Author: Heather Davis Nelson

five minute Friday: “change”

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 4 Comments

It’s been a good week. How could one filled with a visit from cousins and Uncle J. and Aunt Nic. not be? We laughed together and enjoyed simply being together. In living 6 states apart, visits are few and far between and for that, all the richer. 

Back to Five Minute Friday … my favorite writing exercise, with a new “host” – Kate instead of Lisa-Jo. Find out more here.  

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To move from one condition to another will always bring pain and joy and beauty. Think of the caterpillar growing fat upon the leaf, then cocooned in darkness while metamorphosis works its magic to produce – voila! – a radiant colorful winged butterfly. Nature knows change is both inevitable and painful. The seasons moving from one to another and bringing creation with them, from the fresh glory of spring to the long beauty of summer, then fall’s radiance as the prelude to winter’s sometimes bitter calm and death. All is barren. All is white (or brown, down here in the South where we don’t see much of the glorious white flakes). 

edupic.net

edupic.net

We are all part of change. Some of it I embrace. Bring on maturity, please, for me and my children. A new season just as I’m tiring of the old one. A newly planted hydrangea that blooms tenfold next summer. Yes, for growth and change. But hold your horses before you go forcing losses on me, for that’s also part of the change. The caterpillar must surrender its caterpillar-ness and cozy cocoon to become a butterfly. The trees surrender their leaves to turn brilliant and then begin again. Hearts grieve with the distance of friends and family who move away. Communities heave with sorrow after tragedy. 

To think that there is One who never changes during all of my changes? That breathes hope into even the bitter losses of change, and it enlivens the best of changes. I will cling to this Unchanging One through all my changing days. 

summer’s end (come quickly)

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 1 Comment
photo credit: huffington post

photo credit: huffington post

Their energy – boundless
My ideas run dry.
We have colored and painted (sort of) and read stories about Thumbelina and the Twelve Dancing Princesses
Attended the $1 summer movies together
Toured the local parks, zoo, botanical garden, and aquarium
Listened to night crickets and caught the elusive
Fireflies. Even put them into a jar
(until one escaped and lit up the nursery, to their horror).
But summer’s energy can’t be bottled –
(oh, how moms everywhere wish it could!)

Will I miss these long, lazy days by the pool
and spontaneous trips to the waves, salt, and sand?
The vacations to friends and visits from the same?
Well, of course.
It’s an exchange.
Of the unscheduled for the routine,
Of the lazy for the diligent,
Of the mom-directed days to the hours in the preschool teacher’s classroom.
And yet we will all be happier (in a different way)
come September.

Oh, summer! How I used to hate to see you go!
And now, it seems, I have tired of you.
Ah, school-days. Return soon.
I’ve missed you – they have missed you.
Reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic –
we need you.
To rescue moms everywhere from summer’s long and lingering and endless days.

[disclamor: I do love summer. Honest. And I love my kids dearly. But preschool … dear preschool … it’s been just what all three of us need. See my post here:  “on the eve of preschool” ]

 

in the aftermath of tragedy

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 2 Comments

I have been at a loss for words. Understandable, after what we have all mourned as a community. And yet problematic as one who processes through writing, and one who seeks to give comfort through words of the same. It’s almost been two weeks since tragedy struck our community through the unexpected death of a mother and daughter. I think what feels both haunting and comforting is that life goes on. We have returned to our routines, and this feels wrong, for how can we ever really return to a “before” when tragedy interrupted our lives so forcefully and so permanently? Yet in all of the grief research, this very routine normalcy is part of how we grieve and process. Life has to have a rhythm, and it continues to roll on despite the times when I feel it should stop for awhile. Pause, let us catch our breaths and be able to absorb how life has now changed. It feels like a betrayal to grief that I should return to weekly grocery shopping and breakfast/lunch/dinner and reading stories and work-outs at the gym. All of this should be different. And it is, but it isn’t.

