You. Transformed.

I love transformation. I love watching "Extreme Makeover" shows, where a team of people come in and redo a home, a person, a life. I love seeing the before, the hard work in the middle, the after. I love the excitement, the drama, the joy. It's all amazing.

Without even thinking about it, I feel that our lives on earth will model that pattern. I feel like we most likely will have a big moment of transformation, an Extreme Makeover Moment, where everything is sorted out, where we become our best selves.
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In a very real way, that is true. We must have THOSE MOMENTS of GRACE, where we enter into our own personal extreme makeover, where we are open to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, where he can come in and make us into a new creation. Yes, that happens at our baptism, but I also believe that we, as adults, must understand the Gospel Message. We must surrender and allow him to rescue us.  
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When we accept all that he has done for us, we truly do become a new creation. 

That experience of transformation happened to me about ten years ago, and it was an extreme makeover sort of experience. I found my truest identity and realized that my life is not about what I do, but about who I am. As I entered into a deeper understanding of my life as a beloved daughter, I was able to live out of that space in a beautiful way. "It's who you are that determines what you do!" (Mantra from Neal Anderson! Read his books!)

Now, that is wonderful. Great. Fabulous. But what I started feeling about a year ago was that my life was not really different than anyone else's. Yes, I had had this wonderful transformational experience, and I knew my identity, but I also wanted more information on how to live out my life in the daily. It's kind of like when someone creates their own extreme makeover, losing fifty or seventy pounds. They did the work to get there. They experienced the finish line, but then they know they must do the continual daily work.

What was the continual daily work of spiritual formation for me? What did that look like? For many years it looked like Lori floating down a river on a comfy raft. I knew I was a princess, a beloved daughter, and so I took advantage of that status and more or less lived my life in a contented sort of way, reading, casually praying, drinking coffee, raising my family, watching movies, enjoying social media.

Then a new road was opened up for our family, and I began teaching middle school English at our parish school. When I went back into the classroom, at first it was just about trying to adjust to all of the new things in my life, but then as I learned the cadence and rhythm of the school day, the school week, the quarter, the semester and the year, I was able to have more mental bandwidth. I was able to shine a light more fully onto my own journey, and I could see that my life, even though I was teaching at a Catholic school, was not that different than anyone else's. I had habits that weighed me down; I felt enslaved by some of them. I was not living out my own personal transformation in a way that truly set me free. I felt like I was following the crowd. 

So. What to do about that? 

Well, I started praying about this dilemma. Jesus, You see me. You know my heart. And You know I am drifting in a sea of me. Guide me. How can I live out my identity in you in a way that is truly pleasing to you?

Without knowing it, I was asking to be formed spiritually. 

Now. Let me pause right here and just say that I sort of thought that I had already arrived, and that I held the possession of godliness. What I learned right away in my reading and research is that the spiritual life is not an object to be possessed. If spiritual wholeness was an acquisition, something that I could hold and own, then the way of growth would be information and techniques that I would control. When I was on that path, I basically thought that I was in control of my relationship with God. 

No wonder I felt a little like I had flat-lined. Lori doesn't make a great god. 

So what changed? Well, in short, I began to understand two things:

1. Spiritual formation is a life-long process.
2. I must become an apprentice to Jesus Christ. 

First of all, the idea/understanding that spiritual formation is a life-long process was incredibly and stunningly freeing. I cannot state this clearly enough. It felt like I had uncovered a massive gift of understanding, and it changed how I looked at my life. I am not sure why I had never seen this because, after all, I had raised a million children, and their growth was never in one fell swoop. They didn't go from infant to adult in a day. It took years and years and years and years and years. 

In the same exact way, spiritual formation wasn't about having something instantly, but about working/walking towards it. I didn't have to pretend that I had arrived, that I was now a Holy One, but I could be who I really was: a human that felt deeply, yet sometimes lived shallowly; who had unmet needs and desires; who wanted to love better and more radically. 

This is another important piece of the spiritual formation puzzle: I learned that I, along with everyone else on the planet, was being formed every single day by the world around me. Spiritual formation is not an option. It is a reality. We are all being formed. I found that I was allowing our culture to form me. That was what I was feeling/pushing against. Drifting in our culture is not going to get me where I really wanted to go. 

Where did I want to go? Well, I wanted to be more like Jesus. Dr. Robert Mulholland Jr. says that "Spiritual formation is the process of being formed into the image of Christ for the sake of others." Yes, please. Give me some of that, Jesus. 

So how does one do that? It's not only about conversion (although that is vital and must come first), but to truly share in the liberation that Jesus offers, (there is power in the resurrection!!) we must enter his way of life. 

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Wait just a sec. 

This is where I did a little bit of backtracking because I knew that entering into How Jesus Lived = Sacrifice and Discipline. I'd rather have the "freedom" to watch that new series that a friend recommended, plus those old series that are now available WITHOUT commercials, which is life-altering. I'd rather be able to swear like a sailor, swig from my ale cup, eat all the things, go where I wanted to go, do what I wanted to do, become whoever I became. 

