Face Masks and Spiritual Practices

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After a particularly hard week this summer, I received a package in the mail from Amazon. Usually I know what we’ve ordered from Amazon, and we weren’t expecting anything. I opened it to find a pack of face masks (not the kind we are used to wearing now, think spa face masks) that my Mom had sent me.

I texted her and told her they had arrived and she said, “I want you to close your eyes and reflect on God’s goodness and faithfulness in the midst of suffering… and soak in His love.” 

Leave it to my Mother to turn using a face mask into a beautiful spiritual discipline. 

She said it made her think of 2 Corinthians 3:17-18 that says, “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

Our faces should reflect the glory of God. Spending time with Him leads to us looking more like Him. We all know that we start to look and act like the people we spend the most time with, it is just as true with God. 

So I began a new spiritual practice I like to call “soaking.” I put on my face mask, I set a timer on my phone for 15-20 minutes and then put my phone far enough away from me that I cannot be distracted by it. I lay down and spend that whole time soaking in God’s goodness.

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Dear Thirty-One

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It’s my birthday. Here are my thoughts.

I’ve maybe never been more thankful for life. This year has been a doozy, for all of us. We’ve all been drudging through a pandemic and we all have our “and also’s.” It isn’t even a comparison game, “well my life is harder than yours!” It just feels plain hard across the board. I could list so many challenging things that people close to me have faced. So many circumstances that have pushed us all to the ends of ourselves. And we live in a world that is so divided, our only interaction is on social media where we don’t have conversations we just yell at each other and share our apparently always-right opinions.

Listen, I’m too tired to be a jerk. We are too overwhelmed to be mean to each other. There just isn’t room for it. We have done such a good job at politicizing things that never should have been divisive, alienating groups that should have been each other’s allies, inflicting pain over and over and over again when what we need is to be healing each other.

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Stay at Home Liturgy: To Lament our Brokenness

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Like many of you, I’m sure, I have been wrestling through what to do in the face of tragic situations that have happened recently. I’m answering in the only way I know how, through prayer. No matter our backgrounds or beliefs, I hope these words ring true for us all.

Forgive us, Lord, for creating a world where atrocities like the ones we have seen can happen.
Teach us to see people through Your eyes, and treat people with Your kindness.

May we not be overwhelmed or paralyzed by our grief and sadness, but instead motivated to action, seeking change and reconciliation.
Keep us from moving backwards, guide us forward towards progress.

Help us recognize our own biases and privileges, and have the humility to do something about them.

Forgive us for finding excuses, for explaining things away, for allowing all the tragedies that we have allowed.

May we not be motivated by personal gain or political party or any other self-benefitting cause.
May we not begin to hate others as a response to hate.
May we be motivated by love and holy justice.
Protect us from creating more “us versus them” mentalities.

Transform us and our worldviews.
Come, Lord Jesus.

Heal our world from our sinful ways of treating one another.
Keep us from hurtful generalizations and dangerous assumptions.
Teach us a better way.
Forgive us.

What does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
Micah 6:8

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Stay at Home Liturgy: To Eliminate the Struggle of Comparison

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We all know how real the struggle of comparison is in our society today. With our lives constantly on display on social media, it is hard not to measure how well we are doing or how successful we are in comparison to other people. During this time where we all are simplifying, I hope that we can spend some time releasing the urge to compare ourselves to everyone else. I hope this can be a start.

Forgive us, Lord, for the time we have wasted,
trying to prove whatever it is we are trying to prove to one another.

Help us in this time of simplicity,
of cancelled plans,
less events,
quiet evenings spent at home,
to let go of comparing ourselves to everyone around us.

Whatever it is we are hoping to gain — likes, follows, admiration, status,
show us what matters more.

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Stay at Home Liturgy: To Choose Prayer over Panic

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I have needed to read this over myself multiple times this week. I found even in the midst of writing it how easily I run to anxiety instead of to the caring, safe hands of the Father. Praying for each of you that is experiencing any level of fear during this time, and I hope this provides a moment of peace for you.

