Held close in God’s loving arms

 

Have you ever felt your life’s circumstances were earthquake-y and unpredictable and mysterious? That the songs of your heart were slightly out of tune? And yet, at the same time you had an inkling that God was slogging through it with you, holding you close, smiling at you, cheering you on?

 

Often we don’t see our situation clearly until later, in hindsight.

 

I look back and see that during my first few weeks in Lomalinda, I was in a fog—not a dense one, but a fog nevertheless—and I recognize now, more than ever, that day by day, morning by morning, new mercies I saw. All I needed, God’s hand provided. Great was His faithfulness!

 

God had put His loving arms around me during those puzzling days of transition—transition out of so much and into so much. . . .

 

• God said He’d be with me and bless me as I left my homeland and instead lived in Colombia as a foreigner (Genesis 26:3);
• He went before me as I transitioned out of my home in Seattle and into my home in Lomalinda (Deuteronomy 31:8);
• His everlasting lovingkindness led me out of my Pacific Northwest culture and into two cultures new to me: (1) the culture of a missionary community and (2) the culture of rural Colombia (Exodus 13:21);
• As I stepped away from my friends and family back home, God circled me, front and back, with His hand of blessing upon me, and led me into new groups of people I’d never met before (Psalm 139:5);
• He assured me He’d be with me and keep me close as I transitioned out of my home church and into a different one—we had only one in Lomalinda (Exodus 28:15);
• He went before me and helped me fight mental and physical battles as I left behind the way I’d always done grocery shopping and meal preparation, and He led me into the Lomalinda way (Deuteronomy 1:30);
• Although I had never been this way before (Joshua 3:4), He helped me transition out of owning a car and into walking everywhere;
• He had sent me to live as a foreigner and promised to bless me there (Genesis 26:3), helping me trade the smells of forest and sea for the smells of jungle and grasslands and mud;
• Because I was a foreigner in a foreign land (Exodus 2:22), God stood beside me as I moved out of cool Seattle temperatures and into sweltering equatorial heat;
• Within each day’s spirals and whorls, and despite my many awkward lurches, with each little victory and each major triumph God was helping me drop puzzle pieces into place. He held my hand, guided me with His counsel, and transitioned me toward a glorious destiny (Psalm 73:23-24).

 

As we traveled this foreign wilderness, I witnessed God caring for Dave, Matt, Karen, and me as a father cares for his child. He had brought us to this place (Deuteronomy 1:31). 

 

Little did I know then that He was preparing a feast for me so that my cup would overflow with blessings (Psalm 23:5).

 

The Lord carried me out of despair and offered me hope: “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with My righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10).

 

Joan Chittister writes: “Despair . . . leads us to ignore the very possibilities that could save us. . . .

 

“Hope, on the other hand, . . . knows that whatever happens God lives in it, and expects that, whatever its twists and turns, it will ultimately yield its good to those who live it consciously, to those who live it to the hilt. . . . Hope sends us dancing around dark corners. . . .

 

“Every dimension of the process of struggle is a call to draw from a well of  new understandings. It is that wisdom that carries us beyond the dark night of struggle to the dawn of new wisdom and new strength.” (Joan Chittister, Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope)

 

Hope: It’s a good thing.

 

Wherever you find yourself today,

God holds you in His arms

and offers you hope.

 

“May the God of all hope

fill you with all joy and peace

as you trust Him. . . .”

(Romans 15:13)

 

When you’re chosen and called for a particular job

 

Early in the morning on August 30, my kids set out walking to school with Dave. They were nervous, but Matt’s first grade and Karen’s Kindergarten met in the same classroom, and Dave taught on the same campus—such a comforting thought.

 

That evening we all agreed the kids had done well so I started my job the next day, mornings only, which was important since Karen’s Kindergarten dismissed at noon.

 

Gulp!

 

I worked in the administration office, a small, low, pale yellow building. Remember that hill Karen Mac drove us up on her moto our first evening? The tallest, steepest hill in our center? That’s where my office was, just feet from the radio tower.

 

Up to then, I’d thought hiking up comm hill was bad—and it was a doozy—but after I started my job, I climbed comm hill and the hill on top of it, one right after the other, each morning. (And yes, I did lose weight from all that hill-climbing.)

 

On that first day, along the way, I thought about my new boss, Rich, and that he was the top administrator at our Lomalinda center of operations. Yikes! I had pictured working in a quiet little back office somewhere.

