As I sit here writing this morning, my son at preschool for a few hours, a pine-scented candle burning, and the mess of holiday break all around me, I notice the quiet and the stillness that surround me too. Our lovable and attached Goldendoodle gazes up from beneath the creamy coils around her eyes, taking a break from her favorite chew toy that the dog sitter gifted her while we were away for Christmas. There is a calmness that engulfs me like sinking sand. I am being drawn deeper and deeper into what feels like grace even though I could be leaning into chaos.
This feeling doesn’t last long, as I look at the time and realize I have to attend to some things I didn’t have time to get to this week—groceries, errands, the laundry that’s been sitting in the dryer, fluffed every few days (I am guilty of leaving laundry in there for way too long. Anyone else?).
However, even as I leave this moment, I don’t feel hurried. I don’t particularly feel stressed. And a feeling I’ve been longing to shake over the last several months doesn’t seem to be trapping me anymore—heartache. My heart has felt the ache of loss, suffering, and longing over the last season of life. It has been a necessary season for my soul, yet I’ve hoped that God would draw me out of it. That may sound dramatic, but for me, to be freed even for a brief moment of something that has felt relentless over the last year or so feels like a gift.
For the first time in a while, this morning I felt more like myself.
Or rather, I guess I didn’t feel like myself?
On one hand, there was a person who surfaced for a moment who felt like an old friend. Free, joyful, lighthearted, and content. Is this who I used to be? Is this who I always have been?
I felt like I was encountering a former self who lived those things often, who didn’t have to tap into deep wells of personality to find them.
And on the other hand, it was like, for that moment, I was brand new. Is this what happens when we let God have God’s way with us? Is this what newness of life–resurrection–can feel like?
If I’m being honest, the change I’ve wanted to see hasn’t come. Mostly, I’m talking about the prayers I’ve prayed for things in my life to finally be arranged the way I’d like them to be. I’m not welcoming any transitions that I thought I would be welcoming this year. I’m mostly just holding my hands up in continued waiting. Just a simple “yes” from God would be nice.
What do you do when the change you’ve desired doesn’t come? What about the change that doesn’t come after the desert seasons of our lives, and still we are there waiting, our lives unchanged?
So maybe this small moment, when I felt a twinge of something being un-cocooned for the first time in a while (or ever), offered me a type of formation that happens on the regular for those who remain in the in-between. As if it were a fresh coat of snow blanketing the bare ground, the quiet enveloped me in a moment of newness. The stillness, the release, the consolation—all gifts of a life bound up with a God who lets us taste eternity even as we wait.
This moment reminded me of the slowness and stillness of God. A God who bears with us when our lives look the same, who nurtures in us a slow change and a newness of life that is mostly a product of time and a bit of continual noticing. This slow change reminds me of a prayer I recently read by Justin McRoberts. May it be a prayer for you too, for the ones who depend on change to be cultivated from within when we can’t always predict or rely on our circumstances to be different or new.
Overnight change
tends to last overnight.
I want Newness.
May I have
patience and vision
for the kind of healing and change
that does not come
quickly and efficiently,
but comes slowly
and entirely remakes me.
– Justin McRoberts
Haley Wiggers is passionate about discovering how the messy, painful, and unexpected gifts that come with being human connect, relate to, and offer understanding of how God relates to and cares for us. She’s been married to her husband and loving partner Tyson for seven years, and together they have a nearly three-year-old, Theo. Haley is learning to notice, lean in, and respond to all the invitations God offers through parenting, pastoring, mentoring, marriage, friendship, and the fullness of life. Haley is a certified Spiritual Director and has found it to truly be a gift to companion with people as they attend to God.
