11 Things I Learned This Spring
View from one of my “path less travelled” neighborhood walks this spring.
I’m joining Emily Freeman, a writer and podcaster I admire, in her invitation to reflect on the past quarter with a What We Learned reflection. As Emily says, I’m sharing “in-process considerations, not necessarily fully worked out narratives.” Here are 11 things I’m learning in varying degrees of gravitas and in no particular order.
1. WHAT I WANT FOR MY BIRTHDAY EVERY YEAR OF MY FUTURE (YES, I’M STILL TALKING ABOUT MY 50TH BIRTHDAY).
I didn’t know it until I walked into my friend Amy’s living room and my friends Jane and Jane handed me a tiara, but this was the PERFECT COVID-tide celebration (maybe any other time also). Friends, lunch, mid-day champagne, me wearing a tiara (confession: this is the only time in my life I’ve worn a tiara) and so much (partially-vaccinated) laughter.
To top it off, FIFTY FLOWERS. I teared up when I saw flowers covering the countertop. Before I walked into the room I didn’t know I wanted fifty flowers for my fiftieth birthday. After I walked into the room, I realized that’s what I’d always wanted.
I think every birthday from now on I will ask for a flower for each year of my life.
2. WAFFLES WITH MACERATED BLUEBERRIES ARE ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA.
On to serious things! Brian bought a waffle maker just in time for Shrove Tuesday. He brought it out (almost) every Sunday during Lent to remind us that resurrection is real and the feast days would come again. Each week during Eastertide, we toasted again with fluffy, fruity yumminess. The Tequila Sunrise waited 46 long days and arrived, as it should, during Easter Sunday brunch. Christ is risen! Hallelujah!
3. LOBSTER ROLLS ARE ALSO ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA.
We took a few days off during the week of Easter to rest and feast which included several day trips to corners of Connecticut we wanted to explore. Our itinerary for the week included two locations of the 10 “best lobster rolls in Connecticut”. As of this writing, this place gets our top vote.
4. THE WEEK AFTER EASTER IS PERFECT FOR SIMPLE R&R - ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU’RE MARRIED TO THE MINISTER*.
In my house, the minister excels at planning adventures. We like to say he learned it from me, and now I’m more than happy to let him keep up the tradition. That little list up there - crafted during the weightiest days of Lent - is what it means to practice resurrection. Make no mistake.
5. TAKE THE (NEIGHBORHOOD) ROAD LESS TRAVELED.
The neighborhood we rent our house is home to a beautiful waterfront park featuring picturesque views of Long Island Sound. The park is what made me dream about living in this neighborhood since the first day I visited Connecticut. Even in the below-zero temperatures of our February in-person interview, we visited the park and I loved everything about it. For obvious reasons, this is the walking route most taken (by me and tons of other people). This spring I decided to branch out of my regular walking path and discovered there’s so much more about our neighborhood I had to discover. For example? We’ve visited this boardwalk and seafood shack many times, but I never realized what an easy walk it is from our house. Of course, most of what I discovered in walking a different path was just regular stuff like houses and roads and bus stops. I’m so glad to know about those too.
6. I SOMETIMES HIDE BEHIND OTHER PEOPLE’S STORIES INSTEAD OF RISK WRITING MY OWN.
I’m in a season of reassessing my callings and am finding myself torn between introducing you to stories from folks I admire from around the world and investing more time and energy in writing and sharing my own stories. I haven’t figured out the balance yet. So, for this year, at least, I write in hope that something I share will encourage you to think differently about your own life and to respond to that new way of thinking with joy and courage and new ways of living. To begin, I cracked open a treasure chest of memories in the Stories blog* this spring.
7. WRITING MY OWN STORIES FREAKS ME OUT.
I took a writing course* this spring (led by the wonderful Michelle Van Loon and Marlena Graves) and here’s the word I shared in our first session when asked what we were feeling at the beginning (actual comment): READY! BRING IT ON!
Here’s my actual comment in the last week: “Completing the assignments for weeks 4 & 5 has triggered some kind of existential crisis for me. I'm surprised at how scared I feel and the ways that are hindering me from writing. I thought I'd just say it out loud within the safety of this group.”
I’m grateful for Michelle and Marlena’s encouragement as well the other writers in my cohort. I’m also thankful for the encouragement of real-life, in-person friends cheering me on. And dropping gifts on my doorstep on deadline days.
8. PARENTING A PREGNANT PERSON FEELS LIKE MAMA-BEAR INSTINCTS ON STEROIDS.
The day we found out our daughter was expecting her first child, we also learned her pregnancy was in jeopardy. This wasn’t how she expected to share her news and it definitely wasn’t how we expected to hear it. I shared last month the beautiful, miraculous discovery 24 hours after the initial scare that all was well. (If you haven’t watched the video of Kendra giving her Dad the miraculous news, it’s a beautiful moment I’m so glad she’s given us permission to share with you.)
In between the happy/sad/scary news and the miraculous discovery of health, I discovered new layers of my mama-bear instincts. The expression was pretty messy, and the depth of feeling kind of terrified me (and wasn’t necessarily helpful to Kendra). I learned that just like I need as a mom, I need still as a grandparent - safe friends to carry the burden and the joy with me.
