I always respond, “Tired.”  Every time someone asks me how I am, it is my go-to response.  Either that or, “Good…busy…”

I’m tired of responding that way (yes, irony.).  I want to say, and actually feel, free, happy, content…

I think a step towards that is changing my posture.  Both literally and figuratively.

I am sick of living with my shoulders by my ears and my hands clenched tight.  Sick of keeping my head down and my eyes on the ground.

I want to live with my shoulders back, my head thrown back laughing with my eyes open to the world.  I want my hands to be open, palms to the sky, ready to receive.

So how do we do that?  How do we live with abandon, with freedom to just be?  Even in the craziness and sadness and hard times of life…

We have got to know and be known.  We’ve got to be open and vulnerable and to stop hiding.  Because hiding is exhausting.  That is what I’m learning.

Its funny – the very thing I do to protect and preserve myself – hiding, closing off, building walls – is the very thing that consumes my energy and wearies my soul.

One of my favorite verses is in Psalm 103.  Verse four says that “He redeems our lives from the pit.”  Verse five says, “He satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”  I love The Message version of verse five… “He renews your youth – you’re always young in his presence.”

Kids are carefree.  They don’t have a hard time throwing their head back laughing and running barefoot everywhere they go.  They keep their hearts on their sleeves and don’t hide a thing.

So by renewing our youth, making us young always…means we can be like that.  With God, we are free.  Free to dance, free to run, free to cry, free to laugh.

Free to live life with an open posture, relaxed, trusting, and vulnerable.

I caught a line in a song today that made me pause: “Life’s too fast to run my friend.”

We can’t and shouldn’t live rushing through life, heads down and charging ahead.  Its too fast and too short for that.  I am realizing I want to live life slowly and full of rest, drinking in all that God has for me.  Isn’t that the way we all should live?