I remember watching ‘Back To The Future’ as a kid thinking, “Oh, how I wish I had a flux capacitor!” If you have not seen this movie, stop reading this and go watch it (you’re welcome). If you have seen the movie, then you are aware of the dangers altering the timeline can bring. I joke, but seriously I turn 50 this month and some part of me wishes that I could just hop into a DeLorean and go back in time. Well, maybe not a DeLorean…a Mini Cooper, now that would be a cool time machine!

As I look back on that Ursala I see a clumsy, self righteous person who just knew the best way to do everything, at least that is what she thought. Never once did I consider that I had it wrong, or that there was another way to go about things. If I could, I might travel back to that time and give myself a good talking to. Or even a slap! Don’t worry, II would be careful not to run into my parents, I wouldn’t want my sister to vanish. (Another movie reference, seriously, if you haven’t seen it, go watch it!)

Adjusting the past

I guess the idea of going back into time is appealing to many of us. The ability to fix a wrong, make better decisions based on information from the future, maybe punch a bully in the face. These all sound good, of course I would never punch anyone in the face; but, there was that one boy who used to tease me. My recent reflections have me asking this question; “would it really be good to adjust my past?”

At the ripe old age of 49 I would have to say that it would not be a good idea for me to go back and adjust my past. As a matter of fact I believe that changing who I was in the past would make me a completely different person today. Maybe even a lesser or weaker version of myself. The truth I now know is that the mistakes I have made, and the brokenness I have experienced, are all a part of the shaping of who I have become.

From Conditioning to Transformation

The scripture that comes to mind to better communicate this idea is 1 Corinthians 13:11-13:
“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”

I love this passage of scripture because if we carefully read it we can see the unique message Paul is trying to convey. Notice that Paul does not condemn the behavior of his younger self, he simply acknowledges the behavior he exhibited was the appropriate behavior of a child. As he developed and matured that behavior was no longer acceptable, and he put those childish behaviors away. The lesson that this scripture teaches us is that the survival skills that we developed in childhood were intelligent responses to the environments we were raised in as children. However, if we as adults continue to use those same methods we will not fully develop.

Carol Jung talks about this in his work. He reflects that the survival skills we learn in childhood are life-giving, but as adults those same methods choke the life out of us. To apply this concept to my own personal life I could say that in order to survive in her world little Ursala needed to be loud, and quick reacting, in order to feel safe, seen and secure. However, adult Ursala is safe, seen, and secure without those things. To fully grow and develop into the person I am called to be, God has me pay attention to listening and responding and not always reacting to the environment around me.

Changing the lens we view our past

I believe there are two ways to look back on our younger selves. The first is with regret, and the second is with forgiveness. I love the following quote from Maya Angelou, “You have to forgive yourself for not knowing the things you didn’t know before you learned them.” Forgiveness is the only way we can let go of the mistakes and hurts of our past. I’m not saying forgiveness is going to completely erase the past, but it will help us accept it. As we accept it, the wounds of our past will heal.

Allowing myself to notice all the errors of my life not only exercises the muscle of grace in me, but it also teaches me valuable lessons. Now I want to be perfectly clear, this is not a practice that I have fully mastered. I struggle daily with the image that I am projecting to the world around me. I so want to “get it right” the first time I fail…repeatedly. I am learning that failing is an important part of the journey.

Practice: Table Exercise- Forgiveness

My spiritual director once shared an enriching exercise with me. The first time I did this exercise I was not able to complete it, after several times I was finally ready. I would encourage you to practice this exercise if you feel like you are having a hard time forgiving yourself for mistakes you have made in the past.

Imagine yourself hosting a dinner. You sit at the head of a large dinner table and all the guests are you but at different ages of your life. Start at the earliest sense of “self” you have. For me that age was around 5 years old. After filling the first seat, fill the others with all the ages you can up till your current age. (This next part is hard, so get ready!) Go around the whole table to each age of yourself and say, “I forgive you.” Naturally it will be easy for you to say this to some versions of yourself, but others it will be more difficult. This is okay. Actually it’s perfectly normal. Skip the ones you can not forgive and go around the whole table. Repeat the exercise until you can say “I forgive you,” to all the versions of yourself.

