June 2023

I will give you the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places, so that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who calls you by your name.

-Isaiah 45:3

It's been over a month since Gabe made his surprise appearance.

I took the Monday after Easter Sunday off, and spent the day sitting outside in the sunshine, (finally) writing thank-you cards for the generous gifts from our baby shower a month earlier. I had plans to spend all of Tuesday outside as well, setting up my summertime office in a comfy chair on my lawn.

But you know what they say when you declare your plans to God... God gets a good laugh.

Tuesday morning, I woke up to my husband saying, "Kels, come look! There's a fluffy-tailed bunny in the yard!" I quickly jumped out of bed and barely made it to the kitchen window before I realized - my water had broken. Either that, or I'd lost all control of my bladder.

A couple hours later, a nurse at the hospital confirmed: your baby is making their debut, 3.5 weeks early! (In that moment, I was incredibly grateful I'd just done a mad dash at Target a few days earlier to stock up our hospital bag).

Our son, Gabriel Vern Beebe, was born at 5:02am on Wednesday, April 12th.

The weeks that have followed have been a mix of night and day, waking, feeding, eating, and sleeping. I have started reading "Learning to Walk In the Dark" by Barbara Brown Taylor out loud to Gabe as I feed him, and that title feels like the perfect metaphor for early parenthood. We really have been learning to walk in the dark - learning who this child is, how to do all these new things, trying to figure out when to worry and when to let go, and learning who we are as parents - both individually and as a team.

Perhaps you have also had a time in your life when you've had to learn how to walk in the dark - when it felt like you were suddenly thrust into a new situation. Perhaps you unexpectedly lost a job, or your partner walked out of your life, or the death of a loved one pulled the rug out from under you - and you quickly had to learn how to "walk in the dark" and adapt to this new normal.

We're often taught in western Christianity that darkness means the absence of God. But if there's one thing I'm learning, it's that God is perhaps most poignant and most present in the dark. God is right there, holding our hand, guiding our steps, helping us learn how to walk in the dark.

With grace,

Pastor Kelsey*

*This is an excerpt of one of Pastor Kelsey's devotional emails from her nonprofit, Dancing Pastor Ministries.