katrinadestruction.com

katrinadestruction.com

The analogy that comes to mind is walking through New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina devastated that city. I was there with a team from my church to contribute to the ongoing rebuilding efforts. And four years later, there was still ample evidence of the destruction. Shops boarded up; homes crumbling in disrepair; areas of Ward 9 barely touched because of insufficient resources to rebuild. We began that week of rebuilding with a tour of the devastation. That helped us to have a context for our work, and motivation to work, and compassion as we worked. Could it be similar as we walk through the aftermath of this tragedy as a community? That now is a time for surveying what’s broken as we pray and grieve and ask about what and how we can begin to rebuild. 

We will do this in very apparently ordinary ways. Like bringing a meal to provide immediate relief to the surviving father and daughter, and not being afraid to reach out and call or email to say, “I’m praying for you. What do you need today?” I remember the words from my counseling professor Ed Welch in a class on how to enter into the suffering of others, and he said simply,

You show up. And you continue to show up. You aren’t afraid to reach out and to contact the person [grieving or suffering an unspeakable tragedy].

If you were impacted by this tragedy, how is it changing you? What’s the damage that will need to be repaired? Such as theological questions that came unhinged that will now need deeper foundations. Or categories of “how life should work” that seem to be obliterated. Even personal questions of how to support friends in need and how to know whether or not someone is in a desperate place and how to ask for help when I need it. All of these are part of the communal story of grief and response to tragedy. Let’s discuss them together and be changed for the good by such a tragedy. Couldn’t that begin to be part of the redemption story God promises to write, even (especially) here?

…For the Lord has comforted his people and will have compassion on his afflicted. (Isaiah 49:13)

a grief of tragic proportion

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 17 Comments

Shock. Disbelief. Profound bewilderment. Deep sadness, even anger. Could we have done more? How didn’t we see this? Who could have helped? What do we do now? All of these and more flooded through me as Seth shared the news of a tragic mother-daughter death that occurred on Wednesday afternoon. A mother and a daughter who were very involved in our church, who leave behind a bereaved and broken father and an 11-year-old sister who lost half of their family on an afternoon in July. She was at camp, and immediately there was the question of how to tell her/when to get her/who should be there. Questions no grieving husband and father should have to answer. Questions he couldn’t answer. Questions we all attempted to speak our best opinions into while we, too, reeled inside with the sadness.

Seth and I witnessed the two hardest conversations of our lives yesterday as this brave father shared the details in two stages of the how with his 11-year-old daughter, and they wept together. And how can you see this and not weep? And not rage? And not feel utterly bewildered? No one saw this coming. No one. Not her best friend with whom she had lunch that day; not her husband who’s said, “She’s the center of my life!” None of us who worshiped alongside her on Sunday. Not the fellow girl scout troop moms who remember a friendly, engaged woman who loved her two daughters.

There is a sense among us who knew her of a communal fail. Why didn’t we know? How could we have helped? And this is good to ask and to explore and to take as a renewed call to engage in community (the antidote of isolation). And yet we must balance this with the reality that she must have been very good at hiding. She did not want anyone to know, for a part of her must have known that she would have been stopped. In some very secret and broken place, she decided this was best for her and her special needs daughter. But all of us left behind … this father, this daughter … whose lives will never be the same, whose stories will always be defined by this most awful of days … we grieve, we question, we are shocked, we don’t know how to go on.

Except that there is one who weeps with us. Who is in our midst. Who is not absent. And so we gathered as a church community yesterday to lament, to pray, to sing our grief and our questions without answers, to fall deep in the arms of the One who is holding us. Herein lies comfort that is real. A comfort that will meet us even when the questions will linger for the rest of our lives. There are no answers, but that’s not what we need the most right now. We need to know we are not alone, and that’s the comfort that even a deeply grieving father gave to his shattered daughter as they wept together:

“You are not alone. We are Easter people. We are Easter people. We are resurrection people.”

