Four months ago, we moved from Wisconsin to back home where I grew up. It’s been both a dream and an adjustment after 8 years away. The house we bought took close to three weeks to fix up, and during that time, we lived with my parents. We’d put twelve-hour days in on the house, and I’d bring my work to do while walls of paint dried.

One morning, I began my quiet drive to the house as the sun was coming up. I passed our new church with anticipation, where Hunter would be working in the coming weeks. After several minutes, I saw the church I grew up in, then the entrance to the Baptist camp where I had worked for three years during summers home from college. Before that, I was a camper and eventually a counselor for years. Church potlucks were held in the dining hall there. Nelsen family gatherings were hosted a time or two on those grounds.

I drove beyond the camp and came upon Lake Springfield Christian Assembly, where I attended two summers as a pre-teen. As a newlywed, I drove to LSCA every Friday morning before dawn to attend Gather, a time for women to be in the quiet, together, and with God. The ordinary and the pivotal moments of my spiritual formation had happened at all of these places, in different seasons.

Further on, to my right I passed the lane where my friend Kate lived. Kate’s house always smelled like the coziest parts of Fall to me and was a place of belonging during seasons of change. My creativity was encouraged and adventure was always to be pursued at Kate’s house on the lake. Kate’s mom was warm and kind. She was the kind of woman who loved and savored every season of motherhood, and she always had a camera. Kate was quiet and she made me laugh. We were all happy at Kate’s house and I have albums to show for it.

Beyond the lake was the high school I did not attend, but spent many Friday nights at its football games. My youth group friends all went there, and sometimes I wished I had too. But they welcomed me as their own and that will always mean something. By the time I pulled into my new driveway, I was overwhelmed at the history one ten-minute drive can hold. I am who I am because of the time I once spent in all of these places. I’m home. Even now, I still can’t believe it.

The evidence of God revealing himself to me in the big and small places of my upbringing is found along Iron Bridge Road. My faith was formed walking through the woods and overlooking the lake with friends. And it’s still being formed. Kate doesn’t live on Idlewilde anymore. I haven’t been to those old campgrounds in a decade. Moving home fills me with gratitude for where I came from and what shaped me and it also reminds me that I’m a beginner again.

Friendships here are new. Getting to know people is a process. Discovering places of belonging is not always obvious or instant. Uncovering depth in relationships requires saying “yes” to showing up over and over. If I learned anything from my time in Wisconsin it’s that sometimes finding people that get you in all your forms is rare. Mileage with people sometimes has to be made before you can get to that point. But what a gift it is when you do. And for whatever time you have together.

It’s a funny feeling to see the nostalgia and newness in the same place. To miss the past and the friends that made it memorable. Yet knowing the best days are also ahead. To long for what has not been felt or experienced yet. Life is not always so linear. It’s complex and it’s nuanced. Good takes time.

When I think of walking with Jesus, I think of the patience he has for all my intricacies and walking contradictions. Man, have I been an elaborate mess in this season trying to lead my heart well through all the change. I think about the thirty years Jesus spent on Earth before his three years of public ministry and the Creation story that made his human life possible. I think about practicing the presence of God as Brother Lawrence did and the investment Jesus made in a relationship with me first. Good takes time.

Four months is a short amount of time to measure progress in starting a new chapter. Multiple times a week I make that ten-minute drive and I’m reminded that what the Lord did once, he can do again. Friendships will form. Faith will be fostered. All I need to know for now is that the Jesus I walk with is good. And his goodness transcends my human understanding of his time.

Take care & take heart,

Change and busyness have been constant companions of mine the past six months. When I think of chronicling all the noteworthy news of my life in this chapter, I get overwhelmed with where to start. So I won’t start there. Not today, at least. I’ll start with the art of showing up.

I met someone several weeks ago, twice my age and perceptibly at peace with herself. In my short time in her presence, I found myself moved with emotion and unable to explain why. I discerned later that it was because she had learned to treasure the quiet corners of her life. The small things she could not be bothered with then, yield her attention now. And it’s made all the difference for her.

Her perspective, as she shared it, became a lens for me to recognize gratitude for my little life. The emotion I had sitting across the table from her came from a longing for the intentionality she created for her time. I want to be at ease in the present in a way that causes time to stand still, even for a moment. So I can remember the flashes of time as a gift. To learn the art of showing up.

