Deconstructing my way towards Wholeness

Lessons from Strawberry Hill

“I think this hill might be completely covered in poison ivy,” my husband said as we stopped the truck at our first potential camp site.

Earlier this month, we took our first trip, just us, since the twins were born—a celebration of our almost 14 years of marriage, my 33rd birthday, and surviving the first three years of having twins. (We’ve been told continuously that the first three years are the hardest, and boy have we found that to be true.)

To say the trip was long overdue would be a gross understatement—we have been through some stuff over the past few years, and the hits just keep coming it seems. We needed time to process some new elements of our life and relationship. We needed space to decompress from the constant stress of running multiple small businesses. We needed the beauty of the wild places to soothe our questioning souls, and remind us of what we still believe, even as we talked about all that we’re willing to let float away.

After five hours of blissful child-free driving (IYKYK), we landed in a beautiful secluded campsite off a forest service road just outside of Pagosa Springs. But when we opened the car door, we saw this three leafed plant—and it was everywhere.

“Don’t touch it,” I said, as my husband pulled out his phone to ID the plant.

Leaves of three, beware of me. The old adage rang in my head, but then Willy said something that shocked my nerves with a sudden sharp delight.

“It says it’s wild strawberry.”

And sure enough, as we got out for a closer look, we saw a few strawberry runners, and a few flowers, though we could see it was early for them—flowers that looked so very similar to the ones we’d just left in our market garden field back home.

Strawberries.

Then we found one—and though it was no larger than my thumbnail, the sweetness hit my tongue like grace. Like a promise. A prophecy.

Leaves of three…Strawberry?

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It seems silly now, to think how afraid we once were of even setting foot in that campsite; one we scoured for the better part of half an hour to see if we could find anymore ripe fruit, to no avail.

But as we set up our camping chairs that night on the eve of my 33rd birthday, and as we sat by the fire and listened to the quiet of the mountain night, it hit me—maybe this is like the journey of disentangling/deconstructing faith we’ve been on. Maybe what we thought was poison ivy, is really wild strawberry.

The next morning after we drank our coffee and laid in our comfy bed in the back of our pickup truck, we decided to take a short walk up the road, just to see what we could see.

“Are you ready to turn back?” My husband asked 30 minutes later. I glanced up the rocky path and saw the light cresting on the uppermost branches of the pines at the top of the slope in front of us.

“Let’s just get to the top of that hill,” I said pointing, “then we can turn back.”

I was in my pjs and my flip flops when I crested the top of the hill and saw that amongst the fallen trees and stones; beside a small mountain pond, were dozens upon dozens of strawberries plants—and these ones were covered in ruby red fruit.

“It’s my birthday gift from God,” I said as I picked, and ate. The fruit tasting somehow all the sweeter for the relief of what it was not—to think, just the night before we’d been almost sure this was poison ivy. We’d almost abandoned our campsite on Strawberry Hill.

There are so many things we’ve been warned against. So many things that they said were “gateways” to unbelief, to sin—the pathways to hell. (I know you’ve probably heard that deconstruction is one of them.)

But on Strawberry Hill, the light illuminates the wild fruit, and this place is just as holy as church. God is here.

And perhaps some of the things you’ve been carrying around are just old adages that truly do not apply. There are SO many plants with three leaves. They are not all dangerous. In fact, most of them are not.

As Jesus would say, you can tell a good strawberry plant, by its fruit.

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Throughout our disentangling/deconstructing faith journey, I’ve been considering the subject of WHOLENESS and what I wound consider its converse; DISINTEGRATION.

If God made us for WHOLENESS (which I believe he did)— that is to be fully our beautiful selves as God created us to be— and if sin is anything that misses the mark, anything that pulls us away from wholeness, then perhaps things I have called Strawberries all my life were actually poison ivy. And perhaps what I was taught was poison ivy, is actually a wild strawberry.

There are parts of me I’ve been wrestling with lately, pieces of me that needed to be INTEGRATED after spending all my life shoving them into back corners and closets. And though the alarm bells in my head are ringing that integrating these formerly rejected parts and pieces is putting me on the “wide road to hell”—God’s voice is speaking to me from Strawberry Hill saying: taste and see, that I am good. Judge the tree by the fruit that it bears, not by what someone else says it will bear.

When I spoke with my dear friend and fellow Substack writer Sarah Southern recently about her own deconstruction journey, she shared with me that she is always asking herself this question about her faith and beliefs: “Are these beliefs making me a kinder and more loving person? A better neighbor? A better friend?”

And I said to her, “and that’s the heart of the fruits of the Spirit isn’t it?”

Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Gentleness. Self-Control.

If our faith or our faith practices are not cultivating in us these things…perhaps there is something rotten in the root. A bad tree cannot help but bear bad fruit.

Poison Ivy will never be a Strawberry.

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I used to think I had to know everything I believed. I thought I had to drill it in, have it down pat. Like many millennial Christians I grew up steeped in culture wars, sure that what the world needed was my “apologetics.” (For those who don’t know, that is my ability to argue with anyone from any faith background about why mine was better.)

I was so scared of walking away from the faith as a child that I made a pact with my younger brother that we’d keep each other on that “straight and narrow.” I cried on the eve of becoming a teenager, because teenagers were “bad kids” who questioned authority.

But maybe the straight and narrow isn’t what I thought it was. Maybe it’s actually a path up a hill that few know about. Maybe it’s a secret place filled with wild strawberries that others are afraid might be poison ivy. Maybe God himself leads us there, and we don’t have to worry so much that we’re going astray.

I may not be certain about many of the things I grew up believing—but I go back to what I know for sure, and it keeps me tethered, even amidst all the questions are wandering places of the recent years.

I believe in a loving God, who made everything.

I believe that nature speaks of God in her beautiful order, that the earth matters, and that we were entrusted with her stewardship.

I believe Jesus came to draw close the outcasts—the ones on the margins. The ones who were not allowed to even darken the doors of the temple for one reason or other. I believe he came to turn the tables over on the power structures and false piety that had kept so many from experiencing God. I still believe he came to deal the death blow to all that separates us from God, and that he rose bodily from the dead.

I believe in the restoration of all things, and that nothing truly good is ever lost forever. (C.S. Lewis)

(I believe more things than just this list of course. But I hope you get the picture. And if you are walking through your own questioning journey, I hope you know that wherever you find yourself on your journey, you are welcome here.)

The picture is—perhaps I’m less sure about many things than ever. And perhaps I’m also more sure now than ever. Perhaps I know more than ever now that I belong to God, and he belongs to me, and he has always loved me even as I’ve walked through seasons of false piety, feigned certainty, and now more recently, through doubt, and questions.

Perhaps life with God really is the journey, just as much as it is the destination?

Perhaps you can be walking along the plants in the hilly terrain of your life, wondering which is good and which is weed; and the voices surrounding you are loud, and oh so disintegrating.

Perhaps the journey of a life of faith is learning to shut out those voices, the old adages with their false wisdom—and instead tune into the Voice who created strawberry covered hillsides, and sunrises, and YOU.

Yes.

This one child.

This one will feed you.

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Another little writerly update;

Dear Substack Friends—I very much enjoyed my time away, so thank you for patiently waiting for new essays.

I am neck deep in the manuscript for my second book of poems which I have entitled Daughter of Breath. It is a reclamation of what it means to be divinely feminine from a theology steeped in patriarchy and misogyny, and I just want you to know that if you are a Paid Subscriber here on my Substack, not only do you get extra content here but you are LITERALLY helping me to create this book. THANK YOU.

Publishing is not free, so thank you to each and every one of you who subscribe (and if you’d consider upgrading to paid to further support my work, my family and I would be so very grateful.) Your dollars are helping me keep the lights on over here at home during a very tight financial season, as well as assisting me as I continue to pour my heart and soul into the words here, and the words that are going in the next book.

As a THANK YOU, I’m going to be doing a giveaway here on my Substack for all of my Paid Subscribers—with a chance to win two signed copies of my first book as the Sparrow flies (a companion for the aches of grief & love), as well as a small art print of your choosing from my poetry shop. (If you’re already a Paid Subscriber, you’ll be entered automatically and I will email you if you win so you can pick your print!)

ALL YOU HAVE TO DO TO ENTER IS BECOME A PAID SUBSCRIBER. (For less than a cup of coffee a month.) And of course, you know I’d appreciate it if you’d share this post with a friend.

Giveaway starts TODAY, Aug 1, 2024 and ends August 7th at 10pm MST (because I’m a cute lil’ granny and I like sleep.)

As a friendly reminder, during this financially tight season for our family, any purchase of an art print from my poetry shop will also go to directly to support my two favorite non-profits; Life for the Innocent (and anti-child trafficking org in South Asia) and Pucusana Project (an educational opportunities & poverty relief org in Peru). 100% of the proceeds of your art print purchase will be donated, so if you’ve been thinking of getting one of the art prints from my book as the Sparrow flies, NOW IS THE TIME.

Thank you for being here friends.

May we continue to name what aches—so we can learn to live in greater freedom and wholeness.

Warmly,

Grace E. Kelley