Partnering with a Spiritual Director/Mentor

If you would like to take this exercise further, the next step would be saying: “I need you” to everyone at the table and finally the third step is to say “I love you” to everyone at the table. It might take you several times practicing this to move completely around the table, and that is okay. There is no right or wrong way to do this exercise. However, I will say that moving through it too quickly would cause me to question if you are truly being honest with yourself. It may help to find a mentor or an accountability partner, coach, or even a pastor to walk with you as you wrestle with it. I am a Spiritual Director and I have walked several people through this practice. If you would like to reach out to me I would love to talk with you more about this exercise and other exercises and spiritual practices to aid in your development with God. Many people are not sure if a spiritual director is a good fit for them. Equally many people don’t know what a spiritual director even is. What I like to say to both these inquiries is simply this: a spiritual director is a person who helps you notice the activity of God in your life. We are not extra holy, or particularly gifted, we just help you to notice what God might be saying or doing in an area of your life. You may have someone in your life that is filling this role, but if not reach out to me for more resources, (my contact info is below.)

Forgiveness converts to growth

We all have something we need to forgive ourselves for. Maybe it’s a bad decision, maybe it’s for trusting someone you shouldn’t have, or maybe it is for hurting someone you love. Regardless of what it is exactly, I would argue (and I believe Paul would too) that it is these very things that cause us to grow and mature into the fully developed person God has called us to become.

Even though my teenage self would LOVE to travel through time in a Mini Cooper. I have decided I will stay right here in my own timeline; knowing that erasing the mistakes of my past would also erase the best parts of me.

Email
ursala@tvine.org

Ursala Pierce-Houser

Ursala and her husband have 3 children. She was raised in a faith based home. Being surrounded by people who loved to worship God gave her a passion for God’s word and a hunger to connect people to God thru writing. She has written 3 bible studies.

The post Learning to Forgive Yourself: how our past shapes our future appeared first on Cup of Faith.

It’s Mother’s Day month again and as I ponder this I can’t help but think about the changing roles of motherhood. As I have said in previous blog posts, my husband and I have 3 kids and over the course of the past 27 years (yikes, my oldest just turned 27!), my children have changed, and so has the shape of motherhood.

Surprise Beginnings

Our journey started with a surprise pregnancy, yes married people can have those too. We had put off having kids for a few years down the road; at least this is what we thought, until two hours at the doctor’s office, and a blood test moved up that timeline. Have you ever heard the saying: “Want to make God laugh? Then tell Him your plans.” I planned to finish school and have at least one degree, and I planned that my husband would have a full time job. Needless to say, at that time, having kids wasn’t even on our radar.

We took the news like two pros. Neither one of us was brave enough to admit that we were scared out of our wits! Enter our oldest daughter, at 8 lbs 15 oz (4.05 kg) she was going to make her presence known, she entered this world with the strong desire to make things right. From the time she first came out she had a scowl on her face, like she was judging everything my husband and I did. I had no idea how to be a mom, but I was not going to tell anyone that. Armed with every parenting book of that time, I devised another plan. Just in case you are wondering, the answer to your question is: “no”, I hadn’t learned my lesson about planning yet. If I’m being honest, I’m not sure I ever have.

My husband and I stumbled our way through those first five years and then, we decided to add another child to the chaos. Enter our son. Unlike our oldest daughter, our son was six weeks early. He was ready to enter the world, and he arrived the day before my birthday. Happy birthday to me! Due to the fact he was so early our little man had to stay in the NICU for a bit, to allow his lungs to develop. I say little guy, but he was almost two months early and he was already over 7 lbs (3.17 kg)! Weeks later at a wellness check up, my doctor noticed our son’s birth weight. He looked at me and said, “Are you a praying woman?” To which I replied, “yes.” He continued, “I can tell because this was going to be an 11 pound (5 kg) baby had you gone to term!” I think about that often as I look at my now 6 foot 5 inch 245 pound “baby” boy today, and thank God for his mercy.

Rounding the corner to our third child was easy. We were not necessarily planning to have a third (there goes God laughing again) but along she came and boy oh boy did she keep us on our toes. I like to say God gave us 2 mild and 1 spicy. Not to say the first two were easy, but our youngest turns up the heat in every area of our lives. Looking back on these past years all the laughter and tears, all the courage and fear I see God’s beautiful stitching weaved throughout it all. My journey of motherhood has had its ups and downs, but a recurring theme throughout all of it was learning, and growing. Obviously my children grew and learned, but as a mother I have too.

