Drawn to the Small Light (Advent 2023)

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Several years ago, I began doing weekly writings specifically for Advent, and I really enjoyed what came to feel like a holy practice in the process of it. However, I have not felt led in that direction this year. Instead, I find that I have a deep calling and draw towards candles in this darkening fall and oncoming winter.

I have artificial candles on my porch, on my staircase, on the mantle in the living room, all timed to turn on as the sun goes down. I light real, scented candles as I sit in the living room, filling the downstairs of my house with the aroma of cranberries, apples, and spices and my soul with the peace that accompanies such scents and their attached memories. Even as I grade assessment and essays, I can be wrapped in this sensory comfort of light and scent.

I long for candles’ flicker, giving softening, golden light to a world that is often so very harsh. I want their gentleness, their ability to move with changes in the air. The flames waver and move with the current changes but do not go out unless the air is overly-harsh or forceful. I love a candle’s warmth, its taking-in of oxygen and giving-back of heat.

I love writing with firelight splashing over the pages of my notebook or journal. It feels as though the warmth of the flame is transferred to my pen, making my writing softer, kinder, perhaps more empathetic.

As I move through this Advent and Christmas season, I think I want to be more like a candle flame: giving light, warmth, and comfort where I can. I do not have to blaze and be so big as to be seen by and serve everyone. I can be small and still do good, for myself and others.

I may not reach all of my students, but I may be of comfort and support to one.

I may not get Christmas cards to everyone but I might just send one to someone who deeply needs the reminder that they are cared for.

I may not be able to find the “right” gift, but I may be able to gift my time and attention to a dear one at the right time.

I can be small and still be good. And so can you, Dear Reader. I love seeing your beautiful candle light.

In Those Dark and Messy Places

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My favorite children’s book about God is It Will Be Okay by Lysa TerKeurst. I have lost track of how many times I have read (and cried over) this book to my beloved child (and to myself) or how many times I have used its words to reassure them, “It will be okay, Little Seed.”

In the story, a little seed and a little fox become friends, living simple, happy lives in the farmer’s dusty shed and spending every day together. One day, the farmer comes along and takes Little Seed away for planting. He reassures the seed, as he presses it into the dirt, that he has a plan for it. Little Fox goes looking for Little Seed, remaining by their friend’s side in that dark and messy place, reminding them that they had not been abandoned. “It will be okay, Little Seed.” The Farmer had a plan.

When things get hard in life now, I often find myself repeating those lovely reassurances:

“It will be okay, Little Seed.”

“The Farmer is good and the Farmer is kind and He is always watching over us, even when we don’t know it.”

When my dear little Hero is frustrated with friend-drama at school: “It will be okay, Little Seed.”

When I am exhausted from life, I gently remind myself that “the Father is good and the Father is kind”.

It will be okay.

It may not be okay right now. This moment may be painful or heavy. But it will be okay. You have not been abandoned, and “Ugh” is still a prayer (Coffee with Jesus).

Luke 6:21b says, “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”

Matthew 5:4 likewise assures us, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

In His goodness and kindness, God has placed people in your life who will be that help, that comfort, that watching over. People who will also hear your “Ugh!” prayer and surround you with their love and support in those dark and messy moments. They are there, I promise.

You are not alone.

You have not been abandoned.

It will be okay.

Yellow: The Golden Hue of my Soul

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I love yellow! It is honestly one of my favorite colors, as a concept as well as to wear. I once dressed in only yellow for an entire week at work just to see if I could do it and because my spirits needed that tangible, sunshiny lift. I feel like honey or sunshine, warm like sunflower.

The other day, I donned a pretty yellow-gingham dress for a graduation party. As I popped into a store on the way, a woman’s voice called out from a passing car (it took me a minute to realize that she was talking to me) and declared, “You are KILLING IT in that dress! You look so pretty!” I gave her a smile and a thank-you-so-much before continuing into the store. Later that same day, as I left the grad party, one of the senior’s family members asked if I was one of the graduates, and I chuckled.

“I’m one of the former teachers.”

And she proceeded to exclaim her shock and assumption that I was one of the seniors. That was a nice yellow feeling: being mistaken for someone 22 years my junior.

Yellow makes me feel bright and lovely. It makes me feel as though I am walking sunshine and a living encouragement. Yellow makes my skin look golden honey or buttered. As summer gets underway, I want to be that golden yellow of basking in the good. I want to be that glow that welcomes others to rest and peace comfort. I want to be that warm place where others feel safe, that soft light that soothes the spirit.

Dear God,

Please let me be that golden warmth that is suffused with and reflect your heart and love for others. May this be a summer of love indeed. May I raise the spirits of others and make them feel loved and welcomed.

