JENNIFER J. CAMP

3 min read ⭑

I can picture myself in our old bungalow: hair pulled back in a ponytail, my knees pushed up under the concrete counter. I sat in the middle of the house, where the kitchen was. If I got up and leaned to the left, I could see towards the front door, out to the street. And if I turned around, I could see out the windows of the back doors and watch the squirrels play in the tall stalks of bamboo. It would be mid-morning, around 10 a.m.

Justin and I would have negotiated who would walk the boys to school and drive Abby to preschool before he went to the office, working as a venture capitalist with his dad in our Silicon Valley downtown. I can feel it now — sitting there, the laptop open, the house to myself for a few hours — and a compulsion to write and connect with people through my words.

The screen blank, I would type right into the little empty box on my blog — writing the way I still do now: not wanting to plan out what I might want to say, knowing, somewhere deep down, that if I attempted to strategize too much, my mind would miss what my heart is trying to speak.

The act of writing, I have found, is a listening — and a deciphering. My heart is shy, and to write honestly, I must be gentle with it. What is it that I am thinking? What is it that I am feeling? Why am I harboring those thoughts? Why am I feeling the way I do? I don’t know, and I might never know — but I will feel so loved if I give myself space to listen to the what, even if I don’t understand the why.

Sitting and listening to what our heart is trying to say is honoring. I am sad! I am tired! I am worried. I am confused. I am angry. I am scared. I am despondent. I am depressed. I am overwhelmed. I am happy. I am lonely. I am grateful. I am convinced nothing is ever going to be okay.

While we may not know why we feel the way we do at a given moment, pausing and allowing open space to listen to our hearts is an act of kindness we are desperate for. In listening, in acknowledging our emotions, we are connecting with the deepest, most true places within us — the places within ourselves that recognize ourselves as miracles, as souls given life through the very breath of God.

As I sit here writing this to you, sitting across from Justin in a coffee shop and full of mixed emotions — the ache for the world’s struggles and loved ones in pain — this act of listening connects the human, finite part of me with the spiritual, the infinite. I engage with my spirit, created by God, and I remember, as a human, what is so very easy to forget: listening to my emotions and heart is more than an act of kindness for myself. It is vital to me as a human who otherwise resists hope.

Being a human, after all, is so very hard. And to do more than physically survive but live — we must honor the gift of life within us — the spirit that God calls beautiful, the spirit to whom he speaks, the spirit he wants us to get to know.

What is most important? What is vital? What does living look like — living with rhythm, a pace that gives your heart breath?

What will you take with you when you die? Focus on what you will take with you — your heart and its love for Me; my wisdom and words; my gaze and eyes; my hands and feet; my hope and resilience; my joy and forgiveness.

Absorb these things. Make them a part of you. I am what is vital — your life in Me.

Amen.

This

Let us discuss it,
are you open to that?
All the ways I want
to love you, all the
ways toward home.

I like to think of it,
the way you drop your
gaze and look up, full
of mischief and longing,
this love of mine.

Can we fill a house with it?
Our house.
Can we call it that?
“Ours.”

That makes me glad,
like syrup on pancakes–or
popcorn, our hands touching
as the movie plays.

Call me yours, will you?
All the days?

For magic is your name
when I want home
to be real
–where comfort is

uncomfortable

and there is no map
to the end of us
this time.

Jennifer Camp is a poet and listener who delights in investigating the deeper places of the heart. She founded Gather Ministries with her husband, Justin; is Editor-at-Large of Rapt, a multi-award-winning digital magazine; and manages Loop Collective, a community for women who pursue deeper connection with God. She also wrote Breathing Eden and The Uncovering, a collection of her poems.

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