This month I have the privilege of sharing a piece on joy for The Redbud Post, a monthly publication created by the members of my writer’s guild. I encourage you to read the other articles, too! They’re written by wise, gracious, and beautiful sisters in Christ. What a gift it is to write in and for community, surrounded by “the love of thousands,” as Chickasaw poet Linda Hogan describes the communion of saints—that great cloud of witnesses cheering us on, bearing witness to our many-foibled yet grace-laced lives—all the way to Glory, our first and final Home.

I’ve been searching for this color’s name like a word on the tip of my tongue—as if in finding its true name, I would uncover my own. I finally found it nestled among the lines of Jesuit priest and poet Gerard Manley Hopkin’s poem The Windhover, and now I profess it wholeheartedly with the joy of discovery: my favorite color is vermilion. . .

I took a morning walk this week in search of freedom from the ever-narrowing confines of my anxious mind. Breathing in deeply, my lungs remembered what they are for as I strode through streets that were shining with the alchemy of late night rain and early morning light. I paused and knelt every so often to take pictures of leaves and reflections in puddles, of late autumn roses clinging to life despite the evidence. I thought of the late Catholic monk Thomas Merton, of how it was on a morning much like this, perhaps, that his walk through the streets of Louisville, Kentucky was arrested by the sudden realization that the world was his to love—given, broken, blessed. . .

Has God ever given you the opposite of what you asked for, but you discovered it was good—very good?

The first time it happened, I was standing on the upper level of a hospital in Houston, looking down at the scene below. Hospital visitors wove in and out of food court lines, security guards changed shifts, and nurses sat down wearily at tables in out-of-the-way corners for a much-needed break. Though all had the appearance of being normal, there is nothing normal about being in a hospital—it feels like a place outside of time, a space between questions and answers, sickness and healing, life and death. I was standing on the other side of death, having lost Drew’s mother to COPD only minutes before. She looked so sweet and peaceful in her passing that it was hard to believe this was goodbye. Drew and I were ready to head downstairs to leave when the chaplain who’d accompanied Drew’s family in his mother’s final moments walked through the heavy swinging doors and began to engage us, helping us know what to expect next. When she found out Drew was a pastor, her face lit up. . .

I wrote the following piece to accompany my conversation with Nathan Foster on an episode of the Renovaré Life With God Podcast. It was an honor to be invited to share how writing has been a significant part of my healing journey. Being part of the Renovaré community has been a profound joy for me and Drew over the past few years. I believe their mission statement will tell you why: We imagine a world in which people’s lives flourish as they increasingly become like Jesus. If you’re curious about the work they do and want to get involved, I encourage you to check them out! Click the button below to read the article on the Renovaré website and listen to the podcast episode, which can be found at the bottom of the article. Many thanks!

During my training in counseling and psychology, I learned about the power of memory to both heal and harm us. We all contain powerful core memories from our early years that shape and inform how we respond to circumstances as adults, often without our realizing that our reaction stems from both the past and the present. The memories don’t have to be dramatic; often, it doesn’t make sense why a certain memory sticks with us in the way that it does. We know that a core memory has been triggered when something in the present brings us instantaneously into a re-experiencing of that event. We remember how it felt, tasted, smelled, sounded. We remember our shame or elation, our tears or our joy. We recall the exact words spoken over us, for good or for evil. Part of the work of healing through counseling is addressing core memories that keep us stuck in the past in a way that keeps us from moving forward. One of my core memories happened at Christmas time. . .

A simple observation: Perhaps when Jesus said, “Consider the birds,” he meant it. This morning, the birds out my window were singing with a sound that could only be described as “riot”—fully, exuberantly, unceasingly. This went on for so long under the low-bellied heaviness of a dark grey sky, pregnant with impending rain, that I began to wonder, “Is there something I missed? These birds seem to know something I do not. . .

One morning in early February, I woke to the sound a full orchestra playing “Pomp & Circumstance” in my head. This was strange. I did not like having such an endlessly droning song being the first thing to enter my consciousness. As a general rule, I do not listen to “Pomp & Circumstance” unless it is required of me as a cooperative member of society during a solemn ceremony. “This will probably pass,” I thought as I swung my legs out of bed and prepared to put it right out of my mind.

It did not pass. . .

Moments before I was swindled by a beautiful elderly lady in a black lace shawl with gleaming dark eyes who claimed to be the sole caregiver of five children and their children, I purchased a poetry print for twelve euros. Drew and I, along with my cousin and his fiancée, were at a Saturday market in Galway last November and an entire market stall devoted to Irish poetry printed in black ink on small squares of jute fabric had caught my eye. Our traveling in Ireland had been a journey of re-enchantment—a slowing down of pace and a quiet opening of the spirit. My time-dulled senses were growing sharper. I was becoming more porous, more receptive to beauty and to the land itself and all the ways its ancient stone and wind-swept hills whispered something of eternity. When I saw the particular poem print that now hangs on my wall, I knew deep down that William Butler Yeats was telling the truth, even if I had forgotten to believe it. . .

Drew’s mother used to read Psalm 121 during every airplane takeoff, and now he does the same. When we are on a flight together I look over at him and see his Bible open, his lips silently forming the words I know almost by heart. Psalm 121 is an invitation to look up from our circumstances and look towards our Protector. This is a childlike posture, for as adults we tend to think there is no one bigger or higher than ourselves and we assume that if help is to come from anywhere, it will be from within. So we keep our heads down and press on. We forget that we are children, still. . .

