7
Rooted

Practicing the discipline of staying in place

The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

—Anais Nin

Back when we were dating, Brad entrusted me with his favorite plant, a lush ficus tree named Herman (in honor of Herman Melville; it’s true . . . I married a man whose favorite book is Moby Dick) before he left town for an extended period. I moved Herm into my parents’ house, where I was living at the time, positioned him next to the sliding glass doors, and gave him a satisfying drink from the watering can. Two days later I discovered a number of Herm’s leaves had yellowed and dropped onto the floor. Thinking that perhaps he wasn’t getting enough sunlight, I moved him to a south-facing window. The next morning more leaves littered the carpet. I fed Herm some plant food and repositioned him yet again in a less drafty spot in the house. Still he dropped leaves.

A week after Brad left, I called him to report that I’d killed Herman the Ficus in a record-setting seven days flat. That’s when Brad mentioned the one detail he’d neglected to tell me before he’d left town. Turns out, ficus plants don’t like to be moved around. They thrive best when they stay in one place.

When they first join the order, Benedictine monks and nuns take a vow of stability. “The vow of stability affirms sameness,” explains author and Episcopal priest Elizabeth Canham, “a willingness to attend to the present moment, to the reality of this place, these people, as God’s gift to me and the setting where I live out my discipleship.”1 To “affirm sameness” is radically countercultural in our society. We are conditioned, even encouraged, to drop one thing and move on to the next. We update our résumés when we find ourselves bored on the job. We buy a new pair of shoes when we see the toes are scuffed on the pair we are wearing. We unfriend the acquaintance on Facebook when her political views contrast with ours. We upgrade to the new iPhone when the version we own still runs just fine. We abandon with ease, enticed by the fresh and new.

Yet it’s clear this relentless pursuit of the perfect place, the perfect situation, the perfect job, and the perfect person often leads to the Herman the Ficus phenomenon: in moving from place to place, thing to thing, and person to person, we end up feeling restless, uprooted, and displaced. Constant change and transition leave us withered and exhausted. Like Herm the Ficus, in our constant motion we begin to lose important pieces of ourselves. We begin to fall apart.

Turns out, Herm wasn’t dead, though he certainly looked it. After I called Brad with the bad news, I stopped moving Herm around the house and let him be. I was too lazy to lug him downstairs and toss him into the trash bin, so he stood neglected, spindly, and nude in a corner of the living room. A few weeks passed. And then one day, as I was walking by, I saw something that stopped me in my tracks. Tiny buds dotted every one of Herm’s bare branches. Unnoticed by me in the weeks since I’d written him off as dead, Herm had begun to thrive, unfurling leaf by delicate leaf until finally, months after Brad had left him with me, Herm was once again a lush, verdant ficus. Brad had been right. Herm had simply needed to stay in one place. Left in the same spot, he grew strong and whole once again.

Plan to Stay

In February 2015 the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem exhibited a never-before-seen collection of more than 100 clay tablets dating back to between 572 and 477 BCE. The tablets, written in the Babylonian language in cuneiform script, were discovered in what’s now Iraq. They are considered by historians to be direct evidence of the Jewish community that was established in Babylonia following King Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion of Judea and his destruction of the temple in 600 BCE. Filip Vukosavovic, the exhibition’s curator, said studying the tablets was “like hitting the jackpot. We started reading the tablets and within minutes we were absolutely stunned,” he said. “It fills in a critical gap in understanding what was going on in the life of Judeans in Babylonia more than 2,500 years ago.”2

The information written on the tablets is surprisingly ordinary, even mundane: details of retail transactions for the purchase of animals and produce; records of paid taxes, debts owed, and credits accumulated; marriage deeds; lease agreements; partnership contracts; slave sales; inheritance documents; and other financial and legal notes. “On the one hand it’s boring details,” said Vukosavovic, “but on the other you learn so much about who these exiled people were and how they lived.”3 In short, what the tablets convey is that the Israelites were going about their business, living richly and abundantly even while in exile. They thrived, even as they stayed in one place in less-than-ideal circumstances and waited on God. The ancient texts also confirm that the Israelites listened to and obeyed God’s instructions laid out by the prophet Jeremiah:

