Mothers carry an immense emotional weight for a family, and when they are gone too soon, all of that worry, concern, and care doesn’t evaporate or dissipate. Even though I try not to, it’s hard to not carry some of that weight on my shoulders. When I’m pretending to be more or better than I really am, it ultimately leads to disillusionment, sadness, and finally retreating. Obedience means being honest to God about where you’re at. Obedience means admitting God has a better way of doing things. I’m ultimately better when I focus on being a child of a God instead of performing a role I was never meant to play. Sometimes I find myself wondering “if I could go back what would I tell myself?”

• Grief isn’t well organized or linear. It’s sort of like accidentally dumping almond flavoring into your batter and realizing it flavors the entire batch. And you didn’t really want almond flavored cookies.
• If your identity is placed in anything other than God’s view of you and his unconditional love things are going to be so much more difficult.

There’s a reason they say hindsight is 20/20. Unfortunately God doesn’t work this way most of the time. At least that’s not how things have been going for me lately. Lately God has been calling me to pure and simple obedience. Which to be honest, I took a little bit of pride in my ability to be obedient to God. So obedient that he didn’t even need to remind me. So good at it I didn’t need to be refreshed, corrected, or disciplined.

^9-10 “The heart is hopelessly dark and deceitful,
    a puzzle that no one can figure out.
But I, God, search the heart
    and examine the mind.
I get to the heart of the human.
    I get to the root of things.
I treat them as they really are,
    not as they pretend to be.”

Jeremiah 17:9-10 The Message

God treats me as I really am, not as I pretend to be. And to be honest, this last summer (maybe longer) I pretended I was a lot happier than I really was. It was easier. It seemed like an ok survival skill to pretend that I was excited about things. That I could talk to people easily. That I wasn’t unnecessarily worried about my family. That Two Years was a big enough buffer for grief to abate. But I’m made made in the image of an ageless God who has set my heart to eternity, and no buffer is going to stop me from not being homesick for that place.

And here’s the hardest part: I don’t even really know what the point is half the time. Which is incredibly irritating and confusing. God says something and I have to respond. And try as I might I really don’t know what the end result is. I don’t get to know the consequences I avoided by saying “yes” to God. I don’t get another bite of the apple of knowledge. I simply have to walk away from the snake telling me to eat it. It’s like someone giving you the ingredients for a recipe one at a time and you have no clue as to what you’re making. Obedience requires humility, self-control, and restraint. It means heeding the warnings of an omnipotent God and admitting you really don’t know anything at all. It means not filling the shoes of someone who is gone and accepting that your own shoes will do.

God is interested in the health of the tree, in making sure we are abiding in him and not in our own accomplishments. He doesn’t want to just fix cosmetic things on the surface. Sure a multi-vitamin, journal, and exercise help me a whole lot. God wants to get to the root of things. He uncovered a disobedient heart, and invites me to the freedom of being who I really am.

This week I made a very important purchase. I bought a new journal. It’s cloth bound, and has not one, but TWO ribbons to keep your place, you know, just in case you’re writing two entries at a time. I bought it because my counselor said it might be a good idea to write down when I get triggered. Hearing about a friend’s Mom’s illness. A lady coming into the dessert shop wearing the same scarf and coat my Mom used to wear. A bad dream. Writing these moments down makes it a little better for me, because when I write it down I can control the story. No longer do these painful moments control the narrative. I get a choice with how I integrate them into my life. My life has two bookmarked ribbons, one is placed between the pages of the present keeping tabs on my daily ups and downs, and the other marks the future. Where I will be, what I will accomplish; many stories I don’t know the ending too.

Sometimes I see trauma or bad things that happen as if our hearts are made of stone. We get hit, and they seem to crack and almost break completely. And God comes to the scene of our wrecks and ruins and binds our hearts back together with brightly colored ribbon. Our hearts become soft, like fabric, but they are made hardier, stronger. Ripping seams can be more tedious than smashing concrete. They clothe our souls instead of keeping everyone out.

So if someone lets you in on their story, and shows you their fleshy and fabric heart, carry it gently. When I worked with kids, we called this trauma-informed care. It meant if a kid came to you upset, you didn’t yell right back at them. When I try to live this out in life, I call it compassion. Because you may find, like Jesus, your own heart breaks. But it’s not about you. No answers are needed. No advice asked for. Let the person be living and sharing a Psalm’s depth, from despair to joy. Don’t push them towards a Proverbs response, until they’re ready. We must live in that tension between David’s questions and Solomon’s wisdom. One was the father, the other was the son. Our questions give birth to answers, but it may take a generation.

It may not be a new journal for you, but take a risk my friend. Let your heart break, not over selfish gain or ambition, let it break into pieces so it can be rebuilt.

9“The heart is more deceitful than all else
And is desperately sick;
Who can understand it?

