Christian Mindfulness: How It’s Changing Me

My father is the broad-shouldered, strong, internal teddy bear type, with fingers like sausages. In my childhood, he was a Midwestern farmer.  In his spare time, he donates his mad skills to car repairs of missionaries, single moms, people like that. He’s that kind of guy.

And it’s common for him to come back into the house with blood zigzagging down his leg or seeping through his shirt.

The part that amuses me?

Most of the time he’s baffled when someone points it out. I’m bleeding? Where?

The guy has low body sensitivity to the nth degree. Soft heart. Kevlar body.

In my own way, I’m a version of this. I am an enneagram 2. This is to say, I am hyper attuned to the needs of others. I personally, subconsciously block out my own, as well as emotion and all that.

In fact, I tend to associate my needs with shame.

I could have metaphorical blood ruining things I touch, smearing on people I love, and the annoyance of some vague discomfort interfering with my relationship with God.

And often I’d be shocked to realize it’s there.

Christian Mindfulness: What is it?

Peter Scazzero reminds us,

When we do not process before God the very feelings that make us human, such as fear or sadness or anger, we leak. Our churches are filled with “leaking” Christians who have not treated their emotions as a discipleship issue.*

Which is perhaps why a “secular” practice–mindfulness–has been a game-changer in my relationship with God and other people.

Maybe I’ve already alienated a few of you with my reference to the enneagram, which has drawn both legitimate Christian praise as well as concern. Mindfulness, too–even “Christian” mindfulness–draws understandable praise and concern.

Essentially, mindfulness is a form of holistic awareness. An observance of ourselves.

The dictionary defines it as “a mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique.”

What Christian Mindfulness Looks Like for Me

Christian mindfulness takes many avatars for me–like solitude, meditation, and simply being present with God (don’t miss this post and free printable).

I’m currently using a very basic workbook to help me every morning. It asks me the same questions every day.

• what I’m feeling
• what I’m grateful for
• how I want to help people today
• how I want to make today more enjoyable or interesting (this is undeniably the hardest stinkin’ question, with the shortest answer)

At the end of the day, it asks

• when I was energized
• when my energy dropped
• what I’m grateful for now

I actually love this practice–and sometimes it has a way of pivoting my quiet time.

As I wrote in this post, it wasn’t uncommon for me to engage in time with God, but then later find myself crying because of something I’d never acknowledged or dealt with in his presence.

Think of sitting down with a friend for coffee, but never touching on what’s actually pricking our souls. Like anyone would do that. (Pro tip: Our ability to be present with God profoundly affects our ability to be present with others.)

How Awareness Changes Me

My husband, who I associate with safety, has a way of tugging my stomped-down emotions and experiences to the surface. I think about this, and crave more of it in my relationship with God.

As Jen Pollock-Michel writes,

communion with God…is intended to be as intimate as sexual love. Prayer is meant for undressing us, for making it possible for us to know and be known by God. Pretense in prayer is a lot like kissing with your clothes on.**

Part of this “kissing with your clothes on”, for me, is in part because of my approach to God; to change in my own heart. Before, I have to come to God believing change happens within me when I learn.

Too many church services are often structured this way: to help us think or act, but not to begin with listening. Being. Bringing the entirety of our human experience into worship.

But as James K.A. Smith warns,

What if, instead of starting from the assumption that human beings are thinking things, we started from the conviction that human beings are first and foremost lovers? What if you are defined not by what you know but by what you desire? What if the center and seat of the human person is found not in the heady regions of the intellect but in the gut-level regions of the heart? How would that change our approach to discipleship and Christian formation?***

So taking time to “fix my eyes on Jesus”–as well as how he’s interacting with my heart, the interplay between us–changes our relationship.

As John Calvin famously penned, “Without knowledge of self, there is no knowledge of God.” Practicing Christian mindfulness, welcoming God into the intensities and sometimes fickle fluctuations of my internal world?

It’s caused me to love him more.

Bonus for my family and friends: I love them [a lot] better.

I deal with my stress in God’s presence, I tend less to visit those sublimated emotions on family. (My frustration in that conflict at work. Exhaustion, with which I need God’s help. My sense of being overlooked or unappreciated…).

