Tag: faith

God in the Nothing

May 7th, 2024

I remember sitting at my desk in my home office, looking at my boss through my computer screen. It was a series of weeks where I was stressed, drifting from the metaphorical shore. I told him, with confidence, “I feel myself drifting, but I know how to get back to shore.” I went on to explain how, usually, it takes me less time than I predict to get my bearings and feel secure again. This assurance grounded me through the busiest and most difficult seasons of work in my demanding role. It was a requirement for managing the day-to-day and keeping my eyes on what was ahead.

A year or two later, I had a very different metaphor. I was out to sea, a dark sea, with no shore in any direction, treading water. God was with me, but there was no comfort in that thought. I felt a bit like Peter when he got out of the boat, looked at Jesus, then the storm, then the waves and wind. God was there, but I felt more terror than peace. Sinking was imminent. God’s presence does not feel like enough to keep you afloat when you are in deep waters without a life raft.

The longer I stayed in this space, drifting, and treading water, I was able to put the experience into words.

“I am just a black dot on a blank page.” These were the words that most resonated with my experience. Never before had I thought to compare myself to a lonely dot. In past seasons, I might have drawn myself as a dot with a circle around me. Between me and the circle was the fullness of life, vitality of people, and joyfulness of hope. Good things were in the closed circle. They embraced me, like the life raft I did not know I was embracing. In contrast, when I look at this black dot as a stand-in for Lisa, Lisa looks all alone in the world. Somehow, currents took me out to the deep where no one swims and few boats pass.

What remains when you no longer have your circle of belonging and comforts? You have God. I knew that within the space of that blank canvas, surrounding the black dot, the white space was God. But, if you consider the image, God looks like nothing–the absence of anything. You might say that, thus far, I knew God as a circle of good surrounding me and suddenly God was without shape, just the air around me. It was painful.

In the inky black sea, God is all-surrounding. God is in the nothing and God is the nothing. God is that empty white space on the page or that silent dark sky over the water. It reminds me of Genesis 1:2, “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” Before a single bit of creation was created, God was in the nothing. This means God was the nothing. I know, that does not quite sound right.

It is not that God is in essence nothing. But God is not everything in the way we think of everything. Everything is just a tiny reflection of the fullness of God. Everything put together is still only a mere reflection. We cannot visualize this because before eyes were created and before there was any creation to lay eyes on, there was just God. No wonder the best image I can conjure is a black dot on an empty page. It takes a new mindset to settle into the nothing, and know it as the surrounding presence of God.

It reminds me of a float therapy session I was gifted where I learned to lie completely still in a dark, contained space and trust salty water to buoy me. The idea behind this “therapy” method is to create an environment for relaxation without stimulation. After my session, the woman at the front desk told me, “It takes multiple sessions to get used to.” I don’t think so! It turns out the absence of all stimulation while contained is…terrifying and not particularly relaxing! The experience of trusting God’s presence in the absence of all other stimuli is similar.

God’s created content populates the earth and stimulates our senses everyday so we can see God. As examples, we see God in the flowers, the sun, the variety of fish and birds, crashing waves, and the faces of our loved ones. We understand that no created being or thing is God. However, these things translate the “nothingness” of God into concrete objects for our senses to experience, even if these experiences are just a slice of God’s creativity. It is too much for our brains to understand that before any of it was there, God was. God is eternal, not created, and, therefore, original. There, in the nothing, was nothing but God.

I am in the process of reprogramming my brain and body to receive God this way. I know Jesus’s take on earthly blessings is that they do not define our favor with God. But, I realize, in practice, I still expect a short list of specific blessings to experience God. If you take away my list of what feels essential for my sense of well-being, I experience what feels like emptiness, not divine presence. Because I have transferred my understanding of goodness on to things that God gives and not onto God’s presence alone, I struggle. I have had to learn in deepening ways that God’s everything is, in a sense, best reflected in the nothing.

Jesus hints at this all throughout the gospels. Material stuff is not bad, but it is not the goal. Fasting is a related spiritual practice. Through it, deprivation from food can become closeness to God in a counterintuitive way. I do not mean that suffering and deprivation are holier than enjoyment and fulfillment. After all, God’s word uses the banquet table feast as a frequent metaphor for the kingdom. I mean that our deepest enjoyment and fulfillment are in God, not the things God created. However, it initially feels like starvation and death to be deprived of our creaturely needs. It requires rewiring our brains, body, and spirit to accept a reality of God’s existence and presence surpassing anything else.

In The Critical Journey, Hagberg and Guelph describe a stage and process on the faith journey called “The Wall.” Here, a person is moving from experiencing God in the everything, to wrestling with God in the nothing. It may not be that the person has nothing like Job, but the person feels a nothingness. It is a place of prolonged struggle and silence from God. What looks like the end of all we have known, potentially even the end of our relationship with God, is, actually, a place of depth and transformation.

The Wall comes after a life of action and activity for God brings us to a place where what we have done and known no longer works for new challenges. Our paradigm is beginning to shift because The Wall spurs us from an outward to an inward journey or our inward journey spurs us toward The Wall. Pete Scazzero, author of Emotionally Healthy Spirituality says that most Evangelicals do not make it through The Wall because of the limitations within our image of God. We are very comfortable with the God of VBS, devotions, and small groups, but it is very hard to grasp the God of suffering, silence, and nothing. When you slow down from all the frantic activity of ministry, the challenge is to know God apart from all of our constructs.

The irony of The Wall is that you feel like you are losing your faith, but you are journeying deeper. Learning about “The Wall” has helped me walk beside others, knowing that what looks like a spiritual stall-out has the potential to be their deepest spiritual wrestling thus far, as long as they stay engaged with God (however that looks). It is a sign of spiritual maturity and growth on the lifelong journey. It looks like we might be losing our bearings, but we are losing our training wheels. With patience and perseverance, we are actually drawing closer to God and learning to ride free.

