Author: consider2@cox.net

  • Take the Next Step

    Take the Next Step

    “Pilgrim” my teardrop camper is settled among sand dunes across from a boardwalk on a crisp March day. I’m still surprised and relieved when I get her hooked up, drive her safely through the tunnel, back her up, and put her leveling stabilizers down. I enjoy Pilgrim’s cocoon kind of warmth away from the hustle and bustle—a place to ponder and rest.

    Pilgrim represents courage to go beyond fear and loss. I don’t feel all that courageous, but that’s because fear is what makes courage necessary.

    These first three years without Steve have demanded all of my attention. They have been exhausting, painful, lonely, scary, and—sacred. I say sacred because of the way family and friends have given extravagant comfort and care. Grief cracked me open in protest, prayer, and the slow learning of patience. And God is filling that cracked open space with courage in “a new dawn.” Has that ever happened to you?

    I can feel the gentle strength of God’s hand on my back, as He steps with me across “the threshold between sorrow and new life; between honoring grief and opening to possibilities.”1 I honor grief by remembering Steve. I open myself to new possibilities by living in the expectancy of God’s new plan. Please join me at the beach in a one-minute video below.

    1. Christine Valters Paintner, The Soul’s Slow Ripening, (Notre Dame, IN; Soren Books, 2018), 11.

    The Treasure: Take courage to step over thresholds into new beginnings with God.

    If you’d rather read than watch the video, here’s the full video transcript:

    I’ve been thinking about thresholds lately—about stepping over a line into something different—into the unknown, because we know we’re begin led to a different place in our lives. We never know what’s around the next corner when we step through a threshold. We just know that there’s been an ending to one season in our life…and a beginning of another one.

    It takes courage to step through a threshold. I just stepped through a threshold from pain into new beginnings. There can be a lot of fear in new beginnings. Whenever we say, “I don’t want to.” God says, “Don’t miss it.” Take the next step. I’m stepping into joy from deep sorrow, not because of the pain but because of how the pain changed me. I believe when we wrestle well through pain…we can embrace life and joy in ways that we never could have if the pain hadn’t occurred.

    Like someone once told me, “This trip is over…but you have many miles to go.”

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  • After the Storm (Hidden Beauty Part 2)

    After the Storm (Hidden Beauty Part 2)

    The flurry of snow scenes in the last couple of blogs reveals my love of winter. I last blogged from a mountain trail in a white-out storm in Colorado.

    I returned to that trail one year later (see video) and paused in the silence. Its beauty reminded me of St. Augustine’s writing on how nature points to God. Check out this passage of his from the Confessions:

    I asked the earth, and it answered. “I am not He.” … I asked the sea and the deeps and the creeping things, and they answered, “We are not your God, seek higher.” I asked the winds that blow, and the whole air with all that is in it answered, “I am not God.” I asked the heavens and the sun, the moon, the stars, and they answered, “Neither are we God whom you seek.” And I said to all the things and the throng about the gateways of the senses: “Tell me of my God since you are not He. Tell me something about Him.” And they cried out in a great voice: “He made us.”

    The Treasure:
    Creation is God’s craftsmanship on display for us to enjoy. It invites us to ponder His majesty and give Him our hearts.

    If you’d rather read than watch the video, here’s the full video transcript:

    One year ago this month I was standing in this exact place on Morning Star Trail in snowshoes. If you remember it was a blizzard, and I said how things can look gray all around us—but that there’s beauty if we were to see beyond the gray of the storm. I just wanted to show you what it looks like on a beautiful, blue-sky day in the middle of the Aspen trees at 9,600 feet elevation with snowcapped mountains all around. So, a whole year has gone by, and maybe one year ago you were in the gray in a storm and hopefully you’ve come to some new beginnings this year. I know I have and I’m very grateful to have some of that trek up the path behind me and to be able to look out over beauty. We can’t be in the beauty all of the time, but when we are, it sure is nice to enjoy every moment of it.

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  • Hidden Beauty

    Hidden Beauty

    I wish I could go back and talk to the woman who said, “I feel guilty because I doubt God.” Would I give her ten top reasons to trust God when she can’t see to take her next step? Although there are many more than ten, that wouldn’t be my first response.

