In these last days of 2014, I find myself in liminal space. I’ve been in such space before, but didn’t know what to call it, until I learned the word “liminal” back in my chaplaincy training (CPE). As so often happens for me, finding the word empowered me to claim the reality I’d felt for years.

The word liminal comes from the Latin for “threshold.” In liminal space, we are in between what has been and what is coming, on the threshold of something new that God is doing, but not there yet. It’s the bend in the river, where what has been is over and what is to come is yet unseen.

In my own experience, liminal space brings great learning and stretching–and usually, plenty of anxiety. I’m not so good at waiting. The in-between usually feels hard.

But sometimes, being on the threshold is exactly what I need and it feels like it.

As 2014 winds down and 2015 is yet to begin, I am in the in-between. In the church year, this is the sixth day of Christmas (six geese a-laying, anyone?), smack in the middle of the full twelve. I am at my parents’ home in the North Georgia mountains, where I am both child and mother, caregiver and care-receiver.

Several years ago, my parents retired to the valley where my mother grew up and built mom’s dream home on a piece of land owned by her father. From their sunroom, I can see the house where my mother grew up and where my sisters and I (and the other dozens of grandchildren) visited throughout our childhoods. One of the many cousins lives there now.

For me, being here in my parents’ house at this time of year is a good physical space to match my experience of liminal space. I am not in charge here. I am not THE mama in this house. I am not responsible for everything (which is how it often feels in my own home). I assist, I suggest, I lend a hand, I help cook and clean up, I do a few projects my mother has put on hold. My sister who is also here does the same. We work and laugh together, remembering and retelling family stories.

In these days of Christmas leading to the New Year, here in this house, my daily anxieties are at bay. I am not haunted by closets that need organizing or writing assignments I need to complete. I do not worry whether I am adequately contributing to God’s kingdom and using my gifts as I “ought.” I have no to-do list. The push of preparing for Christmas is over and the rush of resolutions and back-to-the-grind has not begun.

I just get to live into these relationships that are here now. I visit with cousins who drop by and another whom my sister and I stopped to chat with on our afternoon walk. I snuggle my three year old niece and we stay in our pajamas until late morning playing with blocks and making cookies. I listen to our children laugh together at the kitchen table eating the delicious meals we have cooked together.

Tomorrow, we head home. The miles will roll under our wheels and the hours in the car will slowly tick past. The bend in the river will stretch out into a new set of rapids and deep pools we’ll need to navigate by the grace of God. But not yet.

Now, in this liminal space, in this small sacred place and time, God offers the chance to be. And be at peace.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Alicia Davis Porterfield is mother to three boys, half a clergy couple and grateful for every moment of rest she receives. She edited A Divine Duet: Ministry and Motherhood (www.helwys.com) and is the midwife of this blog. Contact her at aporterfield@ec.rr.com to claim your spot for a post.

Being a mother feels like living in a perpetual state of guilt. Whatever I’m doing, I feel guilty for the other things I’m not doing, and I just rotate which thing(s) I feel guilty for not doing.

I’m at work. Guilt for not being with my child. I’m with my child. Guilt for not making progress on my work tasks. I’m resting. Guilt for not exercising more. I’m exercising. Guilt for not being with my child or making progress at work or resting. It’s a vicious cycle where nobody wins.

And now it’s Thanksgiving. There are meals to be prepared and cakes to be baked and special outfits for school plays to be packed and decorations to be made. And if we are honest about all of the hats we mommy ministers wear, let’s add to that list sermons to be prepared and preached, shut-ins to be visited, newsletters to be written, community events to be attended, and meaningful worship services to be planned.

More things we are doing. More things we are not doing. More guilt.

As caretakers and spiritual guides, so much of our time is spent giving of ourselves to others. This work is exhausting and keeps the harsh reality of the world in front of our faces all of the time. We know full well about the realities of this world. Racism. Classism. Sexism. Hatred. Abuse. Betrayal. Injustice.

So how do we turn all of that off and participate in Thanksgiving? Sitting around a table and listing the things I’m for which I’m grateful feels a little forced. Really, I just want to bind up my wounds and cling to hope.

