Life & faith reflections

Thursday free write

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 1 Comment

I sit in a quiet, secluded room of the Y, looking out at the Norfolk skyline on the fourth rainy day (or so) we have had this week. A welcome respite for the dry ground, which has not received actual rainfall that counted since August 10.

And here is a picture of my soul this past month. There have been waterings occasionally, but nothing substantial. It’s been busy, busy with good and beautiful things like one last vacation at the beach and the twins’ third birthday and retreat speaking and community group and women’s Bible study and preschool. So I took a soul time out this morning, and I did a yoga class followed by this space. This space of breathing. Of noticing life rather than letting it rush me by. Yoga felt slow to my fast-paced world of efficiency. And isn’t that illuminating?

On a date with Seth last week, I realized a few things – that writing helps my soul to breathe and I haven’t been doing that enough this fall; that when exercise is pushed off my plate it means the plate is too full; and that weekends need to be empty when the weekday rhythm of a pastor and counselor’s family leaves us all coming up for breath at its end.

What am I doing about it? Well … this. Starting to get in the habit of writing again. Saying no to external demands to say yes to Christ’s whispered invitation to my soul to “Come … all who labor … and R E S T.” What helps you to rest? What keeps you from it? Do share. We all need reminders and ideas of how to pursue the rest for which we have been redeemed.

Five Minute Friday: true

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 3 Comments

True. Oh, how we need more of true in our lie-tattered world! Deceit hangs everywhere, literally. Looking down at us from air-brushed advertisements and billboards promising that their product is True Life. But their product is anything but true. The very premise of marketing is that truth can be acquired. And it can’t be.

Truth is what we live. Who we live out of, and whose Life we join ourselves to. My daughter’s name, “Alethia,” means truth, and in her sweet three-year-old voice she can tell you what her name means (much more readily than she can tell the truth when she knows she’s done wrong). We need ones who live true to the True One. Who not only speak of the truth of God’s Word, but speak of it in a way that is true. Which will mean lots of love, for love and truth are inextricably connected in the life of Jesus. The one who is “the way, the truth, and the life.” He walked in love that was true and truth that was loving. And so must we as we live out his True Life within us.

Can I be true to who He is making me to be? Not hide behind my fig-leaf approximations of identity? Will you be true, and champion me on the path of truth? Let us be true and live truly together.

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I’m joining up with Lisa-Jo Baker in her Five Minute Friday community today. How delightful to get a writing prompt each week, and be limited to five minutes only in which to write! Not perfectly – just words flowing freely.

why it’s hard to find lost things

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 1 Comment

Yesterday was a Monday in every deserved aspect of that oft-dreaded day. It began with lots of whining and tears and complaints (mine and theirs, at least the complaints). In my attempts to herd us out the door to get to the grocery store, we kept losing things. Shoes and socks that seemed to be mysteriously repelled by my daughters’ feet. The favorite shirt we/they wanted to wear. The water ink pen which is a “necessary” in-car entertainment. When calling my husband to vent, I absent-mindedly touched my earring – and realized the pearl was gone. He had given me this set of pearls to celebrate a birthday and the pending birth of our twins. A pearl could be anywhere! So then, naturally, the next thing I lost was my temper. If only I could never lose that in response to all the lost things.

When I calmed down, and could think and breathe at last, I began thinking about why lost things get me so much. It’s more than the fact that we seem to always be looking for something lost these days – the beloved lovey that we looked for in every aisle of the grocery store yesterday, for instance, only to find that it was safely at home after all – but it’s how much TIME it takes to find what is lost. It takes time. A lot of time. Patience. Detailed searching, often. And I don’t have much patience naturally. I feel like I have less time. And I am not a girl who loves details.

But in this calling as a mom to three-year-old girls who have beloved objects, short memories, and a propensity to misplace those objects, I am also called to search for lost things often. Probably daily is not too much of an exaggeration. Love for my girls means that I’ll search for what they love even if I don’t share their valuation of it. This kind of looking for lost things doesn’t come naturally for me, as I’ve shared above. And yet I think it’s one of the small sacrifices of motherhood – to take the time necessary to look for what’s lost.

