Where is Your Light Coming From?

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Happy Spring! This month on the blog, we’ll be exploring beauty in nature and life.

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Light

Weird question: How do you feel about light?

You probably feel like I do. You don’t think about it much until you don’t have it. You walk into a dark room and your hand instinctively searches for the switch. You flip the porch light on for the kid who’s out late. The flash goes off as you snap a picture of a friend blowing out her birthday candles. And is it just me or do you sometimes turn on your phone’s flashlight to read the menu at fancy restaurants?

Here’s an unpopular opinion: I kind of like it when the power goes out. There’s something hopelessly romantic about gathering all the candles in the house, rooting around for the flashlight in the bottom of the toolbox, and getting cozy under a blanket in front of the fireplace.

I love it.

I also love the morning, of letting in the light as I travel from room to room opening up the shades and welcoming the day. Good morning, Bedroom. Good morning, Living Room. Good morning, Kitchen.

Good morning.
Good morning.
Good morning.

Light is universal, the first thing God spoke into being in the story of creation. No one has to tell you that life depends on light.

Phototropism

In Biology, specifically Botany (the study of plants), we talk about light as it relates to something called Phototropism.

It’s a big word that describes how plants develop. Most plants rearrange their tiny plant organs (chloroplasts) to bend toward light in order to maximize food production and grow.

Move a houseplant to a dark corner, and you’ll see its leaves bend in the direction of your nearest window. Or maybe you’ve driven by a field of wild sunflowers and been mesmerized as the sunny rows bow in reverence in the direction of afternoon light. Even the trees growing on the side of a steep hill stretch upwards, directly toward the light.

Light is the fastest known phenomenon in the universe. We will never fully understand it, though we try. According to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, nothing with mass can reach or exceed the speed of light. But as humans, we just can’t leave it alone. We want to capture it.

And so we admire the sunrises and sunsets.
And we invent complicated math problems to measure its wavelength and frequency.
Just recently I read that scientists at CalTech invented a camera that can capture light at a trillion frames per second.

We need light like we need air and food and water. Like plants, humans bend toward light.

The Light Inside

We allow light to fill us from the inside out.

My daughter has an album on her phone that’s just a series of sunrises and sunsets, the day opening up wide and clear, all hazy gray and pink and teal and then again as the day says goodnight with sweeping brushstrokes of orange and purple. The canvas of the sky is more beautiful than anything hanging on our wall, breathtaking, and so she opens the camera and finds the light, a moment frozen in time.

Those photos are almost painful in their beauty because they remind us how close we are to darkness, how quickly it covers the day, but how easily, too, the day can wash it away.

As I grow older, the light is dimming, and I constantly find myself saying I need more light.

But what is it I really need?

Do I need more food?
Sustenenence?
Energy?
Guidance?

“The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.”

— Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

We claw our way into the light when we are born, and slip gently towards it again we die. Light is the metaphor for all the good within us. In the hours before Jesus’s crucifixion, darkness covered the land. It’s no coincidence that the resurrection happened just as the day was breaking.

So maybe what I really need is more God.

Lord, help me to bend toward your light.

Come Sit With Me

My first memory of kindergarten is of playing a game called Sandwich. The object was to lay flat on the floor as person after person piled on top of you, trying not to make the “sandwich” fall over. Even as a five year-old, I remember that feeling of being trapped, squeezed, pinned down, and unable to breathe.

Although I couldn’t have verbalized it back then, all I really wanted was a friend to sit beside me, not on top of me.

Fast-forward forty five years and even though we’re no longer playing that game I’ve discovered that I’m part of that unpopular club called the Sandwich Generation. You know the one I’m talking about—sandwiched between parents over the age of 65 and also caring for kids still at home.

The toppings are beginning to pile on. Do you feel it, too?

Two friends just found out that their parents have cancer, three other friends (my age!) are managing a cancer diagnosis themselves, another friend is getting divorced, and my older daughter just got engaged.

Yep, you read that right.
Christiana is engaged! (Something happy in the midst of so many hard things)

It feels a little surreal because:

#1: I can’t believe my daughter is old enough to get married, and
#2 I can’t believe I’m old enough to have a daughter who’s old enough to get married.

