I left this story hanging in July, right before things began to take off. You may remember that all I had was a picture of a tunnel with some light at the end. Step by step, I hoped I might get out of the darkness and into the light.
A few weeks after I posted that story, everything changed.
Within two days, I had a 501(c)(3), a firstborn to launch, and I picked up a contract. I had to laugh, but I wanted to cry. I felt frustrated by everything happening simultaneously instead of bit by bit when I had ample time.
Thus began the project of building the plane in the air.
First, let me back up.
Shortly after I sensed that I needed to take steps toward the light, I met with a small team of friends who were praying for my next steps. At that point, it was clear to me that turning in resumes for jobs as a method of discernment was not working.
My heart knew what I needed to do. I just really wanted to find someone to pay me to do it.
The discernment team asked me if I felt ready to start my own ministry organization. With reluctant clarity, I said yes. I was hesitant because I still did not like the idea. I was clear because I had to admit the fruitlessness of the four months prior. The best I could do was to take one step at a time and see if there was confirmation down this road.
Slowly but surely, there was. It would be hard to recall all the steps in detail now. In short, I spent early 2024 consulting with a few churches, leading local prayer groups for parents, speaking at retreats, and gradually filling out paperwork for a non-profit in the cheapest way possible. (Because the nearly $1000 of upfront costs to start the ministry were $1000 I did not have at the time.)
Still, I felt unsure of precisely what I was building. Was it a prayer movement for the next generation? Was it a consulting ministry for healthy churches? (Why would churches pay me to help make them healthy?) Was it a ministry to families? Would I be speaking and teaching? As it turns out, it’s a little of all those things. I am trying to find all the appropriate words to describe this succinctly on a forthcoming website. That feels vulnerable too.
It seems obvious, but I had no idea that following Jesus’ call to ministry in a renewed sense of vulnerable dependence would require building every piece like I got a new Lego set with a step-by-step manual. In other words, none of the who, how, or what would come primarily from my strategic gifts, which I had relied on my whole career. Instead, it would be a process of following directions, even being willing to experiment with ministry ahead of knowing everything I wanted to do.
So many of the concerns I had been expressing in my prior senior ministry management role were obsolete when I considered created something new. The choice was mine to do ministry more organically and trust the Lord to provide.
I have a big vision for this little airplane called All Gen Movement. We are living in a time when one could easily say that God’s promises do not seem to be true for our kids, the Church, or the future. But I believe the Spirit has been doing a work of renewal before the crumbling even began. Like the twelve getting sent out with the bare minimum, I feel like I am on a journey to share Jesus’s healing ministry.
This healing is what we need.
Falling off a cliff with no one to catch me was painful. Getting scraped off the pavement was not much better.
But as these stories go, the longer the time passes, eventually, we get a broader perspective of why it had to be this way.
My work requires freedom to operate away from systems that do harm.
Outside the constraints of a management job.
I am used to being a loyal employee who tries to bring up concerns in the context of values.
Now, I am creating with the Creator.
Being an employee was much easier.
But right now, for me, this feels much more sacred.
And, yes, on most days, the whole process feels a bit insane too.
Photo taken after speaking at my last work conference, flying home into the unknown.
The woman spent twelve years of her life as an outcast, suffering from incurable bleeding which cost her life savings while searching for solutions. Hers was more than a medical problem. Bleeding had social, spiritual, and personal ramifications.
She was watching her best childbearing years pass by while remaining in a perpetual state of ritual uncleanliness. She was physically and, therefore, socially untouchable with no way to change her status. She would be useless to any man as a wife. No friend would accompany her. No mikvah could offer her cleansing.
With the search for all human solutions exhausted and healing eluding her, she hides herself amongst the crowd in desperation. “If I can just get close enough to Jesus and reach out to him–the healer,” she thought. It was worth the risk. She overcame her fears to be there, to reach out, and, eventually, to tell the “whole truth” of her vulnerable story in front of everyone gathered that day.
The account of this brave woman, found in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke reminds me of the many accounts of wilderness survivors I have encountered over the years. Trapped and alone without food or water, under exposure to the elements, the survivor does not pause to think whether his last action to fight for his life will prove effective. He simply musters up the strength, against all odds, to put out one last SOS, take one more stroke to swim, or call out one last time for help.
If he’s lucky, the last-ditch effort will make the difference between life and death.
This woman’s arm stretched out through a crowd to Jesus’ hem was her final SOS. It was worth the effort.
