We went with friends to Carolina Beach for spring break this year, and one of the stops we made (twice? maybe three times?) was at a little ice cream shop called Boombalatti’s. Not only was the ice cream so good we went back twice or maybe three times, but they make waffle cones in-house.
You know the waffle cones are made in-house when that warm, sweet aroma wafts out the door and around the corner as you approach the ice cream stand. That aroma takes me to Carolina Beach and also St. Augustine, to that one ice cream shop in Old Town, to vacation destinations, to time with friends and family, to laughter and delicious, sticky indulgences.
I decided, with my friend Becca, that any time a place makes their own waffle cones, one must order them. I’m 40 now; I have lived too long abstaining from this delight because I think it might save me a couple of calories. Why should we deny ourselves this great and rare pleasure? What is living if you do not order the house-made waffle cone?!
Izzy came to us the week we learned my mom’s cancer had come back as stage IV kidney cancer, and in the seven years since, she has been the default therapy dog in the house. Ruby joined the crew last Christmas, marking the beginning of the year that we learned Mom’s cancer is gone… NED when “NED” was Never Even a Dream.
These two are my near constant companions in the house all day, the weighted blanket of wet kisses and fluff whenever I recline. I don’t care if people think most of their anthropomorphic characteristics are just us projecting personalities onto them; pets are gifts, a delightful daily connection to the rest of creation.
I love how they insist on being loved, how they don’t hold back from licking a hand or a face or nudging their heads under my palm to be pet and adored. I love how their entire worlds revolve around when the rest of the family comes home, how they wait at doors, how they can barely contain themselves at the mention of the words “walk” or “squirrel.”
But most of all, I love how present they are, how they seem to know when one of us is sick or sad, how they make it their jobs to comfort, to be near. They are incredibly talented at getting between me and whatever object or subject I think is more important than their time, kisses, and love. They are one of many ways God shows me what it looks like to unabashedly delight in others, to sit with people in their grief and in their joy, and to wait expectantly for whatever treasures might fall from up above (whether off the cutting board or off a TV tray or off the dining room table).
This is the latest rule of life in the Wells marriage. And yes, the first marriage thing you thought of is on the list, along with hot tea, nachos, and bourbon. There is no reason to ask whether the other of us wants tea, or nachos, or bourbon, or sex, the answer is always yes.
It’s said that when a couple has spent a long time together, they start to look and sound like each other. It’s actually true, because, science. But it’s also true that people begin to think like each other. In Joshua Wolf Shenk’s book, Powers of Two, he sees the connectivity between couples as a shared mind that allows them to be more creative together than they would be on their own.
Our being together and different ways of processing the world together rubs off on each other; it sharpens the dull edges of our perspectives until we are no longer quite like the person we first were when we met. We see things differently, collectively.
We share a mind, not in a direct replica of the other person, but in neural intimacy, holding one person’s thoughts and emotions with the same love and concern, as closely as your own. There’s actually a psychological term “neuro-intimacy,” which is essentially what I’m talking about here: that deep connection you have with a person that allows you to let down your guard and be exactly who you are, share exactly what you think, because the degree of trust between you is so strong.
You know what the other person is going to say before they say it. You remember the same memory simultaneously. You say the same thing at the same time.
And I find it to be absolutely delightful.
“No man is an island entire of itself” wrote John Donne. We are interwoven, the ever-expanding patchwork quilt of our lives growing more complex and connected the longer we are together.
Brandon and I have known each other for 20 years and will celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary next September. When you’ve been in contact with someone daily for 7,300 days the way we have, you’ve had 7,300 opportunities to develop neural intimacy, the shared mind of couples.
I love this about relationships. It isn’t just true of romantic relationships or marriages, but of friendships, sibling bonds, the connection between a parent and her child. We develop our own private languages and our own inside jokes, and we say exactly what we mean to say from the vulnerable heart center of ourselves.
“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up” the Teacher in Ecclesiastes said. We’ve experienced this push and pull in our lives, especially recently. When one of us is stressed and overwhelmed, anxious about the future, the other tends to be steady, calm, able to navigate the storm. There is great power to find shelter and stability in this neural intimacy.