Build homes and plan to stay. Plant gardens, and eat the food they produce. Marry and have children. Then find spouses for them so that you may have many grandchildren. Multiply! Do not dwindle away! And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. (Jer. 29:5–7 NLT)

The Israelites spent seventy long years exiled in Babylon, nearly twice the time they wandered in the wilderness after their exodus from Egypt. Babylon was another wilderness of sorts, but this time, they were not called to move forward, but to stay—and not only to stay, but to live their lives, to put down roots, and to make this new, unfamiliar place their home, a place where there was the potential to grow and thrive. The ancient tablets discovered 2,500 years after their exile confirm that the Israelites did exactly that. Led into a second wilderness in Babylonian exile, the Israelites stayed and built a life for themselves with God’s blessing. Meanwhile, God was up to something they couldn’t possibly see or even imagine.

Sometimes, like the Israelites in Babylon, God calls us into the wilderness and asks us to stay right where we are. Here we practice the spiritual discipline of stability. Episcopal priest and author Jane Tomaine notes that the words stable and stability come from the Latin word stare, meaning to stand or to be still. From this, she explains, “comes the figurative meaning to be firm, to stand fast, to endure, to persevere, to be rooted.” In other words, “stability is the action of staying put, remaining steadfast and faithful to the situation in which God has placed us.”4 In Babylon, God grew the Israelites’ perseverance, resilience, steadfastness, and, above all, their trust. As they stayed in place, putting down roots, growing, and thriving, they rediscovered who they were as a people chosen and loved by God. Babylon wasn’t a perfect or an ideal situation, and it certainly wasn’t the Israelites’ first choice, but God sustained them there and grew their faith.

Of course, staying put is a lot easier when you are in a place you actually want to be. Ask me to stay put on a Caribbean beach with a good novel in one hand and a piña colada in the other, and I’m there, fully engaged and thriving, no problem. But what happens when we are asked to stay in a place we don’t particularly like, a place that’s hard, a place that’s not comfortable or fulfilling? What happens when we are asked to stay and wait in a barren desert, a wasteland, a place that feels like stagnation?

Such was the case after the proposal for my second book was turned down. As weeks turned to months, and I found myself spinning my wheels in a place of professional and vocational uncertainty, I couldn’t help but wonder why God was not making a definitive path clear. Should I update my résumé and begin applying for jobs in the traditional workplace again? I wondered. Should I come up with a different book idea and write a new proposal? Should I focus on freelancing and pitch a bunch of article ideas to websites and magazines? Or should I try a little bit of everything and see what sticks? I wanted to do something, anything . . . the problem was, I wasn’t at all sure what it was I should do.

When I was a kid, my dad offered my sister and me one particular piece of advice again and again, especially when we found ourselves facing a difficult decision. “When in conflict, do nothing,” he repeated to us time and time again at various points in our lives. I was never especially fond of this advice. First of all, it was in direct opposition to his other favorite mantra—“Make it happen”—so I was never sure when it was time to “make it happen” versus when it was time to “do nothing.” As a triple-type-A go-getter, I tended to land squarely in the “make it happen” camp and was much less comfortable with the “do nothing” stance.

As I’ve matured, I am more able to see the wisdom in my dad’s “do nothing” advice, though admittedly, I struggle to follow it in the midst of my own periods of conflict and indecision. I think my dad was essentially promoting the concept of stability and steadfastness in the face of uncertainty, which doesn’t necessarily imply doing nothing, per se, but simply suggests we adopt a listening stance rather than steamrolling forward in full-blown panic. Unfortunately, I usually choose the second of the two approaches.

Case in point: In the weeks and months after the proposal for my second book was turned down by publishers across the board, I concocted a number of plans and expectations related to how I thought the pieces of my fragmented career should fall into place. When there appeared to be movement in any particular direction, I ran with it, confident that a door was opening, confident that I knew God’s plan for me.

Aha! I would declare to myself every time a glimmer of hope appeared on the horizon. So THIS is what God’s going to do. THIS is how it’s all going to work out! I was so sure I knew what God was going to do, so sure I could predict his plans for me. Until, that is, God didn’t do what I expected at all, and I found myself back at square one—still with no publisher, a whole lot of questions, and no clear career direction.