He said through his own sobs. There is resurrection promised, and it does not ease this week’s grief but gives a hope beneath the grief. The grief will end one day. Tears will change to joy of reunion. And in the meantime, resurrection guarantees that we have HIM with us. He is not in a cold tomb; He is alive and He is with us in the sadness unspeakable.

It was this hope and this reality of Christ-with-us that propelled Seth and me to walk up to the house of the grieving, and to walk inside, and to sit and weep and mourn. “Jesus wept,” is instructive here. Jesus, who knew Lazarus would be raised to life again, wept. He wept for his friend and with his friends. We can do no less.

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Finding words for the feelings are also provided by our God who knows us and gives us what we need to bring to him. If you are grieving this loss or any other, I suggest reading the following as the prayers of your heart when your heart has lost its words.

 Lamentations 1-5

“Arise, cry out in the night,
at the beginning of the night watches!
Pour out your heart like water
before the presence of the Lord! …
Remember my affliction and my wanderings,
the wormwood and the gall!
My soul continually remembers it
and is bowed down within me.” (2:19, 3:19-20)

 

Psalm 44

“Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord?
Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever!
Why do you hide your face?
Why do you forget our affliction and our oppression? …
Rise up, come to our help!
Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!”

 

Psalm 55

“My heart is in anguish within me;
the terrors of death have fallen upon me.
Fear and trembling come upon me,
and horror overwhelms me.
And I say, ‘Oh, that I had wings like a dove!
I would fly away and be at rest;
yes, I would wander far away;
I would lodge in the wilderness;
I would hurry to find a shelter
from the raging wind and tempest.’ “

 

Psalm 77

“In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord;
in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying;
my soul refuses to be comforted. …
You hold my eyelids open;
I am so troubled that I cannot speak.”

 

Psalm 88

“But I, O Lord, cry to you;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
O Lord, why do you cast my soul away?
Why do you hide your face from me?”

embracing imperfection (July edition): living between “not quite enough” and “a little too much”

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 3 Comments

I’ve felt my inadequacy this month, which I’ll label under the category of “not quite enough.” Today all it took was hearing about a higher-than-expected car repair bill, which sent my heart sinking. Any cushion – any savings goals? They seem to have fled out the window as that bill fluttered into my text messages. A feeling of being defeated. And it’s not just that. It connects with a larger picture of feeling not quite enough as I seek to parent my “spirited” three-year-old twin daughters. I gave up on bedtime last night. I was doing all of *those things* you’re not supposed to do: empty threats, adult-like reprimands that devolved into harsh commands barked from downstairs – “JUST.GET.BACK.INTO.BED!” I felt as if I didn’t have the energy to get up from my comfy chair and interesting TV show (Parenthood in case you were curious) to do more than that. And you know what? Eventually, they went to sleep and settled down. So did I. But this morning roared to a start just minutes after I had settled into the quiet of my journal, and it felt like “you’re not quite enough” was the banner floating over my head as a mom yet again. 

“Not quite enough” is a shame sentence. A statement connecting to that vague sense of inadequacy we all carry and experience, that lurks behind any attempt to do or to be something glorious. Like a writer. I’m wrestling with feeling “not quite enough” as I long to pursue my passion to write, but feel like I don’t have quite enough time and I’m not sure I have quite enough of an audience and a message and would anyone really publish what I wanted to write?

I’m not quite enough when it comes to being a strong wife for my husband as he endures the challenges of full-time ministry as a pastor.

I’m not quite enough of a good friend because so often I can feel swamped by an over-full schedule.

But then the tone can switch, too. And I feel “a little too much” when I look at the scale and see a number there that feels 10 pounds too high. I was talking to a childhood friend who’s also recently reached mid-30s and we were commiserating about how much more difficult it is at this age and after having babies to be in the shape to which we’d grown accustomed.

I felt “a little too much” when I showed up in my full ballet leotard and tights to the “Mommy and Me” class when all the other moms (except my friend and I) had on t-shirts and yoga pants. Oops. Felt a bit out of place that day!

