hope

I’m grieving

| Kimberly Smith

I’m having a moment to recognise how much grief there is – in me and around me.

This weekend, I was meant to be in Perth for a full 3 days of ministry. These are the things I love. Seven different workshops and preaches across three days to multiple different groups. The opportunity to invest in leaders who are engaging in Generations ministries across a number of churches. The privilege to be God’s voice of direction, correction, encouragement, inspiration or blessing as I deliver the messages He placed on my heart to bring.

But instead, I spent too many hours wrestling technology and sound and lighting and recording and editing and uploading … a whole lot of things that have absolutely zero to do with my gift and skill set! And I found myself becoming frustrated as every minute I spend on those things is a minute I’m not working on what I’m really being asked to do. Every ounce of energy and thought and focus spent watching to see that the screens were sharing correctly and the sun wasn’t shining on me in a weird way and that the delivery truck out the front of my house wasn’t going to start reversing and have its sensors beeping into my audio feed … had the potential to draw me away from the content I was delivering and the moment I was trying to hold for the people I was recording for.

And the people! Oh wow, do I miss the people!? I love the moments of exchanged encouragement – waiting in the coffee line, washing hands in the bathroom, sitting at a lunch table, in prayer response and worship. I miss the points of connection as we realise we share mutual friends, or similar life journeys or an interest in Disney movies or the work of Patrick Lencioni. I miss seeing the faces of people as I’m speaking. The nods of affirmation, that eyebrow-up-head-tilt-back movement that signifies an “aha moment” – the laughter over a mispronounced word or some other self-deprecating joke, the bent heads over notebooks that make my heart leap to know that God has nudged them in a personal way – “That’s for you! Remember that!”

And I’m also sad that I’m not in Perth! That for the second year in a row I haven’t been able to visit my friends there or see the beautiful beaches and sunsets or have my retreat time at Hilary’s Harbour. I miss being on the plane and going somewhere. I miss exploring new places and meeting new people.

And that’s just today.

More broadly, I’m missing meals and games nights in people’s houses and meetings in real life. I’m tired of rescheduling and cancelling and “waiting to see” and adjusting and reducing. Living in a relatively new town (I was here barely 4 months before Covid kicked in), I feel like I’m losing momentum on developing new relationships and routines. My friendship circle is shrinking. The freedoms of living regionally are overshadowed by how many of my people are on the other side of the ‘ring of steel’. My calendar mocks me with a holiday scheduled for last May that has been bumped and bumped and will likely just end up cancelled. I miss what psychologists term “collective effervescence”. The sense of “energy and harmony people feel when they come together in a group around a shared purpose” – the raucous laughter, the passionate exchange of ideas, the robust search for creative outcomes, reminiscing and story telling (that’s hard to recreate in the clinical environment of a Zoom meeting.) I’m genuinely weary from being depleted of extroverted emotional energy.

Etc, etc, etc … wah wah wah. That’s just me – having a pity party for one.

But then I consider my family and friends and I scroll through social media and watch the news and there are so many more stories of grief and loss. Those who can’t visit sick loved ones in hospital or farewell dying family members or attend funerals. Those whose weddings or parties or graduations or celebrations have been shifted and reimagined and cancelled or been adjusted and reduced to something far less than they’d hoped. Sports teams not able to play finals. Concerts cancelled or performed to empty theatres. Newborn babies taking weeks and months to be met. Increased financial pressures on families. Rising rates of Domestic violence and abuse in homes. Ever increasing numbers of children in out of home care. More businesses closing down after each lockdown. Families separated by oceans. Mental health struggles.

Etc etc etc … so much collective grief. So much loss. Languishing and fatigue. Depression and uncertainty. It’s real.

So, I’m having a moment to recognise how much grief there is – in me and around me.

I am easily able to identify good things in my life and the world around me. There is still much joy to be found – so much to celebrate, embrace and be grateful for. I am not without conscience that my lot is a far easier one to navigate than many many others. I’m ok.

