Jordan Stones Blog

  Outward posture contributes to so much.   Most women have heard that some of the warning signs of osteoporosis can be found in poor posture .   Did you know that sitting up straight contributes to feeling happier, more confident, and less risk averse ? Outward posture primes us for the very next moment.   Poised for action…Positioned for rest…Recoiled to hide…Crouched for a fight? Most of the time it is unconscious, but we have posture 100% of the time-Aware of it or not. Healthy or not. Helpful or not. As important as body posture is, there also exists a posture on the inside, the posture of the soul .   As unconsciously as outward posture is worn, the posture of the souls is even harder to keep a read on.   It seems behooving to tune in and make sure you are poised for what you want as we begin this fresh year, as we greet and bless 2017. Most of us want to be happier, healthier, godlier, more successful at something this year...

Posture Verses Jeremiah 1:18-19 “Stand at attention while I  prepare  you for your work. I’m making you as impregnable as a castle, Immovable as a steel post, solid as a concrete block wall. You’re a one-man defense system against this culture, Against Judah’s kings and princes, against the priests and local leaders. They’ll fight you, but they won’t even scratch you. I’ll back you up every inch of the way.”  God ’s Decree. Habakkuk 2   [Full Chapter] [Oh, I know, I have been rash to talk out plainly this way to God!] I will [in my thinking] stand upon my post of observation and station myself on the tower  or  fortress, and will watch to see what He will say within me and what answer I will make [as His mouthpiece] to the perplexities of my complaint against Him. And the Lord answered me and said, Write the vision and engrave it so plainly upon tablets that everyone who passes may [be able to] read [it easily and quickly] as he hastens b...

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...