SEEN
Happy New Year, Sisters & Brothers! 🥳
As we welcome and ease into 2024, it feels like such a pregnant time of change, possibility and creativity. Mhhmm-mahhh! A time to start anew. A time to be fresh.
The start of this year - like few others for me - has felt like a time to strip everything back to its basic. To really cast off what was before, what has held me back, and what no longer serves the destinies pursuing me as eagerly as I am pursuing them.
Is this you too?
It feels like a time to return to my first principles and to align ever more securely with deep and sacred realities.
I love that about a changing season. Whether I put energy into celebrating the turn of the calendar or sleep through a NYE countdown (as I unapologetically did again this year lol!), there’s still this inescapable sense of a clean slate in every new year. If not at the stroke of midnight, usually within the first week or so. And so it is today.
Yes I sure do love a clean slate when I can get one. I think we all do… In theory 😅 The inconvenient thing about getting a clean slate, though, is that what is there must first be uncovered before it can be cleared.
Pretty obvious, right?
Pretty brutal many times too, huh?
Isn’t it curious, then, how much surprise and delight we get when we find out someone else’s hidden truth? Especially in this age of unceasing personal revelations - intentional or no. Isn’t it crazy how much pleasure many of us get at watching a stranger’s (or a friend’s) carnage play out on social media? All of those remembrances piled high with what happened last year, ten or twenty years ago laid bare in a moment.
Isn’t it funny that, as we watch and see others stripped before us, we subconsciously think (and hope!) we will escape? That we will never have to see our own uncovering. That we will never see the bottoming out of what we believed was true and would last forever? That we can remain hidden. Hidden to our closest life companions many times. Hidden to ourselves many others.
Wrapped as we are within the cocoon of veritable anonymity and the cloak of busy-ness, we have little clue as to what our own day-to-day hiding might be costing. Vigorously engaged in our daily lives and the distractions which abound, we have little notion of what our “unseen-ness” is purchasing.
It makes it so easy for the most important parts of who we are to go unnoticed, un-provoked, unrevealed. It makes it easy to hide in plain sight; to live a life perpetually on the outskirts of a true authenticity and full embodiment of the journey we’ve been sent into this life to savor.
I COULD SIT HERE ALLLL DAY
I have found that it is only when I get very quiet and still - when no one else’s expectations of me hover nearby waiting to be fulfilled - that I come to real honesty. It is then that I am truly free to remove my veils; to be exactly what and how our Creator made me and us. Without pretense. Without performance or manufactured glossiness. Just me. Just us.
Ahhh yes… I sense that soft stillness now even as I write. The gentle and fragrant entreaty to stop. The enticing temptation to see and be seen…
In this warm and honest space, may I ask you something personal? An uncovering kind of question? When you are most quiet, and have given yourself the honor of your highest truth, have you ever felt like the threads of your faith slipped from your grasp?
Like the very essence that once anchored your very soul quietly slipped away? That you were adrift in an ocean of doubt and fear that you couldn’t escape? You're not alone.
I've been there. I've felt that absence of faith. That bottoming out of what I believed was true and would last forever. The inability to believe. The terror of thinking that maybe, just maybe, God might not triumph in the battles I've entrusted entirely to Him.
A certain despair can settle in when faith seemingly evaporates. It's a haunting feeling, isn't it? The fear that you're navigating this labyrinth of life all by yourself; carrying a weight that seems too heavy for your shoulders alone.
It has been at those very moments of emptiness and weakness - in my own personal place of stripping - that I have found a peculiar, wonderful solace. An unexpected sanctuary. A nakedness.
A holy place where vulnerability allows room for a greater power to move in. An emptiness that becomes a canvas for the Divine to paint a masterpiece.
NO ONE COULD PAINT IT BETTER… ✨✨
I had such a moment last August in Kauai just after several months of rigorous travel. When my day of crisis came - as it comes to us all, sooner or later - I didn’t get some scathing analysis from Heaven or fiery condemnation over my lack of faith. I got compassion. I got grace. And I got a whisper…
A whisper that said:
"You don't believe Me to do the unbelievable. And you need to know that I can still do that. And that I can still do that for you too.”
Becoming new again without all the work…
It was a quiet yet firm reminder that, even in the face of what felt like a monumental failure to “do better,” “be perfect”or “be strong in faith,” the Creator was working on something which had nothing whatsoever to do with my efforts.
In fact, those heavy robes of religiosity - which put the onus on us to do a work only God can do - were the very enemies He was removing.
All that weighty, practiced performance… Yeah, that was what He was after. The plains of my spiritual life which had become flooded with dryness and where sincere cries for fresh faith wept for a salve… That’s what He was healing.
Because Heaven wants to convince us that They don’t need our performance. God wants us to know that He still orchestrates the impossible.
As I navigated my journey into a truer, clearer, newer faith, I found myself bathed afresh in the cool, calming waters of practicality and timeless truths. And as I came alive once again, there were my friends: Life. Hope. Flow. Ready companions who, it turns out, had never left my side.
