Jesus – Page 2

Five Ways to Keep Jesus Central this Holiday Season

December 8, 2015 by Ann 1 Comment

Life doesn’t stop in any season, especially during the busy Christmas season full of t0-do lists, parties, shopping, and, (hopefully!) worship opportunities. So how can we still try to focus our hearts in a deeper way on the presence of God in our lives, especially during Advent? How can we attend to how he is moving and how we are (or are not) responding to his love?

Here are some simple steps that I’ve found are helpful to stay close to Jesus in the busy days of Advent:

1. Start with Scripture. It sounds simple, but it can also be very hard to read the Word regularly. I have found, for me, that when I start my day in the Bible, my heart and mind are better prepared to respond to God’s presence throughout the rest of the day. Aligning my mind and heart with his Word in the morning is like tying up my shoelaces before going out the door—it’s much easier to keep from slipping as I walk through the day. If this isn’t a normal part of your life, that’s ok! Start by reading just a few verses at a time, and ask God to speak to your heart with his truth.

2. Pray as you go. It is important to have regular time set aside to pray, but as in any relationship, ongoing communication is important. I often pray in shorter bursts while I’m driving, or while I’m walking across campus to my classroom, or while I’m picking up toys in the house. I had a professor in college who prayed for a particular person each time he turned on a light switch, and I love that idea of partnering normal, daily actions with intentional prayer. Prayer doesn’t need to be fancy or long—just honest communication with God.

3. Pause when you feel overwhelmed. This is an important one for me. There are often multiple times every day where I can feel overwhelmed, anxious, or concerned—usually about things that are outside of my control. If I take time to pause and turn to God when these moments come, rather than letting fear or anxiety overtake me, I find that he has never left my side, and He is always offering me his peace, which is bigger than any fear (Phil. 4:6-7). The time it takes me to pause and pray is always shorter than the time it takes me to be worried about something for another five minutes—or five days!

4. Listen to Truth. In our home and in our cars, Michael and I play music that reminds us of God’s presence in our lives. Music seeps into my mind more easily (and mindlessly) than most things, so if I find myself humming a tune unintentionally, it helps my soul if it’s a song that reminds me of who God is and how he loves me. If you don’t love listening to music, find a radio station or audio book that declares the truth of who God is and listen to it in your car or while you’re working out.

5. Place reminders of God’s love and presence in your home. I am a visual learner, and it helps my heart when I have visual reminders of God’s heart in my house, my office, and even in my car! You can go the fancy route and buy (or paint) a representation of a Scripture and hang it up in your kitchen or bedroom, or you can write a favorite verse on a sticky note and put it by the radio dial in your car. Choose a Scripture verse that is meaningful to you and let it remind you of God’s particular love for you and attention to your life.

How do you keep your heart close to Christ during Advent? I’d love for you to share your insights!

This post is a holiday version of a previously published blog post on my site.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Ann Swindell, Christmas, faith, Focusing on Jesus, God, how do I stay close to Jesus, how do I stay close to Jesus during Advent, I feel anxious, I feel overwhelmed, Jesus, Keeping Christ in Christmas, my soul is tired, Praying as you go, Scripture on my walls, spiritual practices for Advent, Writing with grace

God Doesn’t Care How Big Your Platform Is: An Article for RELEVANT Magazine

October 22, 2015 by Ann Leave a Comment

Most of my life, I’ve felt a tug toward greatness.

You know–that feeling that burns deep and can push us wide? Deep because we know that we were created to do important, meaningful, gorgeous things in the world. Wide because we look around us at all that we aren’t doing and see people who seem great in our eyes—people who carry great influence, great ideas, great power.

And that feeling in us, that yearning for greatness, can sometimes make us feel very small. Small because we lack great influence. Small because we lack world-changing ideas. Small because we lack great power. I don’t have a million followers, a best-selling book, a corporate position or a lot of money. I’m guessing you might not, either.

But we look at others who do, and it’s easy to feel like we should be doing something bigger and greater and more important with our lives. Sometimes, we might even find ourselves thinking: “What if I’ve missed it?” “What if I’m never great in the way I long to be?”

Those are the moments when I find myself trying to push my way into greatness. I think that if I can work harder, think more deeply or just be better—then, perhaps, greatness will fall upon me like a cape. If I just keep driving my way forward, maybe I can make this thing—this elusive greatness—happen.

But I can’t. It never works out that way…

Read the rest of the article here, at RELEVANT!