 

On my application I’d written I had secretarial experience—jobs during high school and college—but when I heard I’d work for such an important person, reality hit. I hadn’t worked in an office for seven years and my skills were sure to be rusty.

 

I wish I’d had the maturity to pray with eloquent words but, instead, I held my breath, every muscle tense, as I hiked those steep hills.

 

How blessed we are that “God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans” (Romans 8:26, The Message).

 

And so, somehow God deciphered my wordless thoughts.

 

Maybe He knew that if I could, I’ve have prayed like this:

 

“Father . . . may I live today with the creative esteem

of knowing You have chosen me 

and called me to receive Your love 

and to serve You [in this particular job].

May Your peace flow through me, 

calming my agitated spirit, conditioning my disposition 

and controlling all that I say and do. . . .

Help me to experience the peace of a forgiven, forgiving heart,

the peace of a heart completely open to You,

and the peace of a pure heart filled with Your Spirit.

You are the sole source of perfect peace.”

(Lloyd John Ogilvie, Quiet Moments with God)

 

And it only kept getting better!

 

God, bless His heart, had arranged schedules, Rich’s and mine, so that during my initial days on the job, Rich worked in Bogotá, giving Donna Weber, his outgoing secretary, time to orient me.

 

I still take delight in the way God had gone before me to prepare the circumstances of the first few days of my new job, which seemed overwhelming. I experienced the truth of this:

 

“The Lord will personally go ahead of you. He will be with you; he will neither abandon you nor fail you” (Deuteronomy 31:8, NLT).

 

By scheduling Rich’s days and mine, God went ahead of me and made potential rough places smooth and crooked places straight (Isaiah 45:2). 

 

In the beginning, my clumsiness troubled me—I was out of practice—but soon I caught on.

 

Later, when Rich returned and the office sometimes ran at a hectic pace, I recalled the blessed quietness of my first days and thanked God I got acquainted with the job when I did.

 

Donna tutored me in duties few secretaries in North America carried out. I learned city and town names—Mitú, Caño Colorado, Cobaría, and Acaricuara—and their locations in departamentos (states), names like Meta, Vaupés, Amazonas, and Nariño.

 

I also learned names of some thirty indigenous languages in which our people worked, names like Tucano and Guambiano and Muinane, and I forwarded messages to our radio crew who kept us connected to linguists working in those distant locales and to our planes and our staff in Bogotá.

 

And I typed correspondence in Spanish and used rocks and coffee mugs as paperweights because wind blew through doors and windows, open because of the heat.

 

When I thought of a few of my previous bosses, words like persnickety and curmudgeonly and stuffy came to mind, so I wondered what to expect in my new boss. Donna assured me he was a gem, and soon I discovered she was right. Courteous, approachable, and unassuming, he had a way of putting people at ease.

 

Rich and I worked well together, partly because he was a grace-giving soul and partly because he was organized. “I want this office to run like a well-oiled machine,” he told me, and it did. Since Donna was a real pro, the two of them had the place humming like that well-oiled machine.

 

We had two types of personnel and during my first day on the job, I needed to sort that out.

 

Rich, as Associate Director of Language Affairs (ADLA), helped the first group, linguists—those carrying out Bible translation and literacy among indigenous groups. Rich and his wife Karis had worked as linguists among Colombia’s Wayuu people for more than ten years but, when colleagues elected him to the ADLA position, he set most of that translation work aside to serve all the linguists.

 

The second type, called support personnel, carried out jobs that freed linguists to concentrate on their work—people like pilots, mechanics, medical staff, finance office staff, school teachers like my husband Dave, and many others. To succeed, or sometimes even survive, linguists needed support people, those with skills and personalities willing to fill such roles. Both linguists and support personnel joined forces on behalf of Colombia’s minority language communities.

 

And so it was that I began my new job in Lomalinda.

It was a good day, better than I could have imagined.

(From Chapter 11, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: 

A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)

The view from our yard: My office is to the right of the radio tower.

 

Living among choice saints disguised as regular folks

 

I’d always planned to chase the American Dream—I’d marry a guy who’d earn more money next year than this year. And more money each year after that. And we’d get a bigger, nicer house every so often. And increasingly nice furniture and carpets. New cars, too.