We become like teenagers who want to slam the door in God’s face. God welcomes us to do this like our mothers who knew their presence brought safety during our struggles of adolescence. The process looks chaotic and feels fraught, but an adolescent is not hopeless. A transformation into maturity is taking place. We have to wait with one another, patiently, to make it to the other side. In time, we can go back to serving and doing things for God with a deeper understanding about ourselves and God. First, intense transformations require space and time.

God as “nothing,” it is not about striving for asceticism. It is not necessarily holier to have nothing than to have God’s tangible blessings. Nothingness is not the ultimate reality. God is reality. With Religious Studies as one of my undergraduate majors, I spent a lot of my coursework studying Eastern religions and pondering them as a Christian. The Buddhist pursuit to know nothing as the true reality has a hint of truth. You do know the truest reality when the circle around the dot is taken away. But from the Christian perspective, what you find there is our eternal God–in the beginning, before creation, and in creation. Union with God, made possible for us through Christ, is the truest reality we can experience.

Sometimes in the Christian life, you will know God through the beauty around you coupled with a sense of deep joy and contentment in your soul. Other times, you will learn and see that when all of that is gone, you are okay. You are safe in deep waters with no sight of the shore because you are with the One who Hovers over the Deep. This is the truest reality to which everything points. We tend to miss the forest for the trees. We miss Christ for the bread. We miss God the Father for the good gifts he gives. We miss the Spirit for the miracle. We miss God in the nothing.
Dealing with Delay

April 23rd, 2024
15 years ago, I was 9 months pregnant with our second child while my husband and I awaited responses from a handful of PhD programs he had applied to. While it was not a surprise that we would spend the year waiting for our future to unfold, it was complicated by answers like “waitlisted” or “alternate candidate.” Even though the entire year was spent pregnant with anticipation (in more ways than one), it was not until 9 days before my due date that we had clarity about which state we would move to in a manner of months.

8 days later I had an emergency c-section. It was not the plan that I would spend extra days in the hospital and have a driving restriction for a month, but it was beyond our control. A week later, Jeff walked in his graduation ceremony with his Master of Divinity. All four family members made it to the graduation. I wore whatever pants fit one week post c-section and spent a lot of the ceremony nursing in the bathroom.

Within weeks, it was time for home hunting in California, but we couldn’t find anything. We had a temporary housing option that fell through and eventually found a month-to-month rental less than two weeks before move-out day. When we arrived in California, we stayed in this rental, boxes unpacked, taking care of a 3-year-old and a newborn, while we searched for houses. We were eventually able to make an offer on our 7th anniversary, August 24, 2009.

No sooner did we put in the offer than Bank of America announced record delays with closing. Ours became the longest of our realtor’s career. We moved into our new home on Halloween. By this time, we were worse for the wear, having been in a state of constant readiness and frequent delay for the year. Jeff famously tells the story of how we were washing and reusing plasticware and were down to just a few as we waited for the keys with our dishes still packed from the move three months prior. The memory of trying to wash a plastic, disposable, spaghetti sauce-stained plate is salient.

Delay is hard and it makes little sense in the moment. I still cannot make sense of that particular delay in that season. It eventually landed us in a home and city we have lived in almost 15 years, but it seemed to have caused more trauma and hardship than necessary along the way. At age 29, my body and brain just absorbed it all and moved on.

Now, at 43, my brain and body have more wear and tear, and our family has been in another season of constant delay.
- I left a job 15 months ago with a deep sense of what I was meant to do next, but no doors have opened.
- Our daughter had a clear sense of her top choice for college and pursued that choice through an early application, but the responses have been “deferred” and “waitlisted.”
- We landed on another college as the backup plan, but as soon as we were ready to submit the deposit, the price was raised.
- Due to record FAFSA processing delays in what is being called the most chaotic year to apply for colleges, she graduates from high school in about six weeks and we are still waiting for things beyond our control.
We have no clear picture of where we are headed. The extended period of delay that I am already in has helped me cope a bit better this time around, but it still brings up a range of emotions, including fear.

Delay can come despite your best efforts.

Delay can come in unprecedented ways.

Even dependable timelines people have been able to count on for generations can fly out the window.

It is not fun. You feel like the anomaly and live out a sense of a perfect storm.

This latest delay season has caused me to reflect quite a bit on what it means to deal with delay. To start, I believe delay has a variety of agents that come into play.

Agent # 1 – God

God may bring about delay to hold us back from something before the proper time. The most obvious example is the intricate timing that went into the long-awaited arrival of Jesus, the Messiah. Jesus could have come at any time in history, but he was born to Mary at the appointed time determined by God the Father. Simeon and Anna attested to this in Luke 2:22-38 after their life-long wait.

Agent #2 – The Enemy

The enemy brings delay as a tactic to fatigue, discourage, and make it appear as if he can thwart the plans of God. In 1 Thessalonians 2:17-18, Paul writes to the church saying he wanted to come to see them, but Satan blocked their way. In the Book of Job, Satan worked on Job to see if an extreme amount of hardship would wear him down to turn on God. He is the enemy of goodness and thriving. When delay is really harming and testing you, especially if you begin to believe lies like, “I’m worthless, ” “I’m a failure,” “I don’t deserve to live,” there is enemy attack that does not come from God. God would never delay something in your life with an intent to bring harm to you.

Agent #3 – Our Choices

Our human decisions that go against the will of God can bring about delay. Jonah was given an assignment to preach to Ninevah so they could turn to God, but his prejudice and disdain for them as a people led him to run in the opposite direction and get on a boat. God had to send a fish to swallow him as an intervention to get him back on track.

Agent #4 – Choices of Others

The choices of others can bring delay. In Genesis 37, Joseph had a dream that his brothers would bow down to him. They did not like the dream so they worked to get rid of him, selling him off. Joseph then had a hard and complicated life, but eventually rose to a position of power that allowed him to save not only his brothers, but all of the people of Israel from famine. Without knowing it, they ended up bowing down to Joseph in Egypt. God did not will for Joseph to be sold and falsely reported dead to his father. God did not will for him to be falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife. God redeemed it so that it would become the pathway to God’s people surviving famine.

Any and all agents could be a part of any given situation of delay. So, how do we discern and deal with it?

