Crossroads

I know I’ve told this story before, but bear with me one more time.

On January 1, 2010, I sat in the parking lot of Barnes and Noble and said a prayer to God. I had been thinking about the last decade of my life, how I had nothing to complain about, but also nothing “to write home about” either. I wondered if the next ten years of my life would be any different.

And I prayed to God they would be.

When I think back on this past year, I will always see 2010 as my crossroads year, the year when God presented me again and again with different choices and for the first time in my life I let Him lead me in the direction He wanted me to go.

In February of this year, a friend spoke about attending a wedding at an Episcopal church and I thought how I had always wanted to try an Episcopal church. And as soon as I had that thought it was as if God spoke to me and said, “It’s time.”

So I went searching for an Episcopal church and found this one on the internet that had a Narnia library.

And I knew God was saying “This one.”

I was so nervous about attending Hope for the first time on Easter, I almost chickened out, but instead I walked through those red doors and heard God say, “This is the one.”

Things began moving very, very fast, and I think I might have stumbled and fallen had it not been for how relatively easy God made things for me.

“Say yes,” He said, “to everything that is asked of you.”

Say yes.

Suddenly I went from someone who spent her summers sitting inside reading and counting the hours until school started back up, to someone who spent virtually every day at church.

I went from someone who never wanted anyone at church to know who she was, to someone who first stood up before the congregation in July to give a “moment in faith.”

I went from someone who rarely cried in public, to someone who couldn’t stop the tears when I knelt before the bishop for confirmation in September.

And now, here I am, 2011 is only days away. I think it’s only human nature to want to predict what our futures hold. It gives some sense (though false) of control. As we all know I couldn’t even predict what my Christmas Eve was going to be like two days before it happened.

And the fact is, I never could have predicted 2010, not ever. It is still so surreal to me sometimes.

All I can do, all any of us can do is be still, be silent and listen to where God is calling us to.

Finding a church didn’t mean that God was suddenly easier to hear. Life still gets in the way. Life threatens to drown out all that God is saying.

Finding a church is about realizing that your voice isn’t the only one calling out to God in the middle of the night. Finding a church is knowing that you are not alone in this world. Finding a church is about finding the eternal chorus of voices who long for God and adding your voice to their song.

There is an old legend that Blues musician Robert Johnson met the devil at the crossroads and sold his soul in exchange for the gift of music.

I visited the crossroads this year but there was no devil there waiting for me.

There was only God and with Him ... Hope.

The Christmas Story

Every year our Christmas stories change.

Some years the story is good. We are joined by family. We get all the gifts on our list.

Maybe we’re even lucky enough to see snow.

Some years the story is not so good. Like this past Christmas Eve that I spent in the emergency room, reeling from a high fever and vomiting. It kept me from my first Christmas Eve service at Hope and broke my heart.

But the good news is that the true story of Christmas, the birth of Jesus Christ, never changes.

Two days ago, at the Christmas Eve service, I was supposed to do the first reading. I was excited at the chance and my biggest concern was whether or not I could make it through the following lines from Isaiah without crying: “For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

Throughout our lives, there will be good Christmases and ones filled with regret. Those memories will always be there, but they will always joined by the only Christmas story that matters.

That God so loved the world that he gave his only son …

New to Hope

Everyone has traditions at Christmastime.

When I was little, we used to visit my Uncle George and Aunt Eleanor on Christmas Eve and have a large family get-together. I saw family—all from my mom’s side—that I only ever saw on Christmas Eve. I remember that the men all played pool and I always wanted to play, but was never allowed near the pool table.

I remember that Aunt Eleanor used to give us communion that night and that I was mystified by the fact that someone who was not a nun or a priest could give communion. I thought that was the most amazing thing and from that moment on, I always wanted to be that person.

After my parents divorced, I don’t remember too much in the way of Christmas Eve traditions, mostly, I think because I was at one home and then another and it always seemed to be changing, but when I was in college and thereafter, when I spent the holidays with my dad, we started a new tradition.

Every Christmas Eve we would attend the service at his church. Toward the end of the service, everyone would take a candle and the church lights would dim and we’d all stand around by candlelight while the pastor’s wife sang “Silent Night.” Cory’s voice was lilting and given the setting and the candles, a little haunting.

After church, we’d go home, my dad and the rest of the family, and stand in the kitchen eating shrimp.

I’m not sure why the shrimp, but I know after we had it that first time, we had to have it each year following—because it was tradition.

I get to start a new tradition this year. I have my own church to attend on Christmas Eve. As the days get closer to Christmas, I realize just how sad I was, not having a church home all these years that I’ve lived down here.

There are people who only ever attend church on Christmas and Easter and for many years I was not one of those people. I didn’t attend church on any Sunday despite my love of God and my need to worship.

I was lost.

I was so lost that I just kept on walking, thinking I’d run into someone who would save me eventually, but like most people who do that sort of thing for real—like getting lost in the woods—I just kept walking farther and farther away from where I needed to be.

And then, this past January, I stopped and admitted to God that I had no idea where I was going and that I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing. It was then that God sent me this little church in middle of those woods I had been so hopelessly lost in.

My very first Sunday in that church was Easter and now I get to spend Christmas with the people who God sent to me to bring me new hope.

This Christmas will always be my first Christmas at Hope. It will always hold a special place in my heart. It will be a day I look back on for the rest of my life.

It will be the start of a new tradition, one of family and friends, one of hope and the promise of good things to come.

Christmas Memories

The smell of oranges always reminds me of Christmas.

When I was growing up, every other year or so, we would drive down from New York to visit my grandparents here in Florida for Christmas. And I remember that my great-grandmother used to squeeze fresh orange juice for me and now the smell of fresh oranges reminds me of Christmas.

Christmas is a time for memories. Whether those memories be good or bad, they become locked inside of us, they become forever attached to Christmas.

I think my first Christmas memory is of my cat running up the Christmas tree and knocking it over, smashing all the ornaments on that side of the tree. My mom was worried that the cat was trapped under the tree. Meanwhile I was hoping that the cat had run away and would stay hidden until my dad cooled down.

Years later, my mom and I would look back on that memory and laugh. It was easier to laugh too once we bought an artificial tree that the cat couldn’t sink its claws into.

When I was eleven, my dad decided that he and I would drive down to Florida. It was kind of a spur of the moment thing and we wound up leaving on Christmas Day. Nothing was open and I remember eating a petrified ham sandwich from a gas station for lunch and then later being super happy to find a hotel Christmas buffet for dinner.

Every single one of my Christmas memories involves someone else. I think that’s key. Christmas is ultimately about family. It is about a family on the run, trying to find a place to stay when everything else was closed to them. It’s about the first child born to a young couple, a child conceived of the Holy Spirit, a child who would one day save us all.

It’s so important to remember just who was with Jesus when he was born. It wasn’t just Mary and Joseph watching over him. His first cries were heard by the shepherds and the angels, a whole heavenly host. His very first Christmas gifts were not gold, frankincense and myrrh. The very first gifts given to Jesus were people, people who loved him and cared for him and watched over him.

Remember that this Christmas. Remember the gift of people, the gift of family.

I am so blessed by the people that God has gifted to me.

It's the Journey

It’s that time of year when I could spend every hour of every day watching nothing but cheesy Christmas movies on Lifetime or Hallmark. My current favorite is a movie called Comfort and Joy.

Comfort and Joy is the story of a woman named Jane. She has it all. She’s wealthy. She’s successful, a vice-president at her company. She has an attractive boyfriend. But something is missing. On the way to a Christmas party, she wrecks her car and wakes up ten years in the future.

In this future life, Jane has given up her job, her boyfriend, her wealth and traded it all in for a husband, two adorable children and a church, where she is president of the Altar Guild. (I wasn’t aware one could be president of the Altar Guild, but good to know.)

She spends the rest of the movie trying to reconcile her old life with her new life and in the end, when her future husband claims to love both old and new Jane, she finally realizes the joy she could have in this new life.

It’s always at this part of the movie that I wish Jane could stay in the future, stay with her new family and live the life she was meant to live. But like most movies with this alternate life/time travel conceit, Jane’s visit to her other, better life comes to an end and she returns to her old shallow, vacant life.

Edmund, Lucy, Peter and Susan leave Narnia and return home through the wardrobe. Dorothy clicks her heels and returns to Kansas. In the end, no matter how great the fantasy, the hero of the story always returns home.

It frustrates me to no end.

But what I’m learning is that life isn’t about the destination, it’s not about where you end up, it’s about the journey.

In Comfort and Joy, Jane returns home so that she can live those ten years and grow those ten years and learn to live and love. She can’t simply fast forward to the end. It’s the journey that is so important.

It’s something that I have to remind myself of daily. It’s as if I see God in the distance and I want to race to Him and be there with Him in a heartbeat, but I know that the journey to Him is the most important thing I will ever do.

My mom and I have not celebrated a Christmas together in eighteen years. That’s a long story, but suffice it to say that at this point in my life it is distance, physical distance, that keeps us apart. But we still have our traditions.

Today the box of gifts she had sent me arrived. I called her and I went through the box and opened the gifts with her over the phone.

When she had asked me weeks ago what I wanted for Christmas, I told her to go nuts in the Christian bookstore.

And she did.

In particular, I was most moved by a cross that she sent me. It says on it “The Road of Ministry” and the writing on the cross says this, among other things, “Don’t run too fast, don’t walk too slow; but let God lead wherever you to.”