Planning the Next Step

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“I have a plan.”

It may not seem like much but being able to say those words when things get rough is a help to me. When things are scary or money is tight, being able to look at what is going on and what I have to work with and say “I’ve got a plan” actually makes it easier for me to say what is wrong. I am not a person who likes to admit when things are hard or difficult. To me, admitting that means I screwed up somewhere along the way. My planning wasn’t perfect; I did not account for every contingency like I “should have”. “Should” is my four-letter word. I curse myself with “should” and “should have”.

I should have thought of that.

I should have planned better.

I should have seen that coming.

I should have said/done this instead.

I should have known better.

This is my constant battle, even now at forty. I have let go of some “shoulds” but others, particularly those shoulds that come with what I have deemed my responsibilities, those are much harder to vanquish. But this…this is one weapon that I do have in my arsenal.

“I have a plan.”

Yes, things are tight right now but I have a plan to help make our meal and oil stretch.

No, we did not expect this, but I have plan for us to get through it.

Yes, this will set my original plan back a bit but it can work; it just needs patience and consistency.

I am so thankful that God has given me this rope to hold on to. All my life, I have been a planner, a 100-steps-aheader, a see-the-end-of-the-road-before-I-starter. Sometimes it leads me to trip into overthinking and spiraling, but, in times such as these…I can more readily see why it was built into me from my mother’s foundation and nurtured by natural inclination.

It’s God’s hand on my shoulder reminding me, “I have a plan, sweetheart. Here’s what you can do with what you have in the meantime.”

Is it easy? No. Is it fun? Absolutely not. But it can be done. It takes grit, creativity, and a teeth-clenched determination to say “not right now” to all I want in the world sometimes…but it can be done.

I have a plan.

So when you are in those hard places, those scary places where you just don’t know how you will get through…maybe this might work for you, too, Dear Reader. Maybe it might be just 10% of a plan but nonetheless that is a start! It can be the lamplight thrown on the very next step.

Don’t be afraid to have a cry if you need, to then take in that deep breath, and ask God to show you what the plan is. It may not be perfect, it may not be easy, but you can do it, even if you need to pause every now and again to cry and breathe. I believe you can. I have faith in you.

On Turning Forty

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Today is my 40th(!) birthday, hence the title. And, strange though it may sound, I have been looking forward to this. I have had a great anticipation for this birthday, so much so that I cannot really explain it, even to myself, but it is true. It feels like I am waking up on Christmas morning, all that excitement bundled up at the base of my spine, just ready to race up it and set me spinning.

It has been a lovely weekend of celebration, friends, messages, and sweet gifts. My dear ones have been generous and kind, and I have greatly enjoyed myself. Honestly, it is a gift merely to be able to do that: enjoy myself. It has been several months of struggle on that front, and to be at a point where I can actually enjoy a night out with zero guilt is the greatest gift. I am so thankful to God for that. He’s led me to people who can help me with my struggles, and I praise Him for that faithfulness and care.

Forty feels sweet, feels powerful, feels true in a way that I do not have adequate vocabulary to describe or explain (imagine such a thing: me without words!). This weekend, for instance, I found myself utterly fascinated with one coiling curl of my hair that is completely threaded through with silver from root to ends. I love it! I love the shock of tinsel amidst my dark hair, a bright grey which actually has been mistaken for glitter before by strangers.

As I step into forty, I feel as though I want to hold it close. I am at a point in my life where I acknowledge my own deep humanity. I am not every woman; it’s not all in me. I need help, and I am seeking it. I need encouragement and affirmation, and I am praying and asking for it. I am needing time with people, and I am making an effort to create space for that. I want to spend my forties becoming more and more the woman I truly want and who God has designed for me to be. I want to be more and more myself and proudly so. I want to do what makes me feel healthy and strong and right. I want to be creative and honest and indulge in the beauty of others’ imagination and thoughts.

As I head into my forties, I am looking forward to being completely, utterly, unabashedly me.

Winter’s Restorative Quiet

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Recent snowy weather lined up with the timing for our annual big winter storm, and, honestly, I had been looking forward to it. I have come to love those days of forced slowing down, forced quietude. When Winter settles its blanket heavily over everyone and everything, keeping us in and still.

Winter has a quality of serenity all its own. There is a profundity to winter-quiet, with all the discernible and the subsonic buzz of the growing and harvesting seasons dampened and silenced. It’s a clear sort of quiet instead of a heavy one, as if something has been released instead of taken on. That silence is something I could listen to for minutes at a time, just standing in the cold and soaking the calm into my hurried, harried soul.

