Free Preview: the Reweaving Devotional Series

Read Day 0/21 to check it out

This is a free taste of the Reweaving Devotional Series, which officially kicks off tomorrow. 

If you’re joining in, consider this a Day 0 bonus for our 21 days together. If you haven’t signed up yet, I hope you will, and you can read on for a sense of how it’ll be. One content note: today I’m sharing about pregnancy loss.

My soul is bereft of peace;  I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say, “Gone is my glory and all that I had hoped for from Yahweh.”… But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of Yahweh never ceases, [God’s] mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “Yahweh is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in [Them].”

Lamentations 3:17-18, 21-24 NRSVUE 

I warn you, though, trusting in Jesus is not a prevention strategy that makes sure what we fear won’t happen. Those fears may indeed be realized, and yet they won’t consume us. As God has proved time and again in the stories of Scripture and in the lives of those who have put their trust in Jesus through the years, even when the worst happens it will be okay, somehow, because of who God is. The God who is good, powerful, just, joyful, and with us is really and truly Lord. 

-Woven, page 207-

Today’s main question: Have you experienced people making the false promise that trusting Jesus guarantees you a good, happy life?

Yesterday was my daughters’ birthday. You may be aware, though, that I am not raising daughters. Before my son Riley was born, almost exactly a year earlier, in fact, I was pregnant with twins. Preterm labor brought Kate and Lucy into the world when they were too young to survive.

As you might expect, losing them broke several strands in my web of faith. That’s what crisis tends to do. What was unexpected was that they were strands that needed to go, and what replaced them was far better.

Looking back on this experience of deepest sorrow 12 years later, I see that what broke were the strands of performance, the idea that I needed to do stuff for God all the time in order to really be serious about my faith. My earnest young self really did believe she needed to have herself together to show God how much I meant it when I said I loved God.

But in January of 2012, and for a long time after, I simply did not have it in me to perform, for God or anyone else, anymore. I had it in me to walk my labrador around the neighborhood. 

So that’s what I did. I waddled through the neighborhood while our 95 lb black lab Flop snuffled about. And after a long time, that section of my web of faith where performance used to be was rewoven.

The new strands that filled in during that season of grief were anchored to a God who really does enter into suffering. A God who is near in grief. Even a God who heals, but in the most gentle and unrushed way. A terrible thing happened to my husband and I, and we came through OK, because of who God is.

What was rewoven has been incredibly important to my life and faith in the years since, in personal hard times, walking with others, and engaging with the pain of the wider world.

Breakage, whether from something painful, or something new, something learned, or something unlearned, has the potential to bring about something beautiful in the reweaving. This is my story. And I think it can be yours too.

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Looking Back

Have you experienced people making the false promise that trusting Jesus guarantees you a good, happy life? Have you had the chance to experience or hear stories from people where that was far from true, and yet they found God to be trustworthy even so?

If so, call those people and their stories to mind.

If not, what messages were you given about God and hard times?

Right Now

The verse from Lamentations says God has unending love, mercies, and faithfulness. They give the writer hope.

What is one thing about who God is that gives you hope right now?

A Prayer

God, where there’s been breakage, would you weave something beautiful? Amen.

If you’d like a compassionate space to tend to your own web of faith and revisit some of the key themes from Woven, I’d love to invite you to sign up for the Reweaving Devotional Series.

Who is Reweaving for?

Reweaving is for any adult whose web of faith has experienced breakage. That breakage may be small or big, it might feel exciting, hopeful, disorienting, or sad. 

Perhaps things you thought were true about God’s character or how to read the Bible have changed. Or faith practices that used to work don’t work anymore (and maybe it even feels like nothing does).  Or something in your life circumstances has impacted your faith in a significant way.

Breakage is not bad. It’s inevitable. But webs are resilient, and they can be rewoven.

It’s true for the spider. It’s true for your faith. 

How will the series work?

Reweaving devotionals will arrive in your inbox each day for 21 days, starting January 10. These extremely short reflections will revisit key ideas and themes from Woven, but with an eye towards us grown ups.

There will occasionally be personal stories, like today, but mainly they’ll help you tend to strands that have broken in your own web of faith and new experiences or ideas that might need to be incorporated.

Think of it as a chance to revisit Woven without a full re-read, with the focus being your own story, instead of also having half your brain on the kids in your life.

What does Reweaving cost?

The devotional series will be behind the paywall in the Kids + Faith Community. One month of access costs $5. 

The Kids + Faith Community receives weekly emails, 25% off at the Kids + Faith Resource shop, and special courses & series. 

But if a paid subscription (it’s $30/year or $5/month) isn’t in the budget, for whatever reason, please just let me know and I’ll add you to the subscriber list.