She knows that when you come to your end, there are no ordinary solutions that will do. We know from the story that she exhausted her religious, expert, and relational options finding no answers, power, or help there.
When she, or you and I, come to this point, two final options remain:
Succumb to despair. If there is truly nothing left, there is nothing to live for.
Turn to the a supernatural power, help, and answer–Jesus.
In her case, with all ordinary means of grace exhausted, there is yet one extraordinary means to reach towards. Jesus proves himself effective for the healing when power goes out of him and vibrates through her.
I’m with her. This woman.
In the past few years I have become so disillusioned with human solutions to the problems that are beyond us. I have faced too many things in my own life that do not seem to be solvable. Too many impasses.
Strengthsfinder 2.0 tells me that I excel in strategic thinking and problem solving. I have worked in a job with complex problems and found ways forward for people, never struggling to find at least small solutions that can help move the needle. I can muster the patience to persevere in that process.
Not so these last few years when my best assets and efforts left me powerless. Helpless. Impotent to change the situations around me. In these moments and circumstances, things felt primal. I was just trying to survive.
And when I looked around at society, it seems to be a theme. Can we really solve the things that trouble us?
Stop gaps? Yes. Solutions? Not really.
Accepting this is part of the solution.
A couple years ago, I had to turn off the news notifications. I could not take the noise anymore.
No organization will cure it.
No political party will fight it.
No charismatic leader will rescue us.
I want to wave the white flag and ask for supernatural intervention. I just think it’s that bad.
But I can accept that premise because it is a necessary one for receiving the gospel. We, as humanity, bring nothing.
At the end of the day, all our efforts do not improve our situation. I believe God equips us as image bearers to enact all kinds of wonderful efforts that generate goodness and kindness. But, without supernatural intervention they will never end the cycle of shattering brokenness in our world.
Our ability to harm is just as strong as our ability to do good. Every well-intentioned effort is likely to have an unintended consequence. This is a point proven by every loving mother and father on the planet and their offspring.
I used to think that I had a lot of power and agency to create a good (near perfect) family because of my values, my chosen spouse, and my faith in God. More recently, I realize the naïveté in that. When Paul writes about knowing the good he wants to do, but cannot, we can read it as an individual internal struggle. But, zooming out, Paul, and all of us, are complex creatures with habits and programming from our broken ancestry and society. We are all products of who we came from, both generationally and socially and have far less individual autonomy than I thought. We all think we will do better than what we experienced, but our demons catch up to us. Those demons go on to plant seeds that will haunt our children, who will try to do better than us.
I do not mean to be depressing. This, for me, is about laying aside idealism, not to accept fatalism, but to embrace reality. That reality helps me to surrender to the only one who can handle problems so big.
At the end of the day, when I cannot enact the kinds of outcomes I desire, despite my effort, I surrender to a power greater than my own. It is the only power that can lift us from the ashes and bring hope. It is a supernatural resurrection power, not a natural power. It is not based on my efforts or my outcomes.
Despair visits me, but it cannot help me live another day.
Like the bleeding woman, I overcome my fears just enough to extend a hand through the crowded chaos and try to grab the hem of Jesus’ garment. Even if we have to tell the whole truth of our stories in front of everyone, the possibility of healing is still worth it.
So take heart, my friends.
The worst situations are the best opportunities for this kind of extended arm posture.
Jesus made it clear, if we want to be perfect, good luck. If we are sick and need help, he is here–for us.
If no one can lift you up, you need rescue and supernatural lifting. While a desperate and unenviable spot, there is clarity here. No illusions. Just feel your desperation…and reach…
Despair is only necessary when you are out of possibilities.
Calling the Twelve to him, he began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over impure spirits. These were his instructions: “Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts…” (Mk 6:7-8)
The loud pounding inside of me from early in the year was deafening by October. I would agree to speak at a faculty and staff conference in Sisters, Oregon, with no idea whether I would still be working for my employer. The clarity around leaving was so strong going back to March. But, I said yes. It would help me end well to prioritize a trip to see my newest staff in Portland. We could travel together to the conference.
I was just beginning to learn to do the next thing without being sure what was ahead. To give my “yes” unless and until I had to give a “no.”
When it came time for me to prepare my opening talk, my heart was exploding with new lessons and ideas. I had so many possible things to share and say. My spiritual life was growing and stretching. I had a pretty comprehensive set of notes on my phone for a scripture that I thought I might use to build a good talk. It was Mark 6 where Jesus sends out his disciples to begin the ministry he has modeled for them. I knew I should speak on the theme of vulnerable dependence out of this passage.
