rainbow I witnessed yesterday evening
I feel more hopeful than I have in a long time.
For years, I’ve been in a kind of stasis. Even as I’ve changed a lot on the inside, I’ve felt like I’m standing still while everyone else’s lives change around me. They say everything is for a season, but this season has felt endless. I’ve written about it endlessly too, so there’s really no need to rehash it. Basically I’ve found it harder and harder to hope that anything substantial will change for the better. I’ve resigned myself to finding peace and living as well as I can at the impasse.
A close friend and I have been discussing prayer a lot lately. Not long ago she got fed up about some upsetting things that she couldn’t change. Rather than keep assuming that God must sovereignly want her and her loved ones bogged down with these problems, she started praying about it. Hard and with faith that God would hear her. And you know what? Stuff started happening. No, God isn’t a vending machine, but the changes in the situation and in her are undeniable and inspiring. Witnessing it has been like a shot of espresso for my soul. Little by little, I’m bringing my stuff back to God too. I’m daring to be really honest with Him again. In a sermon I listened to recently, the pastor said we should pray with the expectation that God wants to heal and restore. We don’t have to presume that He prefers to work through struggle and difficulty, or quickly accept that as His will and shut down spiritually. It’s sad that this was revolutionary for me, but it was, and it’s already created a shift in my heart. I actually feel eager to pray again, about all kinds of things, because I believe it might actually make a difference.
Nothing drastic has happened to me – it’s just that good change suddenly feels possible. Unexpected, surprise developments are popping up on all fronts, like raindrops of hope. After years of drought, even scattered showers are a big deal. I’ve also made a decision that will hopefully lead to more growth and new opportunities, and I’m not afraid of it anymore. I’m learning that I don’t always have to stick things out and make them work – I can let them go. I feel an increasing certainty that winter is over and a new wind is blowing, and also that I wasn’t fully ready for it until this very moment. I don’t know how long it’ll last or how far it’ll take me. But it makes me feel alive, and I’m excited to follow where it goes.
5 Comments + Posted in: changes, faith, hope
Annie Downs is the author of several Bible studies for teenage and college girls, most recently Speak Love: Making Your Words Matter. Her latest work, Let’s All Be Brave: Living Life with Everything You Have, is a challenge to people of all ages to live courageously right where we are.
Let’s All Be Brave is primarily a memoir. After college, Downs left her hometown and a secure job for Nashville – a city where she knew no one – purely because she felt God was asking her to do so. Later she moved to Scotland to do ministry, expecting to stay there permanently. But again, she felt a pull back to Nashville. If she’d concluded her story with “And God wants us all to go into ministry and move to foreign countries,” she would have lost me. Instead, she reiterates throughout the book that there are many ways to be brave, and your ways don’t have to look like anyone else’s. Small, daily acts of bravery are powerful both in themselves and as stepping stones to even greater works that God wants to do in and through your life. Do the next brave thing, and you may be surprised by where it takes you. I’ve seen this philosophy play out in my own life, and I support it!
Downs’s casual, lighthearted writing style shows why she’s popular with youth. But she can also be painfully honest. I was especially grateful for her section about bravery in singleness, after she avoided writing about singleness for many years. We Christian women in our 30s need more strong voices in this area.
If you need encouragement and/or a gentle kick in the pants, I recommend Let’s All Be Brave. It’ll be available on July 29, and if you pre-order the Kindle version now, you can get it for $4.27!
I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
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I planted my garden on May 31st! Erin asked me to Spare No Details, so here’s all the gardening info you could want!
What I’ll be tending this year:
5 tomatoes – Roma, sun gold cherry, beefsteak, Mortgage Lifter, Better Boy
5 peppers – red bell, green bell, Big Bertha, Yummy Snacking, jalapeno
4 squash – zucchini, yellow straightneck, spaghetti, eggplant
2 kinds of basil – regular and Greek
2 regular cucumbers
Oregano, parsley, dill, and Mexican tarragon
I’ve been gardening since 2007, which was my first full summer in my house. I started with herbs in pots on a baker’s rack, and a small patch of vegetables on the northeast side of the house. Not much happened with the in-ground plants. In 2009 I moved the vegetable patch to the south side of the house, expanded it, and tilled some fertilizer into the ground. The plants did slightly better. In 2012, my dad built me a raised bed out of leftover shelving in my shed. We filled the bed with a “pro mix” blend from the Bartlett Nursery. I had a decent harvest of tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers, but again, it fell a little short of my expectations.
THEN CAME 2013. My dad went back to the nursery and talked to the owner about how 2012 went. The owner replied, “What you need is some private stock.” He drove Pops to the very back of the property, where some men were silently shoveling atop a huge mound of rich oak-leaf compost (at which point my dad started hearing banjos). They piled some onto his trailer, along with a bag of Wholly Cow manure, and instructed him to make rows with the compost and place a handful of Wholly Cow into the bottom of each hole before planting. I did exactly that. The results were insane. Victory at last!
When my dad went back on Saturday for another season’s worth of private stock, the owner told him that another layer of it would actually weigh down the soil. Instead he gave him a blend of private stock and pro mix. He said that next year, we can make rows with pure pro mix and won’t need the stock at all. Judging by how healthy the soil looked after it was tilled, I believe it! But I never would have known this, so I’m sharing for everyone’s benefit.
I feel really good about my selections this year. I’ve been gardening long enough now to know what works, what doesn’t, and what I actually use. Believe it or not, I consciously underbought. I typically buy more herbs, and duplicates of many vegetables as insurance. But this year, I decided that if a plant doesn’t make it, I can just buy another one (or try something else). In the meantime, the thriving plants will have more space. I also chose seedlings that looked a little more mature to compensate for the late planting. The Roma tomato already has a tiny tomato on it!
