Picking Raspberries: A Summer of Abundance

Have you ever picked raspberries? We don’t live close to any wild raspberry bushes, but when we visited friends in the UK years back, they had raspberries growing in their backyard. The home they were renting had been built on land that was previously been part of a co-op garden, and although they didn’t tend the plants, raspberries still grew by the hundreds every summer.

Receiving God's Abundance with thankfulness! www.annswindell.com

We woke up on those first jet-lagged days of our time in England and found the kids in the backyard on a mini-trampoline. They begged us to help ourselves to the raspberries weighing the bushes down; there were too many to pick and the fruit often went bad before all could be picked or even eaten. We happily obliged.

Picking raspberries is a delicate process. The berries are often tucked in the bushes, and it easy to be pricked by the plant, a member of the rose family and full of tiny thorns. But picking the berries is ultimately a delicate process because the raspberries themselves are fragile. Pull too hard on a berry and the tiny cluster of drupelets–those little pods of juice–crush under the weight of your fingers and stain them a cherry red. Pull too gently and the berry refuses to part from its core.

The raspberries we picked in England tasted like sunshine and petals, like honeycombs and perfume. They were misshapen and lumpy, but their flavor was sweet and heady and full. And they came in a seemingly endless supply; every morning there were new berries big enough to be picked. We never bothered to wash them; they went into our mouths or a bowl on the table. I remember the richness I felt that summer, waking to a backyard full of raspberries I had never labored to plant. They were a profuse bounty to us, free and abundant. They were a gift.

This summer has felt like that–like a summer of picking raspberries we never planted. It has been a summer full of change for our family; we left a stable life in Chicagoland last month, and in a handful of days, we are moving to our new city and staring a whole new season of life. We have traveled this summer, we have lived with family, we have talked and dreamed and waited and prayed. And miraculously–I use that word intentionally and gratefully–God has provided for us in every way imaginable.

Because so many things this summer have felt fragile–and not just financially. The change of leaving our community and home, the tenderness of starting over again, the risk of saying yes to something totally new and unknown–these are fragile, breakable things. And I have felt my own flesh–those thorns of fear and anxiety and frustration–popping up in the midst of the fruit God is seeking to grow in me. 

But God is a master gardener. And he has gently blossomed the fruitfulness of his kindness and provision in our lives this summer, bringing the best out of what is difficult without crushing me in the process.

God will blossom fruitfulness in our lives, bringing the best out of what is difficult without crushing us in the process. Share on X

And although he didn’t have to do any of these things for us, as he has been asking me to trust him more, God has also taken care of us in abundant, beautiful ways. Our house sold without issue or hiccup. Our church sent us out graciously and generously. An unexpected bill was waived. A writing project came in. My husband was offered a wonderful job. Our apartment in our new city is wonderful and affordable–and close to family. We got to go on a wonderful vacation that we hardly had to pay for. Gifts and gifts and gifts, one piled atop another, generous abundance from a Father who sees us and knows our needs–and our hearts. I have been blown away and humbled by His provision in our lives this summer. At the start of it, we didn’t know where the money we needed would come from. Now, I’m looking back at the past three months, amazed by God’s generosity toward us. I shouldn’t be surprised, I know. This summer has been not a whisper but a shout from the Lord–it has been a reminder that He is in control, and that He is good.

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God is good and He does good. And had all of these things not come to pass this summer, God would ever remain good. Still, I am grateful–so deeply grateful–for this summer of provision. He is changing me, softening my edges and bearing fruit in me that I can’t bear on my own. He has carried us and cared for us in every imaginable way.

I woke up to a garden full of raspberries this summer, unexpected gifts given by his hand. I am so thankful.

Saying No to Being Busy, Saying Yes to Resting in God

The river here is humming. Steady, even, strong. We are in the mountains of Colorado on a family vacation, and in my hours on the back deck, I am attending to that hum. I am not just hearing, I am listening. And in the quiet of listening to the river, I am tuning in again to my heart. There is a lot going on there–many thoughts and things that have not had time to surface because of the constant pace of work and doing that fill my days.