It’s the road. It’s the path.

It’s the journey.

Ordination

Yesterday I attended the ordination of now Deacon Pam at the Cathedral Church of Saint Luke. It was my first time at the cathedral, my first time witnessing an ordination—and I think the one thing I like best about being new to the Episcopal Church is all the “firsts” I get to experience.

The service itself reminded me of home, not any home in the physical sense, but a place of peace, a place of God, a place where it felt like God had His hand on my heart. I felt calm and joyful, protected and loved.

Maybe it was the incense that reminded me of attending Mass at St. Bart’s in upstate New York when I was kid.

Maybe it was the pipe organ and the choir whose voices saturated the air so that it felt like I was breathing in music, liquid, beautiful, music. It enveloped me, held me—I could have listened to them sing Handel all night.

Maybe it was Deacon Susan whose story Bishop Howe related in his sermon. It was Susan who had felt called years ago to search out Mother Theresa in Calcutta. It was there she learned a powerful lesson on what God needs from all of us.

“Did you work today?” Mother Theresa asked Susan.

“Yes.”

“Did you see Jesus today?”

“Yes … in the face of a woman who died in my arms.”

As Bishop Howe explained, Mother Theresa said the world needed workers, not observers, and that, Bishop Howe said, is the call of the deacon.

Maybe it was Pam who made this service so special.

Before the service started I saw Pam and hugged her. She was overflowing with joy. She couldn’t contain herself. Later, during the processional, she was practically skipping, her joy so infectious, it was impossible not to smile with her.

She reminded me of the joy I felt just a few months ago when I was confirmed.

When I was confirmed, I made a commitment to God.

But Pam being ordained, has made an even larger commitment to devote her life to His service.

It is no small thing.

To be called to be a deacon or a priest is no small thing.

To go and answer that call is even more astounding, all the more miraculous, because to be a deacon or a priest requires complete submission to His will.

Think about that for a second. Submission is not something that is hard-wired into us.

It is no small thing.

But there I stood yesterday and watched Pam and six others give their lives over wholly and completely to God. All seven of them are an inspiration to me.

Because I can stand there and feel God’s love and be filled with joy and want more than anything on this earth to serve Him and answer whatever He may be calling me to do.

But in the end, can I do as the song says and say, “Here I am, Lord. I will go, Lord … if you lead me?”

To say that and truly mean it requires, I think, a willingness to let God work a miracle in your life.

It requires you to say “yes” to the most important question you will ever be asked.

Pam said yes.

Six others, yesterday, said yes.

And there was a time during the service, when the music swelled and tears filled my eyes that I believed with my whole heart that there was nothing in this world that I wouldn’t give to God. I would say yes to anything … anything He asked me to do.

I wish that it were that easy. But the music isn’t always playing and the chorus isn’t always singing. When everything is quiet and still … when I’m alone with God … will I still be able to say yes?

Yes.

Advent

Every year my mom sends me an Advent calendar. (And if she forgets, I remind her like I did Monday night on the phone.)

My favorite of these calendars wasn’t a calendar at all. It was a cabinet filled with many doors and behind each door was an ornament, one to hang on the tree each day until Christmas.

When I was a kid I loved Advent calendars. Popping open the little paper doors each morning to see what was on the other side, was a gift in and of itself. And if anyone other than Santa appeared behind that final door, I was horribly disappointed.

As an adult, I think the Advent calendar holds a different meaning. It still rekindles that childlike joy of Christmas anticipation, but, this year in particular, it will help me stay focused on each day leading to Christmas and not get lost, as it’s easy to do, in the shopping mania, the craziness that surrounds the holiday and has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus.

It is as if we live in a world of two Christmases. And I want to celebrate the one that begins its story with a baby in a manger. And I admit it’s a story that sometimes I lose sight of in a crowd of competing messages.

Everything is a jumble, December days threaten to fly by, just nicking Christmas on their way to January.

I want things to slow down. I want to treasure each day, but I’m already caught up in the chaos.

But then in the midst of everything, a voice calls out.

A voice from the book of Romans. This past Sunday our second reading came from Romans 13:11-14. Paul seems almost surprisingly gentle when he writes: “You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers.”

What beautiful words.

Yes, Paul is talking about Jesus’ return some time in our future, but his words also remind me of the promise and hope of Jesus’ birth.

Advent is not a race. Advent is the time given to us to wake. It is more than days marked on a calendar. Advent is the time to make ready. Advent is the time to rejoice at the good news. Advent is Christmas Eve every day. It is waiting. It is hope. It is longing. It is anticipation that explodes with joy with the birth of Jesus.

Wake up, Paul says.

Wake up.

Wake up.

Salvation is near.

Dear Mr. Lewis:

I wonder what you would have thought of Harry Potter.

In a few weeks, Part I of the last of the Harry Potter movies will be in theaters at the same time as The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (book three or book five depending on how you order your Narnia books).

And I really do wonder what you would have to say about Harry Potter if you had anything to say at all.

The Christian message in your Narnia books has never been in doubt despite the fact that they are books of fantasy, that magical creatures such as unicorns and centaurs, dwarves and witches, dragons and mermaids populate every book. In the Narnia books, centaurs read the stars and even Aslan is subject to the deeper magic that rules the land.

On the other hand, many have viewed the Harry Potter books as being completely unchristian, as leading small children astray with the false hope that spells and incantations can cure all the evils in the world.

I wonder what you would say.

Author Madeleine L’Engle said that the chief ingredient to any work of Christian Children’s fiction is love. Love must be the central theme. Aslan shows his love by sacrificing himself to the witch at the stone table. Meg, in L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, defeats the evil IT by a simple declaration of love.

So is there love in the world of Harry Potter? Well, there would be no Harry Potter at all if it weren’t for the love of his mother. Central to the books’ plot is sacrifice, specifically the sacrifice of Harry’s mother. When Harry was still a baby, his mother sacrificed her life and that single act of ultimate love shielded him and protected him from Voldemort.

It is that love that carries Harry through all the books. It distinguishes him from his enemy. It’s the reason why he will always win and why Voldemort must always lose.

Mr. Lewis, I grew up on your Narnia books. I devoured them again and again and again. I’ve read them more times than I can count. I actually stopped counting when I reached twenty times for each book.

Your books made me a reader. I had read before that and I had always liked to read, but your world of Narnia was the first to pull me in, the first to surround me, the first to feel as real as anything else in this world.

Your books made me a believer. Your books made me a believer in things that were totally and completely outside the realm of my imagination.

At a time when most children begin to let go of childish whims and fancies, at a time when most children stop accepting things at face value and begin to doubt in things they cannot see, your books cemented my beliefs, gave them strong roots and allowed them to continue to flourish and grow.

I was an adult when I read my first Harry Potter book so I don’t know if those books have the same effects on children today that your books had on me.

But I do think, and I do think you’d appreciate this, that the Harry Potter books do have something in common with your Narnia books. They fill a need all children have, not the need to believe in magic, but the need to know that there are things out there that are unexplainable and even in the face of the greatest of evils, good, unexplainable and pure goodness will always triumph.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Lewis.

You are missed.

Thanksgiving

I have several routines now when I go to church, especially when I go to church and no one is there yet or there are just a few people wandering around.

I always go through the wardrobe into the library. There is, actually, another door to the library, but I make a point to go through the wardrobe.

Just in case.

I also try and walk the newly created path through the back woods. It’s not that anything has changed since I walked it the last time. It’s not that I spend longer than a few minutes back there. But I think for anyone who walks that path and crosses that bridge and hears the birds flapping through the brush and the lizards skittering across the leaves, there is this moment when you feel like this place is yours and yours alone. There is something sacred and holy and still out there in the woods.

So the library and the wardrobe and the woods and if I’m really lucky and the church is empty, I sit in the sanctuary by myself and try and figure out just how I got here.


There are these surreal moments when I walk through church and it’s as if my brain has not yet caught up to my heart. My heart loves this place and the people here like I have known them all my life. But my brain keeps trying to wrestle with me and tell me it’s only been since April.

That’s when I sit in the sanctuary and take a few breaths and try and let my brain catch up before it gets too winded.

I sit and I thank God for all He has given me this year. I never could have imagined being this happy, this fulfilled. I could never have imagined what it truly means to have purpose in my life.

And then I move past thinking “how did this all happen” and start thinking about “what’s going to happen next?”

That little kid that is still a part of me, the little kid who can’t sleep because every day feels like Christmas Eve, that little kid is not as loud as she was right after confirmation, but she’s still there, this tiny bit of joy nestled within my soul.

And as anxious as I am and as impatient as I am to get on with things, to know what will happen next, I know that the beauty of life is simply the living of it.

In an episode from Dr. Who (yes, I’m quoting from Dr. Who), the Doctor wants to know what will happen next in his journey and River Song, a fellow time traveler, tells him, “It’s a long story, Doctor. Can’t be told. Has to be lived.”

For the first time in my life I am glad and thankful that I can’t flip to the last page of the book and see how the story ends.

For the first time, I am happy just to live it.

Sacred

Some days it’s really hard to write.

Some days things just weigh on me.

Some days it’s physical pain. Some days worry and anxiety become squatters, taking up where they are most definitely not wanted.

And it’s these days when church is so important to me, when church becomes something more than a place I want to go, but a place I need to go.