I’d like to share more silly anecdotes that could provide insight into this small, daily joy of our lives together…
…but you probably wouldn’t get it. It’s an inside joke.
Sometime in the last decade, cooking became less of a chore and more of a pleasure. I have a poem, “A Liturgy for the Preparation of a Meal” by Douglas McKelvey framed on the wall in our kitchen. Its words are in my view while I chop vegetables, measure spices, and stir pots of soup. “Let us invest in this preparation a lovingkindness toward those who will partake,” writes McKelvey, “Meet us in the making of this meal, O Lord, and make of it something more than a mere nourishment for the body.”
It’s this spirit I try to possess as I prepare most meals in our kitchen, with hopes that my people, whoever it is I’m feeding, can taste the love. I’m especially drawn to cooking from new recipes, with fresh ingredients and lots of different herbs and spices. I like the challenge of it. David Giffels is the author of the essay collection, The Hard Way on Purpose. I think of this title every time I set out to make something from scratch.
Because I love words and their origins, I was curious where we get the phrase “from scratch.” It comes from the scratch drawn in the dirt as the starting line of a foot race. A runner who “starts from scratch” began at the beginning of the course, with no handicap. The Cambridge Dictionary says the phrase means, “from the beginning, without using anything that already exists.”
No one can truly make anything from scratch, except God, who spun the whole universe into existence billions of years ago, weaving all elements together in a grand, interconnected quilt spread out over millions of light years and galaxies and stars. Even if you don’t believe in a divine being who created all things, who are we kidding to think we can make anything from nothing?
But I do get to partake in small acts of from scratch-ness, mini-moments of creation that are part of the cycle of birth, death, and resurrection. Each meal I make “from the beginning” uses ingredients of things that were once living, the flesh and substance of which will be used to keep other bodies alive. Someday, these bodies will give themselves over to earth, which will give itself over to grass, which will give itself over to animals, which will give themselves over to someone else, a circuit of harmonious sacrifice.
What has already gone before me to make this particular dish? Some farmer planted the seeds. Some butcher prepared the meat. Some honey bees pollinated the plant. Many things lifted their blossoms and followed the sun, waited for rain, and grew out of the minerals from which we all came. I get to partake in what has already been given up, “from the beginning.” Cooking “from scratch” is humbling.
P.S. Many of my life’s little joys involve food. This is how it is.
It’s December 1… do you know what this means?! This means I can open up the first window in my Aldi box of Emporium Selection Advent Cheese Calendar!
Also, it means the beginning of advent, the beginning of 24 days of family activities, the beginning of holding space for hope and anticipation.
But also, right now, it means cheese. I love cheese. You can count on sliced cheese, blocks of cheese, cartons of cheese, and bags of shredded cheese all coexisting in harmony in my refrigerator at any given time, and, right now, you can also find an advent calendar of cheese.
Cheese means a post-dinner, pre-bedtime nacho indulgence with my husband as we watch Friends or Parks and Rec or The Office. Cheese brings me back to junior high, when my mom and I would make a plate of cream cheese slathered in salsa or cocktail sauce with crackers as an average, every day afternoon snack. Cheese means dozens of charcuterie boards with girlfriends, late-night wine and cheese and chocolate-coated conversations, the substance of indulgence and sustenance that carried us through various crises and celebrations. At the beginning of the pandemic while we were all home, Brandon and I made time for Wine with DeWine, cutting cubes of sharp white cheddar.
The first time I remember eating baked brie was on New Year’s Eve. We were living in Ashland, on Morgan Avenue, and we had a couple of friends over. I baked brie with pecans and cranberries, wrapped in a puff pastry. Out of that golden orb of flaky crust poured warm gooey deliciousness, and as we watched TV and played games, I am pretty sure I ate nearly all of it, alone.
Cheese usually also means wine, and I also love wine.
Cheese means comfort. I looked it up. Actually, the etymology of “cheese” is strictly functional, possibly from some old root words that mean “to ferment, become sour, leaven,” etc. Cheese, like any good friendship, romance, relationship, or wine, takes time to become that which makes it savorable.
For the next 24 days, I get to sample Festive Mini Cheeses from my Cheese Advent Calendar. And it will be glorious.
