I parked the car and headed toward the familiar sounds of water plummeting over ancient, jagged ledges.

The only person here I felt honored to be the one recipient of this gift of solitude and beauty. I walked down a few wooden steps and stopped on the bridge. The tears came instantly, as I looked and listened.

“My God”, I whispered to myself, but loud enough for the trees to hear. The words a prayer of thanksgiving, rather than a moment of vanity. I stood, surrounded by the sound of rushing water and trees of every shape and size. The water flowed across boulders, under bridges and around smooth walls. It crashed and rippled and stayed still. The trees’ canopy hovered over me. Balsams and Pines, Junipers and Oaks, Maples and Birch. Every shade of green created an irreproducible canvas.

I sense a deep well of joy from the earth itself, jumping and turning as a child, free to move as it pleases. There is silent wisdom here, a knowing that those who come here seek rest of some kind. It is a wisdom born of age and solitude that extends a warm welcome to stay as long as needed.

As I spoke thanks, tears poured out of my eyes. Tears from relief, tears from recognizing beauty, tears from memories of moments that will never live again, tears of gratitude. In my mind’s eye, I am a child. My brother and my parents and I, cross this same bridge. We stop to admire the water crashing over ledges and the beauty of the earth. We beg to stay at the swimming hole and get wet. Swimming will come later, we’re told. For now, we begin the hike upwards, using tree roots as steps and trunks as assistants in the climb. Stopping here and there, we look over ledges as the falls grow bigger.

In another memory, my husband and I are both twenty somethings with college degrees and impending marriage on our minds. We cross this same bridge, climb the same trail, and admire the same ledges.

Eventually, my own children make their way into my memories. Their blonde and brownish red hair lifted into ponytails, swing back and forth as they run and stop and run and stop. We climb the path and admire the scene. It’s all entirely the same and completely different. My children’s Pennsylvania roots embrace with courage the rugged Maine landscape as they climb almost on hands and knees to the top of the waterfall. Their childish laughter and excitement spill over. Roles have reversed as I am now the parent responding to questions of staying at the swimming hole. I watch them with utter joy.

I climbed the staircase made of tree roots and rocks, memories off to the side but not lost. The smoothed bark of the trunks, a sign of the hands who have crossed this path before me and held the trees for stability. I stop at each outpost and look over the edge. The sounds aren’t deafening. They are lifegiving.

Climbing higher and higher, I finally reach the top. No gates, no fences, no signs to not climb or swim up here. Just a basic understanding to be careful while you admire this wild place.

I step onto an outcropping, entirely cognizant that I’m alone and it’s a hard stop at the bottom should I slip. Trusting the feet who have climbed over rocks for the better part of fifty years I stood firm as I looked up and down and around.

The canopy has opened up. It lets the light of a very blue sky and bright sun land on me. I am reminded that in the woods, the tall pines begin to darken the path a bit sooner than in open spaces. The sheer ledge across from me is streaked with deep red, orange and black. An overhang is jagged as if chunks of it have fallen or been ripped off with no rhyme or reason.

I sent a picture to my archaeologist daughter. One of the little ones in my memories, now grown and educated.

“I assume this is granite. Can you tell? What’s the red coming through? Iron?” I ask.

“Heavy iron and sulfur. Looks more like gneiss than granite. Much older.” It was a quick reply.

“It’s about 400 million years old.” I tell her. I know because I had seen a sign at the trailhead.

“The structure is a mix of very slow tectonic process, and glacial.” She told me. “Yeah, the age adds up. Gneiss is formed as magma cools rather than granite that forms rapidly under pretty intense pressure. The black lines through it are a giveaway.”

“New England must be a geologist’s haven.” I wrote her.

“It is. It’s one of the oldest mountain ranges still standing. That’s why it’s much smaller than the mountains in the west.”

I love that she knows this stuff.

There is a particular scent to fresh Maine air. A mix of fresh water, varieties of evergreens, dried pine needles and rich soil. I’ve tried to describe it but have fallen woefully short.

I had forgotten how perfectly serene Smalls Falls is, a rest area off the side of the road near Rangely, Maine. It invites travellers, explorers, families, and fifty year olds in grief who need to reconnect with their childhood. My mom would have come here this summer had she been alive. She loved this place. Both of my parents did.

After some time at the top, I began the descent, grateful I had purchased hiking sandals with good soles. As I adjusted and readjusted my footing, I braced myself on trees growing in just the right places and a small fence erected near the bottom of the falls. I watched my surroundings and took stock of myself.

For years, a lifetime maybe, I learned to find my worth in things outside of myself. Service, sacrifice, attention to detail, education, ability, talent, a feigned attempt at submission, all the things we could list on paper.

It took a massive reaction to life and death, therapy and time to see that I, and you, have inherent worth as humans simply because we exist.

“What gives a person their worth?” My therapist once asked me.

“God’s breath,” I told him. It was easier to say it to other people than to embrace it for myself. I believed it, I just didn’t own it.

Degrees are good for the ego, but they never worked to define the worth of a person. Numbers of people served are great for getting donations and grants but don’t define the worth of an organization’s leader. Church attendance and hours spent in prayer are great for a resume of faithworks but don’t speak to the handiwork of a good Creator. As often as I’ve heard a version of “Jesus makes you worthy,” it never helped. The non-help I found in that statement only made me feel less qualified to be a person of faith. Nothing I ever did ever made me feel or know the inherent value with which I was created.

I spent many years attempting to be something I wasn’t because I believed that who I was wasn’t enough. I arranged my life around who I thought I was supposed to be, ignoring the longing inside to respond slowly, to create, to embrace my love for nature, to err on the side of love.

I watched the ragged edges of ancient rock as I climbed down the side of the waterfall. I knew at the bottom I would stand just on the edge of the swimming hole, letting my feet feel the icy cold mountain water. Maybe I would sit on a rock and let the sounds and welcome embrace me.

Nearing the end, I stepped between the fence and a tree with smooth bark. I wrapped my arm around the tree for stability and noticed its strength. There was no movement, just a solid trunk held firmly in place. Its roots were entangled in and around massive rock formations, clinging to an unmovable base. I stopped and looked up. The tree, a small conifer, probably only about forty years old, maybe fifty, stood tall and straight. Its branches and needles were sparse, but what it had hung over the ledge.

“You’re doing good.” I told the tree and gave it a pat. “Thank you for being strong.”

I stopped and became suddenly thankful. Thankful that the same Creator who created this earth also created me. Thankful that the earth who formed this tree to grow around ancient rocks also formed me.

All around me trees grew in and out of cracks in ancient rocks. Smooth round edges of basins had been formed by moving water leaving rings of evidence. Earth’s natural movements for millions of years have created a space people long to experience. It is both ancient and new, hard and soft, living and dying. It is quiet and loud, welcoming and dangerous, dark and light. It is both strong and soft.

The visible things change and adjust and respond to the invisible, to the weather, to each other. Every part is entirely dependent on every other part. The trees work with the stone, the stones adjust to the water. It is an environment that has learned to adjust as needed. It is who it is and it is perfect.

When you live in Maine, you learn to adjust. You have to. Earth moves to its own rythym here. A person must learn to value the outdoors, to adjust to the environment, to receive with gratefulness the gifts Earth gives. The slowness of life gives opportunity to notice trees which stand tall and strong.

I reached the bottom and crossed the bridge hanging over the rocky bed of the stream. I climbed down to the shoreline and found a rock to sit on, my legs and feet feeling the cold.

I was never grateful for Maine until recent years. I thought it old and backwards. I was annoyed by its accents and slowness of living. At some point I decided I had to leave to be who I thought I needed to be, to find my worth. I’m ashamed by the rejection I offered the land who nurtured me. I’ve since asked the land that is Maine for forgiveness. I get it, though. The answer isn’t that simple. The young me believed a certain way, felt a certain way and she did what she knew to do. I’m grateful my love for my childhood state is coming around again. I’m grateful I get to explore it with joy.

“This is who I am,” I told myself as I looked at the experience around me. “I’m wired to adjust, to traverse paths, to sit in nature. I’m wired to think on ancient things and intermingle with the trees. I’m made for quiet spaces.”

