Mindfulness in 4 steps - a Christian reflection on becoming more present

A friend of mine explained overwhelm as sitting in a rotating office chair. She said that it feels as if she’s just able to take care of what is in front of her. And just as she begins to feel like she is winning the challenge at hand, the chair spins around and there is something new in front of her. She never gets a chance to get up or stretch her legs, or to just take a step back and breathe. There is always something to do, and even socializing becomes another thing on the table on front of her that gets lost in-between academics, and work.

Even though you might feel like you are standing knee-deep in the chaos of what you thought would be, LOOK UP. Who you think you are will define how you see yourself. Through grace, you are free from condemnation, and a citizen of heaven now already. When we are rewritten by who God says we are, we will sing His praises - even through a sore throat. Even when you don’t hear anything, linger. Because sometimes we find God in the lingering. Meditating on Ephesians 1 and Psalm 103 can be of great worth when asking God to show you how He sees you. Look up.

And when you have been reminded of how the Father sees you, LOOK FORWARDS. You are allowed to want more, something to hold on to. Find a reason to believe that you can do more than merely exist. If you ask Him to, God can replant you in a place where you can grow in abundance, He really is that good. Visualize where you want to be in a few years. One exercise that I have found very useful is to do a one-line drawing of your ideal day in five years’ time – living out my God given purpose where I am. Do not allow anything in your life that is less than where you want to be. Look forwards.

Before getting completely caught up in where you want to be, LOOK BEHIND YOU- but just briefly. Often we feel like chaff on the wind, blowing around aimlessly, just going wherever we are taken. But we cannot base our worth on how we’re doing because life keeps changing, and emotions aren’t permanent. Ask God what He has placed in you to bring His purposes and kingdom to earth. We can often only see these things when we look at what we’ve been through. Look at how far you’ve come, remind yourself of the lessons that you have learned and how faithful God had been in past seasons. Look behind you. 

And as soon as the miseries of the past start catching up with you, LOOK AROUND YOU. Who are you listening to? The people who speak into your life are supposed to speak LIFE. Ask God to show you what false truths you have been taking onto yourself, and ask Him to replace them with His truth about you. And the first step to making sure that is the case is to start speaking life in the lives of those around you. Help people to see the parts of themselves that are worth more, the parts that are forgotten, the areas they are strong in, and remind them of what they have to offer the world. Look around you.

(Originally written for a newsletter I sent out in March 2019).