I am quite good at worrying (not to brag) which often leads to bristley-ness and down right irritability. I try. Over and over again. To hand it over to Love. And my prayer often is “Take this and compost it so that something good may grow from it.” I don’t think I will ever not need to say this prayer. But slowly (two steps forward. One step back) I can see the transformative composting that only Grace can elicit.
I loved reading this conversation!! I’m currently living in a geographical space that I recently told a friend felt like being planted “on thorny soil.” After years of living in a space that felt like good soil. Until I feel spirit leading me to my next step I am committed to seeing the ways that spirit moves even in thorny soil.
One of the holy things I’ve been sensing here (especially as I work with roses in my herbalism practice) is that thorns are necessary for protection from predators. While I wish to be planted in a physical space that feels like good soil, I’m also conscious that there is a certain distraction to it.
Right now what is important for me is the space to practice my rituals and nurture my work even when it feels unsupported. God is here, too.
I am still reeling and exhausted after a year of cancer treatment and haven’t clawed my way back to hope. I am trying to come to grips with living in this body in this season (which is much more like fall) and to stop setting up life in a younger, healthier body (akin to the full florescence of summer) as the benchmark for health and happiness. Sorry this doesn’t answer the question! (And sounds much more grim health wise than it is.)
“I am trying to come to grips with living in this body in this season”. Sure sounds like hope to me ❤️. Keeping you in my prayers sister for strength, courage, healing and resilience 🙏🏻❤️
I left a comment somewhere else, but it seems to have disappeared. Anyway, I went through a very grueling and ugly divorce over the last 5 years. There was abuse and infidelity and no hope of change, so I knew that it was best for me, but the impossible thing to reconcile was that I had caused this terrible trauma to my four kids. How could they ever recover? How damaged would they be because of what I DID? But the other day, my 14yo daughter told me that she is actually thankful for the divorce, that she wouldn't have it any other way. I still can't believe that that could possibly be true, but I am holding onto that glimmer of hope for all 4 of my kids that something good can come out of the compost heap (really the trash heap--it is hard to even see the benefits of it like you can with compost) that was my marriage. I will trust, and I will hope!
So much of my adult life feels like a compost pile. I have seen some resurrection moments, but they are admittedly few and far between. Nevertheless, I am so deeply encouraged by this metaphor and the truth that God really does not waste a thing—my contentious marriage, sons who both had suicide attempts at 14 now are 20, a son born with a birthmark covering 40% of his body and subsequent rare disorder that has meant countless doctors, surgeries, and treatments, two kids with epilepsy, our family leaving a cult and finding freedom in our “evolving faith,” and so much more.
I have yet to see how God will bring beauty from ashes but for at least this moment, I’m trusting God will do just that
I relate to this compost metaphor so much! During the pandemic years, shortly after moving to a new city and losing my daughter’s birth mother to cancer, we inherited raised garden beds in the backyard of our new house. My daughter (4 years old at the time) and I planted and tended to that vegetable garden together through the hard years of pandemic isolation. Some days it brought me so much hope and joy to share those moments with her, and other days it felt like just more labor on my plate - watering and weeding in the hot sun. But in that way, it was cyclical, like Jeff’s writing.
Thank you for sharing Jeff with us! Especially as a born-and-raised Michigander, I cannot wait to read this book!
Three years ago I retired from my teaching career. Then I did what most 70 year olds would do, I adopted a rescue horse! 🙆♀️
(There is a stretch of a compost story coming I promise)
Horses are expensive and my small social security and retirement fund did not cover such expenses. So I got a job at our local garden center. It was the next best thing to being in the classroom! Surrounded by beautiful plants and flowers 💐 🪴
Since I live in the suburbs I have to board my horse at a stable about twenty minutes from my house.
As it turns out, this same garden center contracts with the owners of the stable to collect and process the manure for their compost site to use as fertilizer for their greenhouse and to sell to consumers for their gardens.