I get it now. I am who I was always meant to be. I make sense given how I was formed. It was hidden for a while. I needed to come back home to find myself again.

“Hi Nancy, it’s Jane’s daughter Chrystal. I need a trim and some layers redone. Do you have time to get me in?” I texted the hairdresser.

“Yes, how about Thursday at 10:30?” She replied right away.

I remembered my way to Nancy’s house and salon, hoping I was making the right turns. Sometimes in rural Maine, you just have to know where you’re going. Dirt driveways and roads aren’t always marked, and sometimes they sneak up on you.

Directions to Nancy’s: Up the hill from my mom’s, down the other side, through the once-upon-a-time center of town, past the house my grandfather grew up in, five minutes of a straight-away, another upward climb and halfway down the second hill where you’ll take the second dirt drive to the right. (The first dirt drive is my mom’s church. The third dirt drive is the dentist’s office.) Take the next first dirt drive (there are three secondary options of dirt drives once you take the original second dirt drive). Go all the way to the dead end, and turn left at the house with a graveyard of old cars, the last dirt drive available.

I remembered.

Nancy’s house hasn’t changed since I was a teenager.

For forty years, my mom went to Nancy to get her hair done. For forty years, Nancy heard about my mom’s family; the problems, the joys, the upcoming trips, the new grandbabies. They exchanged holiday and birthday cards, small gifts and hugs, family lore and, I suspect, local gossip. Nancy styled both of my parents and both of my mom’s parents hair at the funeral home in preparation for their respective funerals.

Mom made sure I called Nancy when we knew she would never go home again, that hospice was her next step.

At some point in those forty years, Nancy styled my dad’s hair, my brother’s hair and my hair. Two out of the three of us got perms.

For many years, until my grandmother died, Nancy permed her hair every six weeks. Do people even still get perms??

“It’s been a long time since you sat in this seat.” Nancy told me as I walked to her front door this morning. Nancy hasn’t changed, nor has her salon.

Until this morning, it had been more than thirty years since I sat in the one-seat hair salon. It looked exactly as I remember. An open door to her home, phone and schedule book to the right of her counter and sink, a bench for those waiting, and a small table with a candy dish near the side window. The large window is situated directly across from the mirror. As you’re getting your hair cut, you’re also watching reflections of birds at the feeders.

In my middle adolescent years my mom was mostly bedridden. “Your dad would carry her in when she was too sick to get here.” She told me.

I had no idea.

“When your grandmother had dementia, your mom would bring her in and I would ask her about all the places she lived and give your mom a break."

I didn’t know.

“I heard your husband did a great service. Donna is my husband’s cousin. I’ve done her hair for years. You know she’s not been back too long.”

Donna is my mom’s friend of a few years from church who lived in Eastern Europe for decades and is now back home. She was at my grandmother’s and my mom’s funerals. Two Christmases ago, my husband and I spent a lovely afternoon with my mom and some of her church friends and Donna’s family at Donna’s house.

“So what was your mom’s cancer again?”

We spent the next little while talking about my mom’s diagnosis and death.

“For Mother’s Day, right before she went to your house, she brought me flowers.”

I didn’t know that either. But I am not surprised.

“When my daughter was here with me this summer, she snagged a picture of me from my mom’s house and took it home to Pennsylvania. It was a picture someone took right after I got one of those spiral perms when they had just come out. I think I was 16.” I told her.

We both laughed.

A lot of life happens over forty years.

I’m sitting in my mom’s garden this morning. The birds are bright, my tea is sort of warm and friends I’ve known my entire life just picked up a van load of items for the local outreach. There’s a hint of pine in the air worthy of breathing deeply.

Years ago, a cousin gave my mom an Adirondack style double bench with a table between. Weather has worn the wood down to almost uncomfortable but still useful. It is the one seating option I have, though I’ve twisted and atempted comfort in ways more strenuous than my 45 minute yoga session this morning. The table between the seats is useful and serves as my desk and cuppa holder. The hole for the umbrella has been whitteld down by an umbrella pole and the back side of the table is starting to break off. My mom loved this bench.

The Catbirds are calling to each other from the front yard to the back. The neighbor’s chickens are somewhere behind the trees. The chickens are usually up around four o’clock a.m. Nuthatch and Red Eye Vireo are here every morning until about ten. I’m hoping Hummingbird comes back today. He’s been a happy surprise this week.

The cool Maine nights and warm days signal the coming end of Maine’s garden season. The last of Mom’s summer blooms surround me. Paperwhites, Hostas and Beebalm. The bees are still working, evidenced by the few pollinators still arrving.

One Peony is pushing through a block of soil. It is a Peony from my grandmother’s garden which my mom and I dug two years ago from her farm. I took one, mom kept two. She was going to plant her Peonies this summer.

I’m spending a couple of months in Maine, taking care of my mom’s estate. I’m grateful for the time to process, time to remember and time to simply be in Maine. I’m grateful that as hard as life has been in the last few months it has also willingly and perfectly provided me the opportunity to take off from life and be in Maine. It is not lost on me that once my mothers house sells coming back to Maine means planning ahead, renting a space to sleep in and finding things to fill my time. There is no more coming home in a expectant kind of way. There will be no more roast in the oven, candles lit, hospitable kind of welcome. No one will be waiting for me anymore.

I see my mom all around me in her gardens. She is standing over her flower beds, hose in hand, drenching them with cold Maine water. “How ah ya?” She would call to the neighbors, right hand raised in a typical Maine hello style. “Its gonna be a good day!” She’d tell them. She greets the birds as she fills their baths and kicks stones that are constantly in the way. Every weed gets pulled.

Weeds didn’t stand a chance with Jane Calden Smith.

My mom was proud of her gardens. The day before she drove to my house, this past May, with unknown stage four cancer, she raked, pulled, bagged and got rid of 60 bags of weeds and yard debry left from the winter and spring thaw. From her death bed she mourned not being able to put her annuals in. The pretty flowers that add a pop of color to a garden space and only last for a season. The work she did pulling weeds and cleaning the yard was simply preparation for summer’s beauty that was to come.

Her yard is manicured well. I’ve watched the Rhodedendrum in the back yard grow for the 20 years she lived here. The Morning Glories are past for the season, but they hold space behind the house and against the bathroom extension my dad built. The little back wall, defined by granite slabs, was a tiny party space. Dad’s grill and mom’s table hosted hundreds of people over the years. Now it simply has a few large flower pots filled with last years soil.

A video has popped up on my Facebook memories just now. It is of my dad’s funeral. A choir of pastors and family members joined my mother at the piano while following my husband’s lead as conductor. They sang wonderfully loud the words:

“When peace like a river attendeth my way. When sorrow like sea billows roll. Whatever my lot, Thou hath taught me to say, It is well, It is well with my soul.”

I hear the resonance of two of my uncles’ voices rising through the others. I can pick up on my husband’s high tenor sound. I hear a faint voice of one of my dad’s sisters, a best friend of my moms. I swear I hear my dad singing.

At my husband’s direction, and my mom’s well-practiced cadence, a packed church joined in with the choir and in good old fashioned church folk’s way, we sang soulfully. Perhaps it was just a favorite hymn of my dad’s. Perhaps it was a declaration of our own state of being. We grieve, but we also believe.

The same church, many of the same folks, would come together six years later to sing the hymns of the faith once again for my grandmother’s funeral, my mom at the piano and my husband leading with his voice. A year after that, just two months ago, my husband conducted from and played on the piano, songs that reminded us of my mother’s life as we all came together once again.

I’ve spent the last few days connecting with extended family as happenstance allows. The neighbors are welcoming, even not really knowing me. I’ve spent time rummaging through old family geneology notes and packing up my mom’s life. This morning I sent a van full of donations for the local outreach with a couple I’ve never not known. I found pictures of three of my cousins and our husbands when we were all newly married and, in the big picture of life, still babies. A text from a friend that he buried his Father in Law this week, a dip in a lake that for more than 100 years my ancestors swam in, a Facetime with my kids and Piper, an aunt who still thinks that knocking at the front door isn’t neccesary if the door is unlocked, plants that have filled my own garden states away.

