Author Archives: Life is For Living book

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.

Charity Concert

Posted in life, love, poetry by

This is an old, out-dated poem, but it doesn’t go away. This is not a statement about politics but tears for the forgotten women and children suffering because of others’ arguments.

April 2, 2022

Orchestra musicians and choirs

Donated a free concert in aid of

Ukraine.

Guests waved blue and yellow flags,

Wore blue and yellow clothes

Or gorgeous flowy Ukrainian blouses.

No one clapped the whole evening

Until

Every song and every poem and the grand

Ukrainian national anthem

Faded into silence.

And then

The appropriate applause lasted for a long, loud time.

 

Surrounded with plush red velvet, dim lighting,

Glittering chandeliers,

We called this solidarity.

We called it respect. And it was.

And the music had been beyond beautiful.

 

But how does velvet sit in

Harmony with missiles and battered bags,

Fractured families, mass graves?

The irony, the audacity

Sits heavy on my chest.

 

And

Where were the charity concerts

For starving Afghanis hiding from their government?

Why is no one singing

The Sudanese national anthem

And remembering their child soldiers?

 

Ukraine is close enough and

White enough

For America to do something—anything—even

Host a luscious night of music and call it

Care.

 

Beneath my confused anger

Weeps grief.

Above the globe

Weeps Jesus

Over the wreckage of the world.

It Just Happened

Posted in gratitude, life by

I keep asking God to grow my trust in Him. It’s been my recurring prayer this year. Then He sent me a hummingbird.

One day in late summer at my second story office, something kept flying in and out of my peripheral vision around the pear tree outside the window. When I stopped to look, I saw it was a hummingbird, and it perched on a branch that pointed toward me about fifteen away.

I called my coworkers to come see, and did anyone have a set of binoculars? The next morning, Sheldon brought his pair and we could see the little bird was clearly building a nest.

I can tell you that I watched a busy little hummingbird make her nest, but then I choke up and my eyes start leaking. I don’t have words to explain how beautiful it was to watch her. She zipped in and out all day, just outside my window.

A neighboring family from church—five little ones and their mom, avid bird lovers—brought their binoculars one day to watch. They told me she would build her nest from moss and spiderwebs.

Sure enough. When Danny*, my co-worker across the hall, got his big camera to capture the action, he caught a shot of a wisp of web on her bill and extra spider webs stockpiled beside the nest.

July 25, 2024

She used her bill to shape and punch and work her nest. She sat in it and scooched around in it to shape its bed. She used lichens from the tree for the outside of the bowl, which was a splendid camouflage. Often when people came to see the nest, it was hard for them to find it because the whites, grays, and greens looked just like the branches surrounding it. Her own green back matched the leaves around her. She was very watchful as she worked, constantly on the look-out.

I watched her build for two weeks. My eyes learned to know exactly where to look, and how to direct others’ eyes to find her. I watched for her partner with his ruby throat, but he never showed up. These are not romantic birds, I understand. Maybe it’s those bills.

Then she sat on the nest for two weeks. The nest was nearly eye level to us, and we wished we could look down into the nest to see the eggs, but we never could. It seemed significant that she usually faced away from my window and toward the tree trunk. I wondered if she felt that direction held her greatest threat, and our brick building with rows of windows felt safe enough to not keep an eye on it.

She was a distraction and many brain breaks and a deep message to me. She was teaching me something about how it looks to rest and trust. I wondered if she knew how small she was and how big the sky is, but she didn’t seem bothered. I couldn’t possibly survive in the wild like her, but I got a front row seat to watching her manage and thrive.

The eggs hatched on August  21 and she started feeding her two babies! It was unbelievable. How was it safe to poke her bill deep into her babies’ mouths? Where was her partner? How could she feed her babies alone?

September 2, 2024

September 3, 2024

Apparently, hummingbirds eat insects in addition to nectar, but still, how is it possible to supply the babies’ growing metabolisms and get them and herself ready to migrate? How can the little mites fly 1,000’s of miles south so soon?

September 3, 2024

Eventually, it looked like the babies were spilling out of the nest. We kept wondering how they practice flying.

