The last time was a few months ago, and I couldn’t help it. I was packing my bag the evening before the trip when my phone rang. The caller ID showed one of my closest friends. I answered it only to hear crying on the other end of the line. Over the next couple minutes I got the full story. It’s not my story to share, but I knew it had changed my friend’s world in an instant. He was devastated, rocked by the moment when a hidden pain suddenly spilled into the open.

The next day, I boarded the flight without my friend, haunted by the last words from our phone call: I never could’ve imagined… I had no idea.

As our plane lifted into the air, my heart grew heavier for my friend, and even for all the strangers surrounding me. I kept wondering:

How many secrets are strapped into these seats?

How many of us are carrying hidden pains? How many of us are weighed down by things we can hardly admit to ourselves, much less the people who love us? And what toll does it take on us, all this hiding?

The Sunday previous, I as listening to a sermon when a couple sentences caught my attention:

You can bring God anything. Nothing needs to stay hidden.

I didn’t hear much after that. I was suddenly reliving my childhood and all the night games I’d played along with the other neighborhood kids: flashlight tag, kick the can, ghosts in the graveyard.

Of all the games we’d rotate through, the unrivaled favorite was hide and seek. The whole neighborhood was :in bounds,” and so were the surrounding woods, so a single round could last an hour or more. That’s an awful long time to stay hidden, crouched somewhere, keeping to the shadows, swatting at mosquitos.

Winning at hide and seek—staying out of sight until the bitter end—didn’t always feel worth the pain.

On the plane that day, I kept thinking about those games and how we sometimes pride ourselves on just how well we can keep things under wraps. I started writing. I wrote about how most of us are hiding parts of ourselves and even hiding from ourselves. Through tears, I wrote about how we’re all playing this game, trying to win at life by hiding as well as we can for as long as we can.

Over the next few weeks, I whittled down and refined those thought into the script for Wonderhunt’s film, Hide and Seek. It may be a short film, but when I watch it, I find it has a lot to say to me. I hope it speaks to you too. I pray (literally) that it encourages you to recognize the ways you might be playing a losing game and brings you closer to a God who operates by very different rules.

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But at the end of a day spent with crowds of creatives—swapping stories, sharing best practices, laughing, and crying—all I want to do is pull on some comfy pants and crawl under the covers.

Being around people doesn’t come naturally to me, doesn’t energize me.

But it’s good for me.

It keeps me from crawling into a cave and never coming out. It reminds me that I’m not alone. It reminds me that I’m smarter than I give myself credit for and that I still have a lot left to learn.

I think we sometimes belief a myth around the natural, that if it doesn’t feel natural for us, we should avoid it. If you don’t like it, don’t do it. If it doesn’t feel good, bail. But if it comes naturally… well… it must be right. Do that! I sometimes use this mythologizing around natural to give myself permission to avoid what’s uncomfortable. 

But just because something isn’t natural to us doesn’t mean it’s not good for us.

In fact, the opposite is more likely to be true. If it feels natural, it can very likely be destructive. The things that feel natural to me are laziness, avoidance, over-eating, and generally making things (read: everything) about me. Those are not behaviors that are actually good for me, nor do they benefit those around me. But, hey, they’re natural.

Today, neck deep in relationships and real talk, that was good for me even if I now feel like I’ve been hit by a truck (and then it backed over me for good measure). 

It ain’t natural. But it’s good. 

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My reading that morning led me to Psalm 72. I read it and then read it again. And then I read it aloud. This morning I found myself drawn to it again, praying it.

Scripture has a lot to say about how one should lead and what causes one should champion. 

The Bible is absolutely political. I just wish it didn’t feel so radical. 

No matter who wins this contentious election, this is and will be my prayer over our future leaders:

Give the king your justice, O God,
and your righteousness to the royal son!
May he judge your people with righteousness,
and your poor with justice!
Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people,
and the hills, in righteousness!
May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,
give deliverance to the children of the needy,
and crush the oppressor!

May they fear you while the sun endures,
and as long as the moon, throughout all generations!
May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass,
like showers that water the earth!
In his days may the righteous flourish,
and peace abound, till the moon be no more!

For he delivers the needy when he calls,
the poor and him who has no helper.
He has pity on the weak and the needy,
and saves the lives of the needy.
From oppression and violence he redeems their life,
and precious is their blood in his sight.