Usually we start with the positive, but today I want to start with the lesser discussed negative. First, we understand that God’s will can be interrupted and temporarily thwarted. Jesus tells us to pray for things to be on earth as it is in heaven. God’s will is reflected in heaven; when and how that breaks into earth is a fluid matter that involves our prayerful participation and obedience. While we like to blanket everything as “God’s will,” the imprecision of this statement can be damaging to people going through delays in seeing the will of God for their life. For example, we know it is God’s will for children to thrive, so when children suffer in poverty or abuse, this is not God’s will for them. When people are not healed on earth, it is not because God wills them sickness or death. We know his will for them by considering their reality in heaven. There is no sickness, sadness, or death there.

Second, we understand that God is sovereign over all of it. This, I believe, is what is intended to be conveyed by the harmful “God’s will” statements. Those statements are just too imprecise. It is not a matter of God willing terrible things for us. It is a matter of God being the true Sovereign and ruler over the world, meaning that even though not all the circumstances are good, God will work it out for good. The clash between terrible circumstances and God’s sovereignty is because of Satan’s temporary status as the ruler of this world. We live in a broken world, where Satan has been given domain to wreak havoc, but his timetable is limited and his power weaker than the one who will put him in his place. Therefore, we know that while our pain and circumstances may be the result of evil, they can be used by God for some good redemptive purpose for us and for others, like in the life of Jospeh.

Third, we fast and pray. We fast and pray because of the clash between two realities where we live–on the one hand, God’s sovereignty, and on the other hand, the enemy’s schemes. We need the full armor of God to deal with the opposition. Jesus says some dark powers only leave through fasting and prayer (Mt 17:21). We will have to fast for some difficult circumstances. We also fast and pray to align our hearts to God so that we can hear if there is any sin in us that we have not confessed and so that we can learn dependence on God more than anything, even daily bread.

Fourth, we ask the community of faith to wait with us in prayer and discernment. We can wait alone. Jesus was alone in his final hours on his path to the cross. Christian community is meant not to fix our problems, but to help us absorb them this side of heaven, in a posture of shared waiting. It can be particularly hard if you do not have a community to wait with, or if your community does not have a robust theology of suffering and waiting. Job’s friends certainly did not understand the delay of the Lord to remedy Job’s circumstances, which created more pain.

Lastly, I want to mention that there are indirect influences that cause delay. These realities do not necessarily have particular human or supernatural agency, though they can intersect with these powers. They have, in some ways, a life of their own and are pervasive in our world. For example, when Adam and Eve brought a freewill choice of disobedience into God’s creation, it inaugurated all kinds of brokenness beyond human agency that affects our lives – disease, barrenness, pestilence, natural disaster, etc. These are naturally occurring causes. They stem from the nature of our now imperfect world and its effect on our bodies and planet.

Then there are systemic causes. Systems are broken in our world. They start with human agency on an individual level and become complex systems of brokenness that continue to perpetuate a lack of thriving and goodness. You know a system is broken when it fails to meet its stated good purpose. For example our health care system does not contribute to the health and wellbeing of all. Our immigration system is painstakingly slow and excessively complicated. Our education system damages children as much as it educates them. While you can often find people making selfish, corrupt choices in systems, removing one person from a system typically will not resolve the brokenness. I heard one author call this the “principality” of systems (Ep 6:12). If you have ever had a friend attempt the process for a U.S. green card, you understand the delay and principalities of systems. When you stand on the other end of a broken system, experiencing delay, it can be crushing.

At times, when the delay in our lives is caused by no visible or singular agent to point to, it can become the most painstaking and lead to despair. Typically, in our humanness, we try to find some particular agent to blame.

If you are receiving messages telling you that delay is simply a matter of God’s will, I am sorry. God is in the picture, but not all waiting is because God willed it. It is a complex mix of multiple agents and dueling realities. It is about the world God made and the brokenness of humanity. It is about the Lord’s Prayer, where all of the agents and factors are named.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

My intent in acknowledging the many aspects and agents of delay is to shed light on something complex and unseen. There is nothing wrong with you if you are experiencing delay. It does not indicate that you have been forsaken by God, though it can feel that way. Let us hold space together so we can hold fast together when we experience seasons and circumstances of delay.

In the last few years, I have begun to pay more careful attention to the process of each bud arriving for spring. The more I tune into the process, the longer the wait feels.
Transplant Shock and Waiting to Bloom

April 9th, 2024

It was two springs ago that I brought home a gardenia tree aglow with bright, white, fragrant buds. It was gorgeous. The occasion was to celebrate the end of a long season, punctuated by breakthroughs and new beginnings. My intent was to look at it every spring when it bloomed as a reminder of God’s faithfulness and goodness.

In a matter of days, it shriveled up completely. Every flower, and eventually every leaf, died. I called the nursery to ask what happened and they told me, “It’s either dead or it’s in transplant shock. You won’t know which one until next year, but just keep treating it like it’s alive and you’ll see.”

It was at that moment that transplant shock became my go-to metaphor for everyone and everything in the post-pandemic world, including myself.

This gardenia has a prime spot on our patio in a large decorative pot. Though I was committed to seeing out its destiny, when it became too ugly to justify its occupancy, I pruned every last wilted leaf and brown flower from the tree in an attempt to eliminate the worst blight. The next month, while preparing the patio for a party, my husband suggested we might want to toss the tree. I told him it might not be dead. He looked incredulous. I understood his skepticism. There was nothing about it that connoted a potential for a comeback.

The next week it developed one small green shoot coming out of an otherwise dry branch.

As the months passed, I impatiently and intently studied every green shoot that arrived on my prophetic little transplant-shocked tree and treated them like an answered prayer. It was a visible example of slow growth and the faith to believe something was happening in the soil and roots.

One day, I realized the best, new growth was coming from the neck of the tree and that it was time to prune all the old branches back to the trunk. This was hard. It was not pretty as it was, but at least it was in a shape reminiscent of its initial beauty. Unready to commit to such a drastic action, I pruned everything except for one branch which contained the last remaining evidence of the tree’s original vitality. I was foolishly romanticizing that the new growth and the old branch could somehow meet up and create a pleasant shape.