In so doing, I am imitating no less than God the Father’s love for me and for all of us who are lost. He takes time to search me out; to find me. He used the parable of finding lost things to describe what his heart is all about – what the Kingdom of God is essentially. A lost sheep, a lost coin, two lost sons in Luke 15 tell the story to answer the complaints of the self-righteous grumbling about why Jesus spent so much time with those who were so obviously “lost.” In all three stories, there is much rejoicing and celebration when what is lost is found. Jesus is inviting the self-righteous to not only join in the celebration of those lost being found but also to join in the search of the lost. And the place this begins is realizing they, too, are lost. The last story of the prodigal son illustrates this so vividly. It ends abruptly with the father of the story inviting the older brother to celebration (he’s angry over the party for the younger prodigal brother who’s returned home). And it leaves us hanging. What happens next? We don’t know. It’s a question the self-righteous need to ask and then to answer. Will I come in, counting myself as a lost one found by my Father and thus able to rejoice when another lost one is found? 

Why don’t I think I have time to search for lost things? Sad to say, I haven’t even looked for the lost pearl earring for yesterday. What kept me from it?

  • I doubt that it can be found.
  • I don’t know quite where or how to look.
  • I’d rather spend time doing something else.
  • As valuable as the earring is, I know that it is replaceable.

My daughters with their lost loveys have a lesson to teach me, yet again. For the Kingdom belongs to such as these [children]. In the face of my unbelief, they remind me:

  • To have confidence that what’s lost will be found
  • To start looking wherever you are now
  • When something’s lost, that IS your #1 priority until it’s found.
  • What’s lost is irreplaceable.
  • There is no rejoicing like the joy over finding what’s lost.

Oh, that I’d share their passion and confidence for finding lost things when it comes to searching and finding for my lost peace of mind, for a lost friendship, for a world that’s lost its way. And maybe I could find a lost pearl earring as I do so?

Five Minute Friday: mercy

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 1 Comment

Mercy. Grace for the undeserved. We are all undeserving. In a word, this defines God’s love for people. Love cascading into the hearts of ones callous towards him, unaware of our need for him, scornful and dismissive when we think of him. But he keeps loving because that’s what will redeem us. It’s what turns us into people who show mercy. Receiving such a gift.

I think of the faces of Haitians living in the streets, piles of rubbish next to their tent homes. Mercy is what you feel as a fellow human recognizing their dignity beneath the rubble. It’s hard to describe because it’s what we need; the air we breathe. We show mercy because we are always being shown mercy. Not to better ourselves or to prove that we do in fact love the poor and the undeserving. But because we are the poor and the undeserving every minute of every day. Each breath I take is mercy. The ability to think, to write, to love, to savor a sunset and beauty and the sweet hand-in-hand walk with my daughter. All of it is mercy, constantly rushing over me and into me and THROUGH me.

Does mercy run through me? Pride hinders it. Pride tells me I don’t really need mercy, that I’ve somehow earned the grace in which I daily stand. Mercy humbles me, brings me to my knees, the only starting point for any love.

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This is part of Lisa Jo’s “Five Minute Friday,” a five-minute writing prompt on one word every Friday. 

watering plants and finding wisdom

/ Heather Davis Nelson / Leave a comment

This will not come as a surprise to those of you who know Seth and me. Plants are an endangered species at our home, whether inside or outside. The past few summers, my dad generously helped us to landscape our front bed – meaning, we picked out a few “hearty” plants and bushes at Lowe’s, and I watched as he planted them, and I listened to his advice about watering them daily (twice in the heat of summer), fertilizing them, mulching them. And I have tried. Promise, Dad! We even bought a lawn sprinkler this year to water the little planties for 30 minutes at a time (or two hours once when I forgot to turn it off. Hello, high water bill).

But after months of diligent watering, we unintentionally took a few weeks “off.” We went on vacation, and thankfully it rained, and then I stayed on vacation from watering our plants. And then a week or two later, I noticed that they looked a bit wilty. Like this photo:

By the time I noticed, I scrambled to find the hose and began watering like mad, enlisting my two favorite little gardeners to come with me. I watered them until the soil looked saturated, hoping against hope to somehow make up for the lost watering time with some extra TLC that could be retroactive.

And that’s when it hit me. That what I was trying to do with my garden is what I often do with pursuing wisdom. I go a long time without nurturing my relationship with God in prayer, Bible study, and community – and then when the need for wisdom arises, I try to take a crash course in it overnight. It rarely works like that. Wisdom is the fruit of a walk with Christ. Just as in watering my plants, it’s easier for me to know when my heart has not been “watered” regularly than if it has been. If I’m daily watering my plants, I won’t notice much growth – it’s slow, steady, constant. However, if I miss a few days in the sweltering heat of the summer, then it will be almost immediately obvious.