I’ve found myself coming to terms lately with my vertical role as daughter and my horizontal role as a sharing the same human experience with her. Maybe my mom is more than I ever gave her credit for.

I’m reminded that I’m connected with an invisible string. That we all are.

Whatever the distance is, via death or miles, the world is deeply connected to one another, like an invisible winding path meandering an unthethered sense of time. Garden’s evidence of offering bees its flowers, of soil needing air, of plants on a journey from one garden to the next, of rekindled friendships and family members who fill gaps in the event of a mother’s death. We really do need each other.

Well, I’ve moved my position multiple times and the bench thrice since I started writing. The morning sun continues to rise over the roof’s peek and fill the shaded side of the house with warmth.

Today, I will deliver more donations, write my list of things to get done, grab Dunkin, and pull some weeds. As lovely as the thought is of my mom tending her plants, she would 100% be complaning about the weeds.

With the exception of eight years of city and suburb life, I’ve been enamoured with the idea of small town living, with its characters, issues and solidarity. I’m not 100% sure my small town experiences would be movie worth. Maybe a B-rating on the Hallmark scale.

As memories and stories surface in my mind I want to share them here. I’m excited to reminisce and put words to moments.

I twisted in my kayak and looked around, above, and along the shore and couldn’t see what I knew was one of three options in the bird world, an Eagle, an Osprey or a Red Tail Hawk.

“Piper I know there’s something close. I just can’t find it.” I whispered to my dog, who was of no help in the search.

The screech was somewhere behind us. It stopped for a moment and when I didn’t see anything I gave up, figuring I had lost the creature to the woods. A voice like that pierces the atmosphere. I was disappointed I couldn’t locate its owner. Wanting to take one more paddle down the creek before heading home, I turned my kayak around and headed under the bridge and into the creek.

The creek, spring-fed and small, has been reconstructed for centuries by beavers and humans alike. Its shorelines are inhabited by woodland creatures and fowl. Its waters are filled with aquatic life and flora that peeks through during dry seasons. It is small, but peaceful. The edges surround a paddler like boundaries as the treetops stifle the noises of humans. On the creek, the sounds of nature grow louder. I welcome the invitation to pause and rest. Observing the world and my own breath heals me.

Among the songbird’s flights, the peek of the turtle’s heads above water and the brush of branches, there is almost a sense of people long past still foraging and wandering.

Up the way from the creek is a remnant of a farmstead from the 1700’s. Foundations of buildings, barns, pastures, and what a good educated guess would say was the location of a smokehouse, are still visible for those who look. Behind me, off the shoreline just a bit, are bricks just beginning to show through the forest floor. Appearing to be handmade, based on shape, size and embedded fingerprints, the bricks give evidence of a structure long forgotten. In front of me, the creek curves and narrows. I once saw a goose nest mid-ravage, and a potential bear somewhere around dusk. Beavers have damned the waters, making it unpassable without portaging, which I use as an excuse to not go back there alone anymore.

I turned my kayak toward the creek and the screech and saw it. “There it is Piper. I knew there was something.” An Osprey? Maybe. A Hawk? Definitely not. It was far too big and far too high in the sky to be a Hawk. I watched a moment longer, observing its noticeable characteristics. Long, wide, flat wings reached five feet or more to its sides but its flapping to gain air was very sporadic. Its colors were muted but dark. Its shape huge even for the distance it was from us. Its voice announced its presence.

An Immature Bald Eagle.

We paddled under the bridge and into the creek before stopping to watch. The Eagle rose above the trees until it caught a thermal. The thermal, an invisible band of warm air that winds upwards, is evidenced by the rising circular path of the birds who use it, like an invisible escalator headed toward the clouds. Thermals are rest for weary, migrating birds.

Eagle rose higher and higher until he was almost a dot in the sky before heading over the mountain ridge to his next destination. Eventually, he was out of sight. Breathtaking.

Given the location where I heard his voice and the start of the thermal, I am comfortable assuming he was somewhere close, perhaps even watching us, during our first paddle down the creek. This shoreline, these old tree stands still offer rest for humans and creatures alike.

Yesterday, I left my key on the counter and walked out a locked door of the nonprofit I’ve been the Executive Director of for seven years. Whoever ‘they’ is, they say you shouldn’t make major life choices during times of transition, times of grief, times of other life upheavels, but I did. Even walking out the door yesterday, I was unsure it was the right choice.

I’m proud of what I have done at the nonprofit. I love who it became. I love who I became as its leader. I love that as I walked through the building one last time, I could look at any room or corner and see memories of people whose lives have been affected by our ministry and outreach over the last seven years. Mine included.

Tomorrow I will set off for Maine for an undetermined amount of time. I will care for my mother’s post-death needs, care for her estate, and climb up into the lap of my parent’s grave stones to sit a while. I’ll kayak some Maine lakes until it’s too cold, watch the leaves turn from green to red, orange and yellow. I’ll visit with childhood friends. I’ll sleep on my mom’s couch a few more times before it belongs to someone else.

Today, I rested. Today, I was 100% sure I made the right choice to walk away.

Yesterday, my husband prayed that we would “find the joy that grows out of the soil of sorrow.” We’ve had a hard year. Unbearable at times. We are anticipating the day when we can see the joy which has been born of sorrow.

I don’t know why Eagle needed rest this morning, or where he was off to when he soared toward the mountain tops. I don’t know what the next couple of months will look for me, or what it will feel like or be like for my spirit. But I know that today I’m grateful for creeks that still my soul and Eagle’s voices that rise above created noise. I’m grateful for tiny dogs who hate water but love being my buddy. I’m grateful that like Eagle is trusting his path I can trust mine as I take the next right step.

We hosted a party this weekend, my daughter’s college graduation celebration.

It is the first party I’ve hosted without my mom. Though she lived hours and states away, even for small gatherings she was the one I called.

This is what I’m having for food. What else should I add? Do you think it’s enough? Remind me of that recipe. I would ask her.

Who’s coming? What are you making? How are you decorating? She would ask.

She was my constant companion for all things entertaining and celebrating. Even living miles and states away, she was involved in every aspect of my party and holiday planning.

Friday morning, I dressed and was ready to leave for work when the tears started. I stood in my kitchen and they streamed down my cheeks. As soon as I believed they were done, they came again. Wave after wave of tears surprised me.

As much as mom’s constant questions regretably annoyed me over the years, I wish I could hear them again. I wish I had a moment to bounce ideas off her again.

I sat with this grief and asked it questions and it revealed a loneliness like nothing else I’ve ever sat with. I realized how much a part of me my mom is, for good or for bad. In my mind a tiny me stood alone on the ocean’s edge. No person or building anywhere near us. Just me. Frozen in response to life’s circumstances. Tiny me, the reality of what my adult self was feeling.

I’ve had hints of this aloneness before, enough that I recognize it. But I feel it’s safe to say that I’ve never felt so alone in childhood or adulthood as I did on Friday.

Eventually the tears ended enough to go to work. I made it through my day and we celebrated well. Friends we hadn’t seen in some time as concerned about us as they were celebratory, joined us for four hours of conversation, food and drinks Friday night. Many were friends who knew us before they knew the one we were celebrating.

“Hey do you remember….” they would ask. What a blessing it is to be remembered.

The waves of tears and moments of grief have surfaced hard since Friday morning. I never know when they will come, or what will trigger them. There’s an outpouring of quiet tears, of the rawest honesty and the realest questions.

Francis Weller, in The Wild Edges of Sorrow, says, “Grief both acknowledges what has been lost and ensures that we don’t forget what must be remembered.”

The reality of grief is that it’s hard. If it was meant to be easy it wouldn’t be grief. I’m grateful for the grief as much as I’m grateful for the memories.

Maple Taps in January.

Wild winds in March.

Tiny Buds in April.

Strawberries around the end of May.

Blueberries in July.

Black Eyed Susans and Sunflowers in August.