Last Sunday the praise band sung the song “The Stand.” The song built slowly, and when it reached the climax, people all around me began to stand up. One at a time and then all together—this wave of people moved, were moved to stand and praise God. I told people later that it felt like the breath of God, that I felt this energy move through me and it caught me so off guard, it almost knocked me over.

This Sunday, not once but twice (because I go to both services), I knelt down following communion and prayed. It’s hard for me to kneel because of my back and I do not have the hip muscles really needed to hold me up. After a minute or so, my legs begin to shake, but I can’t stop kneeling.

And this Sunday, as I knelt, I felt this presence behind me and all around me. And I swear it felt like it did the Sunday I was confirmed. That Sunday three women stood behind me and put their hands on my back in support.

Today, no one was standing behind me, but I could feel hands. I could feel the presence of something, of many somethings, and I have no idea what it was, whether it be God or His angels, whether it be the healing that God is working on me in this church. But I felt enveloped in love.

And I heard this voice, this internal whisper in my soul that said, “You are not alone.” And as if that wasn’t enough, it was followed a moment later by “You have never been alone.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I have always believed in God, I have always known that He was there, but something has happened to me these past eight months and I can’t explain it. But God is suddenly so much bigger than I ever imagined. He is so much more real.

And He isn’t just standing beside me. He’s in front of me. He’s behind me. He’s all around me, all the time and yes, I’m more aware of Him at church than anywhere else.

I can’t explain any of it.

Macrina Widerkehr, author of A Tree Full of Angels, describes it as a yearning, and that “If you yearn for God, a sacred presence will begin to fill you. It will hover over you … upset your entire life with a haunting presence, a presence that is both terrible and beautiful.”

It’s a presence that is impossible to ignore and one that while overwhelming, is so necessary in my life right now.

I need God. I need Him more than ever.

And so I write.

And I go to church.

Because I need to.

Bridges, Doorways and Paths, Oh My!

I didn’t read Bridge to Terebithia until I was an adult. It’s a children’s book and for anyone who grew up reading the Narnia books or anything by Robin McKinley or Tolkien or Lloyd Alexander or Madeleine L’Engle, Bridge to Terebithia is a book for any child who ever dared to imagine.

It’s also a heartbreaking read. I will not spoil the ending except to say that the ending still makes me cry, makes me cry just thinking about it because the experiences of the main character are so similar to my own.

Children’s books, children’s fantasy books especially, are filled with doorways and wardrobes, secret gardens and hidden paths that open up to new and strange and mysterious worlds.

When I was a kid, I was always looking for those doorways. My friend Donny and I used to hide behind the hedge that surrounded my front porch. It was cool and dark there and no one knew where we were. In the winter time, we dug tunnels through giant mounds of snow the snowplows had pushed to the side of the road. We were burrowers. We were explorers.

We searched for the hidden because if it was hidden, then by definition it must be fantastical.

Later, when I was a little older and reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and A Wrinkle in Time, I became almost obsessed with finding hidden worlds.

That drive has never left me. I think it’s one of things that continues to make Hope such a special place to me. There’s the Narnia library and the secluded memorial garden. There are paths through the woods that are overgrown yet still inviting.

One such path was recently cleared and Pastor Debbie took a bunch of us out there tonight, in the dark, with only the moon and a little flashlight to show the way.

It was so incredibly dark, but there was something about hiking through the woods at night that seemed both charming and mysterious. We didn’t hike far, just about fifty feet or so until we reached a small clearing by the water.

And then we headed off to the right. There were two trees. One leaned slightly over the other forming a bit of a doorway. We walked through it, bearing left and then a few feet later, we saw the bridge.

Just yesterday the bridge had been a few pine logs thrown across a creek bed. But now, as if by magic, there was a whole bridge, with railings and Spanish moss trickling over the sides.

And beyond the bridge, on the other side … there was only darkness.

I can’t wait until the daylight. I can’t wait until I have time to explore further, to see what lies there on the other side of the darkness, whether it be Terebithia or Narnia, whether there be orcs or dragons, whether there be simply silence and the wind rustling through the trees—I want to know.

Because whatever is there, it is God’s and it is beautiful.

Moses

Every year I have my students read about Harriet Tubman and every year I am shocked at the number of my eighth graders who have never heard of her, who don’t know her story, how she was an escaped slave, a conductor on the Underground Railroad, how she personally helped free hundreds of slaves by escorting them to the north and to Canada.

One part of Harriet’s story that was glossed over when I was a child and still receives little attention I think in public schools today, is the spiritual element to her story. Yes, she was called Moses because like Moses she helped free her people.

But also, like Moses, Harriet Tubman had an ongoing dialogue with God.

Yesterday in the book store, I came across a picture book on the life of Harriet Tubman, entitled Moses. It is a Caldecott Honor book and a Coretta Scott King Award winner and it emphasizes in a way that is touching and moving Harriet Tubman’s relationship with God. It imagines her dialogue with Him.

It shows how when she first escaped, God directed her to this person and to that person for help, how God provided her instructions for fleeing from the dogs that hunted her, how He protected her and watched over while she slept.

And then how when she finally made it to freedom, He asked her to turn around, go back south, grab her family and do it all over again. Nineteen times, Harriet Tubman made the journey with slaves fleeing from the south to the north.

Nineteen times.

Harriet Tubman escapes, finds her freedom after years of beatings and near starvation and just when she knows everything will be all right, God tells her to go back and do it again and again and again.

It would have only been human to be afraid. And she was many times, I’m sure, but what kept her going was her faith in God and her willingness to be used for His good.

Nineteen times, nearly three hundred people and Harriet Tubman never lost one of them on the journey.

At the end of Moses, author Carole Boston Weatherford, imagines Harriet’s response to those who sing her praises. She writes Harriet Tubman’s response as this “It wasn’t me. It was the Lord. I always trust Him to lead me and He always does.”

There have been times in my life and will be times in my life when that sort of clarity will elude me, when I’ll get too comfortable with the status quo, when I’ll get too lost in the blessings that God has provided and forget that He has plans for me.

I hope then I can think of Harriet Tubman and remember that God uses blessings and strife to propel us on the journey and that to get caught up in either means that we have lost sight of the path.

When we do lose sight of that path, we need to just give it over to God and trust in Him as Harriet Tubman trusted in Him to use us, to make use of us, for His greater good.

Background Noise

Yesterday morning I woke up to the sound of traffic on I-95. The highway is close, but not in my backyard and occasionally I wake up to the howling of a semi barreling through the night. Some nights the low whistling of tires on asphalt sounds like a ghost haunting the moors in some Brontë novel.

Most nights I can tune it out.

I live in a world of constant noise, though.

I know this because on the rare occasion that I can sit in silence, I can still hear a ringing in my ears like I’ve just gotten back from a rock concert.

Finding silence these days, true silence, is a luxury.

And it’s not just physical noise that bombards us each day, distracting us, making it impossible to concentrate and focus, it’s psychological noise too.

It’s the constant chatter that goes through our heads all day.

Pay the bills take out the trash eat something sleep now go here no go there feed the cat change the oil visit the dentist call your mom don’t eat that are you crazy slow down speed up when are you going to get this done NOW DO THIS NOW!

Remember that old commercial “Calgon take me away.”

When Pastor Debbie revealed that when she arrives at church each morning, before she does anything else, she walks the grounds, making a loop along the water before winding her back around to check out her new found oak trees … I was so envious.

I want that kind of quiet time.

So last Saturday, the coolest day of the season so far, I drove to church. I watched Jaci set up for the food drive, and then I took my camera and snuck down to the Memorial Garden and the water.

I had spotted what I thought was a little blue heron dabbing its toes in the water as if trying to decide if it was warm enough.

My feet crackled on the fallen pine needles, but I stepped slowly, just out of sight of the bird.

It was quiet.

I was quiet.

The air smelled of autumn, something I didn’t think was possible in Florida. I didn’t think autumn existed here, but down by the water, surrounded by plants and trees that here dropping needles and leaves, cozying up to one another, ready to hunker down—I could smell it—wet, moist, decomposing plant life that always signaled winter around the corner when I lived up north.

I snapped a picture of the bird.

I was only a few feet away and still so quiet he hadn’t moved.

I followed him a few more feet and then I was too close. He didn’t even look at me. One second he was standing there by the water, the next second he was air born.

As always, times like these remind me that God is to be found in the stillness and the silence.

And as much as possible, I need to run from the noise that intrudes on my life and take shelter among the trees and the birds. There I will find God.

Sunrise

I’ve been thinking about that cross I found last Sunday.

All week—I can’t stop thinking about it.

As I told someone earlier this week, there are times in our lives when God is subtle and there are times like last Sunday when He is so real, He might as well be standing there right in front of me.

Though I still can’t remember why I asked my mom to buy me that cross when I was in third grade, I do remember that year was special to me for another reason.

It was that year that I first remember feeling the presence of God.

It was that year that He became real to me.

I had always believed in Him I think in the same way that I believed in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, except they had more credibility. There was always money under the pillow and presents under the tree.

But when I was eight-years-old, something clicked inside of me and suddenly God became real, as real as my parents, my friends, maybe even more real. He was always present.

He was the sunrise.

Some time after that I asked my mom to buy me that cross.

Years pass and then last Sunday, the cross reappears—like that—without me looking for it, it’s there.

Why?

Why now?

I’ve been having a hard time lately. The last seven months have been amazing and joy-filled, beyond imagination. I’ve agreed to go on this journey with God even though the destination seems a little hazy and the path itself sometimes hidden.

But still I follow.

