With Hope

The humidity greets me with a sticky embrace as I step outside onto my back porch in Austin. I question whether to turn and walk back into my office. No, I need to breathe something other than air-conditioned air this morning.

The air is heavy as I rock back and forth, sipping my coffee. The weight of the air mirrors the weight of my heart. My parents are in need of more care. I’ve flown to Phoenix twice in the past six weeks, and I am headed back again tomorrow. The time of “independent living” has come to an end for them. Elly’s room is filled with piles, things going to college, things going to Goodwill. Her suitcases sit ready to be filled. We leave in a week to drop her off. And I awakened more than once during the night, thinking about Red Tent Living and my final words to honor all the writing that has taken place here. Over the past decade I have written more than 100 essays, and we have published more than 2,000 essays written by the other women in our community.

We dreamed and talked about this Red Tent over glasses of sparkling water on a hot summer afternoon—my daughter, my friend, and me. A couple of hours later we were marking the space where the tent would be built over cold glasses of Prosecco as we toasted to what might become.

The dreaming felt like oxygen, giving expanded life to the dinners that had been birthed around my own table five years earlier. I had recently stepped out of a job I loved, sensing that I was meant to do something different. Perhaps building Red Tent Living was what I was called to put my energy toward. That air on my friend’s back porch was thick with hope that day.

The sacred, storied space of this tent has been marked by generosity and welcome. I have heard more than once that the strength of Red Tent Living has been the stunning beauty of how the women have borne witness to one another in the comments left on the stories shared. The absence of judgment has been a hallmark of who we are as a community of women. I love being part of that and watching as it organically occurs.

Some of my very dearest friends have been part of this writing community, helping to build and lead it.

To birth
To lead
To dream
To build
To hope

Each is inherently filled with risk.

Red Tent Living exists because of the women who said yes to risking with me.

The original dreamers on the back porch in Virginia Beach, the original writers sprinkled across the United States, the original guest contributors who sent in their stories. Sarah Bessey, Nichole Nordeman, Jen Hatmaker, Latasha Morrison, Melissa D’Arabian—the women who said yes to partnering for the Brave On conferences. And hundreds of you who said yes as you hit send on your submissions.

Thank you. Thank you for risking and for cheering on one another so faithfully and with such kindness. It has been an immense honor to hold this space with you and for you.

Nearly two decades ago I sat with a women’s ministry director from a large church. As we talked about my passion to provide places of deeper connection for women, she told me, “Tracy, I’ve been leading women for over thirty years, and I can tell you that the majority of women just don’t want the kind of depth you are talking about. Don’t waste your time trying to build that.”

I didn’t agree with her, and the defiant part of me felt activated. I was sure that I wasn’t the only woman who ached for deeper connection. I wanted to know what it was like to have women who stood in solidarity—woven together out of a shared commitment to change the status quo of how Christian women found belonging. My response was to risk inviting women to my table for the very first Red Tent dinner.

You’re here because, like me, you long for depth, for connection and belonging forged in storied space with other women. You ache to know the goodness of the gospel, tasted as you experience what Jesus said would happen when we gather together and love one another.

As we close the writing space of Red Tent Living, my hope is that you will consider taking a risk by asking one woman to join you in hosting a few mutual friends around your table. Over a hundred women have signed up for our Red Tent dinner packets in the past few months. You can join them and build your own beautiful Red Tent right where you are.

Every ending carries with it the hope of a beginning. Cheers to what is yet to come for all us as we step forward with hope.

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Tracy Johnson is a lover of stories, a reluctant dreamer, and the co-founder of Red Tent Living. Married for over 37 years, she is mother to five kids, two sons-in-law, and is a pastor’s wife. She loves quiet mornings with hot coffee, rich conversations, and slowly savored meals at her favorite restaurants. She is awed that God chose her to mother four girls, having grown up with no sisters.