It Was a Good Week
Resurrection is everywhere, even in me.
Note: Welcome, new readers and subscribers! There have been many of you in recent days and I’m so glad you’re here! The Priory is categorized by Substack under Faith & Spirituality—and it surely is that—but it is also categorized under Literature—and it certainly covers that well. In fact, the ongoing direction we’ve taken here is to embark on a sort of survey of British Literature that goes in chronological order. We started with Beowulf and have made our way all the way to the 17th century! But we take breaks from reading British literature, too. I have an occasional series of interviews with authors and I share work I’ve published other places along with more personal reflections now and then (like today’s post). The paid subscribers have created a real community here in the comments (the only real perk for paid subscribers—that and a Zoom meet-up!). The other thing paid subscribers do is to allow me to offer these posts free for everyone, which is the desire of my heart to be able to do that. So if you are able to consider that, it means a lot to a lot of people. But just being here, reading, subscribing, and sharing also supports the work. Thank you again for being here!
***
A couple of weeks ago, I had the best week I’ve had in, well, years, I think.
I’m generally a pretty happy person, for the record. But if you’ve been following me at all, you know that the last few years have been filled with tremendous loss and upheaval.
It started one day in late November 2022 when I received an email from my former employer asking me to seek employment elsewhere. I later learned that this act was made to appease a donor—who or how or why, I was never told. So I walked away—from there and from a decades-long teaching vocation.
But I guess maybe it really started in the spring of 2018. Most people know that I was hit by a bus in the spring of that year. But not many know what happened before all that. In 2018, I was still at Liberty University, in my 20th year or so of teaching there. At that point, the worst of the school’s scandals around sexual misconduct and sex abuse were yet to be revealed. I was riding high: the university had given me generous release time (a reduced teaching load) that allowed me to teach fewer classes in order to speak and write as part of my contracted duties. For some years, the administration thought that my public voice positively represented the university. Until they didn’t. In April of 2018, while at Calvin University’s Festival of Faith and Writing (an event beloved by me and many of my fellow writers), I received an email (what is it about these institutional leaders and their cowardly emails?) stating that my release time was being revoked with no further appeal possible. Returning to a full teaching load of four classes a semester would greatly curtail my ability to write and speak—and would result in largely silencing my public voice. I had no way to know whether or not that was the intent, but all signs indicated yes.
It was just a few weeks later that I was hit by a bus while attempting to enter a Nashville crosswalk on my way to a meeting, spent eight days at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, then came home to recover, unable to walk for three months. (All of this is incisively and perceptively told in a recent post by
, which you can read here.)Feeling less valued than ever at my institution, I thought the sudden opportunity offered by the next one was the answer to my many prayers. And in God’s weird way, I suppose it was.
But it took only two years before they sought to silence me, too.
From 2018 to 2022 to 2024, it has been one loss after another. In the midst of all this change and loss, my mother was diagnosed with cancer and was gone within the year, further compounding the losses of my academic career, some of my friendships, my church, my ability to trust, my sense of who and what is real, and who and what are just lies.
But I have been reorienting and rebuilding my life. I have transitioned into writing and speaking full time. I launched this Substack newsletter (which is a significant commitment of my time and my heart). The time I am not on the road speaking is all, blessedly, at home. (The dogs love it, and so do I).
But in both practical and emotional/intellectual ways, the shift has been very gradual. Shedding the remnants of my former life—years-long habits, expectations, patterns, and my overwhelming sense of the loss of them—has taken time (and a little therapy). While the shedding may never be complete, I think it is mostly done.
Anyway, this is all just setting the stage to my “best week in years.” (Sorry it’s taken a while to get to the point of this post, but I guess that’s fitting.)
Here’s what made my wonderful, beautiful, no bad, very good week so wonderful, beautiful, no bad, and very good.
Until January of this year, I had been behind in all my work owing to the accumulating effects of caring for my mother, grieving her death, and recovering from all that followed that November 2022 email. I finally got caught up, but it’s taken longer to feel caught up, for my mind and body to remember that I’m caught up and to relax accordingly. My wonderful week was one in which I worked ahead of time instead of behind. It felt glorious.
My one speaking engagement that week was within driving distance. Not only did I get to avoid all the stresses of flying, but my husband got to come with me, too. I spoke at a venue a little outside my usual fare, which was both challenging and rewarding. It was in a beautiful space in a relaxed setting. I feel like I was served in it much more than I served my audience.
I wrote a little, turning in one small project and approving edits of another. These were projects that were smooth and easy, which is not always the case with writing (to say the least).
I received the advance reader’s copy of my new book and even though it’s not the final product, it felt wonderful to hold a tangible representation of it in my hands, to turn the pages, see the font and design all laid out, and to feel its light, trim heft.