There was just one problem. Whenever I would begin to think about the message, something was blocking me from prepping. I do not mean that evil was causing the blockage. I sensed an intentional barrier. It was like something was preventing me from shifting over to my notes in my phone or preparing something new. I sensed God was taking ahold of my mind and asking, “Would you be willing to do this without relying on your intelligence, your preparation, or your polish? Would you be willing to move backwards in your sense of professionalism and expertise?”
This was new. I kept hoping that as I got closer to the moment to deliver the talk, I would feel permission to open the notes. But, in my spirit, I sensed that I was supposed to do what I was willing yet not eager to do. I was to obey the passage on vulnerable dependence by living it out and modeling it. The speaking was not going to matter. It was not going to be a great talk. I was going to be the object lesson. I would have to surrender measures of success and believe in the invisible fruit of obedience, nothing else.
You might think that surrendering ego and letting God speak through me would make for an excellent talk. It was not that. I could not think clearly. I fumbled on my words. With all the awkwardness of an amateur taking the stage to audition, I took a deep breath, exhaled and tried not to think about how this “performance” reflected on me. It may as well have been my first talk as a student from 2001.
Nothing was familiar. I was learning a new skill of minimizing myself and depending on God live in front of an audience. In a room full of university professionals, I did not even have a Power Point to try to cover me. Listening to the Spirit with nothing on the agenda was peculiar. They could have saved some money by not flying me up from Southern California for this.
Moments before, knowing what I was about to do, I had kneeled down in my beautiful, pristine speaker cabin in the woods of Oregon and sang with full gusto, “I surrender all. I surrender all. All to Thee my blessed savior. I surrender all.” This was my only and final preparation, and I knew it.
Performance. Ego. Polished Slides. Respect. I surrendered all. And it was not comfortable because I was doing it as a guest of someone who had invited me to bring something. Instead, I was showing up with nothing and practicing letting the Spirit work in spite of me.
It was not outwardly beautiful. But it was important. Thankfully, the second day I had permission to bring my best. I was not ready to go back to back in that kind of humiliation. In the end, I think the Spirit showed me that the Spirit worked equally the day I did my best and the day I brought very little. It was a reminder that the Spirit’s work and effectiveness are not up to me. All we can bring is obedience.
The day before, I still had 24 remaining hours to write the first talk. With all the time in the world I went to dinner, came back and stared at my computer screen.
I just can’t do it.
It did not make sense because I already had notes written. I went to bed and hoped the next morning there would be a lift to move ahead. Maybe God was holding me back until the last minute to see how much I trusted. Maybe God would flood my mind with new information about the talk I should give.
I woke up. Nothing. Still felt the same barrier and sense that I could not cross it.
With no talk writing to do, I walked down the Willamette River on my way to get coffee and doughnuts for my first time in Portland. Maybe God would speak to me as I moved instead of sat. It was raining.
Typically while on the road doing ministry, I would send a WhatsApp message to my colleagues and ask them to pray for me, especially if something felt stressful or difficult. But, I did not know what to say. It was our job to plan and perform well and I was planning to not perform.
Instead, as the weather fogged my glasses and the raindrops wet my light jacket, I took out my phone and texted R . I was attempting to get clarity in case I had to write the talk on the long drive to the retreat. It would not be the first time that clarity came on the journey to a speaking engagement.
R is the kind of person who I believe is sent into my life to help me through this kind of moment. I don’t remember what I wrote, probably something like, “I am here in Oregon to speak at a conference, but I do not have anything prepared. I keep feeling like God wants me to just show up, but I am wrestling with this.”
What R wrote back began like this:
“Lisa, I’m very happy for you…”
A remarkably different response than I could have received from most anyone else.
As soon as I saw the opening line, tears streamed and joined the rain drops on the soggy overcast morning. I was not crazy. Or, at least if I was crazy, there was one friend cheering me on. He remarked that this was a deepening of my trust in God as well as God entrusting more to me.
The text was the confirmation I needed. The tears flowed because I knew.
I arrived at Stumptown and enjoyed a sacred moment replying to the text on my phone and warming up with my coffee. Whatever happened next, at least I had this.
