terrorist attacks on our nation. My husband, three-year-old daughter and I crested the final hill that began our first descent into the Valley of the Sun. After sixteen hours of travel, we had arrived with our U-Haul truck and little sedan. It was the twilight hour, and the view was breathtaking. All around us, like silent, still sentinels, saguaro cacti stood watch as we passed, backlit by a glowing horizon. I immediately fell in love with the unique beauty of this dry yet thriving land.
I was unaware, however, that the people I was about to encounter were formed from the same mold: harsh yet attractive, covered in thorns yet lovely to behold.

We had come from humble beginnings, as most young married couples do. After scrimping and saving, we had purchased our starter home in Colorado Springs, Colorado only a few years prior. It was an old, tri-level house flanked by a busy street and overlooked by a squadron of electrical towers. But its backyard was an oasis with a big wooden deck, and inside it had hardwood floors and enough space for us to rent out a few of the basement rooms. When we were in the backyard, I'd pretend that the constant noise of the traffic was merely the waves of the ocean. I tried to ignore the car fumes and my anxiety about living so close to such a thick collection of electric wires.

But Colorado is cold, and my husband had grown up on the Eastern beaches of sunny Florida. He is known to say, "Snow is God's way of saying, 'Don't live here.'" So, when the Tech bubble burst and my husband's employer shut the doors on the Colorado Springs branch, we decided to move to warmer climes. Since we had family in Phoenix, it seemed the natural choice.

Once the decision had been made, and we made temporary living arrangements in the small suburb of Anthem, I began to do internet research. Anthem was a new development at the time, at the northern-most tip of the Phoenix metropolitan area, and it boasted that it had the makings of a perfect American home town. It was chalk-full of amenities: a community center with classes, a gym, pools, parks, hiking and running trails, a lake, beautiful homes and just enough distance from the city to feel safe. It even had a more up-scale gated community with a country club.

When I visited the Anthem internet site, I was sucked in. I looked at the model homes, pictures of the parks and the smiling people looking so put-together. I wanted to be one of them. Soon, I had picked out the home floor plan I wanted. They had pictures of every room on the site, so I'd go through the different rooms again and again. My humble home grew very unpleasant to live in. I couldn't wait to move to paradise.
But paradise did not bid us a warm welcome. Two days after we arrived, September 11th hit, and it left me and the rest of the country in utter shock. And then, as if to mourn the loss of so many people, the sky rained and rained and wouldn't quit. It didn't care that it was raining over a desert. For days, it poured.

Even though I knew that all of those events had nothing to do with me, I was left with the feeling that a curse had descended. It was like I was in a surreal nightmare. One minute, I was living a normal life in Colorado, the next, I was in a very unfamiliar place and horrendous things were happening. September 11th had placed a strange hue on my life, and I wasn't sure if the world was safe anymore.


That discoloration remained as I tried to plug myself into the community. I made "friends", but if there is anything a people-pleaser is good at, it's reading vibes. I felt tolerated, but not "one of the group." Secretly, I was being looked down upon. I grappled with what the cause of this might be. Finally, I decided I wasn't put-together enough. So I studied my friends, and emulated them.

The first thing I noticed is that their homes didn't look lived-in. They were replicas of the model homes in the community. They were clean and orderly, and ready at any moment for a camera crew to arrive and feature them in a home decor magazine. These people had children, but you couldn't tell. And the last thing they'd ever want is surprise guests.

Back in Colorado, my friends and neighbors didn't mind you stopping by unannounced for a visit. In fact, if the garage was open, you could waltz right on up to the garage door and knock as you entered. In Anthem, the garage doors were never left open, and no one arrived without plenty of warning. Otherwise, how could you keep up appearances?

So, I got hold of some basic decorations and cleaned up a little more. But I still didn't fit.

Then I observed that the way I dressed still placed me as a college student. These women even had a designer look to them if they were out jogging. Their hair had the perfect, just-out-of-a-salon amount of highlights and lowlights. Their nails were fake, and their toes regularly pedicured. They wore big, clunky jewelry and carried Coach or Gucci bags. They were money from their heads down to their toy dogs.
So, I went shopping at Ross, and tried to find inexpensive clothes that looked like theirs. I felt uncomfortable and stuffy, but maybe it would make the bad vibes go away. Not a chance.

My exploration turned towards the way I raised my child. Perhaps they thought I was a bad mother. After all, they all did cute crafts with their children, enrolled them in a wide array of extracurricular activities, tried to teach them to read and do math while they still wore diapers, and stood in line overnight to get them into the choicest schools. None of them sat on the couch and watched the Little Mermaid for the fiftieth time that day like I did with my daughter. They had their children's days filled with educational or physical activities. None of them surfed the net while their kid ran around and played. Perhaps I wasn't involved enough.