Months later, I looked at the tree. It had a healthy amount of new foliage at the neck and that stupid-looking singular branch jutting out from its side. I needed to prune the whole branch if I wanted to support the new growth. With equal part reluctance and faith, I took a gardening sheer to it and let it go. There stood an unimpressive and awkward, albeit healthy, tree. It resembled a drawing a first grader might create of a stickman with hair coming straight out of the stick body. No head. No arms. It was nothing like the beautiful, fragrant full-sized topiary I had brought home from the nursery more than a year before.

Stickman lingered and activated my impatience, causing me to study the tree less frequently until, eventually, spring returned. One year after I brought it home, thankfully, it was no longer just a body and a neck; the branches had regrown. Upon the branches, new green leaves made an appearance with renewed vitality. I was content to know we were moving in a positive trajectory. However, I was disappointed that no single bud of flower appeared.

It would be a flowerless spring. Branches and leaves would have to suffice.

I held my breath as winter turned to spring, knowing another year had passed. This month, I look out the doorway and, at first glance, the tree looks about the same as a year ago. Not bad, but will there ever be flowers again?

One sunny day, in between gloomy days, I half-heartedly fertilized it. There was no need to water it as strange, wet weather patterns continue to unfold in Southern California–atmospheric rivers, flash floods, and snow-topped mountains reappearing on Easter. If the sun wishes to come out long enough to warm the tree before the heat of summer, it has the potential to be beautiful and fragrant again. It could thrive.

The other day, from my dining chair, I noticed new, light-green sprouts emerging from darker green leaves. Fertilizer, water, and heat are working and invite me to hope and watch with regularity. Now a part of my morning ritual, just as sure as my cup of coffee, I step outside onto the cold, wet patio to look. Just shy of two years since the transplant shock that resulted in apparent death and definite dormancy, I am fully engaged with renewed hope in the plight of my little tree.

This year, tucked within the light-green growth, 16 blooms are waiting to open.

Waiting, waiting, every day.

And one day, when I step downstairs to brew a cup of coffee, at least one fragrant, white bud will be waiting for me.
People of Abundance in Systems of Scarcity

April 6th, 2024
We are people of abundance.

Christ looked at a hungry crowd, broke five loaves and two fish, and fed a multitude. Later, he broke his body and shed his blood to feed the hungry world.

The Triune God is infinite and eternal with no beginning and no end, the source of all life and creation. Under our infinite Creator, there can be no such thing as scarcity.

But we live in this world, which, since the fall of humanity (Genesis 3) has included sin. With sin comes competition, hoarding, lording over, and oppression. After the fall, human relationships lost their perfect harmony and these relational distortions began to impact human systems from the most fundamental (marriage and family) to the most complex (cultures, countries, institutions).

As Christians, we live stuck between the two realities. We are people of abundance living in systems of scarcity.

We believe in a God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalm 50:10). We understand generosity and sharing are biblical values (Acts 2). But the lie of scarcity is constantly chasing after us and embedded in the systems we live and work within.

Competition over resources became normative in the human story, even while it is built on an illusion that there is not enough to go around. Each person grabs and takes and steals and strives to survive because we refuse to live by God’s created order. One person hoards and another person has to steal, but God gives to us so we can share with each person according to their need. God then replenishes and refills that which we give away. But we do not trust others to give back to us if we give away, so we feel justified in participating in the scarcity game.

Because sin moves from individuals into systems, the lie of scarcity becomes the bedrock of systemic injustice. Unfortunately, even institutions set up to give out resources or to give away Jesus himself are layered with models of scarcity within and the evil thought that there is not enough to go around. We bury it in “common sense” practices called practicality and frugality. We even dare to call it stewardship. But, search the system to see if anyone is fearful, if anyone’s needs are going unmet, if anyone is lacking dignity, and you will know that you are not operating in godliness. I would be hard-pressed to find a system this side of heaven that does not have at least one, if not all, of these characteristics.

Why did Jesus tell us to pray for daily bread? God’s systems are not like ours. God is not like a socialist government who wants to give each person one loaf of bread. God is not like a capitalist society where each person has to fend for their own bread based on their individual resources to grow capital. Instead, picture God in heaven listening to all the prayers for bread, giving enough for everyone to have bread, as long as we all pass it along and move it freely from one to another. God’s ecosystem is communal. If he wanted it to be individual (just us and God) he would distribute all resources equally. Instead he has created a world where there is enough, and he asks us to represent him on earth in how we handle these resources.

As soon as we begin to tell ourselves that resources are limited, we are in danger. Every impulse to hoard instead of sharing what we have when we have it is based on that same lie. It is surprising how much these lies can influence us.

I believe in abundance with all of my heart, but when I look at systems of scarcity, I begin to grumble. I feel oppressed. I direct my anger at the people withholding instead of bending my knee to the One Who Provides. Putting my focus on the system of scarcity instead of the source of Abundance invites scarcity into my heart, both to rule over me and to shape me. Rather than resisting the false systems, I become tempted to replicate them. Rather than ignoring their false powers, I let them dictate my worth and value. It takes everything in me to realign and resist so that my checkbook is not just for me and my worth is not defined by my paycheck (or lack thereof).

Here are some lies and truths to help us examine our hearts and actions.

Lie #1 – Resources are limited.

Truth #1 – God has unlimited resources. Your resources come from God, the infinite source, not you. (Psalm 50:10)

Lie #2 – If we were treated in the spirit of scarcity, then it’s “fair” for others to go through the same.

Truth #2 – God’s economy operates on generosity and the equal dignity of each person, not “fairness.” (Matthew 20:1-16)

Lie #3 – Resources are just between me and God.

Truth #3 – Resources are meant to be communal. God gives them to us in differing amounts so that we move them where there is need. (Act 2:45)

Lie #4 – If I spend what God has given me, there will be nothing left.

Truth #4 – Resources are meant to be stewarded, not hoarded. When resources are used, God renews resources both directly from him and through others because he is the source. (1 Kings 17:12-14)

Lie #5 – My worth is determined by my net worth as portrayed by the system of scarcity.