I am reaching for quiet in these days of 2023. Perhaps my word for the year has snuck up on me, in fact. But, yes, I have found myself reaching for it, both physically and otherwise. I am rediscovering the joy of a seat, a blanket, a good cup of coffee, and a book. I am reacquainting myself with my pen and a new journal. I am reaching for lulled, slowed moments over my lunch time. I am longing for soft silence. I feel it in my sigh when I step into my home at the end of the day and in the longing glances I cast towards my couch.

I feel it in the loveliness of my soul’s calm in the soft ambiance of rain falling outside, which I crack open the patio door to listen to. I can feel it in the warmth of a fireplace at my back, in my smile at finishing a book, something that has been painfully infrequent in recent years.

My hands are stretched out for quiet this year. Often with repose comes rest, but rest only is not what I find I am wanting. I am desperate for stillness and peace, for the space to let my imagination roam and bloom. I want the stillness of hours, of comfort, of escape, of heart-tending. So I shall sink into winter-quiet and soak it into my bones before the world stirs and wakes again. Though I cannot hibernate, I can certainly engaged in wintering.

A Letter to Becky Chambers

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Dear Ms. Chambers,

I do not know if I will ever find the words to adequately thank you. Even now they twist and twirl around my fingers, dancing around the keyboard, all too eager to have their say. But I will try to start with the most important ones.

Thank you! Thank you for Sibling Dex and Mosscap! I have not felt as seen as I did peering into Dex’s tender, aching soul. And I don’t mean tender as in “delicate” but as in sensitive from way too much chafing/bruising/strain. I know their struggle with their purpose versus their talent, for it is my very own. I am hip-deep in it, wrestling to figure out my steps between what I am good at and what I want to do with my life.

There were many moments in A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy when I would read a paragraph or even single line and then have to put your lovely books down to just cry. You put words and honest yearning to a question that I have held in the depths of myself for years, fearing all it would be was misunderstood if I voiced it. Seeing that yearning and struggle embodied in Dex pierced my heart and I felt so known. This was also true when you wrote about the necessity of comfort and rest. I am a teacher. My exhaustion feels constant and bone-deep, as I am not often one to extend the gift of rest to myself. But your kind yet honest words wrung tears from me at that reassuring reprimand that without comfort and rest we cannot be successful physically (constructs) or mentally (unraveling mysteries).

For the past few months, I have held your little books close, thumbing through pages I have marked for those dear words, gentle reminders, and the kind touches of the characters. The moments of honest and encouragement between Dex and Mosscap stay with me, how they hold space for and often hold each other without ever touching. How you have held me as a friend without ever knowing who I am.

Thank you for the smiles, the tears, the laughs, and the tender touches you’ve lain upon my heart and soul through this books, Ms. Chambers. I cannot express my gratitude enough. I cannot wait for the next installment and, in the between time, I will undoubtedly return to your sweet stories to be encouraged and strengthened.

Blessings on you,

Melissa Snyder

Book Review: Marmee by Sarah Miller

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I cannot explain how happy this book makes me! Little Women is, far and away, my favorite novel and has been for the majority of my life. I have consumed this story in a myriad of different forms and have had so many surprising parallels between my own life and that of Jo March’s fictional one. But this book…oh, this book!

Here is our beloved Marmee’s soul laid out in her own journal entries. It was so brilliant to read the familiar plot points of Little Women but from Marmee’s particular perspective with all the hidden details that often fill a mother’s heart and mind. We are familiar with the Marmee who admitted to her spitting-image daughter Jo about her own struggles with her temper and indignation at the unfairness and injustices of the world. Furthermore, in this book, Miller expands upon those personal struggles and her journey through them and the life her beliefs and actions have built for her girls, her “little women”. Miller presents Margaret March as thoroughly human — loving, longing, struggling, working, and yearning. In the midst of “hoping and keeping busy”, we see the true needs of a woman, mother, wife, and friend presented in honest relief. Now a Marmee myself, I cried at portions, feeling indelibly seen and known in that particular capacity by this best of stories.

Before, I have always identified with Jo, but here in Miller’s well-researched and heartfully-rendered portrait, I blessedly saw my own heart reflected back at me in Marmee’s vulnerable humanity and the loving work of her life. I found myself yearning to be as lucky as John Brooke or Laurie or Birte Hummel, to be drawn into the warm circle of Marmee’s life.

It is also not only Marmee’s portrait that has been filled out by Miller’s pen. Grandfather Lawrence becomes a deeply-loving father figure that is sorely-needed, John Brooke a man thoroughly deserving of Meg and the Marches’ love (no matter Jo’s young protestations), and the Hummel family comes to rich life as full characters instead of a mere vehicle for lessons in kindness and sacrifice.