Today was an opportunity to practice. Here’s what I noticed:

• the sound of rain on the windows when the wind blows it in certain directions
• the smell of coffee when it’s just been poured
• the sound Nolan’s feet make when he runs through the house. I especially love this phase, where he thinks he’s Sonic the Hedgehog. When he doesn’t know I’m watching, he stands up straight suddenly, curls his hands into fists, then thrusts his arms out and back before taking off running, making engine throttle sounds as he goes
• quality time with people starts with asking if they’d like to do something together. Then enjoying what rises to the conversational surface after that.
• seeing Hunter walk through the door after work is a picture worth a thousand words. There is so much blessing wrapped up in that image when I choose each day to see it and value it.
• feeling the beloved pages of a century-old book turn in my hands, reminded that words outlive us

So often I have missed what’s to be found in the quiet corners of life. I’m grateful that as time continues to carry on, I have the memories of a four-year-old playing in his own world today to take with me into tomorrow. I’m so glad I paid attention to the good things, the meaningful things. It is making all the difference.

Take care & take heart,

Sometime after we bought our first house in 2020, Hunter asked if we could buy an inexpensive rowing machine. I enthusiastically said yes, assuming that I, a person who was not physically active, would also use it and experience life change from it. A well-known book about a University of Washington rowing team defying all odds at the 1936 Olympics had recently inspired me. I could become really great! The rowing machine arrived on 2-day shipping, Hunter assembled it in our basement, and I used it. Once. Maybe twice in the years that followed.

Sometimes, timing is everything. Sometimes it takes feeling inadequate for a long enough time to ignite the motivation to try again. The book I had so loved became a movie. This was unbeknownst to me until I saw the trailer for The Boys in the Boat at Christmastime. Inspired once more, I used the rowing machine. One day became two, two days in a row turned into a 7-day streak until one week turned into nine straight weeks of rowing every day (and still counting). This surprising determination I found in myself has led me to other personal discoveries.

As I would begin to row each afternoon, the rhythmic movement of pulling on the tension, again and again, began to calm my anxious mind. What would start out as a desperate mental escape from my work and MBA classes upstairs for thirty minutes transformed each day into a cadence of steadied prayer and reflection. The stress I brought into the basement with me was not always what surfaced when I got down there. Oftentimes, the worship playlist I continuously played through would usher me into revelations about my view of God. With my feet strapped in and my hands busy holding on, I had nowhere else to go with my findings but to the Lord himself.

What he pointed me toward was the reality that the unconscious part of my spiritual life did not believe that Jesus actually loved me without condition. I had believed with all my heart that he loved my children and my family. I could even look at people in grocery checkout lines and become emotional by the assurance they too, were loved by God. I was others-referencing on the subject of God’s love, but the root of my anxiety really came down to the lack of belief that I am being loved. Especially in the messy parts of who I am. With each stroke of realization, I was tempted to feel shame at not getting such a fundamental Sunday school lesson, but instead, something in me broke out of relief.

Last summer, I came across Mike Foster’s book, The Seven Primal Questions. In it, he describes that all human beings have questions they ask themselves. The seven are: Am I safe? Am I loved? Am I wanted? Am I secure? Am I successful? Am I good enough? Do I have a purpose? Every person relates to each of these questions, but one is primal. For the better half of last year, I wrestled with landing on my primal question. Eventually, Am I Good Enough? became glaringly obvious as my big question.

It’s the question I subconsciously and perpetually ask myself. It’s the question I don’t realize I’m desperate for other people to answer for me. For years and years, I have measured myself, kept score against myself, and always tried to work harder and do better than I had done before. It has been to feel enough and to feel good about that feeling. To sense belonging. To know that I have connection with others thanks to someone else’s approval. The red strings of my own mystery started connecting to other parts of the false narrative I was crafting in an evident way.

I have struggled to fully know that I am enough for God. And when you don’t think you’re good enough, you hide from opportunities to both receive and abide in his perfect love. And I had been placing these obstacles between myself and God for years. Because after all, just being enough still feels like a low bar. Good is still not great. Just enough can always be surpassed with more effort. And I was buying lies in the currency of my own effort. And Jesus lovingly just declared my own bankruptcy.

The advice given to fight against the lie of not “enoughness” was to start affirming the truth, “I am good enough.” For whatever reason, I struggled to think that while this personality assessment was helpful, something was still missing. As I kept rowing each day, the Lord kept revealing the truth of his love and attentive interest in me, to me. I began to sense him speaking directly into my intuition that my gaze toward “Am I good enough?” had been fixated inward when the whole time Jesus had been asking me to turn it upward — on him.

He whispered, “Natalie, I AM good. And enough. I AM enough. My love for you took me to the cross but by its same power, I came back from death to give you the fullness of life. My life. And by it, you have become forever good and enough.”

The wonderful thing about rowing machines when God reveals his glory to you while in use is that they become very hard to fall out of when his goodness compels you in the direction of the floor. The other thing that Jesus is showing me about rowing and his love is that both of these things stay in circulation. Every motion is repeated. The flow always begins again. Back and forth.

So when I get out of sync and when my heart wanders outside of his, it’s never too late to be reminded and lifted by the truth that

He is always good.
And he’s always enough.

Take care and take heart,