A few years ago, I traveled to Tuscany for a spiritual retreat with a group of fellow writers. As a late addition to the group, I was delighted to discover my friend, Christie Purifoy, was also a Tuscany-bound companion. We knew one another fairly well already, and I looked forward to spending ten days together in a state of Italy-induced bliss and deep spiritual formation.
On arrival, we quickly dispensed with the usual catch-up questions and instead talked for hours about our distinct visions for our respective work. We discovered that our written explorations of belonging, beauty, meaning, and restoration often overlapped, and where they didn’t overlap, they often complimented one another. After countless exclamations of “you too?!”, we began to dream about working together in that hazy, half-formed way dreams arrive. Which is to say, we made no plans, but simply acknowledged that someday, we hoped our work would align.
In the intervening years, we’ve spent time imagining what a collaboration would look like, and this fall, plucked from the ripe fruit of a Tuscan summer, a seed of an idea fell onto fertile soil and took root. In January, Christie and I hosted a one day retreat for women pursuing creative work at Christie’s property, the Maplehurst Black Barn. The evening before our workshop, after finalizing the details, we looked at each other and said, “We’re doing it! Our dream is coming true!” The next day, we sat beside one another in the center of Christie’s wood-clad barn. I glanced around the room at the women circled around us, while cold rain lashed against the metal roof of the barn above us, and I heard echoes of our conversations summers ago in the warm flush of a Tuscan garden.
I can tell this story with no shame over my sincere joy and near-disbelief that this dream came true because at the same time our vision came to fruition, I found myself sitting dead center in a time of extreme doubt, frustration, and regret in other areas of my work-life. While this particular plan took a few years to materialize, it seemed to arrive quickly in a way I rarely experience.
The weekend of our retreat, Christie used the word “galloping” to describe how she has experienced God moving in her life in this season of plans through the Black Barn Community, saying she often finds herself running to catch up. While I love this image and the obvious truth of it in her life, I can’t really relate. Galloping is not an experience I equate with God at work in me. Christie went on to say that the pace in which she most often experiences God at work is not galloping, but rather, glacial. Glacial–a pace, a slowing, a way of imperceptible movement within the world– with this I am intimately acquainted.
Nearly every experience of God at work in my life has felt glacial. I asked Christie which pace was the most difficult, knowing full well my own answer, and she confirmed, “The waiting. The waiting is so hard.” Whether galloping or glacial, the invitation God offers us is to live at a pace in which we are perpetually off-kilter and chronically ill-at-ease.
Later that night, as I thought about how often I find myself in a place where I feel no movement, I realized how much I’ve internalized a bias towards action. I want to see God acting visibly in my life, changing situations, removing obstacles, making things happen. But, most of the time I don’t. His work often seems invisible to me, hidden beneath the surface of an immovable ice floe.
When I mentioned these thoughts briefly on instagram, a reader asked how we learn to live in these glacial times. While I don’t have many answers, I do see where I’ve learned a few ways of coping with these seasons of silence even in my frustration.
Faithful movement:
I’ve found that unseen movement on God’s part, does not lead to unseen movement on mine. Faithfulness to show up, and commit to the work I feel called to do (whether in parenting, developing relationships, writing regularly, or teaching with heart) is essential to moving forward, regardless of pace.
Remember God:
I’ve also found that it’s critical for me to cultivate a mindset of remembrance. So often in scripture, God tells his people to remember, to tell the old stories of his faithfulness, to recall his great acts, to repeat over and over the truth of his goodness. This practice of telling myself the stories of his faithfulness helps me re-orient my mind to where God has already been at work in my life.
Feast on Scripture:
When it’s difficult for me to remember the truth of God at work in my own life, I return to God’s promises in scripture. I return to Abraham and Sarah, the Israelites and their desert wandering, barren Hannah, or David the shepherd-king. I return to Anna and Simeon’s lifelong wait for the Messiah, the blind man beside the pool of Siloam, and the disciples who waited with anticipation for the second coming of Jesus. We still wait. We still wonder. When will he come again?
I grasp onto past victories and future promises in the glacial times of waiting, and they keep me alive to hope. I would love to enter a season of running to catch up with God’s movement in my life, but until then, I move, I remember, I feast, I wait.