Back in May, I asked my Facebook friends to share songs that celebrated the little joys of life. I asked because I was scared.
The frailty and finitude of life was right there, right in front of my face in the form of microcalcifications in my right breast. I waited a month for answers. In the dawn of rebirth, as everything around me began to blossom and turn green, every one of my hours was pressed upon by mortality. It doesn’t matter how full of life things seem right now, mortality whispered. This will all end soon.
To combat mortality’s raspy voice, I listened to little joys. I still am, adding almost daily songs that feel like celebrations of the glorious now. The playlist “Little Joys” comes from the Tom Rosenthal song recommended to me by Lydia. If you don’t know it, go listen to it, and watch the video too. It’s lovely.
The beginning of the video says the common mayfly only lives 24 hours. One day. “This old heart won’t turn into another, this old life won’t take me to another,” Tom sings. “Send me into the long night with all the little joys of the finite.”
Now, I do believe this life will take me to another… but I don’t know what that other life looks like, I only know the promises and joys of this life. There are so many little joys and wonders in this life, in this finite life, and I want to live celebrating them, engulfed by them, swimming in them, held by them, grateful for them. “Little Joys” became my waking and sleeping melody, every breath and interaction precious, temporary, love the lasting thread that connects all these little joys.
In June, I received the best news, no cancer, just a bunch of microcalcifications to keep an eye on, some little joys lodged in my bosom, all still there. Since then, I see little joys everywhere, in ritual and routine, in mundane places where the extraordinary isn’t supposed to be. For Tom Rosenthal, the little joys are enough. “When the darkness beats the bright… we’ll be alright, we’ll be alright, in the finite.”
But I don’t believe the darkness beats the bright in the vast and expanding cloak of eternity. The bright wins. The little joys are glimpses of that victory, now, microcalcifications embedded in the flesh of the finite.
The advent season is upon us again. “Advent” literally means “coming” or “arrival.” For Christ followers, it is a season of anticipation and a season of celebration. Christ was born, Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again. This is all our timeline, though, our tenses that identify a past, present, and future—kingdom of heaven here, kingdom of heaven to come. For God, all four of those statements are true simultaneously. The Light is complete and victorious, from the beginning of the age to the end of time.
Advent is our season to wait for the revelations of eternity to be made known in our bright and fleeting now.
To celebrate advent this year, I’m inviting you to join me in exploring the little joys of the finite. I think I could go on forever, looking closely at the molecules of things that bring me joy, but for now, I plan to take the next month leading up to Christmas—to the embodiment of all joy—to bear witness to and celebrate the little joys. I hope these joys that have filled an ache in me to overflowing will do at least a little bit of the same for you this holiday season.
I keep describing the last four months as a wild ride of trying to trust God, getting it wrong (or right for the moment, and then wrong, and then right again, for now *crazy eyes*), and questioning the mysteries of God’s will, my will, and the conflation of these two things into one mushy pile of conviction and desire, surrender and alignment.
What on earth am I talking about?
Back in June, Brandon decided it was time to go back to seminary and finish the degree he started over a decade ago. To do that well meant leaving his full-time job, which also meant leaving behind insurance benefits and the stability of his income. As you might know, I’ve been a freelance writer the last year and a half, a job shift I chose so I could hopefully recover from long-Covid (which mostly I have… mostly, most of the time), which has turned into my most favorite way to live ever. The freelance life has been a gift of flexibility, healing, and full operation of my gifts as a writer. It has also given me so much space to serve in my local church, answer nudges toward various ministry opportunities, have coffee and conversations with new friends, teach adult Sunday school classes, offer a writers workshop at the local library, make dinner (which feels sacred to me these days), and be fully present for my family when they come home, with no brain fog and exhaustion.
I’ve been living my best life, which for me comes with a side dish of guilt. Why should I get to do exactly what I want to do, and be relatively successful at it, when so many other people aren’t able to do that? Is this a Midwestern thing? A Protestant work ethic thing? Shouldn’t I be more miserable, as a consequence of the Fall and all that?
