day 10: care {& five minute Friday}

October 10, 2014 / Heather Davis Nelson / 1 Comment

Ten days into the 31 day writing challenge, and I’ve got to admit I’m feeling a bit weary of it. But it’s like training for anything worthwhile, writing takes effort and it’s right when you most want to give up that you’ve got to keep on going – because now you’re growing. (That’s also what my barre instructor says and often I ignore her advice and put the weights down, for goodness’ sake because I can’t do it any longer.)

So I pause today, on this Friday, even for five minutes to write my heart out. Thank you, kind readers, for reading along and encouraging me that this pursuit is worthwhile.

***

Care – I should know a lot about “caring” for I am in a profession called categorized as a “caring profession.” During the other 75% of my week, caring is what I do full-time for my twin 4-year-old daughters. But just exactly what is meant by “care”?

Care is a burden and a relief lifted. A burden of mine and a relief given when you care about my cares. Just to get a little more complex, let’s think about all the various forms care can take. It’s not only what is cared for (noun), it’s what you do in reaching out to someone else with cares (verb), and it is the way a person, profession, or organization is described when it’s characterized by those who excel at interest attuned to the needs of others (adjective). And I haven’t even started thinking about all the ways we use care casually and flippantly about topics or people we are only mildly interested in or invested in but feel pressured to care about because, well, it’s part of being human to care about global warming and poverty and going green and saving the environment and performing random acts of kindness for strangers. (But care divorced from action – is it visible? I guess at least it’s a start.)

No discussion about care can be complete without speaking of the one from which all caring derives its source, whether aware or unaware. The one who says, “Cast all your cares on me, for I care for you.” (my very rough paraphrase of 1 Peter 5:7) To know that HE cares for me – the one who carries the entire world – I visibly relax and exhale. And I am released to go and do the same for you. To really care for you in a way that carries the burdens you’re carrying to make them lighter and to remind you of this One who Cares for you always.

***

photo by paintermommy.com

day 9: New York City

October 9, 2014 / Heather Davis Nelson / 3 Comments

I lived 23 years before visiting “the Big Apple,” and my first steps off the subway in fall of 2004 were literally breathtaking. And not just because of the stale air stench of the inimitable underground, but I had never seen so many people before and felt the energy of this place so tangibly. I told my college roommate who’d brought me there to go to the US Open with her, “I feel like I’m in a movie!”

New York City still holds that same kind of awe for me, made all the more poignant because its famous Bow Bridge became the scene of our engagement and we celebrated in a rotating restaurant on the top floor of one of its massive skyscrapers. There is an energy that can’t be described but only captured. I always feel exhilarated and exhausted after a day in NYC. (And I’ve never visited for more than a day at a time.) In the 10+ years since my first visit, I’ve returned dozens of times to soak up this city – taking in Broadway, the Rockettes, Christmas (!!! no place like it !!!), summer in Central Park, ice skating, Ground Zero, cafes, and of course our favorite family-style Italian restaurant, Carmine’s.

[disclamor: I’m now past my 5 minutes but I must go on] My favorite trip by far was introducing our then three-year-old daughters to the magic that is NYC at Christmastime. They were appropriately wide-eyed with wonder at the charms of this city – the Rockettes’ Christmas Spectacular, the horse and carriage ride through Central Park, Rockefeller Center’s gigantic Christmas tree, and “allllll of the people, Mommy!” They have a 20-year jump start on me on exploring this city, one I hope that they will take great advantage of with their parents as their tour guides.

day 8: Philadelphia

October 8, 2014October 8, 2014 / Heather Davis Nelson / 3 Comments

Five years of life in this city that too often falls prey to ill repute. And I know why when I remember the crazy aggressive drivers I encountered when I first moved there the fall of 2004 to begin seminary. The culture has sharp edges and the people can, at first, seem harsh (especially to one accustomed to the genteel South). But of all the places I’ve lived, this one draws me in like none other. Maybe because it’s where I met my husband; where I met some of the best lifelong friends; or perhaps it’s the cheesesteaks from Jim’s (better than Pat’s or Gino’s) and the “LOVE” statue and the art and the culture and the dozens of amazing restaurants we took a self-guided tour of while we were dating.

I love this city of brotherly love because of the love I found there. Not only through dating and our first three years of marriage, but also through my fellow seminary students at Westminster Theological Seminary, and the family we found at Cresheim Valley Church, and a friend named Lauren we met because we frequented the restaurant-cafe where she worked while she was in school.