I remember my own engagement with such fond memories, the fun of choosing a venue and a dress and adding dishes, towels, and small appliances to a registry, like we were playing grown up with a pretend house in a make-believe world filled with real china and gadgets that you could actually plug into the wall. When Gavin and I walked into our first apartment together, I think we paused on the threshold and just STOOD THERE for a minute. “We’re home!” we cried.

Our first “chore” as a married couple? Recording a joint message for our family answering machine, a long and annoying song we wrote ourselves that drove everyone crazy. It was 1996, baby!

One night I came home late from work to find Gavin laying on the couch with all the lights off and the blinds open. He was watching the first snowfall of the season drift down to the parking lot outside our first-floor window. Together, we snuggled under a cozy blanket and watched the flakes sparkle in the dim glow of the streetlights.

Why does that one, random night stand out among all the others?

Those early years were filled with lots of trial and error as we navigated all the normal grownup rites of passage—like rejection letters and sucky first jobs and fights about who is going to make the bed in the morning. Stupid stuff and big stuff, too, like buying our first home and welcoming our first baby. I have an old scrapbook photo of Gavin cutting the grass. Our grass! We spent fun weekends with neighbors and met new friends. We hosted themed parties, and Gavin started graduate school. We moved houses, welcomed more babies, and then, like people everywhere, we realized that we’re not just growing up, we ARE grown up.

Now we’re smack dab in the middle of actual middle age. Our friends are celebrating milestone birthdays and retiring. I think I’ve been to more funerals in the last five years than weddings, although that’s shifting a bit now that our friends’ kids are getting married.

At Bible Study today, we talked about love, and of course you can’t talk about love without reading 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. If you grew up in church, you can probably recite these verses from memory.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. ”

— 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

My friend, Ashley, said that years ago a therapist told her how you could tell if a couple was going to make it or not. The therapist said that the couples who think about the little things, like bringing a glass of water to their spouse when they’re getting one for themselves or filling up the car with gas without being asked tend to make it through the big, hard things. The big things don’t topple them because all along they’ve been working out their love muscles in these tiny little ways.

Maybe that’s why I remember coming home from work on that snowy night in January 1996. “Come sit with me,” Gavin said. Surely it had been a long day. I hadn’t even had dinner. I didn’t care. That one small sentence, “Come sit with me,” has been a part of our vocabulary these last (almost) twenty-eight years.

One person sitting next to another person.

As we enter this new season, I don’t want to take for granted a single minute. This middle life sandwich isn’t the curse the self-help articles make it out to be. I’m grateful for having both my parents and my children in my life in big ways. I’m also grateful for the wisdom that comes with the maturity of simultaneously being someone’s child and having children of my own.

Maybe you’re reading this, and you feel like that girl trapped inside the kindergarten sandwich—squeezed to the point of crumbling. I get it. This season isn’t easy. There are no pat answers to the hard things you’re experiencing right now. The human capacity for holding a multitude of emotions is spectacular. Fear, anxiety, anger, confusion, and love all live in the same body.

I’ve heard that gratitude is the antidote for scary feelings. But let’s be honest—who wants to be told to just be more grateful? And while Autumn is traditionally a season of intentional gratitude, my prayer for you today is that you’ll find the people who don’t pile on top of you, but instead sit beside you—in the midst of all the beautiful and terrible things we’re called to carry with us.

Be the person who says, “Come sit with me.”

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Loneliness: You are not Alone

Loneliness.

Isn’t it fascinating that such a big word has the power to make a person feel so small?

Loneliness is an epidemic, but incredibly the pandemic doesn’t seem to have made it worse (source). That’s a good thing, but loneliness is still pervasive. Friendship peaks at age 25, and steadily declines from there. One in four people admit to having no confidantes at all, and a staggering 75% of people confess disappointment in the friendships they do have.

When I’m excited about something I’m working on, I can go days without speaking to another human being outside my family. It’s a gift and a curse, attributed mostly to being sent to my room a lot as a kid. Social isolation was the punishment du jour, and so I learned how to entertain myself within those four walls, reading books or writing stories or listening to music. In those days, we did not have technology to distract us, and so I created fantasy worlds inside my own head.

