MOVE + REST

Dear Reader,

It’s been a while since I’ve had the keys under my fingers to write to you and I must admit I’ve had lots I could share, but somehow the words escaped me. I eventually became overwhelmed with the unfoldings of life over the last few years and my solo attempts at caring for me while still trudging forward stretched me beyond capacity to an unknown place. Ah, the unknown place.

Well, I won’t bore you with going into the intricacies of love, the delicacies of decision, the depths of spiritual growth, or the fact that destiny is unlocked through pain. I will instead share with you a gift I received that is adding sunshine, quite literally, to my days recently.

Self-care is often depicted by spa-like treatment in Hollywood. When it comes to our society’s take on the subject we tend to focus on external pampering, shopping therapy, or disconnecting from our home front and routines by getting lost abroad or at least out of reach (Hello dnd). What if I told you that, while these activities are enjoyable, these activities aren’t caring for you at all?

You are not the body you live out this life in. Your body is just a transportation device for the soul you are and the spirit you possess. So when self-care is mentioned I have come to see it as soul-care, tending to my mind, heart, body, and spirit. This is the mind of God and His priority for us as well.

In Gen 2:1-3 we see God take rest once He declared His creation of all things good. The Bible says He finished His work and called the day of rest blessed and sanctified it. Rest was not a rushed or inconsequential job or practice to God He was just as intentional with taking rest as He was with assigning work. Later on in Exodus 33:14, we see God telling the children of Israel that one of the benefits of following Him is that He will ensure they have rest. But our bodies have to shut down every 24-30 hours for a recharge anyway so sleep isn’t a benefit of being God’s people it’s just physics. Then what exactly did God do in the beginning and why?

I’ll make this short and sweet; The Lord stopped from making what He had already created when He saw that everything He designed was present. He observed His work and then He let His work do what it was created to do. This is rest; to know that what has been established (even in seed form) is already the complete thing in the weight of its glory you created. He promises us as His children this guarantee. Should we follow the Lord, as His own, submitted to His will He will lead us to establish what will not require our input always. We will learn the way of the spirit which is to release a word and it be established forever.

This guarantee gives rest to the mind, heart, and body which is peace to your soul.

Recently I was motivated to get up and get outside realizing I needed to jolt myself from one state of being into a different one and while on a walk I had an idea. I decided to invite whoever would come to a 21-Day MOVE challenge. For 21 days we would get our bodies moving and our heart rates up for at least 30 minutes each day. This challenge would benefit us mentally, emotionally as well as physically and bridge us to the next thing God would have for us. You see my life wasn’t just ‘lifing’ for the last few years transformation was happening. That unknown place has become home and healing has come.

I pray you realize you need self-care, God ordained it.

Truly understand that self-care is tending to your whole being where sometimes you will need to rest and other times you will need to move, but all the time you’ll need to do it as you abide in God.

May you taste the sweetness of resting in God and seeing His will, His good come to pass in your life.

Grace & Peace,

LORI LaChelle

The Terror of Pause

Dear Reader,

It took a long time for me to believe into practice the truth that God cares about how life affects me. Our heavenly Father loving and faithful as He is was unfortunately on the receiving end of my unconscious doubt that He could care about how the twists and turns and pains of life impacted me. This wasn’t at all due to Him failing to care for or to come through for me, He’s never missed a beat, but it was because the wounds I developed as a child had not been addressed.

I had grown, I had reasoned, I had even moved on, but I hadn’t healed.

There is a space for pause after transitions, whether it be grief or gain, that we must learn to honor. When your world has suddenly become something unfamiliar to you and the unknown is uncomfortable even if it’s necessary, even if it’s due to reward one must take that pause and honor the new. To respond to transition in any other way is arrogant at worst, and ignorant at best.

This idea may seem common practice, but how often have you stopped to identify the new place of intimacy with God after gaining or failing at business, a goal, or a relationship? These pivotal moments easily become pillars in our lives and even change how we see ourselves so they can be difficult for us to unpack due to fear that the pieces we might find will be evidence that we are failures, that we missed God, or that we’re undeserving. An accusation too difficult for any of us to manage alone.

