When I lived in the UK one of the things that I still remember about that place was the lack of space that I had between my house and the neighbors. The country is made up of big cities, with many small villages in between those big cities. As you journey out of the big metropolises you would be right to expect the lack of space in the cities to vanish in particular when it comes to the space houses have in between them. Yet as you travel throughout this beautiful country you soon discover that it is actually exactly the same in both settings.
After visiting Australia, where the British were in power for some time, I realized after seeing the way homes were built there where there is absolutely no problem with space that the approach to building had nothing to do with land distribution and much more to do with an intention or mind set within the people that designed the homes and built them.
As a coach over the years I had the chance to understand a great deal about the space within our lives. I found in my own life when I was either watching one of my players perform or received bad news from abroad there was always this feeling of things closing in within me and pressure beginning to take place. This pressure I understood originated from the need to want to fix the situation and try and regain control of the stability that I seemed to be experiencing outside of myself.
The more I observed this the more I realized that this lack of space was also what I am prone to do when I see someone else and what I think needs fixing in them which will make a remarkable difference to their careers and quality of life. The intention is good and noble but unfortunately the reality is that when we take this approach we actually close the space within ourselves and others and prevent the life and discovery that leads to real growth from taking place.
In the bible Dad says that he will take us through some tight places with the aim to bring us to a spacious place. Many of us have taken this spacious place to mean bigger houses, cars, companies, bank accounts, or even churches and church buildings. While of course this might have happened for some I believe that the spacious place Dad refers to is within us in our hearts where we experience his boundary less Kingdom.
To experience this space within us we need to become comfortable around the flaws in our lives and the life of others. As we do this our need to fix and change things begins to disappear and in its place surfaces an invitation for ourselves and others to open up and see how things truly are. No pressure. No shame. No need to get an immediate result. Just resting and living in a way that creates room for us, others, but more importantly for Dad to do or not do whatever he wants in any given moment in time.
Freedom begins to come when we start to see that life is not about fixing as much as it is about discovering it on the road of grace where results take a back seat to an ongoing flow of effortless transformation.
-pablo-
Photo by Unknown