Saying No to Being Busy, Saying Yes to Trusting God.  www.annswindell.com

We’re busy, aren’t we? We are a culture that values busyness, even if it’s not necessarily productive. I wear it as a badge of pride sometimes–I’m busy. The insinuation is that I’m busy doing important things. Really, a lot of times I’m so busy that instead of doing the important things in life I’m missing the important things.

I'm so busy that instead of doing the important things in life I'm missing the important things. Share on X

But here in the mountains, where the internet connection is spotty and the schedule is loose (our big daily items: hiking and napping), I’m slowing down. And I’m reflecting on how I’ve been living.

It’s been a long time since I’ve really taken time off. I don’t say that in pitying tone; I have loved my work for the last years and I have loved the writing projects that have filled up the margin that I’ve had. But this month, I’ve stepped back from working and deadline-based writing. I’ve been re-learning how to rest.

I’ll be honest; it’s not easy for me to really slow down and rest. I like feeling busy and I like having projects to work on. But this past month has been full of huge transitions for our family, and my soul has needed the time to reflect. I have needed to pull back and soak in the relationships and the days that are right in front of me. Everything is changing. These are good changes for our family, but I won’t get these days back. I want to live them fully. I want to be attentive to the live I am living right now.

I don’t want to spend my life busy with things that aren’t the most important. I don’t want to attend to the vibrations of my phone and my email and miss my daughter’s fascination with Legos or the passing whistle of hummingbirds mere feet from my eyes.

And so: God is using my time on the deck to remind me to slow down and tune in to His heart above all.

It’s the swell of summer: the river below the deck is high and full and fast. I have spent the mornings on the deck, praying and reading Scripture and marveling at how quickly the river passes me by. The water stops for no one and for nothing. It passes over and around rock, carries fish in its ribboning swirl, and stops for no man. It is a powerful force.

And I can’t do anything to change that river. No matter how much I do, my own strength could never stop that river or slow it’s flowing down, down to an end I cannot see. From above, on the deck, it’s so clear to me that that river is unstoppable, except by One much greater than me. He can stop those waves instantly, if he chooses. I cannot.

Busyness keeps my head down and keeps me from getting a perspective where I can really see the state of things. It keeps me mired in the tyranny of the urgent rather than living for what is truly important. It keeps me from seeing the unchanging current of the river, and it gives me the fleeting illusion that I can change things if I just work harder or longer or do something else.

The river reminds me: there is only One–Christ himself–who can change the course of things. My responsibility is to stay close to him, to follow him, to obey him. When I do that, he will guide and lead the river of my life. I don’t have to try to force the stream somewhere new. All of my busyness cannot change anything; one word from His mouth can.

All of my busyness cannot change anything; one word from Christ's mouth can. Share on X

So. I trust in him. I let him be in control. I stay faithful. If that leads to busyness, ok. But I’m going to seek to stay away from being busy just for the sake of trying to feel like what I’m doing is important. He already gave my life the highest value. He did the same for you. We don’t have to stay busy to be living a purposeful, important life. We are important because of Christ’s love and sacrifice for us.

Tomorrow, we’re going whitewater rafting. I’m excited to see where the river takes me. I won’t be in control, but I’ll be riding in the waves who are controlled by the One who is.

My Daughter, the Mirror, and Me: Healthy Body Image for Both of Us

My newest piece is up at Today’s Christian Woman today; I would love for you to read the entire article here!

Developing a Healthy Body image in my daughter. So important!

My daughter loves seeing herself in the mirror, drawn to her parallel image like a magnet. Ever since she has been old enough to recognize her reflection in the glass, she has smiled, giggled, and reached out for herself. It’s a beautiful sight. As one who has fought my own reflection in the mirror, I’m starting to understand these moments as what they truly are: sacred.

