Author: Stephanie Rollins

Sixty-five miles outside of Florence was a world away. 

When we lifted our paddle at a gala auction last fall, “seven nights in a Tuscan villa” was all we knew. Setting out to find exactly where and what we bought was exciting.  

Halfway between Arezzo and Cortona down the final stretch of country roads, our GPS took us up a private “neighbors only” drive. This brought the locals into the street in a dusty huff to let us know our error, their fingers pursed and shaking at the heavens in a flurry of Italian expletives.  But leaving them behind for a right turn and then a left, we found our place tucked cozily out of view behind an iron gate and a hedge of oleander trees in pink bloom.

The villa was charming and remote, a modernized storybook: the creamy stones and gnarled wood of a medieval farmhouse, elevated by a sleek infinity pool overlooking the countryside.  A cypress tree framed the view of the valley and the surrounding hills—a patchwork of olive groves and vineyards dotted with homesteads.  Stacked on the adjacent hilltop just over a mile away, the fortified town of Castiglion Fiorentino kept lazy guard as it had done for millennia, its bell towers reaching for the sky.  

With arms folded over the edge of our pool, I’d trace the lines of its medieval walls and imagine the dozens of different flags flown over its battlement through the centuries: Arezzo, Perugia, Siena, Florence.  I’d squint through the summer haze and try to picture what she might have looked like under feudal siege, a sea of glinting armor restless at her gates.  

Then I’d try to go even further back, to the Etruscan settlement whose 4^th century BC walls and temple lie buried in rubble beneath her ramparts.  What was it like to work and worship on that hill then?  Rome was rising, Persia was falling, and a thousand or more miles away Nehemiah was rebuilding his own temple and walls with similar stones.  But my thoughts were interrupted. 

Because every afternoon a glorious thing would happen at our pool.  

For fifteen to twenty minutes once or twice a day, evaporation would trigger our pool’s auto-fill system, and a cascade of water would shoot into the pool out the mouth of a rock fountain at the far corner. The first day, in sheer surprise and delight the kids and I swam to the waterfall, squealing and splashing each other in fun. But within minutes they moved on, the jet of brisk water too forceful for play.  

But not me. 

I stood there mesmerized, chin dropped and head back, letting it assault my neck and shoulders.  The power of it shocked me into wonder and submission; I couldn’t quite believe how fantastic it was.  At one point I genuinely considered that God, out of His infinite love, had sent me angels disguised as hydromassage to pound on my back.  

I felt sheer joy at such profound goodness. The way the roar of the water drowned out the otherwise pervasive and raucous trill of cicadas.  The lavish luxury of an icy cold torrent of water—so decadent in its barrage!—in a country that doesn’t do ice or A/C like we do, a land of inescapable heat.  So I stood there with tears in my eyes and laughter in my throat, stunned by the beauty and the perfection of the moment.  

And then it stopped.  

The pool was once again still. The day hot. The bugs noisy. And it was over. 

So each day when the fountain would come on, I’d get there as fast as I could. I’d stand beneath it with eyes shut tight, soaking in every minute of its unpredictable gift.  

One day, Mitch woke me from a nap shouting, “Mom, it’s on! It’s on!” And to my family’s amazement I wasn’t mad, I was grateful. I sprinted to the yard discarding my clothes along the way, and hit the water with such a fervor you’d think it was the Pool of Bethesda and I in desperate need of healing.

Tuscany taught me a valuable lesson: some things are extra special because they can’t be forced. And they can’t be faked.  And they can’t be enjoyed forever.  All you can do is savor it, thank the Giver, and then let it go. 

I learned this from the in-home chef who taught us how to make pasta from scratch. I learned this from the vintner at the local winery, who spoke to us about fermenting grapes and pressing olive oil.  I learned this from the salumiere in San Gimignano who took his sweet time preparing our lunch, spending as long to shave the meat as it took to cure it. And I learned this from my fountain. 

In the end, our time in Tuscany was this way.  Somehow even though each day only crawled by—the minutes wholly unhurried—seven nights still managed to pass in a blink.  Despite all the time we had there, we somehow felt that we’d left so much still undone.

But as we drove away, and the stone walls of Castiglion Fiorentino slipped out of view behind the earth, I realized just how fitting that was.       

We arrived by train in suffocating heat with bags in tow. Our apartment was an oven with the sun baking its windows, and it took time to crank the air and cool it down.  In the process we repeatedly blew the electrical fuse and learned by trial and error that we couldn’t both run A/C and wash clothes at the same time.  But as we settled in, a late afternoon rain showered the city and cooled it off, and a pleasant breeze swept over the Arno.  By the time we stepped out for dinner, all had been transformed and refreshed. 