I can be “a little too much” at a dinner party – too intense, too counselor-esque, too brooding, too withdrawn (all at the same time).

But you know what my real problem is? It’s that I have not embraced “not quite enough” and “a little too much” as part of what it means to be a human dependent on a strong God. A God in whom I am more than enough, not because of me but because of all He gives me and all that He is for me. A God who never views me as “a little too much” because He delights in me. Yet I kick against my human limitations while God continues to shower me with grace. A God who says gently in the stolen, quiet moments (few though they be) that how well today went does not equate to how much He loves me. (Thank you, Gloria Furman, in Treasuring Christ When Your Hands Are Full for that thought!) A God who reminds me that who I am is not what my ever-wavering bank account shows or the scale reveals, but it is forever redeemed, forever loved, forever holy because of Jesus’ forever grace. 

five minute Friday: “bloom”

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 10 Comments

I so desperately long to write – but when? My three-year-old natives becomes so restless in the schedule-less summer, as do I. The days find me trying to entertain all of us through outings to the pool, or the air-conditioned mall, or the splash pad at the Norfolk Botanical Garden, or simply the sprinkler out front. By naptime, we are all exhausted and I sleep right alongside them. Instead of writing in my few stolen moments.

But for Five Minute Friday? Well, it’s *only* five minutes, and so here is a place I can always return. To keep my rusty writing skills a little less rusty. To keep practicing matching words to life, and placing words together to draw our souls upward to worship Beauty.

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photo credit: statesymbolsusa.org

photo credit: statesymbolsusa.org

Bloom. I think of wandering through fields of bring periwinkle blue blossoms, Texas bluebonnets, while visiting our Houston aunt and uncle and cousins. There is nothing quite so beautiful as a field in bloom. Sunflowers especially grab my imagination this time of year. Their bright, happy yellow faces greeting the day like eager children.

Something in bloom is evidently full of life. There is life coursing through its stems and its roots and it explodes in colorful blossoms. Oh, to bloom like this in life! To be a vehicle for the Life that is in me – the abundant, vibrant, never-giving-up, never-running-out Spirit. This is the hope of glory hidden within – of me hidden within this glory. Christ in you, the hope of [blooming] glory.

To spill over into my relationships with the hallmarks of this life – with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. To imagine such a “field” of flowers – oh, how our churches and families and neighborhoods would change! Oh, how my heart would be at rest, reveling in the bloom of this glorious Life spilling over in a thousand beautiful ways. 

when less is more

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 5 Comments
less-is-more

photo credit: vanseodesign.com

“More, more, more!” is the mantra of our American materialistic culture. It’s quite too easy to get sucked into this vortex of spending, consuming, acquiring, building, adding. This message of “more is better” spills into the crevices of my attitudes about time, too. So I find myself over-scheduling our summer days out of fear of boredom; and I find myself researching the next best activities in which to enroll my preschool-age daughters; and then while I’m at it, I might as well think about community classes I want to participate in as well. Plus I should actually be using my gym membership on a regular basis, and the memberships we have to a few local attractions. And before I know it, we are all spinning, spinning, spinning like the hamster in her crystal clear ball who thinks she may be running her way to freedom. Nothing has changed though – she is just as trapped as 15 minutes earlier when her owners placed her there for “exercise.”

For a while now, I’ve been challenged to consider “less is more.” Hatmaker’s book Seven is the best cultural expose [don’t know how to add an accent there] I’ve read so far – it will jolt you out of comfortable materialism in the best of ways. Slowly I’ve sought to purge our home of the unnecessary “stuff” and certainly to think twice before buying more. My friends Katherine, Mary, and Maria have inspired me to think about what this could mean for our kids, and I’ve done a few toy purges as a result. It turns out when my kids have fewer options to play with, they really are more focused and contented in their play. (Not to mention that there is less mess to clean up!) Simplicity Parenting is on my summer/fall reading shelf because I want to consider this further.