Lately, though, I’ve started to panic a little.

What am I doing?

Where am I going?

It’s like when I was teenager and learning how to swim, I never strayed more than an arm’s length from the edge of the pool.

But now God has dropped me in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight. He asks me to trust Him.

And I want to trust, but I’m so scared.

I’m frightened even as I know that I can’t and won’t turn back now.

“A ship in a harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are for,” the poem says (author unknown).

We are not meant to be safe. We are meant to grow and change. We are explorers and the journey is sometimes joyous and sometimes painful as we become who God intends us to be.

Finding that cross the other day, reminded me that I have known God a long time, but He has known me infinitely longer. Whether or not I knew it at the time, asking my mom to buy me that cross was my way of committing myself to the journey.

Finding that cross reminded me that I do not take the journey alone.

Every day this past week when I have struggled with doubt and fear, I have looked to that cross, thought of that cross, thought of God’s commitment to me. I have remembered that God is real, more real than anything else in this world and that despite my fear I have to keep going.

The night is sometimes long.

But the sun always rises in the morning.

Where Are Your Treasures?

This afternoon I had finished lunch and was getting ready to write this post, putting the clothes in the dryer so I wouldn’t be distracted. I was headed back to my computer when I suddenly felt pulled to go look for this tripod I needed for tonight.

One second I was walking to the office, the next second I pivoted in mid-step and headed off to my bedroom, to the closet, quietly arguing with myself that I should be writing and not looking for the tripod. The tripod could wait.

For whatever reason, though, finding the tripod became very important. I started looking in my hope chest but the tripod wasn’t in there and honestly I didn’t know where else it would be. I was about to give up and head back to my computer when, once again, something stopped me, turned me around pointed me back to the closet.

In my closet is a trunk I had with me in college. I use it now to hold onto some keepsakes and I hadn’t looked inside it in ages. There was absolutely no way the tripod was in there.

So why was I crouching down and popping the latches to the lid?

Mathew 6:21 says “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Which got me thinking, what do our treasures say about us and our hearts?

What would these keepsakes inside an old, dirty, stained trunk say about me?

I opened the lid and stuck a flashlight inside. There were clothes, old clothes that I would never wear again and I couldn’t imagine why I had kept them. There was an old tool box, old only because I made it when I was in 7th grade in Technology class. My initials are stamped backwards into the metal because I could never get the hang of working with tools.

There was the elephant I sewed in 7th grade Home Economics. Its ear is still hanging on by the weakest of threads. I could never get hang of working with a sewing machine either.

There was a necklace I wore when I was in Steel Magnolias in high school.

There was a library card and a National Honor Society membership card.

And there was a tin that I remembered once held candy, but now held something else. When I popped off the lid, I saw three things: a medal with what looks to be the Virgin Mary embossed on it, a broken (made that way) Little Orphan Annie locket my mother gave me, and a gold cross and necklace.

I had been thinking about that cross for months. I have only ever owned two crosses in my life, the one I wear now that I bought a few weeks ago, and the gold one I was now staring at, the gold cross I had not seen in years and had not worn since I was a child.

When I was little, probably eight-years-old, my mom gave me an Avon catalog to keep me busy one afternoon. She would later tell me that she had no intention of buying me anything in the catalog, but thought I might be interested in looking at the jewelry, even though I had never shown any interest in jewelry before.

So, I guess she was shocked when I pointed out a gold cross in the catalog and told her I wanted it. And I guess she was even more shocked when she found herself saying yes that I could have it.

“How could I say no to that?” she would tell me years later.

I don’t remember what it was about the cross that made me want it. It’s plain, nothing spectacular. I don’t remember the thought process that went on inside my head. I just remember wanting it.

And now here I find it years later, at this point in my life, and when I wasn’t even looking for it.

Here is this reminder on this Halloween Sunday that I have belonged to God for a very, very long time. And that He has always been close to me.

And as it turned out, the trunk was exactly where I needed to be.

I found the tripod at the very bottom, hidden under the clothes.

Sandy

Sandy,

You missed my story last night, but remember I promised to blog about it just for you.

This isn’t the whole story. It’s only part of the story. I’ll leave you to fill in the blanks.

Here’s the gist.

What if there was no such thing as a coincidence?

What if everything that happened to you in your life, great or small, joyous or sad had a purpose … was God’s way of steering you to just the right place at just the right time so that when He was ready, you were ready to listen and act on whatever it is He asks you to do?

How would you view the events of your life?

What new meaning would they take on?

For example, I’ve lived twelve years now in Florida and every year it seems I meet someone new and somehow it comes up that I’m from Ohio, that I attended the other Miami University. And almost always, whoever it is I am talking to asks, “How did you wind up in Florida?”

Up until a few months ago, I had a very simple explanation. When I graduated from college, I had no plans and my grandparents (who lived in Florida) said, “Come stay with us.” And so I did.

It’s as simple as that, right?

Except that it’s not.

I know that now.

Life is not random.

I move to Florida, but after a month or so, I can’t find a job, not a summer job, not a teaching job, not any job. I’m ready to move back home to Ohio. I call my dad and tell him so and he asks me what it would take for me to stay in Florida. And I say, I need a job, a summer job, like at a bookstore and I need a teaching job for the fall.

Within a week, both things happen.

Years pass and other things come up and I think about moving out of Florida, about changing careers, but in the end there is always something that keeps me here.

Why?

For several years I live beachside, but then decide I want to buy a home of my own. I look in Viera and find a short-sale. I put in an offer and 30 days later close on my first home.

Where is that home?

Just a five minute drive from an Episcopal Church that sits hidden off the road behind a forest of pines and oaks.

One Easter day two years later, I sit at the stoplight at Murrell and Wickham. I’m a bundle of nerves. And I have choice to make. Turn left and head home or stay straight and try out this new church.

Turn left or go straight ahead.

God shapes us in ways great and small. He can change our lives at stoplight. He directs our every step.

So that when the time comes, we are ready … to trust, to follow, to surrender.

And there can be no turning back.

How Much to Give

Yesterday, I was reading an article on www.cnn.com by Jamie Gumbrecht on Savannah, Georgia’s First African Baptist Church. It is one of the oldest black churches in America, built by its members in the 1850s.

Gumbrecht writes that the church came about when a white congregation offered to sell their land and building to the First African Baptist Church for $1500, a considerable sum in those days.

And it was even more considerable in light of the fact that most members of First African were slaves, slaves who then had an important decision to make.

Use the money they had saved to buy their freedom, or combine their money and buy a church.

They bought the church.

It bears repeating.

They bought the church.

We’re moving into a time of year when churches start talking about stewardship, tithing and pledge cards.

It seems an awkward kind of dance to me because we don’t go to church wanting to think about money and the economy and whether or not our church can afford to keep its doors open.

So let’s take money out of the discussion completely and instead take a moment to think about First African Baptist Church and its founding members who gave their lives and their freedom because they knew the truth of salvation and grace.

They knew that tithing is not about how much you give, it’s about remembering where your heart resides and who it belongs to.

Tithing is about nourishment, about feeding a spiritual need that is far greater than any physical hunger.

Tithing is about trust and giving to God what is already His … you.

Tithing is giving you, yourself over to God to be put to use for His purpose.

The slaves who built First African Baptist Church gave up their freedom so others could be free. They built their church with a secret compartment in the floor that housed hundreds of fleeing slaves, escaping up the river.

Before joining Hope, I never gave more than a few dollars here and there at various churches I’ve attended over the years. Now that I’m a member of a church, I want to tithe and I’ve struggled with that question: how much? 

Techinical definition of tithing aside--how much?

It helps me to think about First African in Savannah because instead of asking “how much,” I can simply ask myself “have I pledged my heart?”

Have I released my heart to this church and to God?

And if the answer is yes, then I have given enough.

When I Wake

Sunday morning I found myself crying in church again. I had made it through the 8:00 service just fine, but by the end of the 10:15, right after communion, I found myself kneeling and praying and overcome by the blessings I have received over the past six months.

When I look at the people at this church who have touched my life, when I think of all the ways that God has transformed my life, has transformed me—I just can’t fathom, I just can’t wrap my brain around it all.

How can this possibly be my life now?

When am I going to wake up?

One of my favorite novels of all time is Holes by Louis Sachar. It is a book for kids, but its theme of redemption and healing, I think speaks to everyone.

In Holes, Stanley Yelnets finds himself sent to Camp Green Lake for stealing a pair of shoes. Though Stanley is innocent of the crime, he accepts what is happening to him because he and his family believe that they were cursed generations ago when Stanley’s great-great grandfather failed to live up to a promise he made to an old gypsy woman.

Stanley and his father live a life where they always expect bad things to happen to them. They expect failure.

Holes is not only Stanley’s story, though. It is also his great-great grandfather’s and it is also the story of a school teacher named Kate Barlow. It is the story of how all these people’s lives intertwine and how finally the curse is broken due to the inherent goodness and persistence of Stanley.

We all go through times in our lives when we feel like we must be cursed, when nothing seems to go right, when every little thing that can go wrong, does go wrong. We become like Stanley Yelnets and his father. We begin to think that failure is the natural order of things and when good things do happen, we can’t enjoy them because we think that something bad must be right around the corner.

It’s why I’m so terrified of waking up from this marvelous dream.

On Sunday I told Judy B. about that fear, about wondering when I’m going to wake up.

And she just smiled and said, “You’re awake now.”

What a beautiful thing to say. There is no fear of waking up. There is no fear of the dream ending.