September 3, 2024

We never saw the first one leave. Then there was one left. It perched on the edge of the nest and whirred its wings into a blur on and off for a whole day. The next morning, while Danny and I were watching, it hopped onto several branches surrounding the nest, then zoomed away. It took maybe fifteen seconds for it to hop out and decide to fly. We never saw any of them again.

I look out at that tiny, hidden nest every day and I miss that sweet little mama and her babies. I’m not a birder, but she was an immense gift to me this summer. She didn’t understand big words like camouflage or regurgitate or migrate but she knew what to do. In that nest, she rested and trusted something bigger than her.

This summer, it just happened that I noticed her graceful swoops to and from the pear tree. It just happened that I work across the hall from someone who likes wildlife photography and has the equipment for it. It just happened that another neighbor had binoculars that could sit on my window sill for six weeks. It just happened that a plucky little single-parent hummingbird chose a branch that made my office window the best vantage point. It just happened that Danny and I got to watch the last fledgling leave.

Now the leaves in the pear tree are slowly turning red and orange. It’s time for a new season. I understand that hummingbirds won’t come back to their old nest and I’m sad. But this season of watching those birds taught me something deep that I’m still mulling.

I asked for deeper trust and He sent me a hummingbird.

 

*Thanks to Danny for the wonderful pictures!

On Turning 50

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Once at the edge of a crowded Dublin sidewalk, I was waiting for the crosswalk. Just as the pedestrian light turned red, I started to step off the curb, intending to cross quickly before the traffic started. A tall man beside me put out his arm to stop me. His elbow grazed my shoulder. “The man who made time made plenty of it,” he said. I laughed, chastened with his Irish humor and forthright advice.

Turning 50 turned me both pensive and excited about time. We have plenty of it, yes.  But time is a weird part of life that we can’t ever get enough of, and yet we’re sad we have it (At least, sometimes. It’s fashionable at some birthdays to be sad about another year.)

I feel an odd mix of exhilaration and bewilderment, and the puzzling compounds when people say they can’t believe I’m 50. “I’d have guessed you about 34 or 36,” they say, and they’re right: that’s how old I feel. But numbers don’t lie, and the math says 1974-2024=50. And what do my friends really mean? That I don’t act my age? How does 50 look? How does 50 live?

My cousin’s 12-year old thought I’m younger than his mom. I can understand him. I don’t have a husband or children, which is how one’s timeline unspools in his world, so to him, I’m just not old enough yet to have a family.

But there’s something in the wider air, beyond his cozy farming community, that doesn’t make sense to me. The math doesn’t work. It’s this:

Everyone is supposed to become the best version of themselves, grow, learn, develop, be all you can be. BUT don’t grow at the expense of becoming old.

Even if we don’t want grandmothers to be dressing like teenagers, we still have this deference for youth and beauty that we’re loathe to lose.

Youth and beauty are wonderful in their time. I live and work around 20-year-olds, and I love their wit and perspectives. But I LOVE being 50 and not 20! I have much to learn and hold many questions, but these 50  years have given me so, so much that I benefit from, give out of, and I would never want to go back to a smaller number.

Some mornings, though, it’s disconcerting to look in the mirror and see more gray hair, or to notice wrinkly skin on my hands. I don’t love that, or the gap in my grin because one year took a tooth. But when I take stock of the richness of my years, I can’t resent the gray and wrinkles. And I have seen repeatedly how a plain face becomes beautiful with a smile, and I don’t think my smile has to sag for a very long time.

Partly because I think 50 is cool, and partly because I want to push against the worship of youth and beauty, I started celebrating my 50th birthday for the full year before my birthday, and past it. Because why not? I started by going to a wonderful concert in Carnegie Hall and wrote briefly about it here. I bought raspberry batik fabric to make a dress that I love wearing. I went to Greece for three beautiful weeks. I’m going to another concert with another friend in August. There were other planned celebrations, and there might be more. Someone said these were excuses to do something, but I said turning fifty is a REASON, not an excuse to celebrate.

We don’t celebrate enough. I’m sure of it. Our Germanic genes make us too efficient and task-oriented to put effort into taking time to reflect and enjoy the end or beginning of a decade or a summer or a week or an accomplishment. We think we don’t have time, but the man who made time made plenty of it. When I think about how long God has been patient with me, and how many days and years He waits to ripen His purposes, I realize that He isn’t a bit concerned about time or efficiency. Remembering this helps me calm down and breathe deep and wait on whatever He’s up to.