But maybe it’s not forced. And maybe it’s okay, even holy, to bring all of that with me to the Thanksgiving table. Maybe it’s the road to healing. As we give thanks, we remember how God has been at work in our lives. Yes, we still know about the terrible realities of the world, but we see the good alongside of it, bringing the entire picture into view. We remember when God has delivered us from captivity, guided us through and out of the wilderness, and blessed us with a holy communion of friends and family.

And when I was least expecting it, I caught a glimpse of hope to which I could cling.

I was making decorations with my son, and he asked if we could give them to our friends. Making decorations was his reward for having a good day at school, and instead of keeping them for himself, he wanted to share them with others, because he thought it would make them happy. He wanted to take what was given to him as a blessing and bless others. Lord, may it be so with your church also.

We mommy ministers spend all day every day trying to heal the world, and it seems unending at times. And then we come home and care for our families. And with what’s left, we care for ourselves. It’s like we are trying to finish a song with an unresolved note, and no matter how many times we play through the song, it just doesn’t feel “over” at the end.

But there is hope in the world because love bursts forth from tiny places. Even though injustice and suffering linger, God is faithfully at work in the world, bringing about reconciliation and healing, providing for those in need, raising up prophetic voices to speak against injustice, and empowering seemingly little voices to speak big words of love.

Though I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders this season, I am grateful. I am grateful to be part of a church family with social justice in its DNA. I am grateful to share this season with beloved friends and family. I am grateful for my ministry and the opportunity to empower young people to acquire knowledge, in pursuit of wisdom, to serve the world.

My part feels small a lot of the time. Maybe yours does, too. But together, we are doing great things. Holy things.

May this Thanksgiving be a time of respite and encouragement for you, a reminder that God is faithfully working through you and around you, and a reminder that you are not alone. You are part of a global community of sisters and brothers working together for peace and justice.

And every time someone enacts love, no matter how small it seems, may we give thanks, for this is the very hope of our lives and our work and our identities in Christ: that God is faithfully at work making all things new. Amen.

Rev. Dr. Courtney Pace Lyons is mother to Stanley and works at Baylor University, where she earned her PhD.

This time last year, I had just completed my first week-long writing retreat. It was nothing short of heavenly. One week in the North Carolina mountains in autumn, surrounded by other women writers with a spiritual bent and led by a gifted teacher with the uncanny ability to inspire “Fearless Writing” (Peggy Tabor Millin, www.clarityworksonline.com).

But I had to plan long and hard to save up for the retreat and arrange to be away from home for a whole week.

First I scoured my calendar to make sure no other commitments interfered with the retreat dates–neither mine nor my minister-husband’s, nor the children’s, nor the church’s. It worked! A minor miracle, no doubt.

Then the real work began.

I carefully calculated the deposit and final installment for the retreat and balanced it with the checkbook. I tallied my anticipated income for the next few months and found it would just work out. Check!

I called my parents far in advance to see if they could come help my husband with the boys that week. I marked on my calendar intervals at which to remind them of said commitment. Check and check!

I worked upcoming deadlines and coaching calls around the carved-out week and planned accordingly. As the date grew closer, I paid bills online so everything would be up to date before I left. I found a substitute for Kindergarten Sunday School and Zumba, with help from friends. Check, check and check!

I prepared things at home: mounds of laundry done so plenty of long pants and shorts would be available for the capricious fall weather on NC’s coast; several meals made ahead and frozen so my mom wouldn’t have to cook every night; house cleaned, my parents’ room readied with fresh sheets and flowers; boys’ schedule arranged and outlined for ease. Check, check, check and check!

Lastly, I prepared myself: writing projects gathered and prepped for work at the retreat; packing for mountain weather; and lots of snuggles and hugs savored and stored for time apart from the family.

It was a lot of work. And it was all completely, assuredly, absolutely worth it.

I came back from the retreat refreshed, renewed and inspired. I am a better, more grounded mother when I have time away. I am better, more grounded minister when I have time away. And I am simply a better, more grounded me when I have time away.

My family and the people I serve in ministry benefit from a better, more grounded me. So do other drivers, people in the grocery store, at the bank, at church . . . but I digress.

As a minister married to a minister and mom of three active boys, I have discovered that in order to get away, I must be “wise as serpents and gentle as doves” (Matt 10:16). I have to make it a priority and plan relentlessly and with great determination. I have to assure and reassure myself and my children.