Because I’m awake … now.

Is God Listening?

A friend of mine once told me that as long as the doctor doesn’t call you the next day after you’ve had an MRI or other diagnostic test, then you’re probably okay and don’t worry.

Four years ago, I had an MRI done on my back. I was the last appointment of the day. Remembering what my friend told me, I waited the next day for that phone call. I made it through the morning and thought I might be safe. But at two o’clock that afternoon, the doctor’s office called.

A few days later I was sitting in front of a computer screen while my doctor flipped through a digital copy of my MRI. I had been complaining of pain shooting down my legs and the doctor had discovered some weakness in my big toe and ankle. The MRI showed my spinal cord stretched out vertically on the screen like a black inner tube. As the doctor clicked through the images, a white spot appeared in the center of my spinal cord and with each click, the spot grew larger and larger.

“That’s not supposed to be there,” the doctor said, pointing to the spot.

“What is it?” I asked.

He looked at me. “It’s a mass, a tumor.”

As I write this, my prayer for you is that neither you nor anyone you love ever has to hear those words. In my case, even though I had a tumor, I turned out to be one of the lucky ones.

Based on its location, the doctor felt it was either something called an ependymoma or lipoma. These are benign tumors. They rarely metastasize. That was the good news.

The bad news is that they almost always grow. And as they grow, they twist and worm their way through the spinal cord and cause direct damage to the spinal cord or cause weakness and paralysis due to compression of the cord itself.

I was told the tumor had to come out.

That was about the time I started to pray. And I don’t think I stopped praying for the next year and a half. Because every doctor I saw said that the tumor had to come out. It was no easy operation. One doctor told me that it was the equivalent of removing gum from someone’s hair, only in my case the hair was actually nerves that could be damaged during surgery, causing irreparable harm.

My choices were take the tumor out and risk paralysis if something goes wrong during surgery or leave the tumor in and risk paralysis if the tumor continues to grow.

I was terrified and I had no idea what to do. Even though every doctor was telling me to have the tumor removed, I kept feeling in my gut that surgery would be a mistake.

So, I prayed. I remember driving home one night, crying in the car and begging God to tell me what to do. I had seen doctors in Brevard County, doctors at Florida Hospital and every one of them told me to have the surgery, but I couldn’t get past the feeling that surgery was the wrong move.

And then I got angry because I felt that God wasn’t answering my prayers. I felt like He was ignoring me. Why was He so silent? Why couldn’t He just tell me what to do?

Here’s the cool thing.

He was telling me what to do.

That gut feeling I had to wait … that gut feeling came from God. Because while I waited, I had more tests done and I went to more doctors, this time in the Cleveland Clinic down south of here.

And over the next few years, we saw that the tumor, miraculously, wasn’t growing. In fact, the last MRI I had showed the tumor had actually shrunk the tiniest of fractions.  At which point my doctor in Orlando actually dumped me and told me I didn't need to see him again unless my symptoms changed.

I don’t know what would have happened had I had the surgery. I don’t know what my future holds, if the tumor will decide to grow again, but what I learned from this experience is that God is always talking to us.

Let me say it again: God is always talking to us.

The question isn’t “Is God listening?”

The question is … are we?

We want God to speak to us in words.  Do this, don't do that.  But really the most effective form of communication God has is to speak to our heart.  That way our brains don't get in the way.

Don't ignore those "gut feelings."  They could be God impressing something onto your heart.

Contrast

Snow is ugly.

Well … end of winter snow is ugly. End of winter snow is dirty-black and slushy and old and lingering.

The first snow of the year always bathes the world in white.

The last snow of the year turns the world gray.

I was in sixth grade when I first started to take notice of spring, when I first started noticing the return of the robins, poking their beaks through the dead snow, looking for something buried in the thawing earth.

I started to notice the trees, the buds bursting on the branches, ready to sprout green, baby leaves.

The air grew warmer. There were still bursts here and there of a chilled wind—winter still trying to hang on, clawing at the edges. But some days, I went without a coat … and didn’t tell my parents.

It was the first time I truly appreciated the spring. It was the first time I felt a sense of relief that winter was on its way out.

I miss the change of seasons of Florida. I miss the contrast of winter and spring. I think spring does come to Florida, but it does so while we are sleeping. Sometime in March we go to bed and outside everything is brown and chilled and while we sleep, spring comes; the branches shed their dead leaves in one final shudder and in the morning everything is green again and warm. It is winter to summer in an eight hour swing.

We need contrast in our lives. We need both the stale, slumbering days of winter and exciting days of new life in spring to appreciate the significance of both.

Terry Esau writes in his book Surprise Me that God is a painter who works with contrast. “Midnight blue is his favorite color … then, all of a sudden … he splashes some bright reds and yellows in just the right places, and suddenly, we understand. If he had started with the reds and yellows, would we have understood? The night explains the day … the dark illumines the light.”

Without a doubt, for the first decade of the 21st century, I led a very boring, stagnant life. Every day was the same. Nothing ever changed. Days were something to be counted and not something to look forward to. Though I had nothing to complain about, I was leading as Thoreau writes, “a life of quiet desperation.”

On January 1, I sat in the parking lot at Barnes and Noble thinking about the last ten years and finally begging God to do something in my life. I told Him I could not live the next ten years the same way I had lived the last.

But as Pastor Debbie continues to point out to me, there are no such things as wasted years. God has a plan and sometimes He has us in a holding pattern while He gets things ready for the next part of our journey.

Within three months of asking God to change my life, I found Hope.

The blessing of those ten boring, holding pattern years is that thanks to them, I have contrast; I have something to compare with the wonderful things that are happening in my life now.

Where my life used to be routine, where nothing surprising ever happened, God manages to surprise me now virtually every day with something new.

Spring has come into my life.

And it wouldn’t have been nearly as meaningful had it not been preceded by winter.

Hope is a Journey

Below is the text from my Moment in Faith given this morning at the 8:00 and 10:15 services:

A few weeks ago, I was standing outside of the school with another teacher. Both of us were waiting for the rain to let up before we slogged our way through the swamp to our cars. We were just standing there watching the rain and the heavy, dark clouds and finally Susan asked me where I was going.

“To church,” I said.

“On a Tuesday?” she said.

I grinned. “I’d go every day if they’d let me.”

For the longest time, she just stood there and stared at me.

“It’s changed my life,” I told her.

And she nodded. “I know it has,” she said.

It’s one thing to simply tell people how God has changed your life. It’s something else though—something wonderful and beautiful—when people can see that change for themselves—when they can see something new about you in your eyes, in your smile, in the way you walk, how you speak.

And I know what people see in me. It’s an emotion that has filled me and carried and lifted me these past six months.

It’s joy.

C.S. Lewis says that anyone who experiences joy will want it again—which is probably why I keep begging Pastor Debbie to give me more things to do around here.

For me the culmination of that joy was here one month ago when I was confirmed by Bishop Hugo. As you may remember, as soon as I knelt before Bishop Hugo, I started crying and the tears continued when Lorraine and Judy and Robin stood there with me, when they lay their hands on my shoulders and back.

It was like I was being made new. It was the single greatest blessing, greatest healing, greatest joy, I had ever experienced. And I cried because I felt—I saw a glimpse of the depth of God’s love. And it was almost more than I could bear.

Confirmation day was the end of one journey and the beginning of another for me.

Lately, Pastor Debbie’s been throwing around a certain phrase a lot. Maybe you’ve heard her say it.

Hope is a journey.

It’s certainly been a journey for me.

In her sermon last week, Pastor Debbie spoke of the faith story she wrote in seminary. In her faith story she wrote about the One who would come and save her. She writes that, “He said if I followed him he’d take the weight I’d been carrying and show me the way to have life like I’d never imagined.”

Just after my confirmation one of my friends commented that though she didn’t know much of my past, she knew that whatever it was that I was carrying was very, very heavy. She said that since I had found Hope, she had seen that burden vanish. I seemed happier, lighter.

I grew up watching my mother suffer from a horrible, debilitating disease. When I was eleven I attended my best friend’s funeral. Yes, my burden was heavy. But in those years, I never gave up hope; I never doubted God’s love. And the beauty of God’s love is that you don’t have to do anything to earn it.

When I came to Hope, God took that burden from me without me even asking him to do it. It was as if he said, “You’ve carried it long enough.”

And that is why I’m so filled with joy, because of God’s love.

This is the journey of Hope. This is the journey of faith.

It is my story.

But it’s your story too.

Something Unexpected

Last night on Glee, high-school student Rachel and her friends stood around the hospital bed of Burt Hummel, the father of one of their classmates, and sang to him. Rachel sang “Papa Can you Hear Me” and as she later explained, each student was alternating singing to Burt and each song they sang was a prayer.

It was impossible for me to make it through the episode without crying, and I was moved not just by the behavior of the characters but also by the writers of the show who took a chance and presented religion on a mainstream television show in a way that was respectful and open-minded.

After the show was over, I sat down at my computer to try and write my post for today and I was stumped. Lately, it’s been hard for me to write, to capture in words the emotions that I’m feeling. If I had half the talent of Rachel from Glee, I guess I could sing how I feel, but instead, I’m left staring at a computer screen, trying to reign in the emotions so I can put together a coherent thought.

