No More Resolutions: Embracing Trees, Callings, and Open Portals

I was nine. Walking in the woods of the state park down the road my grandparents’ cottage. The path was wet and muddy from recent rains, adding to my sense of adventure. On a familiar way, I noticed something new. A large tree fallen over. Roots all clumped together, like octopus tentacles suspended in the air, connected to the ancient long trunk resting in the brush. Initially, more frightening than awe-inspiring. What was it? My first thought was aliens and open portals to another dimension. After closer inspection, that’s when I realized it was simply a tree in a different position. Then I wondered, how it was uprooted? And I began writing a story in my mind about this tree, other trees, aliens, gods, forests, gardens, and edens, and life and knowledge, and forbidden things.

I remember the rush of energy birthed from being so captivated and immersed in what I was experiencing that I had to write about it. For the trees I heard a familiar voice calling my name in a new tone. I didn’t know then about calling, but I knew something was directing me to words and writing. To telling stories about what was happening in and around me.

Ending the year with a long walk is a practice I started while living in Florida. An intentional time of talking with God, being in nature, and connecting with myself. Reviewing the year in hopes of letting go of what is no longer needed. Making space to receive what is to come. Trusting I’ll end up where I’m supposed to be next.

This New Year’s Eve day, I landed on a favorite path. Wet and muddy much like that day when I was nine. The light house, swans and geese, pheasants, buoys bouncing in the water, the shore, the rocks, the graffiti, the trees. Everything so familiar. 2023 was an incredibly difficult and revealing year. I came certain I had far more to release than to receive.

The last time I’d been to this exact spot, the water levels were much higher. This day a little stretch of sandy beach was not only visible but reachable. Slipping through mud and pushing branches from my face, I made my way out. This was a place I came to almost daily many years ago. A time when life was all about letting go. When it felt like loss—and anticipating loss—was all I knew.

I was seeing a therapist to manage the emotional and practical impacts of coming out, leaving the church, and all tentacles of those decisions. It was too much to hold. My therapist knew I walked a lot and found what I needed to survive in nature and especially near water.

One session she said, I wonder, might there be a tree where you can leave some of what’s weighing you down until you’re ready to pick it back up? Can you imagine doing that?

I laughed. Thinking that’s silly and naïve and would never work. With few options, I ultimately gave it a try.  I started every walk at a tree. After a few deep breathes, I’d figure out what to walk with and what to leave behind. The trees were perfectly suited for holding shame, grief, guilt, doubt, fear, anger, and sadness. The trees were a safe shelter for hopes and dreams, for the broken ones and the ones bravely clinging to life. For prayers I couldn’t even whisper.

On one particularly lonely walk, I set down “ministry” at a tree. My understanding of ministry at the time was that it was inextricably connected to church and required ordination and final approval of others. I had allowed it—the pursuit of it—to consume and define every aspect of my life. Of all the things I left at a tree and picked back up later, ministry was not one of them. I believed that in coming out as queer and surrendering my credentials, ministry was not simply resting in the trees, but rather it was buried there.

This New Year’s Eve, ministry gracefully returned to me as I walked carefully through the muck, even before I reached the tree. Two geese squawking in the shallow water, loudly flapping their wings to take flight brought it to me. At the base of a tree was a small wooden box, with a lid that could be opened, decorated with stickers and hand-written notes.

No way! Who put that here? Aliens? Gods? Am I really experiencing this? I’m remembering all those walks, where I asked the trees to hold what I could not carry until I was ready to return AND now a very literal holding space connected to tree is right before me.

I sat with it. I touched it. I inspected it. Thinking “ministry” is the one thing I haven’t fully taken back. And suddenly recognizing that’s because it is no longer mine. I have come to a place where I can be grateful for that chapter, where the beautiful and crushing experiences of that time inspire and guide what I do and how I live today, AND where that is not the goal or the compass for my journey.

As real as the wind blowing on my face, I felt a shift. Realizing the change. Ministry, for me, is now a calling.  A calling to live with authenticity. To be creative. To share creativity with the world. To journey along familiar and new, even muddy, paths and write about what I experience. To no longer allow external approval to dictate my direction. To model that there is no definitive end to grieving, yet through it we find fresh perspectives and unexpected gifts. To show that choosing to live fully comes with loss and sorrow and struggle AND is one of the most wonderful choice we can ever make, bringing invitations we once considered silly or naïve. To remind those in positions of authority that their words and actions, their silence and indifference have life and death power.

My experience of ministry was a tight box of constant demands, of never being enough, of accepting crumbs laced with the expectation to be thankful and grovel for more, of giving my all for others and being turned away when I was empty.

My understanding of calling is expansive and freeing. It’s being and breathing and moving among the trees. It’s water. It’s caring for my own spirit as gently and abundantly as I did for others’.

Making New Year’s resolutions has never been a positive activity for me. It feels like pressure and heavy unrealistic expectation, much like ministry. And deep disappointment and self-loathing when February came and I couldn’t even remember my list of to-do and to don’t.

So, this year, there is no list of resolutions. Instead I create a template for embracing. For welcoming goodness and good things into my life. For honoring all that comes, even and especially the emotions, encounters, and experiences that bring discomfort. For walks along water and among the trees. For releasing what no longer gives life. For calling. For listening, for answering, for saying yes, or no to it. For forgiving myself for the years I avoided it. For living it. For sharing it. For writing it. For speaking it. For teaching it. For learning it.

You have a calling. We all have a calling. Calling is uniquely understood. Diversely and distinctly lived. Preciously pondered and wildly designed. Through the pain and suffering of humanity, the wonder and beauty of creation, our calling cries out. May 2024 be year we embrace it.

What have you set aside for fear or doubt or shame? What are you ready to pick back up? What is something you were certain was lost, but perhaps has simply been resting waiting to be called by a new name? What are you embracing in 2024? Can you imagine doing it?

10 Camels and I are starting 2024 doing what we love the most and are called to do. Our new poetry tour, “New Laces in Old Shoes: Untying the Knots of Church & Scripture” debuts in January and in February we are facilitating a workshop on spirituality and creativity.

Continue coming to the Well on Wednesdays and follow us on Facebook and Instagram for more words and water, and details on bringing 10 Camels to your community/organization/church.

Water-fully yours,

Rebecca & 10 Camels