​A few weeks ago I did one of those silly, arbitrary, Internet things: I looked at a “word search” grid with the prompt, “The first four words you see are your words for the coming year.” My eyes scanned the image and out popped connection. Then, strength, breakthrough, heal.

I don’t usually put much stock in random activities like these, though I sometimes do find a word or phrase speaks to me in a particular way and I adopt it for a season. A few years ago the word was health. I wrote “health” on a pebble with a Sharpie and stuck it in one of my houseplant pots as a reminder (it’s still there). Another time I wrote at Easter, “I need to trust that there is something new for me.” I’d been feeling stuck, worried about quitting a job and moving on to something else.

So these four words--connection, strength, breakthrough, heal—have been flitting around in my brain for awhile. I’ve been thinking about how they might anchor me in the coming year. Coming out of pandemic mode, I’ve wondered if I need to take steps towards more intentional connections with people again. I’ve almost forgotten how much I need others in my life. Will I find strength in unexpected places? What might a breakthrough look like in 2023? What places in my spirit need healing?

I’m going to be thinking about these questions as we enter 2023. And rather than make resolutions, I’m going to try to open myself up to notice the ways the Spirit might be speaking and moving in the year before me.

What might 2023 have for you?

Continue the conversation in the comments, below! 

​

Sometimes the seasons of silence that follow a shift are the ones that are the hardest.
After the death of a loved one. After a dream is destroyed. After a relationship ends.
It can be so easy to cling to what is no longer present. 
To yearn for what can no longer exist.
It can be difficult to let go of what is gone, in order to embrace what is. 
In order to honor the loss. In order to give tribute to the good that may have been.
In order to notice the truth of what can still be.
Wholeness.
Life. Even after the silence. 

Do not ignore the seasons of silence. 
Of exhaustion. Of weariness. Of deep mourning.
They are necessary. 
They are times to pay attention to the ways in which your spirit is connected to the Spirit in others. To the ways in which your essence is poured out from the Source of Life.
 And, to remember.
There is still life. Even after the silence.


Prayer: Lord, I know you are the source of abundant life. Help me hear you even after the silence. Amen.


(Adapted from Healing from Broken Dreams: 7 Devotional Lessons for New Beginnings, written by Tiona Cage and featuring music from Sharif Iman)


​What stands out to you from this piece? What does it stir up in you?

"For everything that keeps us living we speak our words of true thanksgiving." (Miranda Paul, children's book author)
 
You know that saying, "You don't know what you got 'til it's gone"? Well, it seems like a lot of things have been gone lately due to a short supply. I haven't been able to find my kids' juice, their mayonnaise without soybean oil, or the type of gluten-free bread they eat. This wouldn't be a big deal if our family didn't have life-threatening food allergies. I can't help but thank God my kids are teenagers now because if they were babies, with the recent short supply of formula, they would have likely been in the hospital as we only had one type of formula we could use. And we can't forget the toilet paper shortage we all experienced not too long ago.  

We are living in a sparse and scarce world, and I confess I have allowed a scarcity mindset to overtake me. Maybe you, too, have had a scarcity mindset as food, gas, housing, and everything else has gone up in price. Perhaps you have asked questions like, how will we have enough? When will we reach the ceiling?
 
Sometimes, Forbes and other online business magazines try to answer these questions. What they can't do is heal the wounds or fears in my heart, and when I am honest with myself and God, I recognize my heart is scared. So the question I need to answer is, how can I find comfort for my heart? Can I try to see or explore scarcity through the eyes of Christ?
 
When I try to see scarcity through the eyes of Christ, I first think of Matthew 6:31-34. In the Passion Translation, this passage says: "So then, forsake your worries! Why would you say, 'What will we eat? Or 'What will we drink?' or "What will we wear?' For that is what the unbelievers chase after. Doesn't your heavenly Father already know the things your bodies require? So above all, constantly seek God's kingdom and his righteousness, then all these less important things will be given to you abundantly. Refuse to worry about tomorrow, but deal with each challenge that comes your way, one day at a time. Tomorrow will take care of itself."