Exploring Florence was like sifting through a treasure box.  We’d walk its typically urban streets with its bustling traffic and gray scenery, and these otherwise ordinary routes would transport us from one beauty to another like connect-the-dots.  Here a busking violin, there the sculptures and fountain of Piazza della Signoria.  Here a creamy affogato, there a hand-painted deck of cards in an artisanal paper shop.  Here Michelangelo’s David, there truffled gnocchi. It was a breathtaking hunt, and every day I fell in love with something new. 

Florence is a city of contrasts. You rush, and then you wait. You step from noisy streets into silent galleries. The white marble stands out against the most vibrant colors of paint, saturated pigments of startling scarlet and blue.  Beggars sit cross-legged beneath opulent palaces.  And while the locals treat both the beautiful and the mundane with the same nonchalance, I found myself often on the edge of tears.  

But that’s not entirely the city’s doing. 

Florence is where we learned about the flash flooding back home.  It was Friday, July 4^th, our last night in the city, and the first text came just before dinner.  That evening Mitchell bought small slingshot rockets and ran around the piazza sending them into the sky and catching them.  Camden bought a red leather purse. Ellie a clock.  The family rode a carousel.  But all the while my heart was grieving. 

I couldn’t sleep that night, so I was still awake at 4:48 A.M. when I learned that little Lila whom I’d been praying for died in the floods.  Along with 26 other campers and counselors at Camp Mystic, and 120+ people regionwide. I cried. 

I went to our rooftop terrace to listen to worship music, and I watched the sun gently bathe the city in a sepia wash as it rose. Across the Arno, the stone banister of the Piazzale Michelangelo sat silent and empty.  Occasionally a pigeon would coo and then fly, stooping to settle on the statuary of the adjacent library.  And I stood there in my pajamas with my puffy eyelids, arms raised to the clouds, unable to sit still beneath the weight of both praise and lament. 

Twenty years has changed Venice, or maybe just changed us. 

When I was last here I was 24 years young, adventurous and in love.  I’d tuck in tightly behind Derek, my hand in his, and we’d move efficiently and quietly. I felt sexy and fearless then.  But no longer a company of two we are now five, and no matter how hard we try we are still clunky.  In this pack, I am “Mom.” 

We happen to be here for record-breaking temperatures, and a sweltering and humid heat radiates off the bricks and stones.  Our clothes stick to us.  Twenty years ago I would have found it sultry and sensual, but today I carry four portable fans and five water bottles. I am the family pack horse, and there is nothing sexy about it. 

On the breeze along the Grand Canal (or entering from the Canale delle Fondamenta Nuove), it feels like the bay at home: the smell of warm saltwater and fish, the call of seagulls and the hum of motorboats, the lapping of waves against the docks. 

But off the water in the tangle of streets we are clearly far from home.  Bell towers periodically open their throats and sing ancient notes to one another across the sestieri, or six districts.  In the shadow of stained, decrepit buildings, shopkeepers sell relics of an age long past: quills, marionettes, and paper mâché masks. 

Here and there the maze of alleys opens up abruptly to a sun-bleached campo, or square, and our eyes blink to adjust.  These neighborhood gathering spots range from small and secluded, to expansive with a church and several bars.  No matter its size, each campo features a centuries-old wellhead of weathered stone.  Once essential to daily life these rainwater cisterns are now ornamental—silent monuments to times gone by.  Each one is different, and I find myself scouting for them. 

My family forms a line down these narrow corridors: Derek leading the way, girls in step behind, then my son, with me at the back. Mitch looks at his feet as he walks, clearly playing “don’t step on a crack.”  It’s too hard at this pace to try to tell him to look up—to look around—that there’s so much unusual stuff to see.  But I learn that he has his own way of experiencing this city.  His hunt is for gelato, for pigeons, and for pissotte, which he learned about on a tour.  

Pissotte look like slanted seats; they are mortar slopes occupying the city’s dark corners.  They are designed to prevent bandits from lying-in-wait and to keep drunkards from publicly urinating in the nook.  Mitch points out every one he spies: pissotta! And every pigeon he sees: pizchón! (Which is not how you say pigeon in Italian, but he’s committed). 

