On Thursday, November 16th at 6:15am we gathered to say a final goodbye to my mom. We gathered in the darkness and the most glorious sunrise rose over us and lit up the lake in brilliant color.

For those of you who love our family, but were unable to travel to be with us, I wanted to share with you a snippet of that beautiful service, crafted so carefully by my mom and I together, and led by Pastors Amy and Adam Rohler who cared for mom with such love and respect in her final days on earth.

This is the program with order of service and my eulogy to follow.

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A month ago, I went on a walk by the water. A long walk by the water. 

As I walked, taking in the birds and the waves and the lakeside trees with their roots so deep, I quieted the noise within me. 

As I walked, I became aware, again, of the One who is always walking beside me. 

Not in the head, kind of way: because logically, I always know. I know till I know that I know. My head is inflated with knowledge. 

I walked until I knew in my heart, I knew in my flesh… until knowledge seeped down into every crack and crevice of my body. 

I walked until I knew, with all of me again: that the Holy Spirit lives in me. 

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I don’t know why grief is the way she is, but what I know is that she’s hole-y. 

No, that’s not a misspell, and yes, I know that it’s a little cheesy. 

But it’s the best way that I’ve got to describe it. 

10 years from the day I first held Lily in my arms, and almost 14 years since my last words with my dad, and I still walk around with two giant holes in my heart. 

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Our bodies have a funny way of teaching us what we need. As I sat down to begin 2023, after a hysterectomy at the end of December, there was only one word on my mind: 

Peace. 

There’s something about going through several surgeries in one year, unprecedented pain and blood loss, and an uphill immune battle that will make you appreciate un-eventfulness. 

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35 crept up on me while I was sleeping away surgery-recovery, but maybe that’s fitting anyways. 

In my prayer journal from my last birthday, #34, I wrote from Roatan, an island off the coast of Honduras, where we were vacationing at the time, a prayer, that as I look back now, I see its permeation in every part of my last year. 

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It’s only been a few months since I last wrote about trees [check out my Ode to Teachability], but here I am again. It must be something about the way the trees stand and endure and change that catches my eye. Or maybe it’s my fascination with Psalm 1 that is on repeat in my head:

“[Those who delight in the Lord] are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in season and whose leaves do not wither - whatever they do prospers.” (Psalm 1:3)

Either way, here we are again. And this time it’s those beautiful bright orange and red leaves that I know are likely catching all of your eyes as well. This season draws so much attention to trees.

And it is something that what we find most beautiful is their dying, isn’t it?

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I wrote in May here about my transition to a deep and wide (Ephesians 3) life in my own hometown. I wrote about maturity and upward mobility and what it means to send down our roots for the flourishing of our own communities. I wrote about the Good News in the trenches of our plain lives: our own homes, our own churches, our own communities… And the glorious opportunity to sow for the next generations right here, right now.

And so, I’ve transitioned. Over the summer, I released my work with Boundless Communications to step fully into the work that God has called me to in-these-trenches.

So, allow me to introduce you to Ally Co: a venture studio with redemptive imagination planted in Jamestown, NY.

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Who are we becoming? 

A big question, I know. Not to be taken lightly or skimmed over, but I think it’s the question of our time. Who are we becoming? 

This can be cast to the individual, to the community, to the corporation, to the world at large…. You get the idea. 

But the particular question I’m interested in these days is: 

Who are we becoming as a Church? 

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Memory of childhood is a funny thing. I think I should remember it better than I do. For sure, there are still a few moments solidly engraved, but trauma has done what it always does… it blurs the joy and zooms in on the pain.

Even though the height of my dad’s alcoholism was in my late teens, trauma has blurred and stolen so much from the earlier years for me. When I drive by my childhood house, I’m arrested with memories of that last year - of his struggle to get free, of my desperate pleas, and of tear-stained pillows.

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