Lift Up Your Head: Noticing as a Spiritual Practice
Every month, we begin by making space and I try to offer some prompts to help us do just that. Last month, many of those prompts invited us to notice. But why is it important to make space? And why bother noticing, especially when what we’re noticing seems so small or even silly?
Making space, slowing down, noticing—it’s all about giving God room to move in our lives. Remember Elijah hearing God in the whisper? (I Kings 19:11-13) The thunder and storms that came before were loud, powerful, dramatic. But God wasn’t in them. It was the stillness where he could finally hear. The same is true for us. The thunder and storms are the busyness of our lives. Slowing down helps us hear the whisper.*
Often, I pray for “eyes to see” what’s really there, but that kind of seeing takes intention. It takes slowing down. It takes a shift in perspective.
Three years ago, I wrote a blog post about this very thing: about how I was trying to move away from just pushing through the hard moments in my day. Because I really don’t believe that’s what God wants for us. Every moment is a gift, and I don’t want to squander them by merely surviving.
With the help of my spiritual director, I came up with a breath prayer for those moments:
Inhale: Lord, lift up my head
Exhale: To see your beauty
This, my friends, is an act of surrender. It’s saying: “I have nothing, but you give me everything. Help me see it.” And in that surrender, I have been surprised by the freedom I’ve found. I've begun to see more of the beauty around me, more of the abundant life He promises.
Taking that breath often requires a literal shift in posture: I have to lift up my head. But it’s also a metaphorical shift. I am choosing to change how I approach the moment. I am asking for eyes to see, even in the middle of the mess.
That’s what I’m inviting you into. Doing things that feel purposeless (making “ugly” art, noticing silly things) isn’t wasted time. It’s sacred time. It’s a way of slowing down, of receiving.
And somehow, taking time when it feels like there isn’t any actually multiplies time. This is God’s economy at work. This is abundance.
*And this is what spiritual direction is for! If this practice feels hard or foreign to you, I encourage you to give spiritual direction a try.