Filed Under: God, Guest Post, Life, Ministry Tagged With: Ann Swindell, Big love for God, Christian platform, Christianity, famous, how do I grow my platform, how to grow a Christian platform, I want to be famous, Jesus, love for God, my soul is tired, platform, Relevant Magazine

The Scars We Carry: Women as Warriors

October 14, 2015 by Ann 25 Comments

I shuffled into the locker room at our local gym a few days ago, searching for an open locker to dump my bags in before heading upstairs to a treadmill. There’s no shortage of women changing in the locker room, and as I found a pod of lockers that were mostly unused, I walked past an older woman who was bending over to change. Without intending to, I saw down her shirt. And what I saw surprised me.

She was missing her right breast. Even at a glance, I could see the scar; there was a shell of padding filling that side of her bra. And I knew, in half of a second, that this woman had undergone breast cancer and had needed a mastectomy to remove cancerous tissue. My grandmother underwent a mastectomy; I remember hearing her talk about her expensive bra that was filled on one side with padding rather than her own flesh.

And in that locker room, I realized that this woman changing next to me had walked through the pain and the fear of cancer. She had needed her flesh cut off and sewn up. She had been delivered news that brought nothing but hardship and had been given a diagnosis that could have ended in death. And she had not only survived, but she was here at the gym, using her miraculous body that lived through that cancer to swim and move and work.

This courageous, strong, wrinkled woman next to me was a warrior.

She had lived. She had won. And nobody else knew that under that padded bra was a woman with more fortitude than fear.

Before I left the locker room, another woman stood in front of the mirror and began blow-drying her hair. She was wearing a bra, but no shirt, and underwear, but no pants. Unselfconsciously, she stood and dried her hair as other women walked in and out. And I noticed a long, thin scar on her lower abdomen. I know that scar; I bear one myself. My daughter was pulled through that cut in my stomach when she would not come out otherwise. Whether this woman with the blow dryer had one child or many pulled out of her, I do not know. But she will carry that scar forever.

This confident, mighty, toned woman next to me was a warrior.

She was a mother. She had birthed life, made room in herself for another. And nobody else knew that under her shirt was a woman who, like all mothers, has made sacrifices too numerous to count.

I sat down on a bench, suddenly overwhelmed by the power and beauty of the women around me. These were survivors I was walking among—saints, heroes, lovers. Women who share in this sisterhood of scar-bearing.

We all bear scars. Mine is 6 inches across, snow white, a thin line of remembrance an inch below my hip bone. But I have others, scars less visable. Scars where pain has been seared over by love, or by time, or by prayer.

Several days a week, I stand in that locker room and don’t think about the other women around me. I see them peripherally, changing their clothes and doing their hair. They probably see me in the same way. But here, in this locker room, I had been given a glimpse of the scars that each of us carry. Whether from breast cancer or c-sections, whether from broken hearts or anxious minds—we bear the scars of being women, and of living in a shattered world. Most of us can hide them under bras and shirts and acceptable words. But we are, all of us, warriors.

Those who have survived. Those who are living. Those who are mothers, sisters, wives, and friends.

Those scars do not define us. They have marked us, yes. But they can remind us that we have more fortitude than fear, and that we can make room in our bodies and our hearts for life to be birthed. In fact, we can be proud of our scars: being a scar-bearer points us to the truth that scars can be signs of life—even of love.

Filed Under: Friendship, God, Uncategorized Tagged With: being a mom, breast cancer, breast cancer awareness, breast cancer awareness month, Christian and breast cancer, Jesus, Jesus and women, motherhood, pink, scar-bearer, scars, the cost of motherhood, warrior, women

4 Healthy Ways to Accept Change: Trusting God in the Process

August 1, 2015 by Ann Leave a Comment

[This is the start of my newest article for RELEVANT Magazine.]

One year ago, my husband and I had solid jobs, a great community and a church that we loved.

At this moment, we are living with my parents, we are unemployed and we are moving to a new city in a week. My husband will be attending graduate school next month.

Talk about a curveball.

This is not what I expected. I never pictured that we would be walking away from steady jobs and our group of friends to start all over again.

Our lives don’t always go the way we want—or expect—them to go. We get let go from the job we love (and need). We come up short trying to pay the bills. Our hearts get broken. Relationships end. Accidents happen. Bodies don’t heal. Death comes too soon.

So how to we continue to walk with God in seasons when life throws us a curveball?

During the last 12 months, my husband and I haven’t done things perfectly (by any stretch!), but we have met Jesus in the challenges of change and unexpected circumstances—and we love Christ more now than we did last year. Here are four things we’ve learned in the process of catching a life curveball—and moving forward.

Acknowledge Your Feelings

The worst thing we can do with feelings of disappointment and frustration is bottle them up and pretend like everything is fine, especially with God.

If we are angry about a curveball in our lives, or hurt by it, or confused by it, we need to acknowledge those emotions. God already knows how we feel, and when we refuse to own those emotions, we’re only hurting ourselves.