Instead of trying to figure out a way to keep living my best life while Brandon pursued a degree in practical theology (essentially, how do you live out what you believe about God), I decided the best solution would be to see if the local university, the one I used to work for almost a decade ago, was hiring. It turned out they were, in fact, hiring, and in a job that I could actually imagine myself liking, maybe even loving, again. The interim dean custom-designed a job description for me, gave me the 11-month contract I wanted (so I could keep writing), and before I knew what was happening, I said yes, I’ll start August 1, when I come back from my three-week Out West adventure that I’m giving myself for my 40th birthday.
I haven’t written here or sent a newsletter or any of those things the last four months. I began to view my Out West trip as a farewell to the freedom, independence, and recovery efforts from the last 18 months, the marker of a job accomplished, but now it was time to put on my big girl pants and get back to the Business of Work. Enough messing around, doing things I love all of the time as if that’s allowed and even encouraged. Real People work at Institutions and earn Insurance and Retirement. By the end of my (amazing, awesome, once-in-a-lifetime, stunning, incredible) trip, I felt ready.
I started my new job on August 1 as the program coordinator for the MFA, MA in Communications, and Honors Programs. It was hard. Harder than I thought it would be, not because the work itself is hard, but mostly because there is a part of my brain that is apparently still not as functional as it used to be after Covid. I was a kick-ass administrator once, y’all. I used to be able to exercise strategic thinking, answer email, tweet updates, create newsletters, update databases, and build spreadsheets with the joy and delight exhibited by Toula in My Big Fat Greek Wedding when she goes to work at the travel agency.
This is not so anymore. I’m rather sure that the frontal lobe of my brain has lost the neural function required to do this work with ease. It literally hurts my brain now.
I hate that this is true.
Despite these complications, I still had on my big girl pants. Suck it up, buttercup! Headaches and exhaustion are a part of life; deal with it. Get some desk lamps, kill the fluorescents, open the windows, go for a walk, take a break, drink all of the water and Liquid I.V. You can do this!
Several weeks into my new job, where I worked with lovely people and supported wonderful students and did the things I used to do with ease but now apparently sucked at, I told Brandon I would give it three months, and if I was still grumpy and irritated and unable to keep writing while doing this job, I would quit and go back to freelancing. I kept my clients, but just at a reduced level. Unlike my day job, which drains the energy from me, writing gives me life—after hours of writing, I have vim and vigor! I want to tell you all of the things I’ve learned, all of the things I’ve discovered, what fun twists and turns happened while I was writing. Even when it’s marketing content for someone else, it’s exciting. The world is so big and beautiful and bold, and I get to pour my curiosity over it, and then report on what I’ve found.
I had this ultimatum in mind, when all of a sudden, God showed up about six weeks into my new job. I was even settling in at work, feeling better—not great, but better!—making long-term plans for grant writing and certificate programs and conferences and international travel. Here I come to save the day!
And then LOOK WHO WALKED IN.
The jerk. He totally disrupted my timeline.
I’ve been participating in a meditation class with my friend, George Shunk, at church this fall. One Sunday, he had us be quiet and meditate for six minutes on a simple passage of Scripture that had nothing to do with vocation or calling or God’s will or any of that stuff. I don’t even remember what it was about. What I know for a fact is that while I was sitting there, thinking about peace and love and God’s provision, I “heard” in my mind this word from the Lord:
Sarah, I gave you all of these opportunities to do what I made you to do with joy and with freedom. And you chose stability and insurance.
– God
I burst out in tears. Uncontrollable, ugly sobs. If you’ve ever been scolded by God, maybe you can relate.
Let me interrupt myself for a second to say that I really struggle with admitting this to you. I have had a hard time believing that God has a particular plan and purpose for each individual, this job, or this spouse, or this house, or this wallpaper. That just seems overly manipulative and controlling for the God of the Universe who certainly loves us, but maybe doesn’t have time for choosing wallpaper?
But Brandon and I have never been able to wrestle into submission anything we wanted to happen. We’ve applied for hundreds—hundreds!—of jobs, jobs we were plenty qualified for, but never received a callback. So when jobs like the one I was offered at Ashland fall into place so easily, it feels like God’s Will, God’s perfect and pleasing will, a sweet gift from the Lord, just for me. I start to play a lot of “Maybe this happened because…” and determine the cause and effect of circumstances as if I am just along for the ride with God, reading the tea leaves to discern what he’s doing and which way he’s going to turn next.