    I think I’d say, “I doubt too.”

    I’d tell her about the time a white-out storm blocked my view and how scared I was to put one step in front of the other. I’d tell her how, in time, the storm became the catalyst that helped me deal with my doubt.

    My ninety-six-year-old grandfather, Harry the Ancient, once told me, “The first hundred years are the hardest.” He lingered with me in that reality before giving me the second half of ancient wisdom, “But God is good and can be fully trusted with your life.”

    My grandfather’s words began to awaken me from spiritual amnesia to see the evidence of God and to begin shifting from doubt, into a posture of trust.

    Someday I will thank that woman for her honesty. Her words gave me a visual—God embracing her with His left arm and opening His right palm for her to deposit all of her doubt—and the guilt that went with it. What a beautiful picture.

    This reminds me of a snowshoe trail my friend and I hiked in a white-out storm on a mountain in Colorado (see video below). There was no color that day—only gray. But when I returned to that trail one year later the pristine view took my breath away. In the white-out days of life, there is always more going on than we can see as we shift from doubt to trust.

    The Treasure: “Honest doubt sends us on a quest for what is true and real, for that which we cannot only give intellectual assent, but can entrust our very lives to.”
    (from Your God is Too Safe, by Mark Buchanan)

    If you’d rather read than watch the video, here’s the full video transcript:

    Hey! I’m out here in the cold weather on Morning Star Snowshoe Trail in Colorado. You’ll notice behind me maybe some skiers coming down…and then there’s this snow shoe trail. The thing that occurs to me today is – sometimes life can look all gray. Actually, if we could see—if it were clear, there’s an amazing beauty all around us up here. But it’s so gray, all we can see is the snow, the trees near us, and just a little bit in front of us. And that’s the way it is in life. Sometimes we plod along with one foot in front of the other on snow shoes, and sometimes we can be like skiers that are coming down—whisking down knowing exactly where they’re going. So wherever we are in our lives—whether we’re plodding along one step at a time, or whether we’re whisking along knowing exactly where we’re going, it’s worth it to walk every step with God. See you next time.

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  • Bird With a Song

    Bird With a Song

    I ate my breakfast in the silence of my campsite beside “Pilgrim”, my teardrop camper. In the distance, a bird alternated between pecking on the passenger window of my car and viewing itself in the side mirror. Then it flew to the tree beside me and sang for the longest time (see video).

    In the quiet of sand dune solitude I relaxed, welcomed the bird’s presence, and felt its pleasure. I recalled a greeting card decades ago when I sought missing answers to the “unfixables” of life.

    A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer.
    It sings because it has a song.
    by Joan Walsh Anglund

    What song lyrics might we write, even within the context of “unfixables” and unanswered questions? Perhaps the bird’s song came out of what it saw in the mirror—its identity as one who is secure under the watchful eye of its Creator.

    When we look into the mirror of how God sees us, we can begin to know the true nature of our identity—deeply loved and completely forgiven. Then, even when we don’t have the answer to life’s perplexities, we’ll still have a song with empowering lyrics like trust, transformation, freedom, salvation, influence, meaning, redemption…

    The Treasure: Know the Source of joy and sing about what really matters.

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  • Dog Sled Ride

    Dog Sled Ride

    You’ll remember from “A New Dawn” website, that my teardrop camper named Pilgrim is the inspiration for a “Treasures from the Teardrop” blog series. Pilgrim represents courage to go beyond the fence when fear and loss threaten to shrink our lives. This is my first one-minute video. You’ll see I have a lot to learn about technology, but I take joy in letting imperfection accompany me into sacred beginnings.

    The setting of this video is Winter, 2023. Pilgrim remains within the fence, warmed by the Virginia sun. But I have ventured West to the Colorado Rockies in the thick of ice and snow with four new friends. Within a short time I realize how their fun-living spirits, their faith, and their wisdom will add exponential meaning to this adventure. Each one of us pulls loads of one kind or another back home. But, for one week in this winter wonderland, we get to share life and pull our loads together.

    The Treasure: Walk with seasoned friends in the challenges of life.