Truly, I don't think I was. This was an area where I needed improvement. But the happy medium was more where I needed to be, a balance of her needs and mine, rather than the extreme to which they had taken motherhood. And even with increased involvement in my daughter's life, I did not gain acceptance.

I couldn't think of anything else to fix. I began to believe that the problem was me. Social awkwardness was something I had always struggled with. I thought I had gotten past it when I was in college. Perhaps I hadn't. Perhaps I couldn't. Perhaps they would never accept me, because deep down, I just wasn't good enough for them on a level that I couldn't change.

I felt like I was back in high school, being rejected by the popular kids. I had always wondered where those perfect-looking, snobby, successful jerks had gone after graduation. Apparently, my growing jadedness told me, they went to Anthem, Arizona.

Now, don't misunderstand me. I know that Anthem is a big community and I should not make sweeping generalizations.  However, my feelings arose from the specific people I encountered there.

By this time, their tolerance of me was beginning to fray. You can only put up with a loser hanging around in your circles for so long. It was time to show me some rejection, and get me to leave.

Ugliness started to come out of their mouths instead of the usual waves from their body language. The worst example was when I was sat down by one who informed me that my husband (who they liked) was going to become an executive someday. And I was "just not executive-wife material". I was told that most likely, when my husband realized that, he would divorce me.

This outright negative treatment came at about the six-month mark, along with the worst Christmas of my life. After that, exhausted from my efforts to please people who couldn't be pleased, I took a vacation and went home to Colorado to visit my parents. The difference in the atmosphere between the two places was quite concrete. It was like a heavy weight had been lifted. Colorado, the place I had been so anxious to leave, suddenly felt like it was paradise.

I explained to my parents what had been going on. They said they'd be willing to help us out financially for a while if we wanted to find a new community to call home.

So we did. I made the arrangements over the phone with my husband, who had stayed in Anthem because of work. Within three days of returning to Anthem, we had packed up and made our escape into an apartment in North Phoenix.

Or at least, I thought we had. As it turned out, those women followed me in my head. And so did my new addiction to beautiful things. I could not be happy living in an apartment, and spent the next few years miserable as we tried to get out of debt and save up for a home.

I started to watch HGTV and shows like "What Not to Wear" so that I could learn the ins-and-outs of acting and appearing to be someone I wasn't. I learned how to pronounce "Versace." I kept my house picked up and began to stress if it looked at all lived-in.

My children were well-groomed and I enrolled them in activities. I even stood in line to get my daughter into a charter school, and drilled her on her alphabet and numbers so she could qualify for the kindergarten.

I felt judged everywhere I went. When I saw put-together, beautiful women, I imagined they took one look at me and all my flaws were before them. I tried desperately to fit in, even going so far as to study their social interactions. They loved to greet each other with high-pitched voices, they never openly admitted that anything in their lives was less than perfect, and they always carried themselves with confidence and grace.

But I got better at it. We moved from one apartment to another, and then finally into our second home. It was small, but beautiful. It had tile throughout and a swimming pool. The previous owners had done good work with the premises. And the neighborhood was nice. Everyone took pride in their homes and kept them up. I could pretend to be a snob here.

We plugged ourselves into our new community. We found a church, and I joined the mom's group. The people at the church were beautiful, and they reminded me of the people in Anthem. Some of them gave me that same vibe, but surprisingly most of them did not. Perhaps these pretty people would like me. Perhaps they couldn't see my flaws. I began to try and please them.

This erasing of myself lasted a full decade after my initial move to Arizona. God had been whispering to me that my worth was not found in such shallow appearances, but in the blood of his Son. And I thought I believed that. But deeper down, my life was controlled by a lie, and my dignity was dying. I desperately looked for any sign of approval from other women in my circles. Anything that showed they thought I was like them, that I was one of them.

In January of 2011, Satan, the enemy of my soul, made a huge miscalculation. I went under what I believe was a spiritual attack. I felt like I had once as a painfully shy child. My home was the only place that felt safe. For two months, I retreated from the world and lived in fear of rejection. I didn't go to any social events. My thoughts were constantly anxious and I created mountains out of every molehill. This was not long after God had called me to teach Christian yoga. And so I was warned by the teaching team that something like this may happen. If you decide to give your life to the work of God, the enemy doesn't like it. Once I figured out what it was, it dissipated.