But we aren’t just along for the ride. God has given us freedom. He has promised us life and life in abundance. When God “spoke” to me during my time of meditation, his tone was gentle, but firm, loving, but direct, and if I didn’t do something about it, I knew I’d be living in disobedience to whatever God has for me.
That felt both icky and impossible.
Throughout the last two months, you can see the progression of my thought life and prayer life as I’ve scrambled to make sense of all of these changes. They are hidden in my devotional entries written for Root & Vine:
R&V In the Word: When God’s Plan Stinks: (apt title!) Written in mid-August and published in mid-September, this is when I was wrestling with how much I did NOT like the path I had chosen, which had been given so generously to me, which felt like God’s plan for me. “Sometimes God’s plan stinks. This is uncomfortable! I hate this! Why did you call me into this?! Our temporary frustrations and unmet expectations feel like a reversal of the peace God promised.” You can read more about how I worked through all of that.
R&V In the Word: When God Calls Your Name: Written in late-August and published in late-September, this is when I was trying to figure out why God was sending me so many different messages about vocation and calling. Were they to encourage me to stay in the job, or were they calling me into something else? Were they even from him, or had I done an amazing job of conflating all of the coincidences of my life into God’s Plan again? (It can be difficult to live inside my brain.) At the end, I wrote, “When God calls my name, I don’t want to mistake his voice for someone else.” (Well, hold onto your hat, Sarah-of-the-Past! God is about to call your name!)
R&V In the Word: Fish and Sheep: Written in mid-September, shortly after the Gentle but Stern Disciplining Voice of the Lord Sobfest, this word came to me out of nowhere (or the very real Somewhere). It was the reaffirming answer I needed from the Word after hearing the Word in my head. After the resurrection, and after Peter denied Jesus three times, Peter went back to the work he had done three years earlier. After three full years of ministry, working alongside the Real Life Actual King of the Universe, Peter said, “I’m going fishing.” After feeding him a breakfast of fish, Jesus asked Peter, “Do you love me more than these?”
I wrote:
“The footnotes say “more than these others do,” as in, more than your brothers, more than your disciples, more than these other guys love me, but I like to think that Jesus is asking about the fish.
Do you love me more than these fish? Do you love me more than sustenance? Do you love me more than provision? Do you love me more than comfort? Do you love me more than a safe life? You are a good fisherman, Peter. You could make a good living with my miraculous hat trick of overflowing nets.
But if you love me more than what these fish can give you, I have a different mission for you.
Jesus asked Peter three times if he loved Jesus, then followed each of Peter’s answers with new instructions, “Feed my lambs… take care of my sheep… feed my sheep.”
Once you’ve taken that leap and walked with God, it’s hard to go back to the life you once had.”
– Me
At the end of all of this meditation and reflection, here’s what I know: I never have the slightest idea what God is doing, but I do know that he’s always doing something and the something he is doing is a new thing. It is never the same thing twice, or the same way, and even what worked before may not be the way it will work this time.
“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert” (Isaiah 43:19 RSV).
I love the richness of the different translations of this one verse.
God is always doing something new. I want to perceive it and know it, I want to give heed to it, pay attention to it. I want to witness the way in the wilderness, the streams in the desert. I want to be there to see the work God is doing, whatever it is, wherever it is.
So, I resigned from my job at the university, six weeks after I started, and I am back to this writing life, holding this writing life out with an open hand, trying to trust that the Father, who knows how to give good gifts to his children, will provide what we need. He has proven himself faithful, time and time again. I believe, Lord. Help my unbelief.
It is hard to keep up with all that is swiftly unfolding politically right now, but if you try, I can promise you a full day of doom-scrolling and despair. It all feels huge and impossible. Flinging one more opinion on abortion, climate change, gun control, religious freedom, the insurrection, LGBTQ+ rights, race relations, and whatever else I’ve missed this week is a nice attempt to feel like anything I say will actually do something. But it won’t.
When it comes to these issues, I have been along for the ride since birth and before, decisions made for me and everyone I know without our input, really, by mostly men and some women in far-off places who weigh life and death by GDP and percent of military spending, then come up with a propaganda campaign to woo their base so they can stay in power, while I compost watermelon rinds so the planet doesn’t die.