God already knows how we feel, and when we refuse to own those emotions, we’re only hurting ourselves. Share on X

Whether it means writing things down, talking out loud to God or writing a song about it, we need to unfold the places of pain and tension in our hearts to Jesus. He can handle it; He gets it. The prophet Isaiah tells us that Jesus was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). He understands what we feel when life doesn’t go the way we had hoped.

Read the Bible

In a world that is continuously changing, the truth of the Scripture remains constant. Reading the Bible is not just a rote exercise—it actually changes us, comforts us and challenges us.

In a world that is continuously changing, the truth of the Scripture remains constant. Share on X

The writer of the book of Hebrews reminds us that “the Word of God is living and active” (Hebrews 4:12). While the words on the page stay the same, the Holy Spirit is always ministering to our hearts, and the same Bible verse can impact us differently in new seasons of life.

Consistently reading the Word of God when life throws us a curveball is one of the clearest ways to stay grounded—and even hopeful—in confusing times.

Read the rest of the article here, at RELEVANT Magazine!

Filed Under: God, Life, Marriage Tagged With: curveball, how can I trust God, how can I trust God now, how do I deal with change, how do I handle this, how to accept change, how to embrace change, Jesus, life with God, what to do when life changes, when life throws you a curveball, why is life so hard

Picking Raspberries: A Summer of Abundance

July 21, 2015 by Ann Leave a Comment

Have you ever picked raspberries? We don’t live close to any wild raspberry bushes, but when we visited friends in the UK years back, they had raspberries growing in their backyard. The home they were renting had been built on land that was previously been part of a co-op garden, and although they didn’t tend the plants, raspberries still grew by the hundreds every summer.

We woke up on those first jet-lagged days of our time in England and found the kids in the backyard on a mini-trampoline. They begged us to help ourselves to the raspberries weighing the bushes down; there were too many to pick and the fruit often went bad before all could be picked or even eaten. We happily obliged.

Picking raspberries is a delicate process. The berries are often tucked in the bushes, and it easy to be pricked by the plant, a member of the rose family and full of tiny thorns. But picking the berries is ultimately a delicate process because the raspberries themselves are fragile. Pull too hard on a berry and the tiny cluster of drupelets–those little pods of juice–crush under the weight of your fingers and stain them a cherry red. Pull too gently and the berry refuses to part from its core.

The raspberries we picked in England tasted like sunshine and petals, like honeycombs and perfume. They were misshapen and lumpy, but their flavor was sweet and heady and full. And they came in a seemingly endless supply; every morning there were new berries big enough to be picked. We never bothered to wash them; they went into our mouths or a bowl on the table. I remember the richness I felt that summer, waking to a backyard full of raspberries I had never labored to plant. They were a profuse bounty to us, free and abundant. They were a gift.

This summer has felt like that–like a summer of picking raspberries we never planted. It has been a summer full of change for our family; we left a stable life in Chicagoland last month, and in a handful of days, we are moving to our new city and staring a whole new season of life. We have traveled this summer, we have lived with family, we have talked and dreamed and waited and prayed. And miraculously–I use that word intentionally and gratefully–God has provided for us in every way imaginable.

Because so many things this summer have felt fragile–and not just financially. The change of leaving our community and home, the tenderness of starting over again, the risk of saying yes to something totally new and unknown–these are fragile, breakable things. And I have felt my own flesh–those thorns of fear and anxiety and frustration–popping up in the midst of the fruit God is seeking to grow in me.

But God is a master gardener. And he has gently blossomed the fruitfulness of his kindness and provision in our lives this summer, bringing the best out of what is difficult without crushing me in the process.

God will blossom fruitfulness in our lives, bringing the best out of what is difficult without crushing us in the process. Share on X

And although he didn’t have to do any of these things for us, as he has been asking me to trust him more, God has also taken care of us in abundant, beautiful ways. Our house sold without issue or hiccup. Our church sent us out graciously and generously. An unexpected bill was waived. A writing project came in. My husband was offered a wonderful job. Our apartment in our new city is wonderful and affordable–and close to family. We got to go on a wonderful vacation that we hardly had to pay for. Gifts and gifts and gifts, one piled atop another, generous abundance from a Father who sees us and knows our needs–and our hearts. I have been blown away and humbled by His provision in our lives this summer. At the start of it, we didn’t know where the money we needed would come from. Now, I’m looking back at the past three months, amazed by God’s generosity toward us. I shouldn’t be surprised, I know. This summer has been not a whisper but a shout from the Lord–it has been a reminder that He is in control, and that He is good.

God is good and He does good. Share on X

God is good and He does good. And had all of these things not come to pass this summer, God would ever remain good. Still, I am grateful–so deeply grateful–for this summer of provision. He is changing me, softening my edges and bearing fruit in me that I can’t bear on my own. He has carried us and cared for us in every imaginable way.