Learning to be a student

When my children were littles I was their whole world. I was responsible for feeding, and caring for them (along with my husband) and naturally they developed into independent humans who required less and less from me. Navigating this in the first few stages was a relief. I remember when our youngest was finally potty trained, I was so relieved to be all done with that. However, through some divine wisdom I also realized that I would miss these stages and I quickly learned to relish all the “lasts” with our youngest. I held on to those times, and they became very sweet moments to me. Even here my youngest child was teaching me a lesson.

As I enter into the next stage of my life my children have become some of my closest friends, not in an unhealthy way but in a way that I relate to them as being both a student and a teacher. I am not just talking about technology, although that is a BIG part of them teaching me. I do find myself being taught different lessons by each of them. In the same way I have also been taken care of by them. That last bit has required me to learn humility and to ask for help.

Embracing the cycle of life

As I navigate through some recent health challenges I have had to learn how to ask for help. As a mother, I had to set aside my pride of always being a caregiver and humble myself to be taken care of. This current role change has been full of tears, and yet still full of grace. Just yesterday I spent the entire day in the ER. My youngest daughter had to come along with me as my condition makes it difficult for me to navigate on my own. As she tended to me, tucking my feet into the bed and making sure my pillow was adjusted correctly I remembered back to a time when I did these things for her.

I keep hearing the still, steady voice of the lord saying to me “embrace the cycle of life, this is the natural course.” In my head this all makes sense, but my momma heart wants to always be the one to take care of my children. As I’m writing this, my oldest child is planning to move across the country, my son is planning on joining the Coast Guard and my youngest is planning the next portion of her life. It feels like pieces of me are being spread around, and yet again, my children are teaching me another lesson: how to let go.

God shaping us

Whether you are a mother, or you are hoping to be, the lessons that we are taught through this process are priceless. My prayer is that you allow yourself to be a student, and allow motherhood, however that looks like for you, to shape you into the person God has called you to become.

Ursala Pierce-Houser

Ursala and her husband have 3 children. She was raised in a faith based home. Being surrounded by people who loved to worship God gave her a passion for God’s word and a hunger to connect people to God thru writing. She has written 3 bible studies.

The post The Shape Of Motherhood appeared first on Cup of Faith.

I have always enjoyed reading scripture. When I was a little girl I remember playing “church” with my friends. We would open up our family Bible and read for hours. Of course we had one of those Bibles that took up a whole end table. It was a picture bible with artist renderings of David and Goliath, Samson and Delilah and even vivid pictures of Jesus on the cross. This was a two-handed Bible for sure, and it was the King James version. The way it would go is that my friend would read a scripture and then I would explain it. Being about eight or nine at the time, you can imagine that my interpretations were, well let’s say, colorful.

Godly Habits

As I remember, it was also early on that I developed a habit of reading scripture regularly. Even then I knew that it was important to continue reading scripture. Soon I discovered the New King James version and the New International Version. I remember making the switch and realizing how different God’s word was when I read in those translations; it was like opening my eyes to a new language. For me, re-reading all the stories I had read in the King James version helped the stories come alive.

Also during this time I developed the habit of reading the Psalms and Proverbs every month. An old pastor helped me develop this habit. He showed me that if I started on the first of each month by reading five Psalms a day, along with one Proverb, I could get through both books once a month. I found this useful at that time of my life. It helped me to get a good foundation of the basic godly principles found in these books.

Burn Out

Despite my early love for reading scripture, as I got older I found myself taking less and less time to read it. It was not for lack of love of God but I felt burnt out for many, many years of my life. If I’m being honest, I wrestled with my faith and my interior life and so scripture was sort of hollow to me. In my experience, scripture was used as either a weapon to back skewed perspectives or it was somewhat offensive and I didn’t understand how to hold it close.

The distance between scripture and me grew larger and larger and eventually I rarely picked up the bible. As an avid follower of Christ this was unacceptable to me and the shame I felt around this was immense. I knew that there was something at the root of my lack of desire to read scripture but I could not name it. As more and more time passed I became less and less bothered by this lack of interest in God’s word until finally it did not bother me at all.