Pumpkins in October.

Dried pods in November.

—

I sat in the passenger side of my daughters Jeep this weekend. The world passing as she drove us back from the gym. Grown children and reversed roles are one of life’s greatest expectations and surprises entwined in one. A patch of Black Eyed Susans popped out of the grass along a bank. Every August, around the second week, Black Eyed Susan’s burst into their spaces. Tall stalks, tiny leaves, deep yellow petals and a piercing black center.

I waiver between picking them and letting them be. Either way, they eventaully die. One feels selfish. One feels natural. I usually let them stay.

Gratitude for earth’s rythyms welled inside me.

Regardless of culture, climate, or season, the earth has a rythym that figuratively and literally keeps us grounded.

The knowing that this flower grows then and that flower grows now, or that fruit grows soon, and that vegatable doesn’t grow again until next year should give us comfort. We don’t have to wonder. We know what’s coming. There’s a foundation to depend on.

If we stay long enough in one locale we become accustomed to the rythym. If we leave and come back we fall into the pattern again. If we wander, we are privy to a new rythym in a new place. The earth’s rythym is not dependent on us.

The Earth’s hum, its cadence, becomes a knowing, a comfort to our spirits; a dependable thing in which to find a sense of security. If we accept the Earth’s peace, the unknown becomes less scary, the connectedness becomes more real. We know the Black Eyed Susans will spread their seeds and live again next year.

The picture for this post is not mine. I google searched it.

Find my introduction to Garden Liturgies below.

Chrystal J Smallwood

Garden Liturgies

I sat in my garden a few weeks ago and penned the phrase “Garden Liturgy". It rolled off my brain, through my fingers and onto the page. I’ve been thinking about it since. Unpacking it beyond a simple literary definition found in Webster’s Dictionary has been a welcome conversation. According to Websters, liturgy is a “form in which religous worship is…

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22 days ago · 4 likes · Chrystal J Smallwood

I sat in my garden a few weeks ago and penned the phrase “Garden Liturgy". It rolled off my brain, through my fingers and onto the page. I’ve been thinking about it since. Unpacking it beyond a simple literary definition found in Webster’s Dictionary has been a welcome conversation. According to Websters, liturgy is a “form in which religous worship is conducted.”

I like Wikepedia’s definition a little more: “As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and participation in the sacred through activities reflecting praise, thanksgiving, remembrance, supplication, or repentance. It forms a basis for establishing a relationship with God or the divine.

Technically speaking, liturgy forms a subset of ritual. The word liturgy, sometimes equated in English as “service“, refers to a formal ritual enacted by those who understand themselves to be participating in an action with the divine.”

I would offer this working definition: “Liturgy is participating in life and seeing it as blessing, as connection to the Divine. Liturgy allows us to be present in the mundane as well as the sacred, and to see God in both.”

Liturgy invites us to be present. It invites us into the hardness of life and blesses us with life’s goodness, with the sense of Sacred meandering through both. Liturgy offers a glimpse into the sacred by way of the mundane.

For example, Garden Liturgies, might offer us a mechanism where the joy of flowers can be present at our gardens, our forests, our funerals, our apologies, and our weddings. The point isn’t the flowers, the point is the Joy. A garden is a gentle connecter which softens the difficult and makes the good, even better. Much like the gentle Spirit of God.

Liturgy can be viewed as the discipline and practice of intentional engagement.

Garden Liturgies allow us to tend the earth and know it is a healing practice. We contemplate, we listen, we are mindful. There is no pressure to be something we are not, for in the garden we simply participate.

My working definition, currently, is this: Garden Liturgies, an invitation to participate in the Sacred by means of a garden.

Sounds kind of Eden-like. When God walked among us. Did God ever stop walking among us? I don’t think so. Let’s spend some time in the garden and learn to see the sacred.

Church this morning

An outside Cathedral.

Bright greens, soft yellows

A hint of red.

Acadian Flycatcher.

Mushrooms

Lavenders, Reds, Whites, Browns.

Dried Falls

Thirsty Rocks.

Sapsuckers, Chickadees, Waxwings

Warblers, Titmice, Hermit Thrush, Blue Jay.

Yesteryear’s basements

Empty Pastures

Things no longer remembered.

Quiet Streams

Old Roads.

Canopies of branches

reaching toward the clouds.

Silence.

Freshness.

Gentle wild.

Ravens.

Flap, flap of the wings,

purposefully pushing air toward us.

The sounds reach us.

Our gaze draws upward.

The pushing of air,

The strength of wings,

The caw of connection.

Heard if we choose to listen.

Miraculous.

I spent a good part of this morning on the waters edge at Wolfe’s Neck listening. The Osprey family across the waters, the seagulls looking for lunch, the children excited about shells and rocks and clams and mud and freedom to climb rocks untethered from parents, the laughter, the joy, the wind, the tide flowing in, the quiet…it was all there. All at once.

I spent some of the day driving around my hometown and remembering. Crunchy leaves on the walk home from school, sledding down streets during storms, jumping off porch roofs, the solid wood banisters in my 1906 kindergarten building…I could see and feel and hear it like it was happening all over again.

I spent the rest of my daylight hours at my parents house packing their remaining earthly goods. Clothes were put into clean trash bags for donation. Tangible memories were put aside for spending time with later. Decorations were placed in bins for a yard sale at the end of the summer. Found wild frozen blueberries were made into muffins.

When the work was done, and my lower back sore enough to justify stopping, I buttered a muffin, turned the porch lights off to discourage mosquitoes from biting and sat on the porch to listen.

I listened to the sounds of a home I will very soon never come back to. A home that has hosted Thanksgivings and Christmas, birthday parties and picnics, friends and family.

Distant falls of the river can be heard as water rushes over ledges. The infrequent driver makes his or her way home late on a Sunday night and the critter in the backyard are all the noises around me tonight. The neighbors windows are dark. There are no street lights around us. The moon shines bright overhead. It is a quiet experience.

I take a bite of my barely warm, wild blueberry muffin that is lathered with butter and I breathe deeply.

These are the sounds, tastes and nighttimes of my childhood. The depth of quiet in a rural Maine town isn’t a fake kind of quiet. It’s a natural, real kind of quiet. People and critters have all retreated inward as the sun has set. It’s silence that encompass. The kind where you can hear your own thoughts and sense your own soul. The kind of stillness that opens space to remember.

Grief is a multisensory experience. Whole body. Inside. Outside. It is relational. It is active. It is loud and it is quiet. It hurts. It releases. It weeps. It feels. It remembers. And it listens, invites, and accepts.

Tonight I listened to my childhood replay its own rhythm like it has done long before me and will do long after me. I’m grateful for sounds and I’m grateful for silence as they both help me to remember.

I drive a fabulous 1997, currently and forever antique Jeep Wrangler named Jude. Jude’s underside shakes, his radio no longer works, the floor is metal, his heat barely functions. But I love him. Jude and I have taken our girls mudding, driven over rocks and under branches and found roads we hoped had an exit. His seatbelts work ishly.

My mother drove spotless, inside and out, cars that still smelled new after a few years.

In her death, I’ve tried to place emotions, thoughts and opinions in their proper mental containers. Her death came hard and fast. There was little time to navigate anything except the task at hand, which was taking care of her and her needs. All the emotions one generally has time to work through as death approaches, we didn’t have. Life handed us all the ingredients to make a cake and turned the mixer on high.

People are still asking me how we are doing, for which I am grateful. All I can tell them is “we are getting there.” Life is calming down a bit, and getting back to some kind of normal. The house is getting unpacked. Work hours are picking back up. Meals are cooked more than ordered.

A lobster platter threw me off yesterday, a reminder of home and the lobster feeds families from Maine enjoy as tradition. I will never again enjoy a Maine Summer Lobstah Feed in the same way I have for almost 50 years. Dinner in my Central PA house graciously waited for me to shed some tears last night while I thought about Lobster Feeds and Maine summers.

