In these early spring days in Canada, we can see varying degrees of winter’s end. The light is longer. The temperatures fluctuate (even if we will have three more snowfalls before we can put the shovels and boots away). Birds are starting to reappear. Nature is preparing for its most dramatic transition from dormancy to new life. My eyes search for each tiny sign:  buds forming on trees, the dirt and gravel beneath the snow, rubber boots beside the snow pants. I want to stay close to the shifting.

In these last months, I have been walking alongside some big transitions that are more adjacent to me than truly mine. A team that is really coming together after a change, a child growing into a new life, my partner starting a new job. I know – in my head – that supporting others is both profound privilege and also deep work. It is an invitation to stay with that is distinctly different than doing (for). And each of these situations is offering soul knowledge into the edges of presence and the risks of birth.

First, when there are changes in teams, we anticipate disruption and discomfort. And the intellectual anticipation of interruption does not translate into a roadmap through it. I get to show up in the chaos of change and stick with the people while we find our way through. We hold the losses with tenderness and watch in hope for new possibilities. We stay with each other long enough to forge connection in the recognition of mistakes, in learning, in laughter.

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Parenting adolescent and teen children is a constant movement between stepping in and letting go. As not-so-little people test new skills and find limits, my heart gets stretched over wider spaces where I have increasingly less control. I stay close enough to not be too far away. I resist the lie that this makes me irrelevant and embrace the depth of ties that allow them to make their way to me. There is grace – and fear – in the space between and around us that I am not holding. 

Finally, a new job shakes up the household routine, introduces new relationships, invites new roles at work and at home. There are new stories to share and a different energy enters. We have had more of these season shifts than most, and my senses are attuned to the shifts: the new times on the alarm clock, the energy needed for learning, the adjustments to personalities and responsibilities. I feel the desire for me to stay with my person without judgement or interference, to make space for what is new and gently release what has been.

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In all this staying with and walking beside through Lent, I have been thinking of Jesus’ request to his disciples to stay with him in the Garden in the hours before His passion. And it feels world-altering to me that the Word who breathed life into existence asks us to stay with him.

For the last eight years, since the death of my sister Abbie, March has been the heaviest month of my year. My cells carry the anticipation of her death. The intensity has lessened, but there is a dying and rising in my soul that accompanies Lent and Easter and the transition from winter into spring. I know that no one else can walk this journey for me, but those who travel beside me change everything.

This is the prayer of my heart in the holiest of weeks and the hardest seasons of my life: “Stay with me.” Do not leave me alone here. Do not abandon me while I face my deepest fears. Whisper to me in the dark that the sun will rise again, that the ice will melt, and the buds will break into leaves. Here on earth and into the grave and from the heavens, remind me that I never walk alone.

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Right in the most difficult places, I can feel the longing of the Eternal Mystery, the One who set us into life for love, whispering back: “stay with Me.” 

May it ever be so.