I hosted a webinar with
and Sheila Wray Gregoire (@baremarriage) about their newly released books, Becoming the Pastor’s Wife and The Marriage You Want. It was an inspiring and empowering conversation and hundreds of people joined in.I went to yoga thrice that week.
It was the warmest week we’ve had this spring. I went running a couple of times. One day, the sun was soothingly warm, the breeze was balmy, and both felt so good on my skin that I actually ran with my eyes half closed, almost lulled to sleep in the warmth and light, listening to The Lumineers as I sauntered slowly along.
I read.
I planted seeds in my flower garden.
I planted vegetable seeds in my mother’s old raised garden beds. She loved working those beds. One of the saddest parts of last year was the garden projects she was never able to finish. I’m trying to resurrect some of what she left behind.
I adore spring in Virginia. Actually, I adore Virginia. I’m including some pictures I’ve taken over the past couple of weeks around the homestead, including during this particular very good week. I’m glad I got some of the wisteria shots before the frost came and killed these delicate blooms. They were gorgeous while they lasted. Strangely enough, many years ago when we had to do some landscaping and tree felling on our property, we tried to dig up this wisteria. It’s invasive and we didn’t want it. But it kept coming back. And now it’s one of my favorite things. Thank you, wisteria, for not giving up. You are an example of a resurrected life.
This week began when I went to the church I’ve been visiting. I’m not ready yet to write about that search and what I may have found, but this church seems to check all the boxes that I brought before the Lord a long time ago (thinking all along that surely such a place does not exist where I live).
I went to the theater three times: with my family to see the Peking Acrobats perform (they were fantastic!), with my friends to The Trojan Women on stage, then with my horror-movie-friend to the movie theater to see The Woman in the Yard.
I even cleaned out some drawers that haven’t been decluttered in years. Are you reading this? I cleaned out drawers!
I worked, I traveled, I wrote, I spoke, I spent time with family and friends. I did fun, soul-nourishing things. All in one week.
And I remembered what my life was like when I didn’t have to worry about what trolls on the internet would say about me, what sinister emails I’d get from my boss, or what unspoken lines I might inadvertently cross because, once again, the goalposts had been moved. I didn’t have to worry about having to defend the indefensible because once again my employer had done or said one more indefensible thing.
Sometimes you don’t know how heavy the weights you carry are until they are gone.
I had lunch with a friend the other day, and we talked about our major life transitions—different as they are—and the processes involved in mourning, accepting, and letting go of what was past. And I said to her that even more freedom comes when you realize that what you had and lost wasn’t as good as you thought it was. It takes a while to come to that realization. Because confronting that reality means facing the truth of something we had been deluded, naive, or misled about.
Some of you reading may be in one of these stages of loss and change. Some of you may have such times ahead. Know that the feeling of being free can take a long time to settle in. But it will come.
On our drive home from my speaking engagement in Georgetown that week, late at night, somewhere between Culpeper and Charlottesville on a dark stretch of road with few other cars or lights, I said to my husband, “I really love my life right now.”
And I really do.
It was a good week.
***
Zoom meeting for paid subscribers: look in your email (or here on substack) for details about the Zoom meetup on April 16 at 3 pm ET. *NOTE THERE WILL BE A NEW LINK SO WE WON’T BE LIMITED TO 40 MINUTES. But don’t worry, I won’t keep you more than an hour! And certainly you may come and go as you are able.
Next week I will have an installment in my ongoing series of author interviews, this one featuring Susy Flory.
Schedule for The Pilgrim’s Progress (Lord willing!)—note I’m describing the sections since there are no chapters:
April 29: Intro to the work and discussion of “The Author’s Apology for his Book”
May 6: Beginning to introduction of Simple, Sloth, and Presumption
May 15: Introduction of Simple, Sloth, and Presumption to introduction of Talkative
May 22: Introduction of Talkative to the By-Path Meadow
May 29: By-Path Meadow to introduction of the Atheist
June 6: From the Atheist to the end
You can read the work online here. Someone has already asked if we will read Christiania’s journey (part 2). I hadn’t planned to but I’m totally game! Let me know as we go along if you’d like that (or if you’ve had enough of the seventeenth century, haha!). We’ll take it as it goes.
Thank you for letting me share about my very good week! And thanks for being here for so many weeks, even the ones that weren’t so good. You have made them all better.
"Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” – Simone Weil1
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, trans. By Emma Crawford and Mario von der Ruhr (London: Routledge, 2002), 117.
Rejoicing with you in this flourishing. So so good!
Karen, these pictures are stunning! Thanks for sharing them with us. Now, I understand more about how dearly you cherish and enjoy your home! It looks like Eden.