by Chris Boersma Smith | Dec 3, 2018 | Encouragement and Inspiration, Forgiving and Forgiveness, Overcoming Obstacles, Transformational Breakthroughs, Unbound
Body detox isn’t just a fad; for many, it’s become a necessity. We’re learning that our world is filled with toxins, from food and water, cleaning products, and the air we breathe, including the polluted air that comes over from mainland China. It’s mainstream knowledge that these toxins can cause disease and that it’s important to purge as many toxins as you can from your body. Similarly, there are pollutants to our spiritual well-being that eat away at our souls. If you’ve heard me speak on freedom or on creativity, you already know I’m on a crusade to help people go deep and root out whatever blocks their creativity (which I see as reflecting the image and likeness of God) and inhibits fulfilling their God-appointed mission in life.
Fear. Depression. Overwhelming stress. Anxiety. Compulsive people-pleasing. These have become so commonplace that we tend to ignore them until they escalate to threaten our health, our relationships, and our authentic selves. Through my e-book, Freedom from Hurts, Fears, and Unhealthy Habits: 5 Keys to a Free, Peaceful Life with More Creative Energy, I encouraged readers to use specific spiritual tools to forgive and be healed of lingering resentments, faulty thinking, and resulting habits that interfere with being fully alive, more joyful, and more creative than ever. Freedom from Fears was especially geared to women who value creativity but who may not have been exposed to the spiritual detox work described here for Catholic and non-Catholic Christians, based on five key points supported by what Jesus taught in The Lord’s Prayer 2000 years ago. Surprisingly, only in recent years have ministries developed step-by-step approaches to make this kind of spiritual cleansing easily accessible, and lay people are now helping people experience clean hearts and spirits across the US, Europe, Africa, Australia, and South America, most nobably through the Unbound model of prayer ministry.
The book focuses on how detoxing the spirit—which includes cleansing the heart of resentment, bitterness, and unforgiveness—relates to The Lord’s Prayer, verse by verse. And it also tells some of my personal story and the journey from lamenting a relationship impasse through several kinds of training in detoxing the spirit.
The e-book also offers fun and practical tools to help you break through creativity blocks. Before I devoted myself completely to UNBOUND ministry, I called myself a Spiritivity Coach because I believe in the intimate connection between Spirit and Creativity, each enhancing the other. Accordingly, this e-book presented favorite techniques to help overcome roadblocks and cleanse your spirit of whatever lingering hurts or false beliefs hold you back. I emphasized the powerful blending of spirituality and creativity, because inspiration and execution sourced from deep within draw from a limitless supernatural well. Imagine a retreat where the Holy Spirit and Hildegard von Bingen meet Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the book, Big Magic. And, wow, what excites me with that combo is that we can all have access to not just magic, but miracles!
I define creativity very broadly. It can involve the arts, business, or a service profession. The creative process is in play whenever you do something innovative in a way in which you’re expressing yourself as the unique being you are. I believe we all come from the Creator and thus we are all creative.
The e-book, Freedom from Hurts, Fears, and Unhealthy Habits, was recently included in our Inner Healing Black Friday Bundle and will be offered again soon.
by Chris Boersma Smith | Jun 18, 2018 | Deliverance, Freedom, Healing, Holy Spirit, Transformational Breakthroughs, Unbound
I’d like to invite laity and clergy to read this post from Heart of the Father Ministries, which has trained our 5 Keys to Freedom in Christ team and spread the awesome ministry of Unbound across the states, provinces, and nations! Please check out this post and pray for the ministry!
http://www.heartofthefather.com/resources/blog/opportunities-for-new-growth
For an individual Unbound ministry session at St. Dominic’s, please visit our Unbound Ministry page to learn more, and submit your request for a private appointment.
by Chris Boersma Smith | Jun 20, 2017 | Creative Expression, Empowering and Freeing Choices, Encouragement and Inspiration, Holy Spirit, Overcoming Obstacles, Pentecost Experiences, Transformational Breakthroughs
I was the oldest of five siblings and responsibility was so impressed upon me that my shoulders became a luggage rack. Try as I might — and occasionally do — I can’t shirk responsibility. Still, I know that this weight of the world isn’t really mine to bear alone. I can ask for help from family and friends or even get online assistance. I can also yoke myself to Jesus who promises to take burdens upon himself and lighten my load [Mt. 11:30]. I can turn to the Serenity Prayer and wisely accept things I cannot change, putting down some burdens as a result. But what difference does our attitude toward responsibility make when it comes to creativity? For one thing, putting down or sharing burdens frees up time and energy that could be put to creative use.
