Passing Through

There were places you already passed through that you thought would kill you. The things that actually happened, out of all you feared and tried to face bravely, the things that blew in and rolled over you like some great hurricane came and passed and here you are, still standing.

You thought you couldn’t do it. You thought those cities called Loneliness or Being Left Behind or Loss would be your final resting place. You couldn’t imagine a day beyond it. And yet, you passed through. You visited a place called Sunrise, spent an evening in a land called Surprise. Stayed a while in the country of Old Friends and Comfort. You visited a library and picked up old dusty volumes with words by Dickens and Eliot, Tolkien and Lewis, King David. Their words built a house around you and you almost settled in. But you had to pack them up and carry them with you, because you were not meant to stay there. You were only passing through.

You walked past a churchyard and heard music. You wept at the sound of cello because it was the very voice of your heart and its mournful song spoke the wordless goodbyes to the old beautiful life that you had not yet found a way to say. You sang along, wiped away the tears from your eyes and moved out into the open road of a long-shadowed evening. The sky was pink. The birds flew straight into tomorrow and out of sight.

One day you will look back over your life like a dream. You will close your eyes one last time, like the final chapter in a completed manuscript. The book will close, and you will wake to an eternal world where trials are over, where there is no pain or death or suffering, and you will wake to realize that what seemed like such a long and arduous journey was just one short passing through. And you will find, at last, you are really home.

(from my journal, July 2023)

Dear friends,

Thank you so much for being here. It has been an intense week for me as I am dealing with a bout of vertigo that has (almost literally!) turned my life upside down, and I am reminded of God’s faithfulness, season by season. How he has brought me through every single time. We have been enormously blessed this week and are seeing his hand at work in the details of our lives. I have so much to share about his goodness, his strength in our weakness, his riches in our need, His goodness that meets us where we are. I am so grateful that my life is in his hands. May God give you the grace for whatever you are passing through today. And may he give you peace.

Love,

Mackenzie

From the Family Archive:

A song I wrote for our first child, Rosie (who makes her debut in this video…wait for it.), when she was in my womb. At the time I recorded it, I was hugely pregnant with my second daughter, Paloma. (If you like these videos, be sure to subscribe to my youtube channel.)

From the Podcast:

There are seasons of my life where I become acutely aware that I am in way over my head. When I want to hand my life over to someone who is more qualified to run it for me because I literally do not know what I’ve gotten myself into. I find that as overwhelming as these seasons may be, these are also the times when I see the hand of God reaching out to help me. He knows I cannot do it on my own. And he doesn’t expect me to. He is with me. Always. In this episode, I would like to share with you some of the unexpected ways that God has calmed my anxious heart. And I hope if you have been feeling the same, it will be an encouragement to you.

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