But there is space for lament. In fact, it’s healthy to realistically assess what we’re seeing, feeling and experiencing. It’s right to acknowledge the hard and the non-preferred and the downright crappy. There is a “time for everything and a season for every activity”. We achieve nothing through suppressing our grief or forcing optimism.

Maybe you need to take a moment too? To have a cry or a rant or a release of some sort. To acknowledge the loss and grief you’re experiencing – personally or vicariously. And perhaps by doing so, to make room in your heart and mind for the energy required to keep going and to see the potential and hope in what’s still possible and the joy there is yet to be discovered.

there’s prosperity but not as you know it

| Kimberly Smith

It’s a well-known, well-loved, oft-quoted and oft-shared verse.

Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

In 2018, Biblegateway reported it as the most read Bible verse on its website.

It’s a personal favourite of mine. I’ve preached it, posted it, prayed it and even painted it for a friend.

However, it also pops up in the lists of the most misused or misinterpreted verses of scripture. And it’s this abuse, and potentially its perceived overuse, that has many listing it as one of their least favourite verses!

Who was it written for?

Jeremiah delivered this prophetic message from God to His people, the Israelites, as they came to the end of around 70 years of captivity in Babylon. They were a broken down and scattered people. Their knowledge of God’s love and goodness towards them would often not have seemed supported by their current circumstances. And so this promise of hope, prosperity and a future beyond their present experience would’ve been so desperately needed.

How generous of God to direct Jeremiah to remind them – “I see you, I have not forsaken you, your future is in my hands and it’s better than you can perceive or imagine, I’ve got this.”

Any message to the Israelites is a message for us too.

Yes, this is a contextually specific word for then, them and there – but when God spoke historically to the Israelites it was part of the picture He was painting of His heart for His people. His plans and purposes. His generosity and grace.

It’s true for us today. His heart is for us. He desires that we would experience His truth and be filled with hope for the future that He has gone ahead of us to see and prepare. Ultimately, this scripture says more about who God is than anything else. He is the same today as He was then.

Who is defining prosperity?

The misappropriation of this verse lies largely in the definition of prosperity. By today’s dictionaries we understand it to mean “success in material terms” or “financial flourishing”. The Hebrew word used here is shalowm – which is more about safety, welfare, happiness and peace. In fact, in the majority of uses of this word in the Old Testament it is translated as peace or wellbeing.

The former definition suggests promises of the dream home, dream car and dream bank account. The latter indicates a more holistic picture of a preferred future – where God ordained peace and wellness is your experience.

For many readers, that’s a significant shift in focus and expectation.

God’s plan for our welfare might look different than our own.

God’s plans for our future are to prosper. He said it Himself and it aligns completely with His character and activity towards us. His heart is for our wellbeing, happiness and deepest sense of peace. Shalowm.

What I’ve come to understand in a limited form, and what scripture and hundreds of years of testimonies lead us to accept, is that God’s idea of prosperity for us is often different than our own.

To start with, we’re generally only concerned about just that – our own – whereas He is mindful of the prosperity of all people and how each of our experiences interplays with another’s.

Just like a parent constantly makes choices for a child that they aren’t able to make for themselves (because of a lack of foresight, wisdom and maturity) so too, God is working things for our good – our protection, our thriving, our faith development and our future – in ways that sometimes don’t feel like “prosperity” to us.

The most powerful words.

The strength in this verse is in the 3 words at the start. “For I know…”

It’s not really about prosperity. It’s not about a future that we can define and approve. It’s not about hope in circumstances or specific outcomes. It’s about the fact that creator God – all powerful, all creative, all knowing, all loving God – knows.

The message of Jeremiah 29:11 to us today? It’s exactly what it was to the exiled Israelites.

“I see you, I have not forsaken you, your future is in my hands and it’s better than you can perceive or imagine, I’ve got this.”

I WILL celebrate Mother’s Day

| Kimberly Smith


This Sunday would have been my 14th Mother’s Day. An early term miscarriage saw the hope of that ignited and then grieved (& grieved again, differently, surprisingly; sporadically over the years). 