I’ve earned these grey hair and wrinkles. A lot of tears and weights and waiting came before them. I can still be unreasonably chirpy, but I hope I’m a little more measured and thoughtful than I use to be. Fifty years have been very kind and beautiful to me, and I am grateful beyond words.

I wrote this poem last year in anticipation of turning 50:

Nut-brown silk wrapped
Smooth over knuckles,
Gapped grin in line of white,
Silver filaments framing face—
These parts of portraits
Plot a stretch of time,
Paint my story line
Of years, quick and slow,
Rich and deep and variegated, full.

This sagging silk? That dark spot?
They show my days stacked high
Of treasures found in hummocky shamrock fields,
Incandescent faces, glowing coves,
Humming train platforms,
Quiet words and bonfires,
Endless tea and steaming curries and
Tablescapes and holding hands for prayer.

The years and wrinkles converge, collect
To sketch a picture deep beyond
Cosmetics, profile, cursory glance.
Numbers only mark a page.
Wrinkles only touch a face.
My pulse glows calm, claims this age,
And names my story
Very good.

Things I Learned in Greece

Posted in gratitude, love, travel by

Here is a list* of things I learned on my summer vacation on Lesvos, Greece in June. I spent three delicious weeks there to celebrate my 50th birthday, be alone, and spend time with two sisters, one brother-in-law, one nephew, and two friends who joined me after the first ten solo days.

I learned:

  • The island life is perfect for a restful, slow vacation.
  • The plane ticket is the most expensive part of the trip because accommodation and food is way cheaper than vacationing at home.
  • Jetlag is the price to pay for crossing seven time zones in a day.
  • Airline agents are very generous and kind when I treat them like good humans who have feelings.
  • Traditional Greek food is fantastic, simple, and bursting with flavor, and lemon chunks squeezed on everything make it even better. Ranch would be a serious desecration. Ketchup would be even more scandalous.
  • I wonder if most Greeks are Ennegram 7s.
  • Europe’s outdoor café culture is the best. And Greek freddo cappuccinos are valid reasons to go to Greece.
  • Sky and water in all its mirrored shades of light calms me like good music.
  • The lemon tree outside my studio apartment was covered with and dropping so many lemons, my landlady wanted me to take all I wanted. I can’t imagine living with such wealth.
  • Part of the efficacy of restful vacation is not needing stack activities. I can do one thing at a time: Drink coffee in silence. Read my Bible. Listen to music. Take a long walk in silence. Listen to an audio book. Read poetry aloud. Watercolor. No need to multi-task or watch the clock=bliss.
  • When I witness multiple nationalities and languages worshipping in one place, I always cry. Every time.
  • Beauty is profoundly healing.
  • Sunshine and solitude is deeply restful.
  • Some dreams come true. Others haven’t.
  • God is immensely generous to me, far beyond my deserving.
  • When I’m swimming and my friends on the beach decide to move down to a better spot, they can move my stuff and I can swim to the new place. Just like a mermaid.
  • Swimming alone is boring but still wonderful.
  • A three-year old nephew is completely irresistible when he cocks his head and says, “I want to chat with you!” I will happily talk or listen as long as he wants to chat.
  • Playing in the water with the nephew is the best playground in the world for both of us.
  • Sunscreen is worth the effort.
  • A day in Turkey gave us a taste of Middle Eastern welcome and warmth that seemed to go beyond mere salesmanship and I want to be like that too.
  • After three weeks of slow days and wholesome, fresh food and daily exercise and sunshine, I felt about 20 years younger. I felt. So. Good. In every way that’s possible to feel good.
  • Daily sunshine might have been the biggest, best thing about the three weeks. Locals don’t comment to each other about the nice weather because it’s always nice, and nothing to pay attention to.
  • I can drag my suitcase from the island, onto agents’ counters and over ramps to my house but I can never get the sand out of it–and I don’t want to.

*Inspired by Harry Baker’s poem, “Things I Learnt While Interrailing.