Lectio Divina

Many years passed by and I was encouraged by my spiritual director to try reading less scripture slowly over time. Now when I say slowly, I mean verse by verse. This method of reading the bible is called Lectio Divina. This is a Latin phrase that means divine reading. We find the roots of Lectio in the Benedictine Order but it has most recently been brought to the attention of followers of Christ by Father Thomas Keating.

Divine Reading

This slow reading of God’s word draws you in closer as it requires you to SLOW DOWN. As I look back on the struggles I was having I realized it was mostly due to the fact that I was trying to get a checkmark for the day. I did not care so much for the quality of time I spent with God, I was just trying to rush through it. So much of my daily routine was just to mark off my spiritual checklist: pray (check), read scripture (check), not leaving any time for the spirit of God to lead or direct me. Now, I want to be clear, there is nothing wrong with a routine, I understand how useful it can be to stick to a schedule. However, in my case, I was more committed to the routine so I could feel like I had accomplished something than wanting to spend time in communion with God.

1. Prepare

Life pushes and pulls us in every direction unless we are anchored in Christ. A great way to combat the busy hurried life we find ourselves immersed in is by slowing down. I find Lectio to be a great way to counter the anxious world we live in. There are five steps to Lectio Divina. The first step is ‘Prepare’. Just like it sounds this is a time to prepare your heart, body, and mind to begin. I do some deep breaths and sit in silence for a bit before reading. I make sure I am in a place that is free from distraction, I don’t have my phone, my door is closed and my computer is off. I will also grab a pen and my journal to write down what God speaks to me during our time.

2. Read and 3. Meditate

Step two is Read. The scripture you read is up to you but there is a suggestion of how much you read and how many times you read it. The amount you read should be very small, at the most a paragraph, but I usually do a couple of sentences at a time. During the first reading I will ask the Lord “What are You speaking to me in this text today?” After I pray, usually the Lord will highlight a word or phrase in the text and I will write it down.

4. Pray

The amount of times you read the selection should be at least four. The first time you read you are familiarizing yourself with the text. The second time you should try to imagine yourself in scripture. Imagine the sights, the smells, the emotion in the text. If I am reading a passage about Jesus and the disciples I’ll imagine myself to be there as one of the disciples or a bystander. The third reading I will try to view the text from a different perspective that I hadn’t considered before. And finally at the beginning of the fourth reading I ask again, “Lord, is there anything else that you are trying to say to me in this scripture?”

5. Contemplate

Steps 2-5 will all take place simultaneously after the first reading. While you read (step 2), you will also do the following: Meditate (step 3), Pray (step 4), and contemplate (step 5), as you read and re-read your passage. If it seems confusing don’t get frustrated, the more you practice Lectio, the more comfortable you will become doing it.

God seeks quality time with us, the amount of time is not as important. Slowing down to hear what He is speaking to us in scripture will cause our roots to go deeper in Him, and refresh and restore our souls. If you find yourself in a similar place I was in, or even if you are just wanting to go deeper in God, Lectio Divina is a good place to start. It is not difficult to begin practicing Lectio Divina, and I did use the word practice here intentionally, because all it takes is consistency to get into a good rhythm.

Ursala Pierce-Houser

Ursala and her husband have 3 children. She was raised in a faith based home. Being surrounded by people who loved to worship God gave her a passion for God’s word and a hunger to connect people to God thru writing. She has written 3 bible studies.

The post Slowing Down To Read Scripture: The 5 Steps of Lectio Divina appeared first on Cup of Faith.

Weakness is a part of my daily life. As I type out that sentence feels exposing and raw, but it is true. I haven’t had the right language to name what it is but it started shortly after I got Covid for the second time in 2021. This experience of Covid was way more difficult than the first. I had to go to the hospital. It spread to my whole family, including my extended family; and as my husband and I laid in bed day after day, I thought about how blessed we had been with good health up until then. At that moment I didn’t know I would be battling whatever this is for many, many more days, weeks, months and even years. I have spent many days wondering, when will I get back to normal.

A new normal

Cut to today and although I am far from being laid up in bed sick, for some reason my body doesn’t want to snap back to normal. I do carry extra weight, and so that may explain some of it, but even more than that, there is a weakness in my body that wasn’t there before. My stamina is low and over the past 3 years I have lost over 40 pounds. Okay, that last part is not so bad! To add to this physical challenge I am of a “certain age”, where a woman’s body begins to change. Admitting this may be my new normal has been difficult.