ALL THIS RESURRECTION IS MAKING ME HUNGRY 😅😋
It was a profound “ah-ha” moment in the jungles of Kauai that kicked off changes in me I couldn’t have imagined. But I don’t have to imagine it because I was there lol! And neither do you because I recorded and worked through some of it here. I thought it might be just for my personal archives but… Ahh well… I guess the Holy Spirit had other plans. Ha!
““You don’t believe Me to do the unbelievable. And you need to know that I can still do that. ”
Are you ready to believe for the unbelievable? Are you ready to start this year with a real experience that gives you your own real faith? One that isn’t shaped by or predicated on performance. One that resides in and with you no matter the fickleness of human frailty? One that is strong enough to greet you with its service when you know you have exhausted all of your own.
Well then, honey baby, it’s time to move out from your shadows. It is time to be truly seen. It’s time to give the Spirit of Love permission to love you and to refresh and caress your tired heart.
It is time.
Here is a summary of ten things I mentioned in the video that you can do TODAY to help bypass any hardened heart barriers and bring you before the presence of a loving and faith-filling God:
I LOVE THIS WALK. RARELY DO I BRING COMPANY 🤫
Communing in Nature: Stepping into nature's embrace, feeling the breeze and hearing the rustle of leaves—it's a reminder that divinity resides in every corner of creation 🍃🍃
Immersing in the Ocean: There's something inexplicably rejuvenating about surrendering to the vastness of the ocean. Let the waves cleanse your soul and wash away your worries. If an ocean isn’t an immediate option, toss some soothing salts into a welcoming bath or hang some lavender stems in a steeeamy shower 🪻🚿 Water is life. Let it do what it do.
Healing Touch: Now you know how I feel about a massage! Do you also know a soothing massage can be a gateway to reconnect with your inner self? It's a moment to release tension and welcome tranquility - yes. But, more importantly, it’s a hallowed time when the “you” who is so often overlooked gets her/his moment in the sun 💆♀️
Music & Meditation: Allow yourself the gift of serene melodies and the practice of quieting your mind through stillness to energize, bring Peace into your days, and uplift your spirit.
Praying in the Spirit: Sometimes words fail us. That’s why we have a heavenly language that accompanies the infilling of God’s Spirit; to articulate the inarticulable groanings of our hearts. Let your spirit communicate* with the Divine in its own unique language. Then watch Heaven respond.
NO CAPTION NEEDED
6. Worship Looping: Start with a “Thank You” to engage your soul with the frequency that aligns and resonates with your spirit. Sing, dance, or simply sit or lay and allow your heart, love and appreciation for all God is to arise. Immerse yourself in worship music (or silence) and remember the goodness the Creator has placed in you and around you and that is already planned for your life. And then finish where you started - with a “Thank You” ♥️ - and you’ll have created the perfect worship loop ✨✨
7. Embracing Fun: Laughter and joy are sacred. Don't deny yourself the pleasure of grabbing and holding moments of pure delight. Write them down in a journal and visit them often or post photos on your bathroom mirror or refrigerator. It will remind you how much fun FUN is. And it will encourage you to do it AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN!!! 🙌🏽😄
READ #7 & #8 AGAIN 🤣🙌🏽🧜🏽♀️
8. Getting Out of Your Head: Overthinking clouds our connection with the Divine. Allow yourself time to let go and simply be. Read #7 a few more times and then GO HAVE SOME FUN dammit! 😂
9. Being Ready and Willing: Stay attentive and open to the guidance you receive. When called upon, be prepared to play your part 💪
10. Practice Patience: There’s a funny thing I heard once about patience from the perspective of someone who wanted it. It goes: “I want patience and I want it RIGHT NOW!!” 🙄😜 Remember, growth takes time. Trust the process and let Patience have her perfect timing. You will find that, by the end of the wait, you will be complete, whole, and lacking in no good thing.
🎈Bonus: Reading and ingesting faith-filling works. I love the Psalms of King David and the Song of Solomon (David’s son) which bring me in touch with the heartbeat and intimacy that is the very essence of God the Lover 💘
As we journey together, let's anticipate the marvels that reveal themselves as already unfolded as soon as we make room for the Divine. Let's watch with awe as God orchestrates miracles; transforming our lives in ways we couldn't fathom. Let’s watch our faith revive again, Beloveds.
And for those times when faith feels absent, fear not. For in its seeming absence lies the potential for the cleanest slate you’ve ever had and the greatest spiritual awakening you’ve ever experienced!
God bless you. I love you. Have the Happiest of New Years! 😘 And I’ll see you soon…
With Love and In Faith (again!),
~ Dr. Samantha Sarah Anne
* P.S. Read the final chapter in my blog “LOOK UP!” - “Crossing” - here for the first step to gaining access to (and receiving direction and revelation from) the mind and intelligence of God’s Spirit.
BC IT TAKES A CLEAN SLATE & DIFFERENT FAITH TO DO THIS 😅