Tag: God

Waiting on a Baby at Christmas

On By Stacy N. SergentIn Gratitude, Holidays, Parenting, Women in Ministry2 Comments

I watched as my 9-year-old stepson raised his hand during a recent Sunday morning children’s sermon. “When you said that Jesus came to us as a baby,” he told the children’s ministry coordinator, “it makes me think about the baby in my stepmom’s belly.” Tears filled my eyes and I smiled, placing a hand on my very prominent belly, where his sister was making her presence known with unmistakable movements. As we approached Christmas this year, I enjoyed Jackson’s questions and observations as he made connections between my pregnancy and Mary’s.

“You think Jesus kicked Mary all the time, too?”

Continue reading “Waiting on a Baby at Christmas” →

A Blessing for the Longest Night

On By Stacy N. SergentIn Gratitude, Grief, Holidays, Love for Neighbor and Self, Peace, PrayerLeave a comment
Today is the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere, the shortest day of the year. For some of us, this year has felt like a series of long, dark nights. We have done our best to hold on to hope, peace, joy, and love, even one tiny spark at a time, but it hasn’t been easy. As we prepare for the end of 2020, and hopefully much brighter days ahead in 2021, I invite you to take a moment to reflect on all you have experienced this year, and to receive this blessing. 

When you step out into the darkness,
May you remember.
Remember the losses and frustrations and anxieties you have faced.
Remember the resilience and kindness you have discovered, in others and in yourself.
Remember, though you may feel small under the endless sky, that you are cherished by the One who created it.

When you step out into the darkness,
May you feel.
Feel fear and grief and anger, for they are holy and wholly appropriate at this time.
Feel hope and gratitude and joy, for they are holy and wholly appropriate at this time.
Feel your breath, your heartbeat, the love of God surrounding and sustaining you. 

When you step out into the darkness,
May you see.
See how even a single candle in a window is enough to pierce the dark and guide you home.
See planets half a billion miles away reflect the sun’s light, a promise that it’s still there.
See that no matter how long and cold and dark the night may be, the Light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.
Dawn is coming. 

Faith in the Time of COVID-19

On By Stacy N. SergentIn Chaplaincy, Depression, Love for Neighbor and Self, Peace, Prayer, SufferingLeave a comment

“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?” Well, where do I begin?! I heard these words from Psalm 42 during our church’s worship service this morning, which I watched via Facebook Live just like the rest of the congregation. Our new pastor, the one we just installed last Sunday, came together with the rest of the church staff and made the difficult decision to cancel any activities at the church until further notice. Anything that brings groups of people physically together right now, especially when a lot of those people are in high risk categories, is anathema. Every day the numbers of those infected by the novel coronavirus and those who have died keep rising. So yes, there are plenty of reasons our souls might be disquieted within us in these strange days. Continue reading “Faith in the Time of COVID-19” →

Fasting Toward a Fistfight

On By Stacy N. SergentIn Grief, Holidays, Love for Neighbor and Self, Prayer5 Comments

The kids noticed right away that my husband and I were not doing some of the things that we usually do every day, and were doing some new things instead. And yes, it was hard not to notice the cross of ashes on my forehead. Of course they asked why. I tried to explain why our church observes Lent, and why a lot of us choose to give up some things, and add new things, in our daily routines. “It’s making a sacrifice of something we like,” I told them, “to bring us closer to Jesus before we celebrate his resurrection at Easter.” It seemed an inadequate explanation, but it was the best I could do on the fly, as we rushed to get homework and violin practice done, before packing lunches and reading the next chapter of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets together at bedtime. By the next day, my Lenten disciplines were in a way bringing me closer to Jesus, but maybe even closer to punching a total stranger. Continue reading “Fasting Toward a Fistfight” →

Becoming Into Another Decade

On By Stacy N. SergentIn Gratitude, Holidays, Love for Neighbor and Self, Parenting, Perfectionism, Women in Ministry, Writing1 Comment

A lot has happened since the first day of 2010. That’s true for the world at large, of course, and probably true in any of our individual lives. I’m a sucker for new beginnings, and for nice round numbers ending in zero, so despite a pretty tough 2019, I find myself very hopeful as we face the beginning of a new year and a new decade tomorrow. It would be easy to look back at the last ten years and see all the things that haven’t turned out as I had hoped or planned. As a type 4 on the enneagram, I am someone who makes great big beautiful plans and goals on a regular basis, and regularly finds myself shocked and embarrassed when I am unable to bring them to fruition. (Hey, remember when I was going to do 40 new things for my 40th birthday? Yeah, let’s try to forget.) But rather than wallowing in my losses and failures (we 4s looove to wallow), I’d like to look back gratefully at all the things I was able to become in the 2010s, and (maybe in a later post) dream hopefully of some things I’d like to become in the 2020s.

