Jordan Stones Blog

Advent is Intentional Waiting Plowing new Advent ground can be transformational if we lean into it and let it be.   It invites an experience of the coming of the King in a way that doesn’t pretend “it’s the most wonderful time of the year” when there is gaping pain all around. 4  Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He will give you the desires   and secret petitions of your heart. 5  Commit your way to the Lord [roll and repose each care of your load on Him]; trust (lean on, rely on, and be confident) also in Him and He will bring it to pass. 6  And He will make your uprightness   and   right standing with God go forth as the light, and your justice   and   right as [the shining sun of] the noonday. 7  Be still   and   rest in the Lord; wait for Him   and   patiently lean yourself upon Him  Psalm 37:7 On a personal level, in the midst of the lives of those we know...

At every moment, chosen or not, we are all in the process of being formed into something- for better or for worse.  I shudder to take a slice of time out of my day, examine it in retrospect, and wonder what I formed in my being by the choices I made, the things I said, and the reactions I permitted to run their course. Sometimes it goes well…sometimes it doesn’t. But they all count. So I want to be aware, let the scales of mundane fog fall from my eyes, so I can see what these things are that shape my being. Searching out the unseen, we find words that make a map from spiritual formation writer, Robert Mulholland.  Mulholland calls these soul shaping things “trust structures”.  I think we most often become aware of them in two ways (1) when we pay attention to our “feelings are road signs” .  We notice the uncomfortable feelings of stress or shame or anger or harsh self-talk, They point us to the unseen scaffolding of beliefs that needs to be acknowledged and...

Carole Smith was an instrumental contributor to my identity, my path, and work as a therapist.  She was my supervisor during the early years of training to secure my license as a therapist.  Her skills, talent, humor, intuition, and expertise in trauma healing were just a few of aspects that enriched me as a practitioner.  She was an example of how to thrive through pain and live a full life no matter unmoved mountains remain in our story.  She was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis when she was around 13.  She was confined to a wheel chair for the whole time that I had the blessing of knowing her.    Her personality was infectious:  wit and humor found in the hardest of places, her “I get it” sense of being present with struggling souls, her warrior like approach to using just the right intervention to unwrap the stuck places. She passed away this last December.  I found out only recently.  I comfort in the image of her carefree sp...

We have patterns.  Patterns we would like to hide, unacknowledged, cover up, mask.  Patterns in relationships, patterns in our emotions, patterns in our self-governing, in our thoughts. In my own life I am beginning to see them as the sin that they are.    They are the things that make me snap when I am busy. The things that make me judge, blame in my closest relationships.  They are the words I don’t say that conceal resentment and invite it to nest in my heart.  They are the anxiousness that floods right under the paper-thin surface of my outside presentation, that push me to distract and power-through unattended. “Every broken place that has not been healed and transformed in God’s presence is a hard edge of our personality that slices and dices other people when they bump up against it” (Barton, 2010) This revealing of patterns, the calling out of that which is just so “not working” in our lives, is in good timing.  We are on the thres...

New Year, New You – Your Portion This Year is Already Secure Been there, done that, huh?  Me too.   The good news is, you were made the “New You” the moment you became His.  It is finished.  Let’s consider how that effects intentions you lay out for yourself this month. His Love is so deep, so wide, so satisfying…we can know Him so well and just scratch a fraction of the surface of His infinite provision and eternal pleasures that His hand is open and extending to us: Psalm 16 Lord , you alone are my portion   and my cup;      you make my lot   secure. 6  The boundary lines   have fallen for me in pleasant places;      surely I have a delightful inheritance. 7  I will praise the   Lord , who counsels me;      even at night   my heart instructs me. 8  I keep my eyes always on the   Lord .      With him at my right hand, ...