Noticing & Naming: A Monthly Practice

The power of presence to let in the light

This season of life is marked by waiting in many ways and the weather has mirrored that posture perfectly. As gray day follows gray day, we wait for the sun to break through. We wait for a reprieve from the single digits. We wait for the water to boil and our toes to warm up. Meanwhile, we try to keep going. We work. We toil. We do what needs to be done. But we also give in to the call of the fireplace and the fuzzy blankets.

January blurred its way right into February, and I’ve hardly caught up with the fact that this month is almost over. Nevertheless, here are a few reflections from a frigid January.

Our back deck after ten inches of snow in early January.

Eight Things I Noticed

I’m trying to pay attention to the world around me and to the details of my days. Sometimes these observations may lead to bigger realizations, but other times, the act of noticing is enough. Here are eight things I noticed in January:

1. The strong desire to hibernate during these very cold, snow-filled days.

2. The inside of my nostrils froze in the time it took to walk from a restaurant to our car.

3. Marty is an expert at getting cozy. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve glanced up from my desk to see him curled up in a patch of sunlight or walked past the backroom to find him tucked into a tiny ball, his nose buried in a blanket. He looks so comfy. It’s hard not to be jealous.

   

   Sometimes he even keeps a toy nearby for convenient snuggling.

4. When the early January snow finally started to melt, I noticed lots of birds suddenly returning to our yard. They moved as a unit, congregating on the fence in the back corner and then jumping down to narrow patches of grass, finding some food there at last. Most of the birds looked nondescript from where I sat, but I noticed one cardinal and one noisy blue jay in their midst. The smallest birds kept landing in the young redbud we planted a few years ago, and it made me glad we added a little shelter for them.

5. My left eye twitched for several days straight.

6. Defaulting to reading Substack posts instead of reading the news or scrolling Instagram has been a good move recently.

7. I noticed a subtle ombré sky on the morning of my birthday—gentle pink fading into soft blue. It was a welcome change from the month’s monotone gray.

8. My Christmas cactus finally bloomed in mid-January, two big flowers and other stems showing pink at the edges. It was refreshing to see a little growth when everything outside is dormant.

   

One Thing I Named

I have a loud internal life, and naming what’s going on on the inside helps to quiet things down. When we can put thoughts and emotions into words, fear begins to lose its power, next steps come into focus, and we realize we’re not actually alone. Here’s one thing I named last month:

1. It takes many kinds of relationships to experience the full depth and breadth of a person.

I went to a memorial service for my former boss, Heather, last month. After a long fight with cancer, Heather died far too young, and I spent most of the service trying to reign in the torrent of tears that threatened to undo me.

I reported to Heather during my first job out of college, and she had a big impact on me. She believed in me and in my writing, and she made a point to tell me so. I started working for her as an intern after I graduated, and she fought hard to get me on staff full time. She championed me. She pushed me. She trusted me and took my opinions seriously. She patiently listened to me and let me cry in her office as I worked through the disappointment and disillusionment of my early twenties.

I greatly admired and appreciated her, but I only knew her in this one dimension—as my boss.

As Heather’s husband and a couple of her best friends shared stories about her from the front of the sanctuary, I got glimpses into Heather’s life that I’d never known. It was a gift to learn more about her as a whole person, to hear about the energetic, risk-taking, do-it-all-and-invite-everyone kind of woman that she was—as heartbreaking as it also was to accept that she’s gone.

One of the speakers shared that presence was one of Heather’s biggest values. She was known as a connector and a gatherer, someone who was consistently running from a coffee date to a lunch meeting to happy hour with friends.

As I sat by myself in one of the last pews of the sanctuary, sniffling alongside the strangers next to me, I kept thinking about the power of presence. We can’t fully be ourselves without each other. We’re a collage of relationships, the culmination of countless lives that have touched our own. Some impacts are immense, others are smaller and season-specific. But each relationship contributes to the whole, like a single pane in a stained glass window that lets in just a little more light.

You’re so loved and missed, Heather. Thank you for letting in the light in so many people’s lives.

Questions for Your Practice

1. Whether it was season-specific or an enduring relationship, whose presence has had a big impact on you? How would you describe that person’s influence in your life?

2. What does being present with people currently look like for you? Is there anything you’d like to start (or stop) doing?

3. What do you need in seasons of waiting? Try naming what’s helpful and what’s not.

Words That Resonated

In an effort to give us more language for our lives, here are two quotes that stuck with me last month:

“Here are you and I and every one of us—hovering over the primordial power of human decision. Should we, or shouldn’t we? We stand on this threshold for the joy of love, of human connection, yet we deliberate for the risk. I suppose there is chaos in all expansion, because there is chaos in risk. For all our hopes, we do not know how any story will go.” —Stephanie Duncan Smith, Even After Everything

“Even the smallest actions require something of us. They disrupt our ‘negative peace, which is the absence of tension,’ and this disruption is necessary to arrive at a ‘positive peace, which is the presence of justice.’” —Shannan Martin, Start with Hello

Thanks for reading. With you as we keep showing up for ourselves and each other.

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