Then, I seek that appreciation or peace or stamina or identity from God–rather than ramming outer control forward for an inner chaos.

Rather than blustering in to “listen” to a friend? I can set aside my agendas and cravings, and just be with them.

Mindfulness: The caveats

Mindfulness doesn’t have Christian roots per se–barring God’s constant commands toward alertness, meditating on God’s Word, awareness of our own hearts.

In that sense, “Christian mindfulness” is something to which God called us far before Buddhism took a breath. (Check out verses like Psalm 139:23-24,  Romans 12:2, Mark 14:38, 1 Corinthians 4:4, Psalm 19:14, 1 Peter 5:8, and 2 Corinthians 10:5, for starters.)

Mindfulness in the secular sense can potentially lead to

• self for answers and disproportionate focus, rather than tuning the knobs of our hearts to God. As this article points out, the answers really are not within ourselves. Jesus is the light, truth, and way our hearts crave (John 8:12, 14:6).

• “emptying the mind”–which reminds me of the dangers of being drunk/out of control, rather than under the control of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18). That vulnerability can also lead to influence by our mutual Enemy (1 Peter 5:8). Mindfulness can be used for greater awareness of reality rather than escaping it.

• pantheism.

My Disclaimer

I should acknowledge that using these methods is my own personal decision, borne out of my conviction that even what’s been used by other religions for evil can be used by Christians for good.

Paul seemed to examine similar convictions between those who felt comfortable eating meat sacrificed to idols, and those who didn’t.

Upon examination–I exercise with workouts created by non-believers, perhaps who make fitness a kind of religion. I take medicines invented by doctors who exalt science. In Africa, I used the muezzin’s call from the mosques as a routine reminder to pray for Muslims’ salvation.

But as Augustine famously writes, all truth is God’s truth.

In short, my thought is to be like the Israelites before they left Egypt. They sought riches from their enslavers, and put that wealth to use for God and His people (Exodus 12:36).

Personally, I use these methods only to increase my own worship of God.

But I write this post with trepidation (…and procrastination). I understand the potential for other believers to stumble if other than Christian mindfulness methods are used for anything but his purposes.

“How can I develop Christian mindfulness?”

Mindfulness isn’t just for enneagram 2’s! Threes have a difficult time acknowledging emotion. Sevens avoid pain. Ones may motor past emotion to get to the “right thing to do”–and forego doing that right thing from the heart. You get the idea.

Ready for some practical methods to make this a reality?

• • Try these steps outlined by Dr. Timothy S. Lane, Founder and President of the Institute for Pastoral Care.

• • Maintain a gratitude journal.

• • When entering into your prayer time, take moments to breathe deeply, just coming into God’s presence–ready to listen and interact with your whole heart.

• • Use a printable of Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotion to identify where you’re at right now, bringing those to God.

• • At the end of the day, process how you interacted with God’s presence using the Prayer of Examen.

• • Rather than approaching your time with God as a time strictly to learn and build knowledge, consider these moments to build your love of and knowledge of God by relating with him. He speaks through your life circumstances, too. (Richard Foster observes that this is one form of meditation.)

• • Without jeopardizing my sense of the holiness of God, sometimes it’s easier for me to come wholeheartedly to God when I imagine sitting down with a close friend, or on a date night. I imagine how I’d respond if God asked how I was, what I was thinking, what’s really going on.

• • Bought at a Price lists ways to make mindfulness a way of life–when driving, eating, the works.

So tonight, take a few moments to be. To realize where you’re bleeding, or simply what made your heart sing today.

In a very real sense, Christian mindfulness preaches the Gospel to us all over again: That we are not what we do or learn or know. Jesus’ work on our behalf makes me enough, allowing me to approach God with my whole self (Hebrews 4:16).

But before we spoke a word–and in spite of profound humanness–we have been loved. Sought after. Known.

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* Scazzero, Peter. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: Unleash a Revolution in Your Life in Christ. Kindle Edition.

**Surprised by Paradox: The Promise of And in an Either-or World. Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press (2019), p. 166.

***Smith, James K. A.. You Are What You Love. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Publishing Group, p. 7. Kindle Edition.