Philadelphia, I’m sending my love to you through these words and realizing that I need much longer than five minutes to capture this city most fully.

day 7: Haiti

October 7, 2014 / Heather Davis Nelson / 2 Comments

Forty-eight hours before the youth mission trip to Haiti departed, I was asked to join since (a) I had a passport and (b) I was a youth leader volunteer the summer of 2004. So I took a deep breath, said yes, and went to get all of my shots and my malaria medicine.

photo: haitian-truth.org

As we drove to our destination, the poverty was unbelievable. Mounds of trash, dirt shacks, make-shift homes for the poorest of poor. Each morning I would hear drums from the witch doctors in the distance. The children hung on us in their tattered decades-old donated American t-shirts. We collectively repented of our Banana Republic discontentment and materialistic attitudes.

But the joy. That’s what I remember clearest. The joyful sharing of all that they had (which wasn’t much). The glad singing (for hours) on Sunday morning in church. The hope that filled their faces, spilling over into ear-to-ear smiles. The love they had for each other, for us, and for their Savior who was bringing them Home.

For they knew what I often forget. Home was not the temporary shack on the dirt road they walked back to, but Home awaited them at the end of this pilgrimage of life, tears, suffering, injustice, and poverty. The people of Haiti showed me true riches.

photo: blogs.mirror.co.uk

day 6: Ireland

October 6, 2014 / Heather Davis Nelson / 2 Comments

photo from sound-accord.com

Green everywhere. Rocky cliffs with the spray of the sea arching above them as I sit and pray and worship a God more beautiful than I’ve ever seen before. As part of World Harvest Mission’s summer internship, I spent two months in Ireland studying the culture and serving Irish pastors and church planters in their often exhausting and fruitless work of tilling the spiritual soil that is far from verdant like its rolling hills. The contrast I wrote about after my summer was of intense spiritual darkness against the backdrop of stunning creator-gleaming light. Beauty of the gospel at work in my heart and the hearts of those I met amidst the desolate environment of a people disenfranchised by the church due to its widespread abuses. A substitute of religious superstition for real faith surprised me.

Ireland held a world of contrasts. The bustling city of Dublin with its cobblestone streets and busy pubs and the lazy countrysides stretching for miles and miles of green with only a solitary pub here and there and barely roads big enough to pass. Two months of backpacking from coast to coast and I barely scratched the surface of this place. I felt as if I knew it less than when I started – and so it was with God and with my own heart. Ireland opened up a journey of messy grace at the intersection of sin deeper than I wanted to see and love more abundant than I dared to believe. (If you’re intrigued, check out the Sonship discipleship course at Serge, formerly known as World Harvest Mission, or even better – go on one of their trips!)

day 5: Mexico

October 5, 2014 / Heather Davis Nelson / 3 Comments

Guadalajara, Mexico, in summer of 2000. I was there to take my Spanish to the next level and to assist missionaries in their outreach to college students. Both happened quite differently than I expected, and both happened in the context of a country unexpectedly beautiful.

photo credit: aboutguadalajara.com

I pictured poverty and cardboard shacks and drug cartels, for that’s the Mexico we often think of in the USA. But what I found was extravagant wealth, beauty in the hospitality of the people who were patient with our very broken Spanish and who embraced us because we came to love them. I found a land rich with break-taking sunsets, tropical foliage, and markets bursting with handmade goods of talented artisans. Of course, there were also the pockets of poverty – of a family of 6 living in a room smaller than my dorm room, of the black market CD’s and movies that we just didn’t ask too many questions about as we purchased them. How is this movie already out here when we haven’t even seen it in the theaters back home?

I remember ear-to-ear smiles of the people whose church we helped to whitewash. I remember the generous Mexican family who invited me and a few of my gringo friends into their home. I remember the waiting and the waiting for dinner as our stomachs growled and we tried to be polite in this Latin take-your-time culture. (I don’t think dinner was served until 9:00pm). I remember that I really knew Spanish by the end of that summer because I had conversed in it and built relationships through it, which became a lifelong motivation to continue with it.

Will I return to Guadalajara? I don’t know. But it will always stay with me – the loveliness and hospitality that I hope to emulate to others among us who don’t speak my language or call the US their first home.

