Dear friend,
Being the deeply spiritual person that I am, I have been thinking a lot about a Winnie the Pooh quote:
“They say nothing is impossible. But I do nothing every day.”
In the context of imagination and play, and in the context of space and rest, I accept the gift of nothing. I am starting to discover the joy of missing out.
What I find much harder is being absent. At the moment I am not just absent from the annoying, tedious bits of life, but absent from significant moments. I am absent when my friends are really struggling and I am desperate to draw near to them and hold them or just sit with them through it. I can not listen to them and encourage them.
Sam and I have a shared dream of what we want to see God do for the people we live amongst. But I am absent - I can not make connections and friendships. I can not serve people with my actions or even my presence. I am not there in meetings. Hardest of all I can not help Sam and take some of the load from him when it gets too heavy.
Absence is one of those things that the world sort of writes off as wrong, and important to overcome. We are told we should “have it all”, “be in all places at once” and “live the life we love.”
More is most definitely more, and we should make ourselves super-crazy efficient to pack it all in.
But Jesus seems to have ignored this piece of wisdom. The most obvious example, is of him dying just when he was gaining some traction in his ministry. It seems like a crazy move in terms of his followers understanding - they clearly needed him and fall apart after he dies. Then he after he’s turned up in his resurrection body and hung out for 40 days, Jesus leaves again. Surely Jesus is more useful to the early church on earth than floating off somewhere?
What I am beginning to learn is that absence is a beautiful gift.
There is an important pattern in love of letting go. Being absent is a sacrifice where we love people. It is painful to walk away and leave them to struggle. Very often absence is not immediately met with a replacement or a solution. It feels like we are walking out on people. How can that be the right thing? For them or us?
I think I’ve experienced this in many other contexts as well as illness. I was always desperate to meet every need I saw. I found it hard to trust God to spin plates for me, and mentally and emotionally spun them all myself rather than trusting my absence was an important thing. I tried to do as much as I possibly could. I felt guilty for things I could not do. This leads to a cheerleader mentality, even when it is motivated by love. “Keep going, love more, fit more in, be better, be everywhere, do it all.” No wonder we’re all anxious.
“Truly truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Whoever loves his life will lose it, but whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” John 12:24
Here Jesus is talking to the disciples about his coming death. He clearly doesn’t agree with #loveyourlife #livingmybestlife
Packing it all in and maximising is not part of Jesus’ plan. He plans to die in order to bring life to everyone else. He goes for small, he goes for slow and he goes for sacrifice. This is Gods resurrection pattern. With Jesus there is life amongst death. There is life born out of death. The best stuff often comes out of the hardest.
In the garden there is a week or two in spring when everything starts coming to life. All the seedlings start springing up and there is so much hope for the summer to come. What I didn’t initially realise is that there is a mini spring in autumn. A couple of weeks ago, all the dropped seeds from this springs flowers started to grow and appear. Over winter they will invisibly put down roots and next spring they will flower extra early and extra long and grow extra tall. In amongst the death of lots of other flowers, there is life growing up stronger. This is God’s pattern - let go and get more.
I remember at university spending hours with my gorgeous housemates, praying for them all the time and desperate to see them make connections with Jesus. It was only when I went on placement and was out all hours of the day and completely absent from their lives that they started to pay attention to God’s love for them. How humbling! But how beautiful. Means God gets all the credit he deserves.
When Jesus leaves the disciples and goes up to heaven, they are initially stuck and bereft. But then Jesus sends the Holy Spirit (Acts 2) and they have God in an even more intimate way- as part of them, as part of their heart. Not just God in the neighbourhood but God in their innermost being.
Sometimes when we are called to move out, God can get even closer. Always when we hand things over to God, he is able to do more than we could ever imagine, or guess or request (Ephesians 3:20).
The challenge to me is this: Am I so desperate to “be the one” that I cannot trust God that he can work in my absence? Am I really so important?!
Do I believe that God can provide a better thing and bring more life from my obedient absence than he can from my hard work?
Jesus often disappears off to go and hang out with God. He does it after he talks about the dying wheat in John. “After he said these things he went away and was hidden from them.” (John 12.36)
Jesus gives the disciples space, not just so he can have time with his father, but because it is good for them. It is ok to allow people their struggle. So often that is where the real life grows. Sometimes not being there is better.
Jesus absence makes his presence more precious and more powerful. It means that he has time with God so he knows what God is saying and can be more effective. A little of something valuable is better than a lot of something pretty burned out and empty. When did we get so obsessed with quantity? Especially as women. I don’t “want it all” if it means everything is a bit mediocre and unlovely. Can I accept less? But accept a better less? Can we go slow enough to work out what God has for us, and trust him where that calls us to absence?
It is not my favourite thing to be not part of other people’s lives as much, to fade from view and to take a back seat. It is super painful that sometimes absence is not going to make people fonder of you, but they might forget, or think I don’t care about them. I don’t like not being the one to do the hugging and the tea making. But I do want to want to become the invisible pray-er. I want to learn to love people and bring them to Jesus in the secret. I want to humbly accept that his presence or someone else he might send, might be even better than being there myself.
In accepting some of this calling to be absent, I have experienced so much more freedom in what I can do - enjoying the moments I can serve (mostly in prayer) without feeling guilty for not doing more. It’s a fun place, the secret place. You get no credit for it but how exciting to see your prayers answered in the lives of those you love and Jesus acting on things that no one else knows you said. The church needs more prayer vigilantes.
Jesus give me the humility to accept that sometimes absence is the highest calling. Help me to trust you to be enough, to be more than enough in my place. Help me to be humble enough to pray and never get credit for being the one who did the loving. Help me to be content with your presence and you watching me, for what is “seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18.)
Thank you to all of you who have been working in secret for me. Thank you for those who are encouraging me to lean into Jesus and find music in the rest. I am properly grateful.
Katy x