Reflections on a Year of Everything

A year ago today I released a deeply beloved way of being, 

 and stepped aside and up and into another and next chapter of being who I am.

On May 27th last year, my community of faith, my family of Highview, worshiped with me and generously expressed their love and gratitude for my role in our lives together as their Pastor, and commissioned me to the love-work God had been growing in me to do in Thailand.  These days I am 'Ahjahn Ruth', Canadian Director of the New Family Foundation and Highview's "missionary in residence". 



It was a big step.
It was a big day.
It's been a big year.

Not since birthing my first child, some thirty-seven years ago, has there been an event in my life that has brought with it such a dramatic change in the way I think and feel about myself.   Even as I was released to work I love with great passion, these past twelve months I have processed and cried and journalled and prayed my way through what felt like brand new, and sometimes terrifying territory.

Not sure I'm done yet.  Not sure I've done it even remotely well.  But it seemed prudent somehow to take a moment, here at the one year mark, and make a list of learnings.  Yes, a list.  Reflections and random insights from a year of this much change.  Things I know now that I didn't know then, or a least knew only lightly.

• A life of abundance is nurtured over the long haul.
• Being separated from community for a prolonged period of time is a wretched, dreadful thing.
• Releasing long held responsibility happens pragmatically once, and psychologically over and over again in extremely thin layers.
• There are many ways to love that don't involve being in charge.
• We often have more impact on those around us than we imagine.
• In the disorientation and loneliness, God really is enough.
• Nothing, absolutely nothing really belongs to us, even and maybe especially the deeply precious. 
• Just because you've surrendered what feels like your greatest treasure doesn't mean He might not ask you for more.
• Surrendering our greatest treasures to the wisdom and love of God is probably the most intimate our spirits get with God.
• Being stripped of title and role reveals what you're really made of.
• Wise friends who listen without judgement AND who are strong enough to make honest observations are worth one hundred times their weight in gold.
• The bigger the change the more worth it it is to work through to all the amazement that's waiting.
• God wastes nothing, even work that's invisible.
• God wastes nothing and everything you've done up to this point has been in preparation for this thing now.
• Change combined with a surrendered heart is a catalyst for unleashing shalom. 
• Love really is the bottom line.

I'm not done yet, this adjustment thing.  Almost, I think, but not quite.  I want to give myself enough time to do it as right as I can do it, or at least to stop and acknowledge my mistakes.  There are some things you just can't rush, and, as weird and disorienting and even painful as it's been, there's also enough wonder and rush and life and joy to make me want to pay attention and be fully present in all of it.

I could not possibly reflect on this past year without expressing deep thanks.

• To my wise and patient friends who listened and honestly observed with me this past year in ways above and beyond.
• To my husband whose love in risking this new thing with me sustains me in ways imperative.
• To Highview for allowing me the breath-taking honour of both serving you as pastor in the past and remaining among you to worship now. 
• To Pastors Suradet and Yupa for trusting me to serve with you like this in our new adventure together as New Family Foundation.
• To my Best and Tender Father-God for holding me together, unbelievably believing in me, and pouring out Your abundance on my life, over and over again.

Lament for Evelyn Hope

Ah Baby Girl,

How is it that the unspeakable has happened and you are gone from us?

We are flattened by the devastating power of our love for you pulsing forward into the cold emptiness of your horrifying absence.  Every tear is a scream against the vicious void that shocks us awake each day now, since that day you were delivered to us silent.  

This we did not see coming.

But sweet baby Evelyn Hope, you need to know this.

You have rocked our world and we are forever changed.  Perhaps in the brevity of your time with us there is a mystic distillation of your spirit, granting you in the nine months of your growing hidden, and the less than 24 hours we had you in our arms, the same profundity of impact that takes the rest of us a life time to realize, if we live intentionally enough.

I’m so glad I had the chance to hold you.  Your Momma loved you strong and brave even in her heartbreak, to deliver you to us so we could meet you.   And I held you and sang to you, songs about strawberries clinging to the vine, and songs letting you know that this is not the way I want things to be, or I’d be with you now. 

And now what?  How do we live like this?  What is to become of these aching hearts chasing after our phantom child?

I don’t know.

Except.  Except. 

The ocean of love that pours out of us for you does not come out of a vacuum.  This family already knows how to hold on to each other in the midst of the unspeakable.  How to love no matter what.  How to watch for all that God wants to do redemptively because of this, because you were born to us, and then had to go. 

You are now part of a family that loves fiercely, little one.  We will never forget you. 

I see you dancing.  In my imagination – some might call it a vision – there is a swish of yellow, like satin soaked in sunshine that catches my eye off to the right.  And I turn my head and a little girl full of delight grabs my hand and says, “Gramma! Come dance with me.” 

So, I will wait to dance with you, Sweetie. 

Yes, we will dance together, and none of this will be sad any more.