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,

The people who know me best know if I could diagnose myself with an allergy, I would be deathly allergic to change. I am not the person running towards adventure; I am the person who can exhaust a list of reasons to stay right where I am. I’m slow to process change and oftentimes don’t know how to even get started sifting through the feelings of uncertainty I face.

I had been anxious for months sensing change was on the horizon for my family in 2024. No matter how persuasive my arguments and how extensive my lists of reasons got, I couldn’t outrun the pervasive sense that change would be inevitable. But as the New Year came, spiritual discipline started to temper my posture towards an unknown future. My Bible reading, which I’ve spent the past few years in intentional, daily practice has become even more rich with awe and wonder in the last few weeks. As I have been practicing faithfulness to time in his word, I have sensed his faithfulness in real and evident ways.

The first is a desire stronger than I have ever known to stay in step with the Holy Spirit. As a hurried person, I am learning that Jesus is unhurried. He’s been so kind to show me things I would’ve missed had I been setting my own pace. The second is through worship. Last year, Firm Foundation by Cody Carnes became like manna to me. I loved the song because my life felt nothing like the lyrics and I was desperate for what the words offered: joy in chaos. A peace that makes no sense. Steadfastness. What I didn’t know was that my striving was what was in the way of God’s goodness. As 2023 started to slow, a birthday gift from Hunter came just in time.

On Christmas Day, I turned 31. I also received an ancestry.com DNA kit, a perfect surprise from Hunter. Through the website that day, I found my grandmother’s high school yearbook, a picture of my grandfather in FFA, and the four World War II draft cards of my great-grandfathers. I never was able to meet any of them, but seeing their signatures inked in black cursive caught my breath. My dad’s mom, my Grandma Janie was adopted by her aunt and uncle: William and Marion Brewster. I knew Marion as Great-Grandma B until I was twelve. I also knew Great-Grandpa B was a descendant from the Mayflower.

With ancestry.com access, I was able to trace the details of the lineage back to my 9th great-grandfather: also named William Brewster. A passenger on the Mayflower. A mentor to William Bradford. The first elder in the first church established in Plymouth.

And it dawned on me, that from that family, my grandma would be born as Harriet; adopted by her aunt and uncle. Given a new name, Jane. She would marry a preacher with a shepherd’s heart, my grandfather, Gary Nelsen. Their firstborn son, my father, Jeff Nelsen, would have a calling on his life to lead and pastor people to life and hope in Jesus, too. Generations of God’s redemptive hand on my family. Generations given a purpose and a passion for Jesus. In every season, God, as a faithful Father provided for their needs.

And then I heard words in Firm Foundation I had never connected with this personal family history: “He’s faithful through generations. So why would he fail now? He won’t.”

He won’t. Blessed assurance.

If I let him, he’ll grow my spiritual muscles out of his strength. Just as he did for my father, and my father’s father and mother, and so on.

So as I anticipate the future with my family, as I walk in step with the Holy Spirit, praying he’ll help me be unhurried, I’m reminded and I’m overwhelmed with gratitude for his faithfulness to my past and to my present. If he can lead my 9th great-grandfather from a ship, wrecked with illness and hardship, to lead the first known church in a new world, he can lead me to a life worth His calling. I don’t know what that is, but I know he’ll equip me. Because he’s faithful through generations.

Adventure with Jesus awaits. Thank you, Lord, that I can have faith in your future.

Take care & take heart,