Suffering Is Not the End of Your Story 

Dear friend,

 

 

- Isaiah  40:31 -

 

A one hundred year storm, they told us. The kind that only comes once a century. The power company told us that, in terms of damage, it was the equivalent to a three-day hurricane in one place for three days. Seven months later Consumers Energy is deeply in debt from the recovery effort, half the trees on our farm are gone, and our county still has piles of branches and tree trunks piled in open fields.

 

Everywhere we looked was devastation. It took 80 hours and help from two different church groups just to clean up our yard. The storm took out many of our trees, but it specifically took two of our three birches. Their beautiful white trunks, intertwined with one another and beginning to bud, snapped in half and bent to the ground. When we chopped up the wood—much of which couldn’t be burned due to creosote content—we kept the birch logs.

A few months later we were planning our fall products for Every Woman a Theologian, and I had an idea. The birch logs! Somewhere I’d seen an Advent wreath made from a birch cross section. I looked into the details and became more and more excited. We could make these.

As Josh cut the birch in cross sections, I sat at the kitchen table with the children, rolling flats of beeswax into beautiful pink and purple Advent candles. Stacks of candles grew beside me and stacks of birch grew beside Josh until we put them together and . . . beauty from ashes.

It feels a little symbolic of our family journey. Though we miscarried in January 2024, it was April 2024 when we began experiencing the intense spiritual warfare leading up to and after our second loss in June. A year later, in April 2025, the ice storm devastated our area. It felt like another shocking experience in the wave of trials we’ve had, but it also felt like the end of an era. As the brush, trees, and branches were cleared away, we could see the road around the farm more clearly. Without the trees, the way was open.

God permits trials and suffering in our lives for reasons we don’t always understand. But one thing I’ve found from enduring “this light momentary suffering” (1 Peter 5) is that suffering brings clarity on what matters most. The dead things are cleared away. The way of Christ is open. The things we thought mattered—pleasing unpleasable people, making ourselves approvable, being materially successful, fitting a certain size of jeans—are revealed to be empty vessels, unable to deliver what they promise to give. I think forward to the Advent season, coming in less than a month. Advent is a time of anticipation, fasting, and meditation on Christ’s entry to the world. The Church used to treat Advent much like Lent: a season of lament and meditation leading up to celebration (Easter, Christmas). Jesus entered a very broken world in the poorest of places. He came in the midst of devastation, the way cleared by John the Baptist so the Way would open up.

As we light the candles in our own wreath this year, I have a visible symbol of redemption on my kitchen table. Each week of Advent—peace, hope, joy, and love—reminds me of Christ’s entry to our life. He brought us peace in suffering. He brought us Olivera Hope! He brings us joy in the midst of sorrow, and He surrounds us always with His love.

 

This Thursday is the launch of our holiday shop, and as we put all our products into the world, you’ll also see a limited supply of these Advent wreaths. I want you to know the story behind them, so when you light them with your family or in your home, you’re reminded that suffering is never the end of the story.