Still With Us: Hope for New BeginningsMuestra

I want adventure in the great wide somewhere. These are the lines that one of my favorite Disney heroines, Belle, belts out as she runs through an open field. It's a feeling I know well, as we've been canceling trips we've planned and marking off the seventh month we've been working from home.

I dream of wide, open spaces.

A friend of mine recently shared a question he asks himself when choosing a collaborator for projects: When I talk to this person, do I feel like the conversation is expansive? Do I feel like the longer we talk, the more possibilities we find? Or does talking to them make me feel boxed in and small, like the possibilities are limited? 

In the course of three sentences, he had put words to a way of decision-making I've been using for the past three years. When choosing opportunities, relationships, home decor, I have subconsciously been holding up these choices to a simple rubric: Does this expand my view of the world or shrink it?

In other words, does this make me feel more like I'm frolicking in a wide, open field or like I'm trapped inside a small box? 

When I was fostering rabbits, I became even more aware of how subtle the shift can be between feeling safe and feeling trapped in a space. When we tried to pick up our bunnies, it often led to high-speed chases around the living room. The thought of being in a small space, even if it was a pair of objectively safe arms, felt terrifying to them. 

But then they would go and burrow under our couch, or in the wine rack, finding the smallest space they could. In this case, that small space somehow felt much safer than anywhere else in a great big room. It wasn't the size that made a space feel expansive; it was whether they felt freedom within it.  

Perhaps you've learned to notice that subtle shift within you too, but I encourage you to pay close attention — it is powerful intuition that can guide you. When you walk into a room — do you feel cramped or a sense of peace? When you are in a conversation with someone, does it feel like a trap or an invitation? When you have a thought — does it fill you with hope or with fear? 

When we feel small and trapped, we shut down or we lash out. When we feel like we're in a safe, open space, we can engage with the world in a way that creates safety for others. When you can, choose the wide, open spaces. Where you can, create those spaces for others.  

When I think back to the periods of my life when I battled with anxiety or grief on a daily basis, I remember feeling incredibly claustrophobic. My thoughts & fears felt too big for me. Loneliness felt suffocating, but so did being with people. And I became incredibly aware of when I felt trapped and when I felt free — which could often shift at the drop of a hat. 

The words that I clung to throughout these times were from Psalm 18:

[The Lord] brought me out into a spacious place;

He rescued me because he delighted in me.

That mental image of being in the great wide somewhere with Someone who delighted in me became a compass as I moved through the darkest times, directing me back towards the light. I would listen to the voices that filled me with hope instead of fear. I would embrace opportunities that, though they may be scary, made me feel that the world was full of possibility. I would choose the wide, open spaces. 

If you feel small or trapped, as many of us do these days, or if you've noticed yourself getting more reactive, anxious, or easily frustrated — take a breath and evaluate. What are the things that expand your vision of the world? What fills you with hope and excitement? What choices can you make that remind you of who you are and who God is? Where you can, choose more wide, open spaces. 

They don't have to be big — some of mine include playlists, vases of flowers, talking to a certain friend, emptying my sink of dishes, meditating on a verse. Wide, open spaces are not just somewhere out there — they are within reach. They are in the freedom we find in the gospel, the knowledge that God’s presence is sure (even when we do not feel it), the hope that the cramped spaces of darkness & death do not get the final say. Stop and look for the wide, open spaces; you may find that there are more than you think.