Too cynical? Maybe. Okay, it isn’t completely worthless. It does do something: It makes me feel better. When I think about all of the powerful decision makers somewhere making decisions for the country, I feel helpless. I feel distraught. I feel small. I feel inadequate.
I can’t do anything. But we can.
I finished The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again by Robert D. Putnam this week. It takes a long look at what has happened over the last 125 years at the macro level to move our country from a nation of fierce individualism (I) to a country that embraced the ideals of unity and shared purpose (we), and how those community ideals quickly eroded and have continued to deteriorate to where we are today: polarized, traumatized, disillusioned, angry, and afraid. Putnam argues that we are now in a second Gilded Age, an age we have emerged from before and can again.
The book is an excellent and exhaustive analysis of every influential marker of society, from economy to religion to culture to politics, not excluding gender and race. After seven chapters of analysis, I really just wanted Putnam to get on with it already. Okay, okay, I get the point, I-we-I, there is the inverted U-curve again. Putnam strongly makes his case about how we got here and then presents opportunities for how we can get ourselves out of here again.
The forces that generated real, actionable change in the early 1900s / Gilded Age did not come from the top down. They were grassroots efforts. They were individuals who saw injustice and inequality within their own communities and tried to do something about it. “Gilded” has two meanings: wealthy and privileged, and covered thinly with gold paint. The wealth and privilege may have been true for some, but it was not true for all. Even the shiny things turned out to be just a covering, a veneer that might have made people feel good enough, but underneath, it was faked. Instead of covering injustice and inequality with gold paint to make it look sparkly and new, these individuals scraped the paint away and offered new ways forward.
They weren’t all religious, but some were religious. They weren’t all political, but some were political. Because of their individual commitment and effort, change happened, in governmental policies, in local systems, through the organization of leadership associations, in churches, by forming nonprofits, by one person lifting their eyes from their own lives and seeing others, by believing there could be a better way.
These people didn’t take on every cause. They took on one wrong, one need, and leaned into that with all their hearts, trusting that someone else would lean into the myriad other wrongs and needs so that none would be neglected but all might be elevated. This is how I start to make a “we” difference.
When the world feels so overwhelming, when powerful people who are elected or appointed begin to make changes beyond my control, it is easy to succumb to helplessness or bitterness. It is easy to slide into despair, to slip into a pleasant coma of consumption and indifference.
Instead, pick one thing. Just one. When that one thing is violated, trampled, or broken, it breaks your heart, doesn’t it? It brings tears to your eyes. It stirs righteous anger in your bones. The injustice of it could crush you. That’s your one thing. That’s the thing you need to lean into, the thing you need to try to do something about.
What one thing do you care about? Where can you show up and change lives, maybe even change the arc of history? Go and do.
This morning as I drove the kids to school, a blade of light cut through a hole in the clouds in that divine way, you know, the way that feels like God is descending through the clouds to rest his glory on your shoulders, and you feel blessed, and particular, the center of the universe.
Then, the world tilted. I saw the solar system in all its blackness, the sun at the center, our blip of a planet lolly-gagging its way around on its invisible gravitational beltway, pirouetting until one patch of cloud over one city in one county in one country on one continent shifted just enough that the light that was already on its way to us was blocked by some accumulated water droplets and ice crystals hanging in the firmament, except for one spot, where it was free to shine directly into our atmosphere, and lo, the light arrived, and I got to witness it.
Look at the sky! I tell my kids every single time we’re in the car or walking somewhere or making breakfast.
Yeah, yeah, it’s beautiful, they say, and go on with their blessed, particular lives.
I remember being their age, the center of my own universe. I remember seeing my immediate wants and needs right before me, seeing only myself, my desires, my planet of purpose and every other molecule sent to serve my unfolding story. I lolly-gagged about, pirouetting my way through the day, blathering on about all my troubles, all my stresses, my worries, my fears. Admittedly, I still do this; we all do. As a parent, however, I think we’re given the gift of perspective, the ability to see our children as their own selves, separate and distinct and not the center of the universe. Hopefully this gives us our own perspective shift more regularly, from center of the universe to blip on a lolly-gagging planet, right alongside them.