What a picture for me of my need to daily seek God’s face, to ask him to reveal my pride that hinders me from obtaining wisdom, and come to prayer, His Word, and church to water my thirsty heart.

on the eve of preschool

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 6 Comments

Tomorrow. Tomorrow it begins. Enter the song from “Annie,”

Tomorrow, tomorrow,
I love you, tomorrow;
you’re only a day away!

Tomorrow my almost-3-year-old twins will enter preschool. This DAY I’ve longed for, that felt too far ahead into that distant Future which I couldn’t see through the hazy, sleep-deprived gaze of newborn days and toddler tantrums. Friends who’d journeyed there said the oft-repeated and often-frustrating-when-you’re-in-the-midst-of-it cliche of, “the days are long, but the years are short.” I find myself repeating that phrase myself to friends with weeks-old newborns, who are struggling with finding their way through the maze of feedings, advice, sleep(lessness), diapers, and colic. I’ve said it to friends who are still a few months away from welcoming their first babe into their hearts, and who feel alternately daunted and excited by such a venture.

As I thought about this post, I wasn’t sure whether to camp out in nostalgic-how-did-my-babies-get-so-big, or to join Glennon in the ranks of “hallelujah! Free at last!” I offer my story, which is a combination of both. Only this morning, I have felt both extremes. When my blue-eyed blonde beauties look up at me and say, “I love you, Mommy!” followed by a melt-my-heart hug; when one says, “Daddy is my best Daddy ever!”; when I see them creatively playing and sweetly cooperating with one another, I think that I am going to miss this. Granted, I will still have plenty of it (they’re only going two mornings a week), yet I know this is sort of the beginning of School. We are probably not going to go the homeschool route personally (and I have great respect for those of you who are), so School will likely mean that the next 15 years will include fostering their academic pursuits outside of the home. That’s terrifying when I realize that I am giving over the reigns of control to someone else, even for six hours a week. Will they be ok? What will I miss in terms of small moments you can’t capture? What if they are holy terrors for their teachers or their fellow students? [disclamor: I have no reason to believe that they will be since they are always MUCH better behaved with those other than us … but you never know …] Who will help her if she can’t figure out how to get her lunchbox open or if she skins her knee? Can I bear the thought that it will be someone besides me?

Well, yes. I can if I remember the part of me that can’t wait for tomorrow. I am looking forward to preschool because I want them to learn to play with other kids, to do wildly messy and creative art projects that I won’t have to clean up, to learn to be under another authority besides me, to be guided in their curiosity about this world by teachers trained to do so. This sounds quite noble, and I wish I could stop there. But I won’t. Because I bet there are others out there who, like me, also cannot WAIT for the break. The break from being a referee/personal chef/activities director for two seemingly impossible to please toddlers. Parenting has been as much my journey of finding out who God’s made me as it has been nurturing my children into who God’s making them. And a few things I’ve learned about myself these parenting years set me up for preschool being a lovely break at precisely the right time:

  • I don’t enjoy arts and crafts. In theory, yes, but the actuality feels too messy and frustrating most of the time.
  • I’m not naturally a playful mom, meaning that getting on the floor and doing lego towers for hours (or even 10 minutes) can feel tiring. I do it still because I love the girls who love legos, but it’s just hard for me. Same reason that I don’t really like playgrounds either.
  • I am most refreshed by time alone or with a few friends with whom I can connect on a deep level. To say that’s been a scarcity in these first three years as a mom is an understatement.
  • I am passionate about what God’s called me to outside of my home, too. I enjoy teaching women the beauty of the gospel found in God’s Word; mentoring younger women in their faith journeys; counseling those in difficult places; and writing. The freedom of two mornings a week without my children will free me up to pursue these a tiny bit more than I’ve been able to before now.
  • I am a better mom when I have a regular break to anticipate and in which to find refreshment. I’m not saying that God has not met me in the midst of the trenches of these past few years, but I am saying that I’ve found that I am able to love my husband and children better with regular breaks. This may not be your story, but this has been mine. And I suspect there are many of you in the church especially who have not felt free to admit this. Admit it; ask for grace in the midst of each day; don’t demand breaks in order to be a better mom but DO take breaks as you can, for spiritual and emotional refreshment. Take a break in order to re-engage those God’s called you to in self-sacrificial love.

Will I be a tearful mom tomorrow as I send off my big girls with their tiny backpacks? Of course. Will I be a joyful mom who will feel like three hours is a blissful luxury not to be squandered lightly? Equally so. I expect crying and rejoicing to each be present in this mom’s heart. And for both aspects, I am thankful for a God who weeps with me and rejoices with me and who goes with me and with my daughters as we’ll part for three hours. I imagine that I’ll blink and be writing a similar post about college. Oh my. That may really get the tears going, so I’ll stop while I’m ahead.

