Listening To God: 52
Who Am I, Really?
Hello. My name is _____
My mom called me the other day to tell me she can't keep straight what degrees I have or what I am studying in school. “What’s the difference between religion and theology?” she asked. A neighbor I met at the pool the other day eyed me suspiciously, saying, "that's really vague" when I said what I do for work. I often find people think I get paid for my work as a writer. For the most part, I don't. The people in my daily life are confused about the various hats I wear, so I wonder what anyone reading my work online might think. Maybe it's time for a re-introduction. So, hey y'all. I'm Nicole.
Family and Home
I grew up right here in south metro Atlanta, always with the itch for something beyond this place. No matter how many times I leave and how far I go, I can’t seem to shake the red clay out of my blood, though. Lee and I met at thirteen. No, we weren’t childhood sweethearts. There were no romantic notions until we were twenty-four after we had both finished college and moved back to our hometown. It’s that previously small, not booming town, where we are raising our two kids, now entering the tween and teen years.
We’ve lived in Egypt (2007-08) and Bangladesh (2017-19) and traveled to many other places. I’ve left pieces of my heart scattered around the globe and there is not much I love more than international travel and exploring cultures not my own. The places I’ve lived and loved have shaped who I am and am still becoming. I know God has planted me in this place now, though. In another year my daughter will the same high school my husband and I both graduated from. We live miles from our extended family. They too, continue to shape every aspect of my life.
Faith and Church
My faith has been guiding the trajectory of my life since I was 14. I’ve been in and out of the church, but kind of like how Georgia is always on my mind, Jesus never would let me be. I’m more in love with Jesus today than ever, and I am less certain I have how to follow Jesus faithfully all figured out than ever. I will spend my life trying.
I like to call myself a denominational mutt. I came to know Jesus in the Baptist church and am thankful for the love of the Bible and of discipleship I gained there. But my heartbeat is for the diversity of ways God is worshipped by God’s own diverse creation. The beauty of the global church confounds me, and I am committed to the ways we can learn from and strengthen each other. I’ve worshipped in the largest church in the Middle East, on the dirt floor of a schoolhouse in the largest slums in Asia, in a crowded house in a village in South Asia, and in a coffee shop in Yemen. I’ve been fortunate enough to sit under the teaching of Jesuit priests and Cistercian monks, and have been a part of Baptist, Coptic, International, Non-denominational, and Assemblies of God congregations.
I feel most at home, though, in high church and was confirmed in the Episcopal church in the fall of 2022. No, I don’t think the Episcopal church is the right church. I think it is the right church for me. Lee and the kids still go to the church that has been home for them most of their lives. We’ve always raised the kids to value the diversity of the Body of Christ, so it works for us.
Ministry: Writing
I’ve always written. Stories were the landscape of my childhood. Today they are the way I process the world. They are my prayers and the way I figure out what I think. I started writing for publication in 2015. Like most other writers, I don’t make a living from it. I do it out of love and because I cannot not write. I believe it is a gift God has given me and I am always trying to figure out how to faithfully use it to best serve and love my neighbors.
Work
Since I don’t make a living with my spiritual writing, what do I do? Writing is part of what I do for work, but there is more to it than that. I am a Content Specialist with a communications agency working with non-profits, Ruby Brick, based in Atlanta (but working mostly remotely). Organizations with a social impact come to us to tell their stories and connect with their people. I started working in this kind of writing when I was working in a dual role in a church that had a discipleship ministry, and then as the director of communications for the nonprofit we moved to Bangladesh to serve.
Just like I did for those organizations, I help our clients communicate about the needs they exist to serve (so others can donate or get involved) and tell the stories of life-change they are seeing in their programs. I love being a part of ministries and nonprofits and helping them tell their stories well (we tell these stories through websites, emails, social media, and more).
Ministry: Ordained or Lay Leadership?
I felt God calling me into professional ministry when I was in college. I have since learned how calling changes and grows over our lives as we, ourselves, evolve. I have served in churches, in nonprofits, and through my writing. I have been feeling God call me to something deeper for years, and I officially entered the Discernment process with the Episcopal Church this year. It’s a long process boiled down to lots of meetings with various people to pray together and discuss how I can best serve the church. That could be in ordained ministry (priest or deacon) or some sort of enhanced lay ministry within the church. I preached for the first time this year, and never expected to love it as much as I did. Stay tuned. Your guess is as good as mine as to what God is up to.
