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Happy Go Stuckey

Tethering Grace & Togetherness

Scattered Unripe Lemons: A Year In Review

December 22, 2017 by HappyGoStuckey Leave a Comment

It’s 2006 in early spring, and I’m back from college on Easter break. I spend the week at my parent’s house and soak up time with them like soup in a bread bowl. The bookends of our days are long cups of coffee and late night movies. It’s been a year filled with change and I just need to be known for awhile.

One afternoon, my Dad digs a hole in the front yard for a Meyer lemon tree. My brother and my nephew Ben lower the new plant into the hole. Ben wears his own garden hat and his five year old knees stick out of black rubber boots.

In the ground, the lemon tree is two feet tall.

A few days later, I hug my parents twice and back out of the driveway to return to school. The rocks scatter under my tires as I throw a hopeful glance in the direction of the tiny tree. Hope for growth and health. Hope for change for me and for it. Hope seems to be all I am at the moment— but at the moment, it’s exactly enough.
*****

It’s been eleven years since that week. I survived college; that season of crazy uncertainty gave way to surprising joys. Now when my tires spin those same rocks, it is with a car full of loves. My tiny nephew is now much taller than me, while the lemon tree towers over him.

Every November, the branches of the tree weigh heavy with bright yellow fruit. Between stirring cranberry sauce and baking pumpkin pie, dashing outside to pick lemons has become a part of our Thanksgiving tradition.

But in September of this year, Hurricane Irma blew through the south. My parents’ house was without damage but the slowly ripening lemons had nowhere to hide.
The next morning the drippy, cloudy, sun rose on the house and tree still standing and the front yard scattered with green lemons.
My mom brought a paper bag full of them and I laid them out on my dining room table, hoping for the best. They were green, battered, and imperfect.

Days later I walked past the table to see huge dots of sunshine all over its’ top.  They all ripened, every last one. According to experts, lemons need their tree to ripen fully; instead of being picked gently at the proper time, these were hurtled across the yard in gale force winds.
Though every single one bears scars of a bad beginning; they taste like streamed sunshine.
Each time I make lemon zucchini bread or squeeze juice over my water, I know that the lesson is a gift to me.
Perhaps it’s just fruit— but I think it is more.

Because matters of growth and waiting and progress can be much like this. Sometimes we plant a tree and wait for fruit to come and it appears beautifully. Except when a storm comes hurtling from the ocean and scatters more than half of a not-quite-yet harvest all over the ground.

If you’ve ever found yourself kneeling in the midst of scattered disappointments, then you know the feeling of not wanting to try again.
It may appear that the planning season was an utter waste. It may look like the harvest has been cut in half because of circumstances beyond your control. It may feel like no matter what you do you will never get above a certain result.
But it’s just not true.
When we say it is God who gives the increase, what we mean is that the results are never up to us. We mean that results are not the currency of faithfulness. Faithfulness is measured by itself. What ripens and what is blown off the tree months before its’ time– that is not our business.

Still I know how hard this is, standing with my hands full and fit to dropping all the ways in which I need Him to be the increase. My marriage. My mothering. My service. My work.
I can labour every hour of every day in hopes to be the difference that only, ever God can be. I need Him— more than I need to see the fruit of progress.
I, too, am standing at the end of a year and though it is full of so much grace, its also labored with a few things I didn’t get to. Routines I didn’t master. Goals that are still in process, always in process. There are a even a few places where I feel I went three steps back. Discouraging is an understatement for that kind of inventory.
Perhaps we both need to be reminded— what God can do in a torrential downpour is far and away more than what we can accomplish in the glittering light of a sun-splashed day.
What He can do with a tiny offering of gifts, time, and talents— that is the true increase.

So if you’re here at the almost-end of a year with so much less progress than you hoped, take heart. If you’re dreading the ball drop because it means you didn’t accomplish what you hoped you would, or your progress favors slow, cactus- like growth— have courage. Not courage that we will all of sudden be super human in our results; not courage that says this will be the year that I finally… But instead the courage that knows we are not alone. The courage to trust God with the outcome. The courage that smiles with open hands at the future and the past.

In the midst of all our plans and goals, He’s the only One who recovers what has been scattered. He is the only One who brings the increase. And He often makes beautiful growth where all we have is scattered, unripened fruit.

A Thrill of Hope (& a printable for you.)
Motherhood, Missions, & the Problem with Arm’s Length

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Hey There!

I'm Cynthia and I'm so glad you're here. I am an introvert with an extrovert's love of gathering people together. I love good books and capturing moments. Whether you visit me here or on my own front porch, I'll be the one holding the Iced Coffee for us both.

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happygostuckey

I saw a magazine cover this week advertising the h I saw a magazine cover this week advertising the headline, “Ditch Gratitude!” 

This is my “No thanks,” face.
My grateful face.
My you-can’t-make-me-face.
Because no matter how long the list of things we still don’t know, I know I need gratitude like water.

Questions remain. Uncertainties abound. Reasons for concern greet us with each January dawn.