One of the reasons it’s so hard to write, so hard to talk about how I feel, is that the joy never ends. Ever since I walked into Hope last Easter, I have felt nothing but joy. Sure, I still get annoyed at work and frustrated when things don’t work out the way I planned, but overrunning, overlapping all of that is this sense of joy, this excitement at the wonderful and unexpected detour my life has taken.

Something new and unexpected happens to me virtually every day. Every day I can wake up and know that something will happen today, something I could not predict and whatever it is, it won’t be frightening; it’ll be wondrous and holy and magical.

Take, for example, this past Monday night when my mom revealed that she wanted to be Episcopalian now because she wanted to belong to the same denomination I do. In the past, I probably would have greeted such a revelation with some skepticism.

But I’ve changed over the past six months and so when my mom said she wanted to become Episcopalian, I knew what she was trying to tell me.

She was trying to tell me that she wanted to be closer to me even though she lives in New York and I only see her once or twice a year. This was her way of connecting to me, a way for her to feel like she was part of my life.

Most importantly, I realized that the part of me that would have written her off in the past—that part of me was healed. I didn’t doubt her. I didn’t question how serious she was. I accepted her at face value and rejoiced that she was being so supportive.

So, I got online and found her several churches in the area she could try.

I hope she finds a church. It doesn’t have to be Episcopalian though that would be amazingly cool. But I hope she finds a church—I hope she finds a church family who can do for her what the people of Hope have done for me. Because she needs that as much I did, maybe even more so.

And if she does find that church—how wondrous will that be.

Everything is New

The first time I saw snow—real snow, not the tiny, little dew-drop snow that fell on Charleston when I was living there—was in the Howard Johnson’s parking lot in Norwich, New York, the town I would call home for eleven years.

I was five-years-old, and I still remember racing out into the parking lot with my mom and dad to see this beautiful thing. The sky was dark and from it fell what looked like tiny stars that gently touched my hands and my face before vanishing, melting in an instant.

But what melted on me, clung to the cold pavement and the hoods and roofs of cars, blanketing everything in white.

A second later, my parents introduced me to a custom common in the north—the snowball fight.

What I remember next is laughter and joy. I had never felt so happy. I had never seen my parents as happy as they were in those few minutes that snowballs darted here and there, arcing in the night sky.

I tasted snow for the first time that night, fresh from the clouds above and it tasted like cold and ice and earth.

I still carry that joy with me. That memory is still strong.

There is a joy in things that are new, like the joy of a first snow, or the joy we feel when we ride our bike for the very first time, the joy of the first day of school, the joy of learning to swim. Of course those things are usually mixed with a fair amount of anxiety too, but it’s the joy that always breaks through.

And the firsts we experience as children are usually the most joyful of all.

What has happened to me over the last five months is a reawakening of that child within. Suddenly everything is new. Everything is a first. And I’m suddenly so happy, I can’t stop smiling.

A few weeks ago, Pastor Debbie asked me to fill in one Sunday as a lector. I was so excited I could barely contain myself. I had wanted to be a lector for so long. I told Pastor Debbie that I felt like I was being called up from the minor leagues.

I was so excited that I completely forgot that when I ended the reading with “the word of the Lord” that the congregation responded “Thanks be to God.” And so when they did respond, I was almost knocked off my feet by the force of those words spoken by a hundred people.

It was amazing.

Just last week, I served as an acolyte for the first time. Again, it was something I had always wanted to do when I was a kid, but never happened because the church I was attending didn’t allow altar girls at the time and by the time they did, I was too old to serve.

But in the Episcopal Church, acolytes can be children or adults and I saw a need for one at the 8:00 service and volunteered.

And again, it was amazing. I was overjoyed. I didn’t have much to do, light the candles, take the gifts, present the offering to Pastor Debbie for blessing. I carried the gospel. Mostly, I just stood there grinning because it was beautiful, it was so wonderful to be there—up there, at the altar during the service, and especially during the Eucharist.

The liturgy is a beautiful thing and experiencing it as a member of the congregation and experiencing it up by the altar as an acolyte are two very different, but equally blessed things. I don’t know that I prefer one experience to the other.

But there is an awareness of something holy when you stand up at the altar. The Eucharistic Prayer feels more present, more defined. There is a certain connection there that I had never experienced before.

It was a joyful first for me and it won’t be a last. Kay Redfield Jamison writes in Exuberance: The Passion for Life, “ As C.S. Lewis has observed, anyone who experiences joy will want it again.”

Without a doubt.  Joy lingers.  Joy makes us search out those experiences again.

Even joys we experienced as children.

Because, after all, there are still days I miss the snow.

Take it Slow

Yesterday, I was driving through yet another rainstorm on Merritt Island. There were no rainbows, and at times I felt like I was driving directly under Niagara Falls. Every now and then I would hit an enormous puddle, and this wall of water would shoot up and cascade over the windshield making it impossible to see.

It was not a fun ride home.

In order to avoid an accident, I had to drop far back of the car ahead of me, watch for when he hit water and then slow to almost a crawl as I approached the puddles. It took me almost twice as long as it normally does to get to the church, but I arrived safely.

Generally speaking, there are many things in my life that I need to slow down for. Just today a friend of mine, a fellow teacher, asked me to put together a grammar test the entire English Department would use. Normally, I would say “yes, no problem,” but today I was in a hurry. Today helping her would mean that I would have to rush through things and the thought of running out of time made me very cranky. Consequently, I was not the friend I should have been.

Jim Wallis writes in his book Rediscovering Values that one of the greatest predictors of whether or not we will help someone in need is whether or not we’re in a hurry at the time we’re asked for help. He gives the example of a 1970 Princeton University experiment with seminary students.

In the experiment, researchers told some seminary students that they would be speaking on the story of the Good Samaritan in a neighboring building. Other students were told they’d simply be speaking on the topic of vocations. Some students were told they had a few minutes to get to the building. Others were told they were already late.

As each student walked to their speaking engagement, they were presented with someone who was in need of help. Some seminary students stopped. Others did not.

What is interesting is that those students about to speak on the Good Samaritan were no more likely to stop than those students scheduled to speak on vocations.

The variable that decided if they would stop or not? Time.

Those who thought they were already late, more frequently than not, did not stop to help the person in need. Wallis writes, “They were simply moving too fast to even notice that an opportunity to help a neighbor was right in front of them.”

Wallis’s point was that being in a rush, hurrying through life can be blinding. It’s not that we don’t want to help others; it’s that we’re so busy and so hurried, we are as blinded as I was when I sped through the rising water on the road.

Time ensnares us, traps us. When we think we have too little, our hearts beat faster, adrenaline floods our system. Our vision literally narrows, blinding us to a large portion of the world and keeping us from being a good friend, or a good neighbor, or just a basic, loving, caring human being.

When it comes to being a good friend, there is always time. We just have to remember that and slow down.

Stranger in the Mirror

The other day I was driving down Route 3 on Merritt Island. It was late afternoon and the weather alternated from rain to sunshine and rain again seemingly every five hundred feet or so.

As I got closer to the Pineda Causeway, the trees and brush along the side of the road cleared, giving me a clear view of the river. A heavy mist settled on top of the water, but above the mist were breaks of blue in the sky and as the clouds parted, they revealed a greater beauty.

A rainbow.

And not just any rainbow, but a full and complete rainbow, one so solid you’re tempted to stop everything and go search out its ending for that pot of gold.

It was so beautiful, I felt my foot let up on the gas, and the car began to slow. Here and there the trees began to block my view, but when I could see the rainbow, my head whipped about as I tried to freeze the image in my memory … without crashing the car.

Every time I caught a glimpse of that rainbow, I couldn’t stop myself from smiling.

I smile a lot these days. I also cry a lot too. But whether I’m smiling or crying, the emotion is the same:

Joy.

It’s a new emotion for me.

When I was a kid—a teenager—the events of my life made joy something only experienced in fairy tales, whether it be Dorothy, opening the door in black and white Kansas to reveal a Technicolor Oz, or it be Lucy, walking through the wardrobe and finding a wintry, fantastical Narnia on the other side.

The writers of those fairy tales knew something about joy.

Joy is transforming.

Joy has transformed me.

When I returned to work in August for the start of the school year, people kept asking me if I had gotten a new haircut or if I had lost weight. The answer was “no” to the haircut and only five pounds over the summer, hardly enough to account for me looking different.

But I was different, somehow, and people saw that though they couldn’t quite put their finger on the change.

The joy I have now I really struggle to put into words. It is knowledge of God’s love. It is knowledge, finally, of the person God means me to be … the real me … the true self. And so, not only do I feel like a different person, I guess I look like one too.

In her book Exuberance: The Passion for Life, Kay Redfield Jamison writes about the power of joy, “One joy, the Chinese believe, scatters a hundred griefs.”

Joy is not just transforming, it is also healing. God uses joy to heal and transform.

When God heals, He does not simply close old wounds with Godly stitches. He does not put in place metaphorical casts and splints. He does not perform surgery.

When God heals, He transforms. He remakes you. He washes you clean and gives you a new heart, a new spirit. He doesn’t try to make repairs.

He makes you new.

And even though there are times now when I can hardly recognize myself, the core of who I am and who I have always been … sings.

And the song I sing is the song of joy.

Prayer: It's not just something that happens to other people

Over the past few weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time talking to people about prayer. Who prays? Why do we pray? Does God answer prayers?

And what I keep hearing from people is that yes God answers prayers … for other people. Yes, God moves in the lives … of other people.

But when it comes to God answering our prayers for ourselves, we’re either too shy to ask or we feel too unworthy to even believe that God will take the time for us.