 

And I expected we’d continue our pursuit of happiness—which the Declaration of Independence says is our right. I assumed gaining more and better possessions would lead to that happiness.

 

Abundance. Upward mobility. Living the good life. During my lifetime, the American Dream has been so pervasive in our values, assumptions, and expectations that we have allowed it to be a comfortable, acceptable part of Christianity.

 

In my circles, including my church circles, that was the thing to do—that was the way we lived—so when I was a kid and a young wife and mother, I assumed all of that would be mine. I never questioned those goals. I never questioned my motives for pursuing them. 

 

What a shock it would have been for me if, back then, I had read David Wilkinson’s words in The Prayer of Jabez: “Do we really understand how far the American Dream is from God’s dream for us? We’re steeped in a culture that worships freedom, independence, personal rights, and the pursuit of pleasure.” 

 

And then God sent me to Lomalinda in rural Colombia.

 

Lomalindians thought little of North America’s material trappings. For the most part, they had freed themselves, choosing to be satisfied with skimpy physical creature comforts, willing to overlook inconveniences.

 

I sensed no competition to outdo each other in vehicles, possessions, houses, or décor. They built homes where marriages and children could thrive, where they spent fun times with friends-that-became-like-family.

 

If they’d ever craved a big income, a fancy house, and early retirement, they’d set aside those dreams. They lived at peace with themselves.

 

Our population included charming, good-looking men and lovely, capable ladies. Most folks were clean and attractive but had little concern about the latest clothing trends. People returning from furlough brought back the latest fashions and hairdos, but the materialism frenzy did not flame throughout the community.

 

People worked hard—sometimes too hard. They showed kindness and gentleness and generosity.

 

They enjoyed playing volleyball and softball and taking motorbike trips and singing and playing instruments.

 

They also cried together and prayed together and rejoiced together and grieved together and cheered each other on.

 

God had sent our family to live with some three hundred colleagues who, I would soon learn, served Him with zeal. It’s not that they talked about God all the time or spoke in hallowed tones or prayed a lot in public.

 

No, they were ordinary souls who chose a humble lifestyle so they could live a radical faith, despite consequences that would come their way.

 

“While Christians choose to spend their lives

fulfilling the American dream

instead of giving their lives to proclaiming the kingdom of God,

literally billions in need of the gospel remain in the dark.”

(David Platt, Radical, published in 2010)

 

Half a century or so before Platt penned those words,

the Lomalinda bunch had begun addressing those needs

by translating the Bible, and doing so much more,

for some of those billions.

Lomalindians knew from experience

the meaning and implications of Platt’s words.

 

Now, looking back, I don’t hesitate to call them

spiritual giants,

choice saints.

But I didn’t recognize that in the beginning.

They were camouflaged as regular folks.

 

Saints. What are saints?

 

In the Bible, saints are described as God’s faithful servants, consecrated people, and those who worship Him (2 Samuel 2:9, Psalm 50:5).

 

Henri Nouwen describes saints as “people ‘set apart’ by God to be light in the darkness. . . . What makes them saints is their clear and unwavering focus on God and God’s people.”

 

Set apart, indeed.

 

And yet, Nouwen says, “Although we tend to think about saints as holy and pious, and picture them with halos above their heads and ecstatic gazes, true saints are . . . men and women like us, who live ordinary lives and struggle with ordinary problems. . . .”

 

“Most of their lives are remarkably similar to our own.” (Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey)

 

“Remarkably similar to our own,” he said. That’s what I meant when I wrote that Lomalinda’s people “were camouflaged as regular folks.” (From Chapter 10, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)

 

God handed me countless blessings when He sent me to Lomalinda to work alongside choice saints.

 

He gave me a chance to sit around their dinner tables and to invite them to gather around our family’s table.

 

He gave me an opportunity to laugh with them, cry with them, pray with them.

 

In the commissary, I shopped alongside saints.

 

Some of Lomalinda’s saints worked as my kids’ teachers.

 

Saints piloted our fleet of small planes.

 

Saints staffed our clinic, our offices, and our childcare so moms could work during morning hours.

 

And then Henri Nouwen turns the focus away from the saints and instead forces us to look at ourselves: “The saints are our brothers and sisters, calling us to become like them.”

 

While I agree with Nouwen’s statement, I have a hunch genuine saints are not aware they’re calling us to become like them. Lomalinda’s people never even hinted that they were inviting me to be more like them.

