by Chris Boersma Smith | Jul 8, 2017 | Empowering and Freeing Choices, Unbound
Let Peace Begin with Me.
The first time I heard the 1955 song, “Let There Be Peace on Earth” (written by Sy Miller and Jill Jackson) was in1990 during the Persian Gulf War, when the US and other countries launched Operation Desert Storm after Iraq invaded Kuwait. I’m not a good student of history, military operations, or MidEast politics, but I do remember how I felt with the notion of peace on earth beginning with each of us as individuals. I liked the idea because it took away some of the helplessness of being a citizen of a nation at war . . . or planning war . . . or debating decisions that affect war and peace. And here we are again, perhaps feeling helpless, or angry, or some other intense emotions because of what’s happening in the world or could happen soon.
How we deal with these emotions involves mind, heart, and spirit. When that’s our experience, I submit it’s a time to notice that a spiritual battle is also waging and to embrace healing and deliverance, as well as soulful creativity.
Creativity Can Heal.
In creativity, we have the opportunity for mind, heart and spirit to coalesce, to heal and center us by employing varied elements, expression, and processes that often take us to meaningfully depths. Visual art, the performance art of movement, music, tactile arts using ceramics or textiles, music, poetry—follow your own artistic inclinations as we make the Labor Day transition to the Fall, setting aside some time, even just a few minutes now and then, allowing your creativity to rise, to heal, to produce joy, to mourn, to express, led by your mind, your heart, and your spirit, and if you allow it, by the Spirit of God.
UNBOUND Heals.
Almost three years ago, I attended the 43rd annual Southern California Renewal Communities Convention at the Anaheim Convention Center with my spiritual brothers and sisters. We spent four days pursuing a ministry track called UNBOUND. Scripturally-based, UNBOUND’s mission is to love each person as God loves us and to serve God as instruments to set God’s people free in Jesus’s name. UNBOUND disciples of Christ are waging a spiritual battle, and I believe it is just as important, if not more important, than what’s happening in the MidEast. Darkness and evil are the oppressors; and I pray for Light (which has already won the victory on the cross) to shine forth. As for letting peace begin with me, I pray that I may be a channel of God’s peace and a sign of God’s love. Let peace AND FREEDOM begin with me in my heart, and with you in your heart, and in all of our hearts together. Are you with me? Note: This was originally written in 2014 for my blog, and yet it’s all still relevant, especially as our 5 Keys to Freedom in Christ ministry offering UNBOUND prayer is now in full swing at St. Dominic’s in San Francisco.
A Beautiful God-incidence.
I took a shuttle from that convention back to the airport with a woman who, like me, attended all the UNBOUND talks at the conversation. She introduced herself as “Lorelei from San Francisco,” and we had a nice conversation but didn’t exchange contact info. This past May (2017), Lorelei heard about UNBOUND Ministry training at St. Dominic’s—her parish for 15 years and now mine—and when we began emailing about it, we remembered each other, and are now on serving the same team. God rocks!
P.S. By the way, that year’s convention theme was “You are the Light of the World.” I only noticed that after I wrote this!
by Chris Boersma Smith | May 28, 2017 | Encouragement and Inspiration, Holy Boldness, Overcoming Obstacles, Unbound
Let’s talk about setting goals, failing to achieve them, and a spiritual coaching tool that can help!
Following the lead of Michael S. Hyatt, I reviewed 2016 and set goals for 2017 that, if achieved, would likely make me feel that I’d had the Best Year Ever. Believing I should, I set a fitness goal based on my intellectual understanding that, although I’m active, trim, and healthy, I had to exercise X times per week for cardiovascular conditioning, regulating blood-sugar, and strength training. At the end of the first quarter, I’d utterly failed to get near the goal and I sought input to help me get on track. I rejected all the suggestions because they didn’t excite me.
I realized I had a limiting belief—that I don’t like to exercise unless it’s just for fun like tennis or snorkeling. I’d built in flexibility and triggers to remind me, and I’d brainstormed ways to try to make it more fun. But the goal didn’t excite me—even fulfilling it sounded more like discipline than enjoyment, let alone elation about it being the best year. I was stuck. My heart didn’t buy into it. In prayer, the Holy Spirit + Creativity led me to know what would excite me. The solution: I revised my goal accordingly and have now been happily meeting my new fitness goal: Get endorphins going for at least 20 minutes of vigorous movement X times a week so I start to love that feeling!
Have you got any goals that need reframing?
Not surprisingly, my physical-psychological challenge tied into what’s been happening in my family and spiritual challenges.
It’s about not trying to put a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment or into a vintage quilt, because the patch will pull away from the old cloth, resulting in a worse tear. It’s about not putting new wine into old wineskins or they’ll burst, the wine will pour out, and the wineskins will get ruined. [See Matthew 9:16-17.] We need to put new wine into fresh wineskins—new ideas, reframes, revised expectations, and a new way of living out our calling—all are asking for new containers, new constructs, and fresh viewpoints. The “same old” just doesn’t work. “Because we’ve always done it that way” isn’t wise reasoning.
Parenting an almost teen, like our grandson who’ll be 13 in October, requires our daughter (his mom) to use a different approach than when her son was younger. How we relate to her has had to change accordingly.
Our other daughter (in the overalls above) earned a Masters in Art and Ecology this month, right after we went to see her interactive thesis exhibition in which family members shared outdoor experiences (on April 30th with snow that morning in Albuquerque). One experience (shown here) involved hiking into a wildlife preserve with a unique backpack our daughter made (along with other models) and washing each other’s hands, which was symbolic and moving, then later sharing a meal carried in another of her special backpacks. Definitely new and different art and experiences.
Also this Spring I presented a Lenten Day of Reflection on the 5 Keys to Freedom in Christ, base on Unbound healing and deliverance prayer ministry. It’s a brand new ministry in the San Francisco area, though it’s been growing in other states and countries. The Holy Spirit orchestrated that opening, and from it, we now have a dedicated team of trained women as well as priests referring people to us and lay people eager to know more and come to us for prayer and more training. The ministry (that is, God, through a certain prayer model) heals and transforms people in a way that takes them out of their old skins of discouragement, hopelessness or depression, bad habits, the bitterness of unforgiveness, and so forth, so they can experience the new skins of freedom and life to the full that Christ intended. I’m very involved in ongoing team development and feeling invigorated and enthusiastic.
Extending the metaphor, even my latest 2017 quilt was inspired by a something old (a vintage quilt), but changed enough so I now consider it as a new wine in a new skin! The original was a small mostly handstitched crazy quilt (left or top) and mine is a bed-sized machine-stitched rendition.
Are there areas of your life where it seems the old wineskins aren’t ready for the new wine of your life? Take stock and take heart. Remember to sow holy boldness into the art of your daily living and your goals! Also, try taking absolutely everything to prayer. And maybe, like me, it would help to break your goals into small actions that are challenging, doable with effort, and exciting to your heart and soul!
However, if you’re really stuck, consider if there is a spiritual reason, maybe even a subtle tactic or scheme of Satan, that’s keeping you where you are. If so, 5 Keys to Freedom in Christ prayer ministry, or just reading Unbound by Neal Lozano could be your Get Out of Jail Free card!
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.