I have to resist the voices, without and within, that suggest that I am “selfish” for taking this time or that I am neglecting my family when I am away. Several voices I hear like to couch the need for time away as a weakness, sort of that “I never had/have time away so I don’t know why you should get it,” approach.  I’ve secretly wanted to reply, “Well, at least I’m not going away for forty days and nights like Jesus,” but haven’t yet.

My kind-hearted husband gets lots of credit and affirmation from others for “letting me have” this time away. Little do they know that my mother coddles him and the boys far more than I do. She keeps the cookie level high and the stress level low. She serves them gravy regularly: on biscuits, on potatoes, with fried chicken, cubed steak and pot roast.

In similar fashion, my father tells family stories that keep the boys and my husband in stitches. He listens attentively to the boys describe their favorite basketball players’ pros and cons, likes and dislikes. He fixes broken window blinds and drawer pulls.

My little brood is not left comfortless when I go away. Far from it.

I need time away. We need time away. This kind of self-care is not indulgent or selfish. It is essential and it is biblical.

Today I am marking next fall’s retreat on the 2015 calendar. Tomorrow, I’ll start planning for that time away. Gratefully.

Alicia Davis Porterfield is a ministry-mom living in Wilmington, NC. A writer, Life Coach and Board Certified chaplain, she is the mom of three boys, ages 9, 11 and 13. In her spare time, she likes to sleep.

As a mother of a toddler I am rarely alone. I can’t even go to the restroom alone when my daughter is around. She has finally reached the age where I can leave the room until I hear a scream, cry or thump, but other than that we are usually together.

Thanks be to God for daycare, or I would literally never be without her. Even when others are around to watch her, when I am nearby she wants her mommy. This is the blessing and curse of toddler motherhood. The blessing and curse of always being wanted and needed.

The flip side of never being alone is the loneliness I feel as a mother. Those late nights when Scarlet wakes up because her allergies are so bad she can’t sleep and we find ourselves rocking in the recliner in a dark house and there are not even cars passing by on the road. I can’t imagine the loneliness mothers felt at those times before Facebook. At least in my loneliness I can scroll through the lives of others who have gone to rest for the night.

Then there is the loneliness a mother feels after sitting on the bathroom floor for 40 minutes waiting for pee-pee in the potty to happen. The loneliness of wrangling a toddler in Walmart while shopping with a list that is way too long to accomplish alone. As a mother, even though I am rarely alone, I often feel the weight of loneliness. I often feel like I am mothering, parenting, and surviving all on my own.

As a minister I am rarely alone. I am an extrovert and my ministry style is very relational, so I spend a lot of time with others. As a youth and children’s minister, I am always surrounded by people and voices. I can always find myself in a conversation, some simple and some so serious and scary I only survive by the grace of God.

As a minister my door, heart and head are always open to others. I am usually with at least one person in my office or surrounded by 10s or 100s in Bible study and events. As a minister I am called to make disciples; this requires being with people. And even when I am not surrounded by the people of my ministry, I am surrounded by their burdens and prayer requests. I am rarely alone with my own discipleship, burdens, and prayers.

On the other hand, while my ministry requires me to be with people for most of the time, I continue to feel alone. Ministers hear and know some of the darkest secrets of people’s lives. We are often entrusted with stories that are hard to hear and hard to bear. Because of this, we often have to keep these stories to ourselves and God, leaving us very few places to release.

As a minister, I do spend time in my own Bible study and prayer time with God. These times often lead me to places and decisions that are not easy and often against the traditions of the church and sometimes I feel like I fight the battle of servanthood, discipleship, and just being Jesus in the world alone.

As a mother and minister I am often caught in this weird place. A place where I am rarely alone, but often feel so lonely. Please don’t think I am literally alone. I have an amazing husband and partner in ministry, parenthood and life. He does his share of parenting and household chores. And as the senior pastor of the church I serve, he is a constant support of the ministry God has called me to.

I am also surrounded by loving family, friends, and church family. I rarely pay for a baby sitter, when I actually ask for one. I would not have made it this far in ministry and parenthood without the great cloud of witnesses that surrounds me on a daily basis. However, even surrounded by this great cloud, I often feel like I am in a fog.