Forgive us Lord, for being consumed by fear.
Forgive us for running toward panic as an attempt at control.

When circumstances are blatantly unknown,
when loved ones are in danger,
when hope seems so far away,
forgive us for choosing panic.

Help us choose to trust You confidently, rather than running to other things we think might give us peace: information, numbing, scrolling, hiding.

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Stay at Home Liturgy: To Grieve with Purpose

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I’ve been thinking a lot about grief throughout this season. We are all slowly moving through the grieving process — a loss of what we once knew — moving from denial toward acceptance. Whether your grief is very specific today or a general grief of what life should be, I hope today’s liturgy is a helpful way to connect with Jesus.

You are a God who grieves with us.
You, our mighty God, Creator of all good things, You hold space for our sadness and longing.
You understand more than anyone that “this is not how it was meant to be,”
because you created it all.
You spoke the earth into existence, with the intent of peace, beauty, community, love, and health.

You grieve with us.

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Stay at Home Liturgy: To Let Go of being Impressive

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During this season I have come right up against my productivity and what I have to “show” for myself. Maybe you can relate. What have I accomplished, how much am I doing, how impressive is my life? In a slow season where our lives have been simplified significantly, it seems like a beautiful opportunity to throw away any desire to be impressive. One less heavy thing to carry. Here is today’s liturgy to help us in this release.

When our social calendars are thrown away,
when our work looks entirely different,
when our trips are cancelled,
when our events are postponed,
when what we have depended on to feel worthy is stripped away,
show us a new way, Lord. 

Circumstances have stolen our facades, the masks we hide behind to convince ourselves that we are doing enough.

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Stay at Home Liturgy: To Hold Things Loosely

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I don’t know about you, but the hardest part of this whole situation is trying to control everything and protect all the things I love. As I have written before I have come face to face in this season with how little control I truly have. So, here is a liturgy for living with open hands and leaving things in the trustworthy hands of God.

Our plans. Hopes. Loved ones.

Nothing makes us more aware that we are not in control than a time like this.
In fear and grasping for control we want to latch onto these things, grip them, hold on for dear life.
We think we can white-knuckle them into existence, or to keep them from changing.

We control almost nothing.
We have very little say, especially now, over what happens to our plans, our hopes, our loved ones.

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Stay at Home Liturgy: To Be Okay with Silence

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Today is the beginning of a new little project I have started, called “Stay at Home Liturgies.” Essentially, I am writing them to practice praying with intentionality. Come back on the next few Mondays and Fridays if you would like to practice them with me. I would recommend reading them out loud and slowly, only after you have taken a deep breath and are sitting down somewhere comfortable. A liturgy isn’t something to check off the to-do list, but instead something to digest and be transformed by.

In our mandate to stay at home, many of us have come face to face with an experience we try pretty hard to avoid: silence. We fill our days with any kind of activity or distraction to maintain a life that doesn’t have to deal with silence and what it brings with it. But there is so much good to be found there, so here is a prayer for all of us who are needing to embrace it…

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Purpose in this Season

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Anxiety got the better of me last night. Anxiety 1, Kallie 0, I thought, as I lay in bed late into the night after hours of continually waking up gasping for a breath. 

This season is hard. There are days where I feel entirely fine, because I have grounded my thoughts in a higher Truth, or some, honestly, where I am most likely in denial. We have moved from a unity of “we are all in the same boat” to a new stage where we realize that some people’s boats have significant holes in them and some are self-sustainable yachts. I get exhausted by humanity’s ability to always find something to argue about. We all have different things we want to be true, me included, whether they are or not. 

My biggest question for God recently has been what is the purpose of this season? I try to live my life with intentionality, setting goals and working towards personal and communal growth. So in a season where we are intentionally separated, slowing our lives down dramatically, and where I feel like I spend most of my time alone and not doing anything productive, I am asking the Lord this question. What is the purpose? How do we find purpose?

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