Don’t buy into that lie.

God loves us all equally and He is moving in and shaping your life right now.

I, myself, am guilty of sometimes believing that my problems aren’t important enough for God to work in. Doesn’t He have better things to do?

Here’s what I’ve come to believe, though, over the past few months. When we pray to God, when we allow others to pray for us, we are allowing God to love us and care for us in all the ways He longs to do.

Prayer is God’s gift of love.

The other day, I was given the opportunity to see, feel, and experience firsthand just what a gift prayer is when three women, Lorraine, Judy and Pastor Debbie prayed over me in the sanctuary. It was a healing prayer and it was something I had never experienced before.

To have someone lay hands on you and pray to God for you … I didn’t know what to expect. And let me tell you that what happened during that prayer was something I can’t explain, something I am still trying to process as God reveals Himself more and more in my life.

All three women lay their hands on me and I closed my eyes. I felt a little nervous and a little foolish, worried that I was taking up their time for something so minor. I had been sick for three weeks with an upper respiratory infection, and then I had suffered horrible rib pain for an additional two weeks after that.

The pain in my chest felt like I had been shot. It felt like an arrow had pierced my heart and then lodged there, sticking out my back. I was in a lot of pain, but even then I didn’t feel worthy of being prayed for.

I could feel Lorraine and Judy and Pastor Debbie’s hands on my back, just the pressure and then Judy started to pray and when she prayed something incredible and totally outside the realm of anything I had felt before, happened.

As she prayed, her hand began to warm. And this warmth, this heat, spread through my back and my chest like a wave. I told Judy later that it felt like drinking hot chocolate on a cold winter day.  It was soothing and I could feel the pain begin to unravel.

But before I could try and figure out what was happening (how could Judy's hand just suddenly start to heat up), Lorraine started praying and the words she spoke … I can’t even remember them all, but I know the crux was that she was claiming me. I was God’s and evil was not welcome in my life.

And that was when I started to cry.

By the time Pastor Debbie spoke, I was a mess and Pastor Debbie’s words healed yet another part of my spirit as she reminded me of what God has been calling me to do.

And when it was over, all I could think was that in my life, no one has ever given me a better gift than those few minutes of prayer.

Prayer isn’t about being deserving or worthy … it is about letting God’s love work through you and in your life.

Chapter One

At the very end of The Last Battle, the final book (no matter what order you read them in) of The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis writes: “All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story … in which each chapter is better than the one before.”

It’s now been one week since my confirmation and I’m still trying to hold onto everything that I felt that day, the love of friends and family, the love of new family, the awakening to God’s presence and hand in my life since I was born, the joy—the utter joy—and sense of purpose, the clarity that comes when we know without a doubt what God has in store for us.

So what comes next?

I sort of expected that the day after confirmation would feel like the day after Christmas after all the build-up and anticipation is gone. The gifts have all been opened, we’ve had our fill of Christmas dinner and the carols have all been played.

The day after Christmas was always a letdown for me when I was a kid and I was worried I would feel the same after confirmation.

I have been pleasantly surprised to not feel that way at all. There is no letdown … because the story isn’t over. It has only just begun.

All my life, I have been lingering on the title page of my story.

Now God has turned the page for me to Chapter One.

But what is that story? What will happen next?

A friend gave me a confirmation card this past week that quoted 2 Corinthians 5:7 which says, “For we walk by faith … not by sight.”

And oh what a difficult thing that is … especially for someone like me who likes to skip ahead and read the last pages of the book to see if the story is worth reading at all. And now, here I am, unable to see more than a few pages ahead, sometimes not more than a few words and having to trust in God and His plan that each chapter will be better than the last.

I can do that—I think—trust—because God has opened my eyes over the past five months. He has changed me in ways I could never have imagined, in ways I could never have asked for because I didn’t know that such a me could exist.

I didn’t know … and that is the beauty of God’s work … to shape us in ways unimaginable.

He is changing me still, one minute, one day, one month … one page of my story at a time.

I told Pastor Debbie that I was still spiritually hungry and I think that comes from a continued longing to be filled with God’s love, a continued longing to be changed, a continued longing to see more of the story God has written for me.

Adopted by the Spirit

As I try to process everything that has happened over the past few days and what it means to be confirmed, I’m just now realizing something amazing:

I’m an Episcopalian.

I have an identity.

I have a church.

Over the years, it’s been a little embarrassing to tell people in one breath that I was Christian, but in the next breath tell them that I didn’t go to church, that I didn’t even have a church that I was affiliated with. The best I could do was say that I was raised Catholic which made me a lapsed Catholic which wasn’t necessarily a good thing either.

But now God has stopped my wandering.  He has given me a new home and a new family.

Initially, when I found out that our friends and family could be with us while we were being confirmed or received or reaffirmed, I was terrified. I was so nervous already. Even though I was so happy my friends and family were there, the thought of having them up there with me during confirmation almost pushed me over the edge. I’m just too shy. I never want to draw attention to myself.

Marty saw the look on my face and joked “when Kendra goes up, the entire church should come up and lay their hands on her.”

During the bishop’s sermon on Sunday, right before I was to be confirmed, I sat there praying to God. I told Him that I didn’t mind kneeling before the bishop alone. I had told my friends and family to please stay seated.

But I also told Him, whispering to Him in my mind, that there were a few people whose presence up there with me would not make me nervous, but would actually fill me with peace. I hadn’t discussed it with them prior, but I left it in God’s hands.

And sure enough, as soon as I kneeled down, those people were there, putting their hands on my back. It was just one of the things that made me cry.

Because I chose Hope … but Hope also chose me.

Marty had joked about the entire congregation laying hands on me, but in those three people, Lorraine, Judy and Robin, the entire church did lay hands on me.

Those three people who stood with me represented an entire congregation that through the spirit of God has welcomed me, nurtured me, healed me and adopted me as one of their own.

God, with His glorious sense of humor, took someone who was so afraid of drawing attention to herself and filled her with so much joy and so much love, that when she knelt before the bishop she couldn’t stop crying.

All the things that had led me to this point, all the ways God had moved and shaped my life, came rushing over me in an instant as I was adopted into a new family and given a new name.

Kendra

Episcopalian

Member of Hope Episcopal Church

This is the Day

I wish I could live in this day for quite some time. Twenty-four hours doesn’t seem long enough. I want to live in this joy and happiness for much longer than that.

I knew I would cry. I tried not to, but as soon as I knelt before the bishop, as soon as I felt Lorraine, Judy and Robin with their hands on my back, blessing me, supporting me, lending their strength to me, as soon as I looked up at the bishop, the tears started flowing.

“Are you happy?” he asked.

“Very,” I said.

And then he anointed me and prayed for me and confirmed me into the Episcopal Church.

What I’m not sure people realize is how close I was to breaking down completely … how close I was to moving from simple tears to outright sobbing.

I also don’t know if Lorraine, Judy and Robin realize that without their support, both figurative and literal, I wouldn’t have been able to kneel at all. They held me up.

Never in my life have I felt as blessed as I was today. This summer has been a healing summer that has brought me closer to God. But being confirmed today was more than just healing … it was a moment that truly opened my eyes to God.

They say that right before you die your life flashes before your eyes. When I knelt before the bishop, bits and pieces of my life flashed before my eyes.

I remembered all the Sundays I have ever spent at church, all the CCD classes I took in the Catholic Church as a child. I remembered my first communion, how sunny it was that day, how unhappy my mom was because she had recently (accidentally I think) dyed her hair orange.

I remembered how I slid away from the Catholic Church, slowly, struggling to hold onto them because of my love for the liturgy. I remembered the years of floating from one church to the next, aimless and desperate for a home.

And then I found Hope.

All of these memories flashed before me in the second before I looked into the bishop’s eyes.

My life flashed before me.

But this day wasn’t about death.

This day was about new life.

And I wish I could live in this day forever.

Confirmation

When I was fifteen-years-old, I walked one Sunday morning to St. Bartholomew’s Catholic Church to meet my friend Loretta for Mass.

It was, I think, the first time I had been to church without an adult and I made the most of it by sitting up in the choir loft, a place that had previously been forbidden, but thanks to Loretta being part of the choir, was now open.

What a view it was from up there.

I smiled the whole service.

It was my first time sitting in the choir loft, my first time in church without an adult.

It was the first time I went to church because I wanted to and not because I was told to.

It was the first time that I let go and allowed myself to truly feel the presence of God.

What a journey it has been since that Sunday.

In less than a week, I’ll be confirmed in the Episcopal Church. This past Sunday, Pastor Debbie’s sermon moved me to tears because her words, to me, epitomized just what Confirmation is.

It’s when I get to announce to the world that I am His.

That I belong to God.

It is something that I’ve known my whole life.

But God planned this time, this place for me, surrounded by my family—and you are all family—to commit myself to Him.

And I am so blessed.

It has been a summer of healing for me.

And as Pastor Debbie reminds me, the healing never stops.

The other day I was at the hospital sitting next to a little boy who had a fishhook lodged in the palm of his hand. He had his hand curled into a fist and when the triage nurse came out to look at it, he started screaming.

“I’m not going to touch it,” she assured him. “I just need to see it.” She tucked her hands behind her back to show him she was just there to look.

But he was having none of that.

For many years, I was like that little boy, so hurt and so afraid, I wouldn’t let anyone in, I wouldn’t let anyone see. My fists were clenched tight.