Hmm 🤔 so I work for the garden center to pay the stable that feeds my horse and my horse then provides the 💩 so the garden center can make money and pay me?! 🤷♀️ 😂 it’s a very sustainable process is it not? 🌱
My point is… I have always loved horses. To own one again at my age is a late in life dream. But it is with my sweet mare that I find grace, patience, mercy and unconditional love. It is my church. I stepped away from my conventional religion of the past which was anything but unconditional, and it is my solace. In the words (paraphrased) of Sarah… as I drive out past the wilderness and fields to the pasture where I’m greeted with the excited nicker of my horse I can hear God whisper, welcome home. My sanctuary surrounded by the beauty of God’s creation. 🙏
P.S. I am back in the classroom part time again too. My mini church, with my little angels 😇 who remind me of the hope and promise of new life!
Some where, some time ago, I read some thing like 'the forest floor sucks the death out of life"
During some of my years I tended compost piles as another chore of rural, sustainable living and gardening with kids and spouse. Then some time pasted and things happened and I lived in the city. Kids and spouse had moved on. Though I have walked through woods and forest floors before, I did not see the depth of death.
My thinning gray hair does not keep me warm in the cool damp forest. The beauty and comfort of these decaying and living spaces keeps my soul warm and my heart beating. I sit by a large tree that has been resting on it's bed, much like I have sat with family and friends dying. I feel the grasses and moss gently absorb the tree. I see the holes in the tree were bugs lived and birds fed and chipmunks hid. And I comforted to know that in my turn I will give back to the forest floor that has comforted me.
In the last few years I have gone through a tremendous amount of loss- both of my parents, my best friend, my uncle, and my farming mentor to cancer, and another dear friend who dedicated his life to advocating for the wellbeing of birds in an awful car accident, the end of my short-lived marriage, and even my flower farm, which brought me and everyone around me so much joy, but which I chose to step away from so that I could be present and available to better care for my mother on the other side of the continent at the end of her life. I have found through all the grief and loss that one thing that gives me hope, even when I feel so often like I am lacking the grace I would like to have, is watching the miraculous ways that friends and family members navigate through their own losses and challenges, and keep getting up the next day and trying again. The resilience of the human spirit to try again. The other thing that never ceases to give me hope is quality time in nature- hiking, swimming, camping….the beauty, tenderness, strength and resilience of the natural world always leaves me in awe, and encourages me to keep striving, growing and expanding my capacity for love and connection even in the moments where the losses have been so many and the journey so lonely that I feel shattered. So yeah- the resilience of the human soul navigating through hardship, and the power and beauty of the natural world are my biggest sources of hope these days. Great post, by the way! Thanks so much for sharing! 🙏🌱
At 72 I am learning the lessons of loss and letting go. It's a 180 turn from younger years that were about accumulating and building and chasing goals. I resonate with Chu's words about compost. It is at the most devastating times in life that I found God's nearness in life changing ways. This interview spoke to me at a deep level.
Almost ten years ago, I went through a very dark time of depression and anxiety. I was having anxiety attacks not knowing that was what was happening. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep and I couldn't get out of bed. As I was a 40 year old, single woman living on my own, my doctor insisted I stay with my mom so someone could make sure my basic needs were being met. I felt so hopeless at this time. I don't know that I was suicidal, but I kept thinking that if this was it for my life, I don't want to live anymore. Just before my mom would leave for work, I would drag myself out of bed and make a home on her couch which looked out a sliding door window. Every morning, around the exact same time, little birds would come and gather on her patio outside of the sliding door. They would search for food, sing together and entertain me for quite some time. These little birds gave me hope, hope to keeping getting up every day, to take a shower every day, get dressed and eventually feel brave enough to go outside for short walks. Those birds reminded me of the verse in the bible that talks about the birds and God saying if I love the birds, don't you realize that I love you so much more. As part of my healing, I got little birds tattooed on my inner wrist to remind me that even in the most hopeless of places, there is hope.
This is a treasure of a conversation. An insight into writing craft at a level we don't usually see in these virtual book tours (I would call it promo but I know both of you would cringe at the word haha). So grateful for this. I especially appreciate the kindness and art of storytelling. Like this: "If there’s anything I’d like to own, it’s not the story itself; it’s my responsibility to act in love. I believe I have some responsibility toward people who might appear in my stories. That’s why some stories are published, others really ought to remain in the text messages with close friends, and perhaps others should never be told at all."
