Our hands are full

navigating life while holding the good alongside the grief

Hello friends and welcome to all who are new around here. My intention in writing each month is to offer you words that point you in the direction of hope, beauty, and a life of flourishing. I would love to hear from you what resonates and speaks to where you are today.

My word for 2025 is “yet”.

It was one of those times when the word seemed to choose me. It kept coming to my mind over and over again as I thought of all the lay ahead at the beginning of the year. There were beautiful things I could see coming on the horizon, along with really hard things.

“Yet” is a hopeful word. It reminds me that I do not see the full picture and that things are still in process—that I am still in process. I read recently these words in The Spirit of Hope, “an ‘and yet’ is inherent in hope”.

Even as I mourn all that is not right in myself, my family, my community and the world at large, if I tack on a “yet” to my list of laments it opens me up to the possibility of a different eventual outcome. I can cultivate hope in the unseen work of God as he continues to make all things new.

Even when:

Healing has not happened…yet.

My dad isn’t walking again…yet.

My anxiety has not left me…yet.

I haven’t controlled my doomscrolling…yet.

I haven’t fully accepted my belovedness…yet.

The war is not over…yet.

I wonder what you could consider adding a “yet” to?

Coming to terms with fragility

The events of the last few months have left me with a deeper awareness of the fragility of life. We have watched on our screens lives being taken over and over again. We are eye-witnesses to the fear on the faces of those who depend on aid from others in order to survive. I have personal news from family of major medical challenges that threaten the quality of life and life itself.

I want to avoid these realities, maybe you do too. We have been conditioned to be strong and independent, unwilling to admit our fragility. We stay busy and distracted in an effort to evade the hard. We often live like we are infinite. When confronted with our frailty, our affinity to dust, we baulk. The season of lent is fast approaching and Ash Wednesday offers us a chance to face the truth of our finiteness and our inability to provide for ourselves the safety and security we spend our lives striving for.

These things are true …and yet. There is still goodness to be had, beauty to experience, and strong loving arms to surrender into.

I experienced a whole lot of goodness this past week. I was in San Diego at the invitation of a friend to co-lead a contemplative retreat at her church. I arrived burdened and tired. The first two days were spent taking in the beauty of warm days, ocean views, and the sights and smells of green and growing things. I felt my body and soul begin to revive in the restorative power of beauty. Sharing it with my friends multiplied my joy.

It seemed to me a feast in the middle of the battle I find myself in just like the Psalmist talks about in Psalm 23:5.

You spread out a table before me,
provisions in the midst of attack from my enemies;
You care for all my needs, anointing my head with soothing, fragrant oil,
filling my cup again and again with Your grace. (The Voice)

As part of my introduction at the retreat, I mentioned that the day I left home the thermometer read -27 degrees Celsius, a temperature that freezes nostril hairs as you step out of the door. What I failed to express was also the beauty of frigid days —the sun dogs, the northern lights, the clear blue of sky, the specific crunch of snow, the way moisture in the air turns to ice crystals—appearing like diamonds in the air. Why didn’t I share the beauty too? Why did I withhold this counterpoint to the cold?

I think it is something we need on the regular—this recognition of all that is. The temptation seems to be to focus on one while we lose sight of the other. We can fall into toxic positivity or despair if we only focus on one to the exclusion of the other. I am still learning how to hold in one hand goodness and in the other all the difficult things of life. But we must learn this because our lives are always both.

Elizabeth Oldfield had a post on Instagram recently that talks about this very thing. We voice our complaint and lament, and then we ask what else is true?

elizabethsaraholdfield

A post shared by @elizabethsaraholdfield

Current Events

On a normal day in Canada, the conflation of faith and political power I see in America doesn’t come too close. I can distance myself from it even though there are signs of this ideology creeping northward.

But on a dusty road in El Cajon, California, this evil confronts me.

I see the sign on the back of the pickup —an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a symbol of the extravagant and boundless love of God for mankind, with the names of Trump and Vance surrounding it. The incongruence of these names with this image leaves me speechless. I wonder what story the driver of this truck has lived to see no problem in marrying these two things.

And there is always a story. I want to have compassion and understanding for those who think differently, but I have to admit it is hard.

My latest article was published in the Christian Courier talks about the call to love neighbor alongside the difficulty of doing so in the climate in which we live. Read it here.

What I’m reading:

Non-Fiction

The Spirit of Hope by Byung-Chul Han

The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin

You Could Make this Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith

(just finished) The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl – this one was recommended by my dear friend Katie Kibbe and it was a beautiful, slow and comforting read. It is one women’s account of paying attention to the natural world around her. For me it provided a helpful antidote to the despair that threatens.

Fiction

(just finished) The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny — as always Louise Penny comes through with an engrossing tale of murder with a side of domestic terrorism. Woven through all her stories is the beauty and balm of friendship and lives of integrity.

(up next) The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

Please tell me I am not alone in having many books on the go at once!!

Here is a scrapbook of beauty for you today, may it nourish your soul as it did mine.

A Blessing for the Month of March

Even though the days lengthen,

And the sun regains some of its heat,

the world merely tosses and turns

not quite ready to fully awaken.

In these days of waiting,

may the tiny seed of hope

hidden under the earth

begin to warm, break, and reach for the sun.

Hold on, growth is coming.

Thanks for being here. Please share this post generously with friends who might want to read. Your support is appreciated.