Author Archives: Life is For Living book

Knowing & Being Known: a book review

Posted in books, recommendations, singleness by

Last week I was walking in the snow with a friend and we were talking about the books we’ll read during Christmas break.

“Remind me of the title of the book you said everyone should read,” she said.

“Well, right now I have two books that I’m saying everyone should read,” I said. “Are you thinking of Relational Spirituality  or The Body Teaches the Soul?”

“No—there was one before those.”

I doubled over laughing.

I can’t help that I’m the enthusiast who is sure that of course everyone will love whatever I love. And that means that I make superlative statements sometimes. But yes. I read a lot and because reading time is limited, I work hard to read the best. Which of course means others will want to read them too.  

Then I remembered that before the last two books I really loved and enthused about, there was one a month earlier: Knowing and Being Known by Erin Moniz.

About once a year, I hear about a freshly-published book, and I know I need to read it right away and shouldn’t wait until I can buy it cheaply used, which is usually how I buy books. Last year, it was How To Know a Person by David Brooks. This spring Tyler Staton’s A Familiar Stranger was another one that I knew I couldn’t wait until I could buy a used copy. 

This makes two new books this year. No—there was also A Teachable Spirit by A. J. Swoboda that also everyone should read, but I digress. Another digression: I sometimes also read old books. On the Incarnation is perfect and lovely for this time of year.

Knowing and Being Known answered the sometimes-whispered, but often-silent questions about loneliness and ache for companionship. Erin speaks from the perspective of working with college students who are navigating relationships and find themselves floundering between their ideals and their gritty, disappointing reality.

She found that behavior modification wasn’t changing students’ lives in the ways they were longing for. She could tell them “Stop dating losers.” But while she could give solid advice, it didn’t address the deeper hunger driving the behavior. So she went on a search to explore the theology of intimacy: what is in the good news of Jesus that meets the universal hunger for intimacy? 

Other researchers have identified three essential building blocks for healthy, sustainable relationships: 

  • Self-giving love: reciprocity
  • Attention/curiosity: orientation toward and seeking the other
  • Commitment: choosing each other repeatedly; mutuality

Erin expands on these, and then broadens the points and finds them modeled perfectly in the Trinity. 

“…the revelation of mutuality and freedom in the Trinity challenges individual, entitled autonomy. The Trinity’s mutual love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit defines for us the balance of interconnected love and freedom. 

That we are hardwired for intimacy harkens back to an origin story of intimacy that yields the eternal goodness, beauty, and abundance that existed before the dawn of time.”

This is the good news of the Gospel: that the magnet of our desire is pulled inexorably toward  the north star of God’s love, the model and perfection of intimacy.

And don’t think we’re talking only about sexual intimacy, although that’s a valid hunger. This north star is much, much wider and deeper than that one level of intimacy, and it is accessible to everyone everywhere. That’s good news!

I love how Erin addresses loneliness. She acknowledges the hard realities of extended singleness but goes on to name a deeper reality: loneliness is part of the human experience. Further, she says, “I do not believe it is loneliness we fear. What we actually fear is the things loneliness reveals….There are other things driving the pain we describe as loneliness.” 

I think she’s 200% right. I live alone and I love it most of the time. I’m not usually lonely, but when it does descend at odd times, I subconsciously get very creative at avoiding the discomfort. But even a healthy, life-giving marriage wouldn’t fix that. My married friends tell me this and I believe them.

It takes a ton of courage to sit with the questions that lie beneath loneliness. But when we find that courage and that silence, we discover what is under that angst and what we really believe about ourselves, our future, God, and those we love. If we can learn to steer our magnets toward our true north, many of our questions and longings will order themselves under that star, like iron filings tracing the path between strong magnets. 

I’m not saying it as well as Erin does, so get yourself a copy and read it and underline it and discuss it with your friends. I’m not getting paid to promote this. I just want others to  discover the richness of a message that has the potential to comfort and coach toward deeper peace and understanding of each other and of God. So go ahead and order a copy for yourself and a friend as a gift to both of you. It could be a great way to start a new year!

My book talks about loneliness too, and has suggestions for when you’re feeling left behind. You can buy it here.

A Poem-Long Sentence

Posted in poetry by
I wrote this poem some time ago, but it works now too, except for the line about summer! I took this snowy picture two days ago and the snow is still falling and it’s beautiful beyond words.