A few summers ago, I was visiting my parents. My mom often had fresh flowers in her foyer, but this particular day the flowers were wilting and needed to be discarded. She took out those which had turned brown and kept the ones still fresh, still colorful, still strong. To remedy the wilting bouquet, we stepped outside and wandered through her garden in search of fillers. Hosta Leaves, Japanese Lilies, and ornamental grasses created a new bouquet when mixed with the flowers that remained.

It was gorgeous. Fresh. Vibrant. Lively. Crisp. I would expect nothing less from my mother than a perfectly curated flower arrangement in her foyer. That’s who she was.

I took a picture of the bouquet that day with the belief that it should become a painting at some point.

I remembered that day this week. The numerous bouquets of flowers from her funeral triggerd my memory. Cousins, friends, siblings, my family and I, her church, and friends of friends sent bouquets that brightened the church altar she loved. Their colorful presence eventually graced our front window, our mantel, our piano and our kitchen counter. As all living things do, eventually they started to show their age. Crisp colors began to turn into brown edges and clear water became murky.

I placed a few of the vases on our counter and began separating the living plants from the wilting ones. The flowers that were starting to die went to the trash. The flowers that still had life in them were placed together in a new vase.

All that remains.

All that remains.

“All that remains” began to run through my mind. All that remains of the old bouquets became something new. The flowers didn’t become a new flower. They simply had a change of experience. A new bouquet developed a new expression of a living presence.

I thought of grief. In grief, we must learn to separate the complex from the uncomplicated, the dead from the living, the despair from the hope.

After the death of a flower, a job, or a mother, what we do with what is left is all that remains.

This past weekend I won my first award as a Woodburning Artist. My first art award beyond the mandatory coloring contests in elementary school. My piece you can see above is called “Miners Lantern on Basswood”. It’s an homage to the hard working coal miners of the Northeast Pennsylvania Coal Region. Miner’s Lantern received the third highest award at that 91st National Juried Art Exhibit in Cooperstown, New York.

I will create woodburning art pieces if no one awarded them. I love everything about it, but to be honored and recognized…I’m in awe. I’m in awe that I get to be an artist. That my life long dream of seeing my art on a gallery wall has come true many times over, and this time we were both recognized. I’m humbled and grateful and quieted.

I was a creative kid. Paints, colors, markers, designs. I saw forms in the clouds and made friends with the bees. I wore colors on colors and mismatched socks before it was cool.

Something happened in my older teen years and art became a past dream. Nothing drastic, but that wasn’t the way life was going to take me. I had a belief I was called to ministry and marriage, children, church goals and faithfulness. I believed I was to make a difference in the world. No one ever told me art could be part of my future. No one told me art was my gift and perhaps was also a way to speak into the world. That dream was pushed aside. Faith told me I didn’t matter anyway, and what I wanted was sinful.

The result was that I became who I thought I needed to become and not who I wanted to become. The person everyone told me I should become didn’t include art.

In my 40’s I felt reasonably successful at life. I was on boards, doing ministry, homeschooling my kids, getting a 4.0 in graduate school, had written a book, existed in a decent marriage, had friends and was beginning to revamp a nonprofit where I would eventually become Executive Director.

And then my dad died.

It broke something inside of me. I began having flashbacks of pregnancy losses, of sexual abuse at the hands of a sibling, of being screamed at regularly. As the panic set in, as the grief set in, the flasbacks became stronger and more real. I was hitting midlife and grieving lost hopes and dreams. I was unable to cope with the stress of grief, of graduate school, of having a daughter going off to college. I was, honestly, increasgingly really unpleasant to live with. I didn’t like myself, much less anyone else.

Life around me was not unravelling.

I was unraveling from the inside out.

I laid in bed one night, long after my family had fallen asleep. I looked at the ceiling and told God I would go to therapy if He pointed me to the right therapist. But I wouldn’t go to just anyone. I had gone to counseling over the years, here and there. It was never effective. I left sessions feeling like there was something broken inside me. Like I was manufactured wrongly. Cracked at the core. As much as I tried to do well, to be well, to do what I believed was right, nothing fixed anything. As much as I was in the church, as much prayer as I prayed, as often as I led and participated in ministry, something just didn’t get fixed. I accepted I was just the problem. My church told me I was the problem. Rebellious from conception. Sinful. My mother told me I was the problem.

I must have been the problem.

I sought therapy to figure out how to fix the problem. If my therapist could just tell me what it was, like the doctor can diagnose a broken leg or diabetes, there should be a concise fix. I like concise fixes.

A few weeks later I sat across from my new therapist. He looked at the paper I had written the week before where I listed all of the trauma I’d experienced to that point.

He inhaled. Then he exhaled. A slow, loud breathy exhale.

“That’s a lot." he said. “It’s not impossible but it’s going to take time.”

The small office, 35 minutes from my house would, for the next four years become a place of safety, of healing, of secrets shared for the first time.

It was 2021.

I was diagnosed with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. PTSD is typically caused by a one time traumatic incident. C-PTSD is a multi trauma response. And it turned out that what I knew as normal life was actually far from normal and I had taken the brunt of dysfunction in my family. Adult hood brought it’s own traumatic episodes.

If you’re into ACE scoring, Acute Childhood Experiences, I have a 5.5 or 6 out of 10 depending on how I answer one question. That’s high, and alarming.

My therapist and I began EMDR therapy, Eye Movement and Desensitization Reprocessing, within three weeks of our first meeting.

EMDR or any other trauma healing therapy, when appropriately done, is slow. Slow is the best way to heal. EMDR was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and the most significant. I was frustrated at first because I wanted a quick answer. The answer, it turns out, could only be found in the slow process of sharing secrets hidden away for decades. There is nothing fast about healing.

Healing uncovers who we really are. I picture it as an onion, one layer, one trauma that comes off at a time. Eventually we get to who we truly are. Along the way we learn healthy habits, healthy coping mechanisms, healthy relational skills. And suddenly life opens up with lights at the end of all the tunnels we once thought closed.

Enter Art.

On my way home from a session four years ago, a small quiet voice inside said “Pick up your kids woodburning tool.” I did. I’ve not put it down since.

The smell, the meditation, the textures, the wooden canvases met me at my innermost soul space. It took me home to Maine, to my childhood, to my dreams, to the nature who always accepted me. The slow strokes of woodburner against wood. The creative process that brings into existence something that wasn’t in existence before. A new birth of new ideas.

Eventually I entered and was accepted into my first juried show at a brand new Fine Arts Studio near me. I entered a little country church I had burned onto basswood. Then I entered another art show. Then I set up a studio. Then I sold a few pieces. Then I started doing craft and weekend Fine Arts Festivals. Then I was asked to be on our county’s Art Collective board. More shows. A museum. A couple of national juried shows.

And this weekend I won my first award.

Art has been Healer. My innermost blessing.

There is no size or importance of gallery wall, be it my own, a friends, a clients, a museum, where I don’t look at my art hanging on a wall and stand next to a little blonde headed girl who lives in my memories. We both take in the moment. I sneak a glimpse of her getting to live her dream. She’s perfect, exactly as she is. She is an artist.

Who knew that who I was created to be was enough all along.

I had PTSD. I don’t anymore.

Art has been Healer.

I tucked myself into the chair today, the one place my husband and I have to sit in our still unpacked living space. A blue and white plaid cushioned chair circa somewhere around 20 years ago, passed along to us by a friend. The fabric is just scratchy enough to be uncomfortable, but it’s cushions are soft enough to take the edge off a weary body. I snuggled down into the corners, brought my knees toward me and hugged the pillow. Closing my eyes gave me the darkness and rest my overstimulated self needed.

As I listened to the silence, I noticed my breath becoming rhythmic. Slow and deep, intentional. I’ve learned this is how I breathe when I process emotion. As my thoughts slow and focus, so does my breathing. As my breathing slows and focuses, so do my thoughts. That rhythm forms a baseline where I can better understand feelings, cadence, pain, joy, body aches. It’s yoga at its simplest form. Breathing pauses the chaos in order to focus on whatever is not chaotic.

As I nestled deeper into the chair, I began to notice the hints of depression settling in, that darkness of reality where grief disrupts life. The increasing desire to stay and fall into the cavern where depression resides was becoming stronger. The overwhelm of loss and transition, of betrayal and death walked toward me.