Fortunately, after I had obeyed the first night of the conference, I went back to my cabin and immediately typed out my slides for the next morning’s talk. As I suspected, all the material was there. With the barrier removed, it gushed out of me in record time. Mercifully, God allowed me to show these faculty that I wasn’t some ill-prepared crazy person and better meet the expectations of my colleagues.
But, it was not until after I took myself out of the equation. No ego. If I am going to be so bold as to show up with no notes to do a half baked job and claim it was God and not me, then it is also God and not me when God helps me do an excellent job.
I learned that day that vulnerable dependence results in a surrendered outcome. After all, just before Jesus sent out his disciples in all authority, he went into the temple with that same authority and no one believed. He also told them that there would be some homes where they would have to shake the dust and keep moving.
Obedience is not about outcome. When you obey, you surrender the process and the outcome, trusting the Spirit to work in ways that bring fruit we may not otherwise measure.
A month later, I sent an email to resign from my job. Oregon had given me one practice round in vulnerable dependence before doing so.
Last week, I returned home from another trip to Portland. This time, we were taking my daughter to college orientation.
As the plane descends to Oregon soil, I am keenly aware that my vulnerable dependance has been continuous from my trip in October 2022 to today. Instead of moving into a secure job, I find myself in a very exposed state, starting a ministry. I feel just as much like the disciples now as I did then.
I meet Donan for coffee in Downtown Portland while I’m in town. She is the staff I hired in 2022 to cover the Northwest. We are just a few blocks from where I wrestled along the river in the final hours before she drove us to the retreat. Amidst cozy Portland vibes and coffee, we joyfully ponder the Spirit’s unexpected work in the Northwest. We hope together for new fruit in the mystery of the place.
My daughter’s decision to go to college in Oregon surprised everyone, including her. Though she has shown little interest in faith in her teenage years, she will land where my faith was tested and tried before I set off on an arduous prolonged season of trust. It was during a month and a half of weekly fasting (a practice I never do) that I felt confirmation to send her here—one of the least churched areas in the entire United States. Another opportunity for surrender and trust.
As we send her, I know that God is present there–along the Willamette River, in the woods, and on the campus. Oregon has become a sacred pilgrimage for me and it is fitting for me to return on the cusp of another new season. It is the flight of my firstborn and the anticipated flight of a new ministry.
Last week, I felt like I completed a full circle. It was a journey around the same town, same people, same river, and same coffee shop that punctuated my last visit. And when I return in a few weeks, I have one more big surrender ahead.
God, I am struggling. Like the disciples paddling in the dark storm after you told them to pull out in the middle of the water. It’s the last watch of the night. I am exhausted and scared, but I think you are here. I believe you have a purpose.
In summer 2020 when the world was still in the early stages of COVID-19, my friend, Steve, was navigating his fair share of challenges. In a season of unemployment and between homes, prospects looked poor on both fronts. If I knew then what I know now, things would have been different.
I would have taken Steve into our home, risked exposing my household to COVID, and let him stay indefinitely. But at the time, there were no vaccines. We knew relatively little about COVID-19. With kids in virtual learning and Zoom work-from-home, I was at my limits.
I told my spiritual director, who listens monthly to my narration of my life as we look for God together, “Every Sunday, I drive to the park, pull out my lawn chair and pray with Steve and Jonathan.” I went on to explain Steve’s situation. I met him when he had come back to church fresh out of incarceration and rededicated his life to God. He had fallen on hard times, losing his job and home just as COVID hit. And, he lived out of his car.
I described how, with a sense of urgency, Steve asked me and Jonathan to pray with him in-person. For some reason, we both said yes without hesitation, never missing a Sunday. On the best of days in a pre-pandemic world, it could not have been planned. But, somehow, in this alternate reality, there was a portal to this possibility and the three of us stepped inside.
We coordinate by text, show up, talk and pray, usually for hours, until well past summer sunset. At the end of our time, Steve gets into his car. Where will he go? We never know. How long will Steve be gone? When we will hear from him? These are all mysteries. But as sure as the mid-2020 morning starts on Zoom and the evening ends at home without any organized activities, every Sunday night I spend with Steve and Jonathan.
She gave me a look of bewilderment. This was a new and odd turn that even my trained spiritual director scratched her head about. At the time, we kind of shrugged at the senselessness of it all during the upheaval of the pandemic year. A couple months later it became more than a passing shrug when Steve died alone in a motel room.
