Welcome to all who have found your way here. I am grateful that we can gather virtually in this space to share stories and discover that we are in this together — in the thick of navigating a life of messy faith, family challenges, grief all tangled up with joy, beauty in the midst of pain, and every one of us on the way to becoming.
In my part of the world, we are in a time of transition as summer slowly gives way to fall and a return to its rhythms. Planting and tending has turned to harvesting, the long hours of sunlight are gradually decreasing, and hints of autumn are in the air.
A change of seasons always seems to carry with it the need to recalibrate. Do you find that too?
WE ARE IN THIS TOGETHER
Just this past week, while talking to our local Chinese Restaurant owner I discovered our experiences of motherhood were similar. Our cultures differ and no doubt our parenting methods also but we shared some things in common. She lamented that one of her daughters believes her parents love the other daughter more. This was only a few weeks after one of our own had made this accusation to me. Our eyes locked onto each other’s and I breathed a little deeper and freer knowing I was not alone in this. Her shoulders seemed to relax away from her ears when I said, “me too”. We shared a knowing nod, each holding our own sorrow and also a little bit of the other’s as well.
Just last night I heard an apology from the same adult kid for not seeing me as a person, only Mom. She carried assumptions of me she had formed as a child into her adulthood and is now realizing that I am also a complex human being just like she is, and maybe we share more things in common than she thought.
This parenting of adult children is a whole roller-coaster ride of the highs and lows and the drawing close and releasing again. Some days we feel the sense of accomplishment, and other days wonder if there is any getting over all we messed up.
You may have just released some of your grown kids into new adventures of college or marriage and have some feelings about that. Oh friend, you are not alone in the struggle to celebrate with one hand while holding your breaking, wrung-out heart in the other.
CHANGE
“We are typically invited into new stages of life. Only after many refusals are we dragged. There seems to be so little resistance, in nature—it’s almost as though we’ve come to believe that we are separate to it, perhaps in the hope that we might somehow escape our ultimate destiny.” These words are from an article that I share the link to below and I thought how fitting they are—whether it is a new stage according to the calendar or the stages of parenting, work, health, retirement, or empty-nesting that come our way. I feel the resistance to change, to entering the unknown, and yet if I view it as an invitation, it becomes more appealing. What if we envisioned a good and kind friend beckoning us forward to join them in the new that is on the horizon? Do you think we could step more willingly and courageously into the future?
There is so much in life that is in a constant state of flux —changes in our environment and within our own hearts.
Our families are changing, children leave home, elderly parents need our help, our roles are shifting. Maybe our financial situation is uncertain, or our job. Maybe you find yourself without a church community because of all the changes that have happened within you that have made you feel you did not belong anymore.
It can feel like we are walking a path that keeps shifting, the tiny trail we have been following turns to nothing and we don’t know which way to go. This can make us feel off kilter, anxious, and fearful.
I am fearful of what is happening in the life of my oldest daughter. I can obsess about how we are going to fix things, I wonder what arguments will work. What books should we read? Who will be with her during these difficult days? All this ruminating gets me nowhere except more stressed.
I recently read these words from author Amy Baik Lee in her book This Homeward Ache, and felt the truth of them. “I had somehow grown accustomed to anticipating the worst without factoring in his presence.”
How often do we look ahead without believing that Jesus has already gone ahead? And that he is with us every step of the way.
I find myself tossing and turning at night, looking for solutions, without considering that Jesus might already have the situation in hand.
Friend,
He is with you as you await news from your doctor, and he knows the way forward.
Jesus has already set a plan in motion to provide for your needs, even as you hear that your job is ending.
When you wonder if there is a role for you in the future, God is already planting the seeds and making a way.
As you mourn the loss of community, Jesus is coming close and preparing a table for you.
Is there an area of your life that you have forgotten to factor in Jesus’ presence with you? Or have you forgotten that he is also present with the ones who weigh heavy on your mind?
Here is a breath prayer for us:
Inhale: No matter what is ahead
Exhale: Your presence goes with me.
FRIENDS
As I get older, I am recognizing the growing importance of cultivating friendships. As we age our “world” tends to shrink. For those who are retired, your work relationships change and inevitably end, our interactions with others are fewer. After kids grow up and leave home, we lose the social life that revolved around their involvement with sports or other events, we may have simultaneously lost our shopping buddy or games night companion. Now more than ever before we need our friends.