We reroute to avoid an anti-U.S. protest. The female shouting into the megaphone sounds hostile, and I find unsettling their red and black flags.  Polizia cluster in their armored vests and berets, or bob nearby aboard waverunners in the canal.  Americans aren’t the only tourists crowding the Rialto Bridge; languages surround us from every far-flung region of the globe.  But as the activists’ shouts fade into the distance, I wonder at others’ experiences.  We didn’t need a demonstration to know we aren’t warmly welcomed here, only tolerated.  I don’t know how much of this is exacerbated by Bezos’ nuptials, I only know it used to be different. 

Graffiti is everywhere, and the city feels dirty in a way I don’t remember before. Feathers and bird poop, smeared gelato, stickers publicly placed on bridges, stairs, lampposts. And so much litter—scattered about and overflowing from waste bins, tucked into windowsills, left on stoops—strangely all beneath the gaze of architectural angels and saints. 

I don’t remember if twenty years ago I noticed the Eastern influence in this city: the millennia-old echoes of Constantinople in the Byzantine windows and mosaics, the geometric patterns and the art.  But now I see it everywhere, and in my mind it sets an intriguing scene for the flag of Palestine I see draped here or there from upper windows, and the “Free Palestine” scribbled onto walls. 

Our gondola silently creeps down quiet canals. Hundreds of silverfish run over the stones to escape our approaching boat. Mullet gape their mouths near stairs that descend into inky water. Rain clouds blanket the sky—now a stormy blue as dusk settles over the Grand Canal. And all along the banks, pali stand at attention like faithful soldiers.  These are my other favorite thing to spot. 

At the height of the Venetian Republic, the pali di casada, or “poles of the family,” colorfully marked the wealthy houses and establishments, especially for visitors at night.  Historically topped with oil lamps, they now wear modern caps that sometimes mimic the shape of a flame. 

During the early Renaissance, the Venetian nobility dressed their gondola, their gondolier, and their pali in their individual house colors. Until, that is, 1562 AD when the doge banned colorful gondola in order to curb the ostentation and competition of the ruling class.  But the pomp of the pali remained, signaling the status, and sometimes even the politics, of the family name. 

To the Venetian, the term casada refers not to the house or to the family, but rather to a person: a trusted servant, like a butler or gondolier.  The one who tends to the family business, who asks no questions, whose loyalty is undisputed. Nowadays few if any Venetian families keep private gondolas, and none their gondoliers. But the pali survive, vestiges of the houses they served, still proudly wearing their colors for an indifferent world.  

As the sun sets on my last night in Venice, I sit on the dock of the Palazzo Nani Bernardo, our temporary home.  Its pali keep my company in their barbershop spiral of pale blue and white with blue flame atop.  As I sit, I try to imagine what it might have been like at this palace at the height of its gilded glory: gas lamps burning in the sapphire night, and cloaked figures gliding silently toward masked rendezvous.  But instead my mind turns over the lyrics from Cats’ Memory, and as it plays I contemplate how I’ll likely never see this city again. 

I got your letter last night.  I want so badly to sit with you now, hold your hand, look at your face, and hear your heart.  

You used our code word—a word that means no matter what I’ll get you, because you don’t feel safe.  It exists so that when you can’t be honest around others, I’ll still know that something’s wrong. Your letter said you feel anxious, stressed, homesick, and hot. That you’ve thought long and hard and have decided to come home, and that you are certain you won’t change your mind. Your letter tells me you are not in danger; you are unhappy.  

Unhappy, for a parent, is hard.  Because I want with all my heart for you to be happy.  Loving life, joy-filled.  Cozy in your bozy.  But I also recognize that a lot of good can come from hard things, or on the other side of them.  And quitting when things get hard, or uncomfortable, or unfun, especially when it’s new, may have consequences.  Here are some of the possibilities: 

