I want to begin by saying that the writing of this piece comes on the heels of me crying in my room, feeling put out and depleted. It’s been another week of Josh out of town, and the kids at home doing school online. There has been no margin or space to be solitary, much less to write. Sadly, for me that can easily lead to tears and pent up frustration (happily, it is easily remedied by my gracious husband sending me out the door).
It is also an immediate example to me of something I’ve been pondering all week: that what I think I need is not always readily at my disposal. That sometimes, I’m asked to thrive in what feels like a not enough environment.
I wrote of this in last week’s newsletter, about the feeding of the five thousand, and Jesus asking the disciples to give what little they had, and I continued to ponder it this week as I considered the summer ahead.
An email popped into my inbox from an organization that leads ministry retreats for overseas workers. The email announced a beautiful seven day retreat just for women, on the southern coast of Spain, with worship and reflection, beauty and pampering, mountains and sea. I admit, my mind wandered in the bliss of it for several minutes, even though in reality I knew it wouldn’t be possible for me to go. Travel restrictions are still in place here in China, and leaving would mean weeks of quarantine to get back in the country.
It also begs the question, is this what I need to be restored? It’s a question that I’ve fallen back to asking many times when life feels taxing, relentless, or even downright ruthless: can I be refreshed in a desolate place?
Sometimes, there is no break when we feel like we need one. What then?
I posed this question to Josh, citing the story in Mark 6 where Jesus takes his disciples out to a desolate place to rest and recover. But the crowds followed them, I pointed out. They couldn’t get away to rest. And did Jesus refuse the crowds? No. He didn’t. He had compassion on them. He turned to them in their need instead of turning away to meet his own.
We agreed that this isn’t prescriptive for ministry. This isn’t a call to never take a break. But it is an example to us all the same. It’s a story that has been there to instruct me time and time again when I’ve worried that I need to get away, and find that I can’t. Maybe the deepest truth of the story is that desolate or not, the important thing is: Jesus is there.
In an interview with author, Clarissa Moll, she shared that writing inspiration “doesn’t come from a long weekend or at a cabin by the lake. It’s born out of those very ordinary, disciplined kind of practices…” At first I thought, “this isn’t what I want to hear.” And yet, the truth is, this is just what I need to hear. I don’t have to get away for the winds of refreshing to blow.
On one of our walks before Josh left, I shared with him a beautiful maturing I had noticed in one of our kids. We started listing some of the good things we were seeing in them. It was a much needed tone change from all the challenges that seem to be relentless. And then in a letter to a friend, I found myself sharing the growth I was seeing in spite of everything going on. “I mean, we have none of the bells and whistles that I imagine kids need to thrive,” I wrote, “and yet there is good happening in small but important ways.”
In these more lucid moments (not so much the ones crying on my bed), the clouds break a little. And I can taste and see that the Good Life to which we are called, and that we are given, is not the same as “living our best life now.” The Good Life in and with Jesus always takes a cruciform shape. You before me, down before up, them before us. But it always leads to real and lasting life.
I wish you could know how very much I needed this at the end of a Sabbath day that was a wonderful Pentecost celebration but not much rest for me on the heels of several weeks of lots and lots of hospitality. I am so thankful for you.