Ella is not yet two years old. Her belly is as round as a ball after each meal, and her legs still carry the remnants of baby pudge. She is stretching out, but she is still a little bit baby—a little bit soft. And she adores herself. Now that she’s walking, running, and trying to jump, she will run to the full-length mirror in our room and stand in front of it, watching herself as she moves. She usually dances and shakes her head, giggling at herself. More than once, I have caught myself with tears in my eyes and have prayed that she would always delight in her body like this.

It’s been many years since I have been able to do the same. That freedom, that lack of self-consciousness, that complete joy in her own reflection—that is an experience that I don’t want her to lose. But her growing-up years will take place in a culture that is trying to tell her she has nothing to delight in when she looks in the mirror.

A Lost Freedom

Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I looked in the mirror with pure delight. I do like myself, and I think that I have a healthy self-image. I don’t loathe my body or avoid mirrors, but even when I’m feeling fit and my clothes enhance my figure, I tend to focus on the aspects of my body that I don’t love. I focus on my rounding tummy, the girth of my thighs, the shortness of my eyelashes. And I try to do the work of covering up so as to not draw attention to those parts of my body. I might like how I look, but I rarely completely love what I see.

It’s been this way, to various degrees, since elementary school, when one of my female classmates told me that I had “big thighs.” After that, life was never the same.

I’m not being dramatic. Up until that moment, I had never even considered the size of my thighs. I knew that I had a body and that other people had bodies, but I didn’t consider how my body looked compared to theirs. I just knew that my legs worked well and that they helped me jump when I played basketball—that was all I cared about.

But when my classmate told me that she thought my thighs were big, I started looking at the size of my legs in light of the size of other girls’ legs. I discovered the ugly game of comparison. I shot up quickly in junior high and had knobby knees, but I didn’t develop any discernable bustline until years after many of my peers had needed actual bras. And although I was a bit gangly, I always carried a little weight in my tummy. It seemed that I would never have the perfect body I saw in commercials and magazines.

Nearly two decades later, I know that our culture’s interpretation of the “perfect” body is impossible—at least for me. And I really am okay with that. I’m not always thrilled, but I’ve made peace with my body. It does many things nearly perfectly—I can walk, even run, in this body. I have been able to carry a child. I can talk, and learn, and eat, and smile. These are amazing, nearly-perfect things. And I’m grateful.

Would I be happy if my metabolism was a bit faster? Probably. Would I like it if I had naturally smaller thighs? Sure. But the peace that I’ve gained with my body over these years since elementary school has been hard-won. And that’s why seeing Ella dancing in front of the mirror has both inspired and challenged me.

What She’s Teaching Me

My daughter has no sense of culturally imposed standards of beauty. She rejoices in her own reflection because she has no reason to not like herself; everyone in her life delights in her, and tells her so. Why would she not smile at her own face when she receives smiles on every side?

And this is what I always want her to have: encouragement about her body and praise regarding her internal—and external—beauty. Because she is beautiful. She is beautiful because the Creator of the heavens and the earth knit her together and delights in her (Psalm 139). He wove her every cell together when she was inside me. And still, as the one who holds all things together, he is remaking her, cell by cell, every day (Colossians 1:17). She is a wonder. She should be thrilled when she looks in the mirror! She’s a miracle!

Ella’s wonder with herself is calling me to remember that I, too, am a wonder. My working cells, my breathing lungs, my functioning brain—what a wonder I am! My thighs, knit together by a loving God. My tummy, sustained by an awesome Creator. What a wonder I am!

What a wonder you are! What a miracle, really, that any of us are here, living, gasping, hoping, loving, and speaking. All is wonder, truly.

Read the rest of the article here, at Today’s Christian Woman!

Meeting My Hero: Elisabeth Elliot

After my freshman year in college, I went to England for seven weeks through a study abroad program. Our first week during the trip was spent in London, and on Sunday most of us went to a small church that one of our professors recommended. It was a church built out of grey stone, cool on the inside and airy.