So much of my mothering these days feels like taking hold of my teenagers’ shoulders to help them see beyond this moment. Look, this is not so big. Look, this is where this road might head. Look, you only see right now, but I have decades of life in the rear-view mirror, and I can give you a glimpse, at least, of what is yet to come, how much larger the world is, how your life is much smaller and simultaneously more beloved than you can grasp.
Mothering teens feels like dropping seeds in front of their path and dousing the ground they walk on, hoping something might take root, and then watching what happens next. I’m forever watching what happens next in a way I didn’t when they were younger, when I felt some sense of power and control over whether they live or die. I was just trying to keep them from killing themselves in one hundred small ways everyday—don’t run into the street. Don’t touch the hot stove. Don’t ride your bike without a helmet. Eat your vegetables. After every single one of those phrases you could tack on “or you might die.” So much of parenting little ones was keeping them from physical harm while trying to help them grow up with as few injuries, mental and physical and emotional, as possible.
With teenagers, though, I’ve traded my leash and collar for casting visions of what once was, what could be. Here is what I learned in a similar situation. If you choose A, here are some potential scenarios. Here’s how it could play out. You might want to guard your heart. You might want to turn this way instead of that. I don’t know but I’m guessing that if you choose B, this is what might happen. You can choose that, but it might hurt on the other side. It might not turn out the way you hoped.
But in most things it’s their choice now. My teens are adults-in-training. For years they’ve been the center of the universe. But now, every once in a while, the light must streak through the atmosphere and right-size their pirouetting planet. Now is the time to begin awakening to the expansiveness of their world. They will always be, in some ways, the center of their personal universes. We’re all the main character of our lives, but in order to operate with any kind of grace and love, sometimes we have to surrender the first person POV and see. Look.
Now is the time to practice adulting. Now is the time to try out some of their own paths. Now is that time because I still have two or four or eight years with them, depending on which kid we are talking about, and there is space and close distance to catch them when they make mistakes, to guide them, to pour as much love and reassurance about their bearing the image of God. But mostly I get to watch, and love, and watch.
There’s a word I was reminded of this weekend by David Brooks, NYT columnist, that captures this kind of watching: beholding. I have the distinct pleasure as their mother to behold their beloved-ness, behold the image of God in them. No one could have cued me into this privilege, to witness the becoming of my children, to behold. I like “behold.” The past tense of it could be “beheld,” to be beholden by someone is to be held.
These days my teens need to be held, loosely. Sometimes what I want to do is cling tighter. What I want to do is direct their paths and protect them from all harm, like their lives are on rails and I’m the railroad engineer. What they really need are guardrails and GPS. (How many metaphors can I toss into this post?) Instead, God whispers, Hold on loosely. They need clear guidance, yes, but I need the heartbreaking understanding that they might choose to turn left when I thought they should turn right. They need grace to make the decisions, and grace when they turn around. Isn’t that what the Generous Father does for the Prodigal Son? He lets him go and he welcomes him back.
“I think I made a mistake,” one of these image bearers said to me the other night.
“If this is the biggest mistake of your teen years,” I said, “then I think you’re going to be okay.”
Oh, there are so many mistakes to be made. I made so many mistakes. I keep making mistakes. The blessing we have as their parents is the ability to give them grace and mercy and forgiveness now, with these first mistakes, so when they inevitably make bigger mistakes later, they remember their God, who kneels down and does not condemn them either, who will pull them up, whisper in their ear, This is not the end of the world, and give them hope for tomorrow, who will run to them on the road and meet them before they’ve even reached the doormat of their Father’s home.
He will behold them, and he will call them “my beloved.” They will be held. This is what I want to instill in them, now, that the light shining through the clouds is meant for them, and it’s also meant for all. They are beloved, and they are one of many other beloveds. Behold, dear one. You and you and you and you are loved.
In those days there was no king in Israel. People did whatever they felt like doing. – Judges 17:6
I’m reading Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones right now. At the same time, I’ve been trudging chapter by chapter through the book of Judges in the Bible. The confluence of these two narratives is striking. Both books make me weep over humanity’s desperation.
