by Elizabeth

The cry of my heart for ever so long. I encounter God so deeply in science. My girls gave me this mug for Christmas. I love it, and I love them for giving it to me.

My firstborn explaining trusses to me. I took Statics 20 years ago when I was pregnant with him, and here he is 20 years later taking the course himself. I actually remember very little about it, but it was fun to geek out with him over the E (engineering) in STEM.

My four children overlooking Horse Bluff at Camp Tahkodah. Their great-great-grandfather Dr. George Benson cashed out a life insurance policy to purchase the campground — that’s how much he believed in it. 

The older I get, the more I’m thankful for such a heritage for my children. (They have a beautiful heritage of faith and family traditions on my side too.) Benson later sold the camp to Harding University, who still owns and operates it.

Horse Bluff has always been my favorite bluff. 

In many ways the song “Sing My Way Back” from Steffany Gretzinger represents the year 2023 for me. Re-entry challenged my faith and seemed impossibly hard at times. In a very real way I lost access to the one thing that could have strengthened and sustained me in that time.

My relationship with God thrived on the field, but upon returning unexpectedly in 2020, I found that not only had I changed while I’d been overseas, my passport country had also changed.

For a long time everything felt dark, and I felt dead inside. But somehow in 2023 I found my way back to His heart.

Much of this change was accomplished through working with a spiritual director. I’m so grateful to Danielle Wheeler for answering my questions about spiritual direction and for connecting me with a potential director.

We are more completely our true selves when we are in communion with Christ. That’s part of why I felt so much unlike myself during re-entry. I’m thankful to be making my way back to both God and myself.

Brooke Ligertwood’s “Honey in the Rock” represents another aspect of my year. I first heard it a couple years ago and disliked it. I wasn’t experiencing life like this and thought it was out of reach.

But 2023 has changed all that. It started at the beginning of the year with some financial challenges — we had to make major foundation/crawl space repairs, and the bill for these necessary repairs frightened the living daylights out of me.

I’d had anxiety around money for decades — ever since adolescence when my family faced adverse financial circumstances. I’d carried that anxiety through life, memorizing and reciting Matthew 6:25-34 over the years and praying for my daily bread with the Lord’s Prayer. But the anxiety remained.

I had to do some deep inner work on my money fears this year, and it wasn’t pretty. About halfway through the year I began to find some healing.

But that wasn’t the only way I found “honey in the rock, water from the stone, manna on the ground, no matter where I go.”

This year was a series of progressive healings, only one of which was with money. There was healing in relationships, healing in my ability to reach out to others. The manna God offers isn’t just physical nourishment, but I hadn’t experienced His manna in a long time.

Of course, now I can look back over all the years of re-entry and see honey in the rock everywhere. But for so long I couldn’t see the stars, I couldn’t taste the honey.

24 years ago this handsome guy asked me to marry him at this camp (albeit a different bluff). We’ve returned to this place as often as we can over the years — it’s as close to Home as he gets.

And it’s been the place where we’ve often made big decisions. The decision to start a family (remember that big tall guy explaining the trusses?), the decision to go to nursing school in KC, the decision to go to the mission field.

There were no big decisions to make this year, but I came away with a very grateful heart for 2023 and the God (and people! you know who you are, College Heights Church!) who brought me through it.

“Home is wherever I’m with you.”

Re-enacting our engagement for our children.

There’s no one else I would rather do life with. Here’s to 24 more years — and 24 more years after that.