I still find it hard to believe that I’m not a mother. As I move deeper into my forties I am forced more often to face the biological realities but for the most part I’ve just lived with an expectation that (husband &) children would be part of my world. 

And then comes Mother’s Day. 

In many ways it’s a day that represents the hopes and dreams that are deep in my heart and the grief that those are unrealised. There’s a wistfulness; a longing that is undeniably present. Envy and jealousy rear their heads. I wish for the hand drawn cards, the dodgy school stall gifts, the crumbs in the bed from a delivered breakfast. And even more than that, just the day to pause and whisper in my heart “I am a mother” and celebrate all that it would mean for me to be that. 

The reality of Mother’s Day is that it’s a hard day for many. Those grieving the loss of their own mothers – to death or broken relationship, struggling with infertility, facing difficult family dynamics, processing illness (etc) often approach Mother’s Day with fear, anxiety or an overwhelming desire to hide away and avoid. 

But here’s the decision I’ve made and make again this weekend. I WILL celebrate Mother’s Day. 

Of course, I will celebrate my Mother (who I am abundantly grateful for) but I will also celebrate my friends who are mothers. Because I love them and I love that they have produced mini-thems and I want to champion them in this infinitely important role. I will help lead our church in honouring our mums and encourage them with the full resource of the church to keep Mum-ing well. This Sunday, we will cheer for all the women in our church who “mother” us – with their love and care, their modelling of Christian womanhood, their role in the lives of women and girls (& guys alike) needing the investment and wisdom they offer. 

I know some will disagree with me but I don’t think we ought to care for our non-mothers or those grieving in our midst by not celebrating those who are mothers. I believe the idea that we might not acknowledge mothers in deference to those who are wounded and hurting isn’t what family (in its broadest sense) is meant to look like. 

Rejoice with those who rejoice. Mourn with those who mourn. Rom 12:15

Do we not celebrate someone who graduated from university because not everyone has? Do we not high five someone who ran a marathon because not everyone has? Do we not congratulate someone on their 90th birthday because not everyone lives to celebrate theirs? No. That would be crazy. Families are full of people with a diverse range of experiences – both positive and negative – and one of the things that makes us family is our ability to journey the breadth of those experiences with one another. Where we carry one another in our grief and difficulty and we multiply joy by celebrating one another’s successes and wins.

Our tendency toward comparison and the associated emotional processing means that a day like Mother’s Day can make us feel more of the grief and heart-sickness of longing and loss – but our reality is actually unchanged from this Sunday to the next. In reality I am just as likely to feel the pang of jealousy watching a mum with her child at a cafe this afternoon as I am to feel it while the mothers stand to be acknowledged on Mother’s Day at church. 

I don’t mean to diminish the significance of the day – I just dearly hope to bring some perspective that might free us to more genuinely celebrate others as we ought. 

So, let’s celebrate our mums this weekend because they are worth celebrating. Let’s be sensitive to those who will struggle with this day (hot tip – don’t assume anything – ask lots of questions to help you best connect with someone for whom Mother’s Day may – or may not – be difficult. Let them direct you.) Let’s see this day as one of many in the life and journey of our family – where everyone gets a turn to be celebrated and those who need the extra love and support find that amongst us too. 

#4 when encouragement is a casualty 

| Kimberly Smith


My sister-in-law is a really good cook!

Back in the day, I would find it really hard to encourage her when she cooked something nice. To actually articulate “this tastes great” didn’t seem to roll off my tongue very easily. It took me a while, but I worked out I feared that by saying HER cooking was good I was saying MY cooking was inferior. That innate in complimenting her was an element of putting myself down or somehow lessening my own abilities. So the combination of my pride and jealousy stopped me from encouraging her, fearful I would somehow diminish myself by affirming her.

You’re all shaking your heads and ‘tutting’ quietly to yourselves right now … “that Kim sure has problems, who would do such a thing?” YOU WOULD! Go on, admit it, you do it! Or you’ve done it. Or you know someone who has done it. Continue reading →