These friendships can be more difficult to find if we are less involved in the community we live in. When we dropped kids off for kindergarten it was easy to chat with neighbors who were also wiping their tears and there find friendship and comradery. At this midlife stage and later, finding new friends will require more intention. I think though, that we also become more open and our lives may slow down some. We become aware of space opening up in our lives and a longing for something new to fill it. So maybe it is time to risk reaching out and inviting another in.
My mom at 85, is finding herself alone for the first time in her adult life. My dad has been in the hospital since Easter this year and will eventually go to a care home for those experiencing advanced dementia and other ailments.
I see all that she faces without friends to walk with her and it grieves me. She fears moving to a retirement home and I wonder if some of that comes from being out of practice in building relationships with other women. Mom and dad had become a unit unto themselves, their only mirror one another. I do not think it was the most healthy or helpful. I do not want to end up in a similar spot. Today is the day to start to change the trajectory.
CHANGING BELIEFS
Maybe this reflection about the strain of Christianity I grew up in reveals part of the difficulty for my mom:
Somehow, over the years, we have moved from gratitude at being recipients of a mercy so great we cannot begin to fathom, to an elitist attitude of superiority.
We thought we had the corner on truth, which made us better, more enlightened, more holy.
We took personal piety seriously, but not the command to love our neighbor.
We became adept at judging others rather than coming clean with our own stuff.
It became about differentiating between us and them.
We began to despise the “other”, distancing ourselves out of fear of contamination. We were afraid to be in spaces together with those we deemed on the outside. We restricted ourselves to relationships with people just like us. I could be led astray if I hung out with “them”, my morals compromised, my reputation stained.
This is the world I inherited through a strict fundamentalist viewpoint. It was fear-inducing and constricting. And I think it is here that my mother is stuck.
I have personally been on a journey of letting go of the unhelpful beliefs of the past and exploring a more expansive view of the Divine and our place in this world.
Early this summer I went to the most diverse gathering I have ever attended. And there was not one moment where I was afraid —not a second of feeling I did not belong, or that evil was present.
The overwhelming feeling I had in that space was a deep gratitude for how I was growing and how diverse and beautiful God’s creation is. Humanity in all her varied shapes and sizes, nationalities, orientations, preferences and styles of dress gathered in one place to appreciate the beauty of music. Together we appreciated the sounds emanating from instruments, the giftedness of the artists, and freedom of expression.
I have missed out on many years of celebrating the divine in each person I meet.
This theme of seeing others as walking, talking images of God is one that keeps coming up for me lately. Maybe it is a reaction and an antidote to all the division that has been plaguing us of late. As I read the Gospels and consider Jesus, I see how he treats everyone with dignity, compassion and love. And aren’t we called to do the same?
We truly are in this together and also more alike than we know.
Some Beauty for you to Behold
Last night I was awakened just after 12:30 am with a coughing fit. As I got up to get a drink of water, I glanced out the window and thought I saw hints of northern lights. I went out to the deck and experienced the most amazing light show of my life.
Colored ribbons of undulating light stretched across the sky.
For a few moments, directly above my head was a slow explosion of light, like watercolors bleeding across the paper.
At other moments, the aurora looked like a cosmic wand had been waved across the sky – an arch of pulsing green left in its wake.
An iPhone can only capture a tiny fraction of the glory of those moments, but I share them with you so you too can enjoy even just a glimpse of the beauty and wonder. Imagine yourself standing outside, with head back and watching these ribbons of light dance across the sky.
Other resources for you:
Read
My latest article over at Red Letter Christians. Here is an excerpt:
“Welcome to the in-between. There is so much in the natural world that defies categorization which can instruct us to live differently. So often we try to squeeze everything into boxes of good or evil, right or wrong. What would happen if we lived in the middle spaces?
Could our conversations and interactions benefit if we let go of our either/or ways of thinking and embraced nuance instead?” Read the rest here.
This gorgeous essay which I quoted above, the winged, the enlightened, and the dead
like a Swift in the inevitable
Here is an excerpt:
“Watching her languid gestures makes me think of how much my perception of beauty has changed, over time. My heart breaks a little for how often I will have walked by it, without realisation or acknowledgement. How, having fallen for the lie of mandatory urgency and constant doing, blinders had formed that I did not know were there. How I could look at a person in their elder years, and in response feel unease at their aged body, or relief that mine were not so—missing entirely the visual display of the depth of the season of life they were inhabiting. Overlooking the poignant stories co-authored by skin, nature and time.”
A Blessing
As you navigate all that is shifting
May you sense that, on these winds of change,
comes the possibility of fresh hopes and dreams.
That as one season ends, something new is being born.
May you be surprised by the hope that comes rushing toward you in the days ahead.
,
*originally published on Substack