In the past decade, I have become:  Continue reading “Becoming Into Another Decade” →

A Prayer for Everyone Eating Christmas Dinner in a Hospital

On By Stacy N. SergentIn Chaplaincy, Holidays, Love for Neighbor and Self, Peace, Prayer, Suffering1 Comment

Dear God,

This is not really where we want to be spending today. There are many reasons we are here with a tray of hospital food, instead of around a beautifully spread table at home with a great big loving family, like all the TV commercials and holiday cards and sappy songs on the radio seem to imply we should be. But here we are. Continue reading “A Prayer for Everyone Eating Christmas Dinner in a Hospital” →

The Silences of “Silent Night”

On By Stacy N. SergentIn Holidays, PeaceLeave a comment

It was two hundred years ago tonight, on Christmas Eve of 1818, that Joseph Mohr’s poem came together with Franz Xaver Gruber’s guitar music and the song “Silent Night” was born. I couldn’t let that anniversary go by without writing about it. We talked about it at church tonight, where my husband played it on guitar for our candlelight communion service. I thought about my visit to Salzburg, Austria years ago, where I saw the house where Joseph Mohr was born, an unassuming old house on an out of the way street. He was born in poverty, to an unwed young woman who worked in textiles. To become a priest, Mohr had to obtain special permission from the pope because of his “illegitimate” birth. I was moved by that story, how someone from such humble beginnings could earn a place in history because of the words he wrote, and when we were in a Christmas shop in Salzburg later the same day, I bought a fragile egg shell ornament painted with the first line of the song in its original German. It has hung on my Christmas tree every year since, in my many different homes across different states and different countries. Continue reading “The Silences of “Silent Night”” →

T is for Trauma

On By Stacy N. SergentIn ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy, Chaplaincy1 Comment

(This post is part of my ongoing series ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy.)

There are not many places you’ll still see a pager in 2018, but the hospital where I work is one of them. I have the small black beeper clipped to my lapel or in my pocket (if I’m lucky enough to find an outfit with pockets that day) at all times when on duty. The tones of my hospital pager are as familiar to me as . . . well, as any sound you’ve heard almost daily for over ten years. I always set mine to “Pleasing Alert” and that particular series of beeps is the most pleasing of all the options, it’s true. There are some times, though, when the Pleasing Alert is not what I hear. If the beeps instead are jarring, tapping out the same rhythm that in Morse Code means “S-O-S,” then I know that this is a trauma call. Continue reading “T is for Trauma” →

3. Do Back-to-School Shopping for a Child in Need

On By Stacy N. SergentIn 40 New Things at 40, Gratitude, Love for Neighbor and Self, Parenting2 Comments

(This post is part of my year-long series 40 New Things at 40.)

I love shopping for school supplies. As a child, I looked forward to it every year. If I close my eyes, I can still clearly picture my very first school bag, bright red with silver buckles, emblazoned with the logo of the 1981 movie version of the musical Annie. (It looked kind of like this, except I don’t remember the main image being cartoon Annie and Sandy.) It helped me through the difficult first day of kindergarten, when I was homesick and missed my mom and a mean boy told me I had a fat belly. Pretty much every year, I would get a new backpack (except when my grandparents got my brother and me L.L. Bean backpacks, which lasted and lasted) and a colorful assortment of notebooks, folders (I still miss my Trapper Keeper), pencils, erasers, and other supplies. When I grew up, I looked forward to going back-to-school shopping with my own kids. Continue reading “3. Do Back-to-School Shopping for a Child in Need” →

This Body of Dust

On By Stacy N. SergentIn Body Image, Gratitude, Holidays, Love for Neighbor and Self, Perfectionism2 Comments

If you ever feel like you don’t have enough insecurities about your body, try looking through some bridal magazines. And then go to a store and try on dresses like the ones in those magazines. Look in the mirror and notice that your body looks so different in the dresses from those women in the magazines that you might as well be two different species. Voilà! Instant body insecurities! It sure worked for me, anyway. It doesn’t help that while cleaning out my closet the other day, I came across a picture of me from the time just over a decade ago when, for about a year, I was as close as I will ever come to my ideal weight. That picture tortured me maybe even more than the pictures of models in magazines. My eyes filled with tears looking at it as I thought, That’s the body I want to get married in. Why couldn’t I have had my wedding then?! I obsessed about how much better that body would look in my wedding dress (and my wedding night lingerie) and in all the hundreds of photos that will be taken of me on that day. But instead, I will get hundreds of photos of this body I have now, the one that is regrettably far from ideal. Continue reading “This Body of Dust” →