Truth #5 – Every person has non-quantifiable worth according to their status as an image-bearer of God. (Genesis 1:27-30)

These lies and truths present a real challenge for us as believers. We knows the truths, but we also believe the lies, which means we have some choices to make.
1. We can choose the most depraved option and embrace scarcity all the time and watch out for just ourselves and our own. (Fortunately, I do not know many people who do this).
2. We can embrace scarcity first and abundance second once we reach a comfortable threshold so that minimal sacrifice or faith is required. In other words, we can see ourselves as the meaingful source (not God). When our abundance is obvious, we can give. (Ex: When I get a raise, I will use it to help others in need)
3. We can embrace the better option and practice generosity within the constraints of systems of scarcity. In other words, we can be individually generous out of whatever we have been given ownership over even when there is no obvious abundance in a limited system. (Ex: As a manager, I will use the funds in my department to give raises to my employees even though expenses are tight)
4. We can embrace the best option and turn to prayer, faith, and trust that if we release resources, God will also release them to us. We can buck the distorted system, live beyond its constraints, and reject its false messages. (Ex: I will spend my last penny for my neighbor and trust God to care for me)
I am working on moving from option 3 to option 4 and believing, in faith, in the God of Abundance rather than bending the knee to the gods of scarcity. It is a daily battle. I understand the illusion that we call reality, but I’m trying to live more deeply out of the reality that some call an illusion.

Photo: I bought these flowers a year ago as an act of faith and hope in God’s abundance and promises. Jesus tells us flowers are God’s sign that God cares for and clothes creation. (Mt 6:28)
Nearly Naked and Trying Not to Be Afraid

February 9th, 2024

Have you ever studied a scripture that you could not get out of your head? One that became so clear and so pressing that you had to go on and obey it no matter how inconvenient and abnormal it seemed. I like to think those who follow Jesus are always trying to obey the scriptures, but at certain times, there are invitations that grab ahold of us and just will not let go.

This happened to me a couple of years ago when I noticed, in a new way, Jesus’ radical requirements for sending out his disciples on mission in Mark 6:8-9, “Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but not an extra shirt.” Familiar words. A simple reading allows us to have a basic understanding. They were supposed to rely on others and God, resisting self-reliance.

Profound as it is, this observation might normally manifest in something like a self-check. Am I growing in relying on God and others? Am I too reliant on myself? But this bothered me. I began to realize that I wanted to experience the power and authority that the disciples exercise. Not because I wanted to be powerful, but because the world needs supernatural help–to cast out demons, heal the sick, and receive the good news in the authority of Jesus’ name. I have been told that all believers have Christ’s authority during many sermons and Sunday school lessons. Yet, quite honestly, my ministry hardly resembles that of the disciples. I work through all the vulnerable and dependent parts of ministry and get them out of the way during my fundraising and personal prayer times so I can arrive ready with my skills, my tools, and the authority of my employer. I bring my PCard. I do some good. But I hardly feel like the authentic expression of the power of Jesus on campus or in the world when I do that.

Why? This elicited in me a deep desire and curiosity. Is this a mindset issue? Or something else?

When I read the words of Jesus in Mark I understand that the power and authority of the cosmic God is passed from Jesus to his disciples. That is dangerous. It was dangerous enough when incarnated into Christ and now in Mark 6, he’s giving it to sinful, scruffy humans? How on earth can this be so?

I condense this phenomenon down to two key words. Jesus sends out his disciples in vulnerable dependence.

They are in danger among the elements (no extra clothing), in need of provision, and risk rejection. They are depending on the power of God and the hospitality of others while dressed like shepherds with just a staff. (This uniform cannot be accidental).

I simplify this picture to myself with my two-word refrain.

vul·ner·a·ble, adj, susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm

de·pend·ence, noun, the state of relying on or being controlled by someone or something else

Putting the two together, Jesus asks his disciples to go out on a trip into strange towns and homes susceptible to harm and relying on, even being controlled by, someone else. In this case, they were relying on strangers and the power and authority of Christ in them.

The shepherds, sent out in the name of Jesus, are also the sheep, lovingly protected and controlled by the staff of their own Shepherd amidst the dangers of the journey.

How terrifying and how beautiful.

Perhaps this sounds crazy and unappealing, but then we have to consider the brilliant quality controls within this model. God’s antidote to human corruption of power is to require that his colossal power and authority, when entrusted to humans, come in a vulnerable package, dependent on others. First a baby, then a crucified carpenter, and, finally, disciples with just a staff and the clothes on their back.

But do we take this seriously? It is no wonder that so many efforts in ministry now have abuses of power and authority connected. How often do we come to preach the gospel in authority given to us by someone other than God and in our self-reliance instead of in the vulnerable dependence Jesus laid out for the disciples? (And we insist upon some fruitful measure of success that neither Jesus in Mark 6:5 nor his disciples in 6:11 are expected to obtain).

And so I obeyed. I undressed. I left my PCard, my email address, my title, and my monthly ministry expenses behind. Ministry has never been comfortable, but I decided to surrender the comforts I had acquired along the journey. My success. My reputation. My significance.

I was worried about who I would become if I kept going with power and the extra tunic. I longed for the kind of pure power and authority that can only come from God, unblemished to heal the world. Because who am I to try to insist that I have Christ’s authority while tucking money in my belt under my overcoat?

It has been a little more than a year. I’m still lightly clothed, vulnerable, and exposed and it’s the hardest thing I have ever done.

Yet, I trust that this journey of decreasing visible treasure is also increasing something invisible, powerful and eternal.