Long may he live;
may the gold of Sheba be given to him!
May prayer be made for him continually,
and blessings invoked for him all the day!
May there be abundance of grain in the land;
on the tops of the mountains may it wave;
may its fruit be like Lebanon;
and may people blossom in the cities
like the grass of the field!
May his name endure forever,
his fame continue as long as the sun!
May people be blessed in him,
all nations call him blessed!

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,
who alone does wondrous things.
Blessed be his glorious name forever;
may the whole earth be filled with his glory!
Amen and Amen!

Psalm 72:1-7, 12-19

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But all its brethren are catching up. They’ve turned their shades of yellow, red, and orange, and now I’m seeing their awkward limbs poking out everywhere.

Every autumn seems a radical act of faith.

All spring and summer the trees have been hard at work, tirelessly forcing out tiny buds and then growing those buds into leaves. Then those leaves become workhorses of their own, welcoming the sunshine and transforming it into energy-giving glucose. They inhale essential carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen, and they release a tree’s excess water across their sun soaked surfaces. A tree’s thousands of leaves allow the tree to eat, breathe, and sweat; they’re indispensable to its survival.

But come fall, the trees cast off every one of those little survival mechanisms. They toss them to the ground.

Does that seem insane to anyone else?

If something is life giving, aren’t we supposed to grip it? If certain processes or practices seem essential, would any of us feel good about letting them drop for even one minute, let alone half the year? I mean, what if the roots get damaged and there’s no fail safe? What if the winter is more brutal than before? What if spring comes and the leaves won’t regrow? Good God! what if the sun stops shining?

Not only does it seem imprudent to simply take it on faith that spring will come again to rev up production, but what about this business of barrenness? Beginning in late fall and then all winter long, the tree stands stripped naked and defenseless against the elements.

Nothing about that sounds pleasant. Except…

I guess that kind of transformation does allow for a reorientation of the tree’s relationship with the world. No longer must it marshal every ounce of its energy toward earning its meals. Nor does it have to provide every other creature’s shade or shelter for a little while. Gone is the constant blowing from all those leaves acting like tiny sails and getting buffeted by every change of the wind. Stripped of all its adornments, the tree is left with only its structure, the thing that undergirds everything.

If something is life giving, aren’t we supposed to grip it? If certain processes or practices seem essential, would any of us feel good about letting them drop for even one minute, let alone half the year? I mean, what if the roots get damaged and there’s no fail safe? What if the winter is more brutal than before? What if spring comes and the leaves won’t regrow? Good God! what if the sun stops shining?

Not only does it seem imprudent to simply take it on faith that spring will come again to rev up production, but what about this business of barrenness? Beginning in late fall and then all winter long, the tree stands stripped naked and defenseless against the elements.

Nothing about that sounds pleasant. Except…

I guess that kind of transformation does allow for a reorientation of the tree’s relationship with the world. No longer must it marshal every ounce of its energy toward earning its meals. Nor does it have to provide every other creature’s shade or shelter for a little while. Gone is the constant blowing from all those leaves acting like tiny sails and getting buffeted by every change of the wind. Stripped of all its adornments, the tree is left with only its structure, the thing that undergirds everything.

I think there’s a word for this practice of letting go… rest.

Rest sounds good, doesn’t it? At least in theory, at least on the surface. Underneath though, the voices in my head tell me that I’m supposed to keep up the momentum or risk stagnation. That I’m supposed to seize on my successes, leveraging them toward greater success. And that every minute I shrink from the spotlight I’m receding toward irrelevance. Stay productive. Stay useful. Stay beautiful. Don’t drop your leaves!

Rest is hard, maybe even harder than work since it requires actual faith.

Faith is throwing away the leftover manna because you trust the promise that more will come in the morning. Faith is letting the leaves fall and embracing the dormancy of winter. Faith is believing that spring will come again. Faith is standing unadorned in the sunshine, stripped of all the thousand intermediaries—the endless efficiency, the ceaseless productivity, the pretty accoutrements—bare and believing that something necessary is happening.

But I also wonder if that cold and barren time is about something more than just looking toward the promise of spring. There may even be good things happening in-between, right there in the waiting. Little graces, sudden surprises like winter snow that falls silently overnight. In the morning after a storm like that I find myself staring at all those barren trees that have been suddenly reborn as if by magic into something majestic. I wonder if they’ve ever been so beautiful, draped in robes of white for no practical purpose that I can see and by absolutely no effort of their own.