Meeting Elisabeth Elliot-Grace Unfolded

During the service, the pastor announced that they had a guest speaker present, an American woman who would be sharing her testimony with the congregation. She had been a missionary for many years, he noted, and she had lost her first husband as a result of such missionary work. The woman he was introducing was Elisabeth Elliot.

I nearly fell out of the pew. During my first year in college, Elisabeth Elliot had become a literary mentor to me through her book Passion and Purity. I read about her life with fascination and awe, as well as with a sense of closeness—years before, she had been a student at the college I was attending, and while I read the book I sat in some of of the same places she described within her pages.

This book challenged and touched me for many reasons, one of which was that it is a book about Elisabeth’s love story with Jim Elliot, how the two fell in love and then surrendered this love to the Lord for five years until they were married. There were months when the two could not communicate, years when they only saw one another for a few days at a time. Their story of God’s provision and their commitment to purity is truly incredible; their love is the stuff of fairy tales.

Elisabeth’s life, however, has not been a fairy tale. Less that two and a half years after their marriage in 1953, Jim and four other men went to share the Gospel with the Auca people, a native tribe in Ecuador. All five men were speared to death, and Elisabeth was left as a single mother. Instead of folding into herself, however, Elisabeth soon took her young daughter and went back to the jungle, back to the same Auca tribe that had killed her husband. She went to share the Gospel with them, and through her strength, courage and faithfulness to the vision she believed God had given to her a Jim, many in the tribe of self-proclaimed killers came to faith in Christ and gave up their murderous ways.

Sitting in that church in England, I was overwhelmed with emotion as I heard her speak about her life and faith in Christ. I could not believe that it was actually Elisabeth Elliot standing 15 feet in front of me—this woman whose words has shaped me so deeply was in the same room! Later, I asked for her signature in one of her books and smiled at this living hero across from me. I still don’t know why she was at that small church in England on the one particular Sunday when I happened to be across the world in the same church. Whatever the reason, I know that morning was a gift.

Elisabeth has entered into glory, now. She is with Jesus, her greatest prize.

Although she wrote many books and spoke across the world, Elisabeth Elliot was not flashy, was not self-focused and she did not even have an “issue” that she campaigned for—hers was a message of a God who is faithful, regardless of the circumstances. In her own circumstances of losing Jim to Auca spears and her second husband to cancer, she stayed the course and lived as a testimony of Christ’s sufficiency in a world that increasingly tells us otherwise. In Passion and Purity, she asks herself:

“…The question to precede all others, which finally determines the course of our lives is, What do I really want? Was it to love what God commands…and to desire what He promises? Did I want what I wanted, or did I want what He wanted, no matter what it might cost?” (Passion and Purity, 41)

Elisabeth Elliot decided, again and again, that she wanted what God wanted, no matter what the cost. Her life is a deep witness to God’s ability to work in a woman completely surrendered to Him.

I am so thankful for her life, and for that brief moment in England when I heard her voice with my own ears. I look forward to seeing her again.

Taking Care of Each Other

I’m honored to be writing for (in)courage today, sharing my heart about friendship and learning to receive care from those who love us. The article starts below, but you can link straight to (in)courage here!

Our value is not found in what we do but in  whom we belong to. www.annswindell.com

It had been a particularly difficult week, and after a short trip to visit my parents, I was dreading the return to “real life”—a life that I loved but one that currently felt like more than I could handle. We were trying to get our house on the market—a house we would already be losing money on—and had experienced multiple setbacks. I had been sick, the bitterly cold winter was relentless, and my daughter was having trouble sleeping. I was tired, emotionally shot, and worried about our finances with the house.

Still, I had to return to my life, difficult or not. But when I turned the key to our front door, what I found surprised me. It was cleaner than I’d left it! I opened a card on the table and discovered why: my friend Katie had cleaned, left dinner in the fridge, and stuck notes on surfaces throughout the house—notes that reminded me of my value in Christ and His love for me.

I was overwhelmed.