Photo: Oxford, England

September 2022
Not on Our Watch: Let’s Refuse to Let Our Kids Slip Out of Our Faith Communities

January 25th, 2024

Last weekend our firstborn turned 18. Just like they said, I blinked, and it happened. Thousands of imperceptible changes over millions of seconds amounted to a newborn becoming an emerging adult. I have long anticipated this transition with trepidation, knowing it had the potential to crack my heart into a million pieces. I did not anticipate that while my daughter was moving from child to adult, society at large would simultaneously undergo changes as traumatic and disruptive as adolescence. American culture and politics. Societal expectations. Faith communities. Each, unveiling a sudden new shape and tone. Typically, a child’s maturation moves at a rate faster than the rate of culture change. This allows for stability and allows trusted adults to function as guides from the wisdom of our life experiences. But in the last ten years, I feel aware of rapid shifts, without enough time to find that sense of equilibrium, leaving adults as turned around as anyone.

With 25 years in a movement of faith among college students and now two kids beginning to reach the target age group, having a graduating senior is a full-circle moment for me and my husband. Whatever happens next, we join all parents of faith, past and present, in our hope that the faith we nurtured sticks. It could be now or fifty years from now, but we long for the seeds we planted to produce fruit, and we will not stop praying because we believe a relationship with Christ is paramount for life and flourishing. However, we are not naive. The big leap parents used to prepare for while sending kids out the front door to college is a thing of the past. Whether to school, friends, or even church, we send our daughter regularly to environments where the case for genuine faith is thinly reinforced and scarcely visible. One big leap would imply firmly standing on one side of a sturdy canyon, rather than one that is being chipped away.

I remember when I was her age. My church had a program for graduating seniors to gather as a small cohort and prepare us for the challenges to faith that would occur in college. In 1998, this was strategic. As we completed the program, each got a giant book, A Ready Defense, organized by interrogations of Christianity and apologist Josh McDowell’s comprehensive responses. I utilized this book and kept it on my shelf all four years away at college. This type of programming worked perfectly for me. I came into my faith, felt confident and comfortable even while taking classes that were supposed to threaten it, and grew as a disciple of Jesus in a community of peers by choosing to join a campus fellowship.

This approach now works for few if any students. Most kids will not make it to college before they encounter significant difficulty engaging their faith and begin to question it, but apologetics answers questions they do not have from a world they do not live in and assumes too much about their formation and experiences. They go to church with a sea of other kids in the same boat. We are encouraged to allow young people to have healthy questions, and they do, but in a fog as thick as pea soup. The questioning outweighs the clarity at a developmental stage too young for such instability.

I estimate that it begins around the tween years. Our kids are slipping out the back door of home and church while we try to provide formative stability. You may not notice because they are still sleeping in their beds and sometimes still sitting in the pews. But, the walls are made of paper and they are increasingly absorbing what is outside more than what is inside. This phenomenon is not primarily due to an uptick in the willful disobedience of children or a new drive for freedom. It is not even due to the deconstruction that captured my generation of peers and below. It is happening because our formation in the home and church cannot outrun the counter-formation of the culture. We are not evolving side-by-side or in tandem, faith with culture and culture with faith. We are not sharpening one another. As a culture, we are at war with one another and ourselves and have become so fragmented that the dance of Christ redeeming culture and culture sharpening the tools for the mission which fueled so much of my life and ministry has an ever-fainter tune. Steady erosions have brought us into mudslide and flood conditions. I trained my whole life for this moment, but I never trained for a flood!

No matter one’s faith orientation, parents generally prefer to remain a primary influence in the lives of their kids while we raise them and to select other trusted adults for reinforcement and safety. The eroding of that place of parental and chosen adult influence isn’t a rare phenomenon happening in a few extreme cases. While it seems an obvious and overused punching bag, the reality of the internet and social media is at play with the culture reinforcing its algorithm. Here I confess, as a lifelong rule follower, my irritation that I have abided by them, studying and preparing for the points of vulnerability, but, like Jumanji, forces have interfered to change the rules and the board mid-play. It feels like caretakers of children have collectively drawn a metaphorical “Hot Lava” card.

I will leave it to social scientists to distill all the influences converging to create these conditions and stay in my lane as a mother and minister to offer a maternal and spiritual concern. From here, I declare, “The single greatest challenge of our current time and context is the mission to our children and families.” On the one hand, select ministries have always focused on the family, but what I am seeing is a need for something on the macro level. Communal, where we all lean in with our needs, not just individual to each family unit. An all-play. A new mission movement. Like the PTA rallying the whole community to provide care for a school, but instead, it is parents of faith working all together and praying all together for all of our kids and their whole generation.

In our distraction to grow our churches and fill the plates, an entire generation of babies dedicated to God in the same churches move from slipping out the back door to falling through the hole in the floor. How much more can we take? I cannot ignore it. The cry of my heart is to gather the other parents and say, “Not on our watch!” It is an S.O.S., far beyond the many human solutions already being thrown at the problem. I believe it requires spiritual resources given to us in the authority of Jesus. It is time to stand in that spiritual authority and refuse to let forces beyond us claim our children before they even come of age to decide their faith on their own. Who is with me?

Pictured: My first Easter as a mom with my daughter.
Writing without Lines

January 12th, 2024
If you know me, you might be surprised to hear I feel nervous about writing and publishing my thoughts. I am known to be less than shy about sharing them and typing them has usually come easily. At the same time, metaphorically speaking, I have never been so far out in the deep, without a view of the shore. I have never before written without lines that form a box from which to know my limitations.

I love clarity. Clarity is my friend (and your friend too) because clarity is caring. When things are unclear, it is much easier to get hurt or hurt others. The expansive lack of clarity I am living in leaves me uncharacteristically quiet and cautious.

For example,
1. I have no clarity on who my next employer will be.
2. I have no clarity on when I will begin working for an employer again.
3. I have no clarity on whether I should become self-employed instead of seeking an employer.
4. I like writing, but I do not have clarity on a topic for which I am uniquely called and qualified to write.
5. I do not have clarity on where we should go to church.
6. I do not have clarity on where we should live.
I am writing from this space of limited clarity.
1. I know I heard the voice of God call me to a new season.
2. I know that call came with a sense of who I am and what I uniquely bring.
3. I know where I feel a tug to use my gifts and talents and where I do not.
4. I know God to be Provider (even if I wobble in my faith moment by moment).
5. I know God will not abandon me.
6. I know God will lift me up in God’s time.
What about you? Where do you have clarity? Where do you feel unclear? How do you feel when you have to exist in a space without clear lines? Is it freeing or terrifying?