Those words in Matthew are a lot more comforting than what Forbes says. It always comes back to seeking God's kingdom, and all these less important things will be taken care of (Matthew 6:25-34). Granted, it's not some magic system where we just seek God, and what we need is provided, but that could happen. God fed five thousand out of five small loaves of bread and two fish (Matthew 14:13-21). There is also the story in the Old Testament where Elisha told the widow who only had one jar of oil to use the oil she had to fill up every jar she could gather, and she was able to fill enough jars to more than pay off all her family's debts (2 Kings 4:1-7).

The next time you are in the store and can't find an item you are looking for, or can't afford what you need, I encourage you to seek Christ. Even then, we aren't always going to get the item, but maybe God is telling us, "I got your back and know what you need." Maybe our perspective will shift, and we'll realize that even while we don't have what we're looking for at the moment, God is providing us with peace, grace, strength, courage, joy, and more, as we wait for God to meet our other needs. 

What is God saying to you about provision? 

Continue the conversation in the comments, below! 

For more than 30 years I’ve carried with me a distinct memory of my maternal grandfather from my grandmother’s funeral. Grandma died at age 89 from leukemia, and Grandpa, a few years older, suffered from dementia at that time. When his caregivers positioned his wheelchair in the aisle at the funeral home, I wondered if he knew what was going on. Did he understand that Grandma had died? Did he sense an emptiness after nearly 70 years of marriage and companionship? Did he feel comforted by the people around him? Did he know that we loved him?
 
I pondered all this as the funeral service got underway. And when we began to sing a congregational hymn—“It Is Well With My Soul”—I heard a wavering but clear tenor voice. I looked over at Grandpa, and he was singing along confidently. It is well with my soul….
 
This moment became an epiphany of sorts: Spirit communes with spirit no matter one’s age, or gender, or mental acuity. Grandpa’s musical memory served him when his conscious memory couldn’t; truly all was well between his soul and God.
 
Every couple of weeks now I go visit my mom in the memory care unit of her retirement community. She’s 93 and doesn’t remember when I last visited or that I might be coming again on a particular day. But I come and I sit with her during the Tuesday afternoon hymn sing just to enjoy her company without the pressure of trying to converse or think of news to tell her. (She won’t remember anyway.) We turn the pages in the large print songbook, and I sing alto to her soprano. I know most of the hymns by heart and so does she. Great is thy faithfulness … Savior, like a shepherd lead us … What a friend we have in Jesus … It is well with my soul.
 
I’m comforted to know that Spirit understands our deepest longings, our heaviest burdens, our sweetest joys. The child with Down Syndrome. The hearing impaired. The elderly with diminished mental ability. The child too young to know theology or doctrine—Spirit ministers to and communes with all. My fragile mother can sing along with her “Pop”: It is well with my soul….

Continue the conversation in the comments, below! 

​

I hate New Year’s resolutions.
 
I don’t know if it’s how cliché it seems. Or the inherent expectation that one won’t follow through on them past a few weeks, at best. Or how arbitrary it feels to make them at the beginning of the calendar year.
 
Maybe you feel similarly. Maybe you disagree vehemently with me.
 
Regardless, though I don’t like New Year’s resolutions, I do support setting goals and working toward them, whether they are made on January 1st or any other day of the year.
 
Whether your goals are new or old or yet to be made, I want to encourage you with two messages of hope.
 
One of my graduate school professors, Dr. Jeffrey Bjorck, taught me a metaphor that I use all the time with the people I work with in therapy (and with myself!). When people encounter an issue that they have been working so hard on and thought they had put behind them, they tend to feel like they are walking in circles, not getting anywhere. Not so! Dr. Bjorck claimed. Instead, picture a spiral staircase (I will sometimes use the cord on my office phone as a prop – yes, we still have landlines!). True, when walking upward, you will return to the same sides of the circle over and over again, but you are not in the same spot, vertically speaking.
 
You are higher up.
 
You have made progress.
 
You can look back at how far you have come.
 
You can use what you have learned from facing this issue before (perhaps multiple times, even).
 
You are not moving in circles; you are ascending.
 
Perhaps the second hopeful message is the same as the first, just packaged differently. (Thanks to one of my church’s pastors, Nate Macy, for this quote!) In his novella, “Worstward Ho,” Samuel Beckett, the Irish writer, director, poet, and translator, wrote, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
 
Try and fail, my friends! Try and fail. And then do it again. And again. And again.
 