I often wonder what Mary, the mother of Jesus really felt upon giving birth to Jesus. Did she feel the loneliness of rarely being alone? She was an outcast in society, but also never away from the presence of God, literally in her womb. We know she had a friend in Elizabeth, but could Elizabeth really relate?

When Jesus was born, there may have been stable animals around and even shepherds came to visit. It seems like Joseph never left her side. But did she ever feel alone? Did she feel alone in the burden and blessing of raising the Messiah? My answer to many of these questions was found as I read Mary’s song in Luke.

And Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me – holy is his name.” – Luke 1:46-49

Hearing Mary’s humble offering of song, a crying out to God, I find myself amazed by her humility and hope. I am reminded of the great things the Mighty One has done for me. I am reminded of the mindfulness God has shown in giving me two of the greatest honors and responsibilities a person can have: parenthood and ministry. I am humbled that God has blessed me with joy from the womb, a joy that not all women have the opportunity to experience. I am humbled that God has called me to help point and guide his people back to him. I am humbled by the legacy that my parenting and ministry will leave.

Granted, this reflection does not make the loneliness of rarely being alone magically go away. But it does give me hope. It does make me reflect on the greater purpose of my life. It does make me understand the humility that is required to be a mother and minister. As a mother and minister I understand just a small portion of what it means to put others before myself. I can’t imagine the feeling of putting the all of humankind before my own child.

As a mother and minister I will rarely be alone. As a mother I will often feel alone. However, as a child of God I will never be without the God who made me, loves me, provides for me, guides me, protects me, and keeps me – holy is his name.

Rev. Sarah Boberg is the Minister of Youth and Children at First Baptist Church in Red Springs were she serves alongside her husband, Rev. Bradley Boberg. She is the mother of the beautiful and energetic Scarlet Carolyne and spends her “free” time working on her Ph.D. in Educational Studies with a concentration in Cultural Studies from UNCG.

As I left the preschool, I passed a woman who was crying. Hurrying, needing to get to class, I barely stopped to ask if she were OK. I must have still been walking even as I asked – and I smiled and nodded as she responded merely that she would be.

I left the building and was walking across the parking lot when my feet stopped and something powerful turned me around– very suddenly, it felt.

Finding the woman inside, I stopped to look at her face and asked her how I could help. In this stopping and asking I learned that she was afraid she was losing a pregnancy.

Because I responded to the realization that I must go back, because I stopped and turned and sought out her face, I had the privilege of sitting with a woman who was anxious and afraid, and who needed someone who understood this story.

October closed with brisk winds, ghouls and goblins, and remembrances of the saints whose lives we acknowledged on Sunday. Everything has turned–very suddenly, it feels. Our clocks have fallen backwards into a schedule that is darker and the cold will begin seeping into our bones after a luxuriously warm fall. The mountains of my home state saw a very early snow this weekend.

We have turned to a season that is more contemplative, more about inside than outside – both physically and spiritually.

October served as a month of awareness of those who have suffered miscarriages and the loss of infants. This awareness is something that I will carry with me, even, or perhaps, especially, as I navigate the darker weeks ahead. In my own work I have begun to use the term “Fertility Grief” to describe the pain of these losses and the pain of infertility. As an online community who has been offered glimpses of fertility grief this month, we must also make a turn: we turn from becoming aware to meaningful ministry.

The seasons that lie just ahead can be excruciatingly painful for those who are so tangled in fertility grief. There are men and women in our congregations that have been trying for years to start a family. There are women and men in our congregations who have lost pregnancies and grieved without a body to bury or a service to mark their loss. There are men and women in our congregations whose children were stillborn or who were never able to carry their children home from the hospital.

How can we minister to them in the weeks ahead?

Did our faith communities acknowledge these losses as we acknowledged other deaths on All Saints Sunday? How will we address these losses at Thanksgiving when so many focus on the gift of gathering with family? How will we shape the language we use during Advent so that the entire season is not about waiting for a baby?

Where will you be when you pass someone who is aching with the fear that the child inside of them is dying? Or someone whose fertility treatment has failed this week? Or someone who child has died? What will her face look like? What will his face look like?