As we enter 2024, my commitment is to be brave, explore the world beyond the lines, and see where it leads me.

A “burning bush” I saw in May 2022 at University of Washington in a moment that helped me step out of the lines.
Moms Are Not Okay

December 21st, 2023

At the beginning of 2020, I had everything I wanted–a job I love, two happy kids, and a husband making an exciting career move. Beyond my home, local families from the kids’ school community enhanced our lives. My colleagues inspired me daily. I was growing, learning, and enjoying life. While raising my kids far from my parents was always a source of pain, I finally had enough income to get the four of us tickets to my home state without excessive financial strain.

Then, life changed in March 2020, and I have not been able to regain equilibrium since. With numerous subsequent losses, disorientation has lingered and grown. For a while, I believed that this was just me. Other women seemed to recover from the pandemic and resume a sense of normality while our family remained in flux. In the last year, however, I have come to a realization. I am not alone. The majority of women I know are not okay. What exactly is going on?

Early in my pandemic disequilibrium, I attended a Zoom prayer meeting with three women. Kim, with six grown kids of her own, told me, “One thing I do not regret is the time I spent praying for my kids in those mom’s prayer groups at the schools.” Without any other levers to pull for greater sanity, I took her comment as sage advice. I recommitted my time to the weekly mom’s prayer meeting, now located on Zoom, that began years ago with a group of elementary school moms. Before too long, I had started three new prayer groups, one at church and two for my kids’ new schools. I am not sorry that I took Kim’s advice. And with my recommitment to gathering moms for prayer, I now have a broader data set to draw from. Moms are not okay. In my observations, some themes are contributing to our aches and pains.

Faith Community – Difficulties in our faith communities cause stress on the family and make youth group offerings strained or slim. Commitment to our kids growing up in a faith environment does not necessarily translate to receiving the support we need. Youth groups stopped meeting during the pandemic, and our kids may not have rejoined or connected. Churches are struggling with relational strains, transitions, budgets, and, in some cases, a full-on crisis, making church a stressful category in life instead of the community support system it was for previous generations. On top of this, the pandemic accelerated the breaking point for passing faith from one generation to the next. As kids hit their tweens and teens, they often see church as something they do with their family, but that has no relevance or future for them and their peers.

Generational challenges – Our kids lived through a pandemic that migrated more of their social life and academics online while trapped at home, giving older kids almost 24/7 access to the internet and social media. Teens report mounting pressures to succeed in a system with no guaranteed reward or outcome for effort. With extreme costs and oversaturated admissions pools, even straight-A students are not guaranteed that hard work will equal acceptance at a “good” college. These factors all lead GenZ tweens and teens to increased mental health struggles, and stress out their parents.

Whereas previous generations may have felt boxed in by strict societal expectations, this generation has fewer boxes, which can cause its own kind of stress and anxiety. Parents are navigating new territory. Whereas 5-10 years ago, young people sought freedom by shedding the constraints of societal spaces, GenZ and Gen Alpha kids will not be oriented by deconstruction. Instead, they are increasingly floating around in the ether with nothing to hold onto. They live in rubble. Of course, they can’t identify it as such because it’s all they’ve known. Disoriented parents watch this rapid generational shift unfold without the resources and structures that were there for us. A sense of shame ensues in the absence of clear measures to point to the success for our parenting efforts.

Unsustainable systems – When I received a promotion into my last job in 2017 with a seven and eleven-year-old, I knew I was joining a small cadre of women in breaking our organization’s barriers. A female predecessor told me the job was nearly impossible if your kids were too young. Maintaining and functioning in that role, which I loved, required optimal conditions. I was fortunate to have a six-month sabbatical before beginning the job to gain energy and establish family rhythms that worked for me. A few years later, when the pandemic hit and the announcement for remote K-12 education came out, I knew I instantaneously lost my thriving. The suboptimal conditions would last almost an entire school year, directly impacting all families. When I talk to women my age, we universally understand that our jobs exist in systems not built for us. We are intelligent and savvy, and by mid-career, we figured out how to make accommodations on our end to succeed. Still, since 2020, the obstacle course has become more strenuous, and without the system changing entirely, it seems impossible to continue. I used to say that I felt like I was just trying to get through the obstacle course of my day, which was strenuous enough. Then, after 2020, it felt like people were throwing balls aimed at my head that I had to dodge while running and jumping through the course. It was exhausting to make it through every day on that type of alert. Many women I know have taken career breaks, and others want to but cannot afford it financially, leaving them stuck in this cycle.

Caretaker burnout – Women are not the exclusive caretakers of our families, but there is no denying that we take on more of the burden in most cases. There is a saying that “a mother is only as happy as her least happy child.” Truer words were never spoken. With a lack of solid faith community support, increased generational trauma for our kids, and strain over career sustainability, women are burning out. Imbalanced hormones, dysregulated nervous systems, and off-kilter relationships abound, but healing is expensive and time-consuming. When everything is breaking at once, which aspect do you tend to? Whose needs come first? Are some things shattered to the point of being irreparable? These questions call for new skills, paradigms, and resources for many of us.

There is no space within our faith communities, family systems, and work lives to accommodate the work of healing. In an environment where you face daily threats, you cannot carve out a space for restorative pathways on your own. At some point, the threat has to relent so you can move toward repair and thriving, but these days, dangers seem more pervasive and impactful.

Some may wonder, as I have, how this can be so bad when, for generations across time and place, women continue to face many, if not more, instances of trauma. I speculate that we may be in a perfect generational storm. While I am not describing any challenges that women in strained socioeconomic, war torn, and other marginalized realities have not faced and overcome, I believe it helps to put words to what exactly the middle-class is experiencing post-pandemic. It is not the worst suffering in the world, but the mind and body only know suffering as suffering and trauma as trauma. The security system of the middle class is dwindling, making more of us susceptible and vulnerable to loss of agency and systemic failures. Instead of reaching for insights from the successful and well-off, we need to turn to the resilient faith of those acquainted with systemic disenfranchisement and the related cycles of trauma. I anticipate this need will require both tapping into a theology of faith and suffering that is underrepresented or nonexistent in many of our churches and learning moment-by-moment dependence on God.

