race into wide-open space
I am coming up for air and looking at wide-open space. That’s how it is when we run so hard and fast a race. Sometimes, we have to pause to see where we’ve ended up. And the journey there can make us feel a bit out of breath. So, I’m pausing, and listening, so I can keep running. I’ve been blogging—mainly, at You Are My Girls, for four years. Some of you know the story of how I stumbled into blogging unintentionally, when I was leading a group called My Girls, in my home. It was a group with only a few unspoken rules that I tried to follow, as a leader:
Open the door on Monday morning for whomever God brings and wants to stay. Trust that He will bring the women who are supposed to be there that day. Trust that He will create the safe space for women to be real and open and vulnerable with their hearts—with God, and with each other.
Get out out of the Holy Spirit’s way: invite Him in; expect Him to show up; trust that He will lead.
And then follow.
Love. Be present. Listen. Trust my heart and how God wants to use me.
The women God gathered together at My Girls were people God was calling me to love. And leading these women week after week, year after year, was the best.
For when God calls us to love people, isn’t He calling us to love them through what we know, through who we are, through the way we know how?
Doing that thing—loving people in the unique way God has made us to love—is how, really, we see and hear God. And I got to do that.
Then leading My Girls grew into something new. As I spent time thinking about these women, my love for them grew. And when I thought of them, I was thinking about God. And when I thought about God, I wanted to write to figure out what I was thinking about what He said.
One day Justin surprised me by setting up a blog for me—without me asking—and it looked so pretty. So, I started to write there, to these women, and I called it You Are My Girls, the name God whispered to me when He talked to me about His daughters.
I focused on our need, as God’s daughters, to remember who we are—our need for surrender and community and faith. Through my writing there, I was discovering who God was, and how He loves me, and how He loves you.
Now this fun race with God is changing course a bit.
The Coach is whispering me to come close, to come on over here. He says he has a new training schedule for me, a new strategy to help me with my running.
Keep writing. Keep loving people through what you write. Keep listening to my voice in you. Keep looking to Me to lead while you follow. But focus on this right now . . . over here. . .
And this is what I want to tell you: I’m going to be spending my writing time working on a longer project, for a while. This means I’m going to be spending little time, if any, for a season, writing on the blog.
I see this wide-open-space before me, God and me and you, and I hear the whisper in my heart to keep writing. But I need to veer to the left a bit to experience it . . . and not miss it.
I know lots of people begin and conquer and do awesome, amazing things all at once, all at the same time. (At least that is what the whisper that is not from God tells me). But, I know I wouldn’t do a good job at that. I know I would do only a mediocre job in both places if I try to do everything, if I try to post on the blog and do this other project well.
It’s hard to change course, but I don’t want to just choose the good-enough things. I want to live a life full of choosing best things.
And for me, right now, the best thing is letting my whole creative self be pouring into creating a longer work of beauty and art with my God.
This new writing I want to be sacred. I want it to be holy. I want it to be a project, just me and God, for you. So for right now, in this season, my blogging needs to be put on hold.
I’m not sure for how long. It might be for months or a year. . . or much shorter—particularly if there is a message on my heart I feel needs to be posted here. But here is what you need to know: the writing that is on my heart to do is for you.
What I write is still for you—for the daughters of God who crave Him, who desire Him, who want more of Him, who want to live fully surrendered, fully alive, fully free.
You will see me on Gather’s Facebook page weekly. (You can "like" it here.) And you’ll see me on Instagram and Twitter. And I will be jumping in here, in the next month or so, telling you about the new audio book for Loop coming out soon (for which I am super-excited). But the deeper processing of thoughts and dreams and listening? I want to take this to a quieter space, for a while.
But I’d love to still be in touch. So, if you want to stay connected (in addition to finding me on social media), and you’d like a behind-the-scenes look at what I’m working on, what I’m thinking about while I write, how, in general things are going . . . if you want some candid letters from me every once and a while slipping into your inbox, so you know how the project is going . . . (I would so love that), just sign up right here:
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If you want to get insight into Jennifer’s writing process—including how she listens for God—her discoveries along the way as she endeavors to move with God in faith, and her adventure with God in wide-open-space as she creates this project with Him, you’ll need to sign up for the Wide-Open-Space newsletter. Signing up will also give you insight into what this project is!
You want to know, right?
I hope you do. I’m going to have a lot to share with you soon.
So thankful you’re here.
With much love,
Jennifer