Five Minute Friday: worship

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 2 Comments

Sunlight streams in through stained glass on a Sunday morning congregation, hands raised in praise as they worship. Yet it’s oh so much more. A daily direction and orientation of my heart. I am always directed somewhere – something I want, what I fear, what has captured my attention is what I am worshiping.

All-encompassing attention; caught up in what is bigger than me. And when that is God, my heart is happy and right and joyful and full. And when it’s something less than my Creator – a created thing – my heart shrinks to the size of its worship object. I am hungry, never satisfied, always wanting more. More, more, more. For nothing will fill my worship-sized soul space like the God who made me. Who made the stars as they twinkle on the blackest night in the country. Whose vast, immense, eternal presence is merely reflected in the infinite horizon of ocean meeting sky or mountains majestic. Oh, for my soul to meet this God of my heart and our world! It too will rise up in praise with all of its might, joining the chorus creation sings unceasingly day after day. 

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I’m participating today in Lisa-Jo’s “Five Minute Friday” where you write for five minutes on a topic, unedited. Fun way to get a quick blog post and stir the creative writing process.

mentoring lessons from Beverlee

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 2 Comments

It’s been over 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 just-one-year-into-marriage new seminary graduate beginning to counsel and serve on staff with a church plant, from her place as an older woman with decades of experience in ministry including overseas missions and full-time campus ministry. She was not strong but weak during those two years that we met weekly. We 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. And so 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) of a new counselor and wife seeking to find my way in marriage and ministry.
  2. Offer what you have. She could not leave her house, but she reached out to me through phone calls; invited me weekly to come for tea to chat and pray; followed up in tracking me down in my busy, cluttered life of overcommitment. When I first began mentoring/discipling younger women, I was a college student with more free time than I realized. I met with a small group of younger women weekly for 1-2 hours of Bible study and prayer, and then sought to meet individually with each woman weekly outside of that time. After graduating from college, I volunteered with a campus ministry and discipleship/mentoring took a very similar shape then, too. Fast forward 10+ years, and my life as a pastor’s wife, mom to twin preschoolers, and part-time counselor does not allow me to devote the same kind of time to mentoring. Yet it is freeing to remember that mentoring involves offering what I have. And what I have is much less than before – but I still have something to offer. Meetings now take place in the evenings, during naptimes, or on weekends. Sometimes they include meeting somewhere where my kids can play. If I meet with a younger woman even once a month, that’s my “regular” during this season of my life.
  3. Mentoring begins with prayer. She prayed for me when I wasn’t with her, and we prayed together when we met weekly. She followed up about what she was praying for, and there was no secret to the source of the power she depended on herself. Only Jesus sustained her during her most painful days and nights.
  4. Mentoring at its simplest is being intentional to care for another. She initiated getting to know me when I first came on staff with the church plant she helped to start, and she intentionally “took me under her wings,” so to speak. She would call me if we hadn’t seen each other for awhile, and she invited me to meet regularly for the soul respite I so desperately needed.
  5. Gentle challenge embedded in love is an essential part of mentoring. When I had a petty complaint about marriage, she gently challenged me to love. She gave examples from her own life about love as thinking of your spouse often during the day, and then telling him about things that brought him to mind. She shared everything with her beloved Collier, as he did with her. And she encouraged me to do the same – speaking words of reproof into my life as needed.

Do I follow Beverlee’s example perfectly? Far from it. And she herself would be the first to remind me, if she could, that she was not perfect herself. But the call of following Jesus in the ministry of mentoring is a call to lay down your life – as it is – for another. It’s a call to find the grace and strength needed in the midst of my weakness in the cross, not my false notions of self-sufficiency. It is to offer to another the Life I have found and to encourage her to seek Life from this source with me. Until the day when instead of seeing dimly we will, like Beverlee now, see face-to-face the Glory to which we witness. [1 Corinthians 13:12 – “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”]

when mentoring exposes your idol of being needed

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 3 Comments

Sharing the gospel is inextricably tied to sharing other aspects of life with those we’re mentoring. Consider what the apostle Paul says: “We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us” (1 Thessalonians 2:8). Biblical mentoring requires engaging the whole person for more than just a scheduled time each week or month. It includes meeting for lunch or coffee, showing up for an important event in the life of the woman you’re mentoring, inviting her to be part of your life or family, serving together, and even enjoying together the seemingly “frivolous” activities such as watching a movie or going shopping.