Studies
My undergraduate degree is in Religion. This comparative religion degree sparked a passion in me for understanding how people experience God around the world. I’ve lived in Hindu and Muslim contexts and continue to love studying world religions. Wanting a deeper understanding of my own faith and God’s call on my life, I entered seminary straight out of college but life intervened and I never finished that degree. I went back to grad school in 2021 and am set to graduate with my Master of Arts in Practical Theology in July.
I have always said I would go to school forever if someone else paid for it, and I have applied for the Doctor of Ministry Program at my school, Winebrenner Theological Seminary. (If someone else is willing to step up and pay for it, do let me know). What will I gain from this degree? A wise mentor told me last year that when she entered seminary she didn’t feel called to Pastor at the time; she felt called to seminary. I love my school and the ways I have learned and grown in the past year and a half of studies. I feel called to this next step. That is all that is clear currently, and that is all I need to know.
Many Roles; One Self
When we introduce ourselves, it is easy to talk about what we do or where we’ve lived, who we are in relation to our family members or the other people in the room. Is this really who we are? As I think about all the hats I wear on a regular basis, I am reminded of what Richard Rohr says in Immortal Diamond: “Life is not a matter of creating a special name for ourselves, but of uncovering the name we have always had.” The roles we fill in our life do not make us who they are, but they can help us uncover who God created us to be. As we use the gifts God has given us and discover the parts we play in the great tapestry of life woven together by all of us, we uncover a little more of our true selves.
Today I am a daughter, a wife, a mom, a strategist, a student, a writer, a budding preacher, and a Georgian—to put a few labels on my life. Take away any of those things, and who am I really?
Who are you, really? “Your True Self is who you are, and always have been in God, and at its core, it is love itself,” says Rohr. In all that I am doing, I want to be more loving. I want to reflect God in each facet of my life. We are complex beings, created in the image of Love. All that we are and do should reflect this. Rohr continues, “Love is both who you are and who you are still becoming, like a sunflower seed that becomes its own sunflower.”
Maybe you want to take some time this month and listen to who God is saying you are. Is it the same person who is showing up at work or at your home every day? Is it the person you see in the mirror? Are there roles God is asking you to set down for a season or ones you need to pick up? Above all, remember you are beloved. You are Love. You are enough.
Stepping Out Afraid. One Word 2022: Explore.
My hands shook as I grasped the metal bar next to the window tighter. “Why did you insist we come here if you are so afraid?” my husband whispered above the sound of the cable creaking above us. Our family was perched above the Malaysian rainforest, going ever higher by the moment. We ascended steadily on the steepest and longest single-span cable car in the world.
It was Christmas Day and everything about Langkawi was different than our noisy home in Dhaka, Bangladesh. I knew this was a chance we’d never have again and one that my husband and son were dreaming of, one that we would all remember forever. I wouldn’t let my fears hold us back, so I insisted we come. My daughter, ever cautious like me, reflected my anxiety over the height back at me and I gripped her hand tightly. “We can do this,” I insisted. We were rewarded richly for our courage when we reached the top. The light reflecting off the Andaman Sea, the views extending all the way to Thailand, and the lush forest below—they were worth every racing heartbeat.
I don’t remember always being this anxious. In fact, I remember being quite fearless as a child. As a dancer, I loved to perform. As Drum Major of the marching band, I reveled in winning first place in competitions and being the best. I remember feeling like there was nothing I couldn’t do. As I got older, I feel somehow, I got smaller. More unable to believe in myself. Less sure of my own opinions and gifts. I wanted to be liked. I wanted to be good. I wanted to do all the right things. And I grew afraid.
My adventurous spirit was never quelled, though, even by my fears. I want to see the world, every messy and beautiful corner of it. I want to taste it all and take it in. That’s hard to do cowering in the corner.
In 2021, the word “Dwell” chose me, and I tried to let it guide me to a place of settling, of home. Instead, it led me to dwell deeper in the heart of the God who unsettles us, who shakes us up and pushes us beyond what is comfortable.
This is my home, my place to dwell—in the mystery of the God who always keeps me guessing as to how he could speak into the life of someone like me. I finished the master’s degree I began so many years ago and thought was only a dream for me. We bought a house, and we took steps to put down roots after four years of constant transition. And yet it wasn’t a year of finished goals. It feels like it was only the beginning.
On the last day of the year, the sun tiptoed out from behind the rainclouds that had lingered all week. With trepidation, I descended the trail away from the Ignatius House where I had come to spend the morning in prayer. The soft ground gave way beneath my feet as I left the treetops to walk along the Chattahoochee River.
This river feels as if it has flowed along with me through the year, a companion on what was a frightening and exuberating pilgrimage. In the summer I ventured up to North Georgia twice. Once I went to spend the weekend with the friend that has known my struggles with my calling and my fears probably better than anyone since we were just girls in college; once with the man who has walked beside me on our moves me around the world and back (twice). Even raised going to these mountains, I had never floated down the Chattahoochee—a hallmark Georgia experience. I knew this was an adventure I needed to have.