1. The next time something is hard, you might be extra unsure if you can handle it.  You won’t have any experience with overcoming, but you will have experience quitting.  This might make you less confident. 
2. You might miss out on something that was going to be good if you stuck it out.  But at the very least, you’d miss out on knowing you were able to stick it out. 
3. You might have very, very few opportunities in life, very few experiences, very few loves, and very, very little growth, because all these things involve hardship. 
4. You told me you wanted your relationship with the Lord to be deeper, and richer, and more meaningful.  A relationship with God is built by spending time together, talking to Him and listening for His answers.  We do those things most often (sometimes only) from the midst of, because of, what’s hard. Camp is an opportunity to put yourself in a position to grow that relationship; quitting will make that growth less likely.
5. Learning how to cope, how to speak gently to yourself, how to respond to anxiety, how to quiet negative thoughts when you’re trying to sleep, how to lay your heart burdens down—ALL THAT LEARNING—you will put off for another day.  And odds are good, those same skills will only be harder to learn the next time. Why?  Because the size of the stuff grows with you.  Today it’s summer camp, but down the road it will likely be bigger: high school, job stress, your own family to raise, and more.
6. The unknowns will remain unknowns.  You know exactly what coming home looks like: Lucky Charms, taking care of your pets, games with siblings, ice cream, Mom hugs.  Those things are great!  But what if there’s something new to love? A sweet adventure, memory, friend, food, hobby, TREASURE, you’ll only know by trying? 
7. You take yourself out of a place maybe God wanted to use you, because life is as much about others as it is about you.  You right now are a God-gift to Cabin 2.  Where you go, God’s light goes.  In your smile, in your hugs, in your kind words, in your unique wisdom.  When you take YOU out of the world and into your room, the world misses your light.  Can God use another person?  Of course.  But I promise you this: 

NOTHING IN LIFE IS BETTER THAN SHARING YOUR LIGHT FOR GOD’S GLORY TO LOVE OTHERS.  NOTHING. 

Now, don’t misunderstand me.  Some things you have to, should, must QUIT! For example, unhealthy stuff.  Stuff that makes you feel icky (you know the feeling I mean).  We have to be very careful to walk away from people, places, things, situations that are not good for us or right by God.  But that is where God’s Spirit helps us.  He tugs at our hearts and helps us to understand the difference between good and bad, right and wrong, healthy and unhealthy, helpful and harmful. 

I made a decision today, as your Mom, and I pray it was the right one.  I trusted my friend at camp to sit with you and talk with you on my behalf, and I chose not to drive to you today, even though you used our word.  We get to talk together in just a few days, and if after reading all this you use that word again, then baby, I’m coming for you!   

You said in your letter that you’ve tried calming yourself down, and talking to people, and neither work.  And I SO get that!  But try this: 

In your head and heart, tell God all about it.  Let him be your Mom, your Dad, your best friend.  Ask for specific things, things where you will be able to know if He answers.  I know you don’t have your Bible, so with this letter is a chapter for you to read and re-read and memorize and keep close to your heart.  It’s a goody, Philippians 4, one of my faves!  The Bible is one way we pull God close, and give Him a chance to speak to our hearts. 

Now, a story. 

When you were a newborn, only one week old, the doctor thought that maybe you were very, very sick, so we had to take you back to the hospital so they could draw some of your blood.  To do that meant to stick you with a needle and find a blood vessel, but you were SO SMALL, they kept poking you with the needle but not finding a vein.

IT BROKE MY HEART watching you wiggle and scream, so they made me wait me in the hall.  And you know what? I handed you over. Knowing they would hurt you, knowing your little baby heart was crying for me to rescue you, knowing I wouldn’t—at least not yet.  

Why?

Because I knew what you couldn’t possibly: that that fleeting moment—that stinging prick or two or three—was worth it for your long-term health and life and well-being. 

You are no longer a newborn.  You can now listen for the Spirit within you.  You are now old enough to understand with better vision what is for your good.  And again: one more code word, and I’m there. 

Choose wisely, my love.  You are braver than you know.  Stronger than you feel. 

“You are over the edge of the wild now, and in for all sorts of fun wherever you go.”  -J.R.R. Tolkien

Love, 

Mom

 

2023 was a particularly hard year for many of my loved ones.  Start to finish, this past year seemed to hammer relentlessly on their bodies, hearts and minds.  Yes, beauty found its way in too, but it was heavier than most.

Last week my family and I crossed off a bucket-list item by dog sledding along the half-frozen Granite Creek in Bridger-Teton National Forest, outside Jackson Hole.  Its glacier-fed water was a surprisingly deep teal that swirled into solid masses of turquoise and powder blue ice, flanked by silent evergreen trees and snow.  

Peaks rose up on the opposite embankment, the rank and file of the Grant Tetons.  As we mushed past, the mountains stood at attention, decorated in spruce, fir, and pine—forests so dense they turned the ridgeline black against the white winter sky.

Dense, at least, until it wasn’t.  Almost instantly, the thick forest on the far hillside turned to toothpick trunks, trees stripped bare of leaves and life.  There the earth was sick and frail. 

“What happened there?” I asked Monica, our guide and musher.

