When my spring seminary course wrapped up at the end of July, I found myself with a stack of books that were not required reading.

I settled into the sweet space, turning pages as slower rhythms of living returned.

One book that resonated was Henry Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son, a story of homecoming.

Nouwen commits an entire book to reveal what hours and days of sitting before the original, famous Rembrandt painting offered him.

I am unsurprised that when we closed the door to babies a few years ago, desires grew beyond my home responsibilities.

I was out of survival mode.

Keeping six young kids fed, rested, and safe was easily a full-time job and a couple of part-time jobs combined in harder seasons.

While life is still full, this is mostly my choice and no longer filled up with meeting the most basic survival needs.

I quickly tossed a book into my suitcase.

It was not from my seminary reading stack but a Christmas gift I had been slowly reading over the last few months.

I didn’t expect much reading time on our five-day family getaway to the mountains for my fortieth birthday, so a book with just a few chapters left was realistic.

As one of those odd people who rarely leave a book half-baked, I was determined to finish it for the sweet taste of accomplishment more than revelation.

‘Revelation’ sounds dramatic, but that is often my experience when words and God collide.

A few weeks before, I had been complaining that God seemed distant—he wasn’t speaking to me in the usual wordy ways.

During a little break on our trip, I turned to the final chapter in The Right Kind of Confidence and read the chapter title, “Deeply Rooted Confidence.”

I was out for coffee with a lifer friend, one of the few who grew up with me since the church nursery. I had texted the night before to see if she had an hour slot in her lineup of clients, and there we were on a Monday afternoon, getting all our words out in a beautiful space—not the brown Tim Horton’s booth per se, but a safe space built from years of sharing the highs and lows of life.

On a recent podcast, Simon Sinek said,

“When someone is struggling or in need, all they need is 8 minutes from a friend to hold space with them to make them feel better.”

What an honour to receive a text from a friend asking,

“Do you have 8 minutes?”

As emails arrived in my inbox at the start of this new year, it was amusing and a bit overwhelming that one after the other, they asked to steal the sacred time my family enjoys on Saturday mornings.

Four sacred Sabbath Saturday mornings in a row could be gone just like that!

I was relieved when I brought this concern to my husband, and we narrowed it down to one meeting that was mandatory and released the others from our calendar, typing “skip” beside each one in our Google calendar.

This past Saturday, we enjoyed our usual slow, extra special Saturday breakfast where Benj and the kids make some kind of delicious baking, usually topped with berries, syrup and whipped cream, and then piled into our minivan for one of our “experience” Christmas gifts.

We cross-country skid in the beautiful winter snow for the rest of the day.

Like never before, I am reminded that the Holy Spirit is drawing us into sacred rhythms of life if only we would listen.

A mantra or word to frame the next season or year is sometimes chosen haphazardly and other times with great intention.

After significant stress from a season of two parents battling and one dying from cancer in 2022, I thoughtfully chose resilient to depict my posture in 2023.

The demands of this modern world leave little opportunity to be still, let alone quiet.

It is comforting to know that throughout biblical and church history, in what may have been simpler times, practices of silence and solitude were as necessary as they are for busy individuals, especially Christian leaders, today.

Jesus pursued these spaces for himself and his disciples, leaving no question that Christ-followers must execute them.

For many years, my jogging stroller contraption was my ticket to any sense of “silence” and “solitude.”

Those words are in quotation marks because this setting is not the true definition of either. I had to keep my expectations low, so I didn't get frustrated by inevitable interruptions.

Hours were not flying by when I had six children eight years and under, but I had it pretty good.

My babies slept in a separate room within days of being born, and most of them consistently slept through the night within a few months, though my last one pushed the envelope here.

Still, there was always the possibility of an interruption (or more) on any given night—a reality of six young children.

There was no one to put me to bed while my husband was away on a backpacking trip this summer, so there I was at 11 PM eating the chocolate almonds he left under my pillow and scrolling through homeschool videos on YouTube:

Do I have enough planned for this next school year?