Also, whether you already carry huge responsibility or you chronically avoid it, the fear of responsibility can sometimes subconsciously sabotage your creativity or productivity. If you fear responsibility, you may avoid completing goals through procrastination (another way fear rears its head). Or you may repeatedly quit when you’re ahead but not yet at the finish line.
Let’s say you have a big creative idea, a vision you’d like to see manifested. If you’re typically very responsible, you may plan or start but then set aside your big creative vision as you handle a series of smaller responsibilities you “must” attend to, telling yourself you “can’t” put in the time or effort to move forward on the big creative idea. Or you may think you already have so many responsibilities on your plate that you can’t take on one more thing (not wanting to admit that perhaps you need to let go of something else).
Indeed, responsibility can be both an outright block in the form of excuses for attending to lower priorities as well as a fear that impedes your creative progress. I must admit that I’m easily caught in the former, and that there may be less conscious component of the latter . . . because how could a responsible person like I’ve been all my life fear the responsibility that might come with creative success?
Because we were all divinely meant to be creative in some way, each of us has the responsibility to carry out our mission. Christians have just celebrated Pentecost, reminding us that we are summoned to live all our lives “in the Spirit” [Rom. 8:9, Gal. 5:16,25]. We are to get out of the fear that keeps us waiting in the Upper Room; we are to get out there and live big and bold, doing what God’s called us to do. We are to get up and act without fear, not to push off onto others what we can do and are called to do, and not to leave our light hidden away where no one can see it [Mt. 17:7, Mt. 5:15]. So yes, sometimes doing our creative thing means responsibility. In this post-Pentecost time, how about praying for the Spirit’s guidance and the power of the Spirit to do what you’re being called to do, relying on gifts and fruits of the Spirit like fortitude and perserverance.
It also means using our personal gifts and talents and our unique circumstances that add meaning and beauty, serve and uplift the world. When that comes from the heart, it feels more like play and joy than like work and burden. So we need to get over the notion that creative success means increased responsibility and stop sabotaging creativity to protect our so-called freedom from increased responsibility. When we prioritize our writing, music, art, crafts, dance, performance, hospitality, entrepreneurship, leadership, ministry or service — whatever our calling involves — the creative triumphs we experience will lighten the weight we may perceive responsibility to be. And there’s tremendous freedom in knowing you’re doing what you are here to do!
Awareness is very powerful. Just realizing what your attitudes are towards responsibilities, big and small, informs your decision making, giving you the power to decide from a place that is more conscious, more considered, more intentional. It creates momentum and it empowers you to walk out your purposes.
Visualize feeling lightness and relaxation and creative success all together — even if just for a few seconds or just a tiny bit more than you usually do. Invite Jesus and the Holy Spirit to be present as you close your eyes and breathe with that visualization. Pray to experience the combination of lightness and relaxation, joy and creative success. And then during your creative process lighten up as needed for breaks and self-care. Perhaps add some uplifting music in the background as you work or create. Give thanks as you use your “bodyguard energy” to resist excuses to back away from your creativity, even or especially when the alternative activities come justified in your mind as “handling other responsibilities.” As you do that, you grow your ability to be responsible not just for the quotidian obligations of your household or job but, more than that, for creative causes ordained by the Great Creator and entrusted to you for completion. This is highly spiritual and transformative, which is good for you and for others.