There was big push back within me. Maybe I could just keep going about my life, drifting, not caring where the wind took me. 

But when I got serious, I saw that following my rendition of Jesus was not going so well. But what would I have to give up? I liked my life.

Then I read this in Practicing the Way: 

"There is a way of life—modeled personally by Jesus himself—that is far beyond anything else on offer in this world. It can open you up to God's presence and power in ways most people only dream. But it requires you to follow a path marked out for you by Jesus himself." (Comer, 2024)

See, there is this wide gate, which most people go through. Jesus invites us to enter through the narrow gate. This gate, he says, will lead to real life. 

I had to sit with that. The way I was doing my life didn't feel right. I was following the crowd, doing life at the speed of the internet, scrolling, buying, busying myself. 

I knew there was more. I decided to trust in him and his promises. I wanted not only life, but LIFE TO THE FULL—an abundant life. I sort of knew that would not exactly get me life on my terms, but I was ready to learn. Well, mostly. I still had some fear. 

I love how Jesus hears our hearts. We can just tell him all the truths. "I want more, but I am scared out of my mind. I want to become your dream of me, but I am worried that you will require me to die to self and I don't like death. I like life. I like fun, parties, ice cream. Death sounds a bit dreary."

Okay, so what happened next really made everything easy. I basically got a history lesson on the apostles. See, there has always been this odd thing in the Gospels: Jesus goes up to some fishermen, who were deeply entrenched in their daily livelihood, and Jesus simply says, "Come, follow me," and they leave their nets, their boats, their lives, to follow this new teacher. 

WHAT? 

That never ever made sense to me. Then John Mark Comer, in the book I referred to above, Practicing the Way, explained that Jesus was a rabbi, and back in that time period, following a rabbi was sort of like going to an elite college. Only so many disciples were chosen, and those men would follow in that rabbi's footsteps, learning everything they could from that relationship.

There is not really anything to compare that dynamic in our own time, but here is a quick try: think about an incredibly influential person in your life, someone whom you love and look up to. Imagine if that person would come to you and say, "I would like you to hang out with me. Let's go!" 

With stars in your eyes, you'd most likely go. When Jesus looked at those ordinary men and asked them to join him, they knew that their lives would be transformed. Why? Because being a disciple meant that they would follow their rabbi CONSTANTLY and "class" would be in session continually. The disciples of Jesus knew that they would spend every waking moment with this Jesus, sleeping next to him, eating with him, sitting at his feet, and they would also walk behind him, from town to town, covered in his dust. ALL DAY. EVERY DAY. (9)

The purpose of this apprenticeship was so the disciples could become LIKE THEIR RABBI. That was the whole of it: being with the master to become like the master. 

That was what it meant to be a disciple, and excitingly, this is what it STILL means to be a disciple. If we want to follow Jesus, we must become his apprentice. 

Now, I don't know about you, but the word apprentice sort of lends itself towards learning, acquiring knowledge and such. In reality, it's less about learning and more about observing/putting into practice. Sounds great, but why are we even talking about this? I mean, Jesus called the disciples over two thousand years ago, right? Wasn't it a "back in the day" sort of thing? 

Well, no, in reality,  Jesus calls us to follow him. He calls you. He calls me. To be his apprentices. To learn from him how to live the life of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, literally bringing heaven to earth. 

Sounds great, but how do ya do that, exactly? Well, instead of merely thinking to myself, What would Jesus do? (WWJD), I now think of myself as an apprentice to Jesus. He is next to me. He is forming me. So when I wake up, I imagine Jesus as a 57-year old woman from the Midwest, wife, mother of eight, mother-in-law to four, grandmother to five. How would Jesus start my day? That's easy. He'd pray. (I'm also learning how to pray, and let me tell ya, it's not what I thought it was.)

What would he wear for the day as a teacher? How would he greet the students at the door? How would he talk about people? What sort of gestures, eye contact, words would HE use? 

This, more than anything, has helped me transform my life; understanding that if I want to apprentice under Jesus, I have to imagine him in MY LIFE, in my circumstances. 

Probably the biggest area of transformation has been in the realm of how I use my free time, which I'll tackle in my next post. 

So, let's talk about you for a moment. 

Imagine your day, how it starts, unfolds. How would Jesus change your morning routine if He happened to come in and embody you? What would He clearly steer you away from? What would He guide you to? 

Think about him throughout your entire day, more or less being you. If you are surrounded by a ton of small children, how would Jesus talk to them? How would he use his eyes? How would he spend his time with the children? What would he eat? Drink? Watch? How would he get replenished when he became weary? How would he organize the day? How would he plan supper? Would there by any prayers in the evening? Would there be conversations? What would he do in your life?

Friends, this is the gift: 

To be apprenticed to Jesus is to become our deepest, truest self.