Bravely On The Way
Love Will Find You There
Here we are, at the end of our Lenten Journey—or perhaps, at the threshold of something new, as we anticipate Easter’s arrival in just a few days…
Over the past six weeks, I’ve invited you into a practice of knowing and naming—courageously seeing.
“The critical issue is allowing yourself to know what you know.”
—Bessel van der KolkThis practice is not an act of despair—this isn’t about fixating on what’s broken. Instead, it’s a pathway to seeing rightly and truly.
It turns out, that’s a hard thing to do.
The gaining of reality is, surprisingly, a complicated and winding road. Often, it’s a journey requiring more time, space, and energy than we want to give.
And yet, the payoff is remarkable. Nearly always, Love has beat us there.
So today, I offer one final invitation:
Is there a weight pressing up against your chest? A truth tugging at your sleeve? Is there something you need to see—something you need to say?
Naming isn’t a quick fix and clarity won’t erase complexity. But seeing truly—standing bravely in the bright light of reality—has a way of clearing space for what comes next.
Grief.
Beauty.
Healing.
Connection.
Go ahead, my friend, blurt it out! Love will find you there.1
I’ve parked my full essay below, in case you’d like to read it in one sitting. Or click below to reference the segments—the earlier posts with accompanying reflection questions:
Blurt It Out: A Lenten Invitation
Bravely On The Way: A Chorus of Questions
Bravely On The Way: When We Don't Know The Way
Bravely On The Way: How It Works
Bravely On The Way: The Quiet Currency of Patient Formation
Bravely On The Way: Love Will Find You There
I was sitting porchside in the adirondack, gentle breeze blowing, birdsong raining down—a near-perfect shower of sights and sounds. Blinking back the sunshine on this bright Spring Break morning, I felt the contrasts in my body: numb fingers, painful joints, chemo-induced neuropathy flaring.There are things in life that crush you, I thought.
I’d walked myself cripply onto the porch that morning, embodying a paradox: I was a deadweight inside of a beautiful spring song rising.
I knew these places; I had been next to them for years alongside others.
Crouching knee to knee in the church basement with a high school junior in my care, while she hugged the toilet and breathed her way through a panic-attack. Sipping Starbucks with a colleague when, two questions in, a torrent of tears and crushing concerns erupted—business dreams, financial solvency, and vocational identity all up for grabs. Meandering around the back of a barside patio at 2 AM, where my good bud was defensively drinking his way through the unwinding of his marriage—hangover and heartbreak, sure as the dawn.
I knew the pull of the deep—had place-shared in proximity of darkness for years, watching trouble make landfall wave by wave.
But on this bright morning, a few weeks before my 48th birthday, I felt in my own body the pull of the undertow for the first time. It scared me—this external force, so different from the buoyant spirit I’d lived in nearly all my life.
For years, I’d known a special vulnerability alongside Spring Break, Christmas Break, Summer Break—those innocuous seasonal rituals that, nonetheless, work their way into the psyche of singles and “creative family units” with the subtle, haunting message: you don’t belong. (Of course, it’s a small step from there to become a person defined by all you’re not.)
And while that threadbare narrative was surely humming somewhere in the background, I knew that today’s gloom was different—deeper.
In something I can only name as grace, I’d woken up that morning connected to one thought—or, more specifically, one character: the bleeding woman from Mark 5. Mentioned by three of the four gospel writers, none of them give her a name. In every place she appears, Jesus is on His way to something else. She haunts the narrative as someone on the margins—a “by the way character” who is both desperately stuck and seemingly forgotten.
I’d woken specifically to a phrase I had apparently memorized, however accidental: she’d spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse.
Had I lived it?
Over the past three weeks, I’d dropped nearly a thousand dollars—money I didn’t have—on medical supports that hadn’t worked. Sitting porchside on this bright morning, the one thing I knew more than the sun on my face was that instead of getting better, I was growing worse.2
Sparrows flitted about and shape-shifted into fuzzy beige circles of sound, as my eyes welled with tears and confusion, questions taking up cranky residence in every square inch of my brain. I felt the downcast spirit settle viscerally on my body. But something about being here with my blurry truth in the plain light of day—something about sitting shiva on the porch—jolted me back in time to a different moment I’d had in this very chair, nine months before my doctor had said “cancer.”
I had been hosting my friend, Mindy, from out of town. She was here for a conference, so we had barely managed early morning hallway hellos and shower logistics, but on this particular night—well past 10pm—we’d finally connected for real conversation.
Mindy was sprawled out on the porch swing, while I lounged in the adirondack, chipping at paint. Swapping tidbits from the day, we’d not been ambitious for heroic conversation that night, yet here we were, thirty minutes in, dropping into quiet candor and existential questions while the moon slowly rose.
We were talking about how confusing it is to know The Way.
We hadn’t said it like that. But I was describing another friend who’s taking brave steps of faith despite none of the math adding up.
“Like you,” I said, “he keeps walking forward into the wilderness—looking and praying and hoping for the manna.”