    If you’d rather read than watch the video, here’s the full video transcript:

    Hey, so we’re in the mountains of Colorado on a dogsled ride. Each dog is paired up with a seasoned partner. And so in life, it’s good for us to be paired up with someone who’s seasoned who can walk beside us through the challenges of life.

    It started out at ten degrees this morning; I think it’s going to warm up a little bit. These dogs are awesome; they feed eighty dogs, one hundred pounds of dog food per day. Beautiful. Strong. When they’re still, they’re barking like crazy; when they’re working, they’re silent.

    Beautiful terrain here. The dog’s names are Cocoa, Merlin, Smarty Pants, and who knows what else? It’s worth repeating: Just like each pair of dogs, it’s good for us to walk with a seasoned person who can help us along the path of life.

    See ya next time.

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  • Surround Sound

    Surround Sound

    There are testimonies of God giving us grace after we lose someone we love. This is mine.

    Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash

    Worship for me had become stagnant in the outdoor chapel service—measured, rote, eyes cast to the ground. Looking at the sky opened up a chasm of awareness of the distance between Steve and me. It was as vast as the distance between the heavens where he was and earth where he left me. Even a quick glance upward choked my dry words of praise and silenced their vibrancy within my aching heart. Week after week, unexpressed grief mounted with the power of an approaching tsunami that unleashed on the Sunday morning we sang Steve’s favorite song.


    “Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty.”


    I raised my face to the heavens and stood in silence as the words, music, and sun warmed me. Unstoppable tears flowed from under my sunglasses unchecked, and God gave me a glimpse of Steve in heaven, worshiping God to the same song, at the same tempo, and in the same key.


    “Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty.”


    Surround sound of earth and heaven joined in vibrant praise and Steve turned, his compassionate eyes locking with mine in earth-life familiarity.

    “Dawn!” he called. “It’s worth it!” And then he was gone.

    His proclamation inspires me. There will be many valleys in this life. But Steve’s message was undeniable. “It’s worth it to walk with God through every one of them.

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  • Trinkets and Treasures

    Claws from Maine, shells from Florida, lighthouses from North Carolina and more—these all formed my collection of salt and pepper shakers.

    My father chimed in with his not-so-subtle humor and gave me the salt and pepper set of a husband and wife couple to remind me to stick close (to his view of) my gender role in marriage. Oh please, Dad!

    These pairs of knickknacks lined my shelves and brought a smile for a while, but in time they lost their meaning. They became trinkets of little value that ended up on someone else’s shelf or in the trash.

    As I matured (sort of), I sought treasure over trinkets. The treasures I’m talking about are precious gems of the heart like relationships, security, courage, rescue, generosity, love, recovery, and faith.

    These gems of the heart cannot be bought. They awaken us to the need for safe-keeping, to the reality of a Treasure-Giver, and to the beauty of gratitude. They require special care because although they cannot be seen on a shelf, tragically, they can be placed on a shelf.

    We place treasures on a shelf when we betray a friend, shrink back from opportunity, disrespect people we love, worry, withhold resources when it’s in our power to give, refuse to take a hand when we are in over our heads, or build a wall of protection around our hearts.

    My awakening to true treasure began long ago with a decision to get to know the ultimate “Treasure-giver.” It was a dark season during which I could not imagine a future of promise and light. But God helped me navigate through darkness and revealed treasures on the other side.

    My most recent treasure came this past year. Sorrow from loss would have left me desolate. But refusing to isolate, allowing my tears to flow, resting from exhaustion, struggling through uncertainty, and reaching out for pastoral care revealed the treasure of spiritual community like I had never seen or known before.

    The care of friends, new friends, and family tenderized my cracked-open heart to receive, to be humble, to look up, and to begin the process of healing. Unusual encounters with “strangers” opened the treasure of knowing God’s limitless power to express His care for me at just the right time and in ways I least expected.

    There are trinkets and treasures, but treasures remain. We safeguard them because they don’t come easy and they open our eyes to know who the ultimate Treasure-Giver is.

    I will give you the treasures of darkness,

    riches stored in secret places

    so that you will know that I am God.

    Isaiah 45:3

    I still have some trinkets that bring a smile, but my treasures bring joy and align my heart with what really matters. What are your trinkets and treasures?