Perhaps that is what I hate most about New Year’s resolutions: the idea that once you make a mistake on your goal, you have failed for the year.
 
But this need not be so!
 
Which is good, because that’s not how we humans work.
 
To quote Jake the Dog from the cartoon, Adventure Time, “Dude, suckin’ at something is the first step to being sorta good at something.”
 
We are all works in progress. We never reach completion this side of eternity.
 
So, fail away, my friends! Fail spectacularly! Then try again. And fail in a new and different way!
 
Lather, rinse, and repeat.
 
I look forward to waving at you all as we see each other climbing those spiral staircases! I’ll shout words of encouragement to you, and I hope you’ll do the same for me.

​

(Continue the conversation in the comments, below!)

The days are shortening. The darkness is expanding.
The leaves have burned bright. But now, they are falling.
The birds are flying far away, seeking refuge in another temporary home.
The bright sunlight is fading into a familiar Pacific Northwest gray.
This is the season of cold, of drizzle, of isolation.
This is the time of stillness and waiting.
 
And yet, I find myself intrigued by the natural cycles that we move through each year. They remind me that we are dust.
They whisper to me, “Pay attention to what creation has to teach you.”
Pay attention.
 
I am learning that love is in the rhythms.
Love is in the familiar. Love is in the ordinary.
Love is in the losses that breathe to life new ways of being.
Love is in the mundane task which sustains us in spite of our ambivalence.
Love is in the rhythms. No season is empty of its presence.
Love is like the moon. It endures, it never changes shape, it never leaves.
We may perceive it differently. Or, miss it altogether at times.
But, love is an unfailing constant, in hardship and in joy.
 
So, as we reflect upon the coming harvest and as we enter into the chill of winter, let us not forget this truth.
Love is in the rhythms.


What stands out to you from this piece? What does it stir up in you? Continue the conversation here!

​Pandemic
 
Yesterday
I stood on the deck
and as I looked out
an oak branch
suddenly
crashed to the ground.
 
My view did not change
much with the dropping
of that one old branch.
But to the bird
whose nest it held
it was
everything.
 
I wrote this poem last March and shared it with Eden Spiritual Care in April 2020. It’s been a year since the first COVID stay-at-home orders came out. We did not know then what we know now: that more than 530,000 people in the United States would leave us due to the disease, 2.8M souls worldwide no longer on this earth. Political divisions aside, this is a terrible loss—an “ambiguous loss” for some of us—an almost unimaginable loss for those whose lives were immediately impacted. I read somewhere that each of those individuals lost represent on average nine more who grieve deeply for that loved one. Some families lost more than one—more than one parent, child, uncle, grandparent. The grief compounds exponentially.
 
Jesus calls to us and shares the grief. “Come to me,” he says. “All of you bent beneath the heavy weight of trying to carry so much. Come to me, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:28-29, my paraphrase).
 
I don’t know what this rest might be for you. A hike in the woods? A moment to watch the sunset? A deep breath on a morning walk? The companionship of a loyal pet? For me, today, it means walking the dog, rounding a corner, and encountering the wafting fragrance of daphne—a sure marker of spring. It means pulling a patio chair from its storage space and placing it in the warmth of the spring sun. I sit for a few minutes and watch slow-moving clouds in a blue sky, listen to neighborhood sounds, and feel grateful for the sunshine soaking into my skin. The daffodil bulbs I planted last fall in the landscape of our new backyard have sprouted and grown and bloomed in happy yellow hues. Leaf buds open on the hydrangea, the dogwood, the roses. Beside these ordinary spring miracles there’s nothing particularly profound taking place in this moment. But the very gentle breeze reminds me that the Spirit is always moving, always at work. And that’s enough for today to give me rest—and hope.

​If you’re like me and those I’ve spoken with, you’re probably feeling a mix of emotions following the violent assault on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. It's likely impacted you, even if you do not live in the US. I’m mainly feeling sadness. But I’m also experiencing anger, confusion, fear. And grief. So much grief. More grief in a year that has already been filled to the brim with grief.