I could write a poem about stopping by the woods on a snowy evening, but
Someone much wiser and more profound than I has already written a poem beginning with
that line and
After I read that I feel that I can never write so sparse and rich so why should I try,
But I have words in me that Frost never did, so that gives me permission to try to push out
Words, pat them into line, riffle through, discard or choose the precise ones to show, not tell,
The mood and texture of the vignette I have in mind
And even though it’s not about horse or downy flake (I drive a car, it’s high summer, and I don’t Collect Currier & Ives prints) my soul holds
Pictures of thin spaces, moments, sparkles, glistenings, that would be fun to take
out of storage, unfold,
Hold up to the light, adjust, unwrinkle, because, even though out of sight, they shape me,
and maybe
They could nudge someone and set the compass for a friend’s reference point of what is
Good and beautiful and true since stable compasses are scarce these days and we need them
Even though we don’t say it, however insightful we are and however experienced
because we are all
Mostly shuffling our way toward home, knowing we’re not there yet and it might be
Awhile—probably miles to go before we sleep—but we’ll get there someday and meanwhile
we hold
Each other’s hands to find the path and share the light we see because beauty must be shared, not Hoarded, which has to be why Frost gave us his snapshot of his woods and horse.

My book talks about another kind of walk. It’s a voice to remind you that you’re never actually alone, wherever you’re walking. You can buy it here!

Home Matters, Part II

Posted in life, love, women's stuff by
Last week, this post gave the first part of this article on “home.” It introduced the idea that God cares that home creates comfort and safety. One day in chapel this week, we read Psalm 27 and my brain starting pinging when I saw all these words about God’s home: house, temple, dwelling, tabernacle. This concept must be important to God. I wonder how that should inform how we live, how we see the church and individuals?
Rublev’s “Trinity”

Creating welcome for the stranger

In addition to creating comfort and safety, God designed the home to create welcome for the stranger.

The picture of Revelation’s wedding feast shows us a place of welcome, generosity, and abundance. As we reflect God’s character of housekeeping, we can offer His warmth and welcome by embodying hospitality in our physical places. This can reach beyond walls, doors, and a roof.

In Free to be Single, her excellent book now out of print, Elva MacAlister points out that even when I walk across a college campus and fall in step beside a friend, I can welcome them into my space, my personal bubble, and show them hospitality as we walk together. Our personhood, the space we take up on a sidewalk or a car or a park bench, can be a place where we embody welcome, care, and interest in this person at this place and at this time.

God’s spaces reflect His selflessness, His intention toward people, and His deep care for us. We are most like God when we focus on others instead of our default selfishness. This is the biggest part of being hospitable.

Creating our spaces in pressure to compete with the latest influencer or neighbor will drain us instead of help us thrive. On the other hand, creating home as a place to welcome the stranger, which is really anyone, frees us to express our individuality in ways that help our people feel at ease, loved, and refreshed. One homemaker will prioritize plants and toys while another puts her energy into minimalism or coffee, but each can be responding to God’s direction to create order and welcome the stranger.

Home looks different for all of us, depending on our ages, seasons of life, and native abilities. But Christians can always reflect God’s homemaking skills in ways that make order out of chaos and offer life and beauty to people.

Trinity is an old painting by the Russian artist Rublev that moves me deeply. Showing us a peek into God’s character, the medieval painting depicts themes of fellowship, unity, order, and hospitality. Three angels sit around a table at Mamre, while Abram, childless and out of sight, prepares a feast for them. The angels represent the Trinity, a unit of perfect love, fellowship, and safety. They graciously accept Abram’s eager hospitality. Abram, is, after all, reflecting God’s generosity and care, demonstrating what He knows about God’s character.

As homemakers made in God’s beautiful image, we extend, arrange, offer safety, and create homes because we first receive it from God’s heart. Rublev’s Trinity shows how home, fellowship, and hospitality comes full circle: we receive and offer in response, we give out of what God gives us, and we can never out-give God!

Is home a person, feeling, or place?

When I look at the glad fellowship of the Trinity and see how Jesus showed us the Father’s face in a particular time and place in history and geography, my love deepens for the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and I discover my true home. In the Trinity’s circle of beauty and truth, home is a person, a feeling, and a place. Because I’m in a body and not only a soul, I learn from God that place, stuff, food, furniture, things I touch, all matters because it matters to Him.