Trust me, you do not want to get lost in there!

Even though I am content being alone, true joy always emerges when I am in the company of others. I devour stories, savor interesting conversation, and linger over happy gatherings.

And truth be told—I think we can all admit that there are some things best experienced WITH friends, and so if you are one of those people suffering loneliness right now—either by choice or by default—let me give you a little to-do list to help combat those feelings of isolation.

Doesn’t everybody love a good to-do list? Checking boxes gratifies a deep-seated need to be productive.

1. Love one another.

A new command I give: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

John 13:34

I remember the first time I heard a pastor tell me that love isn’t a feeling; it’s a verb. BLEW. MY. MIND. Now, it seems obvious. I have a husband and kids (and a very ornery dog—ACCCCKKK!), and I don’t always feel loving, but still I love them. And if you have a husband or kids (or a dog!) you know what I mean. We’re not just keeping these little beings alive; we want the best for them. We want them to thrive because deep down—admit it—don’t you feel just a teeny bit responsible for helping them become the very best versions of themselves?

2. Serve one another.

You, my brothers and sisters were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.

Galatians 5:13

This passage reminds me of another that says, “Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever want to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be , served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” —Matthew 20:26-28

Friends, there as many ways to serve one another as there are colors in the rainbow. And if you’re thinking Chantel, there’s just seven colors in a rainbow, you’re wrong! The entire spectrum is there—subtle, yet true. You don’t have to look very hard to find ways to serve. Service is the first way Jesus connected with people; he set an example, so we can serve too. One of the very first miracles Jesus performed was turning water into wine, and although you cannot literally turn water into wine, is there something you can make better for someone else? Something that if you did it, would make someone else feel like the party was just getting started?

3. Forgive one another.

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

Ephesians 4:32

My husband and I love the musical Hamilton. Halfway through the show, Alexander Hamilton and his wife, Eliza, undergo a period of intense grief after the death of their firstborn son. It’s a heart-wrenching scene; Eliza blames Alexander for his death because Alexander knew about the duel ahead of time. A song begins, but the end of it is where the real emotion lies: It goes like this:

They are standing in the garden
Alexander by Eliza's side
She takes his hand
It's quiet uptown

Forgiveness, can you imagine?
Forgiveness, can you imagine?

If you see him in the street
Walking by her side, talking by her side, have pity
They are going through the unimaginable

It takes a lot to bring tears to my eyes, but this scene always does. Forgiveness restores relationships.

Always.

4. Honor one another.

Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.

Romans 12:10

Honor. Respect. Grace. Devotion. The author of Romans says it beautifully, “Honor one another above yourselves.” But how do we do that? I know it’s hard. We are inherently selfish, but over and over again, it seems humility and honor often go hand-in-hand.

“The truly humble man will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.”

— C.S. Lewis

Loneliness is private, personal; it’s an inward angst that is wholly defeated when we’re committed to prioritizing the needs of others above ourselves.

Easier said than done, of course, but we can work on it together! 😉

5. Pray for one another.

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

James 5:16

Every once in awhile, I’ll receive a text or email from someone that simply says, “I’m praying for you today.” Five simple words. None have the power to bring more peace than the knowledge that someone else is talking to God on my behalf. To carry someone else’s burden in this way is to walk alongside a person even when you cannot physically walk side-by-side.

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I lead a small group of college age girls. We meet on Wednesday nights, and the very first time we ever got together, I asked them, “What brought you to this group?” Nearly every single girl answered, “For friends.” The primary reason they attend is not because they want to grow spiritually or hear an interesting message—those things are bonuses—they come because they need each other. There are twelve girls in my group, and they could not be more different. They hail from different socioeconomic backgrounds, negotiate complicated family histories, and face challenges beyond anything I ever had to deal with as a college student.

They need each other.

We need each other.

Loneliness is normal, but you do not have to navigate it alone.

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What's the Best Compliment You've Ever Received?