Life-on-life ministry comes quite naturally to many of us women as we love to care, nurture, and share emotional intimacy. Yet as in every other relationship, there is danger that I find my identity in mentoring another young woman and so become enmeshed in an unhealthy relationship. My definition of “unhealthy relationship” is a relationship where one of my idols takes the central place that belongs to Jesus. In mentoring, this can happen when my idol of being needed replaces Jesus as what I am worshiping and serving in our relationship.

Warning Signs

What does this idolatry look like, and how can you establish healthy biblical boundaries?

[… Read the rest of the article here at The Gospel Coalition Blog where I’m a guest writer today.]

what’s not to love about Maine?

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 2 Comments

We are back home. I’ve missed blogging and routine, and after 28 hours of travel by car, I agree with Dorothy that “there’s no place like home.” But what a beautiful trip we had to Maine and then to grandparents in New Jersey. There will be more on all of that later … for now, a post that is an ode of sorts to Maine. It was lovely. In case you don’t believe me, some pictures to prove that. 

We trekked up the East coast to visit my brother, sister-in-law, and two bright and handsome nephews who live in Portland, Maine – their home since my doctor-brother started residency there. It was a brave and bold choice to make three years ago as a couple with a one-year-old who had basically lived their entire lives in South Carolina or Georgia. But they love it there, except for wishing the winter to be shorter and family to live closer.

After our second visit to Maine in the summer (and this time with older twins and a string of gloriously sunny days), we have caught the passion shared by all who love “Down East” (as Maine is known to true Mainers). A few highlights from our trip, under the category of what we love about Maine –

  1. There are bike paths through woods even in a relatively metropolitan area. And they take you to beautiful destinations, like this lighthouse below.20130819-233807.jpg
  2. People fly gigantic (the biggest I’ve ever seen) kites at the field by this lighthouse. In fact, they have a kite club that meets every Saturday morning, which we gleefully happened upon.20130819-233839.jpg
  3. Downtown Portland, Maine, feels like Europe. Diverse people, cobblestone paving, street musicians who are actually quite talented, dozens of foodie restaurants and cafes beckoning me to come in with a book and my journal. Strange though it may sound, being there reminded me of my summer in Ireland.
  4. The weather. Cloudless blue skies, long days with early sunrises and late sunsets, allowed us to explore the beautiful outdoors to our heart’s content (well – almost – at least as much as we could within our four preschoolers’ limits, of course).
  5. The people! I’m sorry, South, but you ain’t got nothing on a Mainers’ neighborliness. Kids gather on the streets to play after dinner while their parents sip drinks and bring out tikki torches and music. One evening my sister-in-law and I were sitting on the front stoop, and a neighbor brought over a plate of homemade salmon cakes and aioli for us to enjoy as an appetizer. Their neighbors met us and greeted us each time we were coming or going. They have mowed my brother’s yard for him and offered A/C units on a (rare) hot summer day. They lent us bikes so that we could have a two-family-with-four-kids bike ride to the lighthouse (see #1). Community? Um, yes, please!
  6. Water, water, water. Everywhere we went there was a harbor or a port or a lake or a coast. It is Portland, after all. A highlight was the ferry ride we took to Peaks’ Island. Perfect delight for the 4-and-under crowd particularly! Especially since I’m pretty sure my daughters were thinking “fairy” ride v. “ferry” – added a magical element to the experience for them.
  7. Holy Donuts. You have not tried donuts until you’ve tasted a homemade HOLY DONUT from this local shop. Flavors included chocolate sea-salt, bacon, pomegranate, lemon, maple, and blueberry (of course).
  8. Farm-style dining. We sat outside on picnic tables in the midst of a field of wildflowers and herbs to eat gourmet fresh-from-the-farm food that was perfectly portioned and so delicious I don’t have words to describe it.20130819-233924.jpg20130819-233938.jpg
  9. A picnic of pizza at a park overlooking the port. Look at that alliteration. As wonderful as it sounds.
  10. My family. I know that without them living in Maine, it wouldn’t have the same appeal. We had days filled with lingering conversations over meals; fun cousin play; stories read by Uncle Jonathan and Aunt Nicole; faith and life sharing; and much laughter. I am deeply thankful for such friends who are also family. My heart is full in that joy mixed with grief kind of way. Joy for the time spent together; grief that we are so far away from them. Until next summer, then … ?!