In the trailer we rent, our shared space isn’t trendy or influencer-worthy, but my housemate and I try hard to blend our differing color preferences, use indirect lighting, white walls, original art, and plenty of blankets within reach to make a comfortable space for ourselves and our guests. I like to put tea and scones on the battered coffee table so that people don’t have to move far for it, and they can prop up their feet wherever they’re comfortable. Friends often step from the porch to the living room and sigh “Oh, this looks so warm and cozy” which is exactly what we want them to feel!

Does home matter to God?

God cares deeply about home as a place of safety and welcome.

In a world that’s constantly degenerating into entropy and disorder, God’s people have a high responsibility to bring beauty, order, and welcome wherever we can. Women (and some men!) are especially good at this, regardless of their personalities or Enneagram numbers.

 Of all the careers you’ve dreamed of, imagine reflecting God’s character of being a home-maker!

I wrote a book about living well in a place I hadn’t planned to be. Turns out that’s where a lot of us find ourselves. You too? Order your copy here!

Home Matters, Part I

Posted in life, love, women's stuff by
Over two years ago, the lovely team at Daughters of Promise asked me to write a thoughtful, theological article on home. It was to explore this question: “Why does home matter in the bigger context of God’s story?” It was a new idea to me, but I quickly got excited as I began to study and ask questions about home. Since then, it has become something I think about often and take notes about and dream of expanding this article to something significantly more substantial. For example, what is special or significant about women in their ability to reflect God’s character as homemaker? And how does mundane, unseen work become meaningful when we think of ourselves as co-creators with God who is in the business of making all things new–pushing back entropy? So many rich questions to untangle! But that will be the work of another several years. For now, here’s the original (slightly polished) article, coming in two parts.

Is home a person, feeling, or place?

As a third-culture kid who feels at home in multiple states and countries, I have wrestled with this conflicted question for years.

If I don’t have a home, does it matter?

Is something important missing from my personhood?

Does God care about home since my homes have been so interchangeable?

I walk in a refugee camp in Greece and saw tents and blankets for houses. Under news headlines, I see photos of tent cities sprout up in Syria after another earthquake. I have suffered nothing like these beautiful people have, but I know the search for home. I’ve wondered if it should matter so much to me, and if home even matters to God because there are a great deal of other big questions that need His attention.

But when I observe people, listen to their stories, read literature, study the Bible, and cringe when people ask me where I’m from, it’s clear: home matters.

The immense disruption, disorientation, and restlessness over the loss of home shows me that home is important, does matter, isn’t a question to hush and try to forget.

Home can be a person or a feeling. But seeing God’s heart in the Biblical stories of Genesis to Revelation, it seems clear that God cares enormously about home as a place.

People and feelings do matter to God, because He says much about how to love Him and our neighbors. But He also holds place as very important, which gives us a way to think about our homes as places that matter to God.

In spiritual matters of the heart, we tend to live in our heads and work hard to think kind and gentle thoughts and nurture loving and patient attitudes. But in physicality, in places, our thoughts become embodied and visible.

For this and many other reasons that I’m still exploring, matter matters.

Bodies matter.

Places matter.

Home matters because God cares about physicality, clay, dust, tangible pieces of His creation. The incarnation of Jesus proves that, in case we doubt whether God values physicality. Jesus’ body, His dusty life as He touched people and got hungry and tired, elevates for us the gritty reality of matter, stuff, tangible pieces of living.

Once when I was reading John 14, I actually gasped when I read verse 23: “We will come to him and make Our home with him.” Jesus is talking about Himself and His Father, and He’s saying they are homemakers!

What kind of home do they make? How do they work together? What does their home look? They’re making their home in me? What does that even mean?

God’s homemaking in me is a spiritual reality with profound significance that ripples into physical reality even when I’m not conscious of it. Further, when I know something about His character and get to know Him as a homemaking person, I can grow in reflecting that part of His character.

Like elegant bookends, the special, prepared places in Genesis and Revelation show us what God thinks about home. And in between those places, we see many ways and times where God valued home as a physical place. He asked Mary to give a home to His Son Jesus, and placed that home first in her womb, then in Nazareth, specific places at specific times. God ends the Biblical timeline with a picture of our eternal home, a place too wondrous to describe, but we know it includes a wedding feast (I think there will be lots of cake!), cultural diversity, a river, and a fruitful tree. All these scenes happen in specific places, not just in our heads.

As I study the Bible and get to know God’s heart, I see His homemaking reveals many things about His character and here are just two:

  1. He creates order and safety
  2. He welcomes the stranger

This concept gives me goosebumps because these characteristics are beautiful and actionable for all of us!