 

After all, each of us—even a choice saint—is a recipient of God’s grace, His favor, His loving blessings we don’t deserve and can’t earn. Grace is a gift He gives us as we slog along on our daily journeys through ups and downs, failures and successes.

 

God was handing me one gift after another

and, among the finest, were and still are

His grace and His saints in Lomalinda.

 

“Happiness, not in another place but in this place, not for another hour but this hour.”

 

And so it was that after those first few days, I told myself to embrace the present, settle into a routine, and live within my new normal.

 

That meant I accepted that lemons were warty and green, colored orange inside—that was normal.

 

Rufina, a stranger, worked in my house for ten hours one day a week—that, too, was the norm; cockroaches lived in our house and weevils lived in our flour.

 

We’d sweat, a lot, and get sunburned, a lot—all those were my new normal.

 

Embracing my new normal did not mean I’d have no more challenges and stresses. No, they’d continue to pop up, but perhaps I’d cooperate with God and adjust my attitude and do better than I had in the past.

 

One of those new challenges would be my future job in Lomalinda.

 

Now, I’d always been first a wife and mother, and if—if—I had time to spare, I accepted outside duties. But I also knew Lomalinda mothers worked half-days because visas were hard to get and personnel needs went unmet.

 

Before leaving the States, I’d had a phone conversation with a man at the California headquarters about moms working outside the home. He assured me Wycliffe understood a mother’s need to focus on her kids’ well-being and that gave me a huge dose of peace.

 

So, I expected to work part-time, but school wouldn’t begin until two weeks after we arrived, and I wanted to stay with my kids until they settled in school. They had a few jitters—everything was new to them and they were so little, Matt starting first grade and Karen starting Kindergarten.

 

But then one day a woman came up to me, introduced herself as Karis Mansen, and told me I’d be working as her husband’s new secretary.

 

She stood there waiting for my response.

 

I asked for his name.

 

“Rich Mansen.”

 

I could hardly wait to find my “Big Sister,” Karen Mac, and ask her about him. “Oh, he’s the number one man here.” She went on to explain that the director of the overall work lived in Bogotá, but Rich was the top administrator at our Lomalinda center of operations.

 

Yikes! I was to work for the top administrator? I had pictured working in a quiet little back office somewhere.

 

On my application I’d written I had secretarial experience—jobs during high school and college—but when I heard I’d work for such an important person, reality hit. I hadn’t worked in an office for seven years and my skills were sure to be rusty.

 

As the days passed, I noted, with relief, that no one in administration contacted me. I kept quiet, hoping they’d overlook me until school began.

 

That gave me time to take deep breaths, pray, and adjust my attitude.

 

It gave me time to embrace Walt Whitman’s wisdom—to choose “Happiness, not in another place but in this place, not for another hour but this hour.”

 

“Father . . . may I live today . . . knowing

You have chosen me and called me

to receive Your love and to serve You. . . .

May Your peace flow through me,

calming my agitated spirit, conditioning my disposition

and controlling all that I say and do. . . .

Help me to experience the peace

of a forgiven, forgiving heart,

the peace of heart completely open to You,

and the peace of a pure heart filled with Your Spirit.

You are the sole source of perfect peace.”

(Lloyd John Ogilvie, Quiet Moments with God)

 

A few days passed and then one day the phone rang and the Director of Personnel, Harold Beaty, asked me to come for an appointment, so I hiked the one-lane roads of red clay and arecife (red lava gravel), preparing to tackle steep comm hill, as everyone called it—the big, main hill of Lomalinda where the commissary was, and thus the hill’s nickname.

 

The road swooped up and wound left and then right, like a grand curving staircase. I was accustomed to hiking that far because that’s where the dining hall and comm were, but then I hiked up another level and stepped into the administration office, perspiring and winded, my heart racing.

 

Someone ushered me into an office and Harold Beaty offered me a seat. I looked at him and silently hollered, Please, don’t say “Rich Mansen.” Please!

 

Harold asked if we were adjusting to the heat and our new surroundings. I lied. I assured him everything was fine. Only Dave knew of my meltdown and I planned to keep it that way.

 

Besides, I wanted to get on with the real reason for the appointment.

 

Harold said, “We’d like you to be secretary to the ADLA—Associate Director of Language Affairs—Rich Mansen.”

 

So, it was true. I groaned. (I think—I hope—it was a mute groan.)