My mother in law collects snow globes from the places she’s visited. My mother collects angels. I have a friend with a basement full of bobbleheads of famous baseball players. But the collection that still kind of creeps me out is the one that’s common among young moms—you know who you are—the ones that save their kids’ baby teeth. (Ewwww)

Me—I am a collector of questions.

I have a notebook filled with them.

The other day, as I was scanning through my notebook, I fired off a few to my husband:

What’s one responsibility you wish you didn’t have?
What’s your biggest fear about getting older?

And then this one:

What’s the best compliment you’ve ever received?

A mentor once told me to pay attention to the compliments.

She said, “Always pay attention to your compliments. Write them down. They are a clue about who you are and what you are good at and where you can add value. Compliments help you figure out what you are supposed to do. Whenever you are unsure, one thing you can always do is pay attention to the compliments.”

So I don’t know what I expected him to say. Probably something regarding his work or education, but what he actually said was so unexpected and so beautiful it took my breath away.

Probably, “I do,” he said.

I do?

Can a promise also be a compliment?
(The best promises are compliments.)

I believe in you.
I love you.
I forgive you.

“I do” is akin to saying “You’re my favorite” every single day of your life.

"Do you, Chantel, take Gavin, to be your wedded husband? To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, so long as you both shall live?”

I do.
I do.
I do.

I promised on January 5, 1996, and every day since reinforces this reciprocal compliment, made all the more special because neither of us deserve it. Unexpected compliments are the sweetest of them all.

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That Puzzle Isn't Going to Put Itself Together

I have a confession.

I hate puzzles.

Twenty years ago I watched my friend Tami put together complicated multi-piece puzzles—a pastime she took up thanks to doctor-ordered bed rest when she was pregnant with her first child. Candy Crush and Words with Friends were still a decade away from being invented, and she didn’t have cable.

I watched the cardboard depictions of exotic places and adorable animals take shape as I held my own newborn and chatted lazily with her from my place on her couch. (Yeah, I wasn’t much help.)

After Tami gave birth to a healthy baby boy (the real labor of love), she put the puzzles away for good. (“I never want to see another puzzle again!)

Two years later, Tami got pregnant with a baby girl. No bed rest this time. Her textbook pregnancy resulted in a full-term, healthy newborn.

Then a few years after that, that precious baby girl got cancer. And even though Tami wasn’t sitting on the floor physically putting together the pieces of a puzzle, she spent many nights poring over a diagnosis that had shattered her heart into a thousand pieces.

In that dim hospital room with the blinking lights and buzzing machines and offending smells, I believe she was trying to make sense of an impossible future.

She approached a never-ending stream of questions from every angle.
And the answers didn’t quite fit.

I think that’s why I hate the puzzles so much. So much trial-and-error. The process takes time. And determination. And patience. So much patience.

I dump out the box, and to me it just looks like a big mess.

I want to organize everything into neat and tidy piles. Border pieces first. Then the interior. Blue ones here. Yellow ones over there. Is that a part of a face? Let’s group those pieces here.

I’m doing things my way, the right way. There’s got to be a method to the madness.

Tami’s daughter survived the cancer diagnosis, but many of her friends didn’t. I once heard a dad who lost his own daughter say, “Everything just feels wrong all the time.”

The patience and determination of a thousand Tamis will never heal his broken heart because there will always be a missing piece.

IT’S ALL WRONG, ALL THE TIME.

When I was talking to Tami about this idea, she told me that the puzzle is really a metaphor for life, not just cancer. We want all the pieces to fit. We crave meaning and purpose. Our hearts long to find beauty in the ashes.

The optimist in me wants to cheer: “Just keep praying! Good luck, friend! You can do it!”
The pessimist in me knows that missing pieces often stay missing.

Humans are works-in-progress.

Recently, Tami told me something I had forgotten; that her pregnancy with Audrey wasn’t “textbook.” Early on, doctors told her she was probably carrying an ectopic embryo and would likely miscarry. She spent weeks weathering that storm, only to then be told Audrey might have Trisomy 18, a rare and life-threatening genetic condition.

Tami spent nine full months fearing the worst.

Her dreams for the new life growing within her broke again and again.

And all this before the cancer diagnosis.

DREAMS, LIKE PUZZLES, ARE FRAGILE.

