“Be where your feet are.”
Last Tuesday, I sat in seat 3 on row V in a darkened auditorium. Amy Grant was center stage, wearing a long flowing dress and effortlessly displaying what it looks like to combine grace, hospitality and wisdom.
She walked onto the stage, said “my job here tonight is to make this big space feel like a living room,” sang a few songs, and then uttered those five small words.
Be where your feet are.
For several months now, I’ve routinely asked myself, “Where are you?”
I’m not lost. I’m not confused. But also — sometimes I’m not fully present.
When I catch my mind jumping to the future or hanging out in the past, I just ask those three words, the short question that has become a spiritual practice that keeps me grounded: where are you?
And then I circle back until I can easily say: right here.
It’s weird how one question can snap me out of a daydream or a memory playing on a never-ending loop. I believe in dreaming, I do. I wrote it in and I’ll say it again (and, likely, again): dreaming can be some of the bravest, scariest hoping we ever do.
But sometimes, and maybe this is just me, my dreaming goes beyond goal-setting or planning or even hoping. It flies right by anything practical and hopeful or even prayerful, and it goes straight into MaybeLand. If this happens, then this. And if that, then this would happen next. And then of course this and this and this and this. Don’t even get me started on future worries about bills and health and relationships.
It could go on forever.
And it does. Until I ask myself, “where are you?”
The future is easy to crawl right into, peering inside one million possibilities, but the past sucks me right back in, too. Replaying conversations, thinking through timelines, sitting in a memory, playing another round of the if game except this time it carries the theme of “if only.”
It’s unhealthy, and so I ask myself the question.
And now, thanks to Amy, I have five words to go along with my newest favorite spiritual practice: be where your feet are.
Be planted. Focus on roots before branches. Trust the timeline, rely on the Author, and stay in the moment. The present is a present, a gift waiting to be unwrapped, so be all there. Show up to life, love fully, and be.
Be where your feet are.
The first image is a print made by Abby Hyslop.
I love everything about the truth presented in this post. “Trust the timeline, rely on the Author, and stay in the moment.” Such a great reminder for me on the journey I’ve found myself lately. I’ll try to remember to be where my feet are. And to trust that they are right where he wants them planted.
Thank you so much Teresa…
Hi, Kaitlyn. Thanks for the practical tip when you’re worrying or caught in the past. Nice to meet you!
Nice to ‘meet’ you too!