“There was a fire in 2016,” she answered.  “You can see where they put it out, but we lost over 20,000 acres of trees.”  Confidently, she added, “it’ll come back though.  The trees were lodgepole pine.”  

Every year, the lodgepole pine produces an abundance of the familiar “open” pinecones.  However, because this seedling requires considerable sunshine and almost always falls in the dense shadowy stand among the forest, these seeds rarely grow into mature trees. 

But I learned that the lodgepole pine also makes a second type of pinecone: the “closed” or serotinous cone.  From the Latin serus meaning “late,” serotiny is a botanical term for delay.  For years the tree holds these special cones with their seeds sealed shut inside, covered in a protective-if-uninviting resin, waiting. 

Waiting, it turns out, for fire.  Specifically for a fire that burns at 113-140 degrees, just intense enough to melt the resin encasing the seeds buried deep within its closed cones.  A fire hot enough to strip the canopy bare so sunlight can penetrate the once-dark forest floor where the emergent seeds now lay exposed and hopeful. 

The fire that kills also brings life. 

For centuries, we humans have depended on the lodgepole pine.  Its tall, straight trunk has supported our dwellings (cabins, fences, and firewood), and its thin bark has been used to nourish and to heal us (consumed by Native Americans, fed to horses, and chewed for medicinal benefit). While highly adaptive, the tree is also vulnerable, especially susceptible to the ravages of forest fires.  

But by God’s design, the fire isn’t an end, but a beginning.  According to the Colorado State Forest Service, “the prolific regeneration that naturally occurs in the open, sunny areas left in the fire’s wake often results in dense stands of 20,000 or more trees per acre.”  Built into the forest’s greatest weakness is a hidden strength—an insurance policy for the future, the key to its own long-term health and survival.   

And the same God who manages the pine forests is looking after us.  

I see no point in naming what we’ve lost over the recent years, individually or collectively.  But we’ve not been the same for quite some time.  Maybe it’s the pandemic.  Maybe it’s politics.  Maybe it’s that now I’m a pastor and I’m hearing more about others’ lives: the sacrifices and struggles.  Maybe it’s age.  Whatever it is, I carry grief with me now.  

When I close my eyes and walk the landscape of my heart, I find pockets of it tucked here and there, like smoldering embers of what was.  

But perhaps in these dead spaces are new seeds.  Warm to the touch, still sticky with melted resin, broken open and laid bare, but already on a course to glory set for it long ago.  

Do you observe Lent? If so, what do you hope for during this season?

I want to change so many things.  Things I dislike about family members.  Situations I want to be different at work.  Self-improvements.  Home improvements.  I wrestle with a desperation—an itch to fix things, to tweak or remake things, according to my liking. 

I want to make Lent about that.  In fact just yesterday I started thinking about how I might use Lent to focus on and pray about those things. 

Then I sat with this verse:

”Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:2

Obsessing over, worrying about, and striving after what I want to see change, that is the pattern of this world. In fact, Jesus likened the worries and the obsessions of this world to thorns that choke out our seed of faith. 

Please don’t misunderstand me: praying for and working toward change can be a powerful and righteous act. But I’m guilty of calling it “praying for” when what I’m really doing is complaining about. And I’m guilty of calling it “working toward” when what I’m really doing is nagging and fretting.

I have found that when I obsess or worry, or when I work as though it all depends on me, I feed my illusion of control.  

But Romans says, Do not conform.  Do not put on the fashion of this world: its habit, manner, or lifestyle.  Do not focus on the fleeting things.    

But be transformed.  In an essential way, an eternal way.  Cultivate change within—inside YOU. 

Truth be told, if my wishlist of changes came true, I’d likely just replace them with new ones. So maybe my focus for Lent shouldn’t be everything I want to change out there, but rather a willingness to surrender myself to the changes God wants to make inside me. To my desire for control. To my tendency to worry rather than trust. To my striving toward, rather than submitting to. To my susceptibility to prioritize fixing things over intimacy with God.

A seed is a symbol of transformation. A packet of hope. It is a tiny capsule containing everything required for life.  Inside the seed’s hard outer shell is a tiny plant that already has within it what God intended it to be. But that hard outer layer will not break open until the seed is in a safe place.

Each type of seed requires specific conditions in order for them to germinate and grow.  Some may need a few months of cold. Some may need a wildfire.  Some seeds can sleep for years before waking up.

But when the conditions are right, the seed will swell with water, and the water will crack its shell.  Then it will develop a root, and that root will enable it to grow upward toward the sun. With proper nourishment, it will completely transform into the full and glorious life it was always intended to be. 