Creating order and safety

God’s design of home holds an atmosphere of safety, rest, and belonging, seen both in Eden and our eternal home. God crafted them as places for fulfillment and fellowship where humans and nature can flourish and expand to their fullest capacity.

Home is a nest that protects fledglings from storms and predators. Home is a fuzzy blanket that wraps children in warmth and keeps out the world’s cold, hard edges. Home is the inviting smell of gingerbread baking. Its physicality engages all our senses and grounds us in this place, right now. Its daily, weekly, annual rhythms shape our neural pathways and linger in our subconscious.

In the absence of safety (wars, famine, abuse, neglect) humans tend to become less-than-ideal versions of who they were intended to be. The loss of home as a place is one reason refugees and natural disaster victims turn to violence and become people they would otherwise not be. In addition to suffering from emotional and spiritual damage, their material losses devastate their lives profoundly because physicality matters. No one just lives in their head.

But in safety and belonging in physical spaces, we flourish because that’s how God designed us. It’s the kind of homemaker He is.

From ages 35 to 41, I lived in five places. In each place, I arranged furniture, organized a kitchen with a housemate, and found a rhythm of keeping order that worked for that season of life. Then I walked away from it, left the stuff behind me (except for a mug or two), and started over in the next place. By the fifth place and the third country in six years, I wanted to think that home and belonging didn’t matter because it was too hard to reckon with all the loss and change I was living in.

But I’ve come to see that those transitions were so shaping and impactful to me precisely because home is so important. I couldn’t brush off the loss of home as if it didn’t matter.

The longing for home and belonging is an ache as deep as time. The loss of home is probably one reason Cain cried when he realized would never belong anywhere and would live in a place that means “wanderer.” We were made for home as a place that provides context for the connections in relationships that make us better people. Even literature knows this. Think about your favorite stories and books and how they center around the search for home and belonging.

  • The Odessey
  • Anne of Green Gables
  • Hannah Coulter
  • Gilead
  • News of the World

To be clear: home is not the most defining thing about us, but it IS basic to the need of our flourishing. This need doesn’t require us to live in one place all our lives. But creating home as a safe place to thrive means we can order our present spaces in ways that are restful and calming wherever we are.

When God gave humans dominion over creation, He was letting us be homemakers, designers of places. He was setting us free to innovate, create, and bring order out of the chaos that cascaded out of the fall. He could have regimented every part of keeping the first home, but He didn’t want Adam and Eve to be robots. Every healthy person carries some capacity to create, experiment, and maintain (“dress and keep”) home. As we carry out that work, we become better people ourselves and provide a comfortable, organized environment for others to flourish.

Up next Friday: Home Matters Part II, Creating Welcome for the Stranger

I wrote a book about living well in a place I hadn’t planned to be. Turns out that’s where a lot of us find ourselves. You too? Order your copy here!

Walk With Me For the Journey is Long

Posted in gratitude, Ireland, life, recommendations by

When I read Ultra-Processed People, (which every American should read, by the way) I was dismayed to find out that exercise doesn’t automatically burn up the calories I consume. For example, when I eat a Snickers bar then compute how long I need to walk to burn those calories, my walk will benefit me, but not by erasing those yummy junk calories. The math doesn’t math that way, which is deeply disappointing to me and also proves that numbers hate me.

Ultra-Processed People shook me for other reasons too, which I won’t go into here except to say that after you read it, you will often ask yourself as you eat, “Was this food made with love to nourish me or made by a company that wants to make money off me?”

Back to NOT walking off the calories from a Snickers bar: the author says walking has many benefits even if it doesn’t consume the calories I wish it would. Even though I’m mad at numbers, I absolutely agree that walking benefits me in many ways.

When I think back to very dark seasons of distress, I remember that the times I was most calm and at peace were when I walked down the road to the sea or when I went swimming in a cove. Back then, I thought it was the sea that calmed me. But now, connecting the dots in retrospect, I know it was the physical movement of walking or swimming that ultimately regulated me, and my body knew what it needed more than I did. This is the road with the sea at my back:

Years later, when I was new to northwestern Pennsylvania, I was telling a friend how hard it is to survive the long dark winter. (In dramatic moments, I know we have nine months of winter in the year.) She suggested I take 15-20 minutes to walk right after lunch when the sun is at its highest. It was the advice I needed, and it has served me enormously. Most days, I’d invite my co-worker friend across the hall to go with me. Sometimes, when I knew she was having a stressful day, I used stronger language and insisted she walk with me. We’d walk in all weather except rain.