 

Describing Rich as kind and quiet, Harold said the arrangement would work well for both of us.

 

And, best of all, Harold said I could begin after Matt and Karen started school. What a relief! I was so thankful he gave me those extra days for my kids’ sake, and for my heart’s sake, too.

 

I left Harold’s office feeling deeply blessed. (From Chapter 10, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A  Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)

 

“Lord, grant me a sense of humor to laugh at myself”

  

After my humiliating flailings and flounderings during those first few days, I decided that with God's help, I would do Lomalinda life the best I could until I knew how to do it better.

“No matter what went down yesterday,” writes Ann Voskamp, “today’s your very own fresh new canvas and there really is hope: ‘The future is as bright as the faithfulness of God.’

 

“Right now through your unlikely desert places, God is making unbelievable roads. . . . You better believe it! Just go face the day with brave joy—God’s got your back.” (Ann Voskamp)

 

“Brave joy.” I like that.

 

And these words of Jesus sound so good at such a time: “I don’t condemn you. Proceed with peace. Choose to act with strength so you can live differently in the future”(John 8:11).

 

My heart felt cheered.

 

But in reality, I was still in transition, and transitions can be a time of fumbling through blunders.

 

On one of those first few days, someone asked me to make cinnamon rolls for an event, but I didn’t know weevils lived in the flour.

 

I’d never heard of weevils living in flour—what a sheltered life I had lived.

 

And I didn’t know what to do about them.

 

Only later did I learn I could (1) put the flour in the freezer and freeze those critters to death, or (2) spread the flour on a cookie sheet and bake them to death. Then all I had to do was sift out their crisp dead little bodies. 

But I didn’t know that yet, and I stood there in my kitchen, clueless, with flour in the bowl and a few dozen weevils jumping into the air and diving into the flour again. 

What could I do? 

That day I stumbled upon a third way to murder weevils: I added the liquid ingredients and drowned them. They experienced a slow death. They kept trying to escape but I punched them back into the dough. 

And then I baked them. Dead. 

And I arrived at the big event with my cinnamon rolls, speckled inside with little black crunchy bits. 

Still today I laugh when I think about those cinnamon rolls. 

I’ve often wondered if anyone recognized what I’d done and snickered behind my back. 

On the other hand, several other people also brought cinnamon rolls—so maybe no one knew which were mine. . . ? 

Nah, I was the only newcomer at the gathering. Everyone knew I was the only one who’d show up with weevils in my cinnamon rolls. But those dear folks extended grace upon grace to me during my transition. 

And, like discovering a third way to murder weevils,

I would learn new ways of living, and even thriving,

in Lomalinda.

(from Chapter 9, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go:

A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)

 

“When a door opened . . . that let the future in”

“There isn’t one of us,” writes dear Frederick Buechner, “whose life hasn’t flamed up into moments when a door opened somewhere that let the future in, moments when we moved through that door. . . .” (A Room Called Remember)

 

That day—the one I’ve been telling you about, day three in Lomalinda—has always stood out in my memory. After more than forty years, recalling it still pains me. But let me hasten to say the memory of that day also amazes me, it makes me smile, it warms my heart.

 

Here’s why: Even though I was shattered—broken, stunned, scared—on that afternoon, a door opened—God Himself stood on the other side of the door, and He opened it—even if I hadn’t fully grasped that yet.

 

Since that day, I’ve long taken comfort in what the Bible tells us: God goes before His children—He is the vanguard—in the lead, on the front line. (1 Chronicles 14:15, Isaiah 52:12).

 

God was already in Lomalinda when I arrived. He was there, welcoming me, opening a door to my new life. I was a nervous wreck, but He was unflappable. I was disoriented, but He was steady, focused.

 

God also goes behind his children—he is the rear guard (Isaiah 52:12). He brings up the rear, protecting us from what might attack from behind. Rearward also means to gather up—God gathers us in His arms when we are weak. He comes along behind and helps gather up the messes and broken pieces we left along the way.

 

So our wonderful God goes before us to lead

and He follows behind us to protect and help.

Front and back, we’re wrapped in His loving arms.

 

If I’d have listened to God, I might have heard Him welcoming me, smiling, and saying something like He said to Habakkuk: “Look, watch—and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something that you wouldn’t believe even if someone told you about it” (Habakkuk 1:5).