Much like the seed, our transformation does not come through our own strength, effort or force of will. Nor does it come by fretting. The word for renewing in Romans 12:2 is the Greek word ἀνακαίνωσις or anakainōsis, and it means “a complete change for the better.” This complete change for the better comes from God when we position ourselves in conditions suitable for growth.  When we allow the living water to infiltrate our tough outer shells.  When we accept that the work to be done begins with us. 

For me this year, Lent is that opportunity. I want to spend the next six weeks submitting to that process in its fullness: in the waiting, in the discomfort, in the unsettling nature of surrender, and in the vulnerability of hope.

I would love for you to join me. Let’s detach our joy from outcomes, and return it to being in God’s presence. Let’s shift our speech from worrying words to whispered prayers. Let’s relax our grip when we feel our hearts tighten around what we most desire, and choose instead to desire most to be like Jesus. And let’s see what grows.

A couple weeks ago, Riverbend hosted a flower-arranging event at the women’s monthly meetup.  I took my teenage daughter, planning to let her put together our box from the gorgeous spring blooms around the room.  She hopped from bucket to bucket of flowers, pulling bundles of hydrangea and stems of bright roses in every color.  She bounced around the room like a bee among the flowers, and she wasn’t alone.  As the buckets emptied, the energy shifted to the tables as all the women turned their attention to arranging.  

After everyone had settled into their seats and started working, a friend asked me, “Would you like to do one of your own? We have plenty of supplies.  Take a box!”  Delighted at the opportunity, I went to see what flowers and greenery still remained. I walked among the mostly empty buckets containing what might charitably be called “the leftovers.” Some had small or wilted blooms, others dull or drooping, a few stems broken to the point that their flowers hung sadly downward like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree.  Much of what remained lacked a bloom altogether but was greenery—“filler”—with a spindly, wild flare.  Thrilled at the chance to participate nonetheless, I happily scooped up what remained and began assembling my box. 

Perhaps because I wasn’t expecting the most colorful, the blooming, the best—I wasn’t expecting anything—I was delighted to find in each choice something beautiful.  I found that crooked or half-broken stems could be stood up next to stronger greenery.  Single blooms that had appeared dull in the bucket now popped brightly when positioned against dark spots in my bouquet. The collective effect of individual blooms that may not have been my first choice, this ragtag band of leftovers, was one of celebrated contrast, of imperfect and wild nature. As I walked out with my personal treasure, a woman stopped me and said, “Of all the different arrangements, I think yours was my favorite.  There’s something really special about it.  It’s art.” As someone who has killed more plants than she has grown, it meant the world.

Lately, I’ve felt tired and burned out; if I’m being honest, I haven’t felt particularly “Christian.” In fact, if someone were to come around and pick out those of us with the best, most Jesus-like attitude, I’d be left in the bucket.  But what I love knowing is that Jesus is the kind of savior who DELIGHTS in finding beauty in the rejects. He walks among the uninvited, the broken, the crooked, and sees the potential in us all. Isaiah 42:3 says,

“He will not crush the weakest reed or put out a flickering candle.  He will bring justice to all who have been wronged.”

When life crushes us, when we feel broken, when our blooms hang limp and dull from our stalks, He doesn’t snap us off and throw us out, or leave us where we lie.  With tender love and care, He takes us in His hands, sees the beauty in our break, and creates art.  Sometimes He leans us against one another, so that one’s strength is the other’s salvation.  Sometimes He sets us against darkness, so that our light might pop against the backdrop.  But it is my prayer that wherever you may be today—full bloom or otherwise—you see your value as He sees it.  Even when the world casts you aside or when your own attitude leaves you feeling unworthy, Jesus deeply loves and pursues you.  You are and have always been His pick, a part of His bouquet, just as you are.

God I’m busy. 

This is a declaration, my first response when someone asks me how I am.  When I ask myself how I am. 

I know I’m not alone.  I’m not the only one falling into bed depleted, exhausted, playing that cruelest of jokes on my heart by asking, “What’s left on the checklist?”, as if it ever ends. 

As if every item isn’t replaced by three.  As if anyone ever finally crosses through Laundry. 

Every day is triage.  What’s hemorrhaging the worst?  A work deadline, a child, something for church, the house?     

I know it’s a season in my life.  The Juggling It All season.  And that one day, I actually will pack for a trip a day or two in advance.  And maintain an herb garden.  And meal prep on weekends.  And keep a clean car that doesn’t smell faintly of sour milk.   