Each successful step you take along a spiritually blessed creative path will encourage and uplift you and others and will be worth the responsibility taken to move forward. If you’d like help in overcoming obstacles and journeying on the spiritual path, perhaps you might pray about and consider signing up for an Unbound prayer session and then getting some spiritual direction.
by Chris Boersma Smith | Apr 7, 2017 | Alignment with Values, Creative Expression, Encouragement and Inspiration, Life Stories, Transformational Breakthroughs, Unbound
Pondering Priorities and Piercing Perfectionism Turned the Tide
When I learned to sew, my mother instilled in me excessive concern about how each garment would look inside out. My seam ripper became the most used tool in my sewing kit. I’d rip and re-do a seam or a line of topstitching almost as often as it took to make the right side and wrong side perfect.
But this week I completed a 76” x 76” quilt and entered it into a show even though it was far from perfection. And I’m as happy with its imperfections as I am with how it’s re-ignited my passion for quilting, which had smoldered for a few years.
With this very time-consuming quilt, From Nora’s to the Crash Pad, I designed and sometimes cut or sewed in peaceful silence (part of my Reap As You Sew approach to spiritual quiltmaking). Because this was a LONG project, I also listened to some audiobooks while I did the more repetitive tasks (such as pressing yards of pre-washed fabrics, adding a slow decorative stitch over certain “ditches” between borders, and hand-stitching the binding and hanging sleeve). Among the audiobooks was The Road Back to You, a book about the Enneagram, a personality assessment tool I’ve benefitted from since 1989 and utilized extensively in my training as a spiritual director. The Enneagram dates back to the fourth century and is a spiritual tool as much as a psychological one. It sets forth nine personality types, with many, many variations and nuances that help you know your strengths, weaknesses, tendencies, and approaches to life. I am a No. 1, the Idealist or Perfectionist, so you see how this ties into the seam ripper!
What I love about the Enneagram is that it doesn’t pigeonhole me and leave me there. Rather, it makes me aware of how I typically respond to stress (I withdraw and become more like a No. 4, the Romantic, like Mary Magdalene) or to feeling secure (moving toward No. 7, the Enthusiast, like The Woman at the Well). It helps me understand how I challenge my husband or kids when I’m imposing unrealistic standards, being critical, or listening too much to my Inner Critic. Armed with awareness, I’m better able to get around my pitfalls, to recognize and renounce my demons.
Surprise 1: The Imperfect Attracted Me Most
From Nora’s to the Crash Pad began with a romantic dinner at Restaurant Nora when I accompanied my husband on a business trip to DC in 2015. We practically missed our dinner when our flight was delayed, but we were determined to go there even when we didn’t land until almost 9 pm. Nora’s had been our favorite splurge when we were dating in the early 80s, and my husband used to save up for visits there about once every other month. When we walked in now, decades later, the part of me who became a quilter about ten years into our marriage was thrilled to see the walls adorned with an impressive and varied collection of antique quilts.
Of all the quilts, the one opposite my seat was the one that inspired my newest quilt. After the diners who sat beneath it had left, I went up close to admire and photograph it. I was stunned to see how wonky it was: the decorative stitches you’d find on old crazy quilts were irregular. The seams were in odd places. The shapes weren’t uniform. The fabrics were inconsistent. Points of triangles were cut off. Straight lines were out of alignment. And there was embroidery in some places, not balanced by similar embroidery where it would be expected. I was charmed! I decided to make something like it for a bed quilt for our San Francisco apartment, which we call “the crash pad” since our principal residence is 110 miles north along the coast.
I’d learned over and over (but still tend to forget) how being perfectionistic can help me or hurt me. Perfectionism helps me when I remember to strive for excellence rather than unattainable perfection, and it’s served me well in academic and professional circles. But it hurts or hinders me when I procrastinate rather than doing a job that I fear won’t meet my standards. It’s awful when it gets in the way of loving acceptance and honoring other people’s approaches, when it harms my relationships. I’m sorry to say that it’s been the source of many a disagreement with my husband, who is not a perfectionist. (Fortunately, he’s let me train him about how best to load a dishwasher.) And it was hard for my kids, who I now know felt criticized and often not good enough, just as I had growing up with my parents’ high standards.