Hope remains and so do questions. The two have never been enemies, but cozy next door neighbors.
I’ll keep my gratitude, thank you.
Some of the rhythms we took up in ‘20 we will co Some of the rhythms we took up in ‘20 we will continue to sigh into in ‘21.
Baking sourdough, watching it bubble and rise and fill our BlueHouse with the scent of a good, long, posture of patience— I absolutely need a second serving of this.
While we wait, and whatever it is that we wait for— may the space between be made sweeter by the knowledge that we never wait alone.
You can’t tell by their joy, but the day I snapp You can’t tell by their joy, but the day I snapped this photo was somewhat of a regular day.

What looks like a winter beach vacation was actually the tail-end of a masked lunch stop in the middle of a pandemic road trip.

This sparkling moment of sun-splashed fun was sandwiched between brutal conversations about regular life, especially the hard parts.

And this is how it is. 
These bits of life that we never see coming, they are enveloped between all that makes us tired, weary, sighing pilgrims in a world that was never really meant to be hospitable in the first place.

This photo reminds me to look again at our year, our season, our circumstances.

To look a second and third time.
To keep looking as long as it takes to see that the joy of our right now isn’t gone, it just might be hiding in the shadow of all that’s hard.

Brokenness is never vague. And we don’t have to search very long to see it both within ourselves and around us.
Sometimes the weight of that fact is crushing.
And then, sometimes it reminds us even more clearly of the light shining in darkness.

Joy is an act of defiance against despair and I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling rather defiant at the moment.✨✨✨✨

@hopewriters #hopewriterlife 
#feastingandforaging #hopelenses #getaftergrateful
Endurance can feel like standing still. Especially Endurance can feel like standing still. Especially if what we’re called to be about is the same as yesterday and last month. 
It’s difficult to meet each day with the same fervor and joy for what we are called to do, especially when at present, the progress seems small and immeasurable. 
But even then, perhaps especially so — our faithfulness matters.

When we cannot yet see the other side, the light at the end of this particularly long tunnel, we begin again.

Not because we will always wake with fresh energies and bright, sparkling hope for what comes next, friend. But because the God of Endurance (Romans 15:5) dwells within us.

“It is the grace of endurance granted to you by the God of endurance that provides you with everything you need to continue to be what he calls you to be and do what he calls you to do between this moment and the moment when you cross over to the other side. When difficulty exposes the weakness of your resolve and the limits of your strength, you do not have to panic, because He will endure even in this moments when you don’t feel able to do so yourself.” — Paul David Tripp, New Morning Mercies

#hopewriterlife
Stuckey, party of two. Always ready to run out for Stuckey, party of two. Always ready to run out for paper towels... especially if the store is in convenient proximity to a quick date for croissants and dirty chai for two. Love my forever coffee companion even more at the start of this new year. Wherever he’s going, I’m riding shotgun.
We have learned... The inestimable value of a goo We have learned...

The inestimable value of a good camp chair, for they have been used for everything from soccer benches and coffee dates to theatre seats and church pews.

What our neighborhood streets can offer in the way of an outing—from the colors of spring to the sparkle of Christmas.

To hold plans with the loosest hands possible.

To rejoice in things found. Time. Margin. ...and enough toilet paper to share with a neighbor.

To give grace and accept it for ourselves.

The hilarious joy of a group text complete with “have you seen this meme yet?” 

To pivot. And then pivot again.

To find more joy in candlelight closer to home, instead of the bright lights of traveled cities.

To perfect our pizza dough recipe and truly learn to prefer it over dinner out.

To work with yeast and flour again and again— until the message of waiting for something really good dusted our apron fronts and kitchen floors.

And in our house, we learned how to be unexpectedly unemployed. We learned how to honor that new found space with needed grief and desired hope. How to be grateful for true friends who prayed with us, held questions with us, and hoped with us. We were reminded of our true identity and that it will never rest in a job. 

In a year in which we’ve all lost quite a lot, you and I have been given so much as well. Some of what we’ve lost we have learned to be without. Some, we won’t go looking for again.

In 525,600 minutes and in all the things, found and lost and found again— there is far and away more to be grateful for.

And we choose joy.

✨Happy New Year, dear friends!✨
Not rushing too quickly into a new year over here. Not rushing too quickly into a new year over here. Though the one in our rear view window is one we wouldn’t choose to repeat, still it was one full of God’s nearness.

One day I’ll write it all down.
But for now I’ll just say,
we were not alone. 🕯
“Once in our world, a Stable had something in it “Once in our world, a Stable had something in it that was bigger than our whole world.”
C.S.Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia

Joy to the World, friends.
Behold. The most apropos Christmas Eve 2020 desser Behold. The most apropos Christmas Eve 2020 dessert ever. Made from a wonky gingerbread cake that did not cooperate.
We shall not go quietly into 2021.
We will fight back with beauty and joy and candles... and fresh whipped cream made by an eleven year old with sparkly green eyes. 🎄❤️✨
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