If you follow me on social media, you may have read about Ceorl. Ceorl is an old, weathered tree I came across years ago while walking on a favorite trail close to the Little Miami River. I love him in all seasons, but I have always loved him best in the winter when he is most exposed. I can see all of his twisted branches, and every stick that is part of his bent and bowed being. I have a framed photo of him in all his bare winter glory, hanging in my family room. I have felt life and wisdom and lessons and whispers of love from God seep into my heart when I stood beneath this tree, and I named him Ceorl (prounounced CHA-orl) because in the Old English poem “Beowulf,” the word ceorl is used to mean “wise, old man.”

More on this tree in a minute.

My life is very much in a season of change just now. So many aspects of it are changing almost faster than I can keep up with. And many of these changes seem sad and bad.

It’s clear now that, barring a miracle, my health will never return to what it was before my bout with Covid two years and seven months ago. My day-to-day life has greatly changed due to the damage that the mild case I contracted that cold February 14, in 2023, caused to my body and to my heart. Damage that no one understands yet, during these still-early post-Covid years. Damage there is no cure for. I can no longer do so many things I love to do.

Our older kids are off on their own adventures now, searching for their own paths in life. They are doing this with varying degrees of beauty as some follow God’s ways, and some choose not to. Some of their choices have affected relationships and some have broken our hearts and the hearts of their siblings, but they are their choices to make now. Mother Teresa once said: “God did not call me to be successful. He called me to be faithful.” Like so many other parents we know, we have made many mistakes, but we have done our very best to remain faithful throughout our parenting journey, and we have had to face that we must let go of the “finished” picture we had hoped for. My parenting of most of my children has greatly changed now, although we do still have a few younger ones we will continue to parent to adulthood for a few more years. But we understand better than ever now that the “success” of those children’s completed pictures, just like all the ones who went before them, is out of our hands, no matter how much we may want to pour our love and dreams into them. And they, like we, are still works in progress. I can leave them safely in God’s hands as he continues to do His work in their hearts and minds, teaching them through their mistakes and bad choices and eventually, in His time, please God, bringing beauty from ashes.

Our ministry, The Shepherd’s Crook Orphan Ministry, has been forced to all but fold, drastically reducing the work the passion in our hearts longed to keep doing until we left this world, and cutting our salary in half, resulting in even greater dependence on God for every aspect of our daily provision. Our work and financial situation have greatly changed.

I even had to totally change how I homeschool these last few kids through their final years of school, after doing it basically the same way for the past thirty-three years. My health and the limitations on each of my days have forced me to find a better way to meet both their and my own needs.

I sometimes feel like I no longer even know who I am. 

Change can be good. Often, it can be great! But so much change all at the same time, especially change that we didn’t choose and would never have chosen if it had been up to us, can leave us feeling disoriented and lost and like all of life is suddenly out of our control. Maybe even sometimes wondering, “what has this all been about anyway?!”

God has been doing a lot of inside-of-me work over the past year or so as I have been trying to process and accept all of this. Trying to learn how to live in all of these new ways and embrace unwanted and unforeseen changes as they come.

Recently, I stepped out onto my front porch early one afternoon and spotted a white moth resting on the white vinyl siding of our house. It was breathtaking and one of the most calming and beautiful things I’ve ever seen. I wanted to just stand there on my front porch and look at it forever. I was mesmerized by it and wanted to take photo after photo, trying in vain to capture all of its amazingness. Later, I started to wonder what kind of moth it was, so I did a little research. My best guess is that it was most likely a Virginia tiger moth, and it’s pretty rare to see them. I also read the following information that I tucked away into the little parts of me that are trying to process all of these changes:

“If you ever have seen a white moth, you must have been amazed at the rarity of it, but also at the sweet presence of nature it carries with it. Very often, the wonder you experience when you encounter one comes with a feeling of peace. White moths encourage you to embrace change and face life’s difficulties as a part of your transformational journey.“

Apparently many cultures traditionally agree that the appearance of a white moth indicates transformation and new beginnings as reminders to embrace change.

God does often use nature to speak to our hearts and encourage us, so this was a little food for thought for me. And honestly, I fell in love with this moth.

Two days later, since the weather had suddenly cooled off dramatically, I was back on my beloved trail and looking forward to standing beneath my Ceorl tree again for a few minutes. As I neared the spot I have memorized so well, I gasped when I saw him lying on the ground, still hauntingly majestic, but now clearly dying. The most recent summer storm had pulled him up by the roots, toppled him, and left him to return to the earth he had sprouted from who knows how many years ago. What a tremendous crash that must’ve been when it happened! He must’ve shaken the world as he fell, declaring that things would never, ever be quite the same again in this little spot in the woods.

Scott and I stood side by side in silence. Then we quietly snapped a few photos and recorded this short video. I tried to find words to express what I was feeling. There was sadness for sure, but it was a peaceful sadness. More like what you feel when you finish the most amazing book you’ve ever read, close it, and then just sigh deeply and sit with it for awhile, missing it. It felt kind of like that. Like a chapter had just ended, but like it was time for it to. Time to turn and walk on now into the next great adventure.

And suddenly, I remembered my white moth. God was indeed trying to help me hear an important message. Change. Transformation. New beginnings. It was time. Time to release this long grieving process and make way for new things.

The next morning, as I sat with my book, Watching for the Morning by Vaneetha Risner, a woman who knows the heartbreak of unwanted change to a life that she thought was pretty well planned out, this was my reading for the day:

“Remember not the former things,
    nor consider the things of old.
 Behold, I am doing a new thing;
    now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
    and rivers in the desert.“
Isaiah 43:18-19

“While I am convinced I’m living out God’s best for me, there are days I mourn what used to be . . . memories of a life that no longer exists. How do we get past the disappointment of losing a precious part of our life? When we verbalize it, and what it’s attached to, the sadness loses some of its grip. The things we love will always be a part of us, but their loss doesn’t have to devastate us or define us. Embracing means gladly receiving and even welcoming whatever the Lord gives me, even when it wasn’t in my plans. It means being fully present, living in the now, finding joy in the moment, and not constantly longing for what was in the past. God told his people not to remember the past because He was making a new way in the wilderness. While we may always remember what we’ve lost, we can be sure God is making a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. Lean into His work and embrace it. Trust that God is dong something beautiful.”

One of my favorite historical women of faith, Amy Carmichael, broke her leg so badly that she spent the rest of her life bedridden and in pain. During this suffering, she wrote a poem called In Acceptance Lieth Peace, in which she described the futility of the many ways we often try to deal with loss — forgetting the precious thing(s) we’ve lost, trying to stay so busy we don’t think about the loss, shutting ourselves off from living and giving up. Then she closes with this verse:

He said, “I will accept the breaking sorrow
Which God to-morrow
Will to His son explain.”
Then did the turmoil deep within him cease.
Not vain the word, not vain;
For in Acceptance lieth peace.

God is bringing me along this path to a place of Acceptance and peace and the embracing of all He still has ahead for me, in spite of how it may look right now. And He uses other people and so many aspects of nature in His beautiful world to whisper this guidance to my weeping heart. To think of Him, the Creator of all, taking time to place a white moth on my front porch wall, and to lead me to this tree filled with so many lessons through the years! Such a merciful and loving Father we have watching over us. He cares so much for us and so much about the things that cause the tears to roll down our cheeks and the cracks in our hearts.