When we were scrambling to begin working from home during COVID, the first thing I put in my schedule was two walks a day: one with my co-worker and one alone. Two daily walks was the best decision I made in that season.

For years, lower back pain bothered me. Sometimes it was better, then worse. One chiropractor said firmly, “You could walk this off.” I was glad to know, and walking regularly is probably why my back doesn’t give me trouble now.

In another difficult, overwhelming season, my doctor (and I) didn’t want to put me on anti-depressants, but she suggested daily walks. I told her I already walk, and she cheered. “And look up as you walk—45 degrees slanted up toward the sky. There’s a reason the good book says to lift your eyes to the hills!” and she swept her arm up from the horizon. I try to remember her advice when I walk. Looking up exposes my eyes to more light and Vitamin D. But I suspect Psalm 121 intended even more than those physical benefits.

I’m the pal who drags her people out for a walk after a meal even in the middle of winter. You don’t feel like going, it’s true, but after approximately five steps, you already feel better. You take longer, deeper breaths, you notice birdsong and the sky even if it’s gray, and when you get back you never wish you’d have stayed inside. Never. For real.

Walking rests my brain. Some of my best ideas come on a walk. It’s probably something about the cross-pattern or rhythmic movement or not needing to concentrate or increased oxygen or change of scenery.

My current walking place is nothing like where I walked in Ireland, and this is sad. But it’s green and has wildflowers in every season and wild apples and white aspens. Sometimes I do a color walk, which gives me new eyes to see the ordinary.

Silence is a practice I stack with walking. In the morning, if I’ve been listening to podcast or audio book as I fix my bed and pack my bag, I turn off the audio at my door. I step out the door in silence, walk through the morning in silence, walk the scenic route to my office in silence, stop to see the sun and sky and trees in silence. In the evening, I might listen to or send voice messages as I walk, but not more. I need silence to give a chance for some of the open tabs in my brain to close. I need silence for thinking space and for rest. Deep work calls for deep rest, Aundi Colber says, and silence is restful. If it’s not, it’s probably time to sit with it and ask it why.

Because I benefit from the social, emotional, physical, and spiritual results of daily walks, I think everyone else should walk too. If it’s too warm to walk at noon, walk at golden hour when the sun is less direct. Or walk in starlight, which is its own magic and calm and wonder. And if you can’t walk, do stretches. If you can’t stretch, do deep breathing. Or sing. The breathing, rhythm, and focus on something outside yourself will benefit you in surprising ways.

If it doesn’t, come talk to me! You know we’ll go on a walk to figure it out.

 

Happy Colors

Posted in Art, gratitude, Poland by

They are mementos of a happy hour of immersive color. I’d pinned the inspiration painting on my “To Paint” Pinterest board and one Sunday afternoon I knew it was time. It was time to play, sketch, blend a branch across three panels.

The backs of old calendar pages gave the size I needed, plus the paper had enough texture to take on my chalk pastels. The technical term is that the paper had tooth but who knows what that means?

The colors morphed, shimmered, stretched across their lines to join each other and the layers became new colors. When I finished, the art looked exactly as I’d hoped–even better–but then, it’s hard to go wrong with chalk pastels, fingers, and a simple black silhouette. I attached the pieces to the ugly orange wall in our sitting room and we loved the tryptic. My finger nailbeds carried the blended colors for days and I didn’t care.

Months later, I packed my Polish life into three suitcases and the colors stayed on the wall because I didn’t think I needed them.

But I missed those colors. So after one year, I asked my housemate to bring them over with her. She carefully wrapped them around a paper towel tube and hand-delivered them to me. The paper was brittle and started to crack when I unrolled them but I was careful. It was so right to see the colors on my wall again!

Now I have them in my studio. They remind me to keep playing, experimenting, trying new compositions and palettes and media. They’re ten years old now. The colors and shades have smudged around the edges but I don’t look too closely. I used them once in art class for 5th and 6th graders who also went home with colors under their fingernails.

Maybe that’s the highest use of art–to be a presence that invites play, reflects color and shape, and offers a sense of home. From the old country to the new and now familiar, we have crossed miles and seen many seasons but some things never change.

I Bring

Posted in life, poetry, words by

This poem came out of a prompt in the writers’ circle I’m part of, led by Rachel Devenish Ford.

I bring whimsy and laughter and hugs—

Here, have one!