Will we allow God to pull us back to sit and listen? Will we work to shape the language and practices of our worship services this season so that those who grieve are welcomed–and not injured–by what happens there?

We turn together. We turn toward the inbreaking of light into our darkness. We turn toward the promise of God with us.

We turn toward a call to sit in darkness with those for whom the light is yet to come. So may it be.

Mary Elizabeth Hanchey is a Coordinator for Project Pomegranate (look for them on Facebook), which provides spiritual resources for those impacted by fertility grief. She lives in Durham, NC with her husband and three children. She is a member at Watts Street Baptist Church in Durham, NC, where she serves as the Interim Director of Children’s Music Ministries. She has recently returned to Duke Divinity School where she is pursuing an MDiv as a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Scholar.

Our story is one of many that has no explanation. No one knows where things went wrong.

We had done what we were supposed to. Get your career established. Get settled in your marriage. And then have children.

No one – not even my doctors – told us that fertility starts to drop at age 30. We couldn’t help but feel a little deceived later when we learned the truth.

My husband and I struggled for five years to have our first child. Those years involved 126 doctor visits, 104 tests and procedures, and more than 250 needle pricks.

Finally, as a result of in-vitro fertilization, we were expecting our first child. But our story doesn’t end there.

More mysteries were ahead of us: Two IVF babies. Two emergency c-sections. One disappeared twin. Two premature births. A combined 81 days in the NICU – meaning 79 days of leaving the hospital without a baby.

Today, as our daughters are in middle school, we talk often about their perilous births, their challenging weeks in the NICU, and the support that surrounded us.

We don’t talk much about the isolation we felt when we were trying to start our family to begin with. When you’re struggling with a major life crisis or health problem, church it seems would be a logical place to turn for answers.

But many infertile couples find church to be space void of answers, barbed with subtle judgment or brash insensitivity rather than peace, a source of deeper pain rather than solace, and a place of isolation rather than community.

Churches know what to do when a baby is born healthy but not so much when a baby is elusive. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Religious beliefs can contribute to a couple’s sense of hope and help them cope with the stress of treatment. This is a strong foundation on which congregations can build as they seek ways to support infertile and grieving couples.

Of course, church families will celebrate the children in their midst. But it can be done in a way that doesn’t hurt the childless.

Mother’s Day and Father’s Day can be honored with an acknowledgement of those who long for children as well as those who mourn.

Congregations can hold infertility prayer services and offer support groups as some have demonstrated.

And we can tell the stories of our Biblical heroines who faced barrenness.

Their stories of determination ring true today as they did in ancient times. These women did not sit back and wait. They took decisive action.

Sarah, Rachel and Leah each set up a surrogate. Rachel also turned to medicinal aide. Rebekah journeyed with her husband who prayed on her behalf. Hannah is the first woman in the Bible to speak her prayer to God in public and to offer an official vow.

It’s amazing to me that these stories were written in such detail, most likely by men in a patriarchal culture. But it was no mistake.

There is power in seeing the strength of others who are like yourself. And there is hope in the new relationship that God has with these ancient women — a relationship that thrives with women today.

I know that when we were in the midst of our own struggle, these stories were of great comfort to me. I saw that I was in good company and that God was present in our journey.

I don’t believe for a second that God gave us infertility. He cried with us, and he helped us through it.

Early in our struggle, some people would say, “It must not be God’s plan for you to have children,” or “Maybe it wasn’t meant to be.”

I wonder what those people would say now, seeing our daughters. They are God’s creation.

By day, Christie L. Goodman, APR, is the communications manager for the Intercultural Development Research Association, which is dedicated to assuring educational opportunity for every child. In the spare time of a working mom and wife, she has been writing a book on ministering to couples experiencing infertility and traumatic births, based in part on her family’s experience. In the course of her writing, she has researched in depth the gift of these Biblical stories of barrenness and renewal.

A year ago today I sat in the ultrasound room holding my breath. I’m not sure why, other than it was one of those moments that—for me—time stopped.

The ultrasound showed an image of a brand new pregnancy—a rice-sized blob with a little flashing dot that showed that there were two hearts beating inside my body. The heart rate was 110—slow for those beginning days—and the doctor looked concerned as he suggested that perhaps our dates were wrong and this was simply a heart just starting to beat.