Because I felt—how else can I say it?—I felt taken care of. There is no other way to articulate why Katie’s actions meant so much to me. She had cleaned my house—the house I felt responsible to clean. She had provided dinner for my family—the meal I felt responsible to cook. And she had reminded me that my value was not in what I did, but in whose I was—Christ’s.

As a wife, mom, and teacher, most of my days are spent taking care of others. I rub backs, prepare meals, kiss cheeks, tie shoes, wash dishes, mentor students, write checks, grade papers and give lectures—along with a hundred other things. I can guess that you do numerous things, too. You may not be grading papers or preparing meals, but you’re probably caring for others somehow. You’re probably taking care of those around you.

I think that, as women, we are used to being the nurturers, the ones who take care of others.

But how often do we let others take care of us? How often do we ask others to take care of us?

Please click over and read the rest of the article here, at (in)courage! You can also sign up here to receive free daily encouragement from the writers of (in)courage, right in your inbox! 

 

When Life is Too Hard and Too Much

The last seven days have been, I think, perhaps seven of the hardest consecutive days in my life. I imagine there will be harder days ahead, and I trust that there will be grace and energy for those days. But I cannot think about those days now. I think about women who walk through much worse than I have and much less than I have, and I have learned that comparison is a trap and a lie. We all walk with our own pain, and no one knows the depth of that pain except for Christ himself.

When life is too hard, Jesus will meet you there. More at www.annswindell.com

The short of our long week is that we were all very sick, and my husband was so sick that I honestly thought, at one point, that I might be losing him.

It has been hard. It has felt too hard. It would have been a hard week if sickness was the only thing we were walking through, but it has also been hard because this upheaval has come in the middle of everything else changing–the last week of my beloved job, our send-off at church, multiple house showings, and interviewing for new jobs in a new city. I have so many emotions bubbling and so many thoughts swirling just because we are moving away from home. But with the reality of life and death on the table, things have felt, just, too much.

And I have prayed and wept and stared at the darkness in the night. It has been too much. I am coming to find that all of life is too much for me. The weight of raising children in this difficult world? Too much. The stress of doing any job with meaning and purpose? Too much. The work of keeping a marriage vibrant and beautiful in trying seasons? Too much.

All of it. Too much.

I cannot carry any of it. At the end of the day–even at the beginning of it–I am weak. I am unable to do anything truly good on my own.

But my hope for this past week–my hope for any week, really–has been this:

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. [Romans 5:6-8]

I never have to be strong for Christ to love me, to save me, to heal me and help me. The Truth whispers to my heart that God’s power is actually, surprisingly, drawn to weakness. He loves working through weakness. He loves being with me and meeting me in those places where I feel broken and unable to move forward. He is with me. He is enough.

I never have to be strong for Christ to love me, to save me, to heal me and help me. Share on X

He loves doing the same for you. If you feel tired and worn down and like life is too hard and too much, his love and presence is enough for you. He is with you. You are not alone. 

I have found such peace in Jesus in these hard days. Not because he is giving me answers or perfect circumstances, but because he is giving me more of himself. More of his presence. More of his hope. And I am experiencing, again, that He is enough. He makes what feels too hard a load that I can carry, because he shoulders it with me. He makes what feels like too much a lighter weight, because he carries it for me. 

He makes what feels too hard a load that I can carry, because he shoulders it with me. Share on X

I threw up my hands this week, in worship and in sorrow. Both are gifts to Jesus, because he knows the cost of my pain.

And he knows the cost of your pain; he knows what is too hard and too much for you. It doesn’t matter if what you’re going through is easier for others. He understands. It is hard. It is too much.

And yet, Jesus is greater. He is kinder. And He is enough.  Throw your hands up in your suffering and in your worship, and let Jesus meet you in that place with his Word and his presence and his love.

He is with you. You are not alone. He who has already died for us in our weakness–He is the same one who will also give us what we need to walk through another day, another week, another year. He will give us more of himself. And that is enough.

May you know his presence and his peace this week. May you know his love.