But it had taught me what the origins of my fears are. It taught me that I was far from living in the freedom of Christ. I explained to my husband how I wasn't sure who I was. I had spent so long trying to be someone else that I didn't know who Amy Arias was anymore. I knew that my years in Phoenix had changed me. I wasn't the same young mother with one child. I now had four. But what did I like? What did I want to wear? What was important to me? What did I dream of? Who was really my friend? I had to spend the following months answering those questions. I still am answering them today.

In October that same year, I went to the yoga retreat that finished up my training with the Holy Yoga Foundation. During that retreat, Jesus did amazing work in my life. One of the core team members asked us if we believed we had dignity and the word hit me like a slap in the face. As the word reverberated off my ear, it broke the curse that had been placed on my life since entering Phoenix. For so long, I had lived in a harsh desert of enchanting beauty that had been very unkind to me. Now, Jesus had shown me how to love myself, how to be myself, and how to be loved by him. He had torn the veil that was discoloring my life. The desert was no longer unsafe. It was a place to spread his hope; a place to love his people.

And the irony is, I feel more accepted by people now that I have started believing in my dignity. People actually like the real me. Who knew?
Even if they didn't, does it matter?

So far in the Body Bag series, we have been laying a firm foundation. We have established that a love of ourselves, neither inflating nor deflating our importance, is commanded in Scripture: "Love your neighbor as yourself" Luke 10:27b. We have affirmed that care of the body is an essential element in obeying that command, since the body is not only a part of ourselves, but also a God-breathed creation and the temple of the Holy Spirit. We have practiced awareness of the world around us and soaked up the blessings it offers with our five senses. This awareness led us to a heart full of thanksgiving for the richness of the life God has provided us, and the wonderful bodies he has given us so we can experience that richness. The foundation is indeed set. Now we are ready to build upon it.

To bring physical health to the body, we must listen to its voice and understand its relationship with the other voices vying for our attention. The body has needs. It needs rest, it needs good food, it needs to move and be active. Our first job in falling in love with our bodies is to listen to and meet those needs.

When a baby is born, it has only one way to convey it's needs: by crying. At first, the mother and other caretakers may be confused as to what need is being expressed. But, because of their love and compassion for that child, because of their awareness of what a precious gift it is, they take special care in deciphering the cries. It does not even occur to them to do otherwise. Soon, they know what the baby will want next before it makes a single sound!

Our bodies are the same. As we first turn our awareness to them, and listen to what they are saying, we may not be able to decipher clearly the need. Sometimes, a want may be taken for a need, like when we crave sugar. But as we grow in understanding, we become able to anticipate and meet the needs efficiently. And an incredible thing begins to happen. We feel love and compassion in our physical self that starts to translate into a love for the whole self.

But we are not simply bodies. We are also minds, hearts, and souls.  If you only listen to your body, and think that dieting and exercise alone will make you whole, you will find yourself unable to achieve it. How can we bring complete physical health to a body whose mental health or emotional health is broken?

Each of these aspects has its own voice and set of needs. Although we make clear distinctions between these "parts" of ourselves, the reality is much hazier. What we choose to think about affects our emotions, which in turn affects our physical health and the state of our souls. If we bury our emotions, block our thoughts, and ignore our souls, we end up with disease in our bodies. We cannot separate the elements which make us up. If you want physical health, you must go for whole-person health.

We also run into another problem, and that is our humanity. I heard said once, "Statistically speaking, three out of three people are broken." We are not perfect. Our souls are tarnished with the taint of sin, and that taint spreads to affect the whole self. And when we try to achieve whole-person health by relying on self-help books, yoga gurus, self-actualization classes and the like, we will never get there.
So how do we become whole?

The Great Physician himself, the one who commanded us to love our neighbor as ourselves to begin with, preceded that command with an even more important one: "He answered, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’" Luke 10:27a. Notice that the command includes every aspect of the self. When you love God with all you are, the healing begins. Listen to this verse from Mat 13:15:

Of course while wholeness in Christ of mind, body, heart, and soul is the basis of well-being, it is still not a gaurantee of health. Many have pursued Christ with their all, and have still encountered tribulation in such things as diabetees and cancer. We must always remember that while we are not to be of the world, we are still in the world - an occupational hazard indeed. Our modern life bombards us with substances and physics (e.g. electomagnetics) having consequences we still do not understand. But the principles of wellness apply even if our health greatly deteriorates. We are all destined one day to die (Hebrews 9:27), which means we must approach any deterioation with the same balance of mind, body, heart, and soul that we sought while in health. No matter what, in Christ we have the peace that surpasses all understanding (Phil 4:7).

