Years and Years and Inner and Outer

4/20/21

Dear friend,

Sometimes the invitations can last years and years.

That's one of the first things I want to say to you in this movement into the practical bits of living into our big invitations, which I introduced last week as our next point of focus in this ongoing series about discerning and living into our invitations.

They can last years and years, and it doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong.

One of the first invitations I lived into with intention lasted 2 years. I was 19 when I sat down on the floor of my life (as I like to describe it) for two years and refused to move.

I knew it needed to happen. People around me didn't understand. I didn't care. It was important, formative, and essential for me, and I knew it. I had to stay with it.

That season gave way to another, this one inviting me to live into grace and my belovedness, and it lasted 7 years. It, too, was big and important and entered into every aspect of my life for that very long while.

Other invitations have been shorter in time frame but no less impactful in terms of the attention and intention they asked of me and how they continued to grow and direct my life.

One was the invitation to start a blog called Still Forming in 2008. Another was the invitation to grow that blog into a community many years later, in 2015.

Later was the invitation to close down Still Forming in favor of a new expression of my work that had emerged in 2016, which was Bookwifery, a company that helped contemplative leaders birth their books. Along the way of that invitation, there were many smaller invitations, one of which was the invitation to start a podcast for Bookwifery.

Then there was the invitation that emerged in 2019 to start the Light House, a community that brought contemplative, lightbearing women together. To my delight, another podcast, called Bear the Light, came along as an invitation during that time too.

What I'm saying here is that some invitations last years and years, and some last less long. What I'm also saying is that some invitations concern our inner world and growth while others concern the outer world and the ways we interact with and contribute to it—and sometimes (maybe often times?) the inner and outer mix and swirl together.

In this series, like I mentioned last week, we're going to explore the practical bits of living into the invitations that come, whether they're inner or outer, shorter or longer. All of the invitations that go beyond in-daily-life invitations that crop up from moment to moment require some level of attention and intention from us.

That's the part I want to talk about next: the intention. What does it look like to live into the invitations with intention when they come and have received a yes from us?

I'll be using examples from my own lived life for these installments around this question. Some of them will be examples from the list above! (And if you'd like to hear more about any of the invitations I mentioned above, I'd be happy to entertain your votes for what to include. 😘 )

So glad to be in this ongoing conversation with you. Discernment, invitations, and our intentional response—these are the things I love to talk about most.

Yours in all these things,
Christianne