Writings of a Beholder 🌿 11.10.23

Letting the ground lie fallow

Letting the Ground Lie Fallow

If there’s one thing I’m learning lately it’s that just as the earth and her seasons are constantly shifting and changing, so am I.

My soul shifts and slides into different seasons and just like I would put on a coat in the winter and wear sandals in the summer, I’m finding that my soul needs different things depending on the season of life I’m in.

2023 has been a year of intensive healing for me. I’ve let go of a lot of hurt, practiced letting God sit with me in my vulnerable places, and embraced parts of myself that I had shamed and kept in the dark for years. I named my trauma aloud in safe places and even went to therapy for the first time.

God and I have done a lot of work together over the last year. So I was caught off guard when, a few months ago, I began to feel a bit… lost.

The feeling was confusing to me — even frustrating — because I thought after this season of healing, new growth would immediately follow. I had spent a year ripping up soul weeds and clearing the ground for something new so it made sense to me that the natural next step would be to plant new seeds where the emptiness lay.

I wrestled with God for a few months and grew increasingly frustrated when familiar rhythms no longer seemed to fit in my spiritual life. I became fearful when God’s voice and presence, which seemed so loud and evident over the last year, slowly became distant and quiet. I began to question why connecting with God felt harder in this season and even wondered if there was something wrong with me.

Everything started to feel overwhelming and decision fatigue became an unwanted, constant companion. I felt easily overstimulated, extra sensitive, and longed for time away to be alone with myself and God. I began to turn inward, not understanding what was happening to me. I had done the work and even felt lighter after releasing so many years of pent-up pain. But for some reason, I felt like I was losing sight of who I was.

This was all very new to me because for years I’ve prided myself on being the steady and strong one — the one with all the “right” answers. The one who didn’t allow uncertainty to define her.

But the truth of the matter was, I had lost sense of where my feet were, and there was no denying it any longer.

I shared all of these jumbled-up thoughts and feelings with my spiritual director earlier this week and after I had finished pouring out my heart, she simply paused, sighed deeply, and said, “It sounds like you’re being called to the desert. It sounds to me like God is calling you to a winter season.”

She explained that the fallow and winter seasons are seasons of rest where the soil of our souls is invited to remain empty for a time to allow God to replenish lost nutrients. It’s meant to be a time of yearning for and seeking God as we surrender to His Love and trust Him to sustain us while we press pause on producing anything of our own.

As she spoke, something began to stir in my spirit and I immediately knew that this was where God was calling me — He was calling me to let the ground rest.

I’ve learned since then that letting the ground lay fallow is a real agricultural practice. After so many years of planting and harvesting, farmers let portions of the land remain empty for a year or so — not planting anything at all — giving the soil time to replenish its lost nutrients.

Even the earth knows that overproducing can lead to bad soil which leads to rotten crops.

In Leviticus 25, we find Moses relaying a message from God to the Israelites on Mt. Sinai regarding letting the land rest as well.

“The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai: “Speak to the Israelites and tell them: When you enter the land I am giving you, the land will observe a Sabbath to the Lord. You may sow your field for six years, and you may prune your vineyard and gather its produce for six years. But there will be a Sabbath of complete rest for the land in the seventh year, a Sabbath to the Lord: you are not to sow your field or prune your vineyard. You are not to reap what grows by itself from your crop, or harvest the grapes of your untended vines. It is to be a year of complete rest for the land.”

(Leviticus 25:1-5, CSB)

As I began doing my own research about the meaning and purpose of fallow seasons, it all began to make sense to me why God was calling me to such a season and why I’ve been feeling the way I’ve been feeling.

I have spent the last year being slowly stripped of trauma, baggage, old wounds, and old things that I had tied my identity to for so long. Now, like the trees in winter, my branches hang bare. Trees without leaves are exposed and vulnerable to the elements, and that explains, too, why I’ve been feeling so overwhelmed, sensitive, weary, and overstimulated. Everything that I had come to know about myself had melted away to reveal the core of who I really am. My soul stands naked, without all of the fluff and the fortified walls I’ve built around it for so many years keeping me from being fully seen.

After so many months of ripping out weeds, tilling the soil of my soul, and weeping over the ground that held so many cracks and wounds, I’m tired and God knows it.

He’s attentive to me in ways no one else ever could be, and He knows that I need rest. He knows that after so many years of striving and working for my worth, I’ve finally come to a place where I’m ready to give it all up and walk down a different path.

He’s led me to a place in the desert where all I long for is His presence — where nothing but Him will satisfy my thirsty soul.

I’m noticing that this fallow ground does not mean His absence; quite the contrary. This fallow ground is where He and I rest together in each other’s company as He gives me what I so desperately need — refreshment.

I’ve realized that His voice has grown quiet because He sees how overstimulated and overwhelmed I am. His presence hasn’t grown distant, He just sits within a proximity that honors the space I need because of how weary I’ve become. He knows that right now, I have nothing to offer, so He’s promised to not lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on me but rather calls me to a place where I’m invited to live freely and lightly (Matthew 11:25-30).