What I Wish I Would’ve Said

Posted in life, love, recommendations, women's stuff by

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Last month I gave a talk on Strength to Strength Sisters about God’s design for older women to teach the younger. You can call it mentoring or teaching or friendship or influencing. One Biblical term is “discipleship.” It was for women who want to live with eternal purpose, but don’t have 10,000 followers on Instagram like big influencers do. I didn’t talk about following a particular mentoring program, but about ordinary women connecting in ordinary ways.

I gave the talk via Zoom, which I don’t love. Physical presence matters enormously to me, so it was hard to speak alone in my empty office. But this technological platform gives the possibility to cross time zones without anyone needing to leave their couch, plus it preserves the words for people to access afterwards (as a YouTube and podcast recording) but still, I don’t love Zoom.

And as always, after speaking, there were details I wish I could do over, or examples I wish I could’ve added or reworded. That’s what this blog post is, which is another benefit of technology.

But before I say what I’d change about the talk, I want to say what I liked about it. I loved that I could see a few dear faces on the screen–especially friends who never turn on their cameras, but they did so for me, and it was super sweet of them. It’s why I rarely looked up at my computer camera, but always just below it at the faces I wanted to see.

I also loved telling the women “You are a tree!” and the simple interactive assignment that came out of that–a fun, meaningful exercise for all of us. And I loved telling the story at the end of what Pastor John told me when I didn’t know how to make a decision. His words to me that day were so confident and strong and simple that I could believe what he said. In turn, I can hand those words to others. It’s my favorite, beautiful part of giving away what I’ve been given.

The Q&A at the end of the talk was the hardest part for me. I felt self-conscious because I wanted to give good advice but didn’t have time to offer something thoughtful, and wasn’t at all sure that I answered carefully or sensitively.

Finding a mentor you can trust

One of the questions was about how to find a mentor you can trust, “who will keep things confidential.” I hear this question often. I never know if the question comes because some women can’t trust, or because some women aren’t trustworthy.

If you’re looking for a mentor you can trust, you need to risk exposing your soul, and you need to know that no mentor will be perfect.

I wish I would have said: If you want be a mentor, you don’t need to overthink it. It’s not complicated. All you need is to love God supremely and your neighbor as yourself. The shape of your life will influence others whether or not you intend that it does. That’s why friendship and conversation is so powerful. But it’s also why gossip is so devastating. It should never be said of you that you passed on carelessly what someone confided in you (except the threat of harming someone).

Most women, for whatever reason, love to be the first to tell a piece of news. But usually the most loving thing you can do for someone is to hold their confidence as sacred. Not even share it as a sanctified-sounding prayer request.

You don’t actually pop.

The soul is very elastic and can hold quite a lot of words and feelings, and it doesn’t explode.

We should work hard to be safe women for each other. When there are interpersonal problems and questions, we should be careful to talk only with the people who are part of the problem or the solution. I wish I would have said that because it’s what my parents taught me and it works for me.

Recommended reading

Someone asked for recommended reading on mentoring. I love talking about books! But I hesitate to recommend specific titles for specific purposes, because reading is so subjective. What is meaningful and helpful to me might not connect with you, and vice versa.

But I do recommend Getting to Know a Person by David Brooks. He writes for a secular audience but holds strong Judeo-Christian values. He says when we listen to people talking, we should listen so hard that we burn calories as we listen. Sounds like a good weight reduction plan! Seriously, if we would all follow Brook’s advice, we would be better people and able to mentor/influence/friend/disciple better.

I wish I would’ve said that.

But it’s ok. I keep learning. And keep taking in. And giving away. It’s the rhythm of a good life, the shape of a flourishing tree.

Come to the Feast of Love

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This is the last of four weekly devotionals from the archives. They first appeared in the lovely Daughters of Promise devotionals way back in February 2018! I felt it’s time to get these words out, dust them off, and think about them again. (The imaginary scene at the beginning  comes from a restaurant I walked past many times, experienced, and wrote about here. But I digress.)

You pass by this scene every day on your walk to work:

Candles flicker on the stone step outside the door. String lights swoop toward the center of the ceiling. Waiters place hors d’oeuvres onto tables sparkling with goblets and silver. You catch whiffs of expensive cologne, alfredo, lemon, basil, coffee.