Today’s too beautiful for dour, dry words and

We are delighting in spring’s light shining in eyes and

Music sparkling from fingers,

Colors spilling from dresses that drape and swoosh

Like pansy petals.

I bring cake and songs and glitter pens for everyone.

 

I bring questions and ache—

Here, take it—it’s heavy.

Today’s too sad for songs and

Questions rumble over trite answers and

Scattered bits of blue eggs dry in their yolks on the ground and

A storm blows disarray over the whole globe,

Smashing like feral bulls seeing red, pawing after power.

What I asked for didn’t come. What I hoped became impossible.

 

Celebration and sorrow.

I bring both today.

 

I wrote a book about living well in a place I hadn’t planned to be. It explores the curious mix of holding both joy and sorrow at the same time. You can order your copy here!

Fairy Rings and Circles

Posted in community, gratitude, singleness by

Photo by Mahad Aamir on Unsplash

I’ve been thinking about circles and the ways they provide spaces of beauty, nurture, and life.

Some of my most formative, life-giving, sacred memories happened when I was sitting around a circle. Not in straight rows, not one-on-one, but in a circle. There were camp chairs or blocks of wood, benches, or floor pillows so some people were sitting higher or lower but no one was outside the circle. Both men and women sat in the various circles, people of many ages and life experiences.

A physical object is usually in the center of the circle. We sit around Sunday lunch or a tray of nachos or a crackling fire or a coffee table with a candle and tea. The object in the center isn’t our sole focus, but it gives us a hub to gather around and something to watch if we feel twitchy and unable to meet someone’s eye.

A circle says everyone matters, every voice is valuable–even the voice that would otherwise stay quiet. No one can hide, and it’s safe enough that no one wants to hide. The circle includes, expands, takes in, listens, responds. In these spaces, there’s one conversation happening that everyone contributes to, not splattered clusters of discussions, although those also have value. The words I carry away with me often begin with:

What I hear you saying is….

Have you considered…?

What if…?

You need to know….

I never thought of…in that way.

I heard Jesus say…

I remember circles with gales of rollicking laughter that helped set my world right again. I remember deep questions with long silences. I remember thoughtful observations and poetry read. Food is always a nice feature, and tissues for tears are essential. I remember advice given to me that I could hand to someone else in turn. What’s spoken was usually simple but valuable because it was born out of experience.

To be clear: not all circles are life-changing. Sometimes the conversation is about the lettuce in the garden or the housing market or wall paint. I don’t love small talk, but I’ve learned to try hard to engage even there because it gives me data for conversations with those people in the future. Small talk is a window into what they care about and it establishes trust and safety. (Read The Six Conversations by Heather Holleman for more ideas and guidance about conversations.)

When you’re done with small talk, the real enjoyment and life-giving exchanges happen with good questions.

What have you been processing lately?

What’s big for you next week?

Are you happy?

What are your dreams for the next 10 years?

These are the kinds of questions that enable knowing and being known, a level of intimacy everyone hungers for. These questions went deep fast in the circles I’ve sat in recently. I love that circles are a recurring theme of my story. I blogged about it here before and probably will again.

You can choose a favorite question to keep in your back pocket for the next circle you encounter.

Laurence Koo, board member of Authentic Intimacy, teaches that humans were created for five levels of intimacy:

  1. intellectual (exchanging and pushing around on ideas)
  2. emotional (friendship, banter, camaraderie)
  3. spiritual (sharing what we know and learn and love about God)
  4. physical (hugs, sharing personal bubbles)
  5. sexual (one man and one woman in marriage)

People live whole, full lives without sexual intimacy (thousands have, over the centuries), but people cannot flourish without those first four levels of intimacy. However, when someone has vacancies in any of those first four aspects, they’re more vulnerable to sexual sin.

I’m an unmarried woman at 50 without a date. Multiple formal and informal circles provide those first four levels of intimacy for me, and I dream for everyone to have the same opportunity to flourish and develop.

But here’s the rub. Circles don’t usually show up at your fire ring uninvited. Only fairies and mushrooms do that. To engage in those facets of intimacy, you have to be intentional and risk and give up significant control and autonomy. To be part of a circle might mean you plan, invite, or host to make it happen instead of stay tidy and cozy at home.

You don’t usually just happen onto a circle. You choose to linger when it might be easier to leave an event early. You choose to engage when it would be easier to stay aloof. You choose to ask questions and be awake to who is around you and what they’re saying.

