On smallness and trees in the proverbial forest

How can we not burn out, in a world that is on fire? Can everyday advocacy coexist with rest? May our smallness just be the way to the change we wish to see?

Well, I feel a little sheepish. I left off in July realizing that I couldn’t give up my voice, in the midst of Medicaid cuts, fear, and despair….and then I failed to post for over two months.

The truth is, despite the rocky June, the summer was restful and restorative—Lucia made it to Vacation Bible School and summer school, our niece came to visit, I made it to Florida for a work conference on my first flight since 2020, and our family vacation to the shore, despite being riddled with the threat of illness, was somehow great, too.

I call this guy the vacation version of my husband—so rested and go with the flow. Here’s to more of the above! Photo mine.

It was a dissonant and rare respite from the world, but leaning into it also felt good. It felt like flow, and for one of the first times I recall, moving from that season of restful summer into the school year didn’t feel so rocky.

How can I stay in this flow state, I wondered? How can I resist the stress and control that beckon me? How can I carry rest with me, even when the world is not restful?

And like clockwork, of course, problems to solve arose. The case manager from insurance didn’t seem to be documenting Lucia’s health needs properly. The bus the school promised was now scheduled to arrive over 30 minutes after the time they indicated. And meanwhile, Medicaid, vaccines, and education for disabled children are threatened, schools aren’t safe, and political violence is at an all time high.

Sigh. Gulp. Deep, deep breath.

I have an incredible friend from seminary who looks in the face of what feels like failure and finds the poise to often ask, “Just what is God teaching me here?”

And if I ask that question, I realize that in the everyday grunt of the work of advocacy for my family, I am helpfully and meaningfully reminded of my smallness in this world. Sometimes I fantasize that I would rather live a life without having to advocate for my family, but then I also realize how doing so connects me with all these other folks who are struggling for rights and justice. And I’d rather be with them, especially at this moment in time, than anywhere else.

My spiritual director had also provocatively asked, “Could the everyday actually be part of the flow?”

Um, hell no, I wanted to bark.

But then I realized that yet another part of my smallness is my lack of imagination. I am notoriously bad at predicting the future. And why I continue to do so also makes me sheepish.

The night before one of Lucia’s specialist doctor’s appointments, Evan and I had a raucous argument about whether we should be submitting for mileage reimbursement through Medicaid. We’re eligible for it, but it’s one of the programs we’ve never filed for. We raised our voices, we sparred about what’s really important. And then the next day, Lucia was too sick to even go to the appointment. We had to cancel the appointment, and of course, any mileage reimbursement possibilities therein.

I remember trudging up to him that morning, struggling to get the words out, because I was already laughing so hard.

“This is just God reminding us we’re a bunch of assholes,” I giggled. He smiled. Problem put into perfect perspective. Maybe you should just try to stay on the same team when your kid is chronically ill and multiply disabled and navigating American healthcare, rather than worrying too much about controlling the future.

What I think I’m trying to say is that maybe there is some countercultural wisdom in minding the trees in the forest, especially in this political moment. That maybe on any given day, thinking this tree or that one stands in the way of some better, forest-less future, is not only the stuff of mere dreams but perhaps, even nightmares.

The future is wildly uncertain and yet, when we really think about it, we actually know exactly how to get there. It will arrive with our small actions of care, tending to the trees, that make up the forest.

Yet, one more example, if you’ll humor me it: That trip to Florida and to a conference filled with conservative evangelicals working in the area of caring for children in foster care brought me face to face with my own fears and assumptions. Here were people who I feared didn’t believe in my pastoral vocation because I was a woman, had perhaps voted for people who are cutting my daughter’s Medicaid, people who I presumed were not safe for me to share my life with.

And instead, the conversations around the tables were profound and healing. Turns out conservative evangelicals who have foster children also have children on Medicaid, so they’re living close to the ground, too. Turns out some of them have more progressive views on women and gender, they just don't air those views for people who can’t hear them. They’re working from within these organizations and denominations to make a difference, so we can’t always see them, but they’re there.

These conversations filled me with hope and humility. The forest is big and daunting, and I’m tempted to think that this moment we’re is merely one to just get through. But again, what if the future isn’t some future in which these problems don’t exist, but rather a future in which these problems are our problems and we tend to them one tree at a time? And what if the only way to it, of course, is through it?

A great blue heron, visible through the trees. My photo.

My daughter is relatively healthy today, and so, I get to tackle these small puzzles in advocacy in my sphere of influence, one at a time. I get to do it, because her life is worth it. I get to make a dent in the ills of this world, because I am afforded these trees. I’m not guaranteed the forest, but if I can just care for these trees, I just might get to see it.

This is your invitation today, as the kids say, to touch grass. To get down with both the problems in your world and the hope in people in it. It might just be the way, not just the way to guard rest, to remain in the flow in the Spirit, and to do so in a world that is on fire, because it will remind us that we are who we have been waiting for.

We are small people whose small things may just end up mattering. May we never be too proud or too big to think that they don’t.