A Blessing
Tracy Johnson asked me to support her new endeavor, Red Tent Living. I know how difficult it has been for me to ask for support for mission trips or the founding of a new graduate school. It is humbling, for me, to ask for anything. I did not want Tracy to have an awkward pause of silence, so I quickly got my checkbook out and asked, “What is the name of your ministry?”
Tracy’s ever-so-surprising reply was, “I don’t want your money. I want you to write a 1200-word essay once a month.”
What? Really? Could I do this? I said a very important “yes” without fully realizing where that would take me.
A few weeks later I finished my first Red Tent Living essay and was ready to push “send” for my 2013 August entry when Dan said, “Let me pray for you because when you press send and release your life to a public domain, your life will never be the same!” Dan prayed for protection of my heart, our family, and every person and all events that I would write about in the future. I sit in remembrance of that moment that literally changed the course of my life.
That same year my husband and I, Cathy Loerzel, vice president of Advancement, and Keith Anderson, the president of The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, met to begin the launch of The Allender Center. It couldn’t have been planned at a better time. In fact, I believe it was God’s design for me to begin processing my life in monthly blog entries alongside my participation in the first year of The Allender Center’s Narrative-Focused Trauma Care in St. Louis, Missouri.
My Red Tent Living blogs on Facebook allowed us to reconnect with Dan’s editor of The Wounded Heart! We arranged to meet her when we were in Colorado. When Tracy arrived at the restaurant, she hugged me and said, “You need to write a book! What I do is I read people’s blogs and find the theme. I will make this happen!” During that same time, my husband hired a new personal assistant who mentioned to us that she had helped hundreds of people independently publish books for the past 25 years! Boom!
Surprise is written into the core of creation. We never know where a “yes” will take us.
As I began writing for Red Tent Living, I was also a participant in The Allender Center’s first year of training in St. Louis. I was the lead intercessor, or better said, the only official intercessor. It was clear that if real change through teaching and group work would set people free, there would be opposition against that change and a covering of prayer was imperative.
I went to a week-long conference in Michigan called Open Hearts Ministry. It was my second taste of group work in thirty years. Tracy Johnson was pivotal in my life during a particular group time. I returned from Michigan and asked Dan if I could go through The Allender Center Narrative-Focused Trauma Care training. The more I wrote and read my stories, the more I came face to face with the many Becky’s I am and have been. It is like looking in a mirror and seeing a face you have known all your life but seem to see now in a new light.
During the years of writing for Red Tent Living, I have become an older woman whose face and body have radically changed. Technically, we all know we are in the process of dying once we reach the age of 28. The technicality changes when you lose friends, and every month brings news of another passing. In some ways it feels like the passing of this phase of Red Tent Living. Great good has come and an ending is inevitable, but there are times one must stare into the mirror, not to put on makeup, but to see what is nearly impossible to grasp: our self.
Oh, what a surprise. I could never have imagined this tender and gracious offer to write would be a long tutelage in learning to take in my face. The longer we look and take in the miles we have logged on our face, we see the markings of grace and wonder. I am not the same woman I was when we began. Red Tent Living is not the same as it once was. We all age. We all die, but something beyond our grasp or comprehension lingers.
What is ahead for Red Tent Living will be amazing. Much has been learned in the process of setting the table for others to explore their feminine faces. There are times, as this moment is for me, to linger. Just linger. Let the memory of the beginning fill my senses and hold the surprise like a long-awaited grandchild.
Tracy, I bless the days that brought the vision to the surface of your heart. I bless the risk it was to end this phase. I bless the risk to begin again. I bless what we each have taken from this gift. I bless the surprise of grace.
Thank you to all the other writers who have nurtured me with their heartfelt stories and lives.