So what happens when we turn to God? He heals us. What happens when we don't? We cannot be healed. Through the sacrifice of his Son, he cleanses all souls who believe. And then, step by step through the work of his Spirit, he reclaims our whole health. With him, we can bring resolution and peace to the troubles of our past. We can bring trust in to replace our fear of the future. We can undo what sin has done to our now. As he burns away what is not us, he leaves behind what truly is us. Consider the story of Moses: 

Moses had the awesome experience of seeing the burning bush, of encountering the Spirit of God. You have the awesome experience of being the burning bush. When you accept Christ as your Savior, you become the dwelling place of God's Spirit. Just like the bush, it sets you aflame but never consumes you. Because you are God's temple--his burning bush--anywhere you walk is holy ground.

But being on fire is a purifying experience. Our God, in his great love for us, works ceaselessly to grow us into Christlikeness. Consider these scriptures:

The more open we are to letting God move in every aspect of our being, the more purification can take place. Sin and its effects can be eradicated. Let no part of you be left out. Open every door you've locked to the different and various skeletons in your closets.
When we give him our whole self, we find that what we receive is a whole self in return: "Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it'"  Mat 16:24-25. By being dedicated fully to him in love, his purpose is fulfilled in us: "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly" Jn 10:10b. He delivers us from the reign of sin in every way:

• Mentally, so we can, "take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ" 2 Cor 10:5.
  
• Emotionally, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest" Mat 11:28.
  
• Spiritually, "So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed" John 8:36.
  
• Physically, "Your body will glow with health, your very bones will vibrate with life!" Prov 3:8. (MSG)
  

So, love yourself as you would your neighbor: Live within your body, and soak up the richness of life. Listen to its voice: feed it what brings it ease, clothe it comfortably, give it adequate rest and love it by moving it. The results of the neglect up until now will begin to be reversed. And most importantly, do it all in the power of the living, breathing God, who will work in you to heal you. Practice his Presence. Listen, abide and obey, for without him, "you can do nothing" Jn 15:5. Until which day you are whole, and he sends you forth to tell the world about the good he has done in you, saying:

"Go, for your faith has healed you" Mark 10:52.

Now that I've explained that it takes living life with awareness to live it abundantly, it only makes sense that I teach you how to attain awareness.

It will help you to know that you've already attained it, on several occasions. Anytime you are fully in the moment, you are living with awareness. Very stimulating experiences will sometimes capture our complete attention, whether they are positive or negative. If you have ever witnessed the birth of a baby, for instance, you probably were not lost in thought at the moment that that new life entered the world. It is enthralling. Take your memory of any significant event in your life, and you will be able to see it in your mind's eye and recall it's vivid nature. But even insignificant events can be experienced in this way. It's only a matter of practicing awareness, and you will be able to call yourself back to the now at will.

My husband is fond of saying, "There are two inscriptions on the temple of Delphi: 'Know Thyself' and 'Nothing in Excess'." (What's ironic is that he quotes it so often that he is doing it in excess!) And there's a good reason he likes those inscriptions: a wellspring of wisdom is found in those two simple lines. Before you become familiar with what it means to be aware, know yourself. No one is capable of living in the now and never getting lost in thought. So, be easy on yourself. Your mind is not the enemy. It's part of your life just as much as any other member of your body or moment in your journey. Yet, it can have a tendency to want to take over. And that's where "Nothing in Excess" comes in. If there is anything our mind wants to do in excess, it's think. Not that I have anything against thinking. It is most definitely what our minds should be doing. But life is not only about thinking.

There are many options here. Some people find they come into focus by exercising. Some by thinking through a challenging problem. Some by prayer, or meditation. Some by adrenaline rush. They may not realize that their experience has a name--awareness--but they are addicted to the activity that brings it to them. When they do it, they feel more alive.

Below is a Christian meditation I have put together to help you become more aware. Note that meditation has always been a spiritual discipline of the Christian church. Meditating on scripture or being still and resting in God are both valid forms of Christian prayer. If you practice the following, it will help you become familiar with what it feels like to have a calm, quiet mind. Then, whenever you think of it, come back to that calmness and allow yourself to be immersed in your present experience of life.

It helps to remember the word BLISS. B is for Breathe. L is for Let your thoughts float by. I is for Investigate how your body is feeling and the emotions you brought with you. S is for Sense the world around you. And the last S is for Send up prayer, inviting God into the experience.
Equipped with a tool that helps you practice awareness, you can now go out into the world and experience it fully. But there is an entire world within you calling out, begging you to notice it. Are you aware of the different voices of the self vying for your attention? How do you take a body whose voices have been stuffed, ignored and stifled for so long, and allow it to live the life abundant? How do you fall in love with it? Let's go inward, let's dig deep.

It's a whole new world.