Let’s Begin at The End

“It didn’t feel like trespassing.” I paused and tried to find a way to tell one of my closest friends about what had just happened. I pushed my hair behind my left ear, “It felt like home.”

She didn’t respond right away. Voices of fear and scarcity began filling in the blanks. You can’t have this. This is too much. You don’t deserve this. You’re just running away.

“I want to hear more about this. Let’s keep talking it through.”

My heart sparked a tiny bit. She didn’t think I was crazy to want to move my entire family from where I’d been born and raised to a small town where we knew no one and had no big plans upon arrival?

Was I just being Covid crazy? Was I simply looking at a wide open space and wanting to build my life into it because everything else had felt so tight; so suffocating; so very hard?

Could my want be trusted? And even scarier, could I be trusted to “hear from God”? Who did I think I was, Moses? Did God really call people away from their churches and their people without warning? Where was this all coming from?

Well, as far as I could tell it was coming from the ground. Literally.

The first thing I noticed about the property we happened upon one spring weekend was the sound of rushing water. The stream in Hidden Hollow switchbacked under centuries-old willow trees, busily sliding over boulders and land bridges. She sang aloud in breathy gurgles that swirled into circles and broke upon the riverbank. The stream was a bit of wild spirit. Her hum fell softly in-between rocks and hard places. She didn’t seem bothered by the overgrown thickets that stole our barefoot dipping space. Instead, she was intent upon putting an anxious, second-guesser like myself as ease.

You can rest now.

Across weed-ridden paths and gravel roads forgotten, the stream wasn’t the only sound source of water. There were also wet puddles in unexpected places. Water bubbled up from several patches of dry encased dirt like an oil strike in some dusty canyon. Water even seemed to be airborne in Hidden Hollow. It was the strangest sensation to feel sparkles of rain on the driest day. Particles from the stream’s presence evaporated into little wet bursts dancing across your skin. It felt like magic. Which, of course, I didn’t believe in.

Upon first glance, Hidden Hollow was something I’d seen in a storybook once. Upon second glance, it was a place I’d seen in my prayers. Regardless, it was not a real place. And most definitely not a real place our family could belong too. That was crazy talk.

What I was experiencing was either a temptation from the horned devil himself or a glimpse of heaven from the likes of the ancient biblical mystic Isaiah,

For I will pour water on the thirsty land,
and streams on the dry ground;
I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring,
 and my blessing on your descendants.
They shall spring up among the grass
like willows by flowing streams.

The problem was I didn’t know for sure.

Hidden Hollow was a breathtaking beauty, a slow, backwards beauty. These eleven acres of untouched land didn’t force anything on you, except stillness. She required you listen to the buzz of the fly instead of the buzz of your phone.

But it was the stream shook me. Why? Because she challenged me. I immediately thought about the people who might actually buy her. How lucky and loopy would those people be? Who would be crazy enough to buy a run down cabin three and a half hours from Seattle, not to mention the nearest Trader Joe’s or Menchie’s? How fiercely free and certain such a couple must be.

“I imagine heaven will look like this.” I prayed. “Thank you Jesus for using this house to remind this looky-loo heart of mine that someday things will be beautiful again.”

God didn’t say anything back. That was to be expected I guess, because even I knew I was hedging. I was putting someone else in the very place I was standing. Why did I do that? Why did I always remove myself from a gift that felt too good for my hands? So I shot him straight.

Hey God, this must be for someone else. You might want to check the tag again, I’d hate for them to miss it.

THE SHUT OFF VALVE

If I was honest with myself I would have told you that Hidden Hollow made me nervous. Her wild orchids and wild rose, overgrown wisteria and mature lilac set my heart to beating fast. Not in excitement. In dread. I was in danger of being disappointed. And I knew it. The influx of desire and joy scared me. I was desperate for a shut off valve. And I knew exactly where to find one. I had installed that very valve into my soul long ago when the dreams I had for my younger self sat in a ball at the bottom of our washing machine. Lyrics, melodies, short stories, and chapters were crumpled and damp next to spit up onesies and our struggling bottom line.

I put the valve in place to protect the bruised and broken things inside of me. I knew who I could become if I let wild dreams run away with me, selfish, self-focused, destructive, withdrawn. So I fashioned this valve out of shame and self-loathing for emergencies such as these.

“Quick! Shut down the desire. Hurry! Cut that piping so that the dreams and the hopes can’t get through! If we don’t move fast, this soul may drown in unhealthy want for beauty and God’s gifts. She may start to believe again that God is extravagant in his love for her. We must move fast!”

The stream split me open. I felt decades old valve scars being tugged at by the scissors of a new start. She cut into the deepest parts of my self-protective fear and yanked it out by the roots. I underwent a stream-side surgery that no one saw. My kids swung from rope wings and giggled at the icy water between their toes. My husband imagined where the pool would go. And me? I was in deep pain. The shut off was being shut off.

I gathered the kids and shooed them back into our large SUV. I didn’t want to keep running around like we owned the place when we didn’t even have a real estate agent who permitted us to explore. My nine-year-old son turned to me before he stepped back into the car, his shoes dusty from outdoor play. A sight that had sadly grown too uncommon. “I don’t think we’ll actually get this place.”