10“I, the LORD, search the heart,
I test the mind,
Even to give to each man according to his ways,
According to the results of his deeds.

For the first time since her memorial service, I stood in front of a sanctuary of people and shared a little piece of my heart. I was talking about joining small groups and trying to inspire other people, but really I was more personally impacted than anyone sitting in the services. Isn’t it funny how the Lord often works that way? We think we’re doing a “great” thing for him and really he’s doing a great thing to our fallible hearts. Sometimes I really do wish for a stone heart. Something hard and incorruptible. Yet here I am with a very broken and woven heart.

This week my friend Savannah shares her experience moving to NYC for the first time. Savannah is passionate about her faith, ethical fashion, and vegan flat white lattes. Check out her ethical fashion blog if you’re interested in learning more: Savannah Dimarco . I’ve included a few lines from Emma Lazarus’ poem to introduce this blogpost, since they are inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, and referenced below as well. Thanks! Katrina

Emma Lazarus, 1883

“As the tale was told to me, so, in turn, will I tell it over again, to the best of my art and knowledge.” – Lais of Marie de France

Thick-curled brunette payot and a wide-brimmed hat. Headphones plugged in. “Wonder what he’s listening to?” I thought, “The Torah through his iPhone?” “Absolutely wonderful.”

I turn the page in my book Ulysses. Leopold Bloom is wandering about Dublin on the way to Dignam’s funeral, dreaming about floating away on a toadstool, and next thinking of the Dead Sea, “couldn’t sink if you tried: so thick with salt. Because the weight of the water, no, the weight of the body in the water is equal to the weight of the.”

The top-hatted fellow steps up out of his seat, getting off at 59th St. Columbia Circle. Shuffles off the train and onto the platform. Doors close. “This is an Uptown Bronx-Bound Express Train.” say a voice over the loudspeaker.

I’ve seen more Jews on the New York City underground than anywhere I’ve previously lived, and it’s caught my heart by surprise. Only last week, I found myself welling into tears on the Brooklyn-bound morning train, listening to “Open Heaven River Wild” by Hillsong whilst a Jewish young man seated beside me read Hebrew scriptures from his smartphone. A person cherished by the Author Himself. Unthinkable that a people group might hold fast to its heritage for millennia, isn’t it? Suffering war, genocide, and diaspora yet somehow retaining its unique cultural and religious personhood from time immemorial. I’ve all-too-often lived in a non-denominational-Protestant-Gentile bubble, haven’t I? How little I’ve known.

On the Manhattan underground, God has prompted me to learn more about His great passion for Jewish history, theology and narratives. And on a wider level, I’ve been reminded that being exposed to something new means seeing a different side of God’s creativity, ingenuity, and heart. Yes, I came to the city primarily to work in publishing and to volunteer with a social enterprise, but since arriving in mid-July, God has broadened my perspective through daily encounters with the #HumansOfNewYork.

I never planned to move to Manhattan. On the contrary, from the moment I left London Heathrow in 2016 on a flight bound for the Václav Havel airport, I was dead-set on returning to Great Britain ‘the first chance I got.’ After a few months in Prague and a year in Portland spent wrestling in prayer, the Holy Spirit encouraged me to say ‘yes’ not to London or Edinburgh, but to New York City.

Sehnsucht

a German noun translated as “longing”, “pining”, “yearning”, or “craving”,^[1] or in a wider sense a type of “intensely missing”.

God knows how much I adore wild gorse and cloud-veiled Munros and the Welsh countryside and the sehnsucht feeling that rises up from it all, but all the same, Jesus knew what I needed even more. What did I need? I needed to look out to Ellis Island, and to wonder what Emma Lazarus’ verses meant for the English and Italian immigrants in my own family or for immigration ethics today. I needed to explore my new neighborhood in Harlem, and to feel consciously that I might be the sole white person on any given street: it is humbling, beautiful, and good. Above all, I needed to feel my own smallness and longstanding ignorance in possessing only fragmentary knowledge about the cultural, racial, ethnic, and socio-political composition of my own country.

I believe that God will use my life and any believer’s life to make an impact on this world for infinite good, and that He delights in bringing us to places that cause our hearts to cascade into fits of total joy. Yet I am beginning to find that actualizing an impactful legacy requires continuous surrender to the Father’s will. He is writing a story of nobility for us, but He also intends for us to embody the characteristics of the noble person He’s created us to become.

Since coming to New York, Jesus has showed me that though He acknowledges my longing for work in social justice abroad, He also knows the narrowness of my current perspective. Against all odds, He’s taken me to the historical center of American immigration to hear others’ perspectives, to experience new cultures, and to discover again and again how much I have to learn. Saying ‘yes’ to New York, it seems, is saying yes to God’s loving authorship in the greater story.

“In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:4-6

Much love,

Savannah