But this afternoon I said my go-to phrase aloud to myself: God, I’m busy.  And I realized this was more than a fact.  Today it was a prayer.  

Tugging at the corner of my mind all day was this thought:

It’s December 1^st. 

The start of elves hiding on shelves.  The start of children opening tiny advent boxes that I’ve filled with treats.  The start of the over-stuffed social calendar, weekends out of town, visits with family, school nativities and piano recitals.  The start of office galas, and fundraisers, and potlucks.  The start of shopping (and more checklists).  And trying to declutter, anticipating all the unwrapping of more stuff.  

From somewhere deep inside—past all that so much MORE vying for my attention—my heart whispered, “Let’s please not miss it.  I love this season.  Can we please not miss it?  I really don’t want to miss Him in it.  I can tell that’s where we’re headed, but, please let’s not.”

It was such a desperate plea.  So childlike and so sincere, that I actually listened to it for a moment.  I took a short break, and I read the first day of an advent devotional.  And it said: 

“ This, this, is the love story that’s been coming for you since the beginning.  

It is possible for you to miss it.  

To brush past it, to rush through it, to not see how it comes for you up over the edges of everything, quiet and unassuming and miraculous—how every page of the Word has been writing it, reaching for you, coming for you.  And you could wake up on Christmas only to grasp that you never took the whole of the Gift, the wide expanse of grace.  So now we pause.  Still.  Ponder.  Hush.  Wait.  Each day of Advent, He gives you the gift of time, so you have time to be still and wait.”  

Ann Voskamp, The Greatest Gift

And I cried. 

Truth is, even though busyness feels so new—so Today—it’s as old as time.  

Jesus came into the world on a night much the same as ours.  The innkeeper was very busy at the inn.  Bethlehem was busy about the census.  Herod was busy at his palace.  People were busy with work and busy with politics: fighting taxes, collecting taxes, fighting Rome, befriending Rome.  Some of them were busy about God’s work, at the temple and in study.  Busy in service and in charity, with family and with flocks.   

Truth is, the checklist will always be there.  And as long as we’re just busy enough to shush our hearts when they tug at us, then we’ll likely miss it.  

The busyness isn’t going to change, we’re going to have to.  

We might have to set off without knowing exactly what we’ll find, like wise men who travelled far.  Or we might have to loosen our grip on our livelihood, let go of some control, trust someone else to watch our precious sheep, like some shepherds did.  

We might have to gather round, even if it’s just some barn animals and us—even all the wayward parts of ourselves who come kicking and screaming and calling it a waste of time. 

We’ll likely have to be willing to let it be a little awkward.  To be okay with the silence, with not knowing what to say.  With the fact that who we find there might not be the messiah we had imagined, the kind who swoops in to fix it all in an instant.  We just might have to be okay with starting out as infants like He did, and letting our growth look like the messy, slow yield, steady and intimate long game God designed. 

We might even have to confront the truth that even if we brought Him the most precious commodities in all the world—gold, money, charisma, Bible knowledge, public service, frankincense or myrrh—he’d still just be longing for our hearts, and some of our time.

Honestly, I’m not really sure what that looks like. How or where it fits in exactly. But I’m not sure anyone who’s done it before us knew either. I imagine it started with the simple thought that they couldn’t afford not to. So they saddled up, took a deep breath, and set off into that silent night.

It’s been seven months.  

In the three years since I started this blog, I’ve not gone longer than three months without writing.  Until now.    

Seven months is a long time for a writer not to write.  You have asked me where I’ve been, and I’ve asked myself the same.  I feel as though I owe you some kind of explanation. 

I’ve still been up to my favorite things: studying, pondering, crafting.  But this year I poured that energy, for the first time, into sermon construction.  And into overcoming fear and anxiety about sermon delivery.  Allow me to give you some backstory. 

Roughly two years ago, I was invited to speak at a women’s event at my church.  The topic was rest, and I’d spent my free time for a year studying Sabbath. I was over-the-moon about getting to synthesize all I’d learned.  I wanted to talk Sabbath with anyone who would listen, so the opportunity to do exactly that was priceless. 

Immediately after that event, my pastor suggested to me that there was a calling on my life to teach.  If I was willing to consider that, he said, then he would like to help: to guide and develop that skill for whatever God might have planned.  

A little over a year ago, we started meeting regularly: my pastor, another mentee like myself named Travis, and me. I listened intently, furiously scribbled notes, and wrestled with this new proposition: preaching.  I was terrified.  