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Her eyes went wide. “Really?”

“Yeah,” I answered. “Pretty cool story, huh?”

She nodded and looked down at the open Bible on the table. She pushed it toward me and then patted it with her little hand a couple of times.

“Daddy,” she said, “you’re gonna have to tell me that one.”

One of the ways my wife and I are figuring out this homeschool thing is that three days a week I sit down for an hour or so with Ona, our kindergartener, and work through letters and basic life skills. This week we’ve been working on the letter “I” (which in Ona’s opinion, seems unfairly similar to the lowercase “L”). We’ve also been learning our basic food groups, and that’s looked like me telling her to run to the pantry or the refrigerator and then timing her to find out how quickly she can come back and place whatever food item she fetched in the right grouping marked on our paper plate. We both find it pretty fun.

The curriculum we’re using tries to incorporate memory verses and biblical themes into the work of letters and life skills. Sometimes it’s clunky, and sometimes it works. Given the food theme, this week we’ve been memorizing the fruit of the Spirit and learning about God’s provision, especially around matters of food.

On Tuesday we ate bread and talked about Jesus feeding the 5,000. Today we looked at all the food stored in our pantry and talked about the time God helped Joseph interpret Pharaoh’s dream, leading to the creation of storehouses of food that helped people survive the famine. Yesterday was about the manna God provided in the wilderness.

In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”

Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you.”


Exodus 16:2-4

This morning I woke up in the dark, and my first thoughts were anxious ones.

“Nick, you don’t have a job.”

It went on from there. “Sure, at first it was nice just to slow down, but it’s been a month now. Do you know what you’re going to do? Are you really looking hard enough? That opportunity from the other day, maybe you should just say yes. You have a family to provide for.”

Falling back asleep wasn’t going to happen, so I got up and was brushing my teeth in the dark when a moment from yesterday hit me.

“Ona, what do you think a story like this one tells us about God? When we’re in the middle of nowhere and God makes bread fall like rain, what does that say to you?”

With hardly a pause she answered, “God will take care of us.”

I finished brushing my teeth. I could just see my reflection in the mirror in the half-light filtering through the window. I quietly told myself, “God will take care of us. God is taking care of us.”

Jesus fed 5,000 people, turning hardly anything into more than enough. When there was no source of food as far as the eye could see, he made bread fall from heaven. When a time of famine was on the way, he laid out a plan to provide.

The whole time I’ve been teaching my kindergartener my Heavenly Father has been teaching me, saying:

“Start with what you have, however humble, and I can make it into more.”

“When it looks like you’ve got nothing, just watch what I can do.”

“I saw the lean times coming, and I’ve made a plan to see you through.”

Please hear me say: We are not in need. In fact, I’ve had to take a step back today to slow down and marvel at all the ways God has provided for exactly this kind of season. Through wise choices, wild generosity, and whole host of choices that seemed strange at the time and now appear clairvoyant, God has been preparing and providing for us.

I’m writing about and reflecting on all of this because I’m convicted and humbled by how quick I am to panic and pretend it’s me who does the providing. I’m humbled by how much I still need the faith of a child, one who hears stories of God’s faithfulness and simply concludes, “God will take care of us.”

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When Karen first floated the idea to me in the middle of the summer, I laughed out loud. I truly thought she was joking. The look on her face told me she wasn’t… and that I should stop laughing.

Still, I dismissed it out of hand. It was the nuclear option, the hail-mary “if all else fails” backup. Back in the summer it didn’t seem necessary. With our schedules and commitments, it didn’t seem possible. We’d have to be really desperate.

But the reality of our world right now has backed so many of us into all kinds of corners, hasn’t it?

This fall, our dining room became a classroom. It looks mostly the same except, instead of dishes, the hutch against the wall holds workbooks and science projects in various states of progress. The table and the floor are almost always littered with little pieces of paper, the detritus of the day’s serious work with scissors and glue-sticks. On the sideboard sits our cuddly mascot. We’re the Benoit Badgers.

It’s gone… fine?

Honestly, there have been a lot of tears. A lot.