This emptiness He’s invited me to isn’t without purpose either, and the trees show me evidence of this.

I learned from my spiritual director that as the trees lose their leaves in autumn and then hang bare in winter, all of the energy and nutrients they were utilizing to keep the leaves alive organically migrate to the roots of the tree, causing them to grow deeper and stronger.

The trees let go of their leaves every year because they know that without strong roots — without a strong foundation — they’ll eventually fall. I would argue that the most important work the trees do happens beneath the ground, where no one sees.

I would say the same goes for you and me.

Fallow seasons — empty, winter seasons — aren’t purposeless seasons, rest isn’t pointless and dormancy doesn’t mean that nothing is happening beneath the surface. Fallow seasons are seasons where we are invited to open our empty hands to receive from God what we most desperately need. To receive from God the nutrients only He can provide as we practice letting Him tend to us as we learn to cease from our striving.

And it’s there, in surrendering to our own fallowness and giving ourselves over completely to these winter seasons that we are healed, made whole, and come to know God and ourselves on a very deep level.

It makes me think of one of my favorite passages, Hosea 2:14-16.

“Therefore I am now going to allure her;
    I will lead her into the wilderness
    and speak tenderly to her.
There I will give her back her vineyards,
    and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
There she will respond as in the days of her youth,
    as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

 “In that day,” declares the Lord,
    “you will call me ‘my husband’;
    you will no longer call me ‘my master.’ (NIV)

God sometimes leads us to the wilderness, or to fallow ground, so that we are finally in a posture where we are ready to receive His transforming Love. A Love that fills us, defines us and forever changes us from the inside out. We are led into winter to be reminded of the God Whose tenderness melts our hearts and Who is the only One capable of satisfying every need and longing.

It’s in that Love, it’s in receiving God in our emptiness, that we find our true selves as God created us to be in Him.

When we choose to surrender to our fallow seasons, God gives back to us what the world has stolen. He replaces our weariness with refreshment, our hunger and thirst are met with His satisfying presence, and the cracks and crevices that ooze pain and fear and shame are filled in with the kindest mercy and Love.

I feel like it’s countercultural to give ourselves over to winter — to embrace emptiness and fallow ground as we surrender fully to God’s tending. Most of us would probably admit that it’s our achievements, what we can produce, or maybe what others think of us that defines us the most. I know this is a struggle for me, perhaps it is for you, too. The problem with this though is that all of those things make space for a different kind of emptiness, one that leaves us feeling like we’re never enough and can lead to longterm destruction.

But when we choose fallowness because we know it’s where God is calling us, the kind of emptiness waiting for us is one marked by holiness. As we walk fallow ground, we find that the more we lean into it, we’re walking hallowed ground — ground that God is using to form us to look more like Him.

Ground that God is using to do a deep, hidden work in us.

I’m not sure what this fallow season holds for me, but I do know that I trust Abba — my good and faithful Father. I’m choosing here to believe that if He’s asking me to remain empty — to cease producing and slow my pace — that only goodness will come of it.

So as I step over the threshold of my own winter season — a bit uncertain and maybe a little afraid — I’m turning toward the joy that can only come from resting and trusting in Him.

Selah.

With you on the journey,

Celia

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Life Lately

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A Breath Prayer for Your Weekend

Inhale: Son of David.

Exhale: Show us mercy and heal us.

(adapted from Matthew 9:27, TPT)

*If you’d like to learn more about the practice of breath prayer, download this complete digital guide to practicing breath prayer.

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Resources & Good Things to Pick Up

I’m reading a really great book by Dr. David Benner called Surrender to Love: Discovering the Heart of Christian Spirituality, and it’s been a welcome companion in this fallow season: Get it on Amazon

I’ve also really been enjoying this daily devotional book by Brian Simmons: I Hear His Whisper: Encounter God’s Heart for You

My Etsy shop, The Beholding Co., offers contemplative resource to help you slow down, seek still moments, and behold God’s presence with you in the everyday. Purchase some breath prayer cards, a Lectio Divina bookmark, and more.

Grab a copy of my Bible study, You Are Beloved: a 21-day study on how to root your identity in the love of God, over on Amazon. If you’d like a free 3-day sample of the study, reply to this email and I’ll send it right over!

My friend and licensed spiritual director, Kari Bartkus, offers an 8-week journaling program for those who want to process their grief and trauma with God within the safety of blank journal pages. I’ve completed the program myself and can say confidently that it was incredibly impactful and healing: Journal Gently

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An Invitation to Pause & Reflect

A regular practice of reflection helps us recognize what’s going on beneath the surface of our souls so we can name it in the Lord’s presence. Because as we learn to name what we feel, what we need, and what we long for, we’re also learning to discern the Spirit’s sweet, gentle voice within our hearts and lives.

Take a few moments today or this weekend to journal or contemplate with the Holy Spirit the following question(s) or prompt(s):

• Is there an area of your life where you feel called to cease?

• Does the idea of a fallow season seem inviting or scary? Why?

• What needs to be emptied in you in order to make space to receive God’s presence?

• How might your emptiness be an offering?