He said the words my shut off valve spoke. I’d put one in him too? I saw the seed I had sown. He was feeling what I was fearing. When did that happen? Mom shame crept up my throat and out of my mouth came, “Everyone out of the car. We’re praying over this place.”

I don’t remember the words I spoke except for, “Your will be done, not mine.”

As we bumped our way back up the rough road and away from Hidden Hollow I knew my old shut-off valve was irreparable. Instead, something else was pushing water through my heart in ways that had been bone dry for years. My heart’s riverbed had forgotten what if felt to be filled with faith for something fantastic and dare I say, fun?

As I watched my little girl in the backseat eye the pear orchards that moved past the window, I saw myself in her. She had caught fire in her imagination just like the rest of us. Where had that gone in me? I definitely had tried my best to keep it alive through creative projects. I had started and stopped big ideas over the last few years. I’d tried my best to squeeze imagination into the time slots between drop offs and pick ups, prayer nights, Bible study teaching, and dinner hosting.

But, somehow I never made room for magic. The unexpected. The off-road stuff.

That stream got inside of me. Because of her I no longer wanted to squeeze in beauty. I wanted to overwhelmed by the scope of her, I wanted to drink her in. I wanted to be in over my head. I wanted to ask God to move mountains just to see if he even wanted to do that for us.

I stepped onto Hidden Hollow as a well-measured, certain, slightly sad, but very content, time management master. And I left an awe-filled woman who heard God laugh in the sticks that crunched under her feet.

Oh dear Lord, were we in big trouble.

MORE THAN WATER

So where is Hidden Hollow?

She’s in Chelan. Chelan is a lake town in Central Washington. Its climate is dry, arid like hot leather seats. It isn’t known for its lush or fertile landscapes. It smells of sage and dust funnels. It is peppered with pear orchards and grape vineyards that are luxuriated by the constant spray of sprinklers pumped from deep inside the ground. Rain doesn’t hang out here long. Water here is an asset. A sign of land wealth.

So when we finally did track down a real estate agent instead of trespassing, turns out he was a land guy who knew Chelan’s plot lines like the palms of his hands. “This here land has one of the only natural streams running through it. Water literally gushes out from the dirt.” He said it like we’d struck the lottery although neither of us fully understood the weight of words like “easement” and “water rights”. Then he furrowed his brow and looked at us harder than I wanted him to. “But I don’t know, this is a lot of property, you know.”

Eleven acres is a lot. I agree. My husband and I both knew that his tone held warning. Winters were tough, we were soft, we got the message loud and clear. Sure, we looked like suburban yahoos wanting to try our hand at city slickering, but we weren’t completely naive. I grew up on 15 acres, I wasn’t a total first timer. And so what if my Midwest husband did look a little out of place in his sunglasses and board shorts? We both felt the shot of challenge surging through us. Our agent was worried this land would eat us alive. Maybe it would, but the stream wouldn’t stop stalking me. I’d dream about her. Think about her. Pray about her. Cry about her.

I’d stumbled upon a new professor and I was eager to enroll.

Seminary taught me a lot, but the minute our agent told us we had an artesian well on our hands I knew the stream’s first sermon was spinning its way into my heart. An artesian well is a source of water “from which water flows under natural pressure without pumping.”

It flows under natural pressure without pumping.

That’ll preach. I love pressure. And usually of the unnatural kind with a ton of pumping required. I like to do things thoroughly, and well. I work hard and I thrive under deadlines and high expectations. God doesn’t seem to have as high of expectations of me as I do.

To be a well that doesn’t require pumping or toil? I was getting the memo.

He was already de-seeding my soil. He was throwing out the ones I made and exposing the ones he’d planted to a deep re-watering. He was begging me to let the pressure off myself. An effortless flow? No pumping or toil? How in the world? Truth is, I’ve never been the stream. Only Jesus can be.

I lack chill. Always have.

So now the stream wasn’t only ripping out internal protective valves she was now taking me to church. I didn’t know what it looked like to live a life without pumping. Without toil. I had built a life around a forced flow; a world where I was holding back my taste for beauty, risk, and big dreams because I didn’t think it was what Christian girls should ask for.

We serve the poor. We teach the Bible. We invest in the broken. We drop off meals. We invest in the children. We do bedtime routines and lunch. We make do with what we have. We save pennies on groceries and save a couple more on second hand clothing. We find bargain furniture and paint our own pictures. We find joy in the small things. Those are the true things. The good things. The honorable things.

And they are. My goodness, they are. The last ten years of our life was the above paragraph on repeat. We’d gained so much by letting the harder years soften our rougher edges. The holy and beautiful duty of a life well-lived? I will never stop doing those things and asking Jesus to increase my appetite for them.

But what if God wanted to increase the flow without the pressure? What if he simply wanted us to fall deeper in love with his goodness without the grind? Naturally? What if he just wanted to give us, and you, the desires of the heart because we delight in him? Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

The natural pressure of pump free joy? It is an unstoppable force. And it was coming for our family in the form of Hidden Hollow. How terrifying is a tenacious Christian woman who takes God at his word? “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance” (Mt. 25:29).

I didn’t know. I’d never been an abundance expert. We’d never been faced with plenty.

And as we crested the top of the hill heading away from the trespassing adventure that felt like home, I embarked on the hardest part of asking to receive from God— believing that he might actually give it.