How do you describe who you are?

What you do…okay. Where you came from, where you live, what you produce, who’s in your family…all okay. But who you are gets to the root of things. It forces you to assess the why and the how and to reflect on what makes you tick and what gives you energy. Most of all, it makes you boil down your meaning and connection with the world.

I am a kinesthetic Christian. I can define the words:

• Kinesthetics learn best by moving and touching and applying their senses.
• Christians follow Christ.

But put the two together and they don’t make sense to people. How can you touch Christ? How can moving help you experience God?

What they don’t understand is, I don’t move in order to connect with God. When I move God connects with me.

I am not one of those people who raises my arms and sways back and forth and jumps and dances in worship. Perhaps I would be if I was raised in a different tradition or a different culture, but I wasn’t. I admire those people, but they are not me. Honestly, I’m physically inhibited in worship, definitely not prone to demonstration. I don’t even clap along with the songs all that often. It feels forced and stilted. That’s not worship.   

I am not ADD,  as the common term has it. I don’t fidget or need to move around in order to keep from losing focus. In fact, I am satisfied to stay put, take notes, sing along, and let my mind wander. I don’t need to move to worship or praise.

Instead, it’s in my moving through my day, and especially in the things I do physically, that God gets my attention. It’s sort of an on-going conversation.

I lift the weight. God says, “Hey Wendy, this is just like…”

I climb the stairs. God says, “Hey Wendy, feel that…”

I scrub the floor. God says, “Hey Wendy, did you know…”

I walk the dog. God says, “Hey Wendy, remember when…”

I walk lazily on the treadmill reading a book I need to finish and God says, “Hey Wendy, I’m trying to get your attention here!” And then I accidentally pull the stop key and my whole workout record is dissolved in a moment. “Ugh,” I say, putting the book down on the table next to the treadmill. First lap. 0 miles. 0 seconds. Go. Suddenly, my brain is flooded with solutions to every project that is on every burner. I put the thing on pause, run to get my notebook, jump back on and hit START. 

Then we’re cooking.

What is a Kinesthetic Christian? It’s how I’m made. Not how I respond to God-filled rooms or God-filled spaces or God-filled conversations. It’s just the ordinary me, doing what I do, because I’m made that way. Lifting, climbing, scrubbing, walking. God settles on me – that’s the best way to describe it. God fills the space with Himself and I am connected in a new way.

And when, on occasion, I get lazy, He sits on me. “Hey Wendy, I’m trying to talk to you here!”

It seems the natural way of things. Not that we meet God just in the worship space, but that He meets us in our daily space. On our home turf, so to speak. Why wouldn’t He? He knows where we like to hang out and what we like to do. He made us that way.

Before we were born He described us just so, then He made us to be just that. I can’t describe it, but I can live it. Perhaps that’s why Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”

I am a Kinesthetic Christian. I read. I write. I pray. I play. I worship. I relate to my world as a Kinesthetic Christian. It’s the only path I know to follow the Lord of my life.