Most of those tears have been when one of them doesn’t get everything right on the first go-round, and we’ve come to recognize how strongly the instinct for perfection already is in them. When they get something wrong, when they need to go back and make corrections, when they need to take another look to more fully understand the ideas they’ve missed, the result is impatience, frustration, and tears. All this crying has actually made us grateful that we’re clumsily inserting ourselves into our kids’ education right at this moment. Almost everyday we have a conversation about what it means to learn.

Hon, learning is about exploring all the things we don’t know yet, and as you explore all those unknown things we expect you to make mistakes, miss things, and need to go back and retrace some of your steps. That process is how you get to know the things you didn’t used to know.

Good words, right? Unfortunately, logic does nothing to stem the crying. Believe me.

I was in a conversation yesterday where someone shared these words from Aristotle:

Learning is not child’s play; we cannot learn without pain.

It’s painful to even hear, isn’t it? I feel it. My kids aren’t alone in this painful process of learning. Right this moment I’m on a path I’ve never walked before, one that’s full of things I don’t know yet. And I want so badly to get it right, and by right I mean perfect. I don’t want to make any mistakes. I don’t want to have to retrace my steps. I don’t want to take any risks that won’t pay off. And I want more than anything to avoid pain.

But I can hear the Spirit whispering most of my words back to me.

Nick, this wilderness is about exploring all the things you don’t know yet, and as you explore all this unfamiliar terrain I expect you to make mistakes, miss things, and need to go back and retrace some of your steps. That process is how you’re going to get to know the things about me you didn’t used to know.

Good words. I expect there will still be tears. But maybe the kindness of the Spirit takes a little sting out of these lessons.

Maybe.

I guess I’ll let you know.

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The last few years of life have brought a lot of these: goodbyes to friends, family, and familiarity of all kinds. My church has changed as it’s grappled with truth and pain. In turn, my job changed, and so did many of my relationships. And now all of us are seeing our world change more rapidly than we ever thought possible. Normal has flown the coop.

Almost all of these goodbyes have been outside my control. I’ve stood in the same spot, waving as people and precedents have faded into the distance. But now I’m saying a few farewells of my own.

A couple weeks ago I said goodbye to my job and goodbye to my thirties on the same day.

The Hero’s Journey is a time-tested structure for stories. Be it The Odyssey, Star Wars, Frozen, or the biblical patriarchs, the vast majority of stories across every major genre follow the arc of the Hero’s or Heroine’s Journey, charting a tried-and-true course toward transformation. But what’s the first step? When does the story really begin moving forward? The rush toward transformation starts when the character leaves, when he or she steps out from what is known and comfortable and crosses the threshold into uncharted territory. When he or she is compelled or called to let go of what is safe and walk into the wilderness is when the real story begins.

A few months ago, I began to hear that call. At first, I tried to interpret it as something minor—a refashioning of my role or a sideways step into something similar somewhere else. Then little by little, God started taking me on a journey of peering into the radical call of Abram to “go.” He led me to wander alongside his people in the desert as they followed Moses. He welcomed me to withdraw into the wilderness alongside Jesus. Through scripture, mentors, friends, books, and in that voice—the one that comes like my own thoughts but is wiser, kinder, and more at peace—I felt God talking to me about a more radical departure.

I heard him asking, Will you trust me?

I realized that this time God wasn’t inviting me into a transition but into transformation.

As a result, as I step into my forties I’m walking into the wilderness. Call it a midlife crisis. (It probably is.) Call it crazy. (Without a doubt.) But I call it an invitation. An invitation to what? Well, I’m not sure. I haven’t arrived yet. But Richard Rohr describes it this way:

There is a deeper voice of God, which you must learn to hear and obey in the second half of life. It will sound an awful lot like the voices of risk, of trust, of surrender, of soul, of “common sense,” of destiny, of love, of an intimate stranger, of your deepest self… The true faith journey only begins at this point. Up to now, everything is mere preparation.

So what’s on the horizon? New depths? New insight? New hardship? New calling? New country? New vocation? I don’t know what’s next. It doesn’t make much sense on the surface. Yet, I’m believing that before any future God might show me there are some things he wants to shape in me.

I’m not on this journey into the wilderness alone. My family is right there alongside me. I’ve invited a handful of friends and mentors too. I’d love for you to be along as well, if you’re willing. Through prayer and through any word or thought you might be compelled to share, I’d love for you to walk with me.

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That moment when you discover your kids know things it’s taken you way too long to know. Things about what’s wrong with the world. Things about what can make the world right again.

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Today, no matter how we congregate,

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