Remembering Five-Year-Old You

I am writing this with gratitude for you from my cozy and quiet living room next to a snoring Edie as I sip tea from a Christmas mug. Roasted veggies are cooling on the kitchen counter where they’ll become a bisque for dinner with yummy leftovers for days.

I love this time of year. As wonderful as the holidays can be with family, gift-giving, and all the extra sweets and treats, I relish the peace of the first few days of the new year. It’s a chance to receive a fresh start and re-center on what matters most. For a little more simplicity.

The older I get, the more certain I am that life is meant to be savored and celebrated. I spent too many years manic and driven—a workaholic for Jesus. I spent more than I had to give on what I considered Kingdom with a capital K work (with more than a little sanctimoniousness about how much of that was mine to strive for).

I still work hard and love what I do. I still believe in partnering with the Holy to usher in more of ‘on earth as it is in heaven.’

I’m also glad to embrace the truth that I can trust the Trinity to be working things for good. And that Sabbath and rest and celebration are just as holy as work and simplicity and sacrifice. That I can ask for help and deliverance and love without demanding any of it but also without pretending I there isn’t need and lack where it exists.

So, while it is wonderful to be seeking out your word of the year or setting demanding if worthwhile goals for work or health or saving (and please do those things as they serve you!), this message is about prioritizing joy this year.

The twins are teaching me every day about the good and necessary work of play. How it is a way to learn and love. It is no accident that one of the ways the Trinity is pictured by theologians as a dance—perichoresis.

I love how Jan Richardson framed these ideas in her writing for this Epiphany (also known as Women’s Christmas, a day when women, often responsible for hosting holiday festivities, would traditionally pause to celebrate and leave the cooking and cleaning to others):

“I am curious about joy. In a time when the anguish of the world can flatten it right out of us, how might we become intent on joy instead of giving up on it? How might it be to approach joy as a practice—one that does not hinge on ignorance of circumstances but staying present in the midst of them? How does celebration—the public face of joy—enable us to keep turning toward the world and each other? I do not have many answers. What I do have are questions, stories, and a conviction that joy lives in close company with sorrow and suffering, inextricably intertwined in an ongoing conversation that we are called to participate in.” (Download her full self-guided retreat here.)

This is your invitation to be curious about joy. To take some time to remember how you played as a kid. What did you love to do when you were 5? How about when you were 10?  

For me, at 5 and at 10, the things that gave me life were books and water (being near it was good and swimming it in was better-I didn’t care if the water was in a fancy country club pool like my mimi and pawpaw’s or a green pond with snakes and the occasional snapping turtle like my mamaw and papaw’s). I also loved biking, swinging, hunting for horned toads, picking dewberries in the summer, climbing trees and building treehouses, and playing out stories with friends. I also loved playing with my Barbies, mostly for the clothes, the car, and that super cool hot tub where I could make the water bubble with an air pump on it’s side.

What about you? How did you play?

Focusing on childhood experiences of God and goodness (or their seeming absence) is important since many significant spiritual moments that shape images of the self and the Divine occur in youth. A child tends to notice the Divine in all kinds of places, but their spirituality is often viewed as insignificant by adults. In Jesus’ day, children didn’t have to be coaxed to come to him, only welcomed or not (Mark 10:13-16).

If you want to spend some more time with this, I have a free download with journaling prompts and thoughtful reflection questions to consider the ways the past is also present for you now and how you might be invited to rediscover play. You can find it on my homepage by scrolling down past the explanation of spiritual direction and the link to Hopeful Lament.

Wishing you more joy and play in 2024,

terra

PS The audiobook for Hopeful Lament is now available! Find your copy here.

What I’ve been up to:

I loved my interview with Rapt. The questions were fun to answer and not ones I’ve already answered a lot of times elsewhere. Check it out here.

And I loved my conversation with Brent for the New Zealand-based God’s Story Pod. You can listen in here.

This week, the latest Spiritual Accompaniment with Children course began and, as always, I am so grateful to join Lacy Borgo and other friends in helping people listen to children's stories of truth, beauty, goodness, and God with compassion. It's a way to help the kids among us feel seen and known (and to know themselves more fully). And it's a chance for grown-ups to be more whole themselves to boot.

Coming up:

I’ll be teaching a six-week course on Accompanying Others Through Grief for pastors, spiritual directors, and anyone walking with others through loss through the Companioning Center starting just before Lent. The meetings are Mondays February 19th-March 25th at 5 pm central time. Find out more here if you or someone you know could benefit from this class.

What I’m listening to:

Beth Moore’s All My Knotted Up Life. As a southerner who grew up in the church with extended family who had a lot in common with her Arkansas river people (mine were Piney Woods lake people), I recognize much of her growing up years. As a woman with a history in SBC ministry, I’ve lived a lot of what she’s talking about. Her story is sweet and hard and courageous. She talks about childhood sexual abuse in a way that is authentic and truthful without being overly disturbing or even re-traumatizing to listeners. I am grateful to her (and Keith) for the openness about the hard and lonely realities of living with mental illness. I’m about a third of the way through and can’t wait to keep listening.

 Sinead O’Connor recorded with Willie Nelson in 1992. When Sinead, who had torn up a picture on SNL to protest the coverup of sexual abuse by priests, the backlash was brutal. Later that week, she was booed off stage at a Bob Dilan tribute. Willie Nelson saw how she was treated and invited her into the studio to record with him the next day. This Peter Gabriel cover is so tender and beautiful. Listen here. Read the full(er) story here.

What I’ve been reading:

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve read a book after watching a screen adaptation and Lessons in Chemistry is one of them. First off, I’ll say that I’m glad I watched the series before reading the book for the assault and attempted assault trigger warnings as well as having a chance to learn that she loses someone close to her. The book (like the series) does a good job of painting of living with loss over time and how it spills over to impact future generations.

I appreciated the way Garmus paints the ways we are uncomfortable with grief and the bereaved:

“They had already exhausted their full complement of things to say. I’m so sorry. If there’s ever anything you need. What a tragedy. I’m sure he didn’t suffer. I’m there for you. He’s in God’s hands now. So they avoided her” (102).

 What made the book worth reading even after I was familiar with the story was the humor, the clarity and courage of the characters, the friendships, the justice that isn’t punitive, and the dog. I guessed (thankfully, correctly) that Six Thirty the dog would get even more of a voice in the telling on the pages. The animals among us are frequently vessels of wisdom and grace, even if they don’t know more than 648 words and possess the ability to sniff out bombs, navigate entire cities, and read good literature.

Someone I host in spiritual direction introduced me to the Comfort of Crows and I’m grateful. It’s Margaret Renkl’s poignant reflections on the wildlife she encounters in her backyard and beyond. There is an invitation to treasure and learn from created life that is solace to my soul. This is a book intended to savor over a year’s time, with a brief chapter for every week of the year beginning with the first week of winter and wonderfully illustrated by Margaret’s brother, Billy. She closes her reflections in week 2 with, “What more could anyone ask from a new year than the promise—or just the hope—of renewal?” (7). What, indeed.

In thinking of God as trustworthy Parent who seeks all who are lost, I leave you with this image from William Blake’s Songs of Innocence:

The little boy lost in the lonely fen,
Led by the wandr’ing light,
Began to cry, but God ever nigh,
Appeard like his father in white. 

He kissed the child & by the hand led
And to his mother brought,
Who is sorrow pale, thro’ the lonely dale
Her little boy weeping sought.

(Song 14)

I wonder when you have felt lost. What about a time you felt rescued?