In 2019: With.

A first for me: the year’s word, preempted.

I always titled my essays after they were written. My preferences lean toward inductive reasoning (taking a set of information and drawing out its meaning, rather than going in with a clear presupposition) and gathering a large pool of knowledge, looking for patterns and abstractions. Some of us are Myers-Briggs “N’s” through and through. As I mentioned in the previous post, themes typically bubble up through the year in retrospect, rather than something to be aimed at. But earlier this year, the word “with” popped into my head, and I wrote it down in my journal.

It was a Thursday morning.

I had stayed up way too late trying to get my photos liberated from my phone-prison into the happy cloud the night before. It was 6 AM and I had just fed the Little and put her back to bed. I received a text from a good friend that she had just gone into labor. I was anxious. I’m not usually anxious. I’ve been through labor 6 times and this mama was no wimp. I have prayed for many labors. I had assisted two handfuls of them too. The process is miraculous and one of my favorite things ever. So I was *almost* certain she was going to get through the day with a baby on the other side.

But there were moments in the day (I was working with The Engineer) when I felt an immediate, urgent, and almost jarring prompt to pray, so I took a moment from time to time through the day to intercede. When I heard that evening that baby was born and safe, and everyone was doing well, I was so relieved. And tired. Our friends who help with the kids on my work days stayed for spaghetti and we talked about Spring Break. They headed out, we put the little children to bed, and 20 minutes after that, another couple arrived at our home for their forth premarital counseling session. After praying together, they left, I wound down with my book, and fell into bed, emotionally exhausted.

The next day dawned. I had planned on taking a meal and my favorite postpartum book (so far) to see the family. They were both doing well, and mama relayed to me the whole birth story. It was really rough. Traumatic. On the knife’s edge of life and death.

So back up for a moment . . . before I took the lentils and heard the story, I was pretty tired. The day before was the Thursday I mentioned above. And this Friday was not unlike its predecessor. I had been serving all day, I hadn’t had even 20 minutes to myself all week, and was really just wanting a few minutes to just NOT be serving SOMEBODY. That day, I had dropped off and picked up the van from the auto shop, worked for Streamline Designs, and of course, the normal life of a homeschool mom and all of that. Anyway, I was weary, and I also absolutely knew that taking a meal and being present with the family was what God wanted me to do that afternoon.

So after an already full day, I left home, picked up the van from the shop, dropped off tax stuff at the post office, and stopped at the store to pick up diapers and some fruit because mama had just texted me. I got to the house to visit with mama and daddy and baby. I left my own emotional junk in the car and walked through the front door.

That afternoon, I got to be with my friend. Listen to the quiver in her voice. Shed tears with her. Hug her. Be the very first person to hear the story from her own lips. I got to hear about how incredibly hard it was and how God was so faithful. It was such a beautiful, moving time. My soul was a witness of the beginning of a healing process. She even told me that one of the times I texted my fervent prayer to her, the exact situation she was in and how fitting God’s words were for her in that moment.

Of all of the houses on that street, and of all of the people in all of those houses and in the surrounding neighborhoods, here was this mama, moving through her pain, and Jesus right there, taking her hand, turning her mourning into dancing. And I had the honor of being with her in that moment.

It was breathtaking.

On the way home, in the van, I started to quietly weep and thank God out loud. I thanked him that I was available and able to minister to a family whom I love so much. I thanked him that they needed not only a hearty meal, but a listening ear, and the balm of Christ on their weary bodies and minds and hearts. I thanked him for the mama, and her willingness to say “yes” to this baby and birth him in the way she felt best. I was thankful for Lynda and Ann and Amy, the team who worked VERY hard to deliver baby. I thanked God for my husband and older kids, keeping things in order while I was out alone, and for the van and the lentils and for God’s promptings.

I felt so privileged to be there in that moment, thinking about all of those people I had intersected in the past 48 hours, and serving in a way that Christ made me to serve. I was with.

And my mind spiraled upward, grateful all over again to be able to enter into life’s hard and infrequent moments of the edge of death, the beginnings of a marriage, the steps of faith to correct midstream in a business decision, being at the end of a phone call of desperation, the moment when a friend decides to leave corporate America for a new venture with us.

It isn’t easy, but it is right where we belong.

The Engineer and I are doing these impossible things that God ordained for us before the foundations of the world. Things like raising 6 children with no idea about what we are doing (sorry again, firstborn), and starting and running businesses in a challenging market (again, not knowing what we are doing), and counseling folks who just need a little bit of coaching and a lot of Jesus. We are privileged to be frequently put in a position of helping others do hard things too. We are surrounded by others who are running with all their might on the same team, pressing hard after Jesus, doing impossible things we all would never have chosen for ourselves. But this is why God made community. To be with in those moments. Not just doing-for. Not just there, but truly with. And being with Jesus means walking whatever knife edge of tiredness and exhilaration he takes us to. It means not knowing when or how my head will hit the pillow that night. It means not putting my hand to the plow and looking back. It means letting the dead bury their dead.

It also means where Jesus is, I’m going to be there too, dependent on the Father for energy, for words, for endurance.

So with is my theme for 2019. I put on the Lenten altar this year some things that were taking away from my with. I’ve already caught myself backsliding in these things and I can tell! It’s amazing that I can feel my attention drifting, the distractions creeping in . . . but when the Lord beckons me toward himself, I feel more with my children, with my husband, with my friends than I ever have before. It is exhausting. I forget and fail a lot. Because it’s like dying little deaths all day, every day. When I am with a person, I just can’t think about myself or the things I even want to think about. But that what makes it freeing and terrifying all at the same moment. But I’m certain with is where Jesus wants me, with him, and present with whom I’m with.

And it’s only the beginning of April.