A Story About Finding My Hiding Place

Finding My Hiding Place in Monday Morning Mantra Chanting

Starting monday morning (and therefore my week) with yoga is one of the most sane choices i make in my schedule.

And this morning, it did not disappoint.

Our instructor worked us hard, but in yoga, you don’t realize how hard you are working.

You’re just following…moving, holding, listening, moving, holding again, and on and on.

Then before i know it, i am drenched in sweat and falling heavily into the earth.

I knew this morning that I was going to have trouble focusing.

I woke up feeling sort of exposed.

For many reasons, some that make sense and some that are completely figments of my imagination, but there you go…still, somehow, I found myself feeling just a wee bit vulnerable.

The events of the last week or so have shaken me up a bit i suppose and even this morning as i was going over some things I was studying, I just kept becoming distracted.

So as i was pulling out my things for yoga I grabbed my mantra list. This is what I am calling this list from a book I am studying with my girlfriends. We are reading and answering questions that have mostly to do with focusing on our identity in Jesus.

The whole point of the study is to be free to live out of who we are.

And in order to do this, one must actually know who he or she is.

In Christ.

So at the beginning of the study there is an entire list of declarations of who I am in Christ that I am supposed to be saying out loud every morning and every evening.

That is the goal. Mostly the three of us are just trying to say them whenever we can and the idea is that eventually the lies in our brains about who we are will be replaced with the truth about who we truly are.

It sounds tedious and simple and self-help-y, I know, but you can’t believe how it actually works. And as with all things spiritual in my life, the messages I am repeating to myself are also popping up in other places.

We have been singing this song for several weeks at church called I Know Who I Am.

The whole song is about being certain of your place as a child of God, belonging, free. When this song was first introduced, it seemed simple and almost trite to me, but now that I have been repeating it for several weeks, it is working its way into my heart and I love to sing it.

I love to declare, again and out loud that I am confident of who I am as a precious child of God. It lifts up my soul.

Also, I am hearing these same messages in a David Crowder Band song that I would not have even found were it not for the need to stay awake driving home from Taos. Taido had the ipod completely loaded with mellow songs and rap music, and so I listened to this one upbeat worship playlist about 14 times, camping on this song that repeats the lyric,

You make everything glorious

You make everything glorious

And I am yours,

So what does that make me?

Again, a declaration that I belong to God and that I have value (even glory) just on the basis of that truth.

When I meditate on that for a while, it overwhelms me. Amazes me. And again, lifts up my soul.

So, like I said, on the way to yoga this morning, I grabbed one phrase from the list of declarations.

My eyes were scanning the now familiar list and trying to just hold onto one in particular to take with me into yoga.

To chant.

So I can focus.

And when my eyes landed on it, i quickly said it a few times and took off, as I was running late.

And it wasn’t until I had chanted it for about half of the class that i realized why I had clutched that specific phrase today.

Of course. Just what I needed for today.

Which is how God works. It is a huge advantage of being all-knowing and all-powerful. He always knows. Always provides.

And as I fell into my mat at the end into shavasana, a place of total surrender.

Open. Vulnerable. Exposed.

But at rest and at peace, I said it again:

I am hidden with Christ in God.