I’m no longer addicted, but I call myself a recovering perfectionist. With Unbound prayer ministry, I renounced the lies that live in No. 1 territory: that I’m not good enough; that I must do everything myself if I want it done right; that if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing your very best; and so on. So I brought my recovering perfectionist self to the making of From Nora’s to the Crash Pad.
Surprise 2: Imperfect Beats Never Finished
Not having a pattern, I had to design and enlarge this quilt and I wanted to “fix” some of the original’s wonkiness, but I ended up with some wonkiness of my own! I appliquéd the center section together, thinking I’d cover all the mitered corners with eight radiating lines like the original had. So I didn’t worry about those miters being just so. Only later, I decided I wanted just four spokes, so some imperfect miters are left exposed. Not all my 90-degree angles are square. I got a new quilting machine with which to quilt this and didn’t have time to practice on a smaller, less important quilt first. So the quilting has many zigs or zags that wouldn’t be there on a perfect quilt. And I bought the wrong amount of backing fabric and had to choose something else from a small local offering, so the back is solid cream and it shows all the stops and starts and a little thread barf and even some blood from a cut finger. So what!? On the bed, who will care? Even hanging at the show, with the placement I got up high, the five-foot rule is automatic. No one can even see those imperfections without a giant stepladder! Had I held out for perfection, or wielded the seam ripper more than I did, this quilt might have lost not only its chances of completion in my lifetime, but the joy it gives me in the present!
Surprise 3: Meeting a Challenge with Excellence Highlights Priorities
Powering through a week of almost non-stop production toward the end of this project, I felt the love of quilting again. I was delighted that I’d traded in a sewing machine I didn’t like for one I now love – even though that meant admitting that I’d made a wrong decision when I bought the other machine ten years ago. You see, wrong decisions are a significant fear and embarrassment for Ones. I had to prioritize and not even try to please everyone else as I put my creativity ahead of service, which is also unusual for a One who tends to overwork and fall short in the self-nurture category. Creativity is, for me, a top form of self-nurturance! Even when I work late into the evening, I quilt with Spirit, go to bed happy, have sweet dreams, and wake up enthused.
I’m excited to be going to the opening reception for the quilt show tonight, sharing it with my husband who loves this quilt. I’m delighted to have re-discovered how expressing my creativity is not a luxury but a necessity in my life! The creative process allowed me to ponder the Enneagram once again, reconsidering both how and WHY I do what I do and what I might wish to do differently. I’ll bring its insights with me into my freedom, healing, and deliverance ministry.
If you’re interested in finding out about your Enneagram type to help you identify some of your penchants and to gain personal benefits from its wisdom, I recommend reading The Road Back to You or other Enneagram books. I’ve got a library of them, and each sheds more light on the illuminating subject of how we are. I’d also recommend Unbound ministry or 5 Keys to Freedom in Christ prayer ministry to help you break through your compulsions, fears, or bad habits, and to open you to greater creativity, a process which I describe in my eBook, Freedom from Hurts, Fears, and Unhealthy Habits.
Your comments are always welcome!
by Chris Boersma Smith | Jan 18, 2017 | Freedom, Healing, Overcoming Obstacles, Spiritual Direction, Transformational Breakthroughs, Unbound
Free live workshops help God’s people learn how to unlock more peace, joy, healing, understanding, and freedom will be presented twice next week! In a nutshell, here’s what we’ll explore:
- Ever wondered HOW to truly forgive situations where you were hurt and still have lingering bitterness, anger, or grief?
- Do you need help to let go of past wrongs?
- Would you like to learn a valuable process for purifying your heart?
- Do you understand what this means? “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” ~Mt. 5:8.
- Can you identify the numerous “on earth” benefits of forgiveness besides the ultimate benefit of getting into heaven
The 5 Keys to Freedom in Christ are based on Neal Lozano’s Unbound book, the Our Father, and Jesus’ specific teachings. The discussion of why it’s hard to forgive also draws on psychology!