My friend nodded. She knew a thing or two about desert terrain and its associative scramble for the bare-bones basics.
While developing land for a retreat center, stepping into remarkable faith-driven risk, she’d made an astronomical payment to a drilling company they’d hired to dig 900ft—twice—in search of water. The result? A mockery of dust and dry ground. The expert they’d consulted on the project had “never seen it.”
In my mind’s eye, I imagined Moses—water on his mind, staff in his hand—managing his way down onto one knee, peering into the abyss of a hole deeper than the Sears Tower.
We talked about the paradox: how The Way looks and feels an awful lot like the Not Way. How crying out into the darkness sometimes does build faith, but at other times, it seems a stand-in for sheer absurdity. We discussed the fact that appearances are endlessly deceptive—how the very thing that could stretch and grow you also has the unwieldy power to blow you well past the breaking point on any given day. (And what does bravery look like in these places anyhow?)
Summer cicadas chirped loudly, joining in the chorus of questions, as Mindy and I traded sleep for camaraderie and friendship.
* * *Another beautiful morning on the porch came like a clumsy thief, Kansas City birdsong loud in my ear. I’d spent the night in solidarity with new moms and night shift workers, making our respective rounds inside of work and worry and prayer—scant sleep sneaking in sideways. Huddled over a mug of black coffee, part of my brain was chasing squirrels while the other part was meandering through the words of John 14. Then, a question from Thomas gathered up all the bits of me: “Lord, we don’t know where you are going. How can we know the way?”3
The simplicity of his words rang with clarity—resonance—and I was taken back to find Thomas alongside me, right here on the porch. (It was as if he’d been hiding out here for months—listening to questions, eavesdropping on conversations, taking in the best of the live jazz improv.) Now he turned toward me, subtle and soulful, offering up the last best-run of these early morning hours.
With each chirping loop, his words drilled a layer deeper: we don’t know where you are going; how can we know the way?
* * *My friend, Rachel, says that finding The Way is like holding onto a little baby bird: you gotta have a light touch, but if you don’t take care to squeeze in a bit, you never even had a chance. Growing up on a farm, spring kitty litters were more my training ground. Like clockwork every May, sis and I would sneak our way up into dusty sunbeams and, with rapt attention worthy of any world-class symphony, listen attentively for muted mews behind square bales. It was sacred ritual. Intuitively, we understood the stealth, steady moves required as the price of entry. But if we made enough trips up that rackety ladder, enough straw pokes into summer legs, enough hushed whispers alongside painstaking patience—inevitably, the path would give way to a glory of whiskers, worried brows, and freshly padded paws.
This work of welcoming new life—young, creaturely growth—comes with an economy all its own. The rules are different. It’s less about information or speed or scale and more about listening and patience and surrender—whole-body climbs up onto rickety hayloft ladders, precariously perched inside of the old barn.
Weeks ago, I’d scribbled down a quote—sticky words asking for another round of attention:
The process is easy to understand, but will require real effort and possibly some significant changes on your part. You’ll need emotional courage—a willingness to be fiercely real with yourself, call your sin what it is, and relentlessly fight your dragons. It is quite a painful thing to dig deep into your motives and find that damaged roots exist. It’s no fun to admit your anger, your pride, your selfishness or greed, and then have to wrestle those emotions into submission before you make a move. But this is critical for gaining the “ears to hear” that Jesus so often spoke of.4
–Terry Looper, Sacred PacePerusing the words again, I feel my allergic reaction to the religious jargon. Yet some part of me ponders this breathtaking range: Kitties in the hayloft. Dragons. Sin. Damaged roots.
I want to push back—to protest—but somewhere in my deepest self, I know that The Way is bound up with my own messy work of becoming. The weight-bearing steps, these whole body climbs, ask for new and different ways of being. And maybe, probably, the only way to get there involves a lot of dusty, pokey prodding.
* * *Easter dawns cloudy in Kansas City, a whisper.
Wide awake in the predawn hours, I check the forecast from my phone: overcast with scattered showers. I close my eyes again—a long moment of indecision—then open them and consult my bedroom clock. 6:27am. If I get up now and throw on clothes, I can be downtown by 7am—a few minutes before the non-event of this morning’s sunrise.
Having seen the better part of darkness on this night—12am, 2am, 3am, 5am—it seems the only sane choice: leave these covers and enter this day, however dimly lit.
Buildings and clouds loom as I make my way downtown, so I decide to greet the dawn from a nearby rooftop—a downtown coffee shop I’ve always loved. Why not line up one sure thing? I think, hoping for a comforting cup of coffee and trendy views of a city I love.
But a few minutes after 7am, I am peering out at a stylish downtown rooftop, cup of coffee in hand, next to a locked door and a sign that reads: “Our patio is closed for the season.”
Probably it is a small thing, but I feel the air leave my body as I jiggle the handle a final time. My spirit teeters, not unlike the coffee cup precariously perched on its saucer, as I turn and walk down one flight of stairs. My body is still wearing last night's sleepless ordeal as I find the first table next to a window and sit down.