I will also say there's an important echo here that, of course, we are all evolving in our stories and perspectives looking back on them. I have told my stories in so many different ways with so many different tones throughout my life: shame and guilt, anger and villains, too-quick redemptions and desperation to belong, despair and tragedy, easy joy and honest grief, spiritual bypassing and crushing doubt... All of it is true in the way that light reflects off a diamond, but no one "color" really names all there is to tell and all that is true, and I am grateful now I didn't make them my public identity prematurely (and hence sold them still half-unlived as a product for consumption) when it was The Thing Everyone Was Doing that could have proved my worthiness or earned me a seat at the cool kids table. Sometimes the people we think should have treated us better hold a complexity that is hard to distill down into the resolutions and takeaways and tied neat bows at the ending.
Not that our stories are ever really complete, but for the ones we choose to tell, we can hold on to them until we can be wise, kind, and responsible in our love. That shows a degree of depth as a person and maturity of faith that speaks highly of you both.
As a teenager I remember yelling at my parents one day saying, "Brianna doesn't do mud!" I now find myself on a farm, with my children running around caked in more mud than I thought imaginable. We moved to this place after losing our son almost three years ago, and it has been our holy healing ground. It was unexpected, but exactly what God knew our family needed to heal and be restored after immense trauma.
This interview was a delight to read! I'm planning to buy the book at my local bookstore as well as making sure my library orders a copy.
My "compost pile" is a bit on the nose because it's my literal compost pile! Back in November on the morning I found out who had been elected president, as I was going through the five stages of grief, I looked out the window and saw that a neighbor had left out four big yard waste bags of Sycamore leaves. I went out in my pajamas and hauled each bag to our yard, where I dumped them on our compost pile for some much-needed brown material. The leaves, soon to be transformed into life-giving soil, reminded me that spring would come and that there would still be veggies and flowers to grow, despite everything. It helped me look to the future in a good way.
I am quite good at worrying (not to brag) which often leads to bristley-ness and down right irritability. I try. Over and over again. To hand it over to Love. And my prayer often is “Take this and compost it so that something good may grow from it.” I don’t think I will ever not need to say this prayer. But slowly (two steps forward. One step back) I can see the transformative composting that only Grace can elicit.
I loved reading this conversation!! I’m currently living in a geographical space that I recently told a friend felt like being planted “on thorny soil.” After years of living in a space that felt like good soil. Until I feel spirit leading me to my next step I am committed to seeing the ways that spirit moves even in thorny soil.
One of the holy things I’ve been sensing here (especially as I work with roses in my herbalism practice) is that thorns are necessary for protection from predators. While I wish to be planted in a physical space that feels like good soil, I’m also conscious that there is a certain distraction to it.
Right now what is important for me is the space to practice my rituals and nurture my work even when it feels unsupported. God is here, too.
Here in the desert, nearly everything has thorns or spines, an adaptation for a harsh environment. And yet there are still blooms and fruit to share.
Love your comment about the necessity of thorns💚. I’m going to cultivate s o m e of mine!
I am still reeling and exhausted after a year of cancer treatment and haven’t clawed my way back to hope. I am trying to come to grips with living in this body in this season (which is much more like fall) and to stop setting up life in a younger, healthier body (akin to the full florescence of summer) as the benchmark for health and happiness. Sorry this doesn’t answer the question! (And sounds much more grim health wise than it is.)
“I am trying to come to grips with living in this body in this season”. Sure sounds like hope to me ❤️. Keeping you in my prayers sister for strength, courage, healing and resilience 🙏🏻❤️
love this as a fellow chronically-ill/disabled person!
I left a comment somewhere else, but it seems to have disappeared. Anyway, I went through a very grueling and ugly divorce over the last 5 years. There was abuse and infidelity and no hope of change, so I knew that it was best for me, but the impossible thing to reconcile was that I had caused this terrible trauma to my four kids. How could they ever recover? How damaged would they be because of what I DID? But the other day, my 14yo daughter told me that she is actually thankful for the divorce, that she wouldn't have it any other way. I still can't believe that that could possibly be true, but I am holding onto that glimmer of hope for all 4 of my kids that something good can come out of the compost heap (really the trash heap--it is hard to even see the benefits of it like you can with compost) that was my marriage. I will trust, and I will hope!