And then there’s time. Yesterday I trimmed a couple activities in favor of a more leisurely start to our day, and we were all happier. We need fallow hours in a day. I need them, and my three-year-old daughters certainly do. Less schedule means more quality time spent together in the ordinary, and less rushing. When I say quality time, this doesn’t usually mean that we are all blissfully enjoying one another’s company. It often means I am refereeing the screaming girls as they fight over the most-popular-toy-of-the-minute – but I am doing so without trying to also rush them out the door, to get dressed, to put on those darn ever-wandering shoes, to eat their breakfast NOW. Quality time with preschoolers looks like floor time doing a puzzle or playing a game. Or sipping my coffee while I enjoy their “show” (usually dancing to Frozen’s ever-popular “Let It Go”). And then some more coaching in how to get along with one another, and how not to have a mean face when you’re not getting what you want, and how to listen respectfully to me, and how to enjoy the slow unscheduled time.

Less is quite certainly more. It’s a trade I hope to continue to learn and practice and discover – that when I trade the “more is better” for “less is more” mantra, we all end up with what I wanted more of in the first place. More joy, more quality of life, more tuning in to the important and tuning out the apparently urgent, more of stepping out of the ever-exhausting cycle of acquiring stress and stuff in favor of learning contentment with what I have and appreciating what I’ve been given.

how to survive your husband’s mission trip (or business trip)

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 1 Comment

A post I wrote a few weeks ago when my husband was in Peru for a 10-day mission trip. For obvious (security) reasons, I’m just now posting it. I hope it’s helpful. And, hey, I did survive that trip. The two things that were MOST crucial were (1) my mom coming to visit and help out for the second half of his absence (just when I felt like I might pull my hair out, or someone’s hair out) and (2) LOTS of grace extended to me and the girls by Jesus – good sleeping, no illness, presence of mind to take breaks when I/they needed them.

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Two years ago, my husband led his first mission trip to India. Our twin daughters were 18-months-old, and they were just rounding the bend of that quite difficult “terrible two’s” stage that lasted for quite too long. Needless to say, the ten days he was across the world serving God in vibrant, spiritually energizing ways, I was pulling my hair out exhausted and worn out from solo-parenting these girls. He returned home, and as he shared stories of seeing God work in incredible ways, I grew increasingly resentful and jealous. I told him in bitter jest that I would not allow him to go on another mission trip until our daughters were in school full-time.

Three days ago he left for Peru for another mission trip. And you know what? This time around it’s been so much better. I have taken a few pages out of the books of my amazing Navy wife friends who are called upon to endure MONTHS of deployments, sometimes at little more than a few weeks’ notice. As I have seen them (you) endure these long days and weeks and months without your husband, I have learned a few tips that I tried to implement this time around. I share them in hopes of encouraging you who may be in the same boat.

  1. Say yes to help. Myriads of people in your community really want to help you. If they offer, take them up on it. Say “yes”! Write their names down; call them when a need arises. We cannot do this alone. Just like it will take an entire team to do the missions work my husband is engaged in, it will take a team (of your “village”) to help sustain you while you await his return.
  2. Plan fun activities. I’ve tried to do things we do not usually do, and to plan one main fun activity each day. Like going swimming; eating ice cream; having a sleepover with friends. This has made the days pass more quickly for them and for me.
  3. Be especially intentional and attentive. It’s not just hard on me – it’s also hard on my kiddos not to have Daddy around to break up their days. So I’m trying to stretch myself and do more spontaneous play than I usually do – and if the dishes don’t get washed by the end of the day, no big deal. There’s always tomorrow … !
  4. Join with them in prayer. I joined with the other wives of team members to pray for our husbands and their team. It was encouraging to lift up this team together and feel like we were a very real part of their missions work. It also helped to build camaraderie among us “left behind.”
  5. Stock up on supplies. Day one (when we had the most energy), we went to the grocery store and loaded our cart with lots of “happy food.” Meaning, ice cream and chocolate syrup and frozen meals and sugary snacks we don’t usually buy. I put a few beverages of choice in the cart, and we went off on our merry way into the week ahead.
  6. Remember that Jesus is my provision as much as he is my husband’s provision. Part of God providing for Seth to go on this mission trip is an implicit promise that he will also provide for me as I’m at home alone with our girls. I also have an opportunity to trust God more fully and to watch him show up in surprising ways for me.