My friendship with Steve was not new. My family and I had known him for several years. But Steve, Jonathan, and I were in a new situation, working together on a committee with an important spiritual task to complete when COVID hit. Steve felt strongly that some of us needed to pray in-person. Thus, our Sunday night prayer meetings began in early July, lasting through mid-November.
It is easy to forget how slow and uncertain time felt during this season of the pandemic. While my family stayed home following safety orders, Steve and Jonathan were the only people I intentionally left my house to see. If I can go back and channel the feelings of those early months, it is astonishing. With all worship centers closed, Sunday nights in Library Park became my new rhythm. This togetherness during isolation amplified everything—the prayers, the community, and the bond.
When we met in person, we masked and sat six feet apart. This was inconvenient for Steve who did not have access to hygienic health and safety options and seemed to want to experience closeness.
Only on the very last day that I saw Steve did we unmask and “break bread.” In fact, it was french fries, Coke, and a chicken sandwich, but it felt as sacred as the Lord’s supper. Our fellowship of three huddled together around a space heater in my open garage on a rare, rainy November night. Fries dipped in ketchup were our intinction. Coke and lemonade tasted refreshing like living water. Steve was so excited to eat with friends. Looking back, it may have been his only shared meal in eight months. Little did we know it wasn’t a typical Eucharistic feast, unless you count the very first. We were offering Steve last rites.
Photo credit: Jeff Liou
When we didn’t hear from Steve for six weeks, Jonathan and I were not concerned. Steve, peculiar as he was, had made it clear to us that he would turn off his phone and drive across the country to secure a van that my husband had planned to build out for him as a mobile home. He even took down our addresses and warned us that if ever we didn’t see him for a while, a letter would arrive. When the page turned to 2021, I believed that I would receive Steve’s letter any day or a sudden text asking us to find a mutual time to gather again when his phone was turned on.
But on January 11, 2021, I learned that Steve died on November 27 about 100 miles from my home. He hadn’t been in any known communication by text with any of his friends for about ten days at the time of his death. The news was devastating.
In one phone call, the cord of three strands broke. We lost our friend and leader of our prayer group who had kept us moving with faith through the pandemic. There are “prayer groups” and then there are prayer groups. This was a prayer group. The spiritual atmosphere was vivid. Steve was as strange of a leader as John the Baptist must have been while wearing camel skin and eating locusts. He lived on the margins of society and met us at the edges to pray before he ventured back out.
Often one or more of us felt desperation with a challenge in front of us and then we would walk away from the prayer time and see God answer in an unexpected way. I remember one week where we conducted two prayer times over the phone together, which was not unusual. This week, I was away, borrowing a friend’s mountain cabin with my family. Every aspect of the prayer time is vivid in my memories– where I sat, what I wrote in my journal before and after, how God spoke to me in my dreams, and the exact words that Steve spoke. I can even hear Steve’s voice in my head.
The cause of Steve’s death was still inconclusive at the time of his memorial service in late January. At age 43 he had developed a recent health issue with his pancreas, but that didn’t show up in the initial autopsy. A bit like Elijah, he seemed to be here one minute and gone the next. At the time, I could barely process his death. It was a shock, and we were living shock upon shock in a sort of time warp already.
About seven months later, my body began to release and I grieved more deeply. It was when our committee work was coming to a long-anticipated crossroads and he was not there for it, that I was finally able to cry. During this time, his absence became sharper for me and all the prayers we prayed together flooded my mind. I do not believe in communicating with the dead. But his death was so sudden, I sometimes wondered if he was trying to tell me anything.
Could he see me tossing and turning at night, crying, sweating, wrestling spiritually or was it just my memory of him visiting me in that heavy hour? I remembered his prayers and knew they were effective beyond his living days. I strangely sensed that some of his connection to the Spirit of God was passing on to me. Like John the Baptist, he prepared the way, but he was not there to see it through. The only small comfort at this time was reaching out to Jonathan knowing that he was holding Steve’s memory as well.
There’s no ending to this story because what do you write about unsolved mysteries? The story of Steve is the story of multiple mysteries–a strange fellowship, answered prayers, and Steve’s death. And the mysteries continue because none of this was as strange of an outlier in my life as I originally thought it would be. All of this was absolutely central to everything God was and is doing, even if right now I do not know all that means or entails.
Rest in peace, Steve. As I turned 44 last week, I remember and honor your 43 years, mindful that you did not make it to this one. Thank you for everything you taught me about longing for revival, persistent prayer, trusting God for daily bread, and believing God’s work at the margins. You were one of the best leaders I ever followed.