So much of my adult life feels like a compost pile. I have seen some resurrection moments, but they are admittedly few and far between. Nevertheless, I am so deeply encouraged by this metaphor and the truth that God really does not waste a thing—my contentious marriage, sons who both had suicide attempts at 14 now are 20, a son born with a birthmark covering 40% of his body and subsequent rare disorder that has meant countless doctors, surgeries, and treatments, two kids with epilepsy, our family leaving a cult and finding freedom in our “evolving faith,” and so much more.
I have yet to see how God will bring beauty from ashes but for at least this moment, I’m trusting God will do just that
I relate to this compost metaphor so much! During the pandemic years, shortly after moving to a new city and losing my daughter’s birth mother to cancer, we inherited raised garden beds in the backyard of our new house. My daughter (4 years old at the time) and I planted and tended to that vegetable garden together through the hard years of pandemic isolation. Some days it brought me so much hope and joy to share those moments with her, and other days it felt like just more labor on my plate - watering and weeding in the hot sun. But in that way, it was cyclical, like Jeff’s writing.
Thank you for sharing Jeff with us! Especially as a born-and-raised Michigander, I cannot wait to read this book!
Three years ago I retired from my teaching career. Then I did what most 70 year olds would do, I adopted a rescue horse! 🙆♀️
(There is a stretch of a compost story coming I promise)
Horses are expensive and my small social security and retirement fund did not cover such expenses. So I got a job at our local garden center. It was the next best thing to being in the classroom! Surrounded by beautiful plants and flowers 💐 🪴
Since I live in the suburbs I have to board my horse at a stable about twenty minutes from my house.
As it turns out, this same garden center contracts with the owners of the stable to collect and process the manure for their compost site to use as fertilizer for their greenhouse and to sell to consumers for their gardens.
Hmm 🤔 so I work for the garden center to pay the stable that feeds my horse and my horse then provides the 💩 so the garden center can make money and pay me?! 🤷♀️ 😂 it’s a very sustainable process is it not? 🌱
My point is… I have always loved horses. To own one again at my age is a late in life dream. But it is with my sweet mare that I find grace, patience, mercy and unconditional love. It is my church. I stepped away from my conventional religion of the past which was anything but unconditional, and it is my solace. In the words (paraphrased) of Sarah… as I drive out past the wilderness and fields to the pasture where I’m greeted with the excited nicker of my horse I can hear God whisper, welcome home. My sanctuary surrounded by the beauty of God’s creation. 🙏
P.S. I am back in the classroom part time again too. My mini church, with my little angels 😇 who remind me of the hope and promise of new life!
I love this!
Some where, some time ago, I read some thing like 'the forest floor sucks the death out of life"
During some of my years I tended compost piles as another chore of rural, sustainable living and gardening with kids and spouse. Then some time pasted and things happened and I lived in the city. Kids and spouse had moved on. Though I have walked through woods and forest floors before, I did not see the depth of death.
My thinning gray hair does not keep me warm in the cool damp forest. The beauty and comfort of these decaying and living spaces keeps my soul warm and my heart beating. I sit by a large tree that has been resting on it's bed, much like I have sat with family and friends dying. I feel the grasses and moss gently absorb the tree. I see the holes in the tree were bugs lived and birds fed and chipmunks hid. And I comforted to know that in my turn I will give back to the forest floor that has comforted me.
In the last few years I have gone through a tremendous amount of loss- both of my parents, my best friend, my uncle, and my farming mentor to cancer, and another dear friend who dedicated his life to advocating for the wellbeing of birds in an awful car accident, the end of my short-lived marriage, and even my flower farm, which brought me and everyone around me so much joy, but which I chose to step away from so that I could be present and available to better care for my mother on the other side of the continent at the end of her life. I have found through all the grief and loss that one thing that gives me hope, even when I feel so often like I am lacking the grace I would like to have, is watching the miraculous ways that friends and family members navigate through their own losses and challenges, and keep getting up the next day and trying again. The resilience of the human spirit to try again. The other thing that never ceases to give me hope is quality time in nature- hiking, swimming, camping….the beauty, tenderness, strength and resilience of the natural world always leaves me in awe, and encourages me to keep striving, growing and expanding my capacity for love and connection even in the moments where the losses have been so many and the journey so lonely that I feel shattered. So yeah- the resilience of the human soul navigating through hardship, and the power and beauty of the natural world are my biggest sources of hope these days. Great post, by the way! Thanks so much for sharing! 🙏🌱
At 72 I am learning the lessons of loss and letting go. It's a 180 turn from younger years that were about accumulating and building and chasing goals. I resonate with Chu's words about compost. It is at the most devastating times in life that I found God's nearness in life changing ways. This interview spoke to me at a deep level.