“I’m cautiously optimistic,” he said.

Nearly two weeks later, my son Benjamin was born—an early miscarriage. He joined his sister Avelyn, born months before after an 11-week gestation period.

I was the mom of two children that I never heard cry.

Tomorrow I will be 21 weeks pregnant with our second son, a yet unnamed squirmy boy nicknamed “Mops” by a friends 4-year-old son. He keeps growing and thriving, and we can’t wait to meet him and welcome him to his new home.

But this pregnancy has not healed me.

The birth of my son will not replace the children not with me.

Each milestone I hit in this pregnancy, I think about the milestones that Avelyn and Benjamin should have reached.

With each new twinge (or lack thereof), I wonder when I’ll hear bad news about Mops. Bad news I can’t help but anticipate every time we see the doctor or midwife.

The world considers me a first-time mom. Each time someone comments on my firstborn or references the first grandchild on my side of the family, I ache.

This is not my first. I have held two others within me, had my water break, felt their birthing time come as my uterus contracted and urged me to push.

I have held them—small as they were—in my hands. I sang them lullabies and journaled throughout their short lives.

Avelyn and Benjamin were—and are—loved deeply, and their lives mattered to their parents.

And yet, there are no words for the birth position Mops holds. Psychology will name him an only child—or the oldest if we have other kids. He will experience life in a way his brother and sister did not.

If all goes well, I will get to hear his cries, see his smiles, lose my sanity to the sleeplessness of the baby stage, feel my heart grow with love.

But our family photos will always be missing two, the invisible playmates our son should have had.

Jennifer Harris Dault is the Associate Pastor at St. Louis Mennonite Fellowship and an advocate for those dealing with infertility and pregnancy and infant loss. She is the editor of “The Modern Magnificat: Women Responding to the Call of God” and blogs infrequently at jenniferharrisdault.com

The day after we laid our sweet baby Anna’s body in the cemetery next door to the parsonage where we live, a very kind family from our church, who owns a landscaping company, came to plant a tree in our front yard in her honor.

It was a very exciting event – especially for our four and six year old boys, who even got to sit in the cab of the tractor as the hole was dug for the tree. It was at least 20-feet tall:  a crepe myrtle which, they told us, would bloom white in just a few weeks, as Spring arrived in all its beauty and promise of hope and renewal.

Garin, my husband, watered the tree every three days, just as they had instructed, and we watched for the first buds to give us a hint of the splendor that we would see, a monument of strength and beauty in honor of our precious baby girl.

But as the weeks passed, the tree didn’t bloom.

We watched the other crepe myrtles on the church grounds put forth their leaves, and then buds, and then tiny purple and pink and red flowers, and still Anna’s tree was bare.

When we received the call from the man who had planted it telling us that the tree apparently had not survived the most recent cold snap, I was heartbroken again.

I don’t know why it affected me so, but it did. Even the tree planted in her honor didn’t survive.

We did everything right. We watered each week. We kept the mulch around the base . . . but sometimes, even when you do everything right, the tree just doesn’t make it.

Our very kind friend said that he would come and take it down, and promised to come back in the fall and replace it with a new tree.

And so, one day when I arrived home from work, the tree was gone. Just like that, there was a hole in the ground, covered with a pile of dirt, empty again.

But then.

A few weeks later, I noticed that there was a little sprout of green, poking out of the dirt. It was small enough to be a weed, but maybe not.

And it grew. And grew.

I called Garin outside to look with me, and he said he knew that the man who removed the tree had left the roots.

Just the roots of that tree were left in the ground, but there was life growing, pushing up through the dirt and grass, stubbornly, persistently, refusing to be kept down.

In that moment, staring at that brave little tree, God reminded me of renewal and hope, and that though Anna is gone, she will always be with me, stubbornly, persistently.

And that even when my heart is breaking, life is still all around me, full of hope and wonder and beauty.

And I will always think of these things when I think of my sweet baby Anna.

“But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, and mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” Lamentations 3:21-23

Rachel Hunt Hill is a ministry-mom and Board Certified Chaplain. She currently serves with Hospice of Cleveland County.