***

[to read the entire series of 31 days of five minute free writes in 2014, click here]

day 4: Chicago

October 4, 2014 / Heather Davis Nelson / 4 Comments

It’s September of my freshman year of college, and this is our first weekend to take the Metra into the city. It’s also my first time to ever venture into any city. I step out of the train station and feel awed by the height of the buildings around me. Man-made mountains dwarf me and exhilarate me. There’s an energy about this Windy City that is echoed in the stiff breezes rushing through the alleyways.

photo by Heather Nelson

Chicago would be the city-scene of my college years. An easy weekend train ride away with destinations including the Sears Tower, the majestic John Hancock, the crazy Wacker Drive underground streets, Navy Pier (and a date or two), and always, always the shore of Lake Michigan as the setting of this inviting and austere midwest city.

Chicago means deep dish pizza and Ed Debevic’s and symphonies and plays and culture, culture, culture like none other. Now it also means cleanliness (compared to the other cities I’ve visited since then). Architecture that’s clean and pristine. Michigan Avenue (window) shopping at Christmastime. The second floor of a Borders where I’d study and people watch and chat about deep things over a mocha. Grant Park and the El.

Oh, Chicago!

Day 3: new

October 3, 2014October 3, 2014 / Heather Davis Nelson / 6 Comments

photo from larainydays.blogspot.com

“Behold, I am making all things new.” (Revelation 21:5) Who doesn’t love new? Like a white blanket of snow unmarked by footprints, “new” begs for us to venture forth in joyful exploration. And new is what the world will be one day, and new is what we in Christ already are. We are the ones who display the “new” to come – the first sign of what will be fully realized at the end of time and the beginning of eternity.

New means we get another chance, that I never run out of grace to cover my sins and failures, that there is always hope for tomorrow and the next minute to be different. New means that I am not defined by who I’m not – I find new identity daily in grace and mercy that hides me securely in Jesus Christ.

What could this look like today, for you and for me? Not only that I walk in the joyous adventure of my new freedom in Christ, unfettered by past sins or future anxieties, but it means I can relate to you with forgiveness. Giving you a new chance to be who God is making you to be. At the end of a difficult day with my daughter, I lean in close as I’m kissing her goodnight and remind us both that tomorrow is a new day. What hope! What lightness – what fresh beauty awaits and what new mercy will cover tomorrow’s imperfections! I can continue to fight against idolatry and to invite you into the same. You will never be outside of the reach of redemption.

For behold, he is making ALL things NEW.

***

Posting as part of 31 days and Five Minute Friday today.

Day 2: view

October 2, 2014October 2, 2014 / Heather Davis Nelson / 5 Comments

I peer over the edge to the water spraying up from 50 or more feet below. The Cliffs of Moher in all their grandeur. It’s breathtaking and I can’t get enough of the ethereal view.

I wake up early to catch a sunrise. Rare for this non-morning-college student, but that summer I am eager to be reminded of fresh mercies and new glory with the rays of sunlight peeking over the ocean’s horizon. So I set my alarm for 5:00am, and it’s like an appointment with my Creator.

The pinks and purples stretch across the twilight as the golden ball of fire dips beneath the blue-ridged mountains. There it is again: an unforgettable view that is etched in my memory.

Like hidden glory, something to recall on the days when all that I see is the view out my suburban windows of a cloudy sky or a sink piled with dishes and a floor littered with legos of all sizes. To know these views exist in the world, and that I have seen them and drunk deeply of this beauty – it stays with me. Keeps me moving, reminds me of the glory inherent in my world. I will see it again, and to think that in a soul, the beauty of this view of God is even more breathtaking? Oh, let me love the people who inhabit my view as I peer into the glory hidden in these little ordinary 4-year-old souls!

31 (or really 28) days of five minute free writes

October 2, 2014November 1, 2014 / Heather Davis Nelson / 20 Comments

Ever since my first “Five Minute Friday” post on July 26, 2013, I’ve been hooked on the five-minute free writes hosted first by Lisa Jo Baker, and then more recently by Kate Motaung. (You can read all of my Five Minute Friday posts thus far here.) It’s an encouraging writing community to link up with, and it’s a good exercise in writing. The idea is five minutes of unedited free-write on a given topic.

This year, I’ve taken Kate’s challenge to join with The Nester’s 31-days challenge by doing 31 days of five-minute free writes in October. Here goes!

[I will be adding links to each day when the post goes live.]

Day 1: move

Day 2: view

Day 3: new

—after getting warmed up with Kate’s prompts, I’m going to mix it up with a few of my own in the days that follow (marked with a *)—

Day 9: New York City*