I’ve always been prone to worry.  I’m naturally risk-adverse.  I prioritize safety and anonymity.  And public speaking isn’t writing.  You can’t edit the work, hitting “publish” when it’s just so.  To speak is to perform a live act, and it violates hundreds of my personal preferences.  It takes courage; something I really have to work up. 

The past year has been exactly that.  Working up.  Listening, praying, wrestling, questioning.  This path dovetailed beautifully with a heart change—an inner transformation—I was experiencing in a spiritual formation class at church called Deeper Journey.  The two things worked together on my soul, filled the pages of my journal, and drove me over and over again to prayer.  My faith—the strength and reality of a real relationship with Jesus—felt as though it was in the forge.  A season of fire and heat, of being pounded out on an anvil, and of being put back in the fire again.  

It’s been so personal, and so hard to explain.  I didn’t know where to start to even try, but I also didn’t know how to write about anything else, and so—silence.  A post here or there, but mostly quiet.  

I spent the first half of this year counting down the days to my first sermon.  I’m not going to lie, I obsessed a bit.  I studied, worked, crafted, and reworked.  I spent creative time on little else.  I preached my first Sunday morning on Father’s Day, June 20^th, and my second three weeks later on July 11^th.  I’m now done for a season, not scheduled to speak again for several months.  

In some ways, those two dates in June and July felt like jumping out of an airplane, trusting God to be my parachute.  Now that I’m on the ground in one piece, I’m experiencing an unusual mix of emotions.  There’s relief, but also the question I can’t help but ask: “now what?” 

I’d like to find my writing rhythm here again.  There are so many things I want to share with you, not the least of which is the heart journey I’ve been on: the Deeper Journey curriculum and its profound insights into Biblical truths; the neuroscience, spiritual disciplines, and Bible stories that helped me cope with my fear and anxiety; and even the sermons themselves, as their content and verses, at least for now, are still turning themselves over in my mind and heart. I’m not sure where to start.

But I tend to overthink things.  I know this about myself. So I think for this I simply need to take my Dad’s advice: just start writing, the rest will follow.  

So, here we go.

Hello again.

Derek and I studied abroad in England in 2005, which gave us a great opportunity to travel around Europe whenever we weren’t in school.  We made a point to pick up a Christmas ornament from each place we visited, which was usually easy enough.  An Eiffel tower from Paris, a golfer from Edinburgh, etc.  But for whatever reason, we struggled to find “the” ornament from Barcelona—until a cab driver excitedly told us about “the shitter.” 

In Barcelona there is a beloved Christmas tradition called “el caganer,” which roughly translates to “the shitter.”  Since sometime in the late 17^th century, Catalans in northeastern Spain celebrate the birth of Jesus with a defecating figurine, a nod to their agrarian history.  With pants around his ankles, el caganer is shown squatting, caught in the act.  Traditionally he wears the red cap, white shirt, and black trousers of the Catalan peasant.  Parents hide him somewhere in the nativity scene for children to find as a game, usually tucked modestly behind a tree, barn or animal.  We’ve kept this tradition alive in our house by hiding him in our tree for Derek to find, with a prize for him if he does.  

While some foreigners consider this addition to the manger distasteful, if not sacrilegious, Catalans wouldn’t think of leaving him out, as he symbolizes fertility and good fortune for the year to come.  But there may be more behind el caganer.

At the time of Christ’s birth, el caganer is busy being human, a gentle reminder that Jesus arrives when we least expect Him, while we are fully engaged in the mess of being ourselves.  Which brings us to the other truth: Jesus was fully human, too.  In the very scene that depicts the divine incarnation, Catalans have an all-too-real depiction of exactly what that means: our great and glorious God came not just to be with us, but as us, in every sense of the word.  God didn’t shy away from our humanity, but embraced it, poop and all.  

The wise men brought baby Jesus gold for kingship, frankincense for deity, and myrrh for death; el caganer gives his own fragrant gift for a bountiful harvest in the coming year.  In his humility, in his humanity, he gives his raw and authentic self, possibly the greatest gift of all.  

There is an old Spanish proverb that says, “Dung is no saint, but where it falls it works miracles.”  The tradition of el caganer confronts us to acknowledge that some of life’s greatest glories are born from messy circumstances.  I have no doubt that this truth was not lost on the very real virgin Mary, who on that holy night would have endured great discomfort and pain, surrounded by the sounds and smells of barn animals, her own cries delivering up an all-too-real, all-too-messy infant into her arms, and into the world.