Successful Baby Boomers who achieved a comfortable American life raised my generation of mothers in the workforce. As their offspring, we may have been ill-prepared to imagine a regression of thriving and lifestyle choices for ourselves and our kids. A lack of hope for a better future brings about depression and fear. Inflation, living further from family support systems, and having less hope in our faith communities may contribute to a sense of crisis. Additionally, more of us work outside the home, simultaneously taking on the burdens of providing and nurturing, unprecedented in previous generations. Pre-2020, we may already have been on a path of burnout. Still, the pandemic accelerated burnout by isolating us and demolishing support systems, such as interactions with grandparents, public school education, and Sunday school or youth groups. We never imagined we would be here, raising our kids without a sense of a hopeful, bright future for ourselves and them. We thought they would have access to the same things that gave structure and provided guardrails to our lives.

While devastating and disorientating, this may be the best thing to happen to middle-class American parents spiritually as well as to our kids. After over two decades of working with young adults, I have noticed that those who attend church are more serious and committed to Christ than in previous generations, where previously there was a social benefit to joining a Christian group. Faith expressions and prayers will likely be more authentic as trials test us. Like Hannah, the mother in the Bible who cried out desperately for a child, we must come to terms with releasing our kids back to God. We did not fully anticipate this because we trusted the “program” to guide our kids in the right direction before the pandemic. Three and a half years after it began, our kids’ childhood, parenting, churches, and society are forever changed. Fortunately, God was never counting on these programs, and our desperation as mothers can become the beginning of a prayer movement where we otherwise, unknowingly, might have sat back and trusted in humans more than God.

A photo I took during the pandemic in 2020. The little playhouse in a town nearby.
Embracing the Wilderness

November 27th, 2023

The wilderness is the space between deliverance and the Promised Land. It’s circuitous and frustrating, tedious and repetitive. It is refining and even rewarding, but in the least longed-for ways.

It may be tempting when you are in the wilderness to think that you have done something wrong to get yourself there. But, the wilderness is not a place where punishment is the purpose, even if discipline can happen there. The wilderness, primarily, is an in-between space. It is a space of transformation from one reality to another. It is a journey and a passageway.

There are a variety of reasons that can send you to the wilderness. The first is danger. Like David fleeing from Saul, a threat can send you on the run and into the wilderness. The second is calling. Like John the Baptist, you may have a call that can only be worked out on the outskirts with camel hair for clothes and locusts for food. The third is preparation. Like Jesus, you may need to go away into a time of testing and trial before a more public season. You may even experience all three at once!

Inevitably, when you are in the wilderness, you will encounter accusations to confuse you into believing that either God doesn’t love you or you have done something horribly wrong. This is not the voice of God, but the voice of the serpent. When you are under threat of danger, the Lord protects you in the cave. When you are called for a purpose, the Lord safeguards you on the outskirts. When you are being prepared, the Lord invites your metamorphosis.

Time and again in the desert wilderness, you will come to your end. You will believe that God is not truly able to meet you in this place. You will succumb to sin and doubt. And then you will meet the grace and mercy of God to give you manna and quail which, whether gathered by your grateful or grumbling hands, will cause you to know the Lord’s presence through daily bread.

Joshua Tree National Park, 2019
The Women Will Lead Us with Their Tears

October 26th, 2023

I remember where I was sitting in a meeting room at the camp and conference center outside San Antonio. It was spring 2019 and I had just heard the testimony of my colleague, Kathy, after a hard year of what she called the “decimation” of her staff team. She was trusting God in a mode of slow, intentional dependence. Preceding that were words from my colleague, Anna. She was reminding all of us in the room that Jesus says the death of the kernel of wheat is what produces many more seeds.

We were discussing revival, longing for it, planning for it, wondering for it and I was bought in. I had been living in a theme of abundance and revival seemed like the natural next step.

And just as I was sitting there listening to these testimonies, the Holy Spirit hit me, out of the blue, with a clear impression in the form of a simple sentence.

“The women will lead us with their tears.”

This impression connected to the sharing of my colleagues and rang true because it was near Easter. In the Bible story, it was the women whose tears led them to show up graveside at dawn. In so doing, they were the first to meet the resurrected Jesus and thus became the leaders in spreading the news to the rest of the disciples about the risen Lord.

Over the last five years, I have continued to ponder and track this theme. How would tears lead us to revival? I didn’t expect to become a woman of tears myself, but in the last two years, I found tears to be a frequent companion. Most recently, I took a leap of faith off a cliff that lead me straight to what felt like a confirmed death. It didn’t even provide solace to have a premonition back in March when, alongside my spiritual director, we had a clear sense that I would die before this process of my career redirection came to completion. When it happened, I was still in shock and so was she. I thought I had died enough in the process of waiting and emptying myself, but evidently there was more dying to do. And with death and the process of death, come immense tears.

How strange this post must read to those outside the Christian faith. Why would tears and death pave the way to something good and holy? The only way to understand is to know and cling to the path of Jesus who went to the cross. His death made way for resurrection, glory, and multiplicative transformations in the world. He was the kernel of wheat that died and produced many more seeds. In mysterious and profound ways, he invites us to take this same path with him and promises to do the same for us.

When you hear the word revival, you may think of a big group of people in an exuberant state of being with massive ministry and church growth. In fact, when we hear the word revival we should be thinking of dead bones that need the Spirit’s breath. If you feel like you may be dying in tears and crushing, you may very well be poised for reviving.

Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. – John 12:24-25

I have suspicions that in this season God is doing something through the suffering of women to prepare us to be the forerunners of revival. We are the caretakers who feel the pain of the splitting and fractured world, especially as mothers to children.

Take heart. The place of your deepest pain and burden, the space where you feel you may have been exterminated, is the soil from which the seeds of new life will sprout.

Esteemed women colleagues Virginia, 2017