 

On that steamy afternoon in Lomalinda,

standing—in my sweat-drenched clothes—

in that little red brick house,

thanking God for strong breezes

blowing through the window slats,

and listening to parrots and crickets

and an occasional dog bark on a nearby hill,

God opened a new door for me

and welcomed me into my new, good future.

 

And I stepped through that open door.

 

It was as if He was saying, “My thoughts are completely different from yours,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9).

 

And if I had been thinking clearly, if I could have found words, I might have answered Him something like this:

 

“Holy God of love. . . You love me just as I am

and in spite of what I have done.

Most of all, I know that

You are involved with me to enable me to be

the person I was created and destined to be.

I can trust You because

I have found You utterly reliable

each time I have trusted my needs

and problems to You.”

(Lloyd John Ogilvie, Quiet Moments with God)

 

The day had finally come: Something thrilling was going to happen, but then—!

For several days we’d had to hike Lomalinda’s steep hills in mid-day equatorial sun and eat lunch in the dining hall, and we always felt sick by the time we got there.

After lunch every day, we stopped at the comm to buy a few more groceries and kitchen supplies, hand-carrying them home and once again feeling sick by the time we hiked home. (Click on sun poisoning: nausea, vomiting, chills, fever, headache. . . .)

Making our kitchen functional was taking longer than I expected—much longer. But that day I was encouraged: I had almost unpacked our suitcases, and the kitchen cupboards and fridge were looking better.

Daily, I made good progress but also faced challenges. Life was constantly one of those two-steps-forward-and-one-step-back experiences. Persevere, I kept telling myself. Persevere. Focus.

Each hour presented me with ups and downs. Take, for example, food.

One of the bonuses of Lomalinda was that carrots and tomatoes tasted like real carrots and tomatoes, genuine flavors I recalled from my childhood when people grew their own produce.

But why didn’t the other food taste like it was supposed to taste? We had only powdered milk, and it had a strong flavor. (The brand name was KLIM, milk spelled backward.) Raw beef, so different from ours in the States, had a sweet, stomach-turning stench and, cooked, it tasted gamy.

And why did food stink? Flour, rice, and sugar had an odor. Brown sugar smelled strange, too. It came in rock-hard lumps, and we had to grate it before we could use it.

But I shouldn’t have complained—it was food. And I hadn’t had to grow it or milk it or butcher it.

And then came the day

when something thrilling was going to happen:

For the first time, we would eat lunch at home

because we had the right groceries

in our cupboard and fridge.

We had dishes and silverware in the cupboards.

No more hiking to the dining hall—

such bliss!

Bent over the open suitcase on the floor, I sorted through the last of the pots and pans and plastic drinking glasses and a pressure cooker, arranging them just so in the cupboards. I was almost giddy.

But then—

then!—

a man arrived at our door

saying I had to empty the kitchen cupboards

so he could spray for insects.

I was furious but, I hope, I kept that to myself.

(From Chapter 8,

Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)

Now, looking back on that setback, tears sting my eyes. I was so young, and I was trying so hard to make that place a home for Dave and the kids and myself.

My discouragement was not unreasonable. The seventy-something me commends the tender twenty-something me for battling so hard.

I wish the older me could have spoken to the younger me. The older me recognizes that transitioning out of our comfortable places and into unfamiliar spaces includes grief—grief for what we have left behind.

It also involves a different type of grief—a pain, a misery, a pesky dark cloud—that envelops us as we fight and wrestle and, sometimes, even wage war to create a new home.

Marilyn Gardner writes:

“. . . Sometimes we need to just sit with the grief before being forced to move on. . . . Sometimes we need to just stop where we are and honor that moment.

“Sit with your grief, let it flow, don’t try too hard to analyze, don’t push yourself . . . to some ‘right’ response. Just sit with it. Because as the grief comes, so will the comfort.” (Marilyn Gardner)

“Dear God . . . You are my one fixed stability 

in the midst of changing circumstances. 

Your faithfulness, Lord, is my peace. 

It is a source of comfort and courage. 

You know exactly what is ahead of me. 

Go before me to show the way. 

Here is my mind; inspire it with Your wisdom. 

Here is my will; infuse it with desire to follow Your guidance. 

Here is my heart; infill it with Your love. 

I realize, Father, that there is enough time today 

to do what You desire. . . . 

Thank You for your power and presence." 

(Quiet Moments with God, Lloyd John Ogilvie)