I was waiting. Everyone who knew me was waiting too. They checked in with me moment by moment, which was kind, but very similar to being nine months pregnant. You have no control over when you have the baby, but feel like a watched pot that never boils.
Then it finally happened. The first glimmer of progress. A job posted that I had been waiting for.
As summer progressed I was in a lengthy process for this role, which I felt passionate and excited about. It clearly aligned with God’s calling and words for me. From the outside looking in, it was like the job had been created for me. It fit the scope of my life and ministry experiences well—so much so that my former colleagues called it a “no brainer.” Jeff and I felt anticipation for what God might do as this application process unfolded.
Prior to the posting, other opportunities came my way. Early on, I was even given the opportunity to write my own job description out of my sense of call, but something did not feel right. I held it in prayer until I finally got a clear answer to wait and take this other emerging path instead. A team of people praying for me through my transition asked, “What will you do if you don’t get this job? Are you applying to other jobs?”
I responded, “It feels like the Holy Spirit is stepping on my neck and telling me there is only one path to take. If I do not get this job, I will have a lot of questions for God. It just will not make sense.”
I should pause and say that I never heard God promise me this job as an outcome. God did give instructions to exclusively wait on and apply for this specific role. One might assume that would mean a positive outcome. This was my assumption. If, for some reason, God did not give me this job, we believed there must be something better that would soon become obvious.
As the summer went on, I made it through every hoop and stage of the process down to the final two candidates. I was eager and ready to resume work. I went in for the final interview early in the kids’ new school year–perfect timing for something new for myself. The following day, Jeff and I celebrated our 21st anniversary, anticipating a long-awaited season of change. That next morning, I received an email that gut punched me so hard it knocked me off the face of the earth. They had chosen another candidate who “God had been preparing for the job.” I have no doubt that is true, but what on earth had God been preparing me for?
The process was over.
Eight months dragged out in waiting came down to a swift rejection. Despair moved across my entire body. I had walked out to the edge, jumped off the cliff, and no one caught me. I plummeted. Like a cartoon from my childhood, I had crushed myself into a puddle at the bottom.
My husband encouraged me about all the possibilities at my fingertips, but all I could feel was beautiful clarity from the voice of God ending horrifically with a heavy door slammed abruptly in my face. Even then, I sensed how seemingly impossible it would be for me to move forward from this place apart from a supernatural lift.
In a normal application situation, at this point, you work through any disappointment, assume the best about doors closing and opening, and keep dreaming about what the future might hold. You move on to the other logs you’ve thrown on the fire since this one has burned out. But, just as I told my prayer team, I did not have any other logs on the fire. God only gave me one log and it just burned its last ember.
In retrospect, I was expecting God to bring me to door #2 if door #1 closed. If I really got this far out into two years of obedience and then this was not the final destination, surely God would provide for our family by quickly showing us the real thing we had been waiting for. Right?
At this point, I did what any person who had already been several months without income waiting on a specific process would do, I began applying to all the other jobs. In so doing, I tried to approach it with an open mind and choose jobs that overlapped with at least one clear aspect of my calling.
Day 150
In a short matter of time, I began to have interviews almost every week, a process that was like goldilocks trying porridge. Everyone I knew had desires and opinions for me about the bowls I was tasting.
A large ministry’s development director.
A director of church partnership for an institute of higher learning.
A Dean of Spiritual Development at a college.
A Discipleship Pastor at a megachurch.
A CEO of a local ministry home.
A high profile family’s covert charitable foundation.
I took the approach that if God opened doors, I would walk through them until the processes closed. I was curious as phone calls and emails came so quickly in comparison to the long, slow slog I had just gone through. But, each time, a sadness and concern would come over me. I knew that this path did not match the clarity God had given me. The unmistakable clear trajectory that began when the Holy Spirit spoke to me and sent me on a new journey never lifted.
It would have been easier if it had.
Instead I found myself in daily and nightly despair about the disorienting process I had just been through. Then, for a few hours I would have to dress nice, throw on a blazer, put on makeup and perform to my highest abilities. It was brutal.
This interview season spanned six months and yet I was no closer to my calling than before I began. In fact, I always knew in my gut that I was not supposed to be on this journey. God never asked me to leave my job so that I could go on a wild goose chase. There was no reason to leave the previous job for this kind of a journey. I just did not know what else to do.