False identity

This double whammy that is my life right now has definitely thrown me for a loop. I have never been a weak girl. I remember my dad telling stories of when I was little, not even walking, I could pull myself up using the coffee table. He would say, “Ursala, you would do pull ups on the coffee table it was so surprising to watch!” With this same strength and determination I moved through most of my childhood knowing I was strong, and proving I was strong.

By the time I had gotten to high school I was lifting weights with the football team and throwing the shot putt in field sports. I was above average at the field events for track and I lettered in my sophomore year. I hung out with mostly boys, because I loved how they pushed me to lift more and more weight. Looking back a lot of my identity was caught up in being strong, and I would proudly call myself a “tomboy.”

As I continued to walk with the Lord my spiritual walk began to take on the same characteristics. I was a strong Christian, unwavering and uncompromising. Weakness of any kind was not tolerated and certainly sickness of any kind was not acceptable. I held this same mindset… until. This would be the first big ‘until’ in my Christian walk, and believe me it was a doozy!

Testing of faith

Before we go into this “until” let me define what exactly an “until” is. An “until” is that place in our Christian walk when our faith is challenged, but more than challenged, it is deconstructed. If you have not experienced this yourself it may be hard to understand, however, this is not a new concept. In our spiritual journeys we experience highs and lows, some call these lows a dry spell, others have named it the dark night of the soul, but for me I simply call them until. The reason for this is because these moments in my life’s story have often started with “everything was going fine, until.”

The first time I experienced one of these faith challenging moments was when my little brother was diagnosed with cancer. It was a rare aggressive cancer that he was only able to fight for about 18 months. At the end of his fight, I found myself tired and confused. What I believed about Christians getting sick and dying no longer made sense. If I’m being honest, I felt lied to. I also felt like a fool for believing that God could heal him, would heal him.

After the death of my Charles (that was my brother’s name) I remained in a place of disillusionment for several years. Too ashamed to admit that I was heartbroken and confused, I pretended to be unaffected. I thought this meant that I was strong. This wrong idea was confirmed when people would say, “you are so strong” I played along but, I remember secretly praying, “God, I wish I didn’t have to be strong.”

At the time I did not understand what real strength looked like, only its facade; which I now understand isn’t strength at all. Looking back at this time, I realized that I didn’t have the tools needed to process my grief. For whatever reason I thought that Charles’ death was a reflection of my own faith, or lack thereof. In my shame I allowed myself to think, “If I had more faith, maybe God would have healed him.”

Cycles of life

Friends, I want to be clear, NOTHING can be further from the truth. I could not say it then, but now I know death is part of life. If we are willing to see, in the pain of death God can show us beauty. I want to say that I fully learned this lesson the first time I experienced loss, but, if I am being honest, this is a lesson I am still learning today.

The cycle of life and death is all around us. One place we see this cycle is in scripture, in the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ . During this Lenten season, this cycle is at the surface of most Christians hearts. Similarly, another place we see this cycle is in nature. This cycle gives us a rhythm to set our natural clocks to. Rhythm comforts us by offering us consistency and making us feel held and peaceful in a chaotic world. The seasons tell us no matter how hot summer is, the cool breeze of autumn will blow, leaves will change, and winter will come. In this same way God remains, even in the painful bits of life, giving us the grace to remain in Him and hold space for grief and sadness.

Still and empty

This lesson has been most recently thought to me by a particular tree on my back patio. If you remember my last post, you know lately God has been speaking to me through my little backyard garden. Like most trees, my Palo Verde tree changes throughout the year. In the spring and summer it is a lovely deep green with thousands of tiny leaves covering its branches. In the fall the leaves change color and drop. Currently it is winter where I am, and the tree sits in my backyard bare. Lately I have noticed a sense of anticipation in my garden as we get closer to spring. This is reflected in the first new shoots sprouting up from the ground, however, my tree sits empty and still.
That phrase ‘still and empty’ began to echo in my mind and so I wrote it down and over the course of several days the poem below developed.

