How is it with your soul?

Oh Friend, how is it with your soul today?

This is a question I find myself whispering to my heart often these days. On the days when my life feels over-the-top-extravagant or mundane, and everything in between. 

How is it with your soul today Lindsey?

What are you playing on repeat in your mind? What has your attention, affection, focus?

This past weekend I was blessed to spend an afternoon celebrating the women in my family. I can't help but smile as I think about the few hours on February 28th that held nothing but the beautiful lives that sat around me as we celebrated the birthdays of the oldest and almost youngest in the group.

There was no agenda or checklist, no task to accomplish or favor to be done. We were simply there to be in the presence of one another, spending time listening to the beauty that makes up 4 generations of living. 

Soul Nourished.

Fast-forward to later that day when Chase took me to the beach to watch the sun-set. 

Insert: To say that I LOVE the sky, would be an understatement! I am completely fascinated and amazed by it. I could easily write an entire post about the sky, but I will save that for another time...Maybe. :)

Clearly Chase knows my love language because he drove us straight to the beach without explaining why. He just knows that I will never turn down an opportunity to wonder at the works of the heavens. Which is why it is so clear to my heart that he loves me well. 

So there we sat, silently captured by the beauty displayed before us. The brilliant colors of the sun, slipping into the clouds. My body calm, mind still and heart full. Behold Our God, seated on His throne! 

Soul Nourished and well. 

Then comes Sunday morning small group with my faithful 6th grade girls. Some of the most beautiful teen souls I have ever met. Again I was in awe, sitting around the table sharing in sacred moments as they began to say what was on their hearts with such vulnerability and depth. 

Our topic of discussion was on physical changes. Finding our identity and worth in Christ, rather than what others or we make ourselves out to be. I opened up the discussion cautiously, having once been a middle school girl myself, remembering all of the changes and struggles I walked through. 

 But can I just tell you how blessed I am by these girls? All morning I had been silently lifting up our time together, asking the Lord to be in it, to send his Spirit to rest in my heart-their hearts as we spent this time together. 

When we are expecting His presence, He never disappoints. 

A few of the girls began to speak openly to how they felt about themselves physically, emotionally, and spiritually. They spoke words that I would have been scared to death to share in a group of peers at their age. We were able to encourage each other, and speak truth and grace into the freshly opened wounds. Beauty surrounded me again, in the most raw way possible. In fact, in those moments, I wanted to shout out to each one of them, that THIS, this humble transparency, was beauty in its truest form! 

Soul Nourished and richly fed. 

Today I am asking myself again, how is it with your soul? May I boldly ask you the same? I will admit there have already been many moments of refocus and repentance in my heart today. But in the midst of my repentance and turning to Jesus, He picks me up from the foot of the cross and breathes life into my being again. "Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable." (Isaiah 40:28)

Wash me Lord.

 Let me return to you again and be reminded that true beauty is of you.