I’m here for a sunrise vigil that never wanted to be, I think, taking first sips of coffee. But I peer out the window and look east anyway.
Bright globed interior lights glaring on windowed glass beside me are the first to meet my gaze. Squinting past these, I can barely see a monochromatic city scene through the darkish window panes. One lone red rectangle, the only pop of color, sputters, stops, and starts—a city bus, making its lazy morning rounds.
As if looking for relief, my eyes scan a triangular field of vision: coffee steam rising just past my nose, student hunched-over-computer two tables down, and, out the window to my right (every third glance), the sputtering bus, exhaust fumes trailing.
Several rounds in, I make accidental eye contact with the kid working on his project. He looks stressed, but he shoots me a smile and it feels like solidarity, a notable act of kindness on this otherwise dreary day.
I look around: the grand staircase opens up to an extensive second floor, but the place is nearly empty. We are a small, battle-worn remnant, hunkered down on the frontlines of dawn. Like that first Easter, I think, hardly a soul.
I glance back to the window and watch as the bus, two flights down, creeps curbside, coming to a halt just below us and lowering its platform, letting third-shift workers trade places with pedestrians. I imagine the kind smile I’ve just received making its way whimsically onto the face of the bus driver—a glad and surprising farewell to the night shift workers, now bounding out onto the street. This makes me think of Mary Magdalene, somehow, and her unexpected early morning encounter with a third-shift gardener. One of my favorite Easter passages5 comes to mind…
It has always struck me as remarkable that when the writers of the four Gospels come to the most important part of the story they have to tell, they tell it in whispers. The part I mean, of course, is the part about the resurrection. The Jesus who was dead is not dead anymore. He has risen. He is here. According to the Gospels there was no choir of angels to proclaim it. There was no sudden explosion of light in the sky. Not a single soul was around to see it happen. When Mary Magdalene arrived at the tomb afterward, she thought at first that it must be a gardener standing there in the shadows…
I look out the window again; it’s getting easier to see the city now—the buildings, the streets, the sky. Against a window backlit by morning, the globed reflections have faded into faint circles of pale orange.
The way the Gospel writers tell it, in other words, Jesus came back from the dead not in a blaze of glory, but more like a candle flame in the dark, flickering first in this place, then in that place, then in no place at all.
I peer into my cup—a final few sips. It’s time to call it, I think and gather my things, starting for the staircase.
If they had been making the whole thing up for the purpose of converting the world, presumably they would have described it more the way the book of Revelation describes how he will come back again at the end of time with "the armies of heaven arrayed in fine linen, white and pure" and his eyes "like a flame of fire, and on his head many diadems" (19:14, 12). But that is not the way the Gospels tell it.
I am not three steps away from my table when I’m physically stopped in my tracks by a young woman who I’ve wanted to connect with for nearly a year—we’ve traded a dozen texts in earnest efforts to land a calendar spot.
On Easter morning, she is my contrast in every way: spunky, joyful, effusive. I've always thought of her as a better version of my younger self and, since our earliest encounters, I've had an affinity for her that’s hard to explain.
They are not trying to describe it as convincingly as they can. They are trying to describe it as truthfully as they can. It was the most extraordinary thing they believed had ever happened, and yet they tell it so quietly that you have to lean close to be sure what they are telling.
She rises the minute she sees me. She’s been a stone’s throw away—maybe the entire time?
We laugh. We embrace.Since learning of my diagnosis, this young friend has not stopped surprising me with random weekday texts, putting me in the way of earnest prayers and immersive beauty: pictures of jaw-dropping slot canyons, sunbeams over mountain cliffs, flowers in full bloom. Kind questions. Simple check-ins. I pause to recall the last text she sent—a video of musicians playing streeside in her old college town. Alongside a red heart emoji, she’d written: “Here’s to beauty in the small things, beauty in people, beauty in simplicity.”
They tell it as softly as a secret, as something so precious, and holy, and fragile, and unbelievable, and true, that to tell it any other way would be somehow to dishonor it.
I am brushing back tears as she introduces me to her coffee shop companion. The three of us greet and smile, saying all-the-things. Then, just before leaving, I pull out my calendar and we finally land a spot.
To proclaim the resurrection the way they do, you would have to say it in whispers: “Christ has risen.”
Shhhhh.
Like that.
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The better portion of this phrase is a gift I received in grad school, when sis surprised me with a Nicole Nordeman CD. (To this day, I’m nostalgic for music albums I can hold in my hands!) Sis and her (then) new husband had invited me for Thanksgiving Break—our first after we lost mamma to cancer—and this particular album was perched on my pillow as a welcome gift. I stayed up late that night, awash in tears and songs, and the phrase “love will find you”—from this particular track—made its home in my heart that very night.
Author’s Note: This scene depicts a particularly difficult moment in my chemo journey. Though I’m currently trudging through a final year of cancer treatment, my long-term prognosis remains full of hope.
John 14:5: Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”
Sacred Pace, Looper, (Thomas Nelson)
Frederick Beuchner, Secrets in the Dark: The Secret in the Dark.