Listen for God’s voice

In this busy hurried life I believe that God will use even a simple Palo Verde tree to speak to us. My prayer is that you will allow God to use your everyday life to draw hope and inspiration from, He is always speaking all we have to do is listen.

Still and Empty

a poem by Ursala Pierce- Houser

You provide all four seasons,
growing, reaching, giving for all who will partake.
Twisted branches and straight, you are beautiful,
all your beauty, all your majesty, I celebrate.

Bare…only a few dried leaves left behind,
the birds have picked your branches clean for food and nesting.
Still and empty

Green beauty dancing in the light,
reaching stretching towards heaven,
your bare branches wait with anticipation for the dressing to come.
Still and empty you wait,
still and empty

Sun so bright, shining almost white on your naked branches,
you don’t hide or cover your nakedness,
you embrace the beauty found in it,
Still and empty you shine
Still and empty.

Dark green, and precious.
You stretch you reach,
knowing a day will come when you will be covered again.
Still and empty.

Rain comes down, and it nourishes you,
wind blows you from side to side, fortifying your roots,
Still and empty

Light cascades down on the outside of your branches and there is darkness on the other
your olive tones seamlessly fade to deep green.
Still and empty, you remain, still and empty

Today you are still and empty
not even a bird uses you to perch,
still and empty
gathering the sustenance you need from the earth
Still and empty.

Even now you are beautiful,
reaching out, reaching up towards the sun,
you are not lacking,
you are full of the potential that you had when you were planted.

Still and empty
you are beautiful!
Still and empty.

Ursala Pierce-Houser

Ursala and her husband have 3 children. She was raised in a faith based home. Being surrounded by people who loved to worship God gave her a passion for God’s word and a hunger to connect people to God thru writing. She has written 3 bible studies.

The post True Strength appeared first on Cup of Faith.

Along with the rest of the world, finding a rhythm over the past few years has been a bit tricky for me. When 2020 hit I had two kids in school. My husband and I were homeschooling already, so there was no real change in the schooling department. However, what did change were the supplemental activities that kept us engaged in the community. Before Covid hit we had our normal routine of church, enrichment classes hosted by our charter school, and of course the usual dance, music and other activities our kids were into. My natural inclination was to try to figure out how to keep up the busy, hurried life I was used to. This led me to look for new ways to engage without gathering..

The two children that were in school at the time were my son, then 17, and my youngest daughter, age 13. The way my son is wrapped it was like he was made for quarantine. He didn’t mind staying in and away from people, he is a natural introvert. However, my daughter and I were bouncing off the walls! We are both extraverts who love to be in the action, and the isolation and quiet was unbearable for us.

To combat the quiet and loneliness of quarantine my daughter and l tried everything we could during lockdown. We made masks and donated them to our local convalescent home; we learned how to crochet, and how to make strawberry preserves, (my husband’s favorite of our endeavors); and lastly, my daughter made sourdough bread starters. My waistline is still trying to recover from all the homemade bread – yum!

Seeking More

Feeling drawn to something deeper, and with fewer carbs, I realized that, while filling our time was successful in keeping my daughter engaged in community, I was missing an opportunity to hear God’s voice in the silence. I began to be curious about the season of life I was in. I thought, “Instead of filling up all my time with doing, maybe God’s inviting me to take time to be with Him.” As you have probably guessed, my personality type is not one that naturally looks to sit and be anything, especially still. I knew this invitation was an opportunity for God to work something new inside of me, so I responded with a soft, “Yes Lord,” and a louder gulp.

I started to respond to the invitation by sitting on my back patio to watch the sunset. In Southern California, the sunsets are an explosion of blues, purples, reds and oranges. Watching the different colors each evening also gave me an appreciation for something else. It may sound strange; but, before my evening sits, I had not realized the beautiful colors in my own backyard. All the colors came alive to me: the deep purples of my Lavender bush, the forest green of my Palo Verde tree! I also began to notice a wrestling inside of me. I knew there was more the Lord was trying to speak to me, but the doer in me would not allow me to rest any longer. Instead, feeling inspired by all the colors in my backyard, I decided to plant a little vegetable garden.