It is a strange and blessed thing when the person with whom you share a home, British dramas, dirty dishes, and breakfast burritos is also your pastor. So many people never get to see their pastor “in real life” on the mundane Mondays after church. But I do, and I’m glad. I watch Drew like a hawk and I can say with confidence: he’s the real deal. The intimacy and trust that comes from a day-to-day life shared together is what keeps me in my seat on Sunday mornings, genuinely open to listening to God speak to my spirit through him. And this past Sunday brought the weight of discovery that has sunk to the depths of my soul, refusing to budge until I reckon with it. . .

“Is it because we had potatoes *growing from* our rotting potatoes that we shoved in the cabinet for several months?” Drew asked.

It was a fair question. We do, in fact, tend to put organic things in refrigerator drawers and kitchen cabinets, blissfully ignoring them until the sheer stench of decay causes us to wake up a bit to the reality of entropy and do something about it. Such was the case with The Easter Potatoes, of which I had purchased an unreasonable amount because as we all know the worst thing possible on Easter is not having enough scalloped potatoes. It is now July, and I am proud to report that after checking monthly on those dank, unused potatoes then promptly forgetting the undeniable mass of roots and rot fermenting in the dark recesses of our lower cabinet. . .

Think on These Things

Now it is time for the unashamed exuberance of summer,
Leaping and frolicking across emerald hills
Like an untamed colt who has just learned to run—

Beaming like the freckling sun who celebrates her birthday each morning
With the trumpet of swans and a yellow jubilee of honey bees,
Alluring like a tangle of jasmine and orange blossom on a starry night—

Singing so convincingly it is almost as if winter never happened
And the bitter wind of fall never cut to the bone,
Almost as though the early spring rain never extinguished our last ember of hope.

Lest you forget,
Think of how much darkness it took to get here.
Think of the cold, the bitter burrowing deep into frozen soil—

The thin surround of a seed’s final exhale before surrendering to death.
Think of how long the birds stayed silent, wrapping their Feathers around fluted bones and fragile beating hearts,
Just to preserve what they sing in the light of a distant sun.

Think on these things, and be glad
—for dark, for silence, for deep—
For the countless ways that death yields to life, turning
What we hardly dared believe in the long ache of months into a dream true as roses.

Welcome, dear unimaginable summer: Long have we waited for you.

. . .

Within the past week, I have known the deep honor of journeying alongside several women who shared their stories of pain with me. Most of their stories involve a sense of betrayal—either by the people they loved or by a sense that God did not come through for them when they most needed help. I have felt this way many times, though God is doing much to heal the places in me that still ache with the question, “Where were you?”. . .

Thirteen years ago, I was living in Prague for the second semester of my junior year of college. My roommate and I spent weeks researching the most ideal (and cheapest) spring break journey which consisted of two trains and multiple buses, four flights, three nights in hostels with very mixed company, whirlwind stops in four different countries, and one sleepless night on the thinly padded bench of an overnight ferry—all to reach the final destination of our dreams: Santorini, Greece. . .

It may come as no surprise to you that I composed this poem while on an airplane, my eyes getting dryer by the minute from the unceasing stream of filtered air coming from above my seat, my heart wondering how it is that I get to gaze upon the Colorado desert—sensing in some tiny way what the resurrected Jesus might have seen when he ascended into heaven before his disciples’ watching eyes. I felt as if I was peeking over the shoulder of Jesus as I pictured how the clouds must have looked beneath his feet, watching with as the brown and scrubby land of Israel and the upturned faces of his beloved ones faded from view. Was Jesus sad when he left them?. . .

The dream that changed my life forever came to me in the summer of 2012. In my dream, I saw a blonde man with a beard standing on stage behind a wooden podium. He was preaching passionately, and I sensed that this was the man I was meant to marry. I had started dating a seminary student with blonde hair and a beard shortly before this dream, so when I awoke the next morning I excitedly shared it with my mom because I just knew it was confirmation that I would marry the man I was dating. And I did. . .

There were steaming piles of mulch and swarms of sprightly, neon-vested volunteers everywhere we looked. Drew and I had unsuspectingly pulled up to the community center this weekend to go to the gym but were met with a community-wide display of eager and altruistic mulch spreading across the parking lot. Feeling guilty that we were not among the volunteers, we parked out of sight and slunk in to the gym through the back door—justifying this decision by musing about how our property tax dollars very likely contributed to this manifold mulch-buying which means we were basically sponsoring the entire event. To make matters worse, the gym has a wall of windows that faces the parking lot, which only served to emphasize that although we were working out, we were not working outside, which was the obvious right thing to do. (Later I overheard a teenage girl saying, “I’m only doing this for the doughnuts,” which made me feel much better). . .

This Eastertide, I have the privilege of sharing some thoughts on death and resurrection for The Redbud Post, a monthly online magazine written by members of the Redbud Writers Guild. Its message strikes me as more true today than when I wrote it in March, through no brilliance of my own but because God is faithful to deepen and grow the thoughts he plants in my heart. Many times Every time I write—whether for this blog or for another publication—I write what I need to hear. I declare what I desperately need to be true. May these words serve to water the new seeds of life and resurrection that God is planting in you, even now.

November 10th, 2018 was the perfect evening. All of mine and Drew’s favorite ingredients for joy were gathered in one wedding tent: the people we love most, pizza, greenery and flowers along with drippy wax candles and blue glass goblets, words that celebrate life, and most of all, the sweet fellowship of the Trinity as we breathed and laughed and cried the breath and joy and tears of God together. It was and is the most fulfilling evening of our life together. . .