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Her name was Elizabeth Livermore, but we called her Old Faithful. She was an older, grandmotherly woman with her hair in a low bun, weathered hands, and a slightly hunched back. On Sunday evenings in our church, when the pastor invited the congregation to share a testimony or a word of praise, you could count on Old Faithful to rise slowly to her feet.
The holiday season, in many ways, has been hijacked. Instead of Earth receiving her King, she seems to get stressed out and bent on consumerism. We look forward to this time with nostalgia, and then somewhere in the midst of it all, we realize that we’re worn-out, overcommitted, frantic, and not at all the people we want to be during a meaningful season.
The afternoon sunshine streamed through the family room window while my daughters—then just two and four years old—were playing independently, sitting amidst the many small toys strewn on the carpet all around them. They were each enraptured in their own play, virtually silent; I lounged alongside them, reading quietly.
A line from one of my favorite hymns, “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” has been running through my mind lately: “Morning by morning new mercies I see/All I have needed Thy hand hath provided. . .” I affirm to myself that God provides all that I need, with new mercies every morning.
My only child is about to graduate from high school.These final months have flown by in a flurry of last this-or-that celebrations, college applications, campus visits, and the standard end-of-an-era fanfare.
Why do you work at the job you have, care for the people you care for, lead that team, volunteer, train, learn, keep showing up?
Lately, I’ve been thinking about how much is taken from survivors of sexual abuse and how much is out of our control. Although it feels as if the abuse robs us of everything, there are some things that abusers cannot steal and that remain in our control.
Embrace the finite. Writing the words in my journal, I was unsettled somewhat as I read them again. I love permanence. It’s not only the idea of having started, persevered, and completed something, but permanence is the assurance that something will remain consistent and unchanging.
“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?”