“You have to get up.” My spirit whispered. “You know what will happen if you stay here. You have to get up.”

I didn’t want to get up. I wanted to stay. I wanted to quit and not go into work this week. I wanted to sob as the false fears of what I could have and should have done differently showed up. The catastrophizing of what life would now look like began to write it’s own script. The steep slope of falling into the pit of depression was coming and coming fast.

Grief shows up in some ugly ways and honestly, it was beginning to be ugly. Sensitive feelings take everything personally. Lack of sleep makes everything bigger. My patience lessens as fear increases. Today, the heaviness of still not having a bed to sleep in, and just now, after six weeks since we’ve moved, getting my clothes into one place is hard. Ridding our home of half of our non-essential belongings is heavy. I spent a vacation that my mother planned and should have been on, instead, beginning the process of taking care of her estate.

I’ve met grief around every corner lately.

“You have to get up. If you stay here you’ll have a hard time navigating everything else.”

My inner spaces began to feel the pull between despair and decision. I wanted so deeply to sink into the sadness, to let my feelings, my emotions, my experience take over. I wanted to stay in that chair and sleep. Though my stomach showed signs of hunger, I didn’t want to get up and find food. I wanted to crash and quit and give in.

I’ve learned a healthy balance of knowing myself and my limits, as they meander alongside knowing when to rest and when to be proactive. I knew that still small voice was right. I had to get up.

I slipped on my sneakers and pulled the top off my Jeep. Choosing fresh wind in my face and the sharpness of midday sun in my eyes was intentional to rouse my soul into awareness. Fifteen minutes later, I found myself walking a familiar trail. The trees provided a protective, welcoming canopy, one that felt safe. The sounds of a forest in the summer, and the slow crunch of the gravel under the soles of my feet brought a new kind of rhythm. A rhythm that focused on something outside of myself.

And my soul began to rest.

Scarlet Tanager, Blue Jay, Northern Parula, American Goldfinch began their nightly routine.

The flock of Northern Rough Winged Swallows took turns catching dinner and taking watch from their perch on a fallen branch.

The Black and White Warblers kept their distance high up in a conifer.

A Woodpecker could be heard only if we listened.

The earth gave me the peace my soul needed today. Two hours, later grief was more manageable.

I fear an inability to sleep tonight. My body has learned a cadence of unrest for the last few weeks and is taking time to relearn. I fear waking tomorrow and greeting the overwhelm of a new day in the morning. I fear what the week will bring. I fear snapping at my husband again.

But I realize those are worries for tomorrow, and they may or may not come true. I have a choice in how to hold them. For today, I’m grateful for the birds.

At the beginning of May she drove ten hours from her home in Maine to my home in Pennsylvania. She arrived in pain and barely got out of bed for the rest of her days.

On Mothers Day weekend it was suggested by a CT Scan she had cancer. Two days later, another CT scan and a biospy confirmed cancer. Yet another CT scan showed it was advancing quickly and agressively and any kind of treatment likely wouldn’t do much good.

Three weeks later, she was on hospice at my house where I’d lived for only a day.

Five days later she was dead.

Her death was fast and furious, with an air of drama. Just like my mother.

The weeks were heavy. All of life and all of death, all of the past and all of the future were thrown at us. Somedays it felt like it was happening all at once.

Saturday morning around 1:00 a.m. I fell asleep in the living room, next to her hospital bed, my oldest daughter next to me. At 3:00 a.m. I woke up from a sound sleep and looked at her. She had taken her last breath.

Sometime after 5:00 a.m. I went back to bed and slept until noon.

I finally woke up, toasted a bagel and spread some cream cheese on it, ate and got dressed.

I didn’t know what to do for the rest of the day. Be still? Be active? Be productive?

My dad died seven years ago. My in-laws are both gone. My grandparents are all gone. How do you live and grieve on the first day you’re a 49 year old orphan? I don’t know.

So I gardened.

I had a beautiful garden at our former home. The church provided housing that we lived in for thirteen years while my husband pastored until the church leaders decided we should leave. I spent thirteen years cultivating my gardens in our former yard, ground that had once been a farm. The perennial plants grew to maturity. My herbs bountiful enough that I not only used them solely for my cooking, but I sold them at craft shows and online to friends and family.

The garden soil over thirteen years had been restored and tended so well that it was like new every year. The perennial plants came back bigger and better each year.

There was no tending the plants this year. Thankfully, they knew what to do. They grew big and beautiful on their own. One weekend ago, we moved my garden, my home, my family and my mom within hours of each other. By the time we transplanted my gardens some of the Lilies and Irises were almost five feet tall. My hostas were four feet in diameter. Ornamental grasses, Lilies, Irises, Bee Balm, Echinecea and more filled invisible spaces. Oregano, Thyme, Lavender, Basil, and Cilantro, when it felt like growing, sprawled across the herb bed waiting for harvest.

Over the years friends and family became part of my garden liturgies. Friends offered one kind of plant, family members shared another. That’s what I love about a garden. It tells a story. Each plant is evidence of the blessing of relationships. Each plant identifies a moment in time.

When we moved the plants came with us to our new house. It’s been hard to find time to plant them. Daily I watched them wither in the sun. Caring for a mother on hospice, while attempting to unpack and work, made it difficult to find time to tend the soil.

My new garden space is petite compared to my former space. It’s more of a city backyard than a sprawling rural former farm field. My new space is three levels, broken up by walls and edged by the neighbor’s fences. The vision is a Cottage Garden, with flowers tucked into flowers, solar lights popping through the Hostas. The Paper Whites will stand tall near the bird bath. A table will invite us to sit and breathe.

My husband, knowing how important my garden is to me, lovingly found time to dig a few holes at a time in our new yard over the last week. Between shifts at his new career as a First Responder, helping to care for my mom, weather patterns and backaches, he planted most of the garden.

Yesterday we had a few plants left that had withered more with each day.

After my mom died, I didn’t know what to do. How to grieve. How to behave. There’s no right answer, I know. But what did I want to do? What felt right? I’ve never been a parentless daughter before.

So I gardened.

I knelt in the ground and felt the soil under my fingers. The smell of coming rain grew closer and closer. I forced the shovel into the hardpacked ground with my foot until a I had a hole large enough that a plant would fit. The dusty cloud of dirt that rose was evidence of neglect. I dug a hole, put in healthy soil and water, added my plants, added more soil. I repeated this order a few times until my new coming Cottage Garden was full.

The plants will be fine in their new home. They are shocked right now because of a life upheaval. Eventually, their roots will find a path until the plants are once again firmly in place. They are restarting too. New soil and space needs to be tended. But they will grow. I have no doubt.

Life has dealt my family some blows in the last few months. It’s been hard at times and amazing at other times. It’s not been all bad, but it’s not been all good.

This morning I sat in my new garden drinking hot tea as I do every Sunday morning. I listened to the birds. The traffic drove by. I rested my head while the sun poured onto my closed eyes.

In the face of death, in the midst of grieving, I am reminded of the words found in Revelation. The leaves are the healers of nations. Perhaps they are also healers of humans living their first day as orphans.

Everything has to start somewhere. Everything has its own beginning. This new garden space is my new beginning.

My baby graduated from college.

We said goodbye to a ministry of 13 years whose board decided they didn’t want us anymore. Because God forbid we love Jesus and all of his people.

Our daughter bought her first home and we moved in with her. “I can buy the house mom but I can’t live AND pay the expenses. Can we live together?”

My mom drove 10 hours to my house with, unknown to her, stage four cancer that has progressed rapidly since she’s been with me.

A few days ago I sat in the middle of an empty house, the old house, sobbing on an air mattress.

The new house is virtually unpacked. I can’t tell you where my clothes might be.

I resigned my hospice job to care for my mother.

My husband is transitioning from fulltime ministry to fulltime EMS.

We no longer have church home.

Friends and a team of first responders, some of my nonprofits board members and their families moved us. Some of them I don’t know.