I woke up to a garden full of raspberries this summer, unexpected gifts given by his hand. I am so thankful.

Filed Under: God, Life, Uncategorized Tagged With: abundance, Christianity, faith, faith and raspberries, God's faithfulness, God's provision, how do I make it, Jesus, picking raspberries, the provision of God, where is God, where is God in hard times

My Daughter, the Mirror, and Me: Healthy Body Image for Both of Us

June 24, 2015 by Ann 2 Comments

My newest piece is up at Today’s Christian Woman today; I would love for you to read the entire article here!

My daughter loves seeing herself in the mirror, drawn to her parallel image like a magnet. Ever since she has been old enough to recognize her reflection in the glass, she has smiled, giggled, and reached out for herself. It’s a beautiful sight. As one who has fought my own reflection in the mirror, I’m starting to understand these moments as what they truly are: sacred.

Ella is not yet two years old. Her belly is as round as a ball after each meal, and her legs still carry the remnants of baby pudge. She is stretching out, but she is still a little bit baby—a little bit soft. And she adores herself. Now that she’s walking, running, and trying to jump, she will run to the full-length mirror in our room and stand in front of it, watching herself as she moves. She usually dances and shakes her head, giggling at herself. More than once, I have caught myself with tears in my eyes and have prayed that she would always delight in her body like this.

It’s been many years since I have been able to do the same. That freedom, that lack of self-consciousness, that complete joy in her own reflection—that is an experience that I don’t want her to lose. But her growing-up years will take place in a culture that is trying to tell her she has nothing to delight in when she looks in the mirror.

A Lost Freedom

Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I looked in the mirror with pure delight. I do like myself, and I think that I have a healthy self-image. I don’t loathe my body or avoid mirrors, but even when I’m feeling fit and my clothes enhance my figure, I tend to focus on the aspects of my body that I don’t love. I focus on my rounding tummy, the girth of my thighs, the shortness of my eyelashes. And I try to do the work of covering up so as to not draw attention to those parts of my body. I might like how I look, but I rarely completely love what I see.

It’s been this way, to various degrees, since elementary school, when one of my female classmates told me that I had “big thighs.” After that, life was never the same.

I’m not being dramatic. Up until that moment, I had never even considered the size of my thighs. I knew that I had a body and that other people had bodies, but I didn’t consider how my body looked compared to theirs. I just knew that my legs worked well and that they helped me jump when I played basketball—that was all I cared about.

But when my classmate told me that she thought my thighs were big, I started looking at the size of my legs in light of the size of other girls’ legs. I discovered the ugly game of comparison. I shot up quickly in junior high and had knobby knees, but I didn’t develop any discernable bustline until years after many of my peers had needed actual bras. And although I was a bit gangly, I always carried a little weight in my tummy. It seemed that I would never have the perfect body I saw in commercials and magazines.

Nearly two decades later, I know that our culture’s interpretation of the “perfect” body is impossible—at least for me. And I really am okay with that. I’m not always thrilled, but I’ve made peace with my body. It does many things nearly perfectly—I can walk, even run, in this body. I have been able to carry a child. I can talk, and learn, and eat, and smile. These are amazing, nearly-perfect things. And I’m grateful.

Would I be happy if my metabolism was a bit faster? Probably. Would I like it if I had naturally smaller thighs? Sure. But the peace that I’ve gained with my body over these years since elementary school has been hard-won. And that’s why seeing Ella dancing in front of the mirror has both inspired and challenged me.

What She’s Teaching Me

My daughter has no sense of culturally imposed standards of beauty. She rejoices in her own reflection because she has no reason to not like herself; everyone in her life delights in her, and tells her so. Why would she not smile at her own face when she receives smiles on every side?

And this is what I always want her to have: encouragement about her body and praise regarding her internal—and external—beauty. Because she is beautiful. She is beautiful because the Creator of the heavens and the earth knit her together and delights in her (Psalm 139). He wove her every cell together when she was inside me. And still, as the one who holds all things together, he is remaking her, cell by cell, every day (Colossians 1:17). She is a wonder. She should be thrilled when she looks in the mirror! She’s a miracle!

Ella’s wonder with herself is calling me to remember that I, too, am a wonder. My working cells, my breathing lungs, my functioning brain—what a wonder I am! My thighs, knit together by a loving God. My tummy, sustained by an awesome Creator. What a wonder I am!

What a wonder you are! What a miracle, really, that any of us are here, living, gasping, hoping, loving, and speaking. All is wonder, truly.

Read the rest of the article here, at Today’s Christian Woman!

Filed Under: God, Guest Post, Motherhood, Parenting Tagged With: body image, Christian body image, Christians and the body, daughter, do I have a good body, faith, healthy body image, help my daughter with body image, Jesus