Almost ten years ago, I went through a very dark time of depression and anxiety. I was having anxiety attacks not knowing that was what was happening. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep and I couldn't get out of bed. As I was a 40 year old, single woman living on my own, my doctor insisted I stay with my mom so someone could make sure my basic needs were being met. I felt so hopeless at this time. I don't know that I was suicidal, but I kept thinking that if this was it for my life, I don't want to live anymore. Just before my mom would leave for work, I would drag myself out of bed and make a home on her couch which looked out a sliding door window. Every morning, around the exact same time, little birds would come and gather on her patio outside of the sliding door. They would search for food, sing together and entertain me for quite some time. These little birds gave me hope, hope to keeping getting up every day, to take a shower every day, get dressed and eventually feel brave enough to go outside for short walks. Those birds reminded me of the verse in the bible that talks about the birds and God saying if I love the birds, don't you realize that I love you so much more. As part of my healing, I got little birds tattooed on my inner wrist to remind me that even in the most hopeless of places, there is hope.
So beautiful. I think my "compost pile" is, ironically, the local church. After many bad experiences, I found a good one, and found hope again.
This is a treasure of a conversation. An insight into writing craft at a level we don't usually see in these virtual book tours (I would call it promo but I know both of you would cringe at the word haha). So grateful for this. I especially appreciate the kindness and art of storytelling. Like this: "If there’s anything I’d like to own, it’s not the story itself; it’s my responsibility to act in love. I believe I have some responsibility toward people who might appear in my stories. That’s why some stories are published, others really ought to remain in the text messages with close friends, and perhaps others should never be told at all."
I will also say there's an important echo here that, of course, we are all evolving in our stories and perspectives looking back on them. I have told my stories in so many different ways with so many different tones throughout my life: shame and guilt, anger and villains, too-quick redemptions and desperation to belong, despair and tragedy, easy joy and honest grief, spiritual bypassing and crushing doubt... All of it is true in the way that light reflects off a diamond, but no one "color" really names all there is to tell and all that is true, and I am grateful now I didn't make them my public identity prematurely (and hence sold them still half-unlived as a product for consumption) when it was The Thing Everyone Was Doing that could have proved my worthiness or earned me a seat at the cool kids table. Sometimes the people we think should have treated us better hold a complexity that is hard to distill down into the resolutions and takeaways and tied neat bows at the ending.
Not that our stories are ever really complete, but for the ones we choose to tell, we can hold on to them until we can be wise, kind, and responsible in our love. That shows a degree of depth as a person and maturity of faith that speaks highly of you both.
As a teenager I remember yelling at my parents one day saying, "Brianna doesn't do mud!" I now find myself on a farm, with my children running around caked in more mud than I thought imaginable. We moved to this place after losing our son almost three years ago, and it has been our holy healing ground. It was unexpected, but exactly what God knew our family needed to heal and be restored after immense trauma.
Delighted to find that my library already has this on order, so I can be the first hold!
This interview was a delight to read! I'm planning to buy the book at my local bookstore as well as making sure my library orders a copy.
My "compost pile" is a bit on the nose because it's my literal compost pile! Back in November on the morning I found out who had been elected president, as I was going through the five stages of grief, I looked out the window and saw that a neighbor had left out four big yard waste bags of Sycamore leaves. I went out in my pajamas and hauled each bag to our yard, where I dumped them on our compost pile for some much-needed brown material. The leaves, soon to be transformed into life-giving soil, reminded me that spring would come and that there would still be veggies and flowers to grow, despite everything. It helped me look to the future in a good way.