So start small and fun: a shared activity like a walk or work or art project or birthday to celebrate. Find a common interest like poetry or bird watching or thrifting. Start light and breezy, not heavy and ponderous.

Ask God to give you circles to be part of. It was His idea in the first place, that you thrive in community with other voices contributing to your life. He cares about the circles you sit in. I can trace His mysterious, light fingerprints in the way He arranges the circles I’ve been part of. It was clearly His arranging, not mine, but it was on me to be aligned with what He was up to.

Loneliness is an epidemic in the West, and loneliness doesn’t go away when someone gets married. That means everyone needs to find ways to live well in our common experience of being lonely, separate, other.

So let’s learn how to hold the weight of loneliness without crumpling. Let’s find places—circles—to offer companionship, understanding, presence that offers an antidote to crippling, suffocating loneliness.

This doesn’t mean that we should desperately chase after circles so that we’ll never be lonely again. In an ironic turn, I’ve found that when I’m most at peace in solitude, I am most ready to contribute and receive from the bounty of a circle.

Circles are gifts to receive, not rights to demand. But isn’t it good of God to give such lovely gifts?

The Winter of Our Content

Posted in gratitude, life by

Years ago, I stood in a crocus field in Holland. Our bulb farmer friend showed us the heating pipes that ran under the acres of rows of dirt. These heaters boosted the soil temperature for crocuses to give them a jump start on their competitors.

But before that luxurious spring came winter. Our friend showed us the buildings with huge coolers that forced winter on the bulbs. He explained how essential it is that the crocus corms were kept at a specific cold for a specific length of time. Without this carefully- designed winter, the crocuses wouldn’t produce well later even in their deluxe spring bed heaters.

I often think about that compulsory winter for the wrinkled little bulbs, and I wonder about my seasons and my flourishing.

Right now, it’s winter above the equator and it’s a beautiful one. Every morning I thank God for warmth and light and health and quietness–gifts that many in the world don’t have. For months, I got to watch the black sky turn to periwinkle then I put on boots and many layers of clothes and walked to work in fluffy snow. It was like a storybook. Ok, sometimes now it’s slush, not snow, but still. This winter has treated us exceptionally well.

Some of the best moments were when I walked in falling snow. Or made a snow angel then stayed and watched downy flakes fall and fall on me. It was so quiet relaxing, I understood why one would want to curl up in a snowbank for a nap.

This winter kept on being beautiful. But winter isn’t always white and peaceful, either outside the house or inside the heart. Sometimes more accurate words for winter are

  • bleak
  • howling
  • dark
  • ghostly
  • empty
  • ugly
  • parched
  • barren

Winter can be a season in the calendar or of the soul. It is never warm breezes and pink blossoms. I see no beauty in gray, bare stalks and trees. I find no joy in husks of stems and leaves, mud, and thick clouds at high noon. Winter feels like wasted time, pointless, empty, and, worst of all, ugly.

I have found no fast cure, no quick ticket to a warm spring and billows of blossoms. Winter is a season, a rhythm that comes and goes without my permission. I can only control my response to it. So, after many years of resenting winter’s darkness, I’ve come to try to befriend its hostility.

I bought a long down-filled coat and ear muffs and when I wrap my scarf around my neck and face, the cold can hardly get me. I light candles and read and drink tea. Or host friends or bake bread to give away. Or go to bed early. Or play with watercolors or words.

It’s a mindset I learned from Wintering: the Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May. She explained how Scandinavians in their long winters make the most of the season instead of fighting it. Since it’s going to be dark, they insist on cozy lights. Since it’s going to be cold, they wear warm layers and snow boots. That approach has changed my life in northwestern Pennsylvania where winter stays for six months.

In melodramatic moments, I say that we’re in the Arctic Circle and sometimes see penguins. My impatience comes from having lived in Ireland where daffodils bloomed in late January and now I have to wait until at least April. But I also experienced SAD there and those winters were dark and rainy and I wanted to run away to Spain or Italy every winter.

The good thing about seasons is that they don’t stay. And they are part of a life cycle. Winter is not empty time, but a space to go still, like a seed underground. Winter is the creator’s answer to the longing to bloom. Winter quiets the seed, nests it safe, protects it from death while it rests. The husk of the seed does die. Death is part of winter but it is for the purpose of life.

Stillness and quietness works for seeds and people and their fruitfulness.

Have you noticed it? The people you know who are most luminous now have known long, cold, brutal winter in previous seasons. They had no timeline, no calendar to know when spring was coming. They couldn’t see progress or change in that darkness, but underneath all the layers, even in the dark and cold, life hadn’t stopped. The roots hadn’t withered.