Twice last summer I tubed down the river for hours. We slowly took in the sights and let our fingers linger in the cold, clear, spring water. In places it was so shallow you could scrape your hands along the rocky bottom. Other spots sent us squealing through rapids and that old familiar frenemy fear made my heart race as the rocks sent us reeling. On those weekends we sat next to the bubbling water and talked about the struggles of the pandemic, the unlikely places God has taken us, and being brave enough to walk on through the fear.
There at the retreat center in Atlanta, the river looked like a different one altogether. After flowing nearly 100 miles south of the mountains, through the city, its wide banks revealed a deep and muddy river that crawled by. It was the same water, but it had been completely transformed by its journey. It was no longer pristine. Yet wide and powerful, it was still surging on toward its destination, unscathed. Continue Reading
A Place to Dwell for Restless Hearts. One Word 2021.
My fingers lingered on the smooth contours of the olive wood carving as I placed it on the mantle. The faceless Mary and Joseph figures cradled a little bundle, a mystery they would watch unfold through their lives. Could they ever imagine what his life ahead would fully hold, where it would take them all?
As I decorated for Christmas, the house we had been living in for a little over a month started to take on the feel of home. Until then, it had felt like just another temporary living situation. That carving had seen more than its share of new places in the past few years. The year I brought it home from the little shop in Jerusalem’s Arab quarter it had its first and last Christmas in the house we then lived in.
We packed the Holy Family statue among our ten suitcases and carried it along with us through temporary homes—a basement apartment we occupied after we sold our house but before we left the country and then the flat of our new boss in South Asia as we scoured the city for a place to live. It was one of the few precious items that decorated our little flat in Dhaka for the next two Christmases. The year after we returned to the U.S., we put it up to decorate the friend’s house we lived in, but our hearts were still torn between continents.
We weren’t sure what home looked like anymore. We thought we would stay there a long time, like the other places we had ended up only passing through. We made plans to renovate that house and as we rebuilt our lives, we inched toward a feeling of belonging for half a year. Then, the pandemic threw the whole world into the kind of transition our family been experiencing for the past four years. We all occupied a kind of liminal space between the world we knew before and one that had yet to reveal itself. What would life look like on the other side of Covid?
As I stared down all the unknowns of 2021, I held onto the word “dwell” and longed to find a place where my soul could breathe again. I wondered if I could find a place in the in-between to flourish. I wrote, “Dwell: It is an invitation to live in the now and not-yet that is our life or faith instead of always chasing after the next thing, the answers, and the illusions of perfection. Can we sit awhile in this half-built house around us and stare out at the trees? Can we accept the mystery and be just where we are?”
The half-built house was metaphoric and literal for me. We had begun renovations that stalled and every part of me itched for something that felt whole. I had joined a new church that I could not yet feel a part of because we couldn’t meet in person. I enrolled in school, looking to finish the master’s degree in theology I had begun seventeen years before, not even sure what completing my studies would mean for me. I ached for feeling settled at last. My word was more of a wish than anything else. Continue Reading
Becoming Human. for the Mudroom.
As I flick on the switch, the tiny bulb meant to act as the star casts a warm glow over the scene below. “You have a lot of nativity sets, Mom,” my son comments after he helps set up the wooden, ceramic, hand-carved, and clay sets next to the snow globe manger scene and the stitched Kantha magi picture. I stopped counting how many baby Jesus figures adorn our living room come Advent-time every year. They have captivated me since I was a little girl, even before I knew who this baby in the creche even was. I just knew there was something strange and beautiful about this helpless babe that people revered.
What was attractive about a wriggling bundle of flesh? What power was there in this helplessness? It’s a mystery I still wrestle to answer every year as I gaze upon these nativity sets I have collected from around the world.
In the church, most of the year we contemplate the cross, what we more often see as the symbol of our redemption. But I find myself drawn more to the cradle than to the cross. We view the coming of the Messiah as a culmination of our salvation, but I think it’s just the beginning. The enigma of the life we live in and through the fully God, fully human Savior is something we work out with fear and trembling our whole lives.
The week before we unboxed our mangers, I sat at the computer for hours pondering all I had learned in the last three months during my final trimester of studies for my master’s degree in Practical Theology. We were tasked with writing a statement of faith, detailing what we believed about important doctrines like the nature of God, creation, and our eternal destinies. One question I spent more time on others is what the Imago Dei really means, what it says about us that we were created in the image and likeness of God.
