Dear Hildegaard

Ministry life and the wilderness of Nebraska

Dear Hildegaard,

We went away for a couple days – you, your dad, and I – to the wilderness of Nebraska. We took a long dirt road out to a dusty acreage just thirty minutes south of town. We needed to get away. Easter means everything to us, but it’s also such a busy time for those in ministry. For example, on Maundy Thursday, your dad set up tables for the feast while you ran around, spilling all the pencils out of the offering baskets, and I practiced songs on the piano that I would play later that night. This is a typical scene for us. We scurry and hurry and pause and pray and sigh and laugh and shake our heads. We do our best to serve God and people, and sometimes we succeed, sometimes we fail. And we get tired. So I booked a tiny house in the middle of a field in Nebraska.

The land there was just beginning to show the green of spring, and you pulled up new grass with your baby fists. You also gathered rocks, lots of them, and put them in the tailpipe of dad’s truck. Toddlers do such funny things. I can see the wheels turning in your brain. You absorb and absorb, then nap, exhausted from all the absorbing. We marvel at who you are and imagine, often, who you will become. 

The wind really is stronger in the plains. You kept taking off down different paths, running headlong into its whipping, frantic, invisible, breeze. You would open your arms wide, then put them above your head, as if worshiping God, humming something like: Wah, hmm, hm, yuhhh, hm, yuhhEEEE. You love the wind. You have ever since you were born. When you had COVID at 8 weeks old, I would take you out into the winter air to open up your lungs. As a Californian, I hated it, but I would look down at your face and you would be grinning, trying to gulp up the frozen breeze. You are a South Dakotan, after all, and as such, we will never fully understand each other. 

The thing about ministry is that it takes more than it gives. And so you have to fill yourself up with God’s love every chance you get in order to keep going. You have to notice the birds in your yard; their colors and calls and social habits, and take those moments to focus on breathing in and out. You have to pile into the family car during that first week of summer and drive to get ice cream cones, then eat them in the hot sun, letting their sweetness drip down your wrists. You have to talk to a friend who knows your heart and doesn’t mind carrying it for a bit. You have to work hard to find those friends and keep them in your life. You will need them. 

And you have to occasionally cancel everything and drive to the middle of nowhere to spend some time somewhere vast, like the prairie, or by the ocean, or in a cabin or tent surrounded by tall trees, preferably near a stream. You have to. Remember that. 

Cover image by Rachel Joy Welcher, All Rights Reserved.