I’ve taught much of this before to parents of young children at 40-minute talk at St. Dominic’s Practical Faith that happens during Children’s Faith Formation on Sunday mornings. But I expanded a shorter PowerPoint presentation into a 90-minute workshop that includes prayer, a creative exercise to help with insights, practical suggestions for putting faith into action, as well as the Scripturally-based PowerPoint presentation. Please pray for this ministry, for those called to attend workshops, to pray for others, and to receive prayer ministry.
In the spirit of Oneness, the parish where I gave the “Forgiveness is Your Key to Healing and Freedom!” talks, Mary Star of the Sea, shares our charming little church building with other denominations, who call it Shepherd of the Sea. It’s nestled in the redwoods with a spectacular setting where you can see the waves through the windows behind the altar! We embraced the unity of all members of the Body of Christ and cordially invited those of all Christian denominations to join us!
5 Keys to Freedom in Christ prayer sessions are offered free, with a requested from-the-heart donation to the church or Heart of the Father Ministries only if you feel afterward that the Lord has done a good work in you!
I’ve personally experienced being set free right after forgiving those I perceived to have trespassed against me (including forgiving myself.) That’s given me a passion to minister using the process and to teach others the applicable divine promises! I present these workshops in partnership with the Holy Spirit as I draw on my experiences as a Catholic spiritual director, a trained UNBOUND team and prayer leader, and as author of Freedom from Hurts, Fears, and Unhealthy Habits: 5 Keys to a Free, Peaceful Life with More Creative Energy, which tells my story of forgiveness and freedom and also sets forth the 5 Keys in the context of the Lord’s Prayer.
For more information about booking me to make a presentation or to learn more about our prayer ministry, please browse our 5keystofreedom website.
by Chris Boersma Smith | Oct 12, 2016 | Authenticity, Empowering and Freeing Choices, Holy Boldness, Life Stories, Love and Compassion, Overcoming Obstacles, Transformational Breakthroughs, Unbound
I recently attended a SF-Spirit conference entitled “Mercy and Mission” and heard a married deacon of the church tell about his extensive drug and alcohol use, his profanity, and even his adulterous affairs . . .
That’s how he lived until he finally found the Love he was searching for in Jesus and turned his whole life around, ultimately entering the diaconate with his wife and kids’ support. It took courage to share so boldly, and his witness was undoubtedly more impactful because of it. Hearing how low he’d been stirred up compassion and proffered hope to others in dire circumstances. Telling his tale certainly exhibited Holy Boldness! It also spawned gratitude that although we have our own crosses, the majority of us seem to have been spared some of those particular problems. A sanitized version of his story wouldn’t have come close to touching hearts the way the messy tale of his journey did.
We All Have Not Only Messiness but also a Unique Life Story
Sometimes our stories have been kept very quiet, especially if they involve shame or perceptions of inadequacy or failure. Other stories are so public that they’ve defined people into a certain persona, concealing (even to themselves at times) who they truly are. Blessedly, even the most heart-wrenching stories can become stories of healing, redemption, and grace, and often that can only be surmised in retrospect. Having your story heard with compassion is a key behind the UNBOUND forgiveness and freedom ministry in which I’m so privileged to serve. Wisely sharing those stories can also help you and others to learn empathy, compassion, communication skills, and conflict resolution.
Sharing My Personal Stories
Hoping that the messiness and brokenness of my life and my thinking at different times would be instructive, I published a series of blog posts on my personal website last year. I’ve engaged in rampant self-criticism and judgmentalism over the years, forgetting that the verdict that counts awaits my arrival at the pearly gates, when Jesus will be my merciful judge. I hope you can accept what I shared as a part of just another messy journey, shared in hopes that it sparks worthwhile reflection for others and brings glory to the One who’s used it all for good. Apologies if you already know parts of my narrative; I’ve told some of it before, but since we’re constantly evolving, I trust that my sharing will reveal a slightly more mature cast this time.
This was Post 1 of the series. The others address how you know when you’re ready for another transition, how I transitioned from practicing law to my focus on spirituality, how dreams can guide you, what I learned while writing Reap As You Sew, how my ensuing business evolved, what spiritual direction is, and my then-latest revelations from the Holy Spirit.
Your comments are welcome, and guest blog posts are invited.