This church, though, Hope Episcopal, is a healing church. God is doing something special with the people here because I haven’t met one person that He isn’t working through.  I'm not even sure that they realize just how special they are.

Each time someone at Hope says my name, shakes my hand, shares a hug—each time I walk through those doors, another little part of me is healed.

And I find myself opening up in ways I never could have imagined.

God is so good.

He is so … good.

This Sunday is not the end of any journey. It’s just the beginning and I cannot wait to see where God takes me from here.

Why I Write

When I told Pastor Debbie that I would be presenting to a group of teachers at our District Inservice Day and that part of my presentation would be making them write about their experiences as students, Pastor Debbie laughed.

“You’re always trying to get people to write.”

Yes, I wanted to say, because I know that writing heals. 

And I know that for me and for many, writing heals not just the big stuff, but sometimes the tiniest splinters of wounds, the ones we didn’t even know were there, but have festered over the years.

Madeleine L’Engle writes about healing in Walking on Water. She says, “Wounds. By his wounds we are healed. But they are our wounds too, and until we have been healed we do not know what wholeness is. The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort toward wholeness.”

Though I had been writing short little stories since the first grade, it wasn’t until fourth grade that I grasped the idea that writing could heal. When I was in fourth grade, my mother was in and out of the hospital. Virtually every day after school, my dad and I would drive to the hospital to visit her. It was an hour long trip one way and on the way home, I would frequently recline the seat back and try to sleep since it was too dark to do anything else.

When you’re a child, a parent’s illness can be very isolating. As an only child, I had no one to talk to, no one who could understand. Afternoons and evenings spent visiting my mom, meant there was very little time left to play with friends.

One night, though, on the way home from the hospital, I started writing a poem, composing it in my head. I had never written a poem before, but that didn’t stop me, because when I wrote, I could be anywhere.

A dark, cold car ride home could become a trip to the beach instead. So when I got home, I started writing. I could only find a piece of graph paper and I meticulously filled in each box with a letter until I had my poem written.

Here I am upon the shore,
Listening to the waves roar.
And as the tide sweeps across the shore,
And the seagulls screech,
Peace.

It’s a poem you’d expect from a Florida girl, except that we were living in upstate New York, far away from any beach, sometimes seemingly far away from any sun. We had visited Florida the Christmas before and the image had stuck.

That poem became the first of many. And by many, I mean … many. If I was breathing, I was writing and I can say that it was a gift from God because poetry sustained me for many years. It spoke the words of my heart when my heart felt too wounded to speak. It gave voice to my fears and eventually became a reflection of new hope.

Words healed me. And I thank God every day for those words.

So when I encourage others to write—sometimes I actually nag others to write—it’s because I know the healing power of words, how those words heal us and how when we share those words, they can heal others.

The Good Shepherd

I was in third grade when my dad and mom and I went to the SPCA to pick out a cat. I’m guessing my dad wanted me to spend some time looking at the kittens before settling on one, but I didn’t need very much time at all.

I saw a small calico hiding in the litter box and I pointed to her. “I want that one.”

“Leave it to you,” my dad would tell me years later, “to pick out the cat with psychological problems.”

My mom named the cat Dickens and she more than lived up to her name. She was skittish and unfriendly to everyone but me. For the longest time, I was probably the only one in the world who loved her.

And then one day she vanished. She was an outdoor cat, but she and her brother always came running when we called for them. But on this day, there was no sign of her. I was heartbroken, walking through the neighborhood, calling her name. Finally, I sat on the porch, head in hands, defeated and convinced I would never see her again.

That was when I heard a meow, a soft, distant mewing. I called her name, “Dickens!” and there was the mewing again, only I couldn’t place it. I had no idea where it was coming from. When I ran inside to tell my mom, she waved me off.

“You’re imagining it,” she said.

But I was undeterred. I kept calling for Dickens and following her cry through neighbors’ backyards to the base of a giant pine.

And that was where I found her, at the top of that very tall tree.

Mr. McFee, our neighbor who disliked children and I’m sure disliked the tree-climbing pets of said children even more, climbed a ladder to the top of that tree and plucked a hissing, claws-whirring, and very frightened Dickens from a branch and brought her back to me.

Persistence is a beautiful thing, especially when it’s based on love. And there is perhaps no greater love for any child than the love they have for a pet.

But even as persistent as I was, I was also lucky. Dickens was lucky. What if I hadn’t found her before it got dark? What if my mom had called me in for dinner? What if I had believed my mom when she told me that I wasn’t really hearing Dickens at all?

As persistent as I was, I was limited.

I am reminded when I think of this story how persistent God is and how, fortunately for us, unlimited He is in His pursuit. God never gives into darkness or doubt. He never has to stop for a bite to eat. He will always find us no matter how lost we are. He will never stop.

Jesus refers to himself as the good shepherd. In John 10:14, he says, “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me,” and earlier in John 10:3, “The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.”

In much the same way that I called for my lost cat, God calls for us and waits for our answer. We don’t have to be lost and afraid anymore. We can put our faith in Him and know that He will carry us home.

Your Sunday Clothes

Our first glimpse is of the universe.

Swirling galaxies, star-shadowed planets, a dim, rust-orange sun, followed by a zooming close-up of the earth.

Only, it’s an earth we’re unfamiliar with, an earth where the mountains aren’t mountains at all, but mounds of waste and debris.

It is a post-apocalyptic earth whose only guardian is a small robot named Wall-E.

It’s sort of a startling opening for a kids’ movie especially given the juxtaposition of what we see—a dead earth—with what we hear—Michael Crawford, as Cornelius, singing Put on Your Sunday Clothes from the musical Hello Dolly.

And what’s even more interesting is that it’s the song, not the vision of an abandoned earth that sets up the theme of the story.

Cornelius sings in Put on Your Sunday Clothes:

“Put on your Sunday clothes.
There’s lots of world out there.
… we’ll see the shows at Delmonico’s
And we’ll close the town in a whirl.
And we won’t come home until we’ve kissed a girl!”

For the robot, Wall-E, watching Hello Dolly gives him hope. He sees the world how it once was and he knows that even though he is alone, that is not the way the world was meant to be.

It is Wall-E’s search for companionship that makes this movie ultimately one that teaches us what it means to be human.

In Epic: The Story God is Telling, John Eldredge spends a whole chapter on the importance of fellowship and relationship in the human experience.

He writes that “Loneliness might be the hardest cross we bear,” and “Whatever else it means to be human, we know beyond a doubt that it means to be relational. Aren’t the greatest joys and memories of your life associated with family, friendship, or falling in love?”

We spend our lives finding ways to combat loneliness. We work together, we work-out together, we go to the movies, we go out to dinner and yet, for me, for many years, the loneliest day of the week was Sunday.

Not anymore.

I went to church this morning and last Wednesday night and last Tuesday night even though I was either sick or so weak from being sick that I could hardly stand.

I didn’t go to church because I felt obligated to go. I didn’t go out of a sense of duty—this is what good Christians do, this is what I must do to get to Heaven—I went for the fellowship. I went to worship, not alone, but with others whose goodwill always lifts me up.

I put on my Sunday clothes (which these days include jeans and sneakers) and I rested … not by myself, but in the company of others, people who always seem to bring me closer to God.

On Chestnut Trees

Monday, the 150-year-old chestnut tree that provided Anne Frank comfort while she was in hiding toppled over in a storm.

For years, the tree had been living on borrowed time, propped up by a steel tripod after a fungus nearly devoured it whole.

Anne Frank spent more than two years hiding in the Secret Annex above her father’s factory—two years of not being able to feel the sun—two years of living in fear that a creak in the floor or a sliver of light would give them away and send them to a concentration camp.

But Anne was able to peek, here and there, at the outside world. And the one thing that brought her the most joy was the chestnut tree.

Anne writes in her diary, “From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver … as long as this exists … and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies … I cannot be unhappy.”

When I read about the Holocaust, not just Anne’s stories, but others, I’m always amazed at the stories of survival. We can argue that Anne’s story is not one of survival because she eventually dies in a concentration camp, but for more than two years she did survive in hiding, living in conditions that would have driven most of us to despair.

So, how did she do it? I’m struck by two things. First there is her basic belief in the goodness of people. Her famous quote being “In spite of everything, I still believe people are good at heart.” She goes on to say that she has to believe this because to believe in anything else would be too horrible to bear.

And then, there’s the chestnut tree, her one glimpse of a world outside the Secret Annex, her one reminder that there is a world that exists … out there, a world of beauty and grace, a world where one can breathe, a world where she hopes to one day be free. The chestnut tree doesn’t just symbolize hope … it is hope, which is why people have fought so hard the last sixty-five years to save it.

Though we may not suffer as Anne suffered, we all need a chestnut tree.

And God provides. God always provides, so even during the most horrible points of our lives, there is something we can look to, something we can smile at, something we breathe easier around, something to give us hope.

Sometimes our chestnut tree can be as simple as a purring cat sitting in our lap. Sometimes the chestnut tree is more complex, a person perhaps, someone whose mere presence strengthens us, grounds us.

To survive this life, we need our own chestnut tree. What if Anne has chosen to stay out of the attic where she had a view of the tree and the sky? What if she had spent her days closeted away from windows and breathing only the stale, stagnant air?

Without a doubt, she’d have been a different person and have written a very different book.

Though Anne’s tree is gone, it lives on. Across this country, there are eleven saplings from Anne’s tree waiting to be planted.

Hope lives on.