Are the days of simplicity just gone?

the monthly letter

Life in this world has changed. Life keeps changing. I suppose life is never static, but this speed of change feels new to me.

My mind sometimes flashes back to when my kids were younger — when life not only felt simpler inside my home but outside my home. Those days meld together. I can’t remember if my oldest was 12 or 8 in my memory of them riding the slides at the pool — down and back up, down and back up for hours. The year we spent Mother’s Day at the park and one of my faster bike riders got too far ahead of us, and we lost her whereabouts for thirty minutes … was that nine years ago … or five years ago?

Life held rhythm, predictability, cadence. The first summer nights at the pool with pizza, the last summer days at the pool when you used your towel for the first time all summer — there was September’s chill again. Year after year … the same.

Some of our rhythms and life-predictability faded with driver’s licenses and sports practice, and babysitting jobs. But only some.

The complications from the world outside win the tug of war with the ones inside of our home — though both are connected, both contributing to my complex state of mind. We humans are still reaching for memory-making and the beauty of family traditions, but even the purest of moments can feel laced with complexity. We host a backyard bonfire for my kids and their friends, and the news I read that morning still hovers, ominous, over my conversations and in my mind as I look across the lawn and wonder about the world into which we’re launching these teenagers.

Even as one who knows how to reach for peace — for Him, as my peace — I’m struggling to find it as these days page like a flipbook, faster than I can see any individual one. Now that the once-seemingly stable elements of our culture and predictable norms are changing faster than I can understand, I’m discovering I need a new reach for His peace.

Or maybe I need to see a new side of His peace.

The days following when I decided to follow Jesus actively — after I cracked the still-suck pages of from my first communion Bible (or was it confirmation?) and I began to read it, to write in, to think about myself inside of it — hold my most potent high school memories. I remember laying across my bed comforter (white with blue geese around the edges) with my friend Beth talking about what it would look like to share Jesus with some freshman girls we knew. I remember a conversation in hushed tones at a local coffee shop with two new friends (Deb & Rach) who also just began walking with Jesus. We shared stories of how He was moving in our lives that I still remember today. And I remember the jar I kept verses in from my friend Julie — we passed them to each other in the hall, folded in fours. I read each one as if it was a message direct from Him for that single day.

God was present in the simple, showing Himself to me in the smallest of things, tending to what I cared about at seventeen … caring for what I cared about at seventeen.

I notice that as life has gotten more complex, it’s as if I think I’ve aged out of finding God in the simple. In the quiet, my mind wants answers to navigate these murky days and help my kids navigate these murky days. And in my time spent analyzing the big picture … I think I’ve lost a little vision for what can happen in the small.

The sparrow building a nest outside my kitchen window.

The gift from a friend that arrived just as the first tears of exhaustion from the day dropped.

The seventy-degree May-sprung night under the star-spangled sky.

The first bonfire of the spring — sending out its scent for miles.

A toddler’s chubby hand full of dandelions from the soccer sidelines.

Nate’s arm around my waist in the kitchen.

The teenagers crowded around the kitchen island, each one talking louder than the other, laughing from their bellies.

I want to remember these minutes.

Lest you think I’m sending you Hallmark happiness in your inbox, I’ll say this:

To see God in the small requires an intentional eye for the small, the simple. 

Though our world is changing at a speed faster than we’ve known, God is still moving in our minutes.

The sparrow, the seedling you were sure wouldn’t sprout, the first bloom on the dogwood tree and the first time your son ties his shoes: they train us.

The world is telling you and me that there is no time to sit back, to absorb rather than respond, to think. To pray. The world (and the enemy of our souls) preaches the gospel of knowledge — knowing what’s right, knowing it fast, and speaking it out.

All the while God, unthreatened, is inviting us to the same thing He invited Peter, and James and John: to search Him out, first. To wait for … Him. To speak slow, to develop that ear to listen (to Him).

To look for Him in the minutes.

To return to those fresh days of new faith when a sudden break in a cloudy day meant a wink from God, and a Bible verse passed in the hallway could penetrate through the thick layers of thoughts and smarts … the days when we knew He cared about the lost algebra assignment or the lost car keys.

“I want more of You, Jesus. Help me to find You in my minutes.” This keep-it-simple-stupid prayer is my spring and summer plan.

It won’t make me famous. It won’t ensure favor from the world around me. It may not preach.

But it will fill my soul in private and train my eyes toward the mighty small.

{I’m writing more about my quest to find Him, again, in the simple and the small, amid a complex world over here this month.}

Until next month,

Sara