The truth is though that the enemy of our souls loves to hang out in the corners of our hearts and our minds where we hesitate to bring into the light. He has mastered the art of suggestion through shadow casting and learned to manipulate our desire to be ‘okay’ in ways that cause us more harm than you can imagine.

Wherever there is change you should take the time to hear the new sound of God’s presence in that space. If the change brings advancement from harvest or reward, taking a pause after crossing over the new threshold could give you space to exhale, be grateful, turn off autopilot, and seek God for wisdom and grace as you move forward in this new territory. If the change is due to deconstruction, taking a pause is necessary to assess the damage, confront any lies, grieve the end of a thing, and seek God for His perspective on the circumstance, on who you are to Him, and for wisdom and grace as you move forward in the new reality.

The pit is that we so badly want to have mastered what we have never been exposed to because we’re trying to avoid being undeserving or hoping to evade another opportunity for loss or pain. But the place where you can take a step without the counsel and guidance of the Holy Spirit is the place where none of the possibilities available with Christ can be found. Apart from God, even if we do what we think He wants us to do, we cannot choose well. Your pain, fears or insecurities will be a more dominant sound following any transition so it is imperative that you do not force yourself to be an expert or to be back to business as usual when God is calling you to pause with Him.

Wherever you are in this chapter of your life there is something beautiful the Lord wants to get to you, something your heart needs to know about His. I pray that you honor the space for a ‘pause’ in your life and that you resist rushing your process for healing or your celebration of victory. I pray you come to see yourself as God sees you and you grab hold of His unbelievable love even in the midst of unbelievable circumstances.

I am by no means saying it’s easy. Both rushing and pausing will cost you, but the price for rushing is a future backtrack, a deeper and broader wound the Lord is willing to heal. The price for a pause in the presence of God is your ego, your sense of control, your fears, and the discomfort of being stretched while He is revealed.

If you want to be closer to the promises God has made, how much more does He want that for you?

The question is then which of you is better to lead the way?

Grace & Peace,

LORI LaChelle

Obscurities Glory

Dear Reader,

This message may not be popular and could poke at you a bit, so proceed with caution. You should know that I write this letter in love and I want you to lean in... You must learn to value your season of obscurity (which is not isolation). I’ll tell you why.

By definition obscurity is; the state of being unknown, inconspicuous, or difficult to understand.

Have you ever felt like no one could see you or understand you or as though your value was being overlooked or even worse missed? To be praised is written in our nature so in seasons when the praise seems to be muted many have a hard time coping. An ‘unfruitful season’ is not just uncomfortable, but it literally goes against our nature we weren’t built to be unappreciated or ignored or fruitless.

Having to survive seasons like this is very difficult to do. A man who is not praised for his contribution is a man wrestling with the suggestion that perhaps life has no purpose and if he is a man aware of God’s greater power then he is at best wrestling to silence the taunting that screams ‘You’re being used!’ But is this our seasonal plot in life, our gym of survival development or is there something that we are missing? Could it be that God is speaking and we are not identifying His voice or even worse misquoting Him?

If a tree falls in the forest with no one around to witness does it make a sound or shake the earth? What value does a thing have if no one is there to ascribe value to it? Are you asking for too much when you need to be validated?

The truth is needing validation isn’t the real issue at play during obscurity, identifying the voice of the necessary affirmation is.

You see the value of a man is not found in the audience one can attract, nor the applause said audience offers because value cannot be ascribbed with the five senses. No, the value of anything, especially man, is found solely in its design. The design speaks of purpose and purpose points to a creator.

We must come to discover who God is by His revealing of self along the path He has chosen for us. Obscurity allows for your process to be private, for your kinks to be worked out with minimal commentary, and for your transformation to happen without the tainted perspective of too many others. Obscurity allows you to grow and transition and rest without the pressure to perform. And obscurity lends itself to your discovery of what God knows you to be. But if you do not understand this the chaotic flow and directionless rush of culture will convince you that if the world can’t see what you’re doing then your value is questionable.

Dear Reader, In winter, are trees bare? In winter are trees barren?”

May your eyes be opened to what God is using this season in your life for, may His strength align you with His glory and may you come to treasure who you are by masterful design.

Grace & Peace,

L O R I LaChelle