A thousand-piece puzzle isn’t put together in a day. And neither are we.

We spend years creating a life we think we’ll love, the one we’ve modeled after the picture in our heads. But we break. Pieces get lost. The pictures don’t match.

Is it still possible to create something beautiful?

The View From Here

Tami is wise. She said we’ll never see the complete picture this side of heaven. And when we get there, maybe our questions will be answered and maybe they won’t. “Probably,” she said, “by then we won’t even care.“

One year it rained while we were on vacation, and I packed a puzzle “just in case.” I’m not sure what prompted that bit of foresight because I’m telling you, I don’t like puzzles. At first, no one wanted to help, but once I set up the work space and began organizing the pieces, members of my family started tiptoeing over one-by-one “just to watch.” Soon, everyone was pitching in to help.

Maybe puzzles aren’t so bad after all.

There’s a sense of accomplishment that accompanies a completed puzzle, a healthy sense of pride for being plucky enough to stick with it.

We were almost done with the puzzle at the beach when we realized a piece had gone missing. One piece! We looked everywhere, and it was just…GONE. I remember being really irritated because I was so proud that I had COMPLETED A PUZZLE. (Let me clarify: I almost completed a puzzle. I was missing one piece.) Was it a defective box? Did we drop it on the floor? Was it hiding under a rug? Or worse: Was one of the kids in the house just messing with me?

The world will never know.

I loaned the puzzle to my sister-in-law during the pandemic, and when she returned it, she said nothing of the missing piece.

“I forgot to tell you…” I started.

“You forgot to tell me! We looked everywhere for that piece! I thought I lost it!”

“Joke’s on you,” I said. “I just forgot.” I shrugged.

The older I get, the less clear I see the photo on the box in my head.

UNLIKE PUZZLES, OUR LIVES ARE FLUID.

Moments of joy and loss shape the way we live, love, parent, and work. The broken pieces don’t always go back together like we want.

And the missing pieces will always drive us crazy.

Tami said we won’t see the complete picture this side of heaven, but even if we can’t see it, we can trust God to fill the empty place. He’s the master of creating beautiful things, after all.

There’s another thing about puzzles that’s pretty cool. Working them with friends is infinitely more fun than working them by yourself. When we link arms with one another, we make each other stronger. We help put the broken pieces back together. We fill empty places.

Until piece-by-piece, compassion emerges and our collective humanity takes shape. 

And we are whole.

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Romans 15:13: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

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WINSday on Wednesday--Survival means Love

We’re in week three of quarantine.

Kids have been home schooling.
Parents have been teleworking.
We’ve all cooked—I don’t know—like 893 different meals, not to mention all the cookies, pies, and bread I’ve been making.

A friend of mine joked today that the memes are winning the pandemic.

Anybody else feel like you don’t know what you’re doing anymore?

We are doing what we can to survive.

But humans want to do more than simply survive. We want to thrive.

“The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.”

— Charles Darwin

I used to think that when Darwin was talking about survival of the fittest, he was talking about something akin to the notion of “every man for himself.” Me first. You snooze you lose. Winner takes all.

But that’s not how true survival works.

Survival of the fittest does not follow the rules of modern game theory, which posits that the rational answer or choice is always the one that’s best for me.

What’s best for me may not be what’s best for us.

In 1871, Charles Darwin published The Descent of Man. In this 873 page tome, Darwin writes only twice of “survival of the fittest,” but 95 times of love.

He writes of selfishness 12 times, but 92 times of moral sensitivity.

Of competition 9 times, but 24 times of mutuality and mutual aid. (Source)

Darwin and Jesus had this in common: They both understood that society functions best when its participants love one another.

“Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.”

— Romans 12:10

Please continue to practice safe social distancing.
Please continue to honor doctors, essential business personnel, and your kids’ teachers. "
Please continue to wash your hands and sanitize everything you touch.

We may yet have weeks or months of some type of quarantine ahead of us.

Our survival, our ability to thrive, and even our sanity depends on how we choose to honor one another.

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I’d love to know how you’re thriving in these trying times. I love hearing from you, and I read every single comment and reply.