Embodied: K.J. Ramsey's Newsletter
Embodied.
Hi friend,
Embodied is my small offering for you, a cushion on an internet couch, where we can talk about some things that matter and seek joy in the lives we have. It's a small conversation to create more room in your soul and story for joy. In each edition I include a short reflection, usually with something to practice in your ordinary life, and some writing updates. I pray you find comfort and compassion leading to action here. Jesus holds great joy in our lives, and I want us to receive it.
Only Friendship Can Hold Fear Next to Faith
Part 1
Fear feels like adhesive darkness. In some seasons it joins us like clumped glue, a sticky haunting that we are alone, unsafe, and probably cut off from what we need to survive. Fear is a fact of living, one that seems diametrically opposed to goodness, truth, and joy. But nothing about your life is as simple as that.
Let’s walk along fear’s edges. Stoop with me to notice its leaves and shoots. Trace them to the ground and kneel in the chocolate earth where layers of undersoil nurture a life and wholeness—yours—deeper than any surface sense of scarcity you carry and more lasting and true than any present uncertainty you feel. There is something beautiful that can grow here, if we are willing to place the branch of our scared selves in the Vine of God’s love. Abiding requires a different relationship to the soil of our selves, a kneeling, patient posture patterned after the Gardener himself. Our relationship to fear needs to change in order to grow rooted, vibrant, and strong into the Vine of Jesus Christ.
*|TWITTER:TWEET [$text=Fear is not an obstacle to faith but a feeling that can form it. @katiejoramsey]|*
Between the fact that fear doesn’t feel good and the Bible’s obvious heeds to “fear not” many of us assume fear and faith can’t coexist. Jesus told us not to worry about tomorrow. Paul preached prayer in place of worry. And Peter said to cast all our cares on God. With hearts pounding, shoulders tight, and jaws clenched, we pull out the sword of truth to conquer the enemy of faith and the rival of relief. We name fear a liar and take a machete of Bible verses and good intentions to ourselves to slice back the intruder cloaking us in mistrust and doubt. *|TWITTER:TWEET [$text=We name fear a liar and take a machete of bible verses and good intentions to ourselves to slice back the intruder cloaking us in mistrust and doubt. @katiejoramsey]|*
After a while all the slicing and truth-telling get exhausting. Cutting away darkness doesn’t always work. Without intending, we close our eyes instead and wear fear like an invisible rain poncho in the thick July heat. We ignore its discomfort or pretend it’s not there overheating and overwhelming us, sweating and uncomfortable in our fear-laden summer skin.
Many of us pinball between annihilating fear or avoiding it, marrying our innate human instinct for self-preservation with a moral desire for faith. Fear clings either way, rippling through our bodies with an incessant stress that whispers self-protect, withhold, hide, don’t hope… Without a shift of attention and posture, fear will continuously activate our sympathetic nervous system, triggering our fight-flight-or-freeze response from the lower regions of our brain. When our bodies are constantly triggered, we struggle to access the parts of our brain capable of hope, faith, trust, measured thinking, and joy.
Here’s a therapist secret: Fear is not your enemy.
When we feel fear, our bodies are in distress, and relating to fear as though it is an enemy to kill or an obnoxious annoyance to ignore often means unintentionally relating to our bodies as though they are an enemy or a pest. *|TWITTER:TWEET [$text=Relating to fear as though it is an enemy to kill or an obnoxious annoyance to ignore often means unintentionally relating to our bodies as though they are an enemy or a pest. @katiejoramsey]|* When we pit fear against faith, we pit our minds against our bodies and the substance God created to move us toward peace. *|TWITTER:TWEET [$text=When we pit fear against faith, we pit our minds against our bodies and the substance God created to move us toward peace. @katiejoramsey]|*
We are fearfully and wonderfully made, and I think I’ll spend my whole life unlearning a deep mistrust of my body and self and learning instead to inhabit the truth that this body is good and worthy of attention. In our efforts to rid ourselves of fear and be faith-full Christians, we minimize and even mutilate our bodies, expecting perfection out of vessels that need tender care to find calm rather than swift slices of reframed truth.
When we are lit with a fire of fear our brains are nearly incapable of using the regulatory functions of the pre-frontal cortex—translation: only using the strategy of reminding yourself of truth is an ineffective, even mean, way to care for yourself as a fearfully, wonderfully made, beloved child of God who has a brain and body that need soothing in order to feel calm and secure.
Fear is not an obstacle to faith but a feeling that can form it. Rather than a noxious weed, a sudden shoot of fear can be a reminder to sink deeper than the shortage we sense. Think of fear, along with your other emotions, as energy-in-motion. Emotion is energy God created to direct you toward safety, belonging, and love. *|TWITTER:TWEET [$text=Emotion is energy-in-motion that God created to direct you toward safety, belonging, and love. @katiejoramsey]|* It is the complex combination of perceptions, sensations, memory, and thought organizing your brain and guiding your body toward action. Emotions, including fear, are not disruptions to your life of faith.
You don’t have to call fear a liar to live in the courage and truth of faith. We forget God is our Gardener, not ourselves. He is the one who prunes; branches aren’t meant to prune themselves. Our job is to abide.
Emotions are guides, asking you to be honest about your life and offering you an opportunity to align your body and soul with the most honest reality that God, the patient Gardener, has not only grafted your life into his own, but calls you friend.
Only friendship can hold fear next to faith. *|TWITTER:TWEET [$text=Only friendship can hold fear next to faith. @katiejoramsey]|*
And friendship must be cultivated.
In the dirt of this world’s brokenness, fear often shrieks at us to name God a foe rather than a friend. It begs us to stay at the stressful surface of our lives, where our bodies can only stay focused on lack and uncertainty. But the sun of God’s love shines on our growing branches; we aren’t shrouded in darkness, even when it appears like we are. Abiding in Christ can mean encountering our fear as invitation to remember the hidden, abundant work of God under the surface soil of our lives. Fear, the very feeling that begs us to believe we are the farthest thing from a friend of God, can remind us to sink beneath our sense of scarcity and past our striving swordsmanship to escape unpleasantness to the deeper place where God patiently waits to make us whole.
Centering prayer is one way we can cultivate friendship with God in our innermost being. It's how we can move from constantly seeing scarcity to knowing a deep, abiding abundance. It's one habit I’ve been forming to create hospitality in my heart to God that runs deeper than the sticky, residue of fear, and I would love to offer it to you as a tool as well. In Part 2 of this essay, we’ll sink deeper into the goodness that centering prayer can offer our stressed, fearful bodies and hearts to be transformed by trust. I'll be sending out Part 2 very soon in an extra edition of Embodied. In the meantime, if you'd like to learn more about centering prayer or begin practicing it, I highly recommend visiting trying out this app.
Writing Updates
Earlier this month I submitted my finished manuscript of my book to my editor at Zondervan, and now I finally get to share with you the official title of the book. You are the first to hear it!
This Too Shall Last: Finding Grace When Suffering Lingers
I can't wait to share more details with you! I'll be sharing the beautiful cover and info on how to pre-order very, very soon. In the meantime, here I am all giddy the day after turning in the manuscript. Guys, it's basically the best feeling ever:
Thanks for spending a little time on the couch talking about grace with me. It's an honor to share words and space with you, even in the small form of an email. Look forward to receiving Part 2 of this essay soon!
In the fellowship of Jesus,
KJ
kjramsey.com