5 Mentoring Lessons From Beverlee

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 1 Comment

It’s been more than four years since I last met with Beverlee in her living room over a cup of steaming Lady Grey tea and chatted about life, ministry, and relationships. She invested in me, a barely-one-year-into-marriage new seminary graduate beginning to counsel and serve on staff with a church plant. She was an older woman with decades of experience in ministry, including overseas missions and full-time campus ministry. She was not strong during those two years we met weekly. I did not know it, but she might have: those were the last two years of her life, and she suffered from complications of diabetes that often robbed her of sleep and forced her to be homebound.

Yet she taught me more about mentoring, discipleship, gospel-centered friendship than almost anyone else in my adult life so far. Her legacy of gracious, selfless love and care for others even in the midst of her own pain lives on while she lives in glory. I hope to continue that legacy by sharing with you some of what she taught me.

1. Gospel mentoring flows out of weakness, not strength.

She was physically weak for most of the two years that we met together. She easily could have complained and focused on her own pain and ailments, seeking my comfort and prayers. I certainly did pray for this dear woman and seek to comfort her, but it was not because of her complaints. The pain was written on her face, and yet she repeatedly asked me how I was doing; what she could be praying about; and entered into what seemed like my petty struggles (in comparison).

[read the rest over at The Gospel Coalition today]

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For  another article on mentoring I wrote:  “When Mentoring Exposes Your Idol of Being Needed.”

Five Minute Friday: lost

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 3 Comments

I write tonight from the rare bliss of a hotel room all to myself, after a day of refreshment at The Gospel Coalition Women’s conference. I’ve heard Tim and Kathy Keller both teach on the book of Nehemiah; been led in worship beautifully by the Gettys; and have had the opportunity to connect and reconnect with friends old and new. Not to mention the afternoon enjoyment of this resort-like pool here. It’s a little taste of heaven in every way! A rare gift to have all of this at once: community of friends from various stages of life (I’ve literally run into friends from all major epochs so far: South Carolina days, Wheaton, Westminster Seminary/CCEF, World Harvest Mission – all in one place. Wow. Last time this happened it was our wedding … !)

Now onto Lisa Jo’s Five Minute Friday. This week’s word: lost.

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We were in a grocery store, and I lost sight of her amidst the aisles of colorful food cartons and cans. I was terrified that I would never find her again. But after a brief few minutes, I found the mama I wanted as a five-year-old child.

picforparents.areavoices.com

picforparents.areavoices.com

A few years ago, it was reversed. And one of my blondies was there one moment and lost the next amidst the rows and rows and rows of clothes at Kohl’s. I looked everywhere for her and could not find her. I was feeling very panicked as I searched through two departments. I’ll never forget what it looked like to see her coming around the corner safely rescued by one of the staff.

Lost is terrifying. But in those few minutes before you realize you’re lost or that you’ve lost someone/something, you are blissfully unaware. If you’re the lost one, you may even think you’re free. Because to be lost can feel like freedom. Until you realize you’re unmoored from the source of life, of hope, of true safety and security. 

Mine is a story of not knowing I’ve been lost. Of being the good girl who always was finding others, never realizing that I needed to be found. And mine is a story of being rescued and found over and over and over again. Not physically (though that has certainly happened too during various cross-cultural travels), but spiritually. Being found by the God who delights in me and who always knows where and when and how to find me. Like how He is finding me here, in a solitary hotel room amidst 4000 women.

Show me where I’ve been lost, God, and lead me back home … through Your Word and Your people. Amen.