I don’t say that glibly. Spring is hard-won. Winter seasons are intensely difficult, demanding, distressing—how many other D words?—dangerous, depressing, debilitating, dark, depleting, deserted.

Being chirpy about winter isn’t helpful. But it helps me to name what is true. And it helps me to know, in a dark season of famine and barrenness, that it won’t always be this way, that spring comes eventually. At some point, I know, water will trickle again instead of freezing.

Let me tell you an unbelievable secret. It’s so astounding, I have to whisper it because it’s so hard to believe. Last week it was zero degrees and as I walked gingerly over ice and snow beside the pear trees, I saw tiny swollen brave buds pushing out of the twiggy branches.

How is it possible? Buds when it’s below freezing?

There is something thrumming down deep out of sight, silent and stubborn: the insistence of life, the throb of light pulsing in the sap and bark and roots. Gnarled twigs hold veins of liquid that circulates in response to the lengthening frigid days.

Light will always be stronger than dark, sending warmth and vitality to the most hidden places. Even in the Artic Circle, the polar night shortens and daylight cautiously emerges. That mechanical Dutch winter those wrinkled, lumpy crocus corms endured became their route to flower.

I’m so curious about what fruits and flowers are ahead of us.

Walking Beside Each Other

Posted in community, gratitude, love, singleness, women's stuff by

Photo by Rajat Verma on Unsplash

Last week, the lovely Daughters of Promise team asked me for a writer’s interview on Zoom. It was in connection with their Brighter Winter program, which gets participants into lots of books during January and February. I agreed to the interview even though I’d never done anything like it. In the moment, it was mostly enjoyable even though I don’t love being the focus in a virtual conversation. My hosts helped me feel comfortable, and seeing a few friends’ faces made the call enjoyable.

We talked about my book, the process of writing and self-publishing, and my goals for the book. My goal was—and is—for it to be a companionable voice on a lonely path. Then a question came that I wasn’t prepared for: what can the church do for singles to support them and recognize their gifts and contributions to the Kingdom and not make them feel left out?

I stumbled around, offering ideas off the top of my head, but I didn’t feel good about it. So I decided this space (ironically another virtual platform) might be a place to think longer about the question and possible answers. I’m thankful beyond words that in this current season I can put down these ideas from a place of abundance, gratitude, and fullness rather than resentment, scarcity, and envy. I wish all single women’s churches and work places would support them as mine do. I hear many single women’s stories, and this is not their reality.

  • We want to be known and seen as contributing citizens, not oddities, even in our pro-family sub-culture. So please meet our eyes. Notice our appearance. Ask us questions about our latest holiday or visit home or latest book or hopes for the new year.
  • Give us responsibilities in church that fit our lifestyle. Keep in mind that most of us are working 50-60 hour weeks, and we love our work, but we have very little discretionary time. At the end of a long work day, we still have to maintain the car, see the dentist, buy groceries, do laundry, and cook. Did I mention take care of the house or lawn or garden? And all solo? That doesn’t give much time for babysitting, making church bulletins, or hosting–even if those are all things we are able to do and enjoy doing when we find cracks of time in evenings and weekends.
  • We love meal invitations and leftovers. We love hosting too, but it takes a lot of planning ahead because if hosting involves food, we don’t always have food in the fridge.
  • Hug us freely and often. We live in an adult world and often go for days without physical touch.
  • In family-centered activities like meals and picnics, invite us to join your family. We don’t always know where to stand or who to sit beside, and it’s lonely to stand alone in a circle, and we never get used to that.
  • If you don’t know us well but you have a potential boyfriend in mind for us, stay quiet and pray. If you know us well and we’ve confided our dreams to you, set us up with good men. Ask us on a double date or a blind date. We know that marriage won’t solve all our problems so you don’t have to tell us that but we need you to celebrate your beautiful, strong marriages and darling children and we need you to love us where we are and hold hope for us.

I can already hear howls of protest from some singles who feel misrepresented in this list. What I put on the table here is true for some but not all single women. That means it’s on every person to get to know the single lady beside her and love her as a one-of-a-kind individual, not as a piece of demographic information.

Singleness is hard and marriage is hard. That’s what Sam Alberry says, and I believe him. That means that all of us need all of us to accompany each other in this beautiful, broken world, to smooth the path a little bit for each other, to be present and available and tender toward whoever is walking beside us.