I tried to keep an open mind in the event that momentum would start to build and God would give me a clear direction or nudge. Mostly I just found myself panicking when I became a final candidate for jobs. The morning before the Dean interview, which seemed like the best fit for me, I abruptly awoke at 4am, sweating. I was thinking about a church up the street going through a season of scandal.
“Churches…making churches healthy. I’d rather work for myself if I have to.”
I tried to show up for every interview and bring my best, but the truth is, I felt locked in to the original calling God had given me. It just would not let up.
Having interviewed dozens and dozens of people for ministry jobs in the previous decade, I knew my problem. A) I wasn’t called to these jobs B) I was aimlessly looking for work C) I had a specific vision and calling that was coming through more strongly than the work at hand. Jeff and I both agreed. We wouldn’t hire me for these jobs either.
As each door closed, I felt relief instead of sadness. But, I also felt confused and aimless.
Day 260
Sunday morning comes and Jeff and I decide to take our son an hour away to the megachurch where I will be interviewing. It is Christmas time.
A famous worship singer and songwriter comes out on the stage. Jeff and I look at one another with the same knowing chuckle. We were not expecting that!
As the worship plays, I merely close my eyes and God begins to speak to me with direction for the first time since the early part of the year.
I receive a vivid picture. Standing outside the door of my calling, I am weeping. I feel sadness all over my body as I stand in a sewer tunnel staring at a door vaulted shut like you might see at a bank. I see I am at the end this tunnel and notice there are other doors along the sides. With no other choice, I begin to ponder these other doors. They are not welcoming but they are not vaulted shut either.
I could knock on these.
But, in the distance, on the other side of the tunnel is a sense of heat and daylight. Reluctantly, with curiosity impeded by sadness, I sensed an invitation to start to take steps toward the light.
The image panned out again and I saw that the path toward the light would also put me over and above this sewer. A different access point to my calling would become available. I would be above all these doors instead of knocking on them.
I thanked God for speaking. The slow pursuit toward heat and light had begun.
My spiritual director, sitting with me in our usual meeting place of over a decade, declares with confidence, “You really hear from God! When I make reference to you, I tell my husband, she really hears from God.” This was news to me. I never thought of it this way. As far as I knew I was just minding my own business in my faith life. I had never claimed to anyone that I heard from God. God made things clear to me as circumstances lined up, as I looked at how things had worked out in the past, or in my gut. I never heard a voice that I connected to God’s. How interesting that this was my descriptor–the one who hears from God.
This was a little external reinforcement to look back upon for the road that I would soon begin to travel.
Days later, I found myself in the midst of a profound supernatural experience that brought me to tears. I had never experienced anything like it. I was wrestling in mental frustration about a particular circumstance when, out the blue, God began to show me how he saw me by providing clarity to a longtime question which was related to my struggle.
What exactly is the thing that I have been made to do, no matter the job or the season of life? It came through crystal clear. I sensed it all over my body along with God’s presence as I was driving down the road. It took me by surprise and was so powerful that after I pulled into the garage and parked the car, still weeping, I walked into the house and wrote it all down. I was very clear on what was happening and I knew I would not be the same.
Like Moses and Mary, while minding my own business, carrying on with my daily life, an encounter changed my life without warning.
From there, I began to grow in new and deeper ways in my relationship with the Lord. I also began to know my time in my current career was ending because what I was made to do and the current reality of my job was no longer in alignment. This visitation was the beginning of a redirection.
In the process of redirection, at times it feels like I have the faith to walk on water. Other times, it feels like I am sinking.
2022
12 months later, I am sitting in a room at church where a meeting has just wrapped up when my Facebook messenger makes the distinct noise of an incoming message. “Hi Lisa, I promise this is not spam, but have you ever thought about a career change?” How curious! “Why, yes. Funny you should ask,” I answered the friend on the other end. “I am thinking of leaving my 20-year career. Why?” What followed was an incredible opportunity that I should have/would have jumped at if I did not have so much specific clarity on what God had called me to. Nonetheless, it was exciting, tempting, and flattering.
The next day I got on a plane for London for a work trip. This new job option would be a nice pay bump. It would open doors to a new world. And, it would be local, an important component to my sense of redirection. But, it would not check the main box. That entire night as I was bouncing my head forward and backward, sleeping and waking, in my economy seat, I would hear over and over again, “Church, not non-profit management. Church. Not non-profit management.” It was persistent and clear. Take the opportunity as a sign of good things to come, but do not take the bait, I decided.
I would stay the course and wait.
