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,

Late last year, I declared that 2024 was going to be my year of fun. 2023 was the epitome of challenging and I had the hardest time letting go of deep feelings of insignificance and resentment toward the circumstances that magnified them. The most frustrating part was wanting to move forward but easily recalling the unmet expectations of the past year that turned into skepticism of a positive future. Coming up short, I decided if I just tried to make life more fun, I’d win at it.

Well. I made it to January 11th before sensing my own defeat. Life is just as challenging as it was twelve days ago when I was still living in last year. And I’m not having very much fun, as much as I’m trying to not take myself too seriously. Loneliness is likely the biggest escalator of my best intentions. I’m an extrovert who works from home, dependent on virtual reality for connection, most days. I’m starting to believe that cat ladies are the people who understand the key to human survival after all.

2024’s Year of Fun pledge was simply a longing for my ideal preferences to continuously come true. Reality did not let me get very far. But what’s saved me on days when I’m doubting or wondering, or feel myself over-striving to feel enough is one thing: being present with Jesus. And he’s showing me old and new ways I can do that. Dallas Willard said, “Prayer is Jesus walking right up to you and listening.” When I heard that this week, it shifted my posture from praying throughout the day to being in constant conversation with God. It’s the miracle of all miracles that I’m both alone during working hours, and yet always within reach of eternal connection.

It’s given me the freedom to wonder about so many things, to cast daily frustrations onto Him, and to practice asking for what I need and then listening in comfortable silence for it. And I hear him whisper just one thing: “This is it.”

This is it. This is my life. And my reaction to that reality can either be disappointment or intentional presence within it. I get one shot with my kids. With my marriage. With my opportunities. With my loneliness. Another way my dad phrased it to me recently was, “Don’t waste your winter.” And that’s been freeing to get on the other side of wondering what’s missing. Nothing is. Not when I’m drawn into the present.

What continues to keep me present is gratitude, as it always does. Out of the overflow of practicing the presence of God has come small, quiet moments. Flickers of his blessings, really, where He’s allowed me to have a bird’s eye view of my life for just a second. Hearing my sons imaginatively playing in their room. Soaking in the sound of their tiny voices that will one day deepen and change. Seeing the profile of my husband as he silently empties the dishwasher without prompting. The garage door opening as I release the button, a reminder that God gifted me a place to land.

When I find myself in the space of what could or should be, the Holy Spirit assures me in tiny flashes of remembrance that this is it.

And I become overwhelmed with joy and holy contentment, that it is.

Take care & take heart,