The book of Judges begins with violence and dominion and ends in chaos. “At that time there was no king in Israel,” the last verse of Judges states. “People did whatever they felt like doing.”
Dreamland has a parallel feel to it. In an effort to ease our collective pain—the pain of poverty, the pain of oppression, the pain of addiction, the pain of illness, the pain of suffering—people will do whatever they feel like doing. There is no king, no governing sense of right or wrong that can stand up against the will of the people, who ultimately become slaves to painkillers, to the rush of wealth, to the hazy and unrealistic dream of a pain-free life. Dreamland is an incredible look at the complex roads that led us to the opiate epidemic in this nation. There is no one reason why we’re here. There are many. Some, maybe even all, of those roads looked altruistic and virtuous to the people who walked them. In the end, they’ve led to death.
The Book of Judges is a painful, violent cycle of dominance and war followed by rescue and order, for a time, until the next generation comes along. People do whatever they feel like doing and are left to their own devices. When suffering, oppression, and strife happen as a result, the people cry out for help from the Lord. A deliverer/judge/military leader rises up from the community to protect Israel, sometimes just, and other times unjust. Peace prevails for a time, and then the people forget about God and do whatever they’d like again, taking matters into their own hands.
The story is summarized in essence later in the Bible, in the first few chapters of Romans, capturing the same cycle from Judges in a more universal view: So God said, in effect, “If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.” It wasn’t long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy inside and out. And all this because they traded the true God for a fake god, and worshiped the god they made instead of the God who made them—the God we bless, the God who blesses us. Oh, yes! (Romans 1:24-25 MSG).
The heart of Bible stories plays out over and over again throughout history. People who gain power seem to become addicted to power, are hungry for more and more, and are willing to sacrifice other people’s lives in order to acquire whatever they think will satisfy their desires, only to be left wanting even more. It’s happening in Russia and Ukraine right now. It happened in ranchos in the Mexican state of Nayirit. It happens the world over, generation after generation, in small towns and between nations and in our immediate families, my gain for your loss, my growth at your expense. The god we worship is the god we’ve made: our things, our source of security, our country, our national boundaries, our bank accounts, ourselves. The god we serve is a voracious god, a bottomless pit of need.
On the other hand, the God Paul says we’ve traded in for a false god describes himself as compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, faithful, forgiving, merciful, mighty, and loving, the wonderful counselor, the everlasting father, the prince of peace. When it comes to joy, his cup overflows. When it comes to love, it’s higher and wider and deeper than anything we can imagine. That very God made himself known fully through the God-Man Jesus, the one whose name forms the foundation of our religion’s name and ought to be the central focus of our faith.
The subversive message of Jesus—what gives life meaning—is not the acquisition of wealth, or power, or domination. It is love. If we place ourselves under the Lordship of Christ, we say that our lives are no longer ruled by our own gain. Our lives are no longer ruled by that voracious hunger. Our lives are no longer ruled by our own desires. Our lives are no longer ruled by our pursuit of a pain-free existence.
Our lives are ruled now by the rule of love: Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them”(Matthew 22:37-40 MSG).
When love leads, all else comes into alignment. You cannot covet and love. You cannot abuse and love. You cannot envy or slander or steal or kill or commit adultery and love. Any of these actions is outside the bounds of love and therefore against God, who has given us, in love, the Holy Spirit to guide the way to a meaningful life and a peaceful world, in communion with each other and with God, who sees our failings and faults and loves us back into relationship with God and with others.
Faith, hope, and love are the preventative measures against such things, and humility, justice, and mercy are the restorative measures when things have fallen apart.
It’s the simplest, hardest message to live out. The global challenges I find myself sucked into in the news cycle are beyond my control, but I can seek to live a life of love where I am at. I can seek to be a force for good in my family, in my home, in my church, and in my community. This is my sphere of influence, the place where my small act can make a difference to subvert the powers and principalities that oppress the marginalized, with the love and grace of the God-Man I have chosen to follow, who holds me in his grip and whose peace he promises to give.
Featured Image: Chaos during an earthquake by Jose Guadalupe Posada, ca. 1880-1910. Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum.
Sarah Marie Wells 