I ought to first say: happy Christmas.
The end of another year! How it has passed so quickly, friends I do not know. I have found myself at the epicenter of writing lethargy. My thoughts and experiences do not feel as if they could be captured with words - they’ve been overwhelmingly subcortical. These precious past months have been so keenly intimate, devastating and glorious. To write about them would be exposing the testimony to a vulnerability it’s not yet ready for.
What I can say is this: I’m writing on December 16th, and a year ago today I baked my first loaf of sourdough bread. Reader - it was a truly dreadful brick. And it stayed that way for many months, but somewhere along the way the fruit of my labor became something I’m proud of (which, by the way, is not an easy accolade to earn).
I have been burned, broken and humbled by bread. The past 365 days have changed me in a lot of ways and I have especially adored learning the tender notes to this melody of domesticity. Bread making is such a holy practice. Everything about it seems to me to belong to a higher calling, an expression of grace I feel grateful to behold. Bread is so often the manifestation of jehovah-jireh, the Lord will provide. To make something beautiful, nourishing and true. My kitchen is a different place and I am a different person - we are adorned with the fingerprints of my divine, blessed Creator.
Also, I have been thinking about Heaven a lot. This Advent season I find my heard captivated by Revelation 19; the illustration of Jesus riding valiantly into victory on a white horse is so completely romantic to me. I’ve begun to notice what is true about my most earnest longings and my deepest heartaches — that my soul does not sigh for something here, rather it waits eagerly for the final wedding feast. This particular practice of hope is a yoke I am learning to bear, albeit with many hours still spent yearning impatiently for Heaven.
Anyway - all I can really say is this. Somehow, despite so much, I really deep down do believe that the best is yet to come. On Earth, hopefully, as it is in Heaven.
Happy Christmas to you, and you and you and you.
Xoxo,
MT