Is it something about our physical bodies? Our capacity to reason? Our freedom to choose or to love? Our eternal nature? I read arguments from theologians and early church fathers arguing for each of these.
But the words I kept coming back to were ones I had heard months before when I spent a day hiking and praying at the Ignatius House in Atlanta. A quiet Jesuit priest spoke to a handful of us retreatants throughout the day about the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola.
What stuck with me from that day is he didn’t speak about becoming more spiritual through these contemplative exercises but becoming more human. “We become human on our journey through this life and so become what God is like,” he said. It felt scandalous, blasphemous. I grew up hearing that our humanity was nothing more than fallen and sinful from birth, taught we should try to be more like God, less like us. Instead, he was telling us to live more fully into who God created us to be.
CONTINUE READING AT THE MUDROOM
Stepping Into the Beautiful Mess. for the Mudroom.
Perched on the balcony, like the Black and White Doel¹ that serenaded me from the windowsill in the spring, I watched over my little corner of the world. In the most densely populated city on earth, that one little intersection of Road Six and Safwan Road felt like a microcosm of humanity itself.
I would sit there with a steaming cup of coffee in my hand though the tropical morning humidity already made streams of sweat trickle down my back. The city had been awake for hours already—really it never slept at all. Through the night my family would be serenaded by the barking street dogs and dinging bicycle rickshaw bells. The construction trucks arrived in the early morning hours to dump more rebar and brick in the lot next to us for the ever-growing high rises.
Bangladesh, built on the delta that contains over 700 rivers, is a stunning display of God’s workmanship. Even in the concrete and brick mega-city, our flat was surrounded by green. Palms lined the streets, heavy jackfruit pulled branches down around us, and the bright red Krishnachura blooms fell to the ground like the snow the city will never experience. Humanity has complicated that beauty as more people pour into the city, away from the rising floodwaters, the ebb of jobs, and increasing poverty in the villages. When most people talk to me about the city I love, this is what they focus on.
The pollution that blankets the city in the winter and causes pounding headaches, the trash that lines the streets, and the steady protests that clog traffic makes Dhaka a less than desirable location for most. When we moved back to the U.S. I heard it everywhere: “Aren’t you so glad to be out of that place? It must have been so hard. I would never want to go there.” Every time someone says something like this, I can feel tears of defensiveness sting my eyes. In my mind, I still go back there often to that intersection. My heart swells with love for the beauty I found there, amidst the mess. Because of the mess. Because of the people.
That coffee in hand, for a few quiet moments I would watch the people, so many of them. The chatter of Bangla rising from the street never stopped as people called for rickshaws, yelled at friends heading to the University, or kids ran off to the English primary school down the street—its walls painted brightly with cartoon characters.
From where I stood I could peer directly into the nursery below, as early morning shoppers chose from orange marigolds and buckets of pink bougainvilleas to take home and grow on their balconies. Depending on the season I could see the children inside the small slum-house across from the nursery chasing chickens or running past the cow tied outside the gate. The day workers cleared their throats as they ascended the pile of red dust made from smashed bricks that they would add to the concrete mixer.
I would smile and wave at the nuns, their white shoes shuffling down the cracked street as they walked to the Christian counseling center next to the school. I wanted to smile at the men on their way home from morning prayers at the mosque but their white Topi-clad² heads never looked up at me, hurrying on into the day. The Ayah³ in the villa next to us would meet my gaze, though, as she pulled tight sheets over the rooftop clotheslines. I wondered what she saw when she looked at me. We were some of the only white faces visible in this part of town, far from the richer, diplomatic area in which a lot of foreigners chose to live. She would nod as she returned to her work.
As the heat closed in around me, I would leave the sounds of the city behind and return to the work awaiting me. Soon I would head down to the non-profit office just a couple floors below to write out stories about these people I loved. I would weed through reports from our village schools and news from our teams in the Rohingya refugee camps in the south of the country. I would stumble through accounts of other people’s lives, trying to figure out how to communicate to donors just how important their support was to the education and economic development of people they would never meet. I would pray that I could somehow honor the stories of people, let their own voices come through my words.
Today, I sit here two years after our return to the U.S. and twenty years to the day from the moment I felt God telling me to turn to love when so many around me were learning to hate. The day after the attacks of September 11, 2001 as I sat in an Arabic college class among my Middle Eastern classmates weeping that their religion had been turned into a weapon of terror, my heart shattered. It has been breaking ever since for the divisions we invent out of fear—the blinders we erect that keep us from seeing the glorious richness of what others have to offer us....
CONTINUE READING AT THE MUDROOM
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