Related: So far we’ve talked almost as much about what my grandmother name will be as we have about what this child's name will be. What do y’all call your grandparents? If you’re a grandparent, what do your grandkids call you?
9. RECEIVING THE DAY HELPS ME WELCOME RATHER THAN TRY TO ESCAPE TIME.
We’re on a slow but steady journey of recovering from the trauma of our daughter’s severe mental health crisis. (She shared her own experience of this trauma in my Stories blog during Holy Week.) As we approached the anniversary dates of her two most traumatic episodes this May, I noticed I was holding my breath emotionally - just trying to get through the month without feeling too much anxiety or anything else. Not every day and maybe not even most of the days in May, but many of the days I was able to enter the spiritual practice of “receiving the day”.
Receiving the day* means to walk through it (and some days, honestly, stay in bed through it) exactly as the day presented itself to me. I would pray whatever half-articulate prayers I could muster “Thank you for this day. I receive it as a gift just as it is.” Most of the time during that month, receiving the day was too ambitious of a goal. So I received the hour or the minutes. Whenever I felt the temptation to crumble under the weight of ungentle demands of myself, that was my clue to take an emotional and physical pause to receive the moment exactly as it was in reality.
10. RECEIVING OTHERS HELPS ME WELCOME RATHER THAN TRY TO ESCAPE PEOPLE, INCLUDING MY OWN SELF.
I quickly learned that the practice of receiving the day can’t be separated from the act of receiving my own self whatever state I found myself in throughout the day.
In early June, I was sharing with my spiritual director my gratitude for a May without severe crisis for our family. I told her how much I appreciated the ways she’d helped me understand what it means to receive a day. The whole experience had been so freeing I began to notice other parts of my life I wasn’t as free to receive.
For obvious reasons, like many of you I’ve found it especially challenging to love my church community indiscriminately throughout 2020 and 2021. It’s my desire but I’ve found myself falling into lapses of unloving attitudes and less-than-gentle responses to others’ idiosyncrasies, quirks, and garden-variety sin. I asked God to help me grow not only in gentleness but also in strength. I wanted to be able to receive others exactly as they presented themselves and then to be able to respond with healthy hospitality instead of harbored hostility*.
As I sat with God and my spiritual director in this question, the Holy Spirit began to show me that I’d been misunderstanding the meaning of hospitality. When I used the word hospitality, I imagined a state of being I was responsible to initiate and execute. From my own ability to produce hospitality, I couldn’t imagine how to receive others exactly as they presented themselves to me and to establish healthy boundaries at the same time. It felt like I had to choose one or the other and, lately, that hasn’t felt like a safe gamble.
In my equation, practicing hospitality toward the church community meant protecting others’ vulnerability at the expense of my own. I knew my equation was off, but couldn’t figure out how to move into the freedom of receiving others with hospitality rather than hostility*.
As my spiritual director asked questions to help me probe my assumptions about hospitality I began to realize that receiving the day (and myself) had been an act of entering into the hospitality of God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - all along. When I thought I was welcoming the reality of my day, I was actually responding to the welcome of the Trinity that is always, at all times, and in all places being offered. I wasn’t receiving so much as being received. I wasn’t welcoming so much as being welcomed. What makes the welcome of God so inviting is that it’s always offered with the option to respond or reject the invitation. (This is how seriously God takes the dignity of the imago Dei.)
In the loving presence of God and my spiritual director, I received the gift of insight. I began to see my questions and my fear in an entirely new light. The light of truth and love. When I receive others, I’m only welcoming them into the same hospitality God is offering me. I’m passing along the invitation that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are always offering. In this equation, I’m given agency as a guest of God, but ultimate care and responsibility for our vulnerability (mine and those I’m encountering) belong to our host, the Holy Trinity.
This has changed everything for me. I’m still wobbly in the practice, but am experiencing so much freedom and watching God sort out the things I couldn’t figure out how to receive. I’m a grateful guest.
11. ALL BOOK GROUPS DESERVE A SWEET MASCOT LIKE THIS.
Seriously, of all the reasons I’m so delighted my little church triad can meet in person again, spending time with my friend’s dog makes the top of the list. She is deeply attentive to all our conversations about the Psalms* (and seems to have a preference for the ones that mention animals.) She’s also quick to offer condolences when one of us lapses into tears. She loves petting, ball throwing, and prayer time - in that order.
*HERE ARE SOME OF THE RESOURCES THAT HELPED ME THIS SPRING. (Maybe they’ll help you, too.)*
The Minister's Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Doubt, Friendship, Loneliness, Forgiveness, and More by Karen Stiller - Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Books
My review of The Minister’s Wife at Englewood Review of Books
A Sacramental Life Stories Blog membership
We’ll be talking about the spiritual practice of receiving the day during the Rhythms of Grace retreat series .
You can also read about the practice in Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time by Dorothy C. Bass - Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Books
I’ve learned so much about the movement from hostility to hospitality in Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life by Henri Nouwen - Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Books
If you’ve ever wondered what it means to have a spiritual director, I’d love to talk about it with you. You can learn a bit more and reach out to me through the contact form at the bottom of this page.
In case you can’t tell from the photo, Carmen the Dog gives two paws up for David O. Taylor’s beautiful book Open and Unafraid: the Psalms as a Guide to Life. The triad small groups at Church of the Apostles heartily concurs. - Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Books