Working the Garden

To tell the truth, I had tried to plant a garden before, but I failed horribly. At that time, the soil where I lived was not good soil for gardening. In my current home the soil is rich with nutrients; so, over the course of the next few months, I successfully grew a productive vegetable garden. I had so many vegetables I started to give them away. The weeks passed and, naturally, my once fruitful garden started to dry up and stop producing fruit. Trying to get more yield from my garden, I researched ways on how to make my garden produce year-round. Which in Southern California is not very hard to do. However, the more I researched the more I began to understand that a healthy garden needs rest. There it was again: “rest”.

I didn’t know it then, but my garden was teaching me a lesson. As I researched more, I learned that producing vegetables was hard work for my soil and during the winter it NEEDED to rest. Every year, as the flowers shrink back and the leaves turn brown and fall, the earth is able to get the well-deserved rest it needs. Winter is just as important for the harvest as spring. I learned that, in the winter, a seasoned gardener will enrich the soil with amendments and “tuck in” the garden with a blanket of mulch as it sleeps; so, I did just that.

As I prepared my garden for its winter rest, I heard the voice of God say, “Ursala, the seasons are for you, too.” It was not until this moment that I realized the invitation God had given me to sit and be with Him extended into the planting of my little garden. I don’t know about you friends; but, so often in my life, I am unaware of the story behind the story God is writing.

I was finally ready to hear the whole story and God revealed something so sweet. In every step I took to plan my garden: planting, watering, harvesting, even preparing for winter, God was using the rhythm of my garden to teach me about the rhythms in my own life. If I’m being honest, finding joy in every season of my life has always been difficult for me. This California girl loves warm weather, so I spend most of my winters inside waiting for spring to come.

Similarly, the winter seasons of my life can seem cold and unproductive. I often find myself wanting to fast forward through all the painful parts. I actually had a friend encourage me once that the best way to get through a hard time was to put your head down and just push through it. She said, “If you do this, before you know it, you will be on the other side.” At the time, I thought this was wise advice; but, now I know that there is a different way.

The “press through it” method will get us to the other side, but we will miss out on all the beauty along the way. This is because, as we move through life, it’s the shadows that help us to appreciate the light. Just like when we look at art, our eye is drawn to the contrast. Too much light and a picture looks washed out, too much dark and the image falls flat. A good image has both light and dark parts, and a good story is full of both beauty and pain.

Rhythms of rest

God invites us to sit with Him in all seasons of life; when we do, He wraps us with love and grace. Much like the mulch for my garden, it’s in these times that He gives us the nourishment and strength we need for life’s next season. Producing fruit and giving it away is good, but it is also good to rest. Taking some time in the day to just be with God is a healthy rhythm.

The rhythm of working in my garden brought rest to my soul, and that was the invitation that God was extending to me; and, He extends it to all of us. I have to believe the enemy loves to distract us from finding this rest with God. Richard Foster famously said it this way, “Our adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry and crowds. If he can keep us engaged in the muchness and manyness he will rest satisfied.” Scripture tells us Jesus is the Prince of Peace and His invitation to us is to step away from the muchness and manyness of life and step into rest with Him. Rest can take on many forms. Taking a walk in nature, drawing, or even playing the piano, can all be ways of resting. The key is that we intentionally slow down so we can hear God speaking to us.

The rhythms of life are not meant to hinder us, they are meant to hold us. Embracing the natural rhythms of life helps us to become more aware of the activity of God in our lives. Even the writer of Ecclesiastes knew the intelligence in embracing the seasons. Ecclesiastes 3:1-6 says, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing…” (NIV).

Scripture explains that, as followers of Christ, every season of our lives has a purpose, even the ones that are mixed with pain. Although some parts are difficult, each season is part of the story God is writing with us.

The practice of resting is new for me; and, like any new practice, it takes some time to develop a good rhythm. My little garden is still teaching me lessons. In each new season, God is inviting me to go deeper with Him. However, as my daily routines have gone back to normal, it is very easy for me to go back to the hurried life I was so familiar with. So, I must remember, “The seasons are for me too.”

In this life, God calls us to slow down and be still with Him. It is a sweet call, one that produces good fruit. And so, the natural question arises, “How is God inviting you to practice resting in your story, and how will you respond?” I guess that’s two questions.

Ursala Pierce-Houser

Ursala and her husband have 3 children. She was raised in a faith based home. Being surrounded by people who loved to worship God gave her a passion for God’s word and a hunger to connect people to God thru writing. She has written 3 bible studies.

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