Saturday I stood in a friend’s fig garden while he listened.

Today my mom comes to my house on hospice. I’ve been watching her die for a month.

Last night my husband and I started to fall asleep on the couch, legs intertwined, cuddled under one blanket. “Honey.” He said. Not a honey said out of love. Not a term of endearment. Not a calling me by name. Just an exasperated statement, a call for understanding.

After a few minutes the dog and I went to the bathroom with pillow and blanket in hand. It’s the only room with an air conditioner and for whatever reason a cot.

And I slept.

I slept in the bathroom.

Because at this moment in life it’s the only place that made sense.

I’m not waxing poetic.

I’m not finding a silver lining.

I’m not forgetting the good things that have happened.

It’s all heavy.

Sometimes life is just heavy.

This specific idea is one of acknowledging reality without bypassing, gaslighting or avoiding. This may sound obvious to most, but the ingrained ideas of Christian faith, some of its basic language rarely allows for acceptance of reality without adding a “but God” to the end of the sentence.

It’s been an increasingly capable ability of mine to tell myself “This is reality. I feel such and such a way about it. This feeling is okay.” The bigger question that it forces me to sit with is “Now what am I going to do with it?”

We are going through a transition. A forced termination from church ministry. It’s been painful. Deeply painful.

You know what’s most helpful? Not to have others add a form of “but God” at the end of their commentary, but rather to sit with us and listen. Maybe even agree with our opinions, acknowledge us, our pain, our hurt and let us feel.

I’ve found that people outside the church circles are generally more able to let this happen than those inside church circles. I wish that were different.

Someone, a counselor actually, (who’s time with us didn’t last long due to his constant dismissiveness), repeatedly asked us how this affected our faith and how we could still see God, if we did still see God.

Finally, I told him we aren’t so shallow that our faith is affected negatively by this. I’ve been irritated with him since.

Our faith in Gods provision, direction and consistency has not diminished. If anything this experience has been clarifying towards our call, our dedication to our family, and our passions. Our faith in some people? Well, that’s currently a different story.

I’ve been meshing this idea around in my mind for some time. It felt clear to me this morning. Maybe not clear, maybe finalized. Confirmed.

I looked out my window this morning and watched my mailman rest his forehead on the mailbox, close his eyes and take a minute before moving on. It felt real to me. Human. This man walks miles every day, greets people by name, knows our town inside and out. Always has a smile. Today he needed a moment to stop. I don’t know the reason. I didn’t ask, though I would have listened if he shared. But I’ve never seen him do it in five years of knowing him. I was reminded that each of us have stuff. We each have a reality that sometimes forces us to pause.

The easy way to deal with the parts of life that don’t feel good is to bypass them. To push them aside and not feel them. To avoid reality and pretend everything is fine.

It’s taken me a long time, decades, to allow myself to see reality for what it is and not gaslight myself, not spiritually bypass it. The good evangelical in me wants to add a “but this is God’s will” and tell the grief to take a hike.

We are allowed to feel our feelings without having to qualify them and still hold deep faith. God created us whole persons with emotions, bodies, spirits. All of them matter.

Give yourself a gift today and sit with reality. Whatever that might be. Happy, sad, peaceful, hard. Let it be clarifying for you. Stay there. Sit with it as if reality is a friend, as if your feelings toward reality is a friend.

I’m leaving you with some good words from Thomas Merton. Be blessed today.

The fog is damp and close. Heavy but not consuming.

Sounds are muffled. Birds sing low. Cars rumble in the distance. Dogs bark.

The earth has slept in today. The dog sleeps too.

Saturday or summer. Either way, Sabbath.

Smoke greets my nose.

Someone somewhere close has lit a fire.

Proper New England.

Pancakes fresh from the griddle are compared to the last time pancakes were fresh from the griddle.

The chill meets my sweater. The warmth meets my bare feet.

Dew waits on the grass for animals and Sun.

Slowly, the fog lifts. Sun peaks through.

The expectation, the knowing born of living here, points toward later when dew dries, sun warms, voices louden, Earth wakes.

Silence has mattered, giving space for slumber and waking.

Later, work will be done.

Later.

“I’ve never said this to anyone.” I remarked to my therapist as my gaze took me just beyond where he sat. The invisible memories, alive in my mind but secret to the rest of the world, minus one, were happening all over again somewhere in the intangible space just over my therapist’s left shoulder.

My age, 47 at the time, was somewhere between thirty and forty years after it happened. I know it happened mulitple times. I can remember some of them with vivid detail. I can remember some with barely a detail, more like a foggy image in my mind.

The evening after I shared my story in a safe space, I sat at my dining room table to do some work. A feeling of nausea swept over me. The longer I worked the more I felt like I wanted to lay down or throw up. Something was happening inide me. It felt like a wave of hormones flooding my body. It didn’t feel good. Anxiety rose, panic started to set in. I made my way down our hallway to the bedroom where my husband was folding laundry. I went straight to him. He held me and I promptly started to slip toward the floor. The space around me grew dark.

I’m grateful that of all the things my husband does, being a first responder is one of them. He knew I was passing out and he caught me as I started to slide toward the floor. He held me and asked what I needed. The only thing to make sense was to lay on the floor. He laid next to me for I don’t know how long. Tears ran down my cheeks and into the carpet. Trauma was leaving my body and it wasn’t going without a fight.

Sexual abuse happens to 1 in 3 females. Atleast that’s what is reported. The reality of that number and potential for more should scare, offend, make angry, embolden toward action, terrify and horrify us. That’s a lot of women.

It’s a lot of woman you and I both know.

That day in therapy when I shared with my therapist about my abuse and named names, began a healing process. Having a safe space to share, gently lifted the door off a portal where memories found validation for existing. The little girl inside me who never felt safe to share her experiences, partnered with my adult self to courageously face what had happpened. If you’re a visual processor like I am, you might see a little girl around ten years of age, with long, straight dark blonde hair and blue eyes, holding hands with her older version, now wearing glasses, having gained some weight and life experience, hair now straight only because of modern technology. They are hand in hand, heads held high and strong, looking their future in the face with a quiet strength. They are ready to do the work of justice. They know their power is in their partnership.

The validation my memories experienced gave opportunity for my abused self to take one step at a time. One by one the memories and details came forward. They were gracious in allowing me to sit with them before they offered another snapshot of abuse. I will be 50 years old in three months and I’m still understanding new snapshots and feelings my body gives me that help me heal from sexual abuse.

I don’t remember all of it. I’ve tried to piece the timeline together and I can’t. As I’ve shared with my husband he’s commented that it seems to have happened more frequently than I seem to remember. I don’t remember the first time, and I don’t remember the last time. Trauma has a way of producing foggy connections in our minds.

I was 47 years old before I reported my abuse or my abuser’s identity.

Why did I wait so long?

There are multiple reasons why I waited.

• The church convinced me that somehow abuse was God’s Will. They didn’t outright say “Your abuse is God’s will.” They said things like: “Whatever happens to you is God’s will.” “The more you endure the more blessing God has for you.” “We don’t talk about such things.” “Put it under the blood of Jesus.” “Forgive them.” The consequence of these statements on someone who wants to be properly faithful is that if you DO tell, you’re not only attention seeking, but you’re not faithful. And I really wanted to be faithful to God.

• I didn’t have a reason to believe I would be believed. My abuser was in my circle of life. He was, and is still, well known, well liked, charasmatic and outgoing. He’s likable. He’s a good church man. He’s a family man. How could he possibly have abused a little kid?

• I was a kid. He was an older kid. It was a long time ago.

• I thought I was the only one.

• The assumed assumptions of others. “If it was that bad you would have said something sooner.”

• Shame. Secrecy. Trust of the one who abused. The reality of betrayal.

• I wasn’t ready to share, or to face what had happened.

• I gaslit myself into believing it wasn’t as bad and I felt like it was.

• I was catastrophizing any and all possible consequences if I told.

There are as many reasons for not telling as there are victims. Please remember that.

Why share now?

• “You’re not the only one of you.” My friend told me the other week.

