Cultivate 2021 - A Year in Review

It is Well With My Soul - Following Up on My Word for 2021

Oh the irony! I had told my young son NOT to practice headstands on the couch. But alas, as he flipped upside down when I was in the other room, his feet hit the decorative wall-hanging which declared the words, “It is well with my soul.” The sign fell with a crash and broke. This was indeed NOT well with my soul.

As the year comes to a close, I’m reviewing again the meaning behind the word cultivate - the word I had chosen as my theme for 2021.

Cultivate means to prepare, promote, improve the growth of, develop, train, refine, or tend. How have these qualities manifested themselves in my life over the last 6 months?

The month of July brought temperatures in the 80’s and 90’s. I was 8 months pregnant and sweaty constantly, so the kids and I spent plenty of days in the rivers and lakes surrounding our home in central North Carolina. The kids also went to vacation Bible school, church camps, and Boy Scouts camp. I found myself moving slowly through each day, preparing my heart and mind for the new little bundle who would soon be joining our family.

A few days into August, my mom and I took the kids to a fascinating drive-through animal park and then picnicked and relaxed at a nearby lake. It was one of those ideal days where the children were having so much fun they acted like angels, and I was soaking up each joyful moment. On the drive home, I suddenly began to feel strange, almost like I was coming down with the flu. Within 2 hours, I was in the emergency room. My right leg had swollen up so much that I couldn’t even walk, my heart was racing, and I had a raging fever. The triage nurse brought me in immediately even though there were folks who had been waiting over 6 hours to be seen. They transferred me by ambulance to a larger hospital. The crew there told me they would do everything they could to help me and my baby. I’m laying there thinking, “What in the world? That seems a bit dramatic. I was just enjoying a day at the lake and now medical professionals are subtly letting me know that my life may not go back to normal.” I ended up in the ICU on major amounts of multiple antibiotics, ultrasounds on my leg and pregnant belly, and constant monitoring. The strange thing is, I never once felt afraid. It seemed like the Enemy himself was doing everything he could to cultivate fear in me and yet my soul was at peace.

I left the hospital 5 days later, barely hobbling along with a walker, still pregnant, and still very sick. The diagnosis was cellulitis. For the next week, I laid around, very sleepy, and with a mysterious cough. Fourteen days after first being admitted to the hospital, I went back and delivered a beautiful baby girl. We both immediately tested positive for Covid. We went home and our family spent the next couple of weeks being ill. In the middle of all that illness, our 7-year old fell in the kitchen and broke his wrist - badly. It was the type of break you could see from the outside. His arm is not supposed to bend that way! All this was not well with my soul.

You know, I really think humans in general ultimately want to live a life that pleases God and is truly beautiful. But we get caught up in how to do that and what we really want and acquiring what we need as well as extra. We have beautiful moments or beautiful seasons and then life takes a wild unexpected turn and it sours our outlook completely.

By the time October rolled around, we had much to celebrate. Everyone was healthy again and we took a day trip to the mountains. It was a perfect weather, idyllic pick-apples-and-walk-under-waterfalls type of day. My heart felt so full to have all my children there enjoying the events, and I was able to hike normally once again. We went to a Donut Man concert (if you watched Christian TV in the 90’s, you know about the Donut Man!) and trick-or-treated on Halloween.

Thanksgiving and Christmas have now come and gone. I love these holidays. We enjoyed family visiting from out of town, delicious food, good gifts, singing together, decorating, movies, and downtime. I also had a few mini meltdowns feeling sorry for myself and saying things like, “When does Mama get a day off!?” All the cooking, cleaning, planning, and hard work that goes into creating the magic of the holidays has got to come from somewhere! My soul was torn between the beauty and specialness of it all and the resentment and inconvenience to which I was giving an audience.

Whatever takes root in our souls and continues to thrive does so because care and attention was put toward it. It’s just as easy to cultivate bitterness as it is to cultivate joy. We have to pay attention to what is rooting. G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “I cannot just bear fruit one day out of the blue because I’ve willed to do so - just as one cannot grow a beard in a fit of passion.” Anything can be cultivated. We get to choose what we will promote, which emotions and feelings we tend, and what type of character we will develop.

This year has taught me that it’s important to cultivate certain things and avoid cultivating others. I have to purpose in my heart NOT to cultivate fear, complaining or whining, ungratefulness or entitlement. In the absence of something there needs to be the presence of an alternative. If we take out a bad habit, it must be replaced with a good one or we will fall right back into the old groove. Complaining and entitlement need to be replaced with gratefulness. Whining must be replaced with praise and positivity.

This year has shown me how important it is to cultivate meaning in one’s life. I have this memory of riding in the car with my dad when I was a teenager and we were just sort of quiet when all of a sudden he said, “I love you, my darling daughter.” It was one of the most meaningful moments of my life, even though he told me he loved me often as I was growing up, and he still tells me. He cultivated a relationship with me that is real and meaningful and long-lasting.

My two-year-old was once very sick with the flu and had a high fever. My 12 year old came into the room and began crying. She asked if her little sister was going to die. She was so distraught at the thought of her sister suffering and she considered the possible loss of life. I had worked hard to cultivate love and concern between siblings. The evidence of my attempts wasn’t often clear - they fought like cats and dogs. But that moment displayed proof that the struggle to cultivate is productive.

I remember laying in the hospital bed with that leg infection, and my husband was sitting next to the bed. We were watching Seinfeld, killing time. He reached over and put his hand on my arm, smiled at me and said, “You are so important to me.” I hadn’t bathed in days, hair and teeth were unbrushed, and I was 9 months pregnant. But to him those outward things didn’t matter because we had spent nearly 20 years cultivating something amazing and satisfying. He was just glad I was going to be ok.

When I was young I had cultivated a love for ballet. Going to an audition at Miami City Ballet Company was one of the most meaningful events for me. Even though I was rejected, it didn’t matter because I had cultivated the ability to even be there and participate in potential for something greater than myself.

When I was a teller manager for Bank of America, my boss came to my wedding. He told me I was one of the strongest people he had ever met and one with the most integrity of anyone he knew. What a statement from someone I merely worked with!

I’m not saying these things as a way to toot my own horn. I’m mentioning examples of results that come when you intentionally cultivate a life through discipline, hard work, and perpetual humility, grace, and love poured into relationships.

Life seems to be 50/50. Fifty percent of the time, it’s amazing and wonderful and fun. But the other 50 percent is hard and full of trials. If we let life simply come at us, we will become victims of the negative 50 percent, then the other half will take on its own gloom as we talk ourselves out of being able to enjoy the positive. We must rise up and own our lives.

Cultivation of what you want and what is meaningful makes a huge difference. Then we can face the hard times with an attitude that says, “It is well with my soul,” and it will indeed be so.