While Miller does indeed make some changes to this well-worn story, I found none of them to be detractors or detrimental to the effect of this gorgeous story. It is more than just a retelling, it is a new side of the much-beloved story of the March Family. Miller has drawn the stitches between the fictional Marches and the humanly real Alcotts tighter and embroidered them with stunning flourishes of growth, love, faith, hard work, and hope. I could not have asked for or even dreamed of a better novel with which to begin 2023. It has done my heart and soul unspeakable good and has become one that I will undoubtedly recommend over and over again. Thank you, Sarah Miller, for all your hope and hard work in producing a book of such feeling and skill. Thank you for giving me a story that shall find its way into my own Marmee’s hands as well as next to my childhood and anniversary editions of Little Women, in pride of place among my most cherished volumes. A place among my treasures, for that is what it is: a treasure.

Between the Years

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A few days ago, a neighbor and dear friend posted about the German phrase “Zwischen den Jahren”, which translates to “between the years”. It speaks to the state of being represented by that nebulous time between Christmas and New Years. As she puts it, “Time stops at Christmas, continues in slow motion and picks back up in January. It’s a time to stay in, take off work if you can, reflect, be lazy, eat leftovers, read all the new books all day and whatever else helps you reset”. That honestly sounds pretty amazing and special right now. I rather wish we all adopted this attitude of rest, and I am grateful to have the space today and this past week for largely that.

I’ve fallen in love with the Danish concept of hygge over the past few years and the state of Zwischen den Jahren fits so beautifully as a practice that I’ve felt my heart latch onto it almost immediately. As we prepare to big 2022 farewell, I shall spend today with my blankets, fireplace, stacks of books and journals, and the quiet of stillness. I know that I deeply need time like that: moments where I can just be or indulge in lovely things that feed my soul. Yesterday morning, it was coffee and episodes of season 2 of Sanditon that I have been putting off. I am often hard-pressed, as you know, to allow myself time to rest. But learning that stopping and slowing down after the holidays to allow oneself to recover is not just wishful thinking but the practice of an entire country makes it somehow more palpable, even attainable.

I have worked hard to make this holiday special for my dear ones as I also take care of necessities and work. As 2022 ends, though, I want to see it out with gentle reflection and handling of myself, my heart, and my tender soul. I want to sink deep into Zwischen den Jahren, drawing hygge close, and giving myself the rest and comfort I deserve.

And I hope you gift yourself so, too. Happy New Year, Friendly Readers. May it be blest.

“Without constructs, you will unravel few mysteries. Without knowledge of the mysteries, your constructs will fail. These pursuits are what make us, but without comfort, you will lack the strength to sustain either.”
― Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

When Advent Doesn’t Go As Expected

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This year marked a break in what had become a much-enjoyed activity. Let’s just say that things have not gone to plan this Advent. Work, life, and mental health intervened and overall weariness has lain me out of late. So, in short, I have not written anything past week 1 of Advent. That is not what I had planned. Advent writings have been such a balm for me these past two Christmases. They have been a light amidst all the rush and fuss and struggle, and it makes me rather sad that I just could not make it happen this year. Along with that, I haven’t planned any holiday activities for the family — no lights viewings, no Christkindlmarkt before the big day, nothing like that. I just have not had the wherewithal for anything like that, and that honestly makes part of my Christmas-loving heart very downcast and disappointed.

Here we are…less than a week away from Christmas…and I am deeply battling the sense of not-enough. Fighting the feeling that I am not doing enough, haven’t bought enough, haven’t decorated or celebrated enough. This feeling also wars with trying to ensure that needs are met as well as desires. In the midst of all this, I am doing my best to remind myself and others that what we are doing/have done is enough. What I am doing/have done is enough. A manger was enough for the dear babe who Himself was enough for Mary and Joseph, though I can guarantee that Advent did not go as planned for them either.

So, Dear Ones, if this Advent has not been what you expected or hoped, allow me to speak truth to your tender heart. It is enough. What you are doing is enough. You are enough. As we move towards the end of Advent and the beginning of Christmas, remember and hold close that a simple, faithful teenage girl was enough. A good Godly man was enough. A manger in a stable was enough. And you, Dear Heart, are enough. You are enough for Christmas.

~

‘Maybe Christmas,’ he thought, ‘doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas … perhaps … means a little bit more!’ 

Christmas Day is in our grasp, as long as we have hands to clasp! Christmas Day will always be, just as long, as we have we! Welcome Christmas while we stand, heart to heart, and hand in hand!”

~ Dr. Seuss