• I’m not angry anymore. Healing produces motivation to stand up to injustice in a healthy way.

• April is Sexual Abuse Awareness month. Many women have shared with me about their own abuse and I write this for them as much as myself.

• I understand what happened. I get it now. I was groomed. I was manipulated. I was coerced. I was young. I was a perfect victim. It was something done to me, not something done becuase of me.

In an entirely unplanned conversation I had with someone from my childhood, years after not seeing them, I learned I wasn’t the only victim of my abuser. I was horrified. The reality is that pedophiles have, on average, between two and nine victims. With this conversation I now knew of two.

I made the decision to report him.

It was 10:00 p.m. on a Monday Night and my family had gone to bed to give me privacy. I called the number, feeling a sickness in the pit of my stomach.

“Maine State Child Line. This is so and so speaking. How can I help?’

I told her my name, why I was calling and as many details as I could. We spoke for about 30 minutes. She thanked me for my courage and I pushed the little red spot on my phone to end the call.

I sat on my couch near vomiting. My heart raced, my face was red. My body shook. All the reasons I never told anyone before this season of life were now chaoticly reacting at once. It was the right thing to do, but it was hard.

Something else happened too.

I saw a floor open inside of me. Old wooden floorboards opened like a draw bridge and slowly vaporized. This wooden floor was a false bottom, a hidden space now revealed, open to the light of day for the first time. Sun rays began to shine into this space and highlighted the dust particles that floated up and out. Like opening shutters closed for years inside an abandoned home. What had been a stale, quiet, hidden space was becoming fresh again. There had been a place inside me, a closed off space in my core that was hidden for decades and now was not. There were parts of this room that had been closed off and separated from the rest. Now, it was one, whole, connected space. What was hidden had been revealed. I was free.

Over a year ago I took a ten week sabbatical. It was time to step away from life and work to recover, recharge, and rest. For ten of those days I was lakeside in Maine, USA, alone at a small cottage. The time at the cottage was a gift from family friends. Ten days of quiet, solitude, and nature. I painted, drew, cooked, read.

I grew up in Maine, a distance from this cottage, and in many ways was reconnecting to my roots during Sabbatical. It’s important to remember who you are.

One day while doing some local exploration, I wandered into a Quaker Meeting House. Built somewhere in the early to mid 1800’s, I imagined it still looked exactly what it would have looked like when it was new, minus some modern signs with up to date information. Men would have sat on one side, women on the other. I entered the silent space and found a seat. The hard, worn pews were not terribly comfortable but served as a reminder of the faithful who, for generations, had placed themselves in these same seats.

Few cars travelled by on this already quiet road. The mountains in the distance and the rocky farm fields surrounded us. A row of pine trees announced the property’s edge. It was as if the earth absorbed the noise, doing its part in the protection of silent spaces. For almost an hour I sat quietly.

When my spirit said enough, I walked into the foyer where I’d entered and noticed the chair you see above.

I am an artist. My medium is wood. My method is heat.

The piece above is burned on basswood by my own hand.

My hope with this piece is that when you look at it, when you spend time with it, you will place yourself in this chair and wonder what you would think about. It is a quiet space with no expectations. You can be honest here.

Where is your heart these days?

What needs to be made well?

What brings you joy?

Where does your mind go when you’re alone?

This artwork invites you in. It invites you to step across the barrier between object and person and become the art itself. Imagine what you might think about if you were sitting in this chair and had no expectations and no time frame.

I invite you to share.

There’s a tendency in ministry circles to take on the ways and methods of the business world. We qualify, quantify, and categorize results, people, and decisions. Growth, finances, training and highlights of the year are given in written and oral reports to constituents and congregations overseeing organizational leadership bodies and people. Networking opportunities and conferences abound and have a tendency to suck the life out of people like me.

We tend to want fast results. We want good business practices to provide obvious and quick results while at the same time we want faith practices to provide saved folks, altar calls, increased budgets for God’s glory, expedient growth to fill the pews, a need for a new building, and a great reputation that all happened yesterday.

It’s not all bad. I’m a minister and nonprofit executive. We owe our constituents updates on how we have spent their time, money and effort. We are responsible to be grateful for and use both financial and inkind donations well. The upkeep of our buldings matter. How we treat the people who support us and work with us matters too. Financial growth allows us to build a sustainable future, more people means more space and helps build our finances and buildings, changed lives and connected communities remind us that we are doing something right. I get it. I record every toothbrush and bar of soap given away for the sake of my year end reports.

It’s the idea of stewardship, i.e. manipulating what we have for the purpose we live into, and transparency, i.e. the very bottom line of good stewardship. Transparency might be where all the other good things begin. Since we don’t all learn the same, utilizing both written and oral reports gives everyone an opportunity to absorb the information. Accountability matters in all areas of life.

I’m not knocking anything about my first paragraph. All of it matters. Growth generally points to something in the system that is working. We must continue learning or stagnanation sets in, both in our person and profession. Finances matter to the penny and provide means toward accomplishing the vision. I don’t take back what I said about networking and conferences sucking the life out of me.

Professionally and personally participating in ministry and nonprofit work for more than two decades have helped me learn something that my second half of life needed those younger years to teach me. Real impact takes time. The depth of a relationship, romantic or not, is found after years of connection. Influence that lasts requires consistency. In therapy it’s called “slow healing”.

For many organizations and purposes, transaction is the point. Hungry people are fed and cold people are clothed. Sometimes that’s all you need, and it’s important and it matters. In ministry circles though we say we value transformation but often get caught in a cycle of transaction. Tranaction is easy. I hand you a box of food. You eat. Transformation is harder. It means we spend time getting to know each other. It means that I hand you a box of food but I also ask how you’re doing and remember next time I see you to ask about what you shared. Transformation is about consistency, memory, hospitality, relationship and gets to the real stuff that make us the way we are. Transformation is slower than transaction. Investing in the lives of others costs us something personally. It’s slower than a simple transaction and can wreck us if we are results driven. The results aren’t evident sometimes for years.

Here’s where my heart lingers these days: It’s on the thoughts and actions of the process of slow ministry.

Slow Ministry is the idea and practice that transformation takes time. In order to love others well, cultivate a space where all parties have the freedom and safety to grow, ask questions, be authentic, fail and still know love exists…well, all of that takes time. Sometimes it takes a lifetime. The results of slow ministry aren’t always satisfying. Transformation, wether it’s simply building a relationship or helping someone through a difficult situation can take years. Most often the slow transformation in ourselves is the hardest to allow.

At my nonprofit, it is obvious what is transactional. Thrift store purchases, a bag of food, a foam mattress to sleep on are all hand offs. I know that for many people we will only ever be a thrift store where they get really cool stuff for really cheap prices. Many neighbors know it’s place to get emergency food or lunch on Wednesdays. The unseen parts of my day, the slower parts, are the conversations of addiction, faith, or troubles of the heart. It is slowness that welcomes shared grief and joys. It is slowness that listens, slowness that offers space for help that no one wants to ask for but needs to get. It is slowness that provides safety and welcome. It is slowness that offers enough love to make sure correction is not offensive.

In the Scriptures, Jesus healed people (for the purpose of this article we’ll call it transaction) but He also addressed societal injustices, knew neighbors that others rejected, and spent life with a crew of folks who believed his message and learned his ways (transformation). The transaction was often the beginning of the transformation. Jesus was a master at meeting needs and building relationships.

My fear is that we’ve come to believe ministry means quick results, big churches and loud music that leave us either with a Jesus High or an Ego High. But spending time with real people reveals real lives and, much like ourselves, we can too easily forsake the time it takes for a life to heal.

Maya Angelou wrote: There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.” I shared a deep part of me a few years ago with a friend. One of those things you must share but don’t want to. She listened, asked some questions and told me: “There are two people who know everything about you and love you anyway.” A friendship that has continued for thirty years gave me permission for transaction (the telling) and transformation (the thing that happens when safety is experienced and love is evident).

Transformative practices matter to our ministry. To make real change in our families, communities and organizations, slowing down and trusting the long game will bring the ultimate connection to those with whom we coexist.