Six weeks later, urgency was growing in me. The end of the calendar year was drawing near, but no opportunity to follow my new sense of call had materialized. I told God early in our conversations about new beginnings that I could by no means afford to lose my salary or go backwards in progress after all the early years of ministry penny pinching and struggling to advance as a woman, so I was sure that God would honor my bargain and there would be no gap from one job to the next.
Eventually, I had to pay attention to the pounding sound in my chest. It was sounding an alarm of release from my job. It was not that I did not like my job. I had felt excited and called to that job. In so many ways it was the best job ever. But just as easily as God had given me a call to the position out of nowhere, I knew God had taken it away. God had been preparing me to go where God sent me. I did not know where I was going, but I was no longer sent there.
One night, as I lay in bed, I felt the Holy Spirit again. This time it was an urgent, clear, step-by-step plan. The instructions included exactly what date to leave my job, a volunteer ministry assignment to step into, and a financial plan to cover our family for two months after my last day of employment. I sent the appropriate emails to enact the plan and went to bed with peace.
Since God led me step-by-step and I followed all of them, I naturally expected there would be more instructions by the time the plan ended. The last thing I expected was a gap, let alone a long gap.
2023
Early in the year, I worked one final month in my career, completed my volunteer assignments, and then came to the end of the lit path of instructions. It was difficult. What lay beyond was darkness. It was terrifying. In the beginning, every calendar day was excruciating. One day out in the wilderness…two days out in the wilderness…
Over 400 days out in the wilderness…
At this point, I have learned to walk with a very tiny headlamp on a very dark path, sometimes making no steps of progress on the path, and often taking the tiniest step imaginable. I cannot see far enough out to take any huge steps. Every day is an act of trust and obedience.
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.
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, whoart 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.
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.
Last night, a group of people came together to worship God and pray for the things that burden us in our families. We set the table and the Lord prepared a feast.
Beginning with worship, we came to the Lord as we are–broken, hurting, weary. We invited God to take us wherever God wanted and remembered that there is no shortage of the Spirit to rain down on us.
Joy opened us with a powerful confession and repentance time. “We want fire, but we do not want to repent.” In humble contrition, she confessed her own sins so that we all could come openly before God. She reminded us that we are often concerned about our family members without looking at our own sinful hearts.
We looked at the death of Lazarus, the disappointment of Mary and Martha about Jesus’ delay, and the hope they placed in a future resurrection. Meanwhile, Jesus was ready to display his Resurrection identity and power as a disruption to death. He asked them to open the tomb and then declared in a loud voice for Lazarus to come out, and the once decaying Lazarus became a living, breathing, risen man who walked right out of a grave. Jesus then asked them to finish the work and cut off the grave clothes.
Jesus was devastatingly sad about his friend’s death, and he wept. But he did not weep because he was accepting death. He wept because death is wrong. It goes against everything God is and his personal assignment was to reverse it. Because of Christ’s obedience, the things we see as final and irreversible are, in fact, reversible with God. Resurrection changes everything. Jesus demonstrates the glory of God right out of the smelly tomb of death and decay. There is nothing in our lives that his resurrection power cannot transform.
So we turned to God to pray for our families and to “cut off the grave clothes” with one another. We proclaimed and declared the resurrection power of Jesus in the dark, foul, rotting places. It takes courage and risk to remove the stone.
Prayers were prayed for our families as we remembered the power of praying parents and grandparents in our family lines and as we canceled the assignments of the enemy to bring curses instead of blessings.
We blessed one another singing, “May his favor be upon you, and a thousand generations. And your family and your children and their children and their children.” One grandfather blessed grandparents to go and see their most important task as discipling their grandchildren to know Jesus. Pastors caring for families and youth reminded us that our prayers matter. The power of a praying mother and father is real. Christy proclaimed, “We do not have to accept death!” We have been given authority from God and Christ’s blood to pray life for our families and stand against the plans of the enemy. We have not been left defenseless here. Resurrection requires death, but death does not define us.
As the evening drew to a close, there was an opportunity to come forward for healing prayer. Jesus came for the sick, not the healthy, the sinner, not the righteous. We came to the living water for prayer and healing.
This evening was an offering to God. The “golden thread” observed was that God wants to heal us from the trauma that impacts us as the intergenerational family of God. There is healing and power in the name of Jesus. Thanks be to God.
Photo: The cemetery in the town of my maternal grandmother’s ancestry, Agnone, Italy