I did some rearranging. The tomatoes are now on the wider end of the bed (which also leaves the cucumbers more light). They’re spaced further apart (look at me, preparing well for success!), and instead of using cages, I’m going to set up a Florida Weave support system. It’ll be more supportive and easier to manage as the plants grow.
I water with a soaker hose on a timer, which has proven to be the most effective and low-maintenance method. Last week the plants sat together in a wheelbarrow that collected a lot of rain. So they were a little drowned when I planted them (as you can probably tell from the pictures), but they’re already perking up.
Stay tuned for garden updates throughout the summer! Yay!
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At the Pentecostal church where I grew up, we didn’t have benedictions at the end of service. The practice of benediction came into my life when I became a Presbyterian, and I’ve loved it from the beginning. I loved singing “The Lord bless you and keep you” at the end of every RUF large group in college. I love that a blessing is the last thing I hear as I leave church. Recently I’ve noticed some people at church holding their hands out for the benediction, and I’ve started doing it too. It’s an outward expression of what’s already in my heart. I feel my need for every smidgen of that blessing.
My pastor chooses great benedictions, and my favorite is from Romans 15:13:
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Depending on the day, different aspects of that verse stand out to me. Last Sunday I had a new insight: trusting in God is meant to be a positive experience that brings about joy and peace. Trusting in God is supposed to increase your hope, not deplete it. I must have taken that for granted at some point, but over the years my outlook has changed. I trust God in a passive sort of way to take care of my daily needs. But actively trusting God with my future has come to mean a kind of resignation to His continual nos, a chipping away at my hope. I have to trust that His denials of certain things are for the best. Or for His glory, anyway, and I’m supposed to care about that more than my own happiness. All the nos may be paving the way for some really fantastic yeses, but it seems unwise to count on it. Meanwhile, our true hope of heaven is so far away. Joy, hope, and peace are definitely present in my life, but under this perception of trusting God, they’re not thriving like they could be. So I’m praying for better understanding.
On another note, after writing this post about blessing and failure, I started paying attention to how I use the word “blessed.” In modern usage, it seems to set up a dichotomy that those who receive things we typically consider “good” are blessed, and those who don’t are not. But Jesus disagreed. Instead of excluding the poor, the mourning, the meek, and the persecuted, He called them blessed. That comforts and grounds me. So when I’m thankful for the gift of my friends, my health, a delicious meal, or a beautiful day, I’m just saying I’m thankful. Because, to paraphrase Inigo Montoya, I do not think “blessed” means what we think it means.
3 Comments + Posted in: faith, hope, reflections
The Moon and More by Sarah Dessen (4 stars)
Set in the fictional beach town of Colby, NC (also seen in Along For The Ride), The Moon and More follows Emaline through the summer between her high school graduation and heading off to college. Emaline has a lot to sort out: the sudden collapse of her three-year relationship with Luke; worrying about her aimless best friend Morris; and the sudden appearance of her estranged father and half-brother. After coaching her through the college applications process and promising to send her to any school she wanted, her father re-neged on the deal and she still doesn’t know why. All the while, she works at her family’s realty company, and gets more than she bargained for when a summer tenant sucks her into the making of a documentary AND a new romance. Dessen’s books always involve lovable characters and situations that feel true, but The Moon and More is her best work since This Lullaby. I loved it.
Let’s All Be Brave: Living Life with Everything You Have by Annie F. Downs (4 stars)
I’m reviewing this for Netgalley, so a post about it is forthcoming.
Invitation to Tears: A Guide to Grieving Well by Jonalyn Fincher and Aubrie Hills (5 stars)
I reviewed this here!
Second Chance Summer by Morgan Matson (4 stars)
All of Taylor’s childhood summers were spent at her family’s lake house with her best friend Lucy and her eventual first love, Henry. But five years ago, something went wrong between them, and she hasn’t been back since. Now, her dying father wants the family to spend their last summer together at the lake. As she struggles to deal with the impending loss of her dad, Taylor also finds healing and forgiveness that she never expected. This book is a tearjerker for sure, but there’s a lot of beauty in it too.
Flat-Out Celeste by Jessica Park (4 stars)
I knew this book was on the way, but I was happily surprised to see it live on Amazon this week, and read it in a day! Several years after the events of Flat-Out Love, Matt’s sister Celeste is now eighteen and as smart and quirky as ever. On the surface, she’s come a long way since her days of carrying a cardboard cutout of her brother. But her peers reject her and don’t understand her odd personality. Preparing to choose a college, she falls into a correspondence with Justin, who handles student relations at a small school in San Diego. As their relationship grows, she starts to hope for the first time that someone can love her for her true self. Meanwhile, there’s also the problem of Matt and Julie, who broke up two years ago (waaah!) but still clearly love each other. Maybe Celeste can save her brother’s future happiness in the process of finding her own.
The Probability of Miracles by Wendy Wunder (4 stars)
Sixteen-year-old Cam, raised as a performer in the Polynesian show at Disney World, has cancer and only a few months to live. As a last-ditch effort, her mother hauls Cam and her younger half-sister to Promise, Maine, a town where miracles are said to happen. As the town’s magic slowly captures them all, Cam gains enough hope to really live what’s left of her life, even if she may not have a tomorrow. Sounds like a bummer of a plot, but it’s surprisingly funny and whimsical. If you loved The Fault In Our Stars, you’ll like this.
Books for May: 6
2014 year to date: 27
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