As I write this, it hasn’t even been a week since it happened. I usually like to have things processed and thought out in my own mind before speaking. However, because the events are still so fresh, I offer these words, incomplete and inchoate as they might be. With humility and a desire for dialogue and hearing from you, my friends.

As we sit with recent events and feel it and act on it, I find that it is helpful to return to the same questions over and over again: Jesus, how can I/we best serve you, and how can I/we best join you in your work in this world? What, Jesus, would you have me/us do? And in the midst of the storm raging around us and the exhaustion so many of us are feeling from all that we’ve been dealing with—and then adding one more thing to all of it—we can also make the question more specific: Jesus, what does it look like for us to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with you in all of this? As individuals, as families, as local churches and the broader Church, as communities, as a nation, as the whole global community. What is the next right thing?

Silence in word and deed is not an option. Not for me. Not for the Church.

I encourage you to find a way to act for peace and justice in the midst of everything that is happening. Whether that’s in your personal relationships or local community or engaging with the government. I wrote to my senators and congressperson for the first time in my life just a few days ago. Doing so has led me to commit to communicating with these elected officials more often. I’ve been present with and had conversations with family members and the clients and students I work with about how all of this has been impacting them, their functioning, their daily lives. I’ve tried to stay informed without overwhelming myself. I’ve prayed.

I also encourage you to find ways to care for others and for yourselves. The world has been through an incredibly painful year. Some groups have been impacted more than others. People from marginalized groups have been dealing with discrimination and injustice and hatred directed at them for years. And here is one more massive example of how Whites and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) individuals are treated and valued differently in the US. The pain is real. The grief is real. The anger is real. So how can we care for and love others and ourselves well during this time?

I don’t have all of the answers. I often feel helpless in the midst of such large forces and events. But even though I can’t see the way forward, I choose to trust that with God speaking in and to and among us, with us joining God in God’s work in the midst of such violence and pain and fear, with us listening more (to God and each other) and speaking less, with us finding support and love in community that we then share with others, with the privileged using our power to elevate and privilege the marginalized and to end systems of oppression, with communal discernment of God’s desires for the world—with all of this, we can receive, experience, and spread peace and healing and hope and love. We can be the bearers of Christ’s presence to each other. We can carry each other’s burdens. We can experience rest and stillness in the midst of the storm and in the process of working toward justice and mercy.

Whatever God is calling you and us to now, bless you. Maybe that’s stillness and shock. Maybe it’s grief and lament. Maybe it’s speaking locally or to a broader audience. Maybe you have ideas of concrete actions to take. Maybe you’re already taking those steps. Whatever it is, may we do so as individuals and as groups with Christ as our center. May we be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves as we do this difficult work.

Be gentle with yourselves and with others, my friends! We’re dealing with so much.

God, help us!

Christ, have mercy!

“A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.” (“O Holy Night”)

As 2020 comes to a close, our world is most definitely weary and yearning once again for a “new and glorious morn.” Advent is a season to watch and wait, and it feels like now more than ever we hold vigil together, waiting for the dawning of relief and joy. But how do we take hold of the “thrill of hope” we have in Christ and rejoice even in this very moment?

One of my teachers in this is Miriam from the Hebrew Bible. She stands out to me because of the way she picks up a tambourine and dances after she and her Hebrew community escape Egyptian captivity and cross through the Sea of Reeds (Exodus 15:20-21).

Doing what she did would not come naturally for me. If God told me we were on our way to a “land flowing with milk and honey,” I’d want to wait until I got there—until I saw it, until I felt that fertile ground beneath my feet, until I heard no rumble of my captors coming down the road, until I tasted that milk and honey for myself—before I started to dance. I’d want to know that the work was done, the promise was secured, and the hope was realized before I pulled out my tambourine or even let myself exhale.

But Miriam celebrates the goodness that is now here, rather than waiting for the full goodness that is to come. Being on the journey to the promised land—never mind that it will take another 40 years—is reason enough to rejoice. God has already worked wonders, and Miriam is not going to let fear of future unknowns stop her from recognizing them.
​
This Advent, how can we take a lesson from Miriam and celebrate the goodness that is already here and the hope we have in Christ?