I could try this curriculum…

We really should learn another language…

Why not beautify our cursive writing?

Pause. Breathe. Remember, Charlene.

Be With Me

I interacted with the story of Job throughout my life as a faithful Sunday school student and church attendee; however, my first encounter with death and grief twelve years ago, when I had an early miscarriage, made it more personal.

The Sunday after my miscarriage, my tears fell in the hiddenness of this loss as I tried to sing along with words that echoed Job’s:

“The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised" (Job 1:21b).

But walking through cancer journeys with both of my parents in the same season trumped any heartache I have experienced.

The first half of this blog post examines Job exegetically, while the second half offers personal reflections.

The words to this poem poured out through many tears one afternoon while working on a paper that reflected the themes of time, grief and wisdom from Ecclesiastes.

Suffering and loss are inevitable life experiences for individuals and communities.

While grief is reflected in a myriad of postures and expressions, a sense of longing is usually present).

Suffering, “a feeling of more than one can bear,” involves a longing that can translate to hope in the right environment.

But today’s drugs of choice, including common coping mechanisms of denial and illusions of control, only exacerbate pain.

The Bible provides a down-to-earth model to process difficult emotions and lift one out of the “pit of despair” (Psalm 40:2).

Before examining a familiar passage of lament and the impact these expressions have on our spiritual lives, ministries, and the modern world, a broad biblical survey reveals God’s heart in suffering.

I mindlessly twirl the gold chain around my neck until I reach the tiny square locket that holds a picture of my dad and me on my last birthday and another of my family with my mom and him a few years ago.

It jolts me back to reality.

So much has changed.

I’ll turn 39 in a few days with my keepsake necklace representing the gaping hole in my heart.

My older sister sent me a Marketplace link the night before my 15th wedding anniversary.

I happily sent an e-transfer and drove a 60-minute round trip to pick up a sizeable wood-framed wall sign from “the back porch with the Christmas lights.”

That same night my husband measured and nailed the sign into a spot that had been waiting for something meaningful for almost four years.

It showcases a bold statement ‘blessed’ in scrolly letters, and I didn't see the deeper meaning until weeks later.

Around the new year last year, I was on a video call with two lifelong friends, sharing that it felt depressing to look at 2022.

We sat with our tears, knowing that outside of a miracle for my dad, who was battling acute blood cancer, a funeral was inevitable in the next year.

Death became a brutal reality by Easter weekend.

Still, 2022 was a full year of living for the rest of us. It's what my dad would have wanted.

And now it is time again, for reflection and anticipation—in this space between celebrating the birth of Jesus and the beginning of a new year!

If the faith my dad preached, while laying in a hospital bed, is not based on a fairy tale, then maybe with each new year, each new birthday, and each new Christmas, we can experience “a thrill of hope” as our weary souls rejoice in what is to come!

The sun was climbing out of bed on the continent of South America as my earbuds delivered these words:

"Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.” Mark 1:35 NIV

My reflex was an audible "yes" with a fist grab right there in the hotel bathroom, followed by a bashful giggle as I told my husband.

Long ministry days, which excluded even the opportunity for a full night of sleep, were wearing on my introverted nature.

Even though I grew up at church, there were seasons in my life when I read a lot about Christian themes but didn’t open my Bible consistently!

Devotionals and Christian-living books too easily took the place of Bible reading and study.

Sure, I’d open it for a feel-good verse or a specific passage for a card but I was not experiencing the richness of Scripture in context or seeing how the Bigger Story reveals God's character!

I wish I could call my dad, like I did every day when he was in the hospital, and talk our way through all of this—cancer, suffering, death.
But this is the mystery Bill Johnson spoke about just days after his wife’s passing. My dad’s childlike faith and trust right up until his final breath revealed how he understood his identity in Christ. He didn’t need answers, even though it hurt him deeply to leave so soon, he knew there was a bigger story at play.