You peer into the banquet room and linger in its fragrance for a couple seconds. But you never step further because you know you could never eat there.

It’s way too expensive.

I’m alone and it’s a place for couples.

I wouldn’t know what to do with all those forks and spoons.

My clothes smell like work.

This banquet and this hesitating is the setting for George Herbert’s poem called “Love.” The poem is a story recounting the exchange between Love and a hungry, aching soul. Each of us can read it in the first person, first placing our feet at the banquet door. (The words in parentheses are my responses.)

Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin. (My clothes smell like work.)
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack  
From my first entrance in, (He saw me every time I lingered at the door.)
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lacked anything.  

‘A guest,’ I answer’d, ‘worthy to be here:’
Love said, ‘You shall be he.’ (Me? No, you can’t mean me.)
‘I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,  
I cannot look on Thee.’ (You are very kind, but I don’t belong here.)
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
‘Who made thine eyes but I?’ (Hmmmm. He made this banquet—He even made me. And my shy eyes.)
‘Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.’ 
‘And know you not,’ says Love, ‘Who bore the blame?’ (He says He made me worthy of this feast. He wants me here. How can it be?)
‘My dear, then I will serve.’ (No, no—I won’t eat. You are my master. I’ll be your waiter tonight.)
‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my Meat.’ (‘Says’ is present tense: He is STILL speaking!)
So I did sit and eat.

As we read George Herbert’s lines, we see that the man knows how to be proper, dutiful, and fair. He knows about protocol and propriety to maintain at all costs. When Love pronounces him as the worthy guest of the feast, Herbert is incredulous and gives reasons why he can’t possibly accept. Sounds familiar, right?

When Love invites us to His banquet table, we learn, like Herbert did, that love is not a place, or a feeling, or a flavor. Love is a person, and His name is Jesus. Hearing His voice and seeing His eyes is the best thing that could ever, ever happen to us.

And the feast will  never, ever end.

I wrote a book one time about living well and living loved—even without romance. You can order your copy here!

Love’s Posture

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I wonder if you’ve seen how you’re surrounded by love this month. I wonder if you’ve been surprised or disappointed. I wonder how you’re responding to that surprise or let-down.

When we open our hearts to ahava, we risk loss, misunderstandings, and even heartbreak. One human response to this is anger and a commitment to avoid ahava in the future.

But the posture of ahava is an open hand. I’m here to serve you. What do you need that I can give?

Alternatively, the posture of anger is a clenched fist. I can’t wash my neighbor’s feet with my fists, and it’s hard to ahava (give to) someone if their hands are closed. There are a lot of clenched fists around these days. And sometimes the fists belong to me.

John, who found his identity in being the disciple Jesus loved, pointed out that love casts out fear, and he added that fear possesses terror. Apparently, he believed that the opposite of love is fear. Let’s contrast more words connected to love and fear.

These lists demonstrate love’s enormous power to transform, heal, and free. Like the sun shining on a cold day inviting you take off your coat, instead of the wind that makes you hang onto the coat even tighter, love melts open a clenched fist and a stiff exterior. It invites dialogue and a smile. It gives a cup of water, the simplest of gifts.

If we would love like Jesus did, generously and winsomely and in hidden ways, we could change the world! We can live in love and not fear when we embrace our deepest reality—that we are deeply, outrageously, undeservedly loved. It seems John knew how much Jesus loved him, and he never got over the wonder of it. It shaped how he saw himself, and influenced how he spoke and taught.

The ahava God pours on us is an endless supply to share with our world. We can approach the difficult person and the stranger with open hands, and mirror the warmth and comfort of Jesus. In doing so, we help to soothe the crippling, damaging fear that keeps people from living with open hands.

If the posture of ahava is open hands, it means that love has nothing to defend and no personae to keep polished. It is genuine and honest, simple and frank. It is not driven by the destructive, irrational fear of criticism or failure. Living with open hands is possible by a power far beyond human limitations, and its results reach further than we can know or dream.

Will you move into this week with open hands, giving and receiving love?

I wrote a book one time about living well and living loved—even without romance. You can order your copy here!