I stood in a park on a fall day, leaves a kaleidoscope of colors around me. I held a bouquet of burgundy flowers in front of my simple black dress, a gold ribbon wrapped around my waist. In front of me two of my dearest friends sniffled, trying to hold back a river of emotion, clutching the tissues they’d secretly wrapped around the stems of the flowers they also held. A third dear friend with hair the color of flame wore a white dress and said “I do” to a man who had won her heart.

Afterwards there was music and dancing, the forest floor a stage, the sky a ceiling. We ate cookies instead of cake—chocolate chip, peanut butter, oatmeal and toffee. I snapped a picture of the bride with her head thrown back, laughing as the groom twirled her around during their first dance. It’s the closest I’ve come to witnessing a fairy tale.

Those moments don’t come often in life, the ones full of holy magic and wild wonder, the sort that make you want to ease time down to a trickle and let it run over your hands, your heart slowly, slowly. As I breathed in the scent of campfires and sugar my mind drifted back to another moment, years ago, that felt entirely different.

It happened during a year when I’d gotten on a plane twenty times, when peanuts and pretzels in little packages felt like a solid meal. It came during a season where I cried in hotel bathrooms and stared at the ceiling at midnight. It snuck up on me when, if I wasn’t traveling, I spent most of my time looking into a computer screen. The world felt flat and pixelated, the desire to prove myself in some mysterious way a constant drumbeat in my weary bones.

One day I went to coffee with the bride—although it would be years before she took on that role. Months had somehow slipped by without a meaningful conversation between us. I’d been distracted and exhausted, distant and a bit depressed. She sat across from me and pulled a letter from her purse. It said many kind and beautiful things. But they all came down to this: She loved me and she missed me.

I felt like the Apostle Paul with the scales falling off my eyes. I could suddenly see what all my hustling had done to the people closest to me. Later in the car on the drive home I told myself things had to change.

I’d like to say the alterations were easy. But I was hooked on approval like an addict in a dark alley, every round of applause or “like” on social media another hit. I felt the withdrawals of saying “no” to good opportunities, of choosing to be present in my everyday life where I was quite ordinary rather than on a stage where no one could see my flaws. I worried that I wasn’t keeping up or that I was letting everyone down.

Click here to continue reading this post over at (in)courage.

Also, if you’d like more encouragement you’ll find it in my new devotional, Hope Your Heart Needs: 52 Encouraging Reminders of How God Cares for You. Right now you’ll also receive my exclusive, limited-time-only bonus ebook Hope for the Holidays (get all the details here).

I’m attending a tea party in the Fellowship Hall of a small town church about an hour from my home. This is where my parents had their wedding reception, where my grandparents had their fiftieth anniversary party, where my great-grandparents held hands in the pews.

Today the tables are covered in white linen and each place setting includes a vintage china cup, the kind that tempts you to stick your pinky out when you drink from it. The hostesses of this gathering are the lovely members of my Grandma’s Sunday School class, most of whom are now in their eighties.

There is one guest who is a distinct exception to this age range. My granddaughter, Ellie, is here with her Mama and I. She’s wearing a pink bow and charming everyone. At some point I realize five generations of my family are represented. This is beautiful to me.

“For the Lord is good, and his faithful love endures forever; his faithfulness, through all generations.” (Psalm 100:5, CSB)

A couple weeks later I find myself in a room full of diverse ages again. My friend Jennifer Watson, a local pastor’s wife, youth director and soon-to-be-author has organized an event. She’s seen how we can tend to silo ourselves according to age and she’s calling for an end to it, for a coming together across seasons and decades.

The women who are gathered are not family in the physical sense (but then neither is mine—our daughter became ours when she was twenty-one) but we are connected by a different kind of blood. We are sisters and daughters and mamas in Jesus.

Jennifer starts with a word to the senior sisters among us. “We need you,” she says, “You still have so much to offer. It’s never too late for God to use you.” I echo that wholeheartedly—please know we long for your presence and hard-won wisdom. It’s so much harder to walk well without someone going before us.

To those of us in the middle I’d say, “Let’s not miss the divine hidden among the mundane and ordinary. We can touch a life whether we’re holding a microphone or warming up mac-and-cheese in the microwave. Let’s show up where we are, as we are, steadily and faithfully. What’s visible isn’t more valuable.”

To those younger I’d declare, “It’s never too early for God to use you either. Don’t wait to feel ready. We need your optimism and energy, your fresh perspective and your daring. If you received something yesterday—even five minutes ago—then you have something to give to someone else.”

I’m falling in love in a new way with the idea of generations–with the beauty and strength we have when we link arms and stand side-by-side like a glorious timeline of God’s love. Together we can look back with gratefulness for what God has done and look forward with anticipation for what He has yet to do. And we can each choose to make a difference where we are now, in the season we’re living today, in the kitchen or the boardroom, at Tribal Night or a tea party.

This is what my heart understands better each year, what I want to pass on, what I believe: We all have something to offer. We all have something to receive. We are better together.

Today, I’m over at (in)courage. If you’d like to leave a comment on this post, I invite you to click on this link to join me there.