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Telling stories and writing poetry has always felt like a calling to me, but early on, I didn’t find myself surrounded by very many other creatives. Then, in my mid-twenties, I began a career in arts administration, and a whole new world opened up to me. I found myself surrounded by a community of people who cared as much as I did about the music of language, plot development, and proper semicolon use.

“Oh, I just love fall!” I said with a happy sigh, staring out the window at the falling leaves. In a high-pitched voice, one of my kids said, “I love fall!” and another one followed suit, “And winter, when the snow falls, I love winter!” and the third chimed in, right on cue, “And isn’t spring just wonderful?” 

I don’t want to sound preachy, girlfriends, but it’s time to retire the phrase, “I’m so busy” from your vocabulary. I’m a recovering workaholic myself, ever tempted to utter this ugly four-letter word, so I feel like I’m justified in this admonition.

Except for the Gospels, where Jesus is the living and breathing Word, God seems to reserve the power of His audible voice for critical moments. He breaks His silence only when it’s His true and clear Word that could muster the listener to turn, go, act, or change.

Before I was “officially” saved, I required a lot of evidence that Jesus was the Son of God. Even after God rescued me in my dorm room the fall of my freshman year, I still sought out books and arguments that supported my feeble faith. I felt I needed to be certain that God was the One True God before I was going to give my life over to Him.

My husband proposed twenty years ago this May, on the day I graduated from college. We went to dinner together at the Macaroni Grille to celebrate my brand-new degree, and then, with my leftovers tucked neatly at my feet, we headed towards his parents’ house.

But instead of turning onto their street, he asked, “Want to go for a walk?”

Early on in the pandemic, I got sick with what was likely a case of Covid. My symptoms were mild yet distinct from anything I’d ever been ill with before. Aside from just a day or two of shortness of breath and what seemed like never ending thirst, I thought I had recovered.

Jenn, a friend of mine in our community, died of cancer not too long ago. One of Jenn’s best friends, Steph, shared with me how she held space with Jenn in the last couple of months of her life. Steph sat with her and read Scripture with her, and when Jenn grew too weak to read the words herself, Steph read to her while she rested. Steph described those days as holy, beautiful, and sweet. There, in the fullness of time, Jenn and Steph were achingly close to the Lord, swallowed in the tenderness of God’s embrace.