I cycled through this process of planning, expectations, hope, and disappointment three separate times over a period of two months before I finally realized something important: God hadn’t failed me, and he hadn’t intentionally led me down dead-end paths. The fact was, it wasn’t God who had created any of those plans in the first place. It was me. They were my plans. I put my faith, hope, and confidence in Plans A, B, and C—plans of my own making—instead of in God himself. Instead of leaning into a steadfast stance of listening and waiting, I had created my own plans, called them God’s, and them blamed God when my plans didn’t work out as I had anticipated.

The truth is, we like details; we like a clear plan. Even Moses asked God for specifics. Frustrated with his people and disappointed in his own leadership skills, Moses laid it on the line with God: “You have been telling me, ‘Take these people up to the Promised Land.’ But you haven’t told me whom you will send with me,” Moses complained. “You have told me, ‘I know you by name, and I look favorably on you.’ If it is true that you look favorably on me, let me know your ways, so I may understand you more fully and continue to enjoy your favor” (Exod. 33:12–13 NLT).

Moses demanded specifics—“Whom will you send with me?”—as well as a clear plan—“Teach me your ways.” But that’s not what God offered him as an answer. “I will personally go with you, Moses, and I will give you rest—everything will be fine for you,” God replied (Exod. 33:14 NLT). Like Moses, we want to know the plan; we want specifics—the who, what, why, and when. But God gives us something better: his presence. God is who he says he is: Emmanuel—God with us. As God tells Aaron in the Old Testament, “I am your plot of ground” (Num. 18:20 Message). It’s not about the plan; it’s not about the specifics; it’s not about the land or the inheritance or what we get. It’s about God in us and with us, and us with him and in him.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jer. 29:11). Notice the wording here. It’s not, “For you know the plans I have for you” or even “For I will tell you the plans I have for you.” It’s very clear who God considers the master planner and who he intends as the followers here. We don’t always get to know God’s plans, and even when we do get an inkling of what God has in store for us, it’s likely not what we had in mind for ourselves.

When the Israelites heard they were to spend seventy years in exile before being brought home (in this case God actually did lay out the big picture plan for them in advance; see Jer. 29:10), they were undoubtedly frustrated and disappointed. Seventy years is a long time—a lifetime for most people. And yet as the ancient clay tablets reveal, the Israelites listened to and obeyed God’s commands, trusting that he had their best interests in mind. They built homes. They planted gardens. They married and had children and grandchildren. In short, they stayed in one place and made the best of it until God told them it was time to move.

Prayerful Expectancy

We typically think of the Old Testament when we hear the word wilderness, but there are plenty of examples of staying and waiting in the New Testament too. The Gospel of Luke tells the story of a man named Simeon in Jerusalem who was called to wait. The Holy Spirit had revealed to Simeon that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah, and so Simeon bided his time, “eagerly waiting for the Messiah to come and rescue Israel” (Luke 2:25 NLT).

Luke doesn’t offer any details about Simeon’s waiting period, nor does he tell us how much Simeon knew about the coming Messiah. Nevertheless, I picture Simeon as an old man, patiently waiting in the “prayerful expectancy” (as The Message puts it) of hope for Israel. I’m also guessing he probably didn’t expect the Messiah to show up as an infant. Yet Simeon waited, steadfast and faithful, even when he didn’t have a complete picture of who he was waiting for.

Finally, led by the Holy Spirit to the temple on the day of Jesus’ circumcision, Simeon spotted Mary and Joseph. Taking the infant Jesus in his arms, Simeon thanked and praised God, saying, “Sovereign Lord, now let your servant die in peace, as you have promised. I have seen your salvation, which you have prepared for all people” (Luke 2:29–31 NLT).

I can’t imagine that the kind of waiting Simeon endured was fun. I wonder, did he get discouraged? Did he ever doubt he had heard the Holy Spirit correctly? For a long time there was no evidence that what the Holy Spirit had told him was true. Was Simeon ever mocked for his faith, which may have looked to others like foolishness or even laziness? The text doesn’t tell us, but my guess is, it wasn’t always easy for Simeon to wait in prayerful expectancy. And yet, that’s exactly what he did. Day after day, year after year, Simeon stayed and waited, trusting in steadfast faith that God was up to something he couldn’t see or possibly imagine.

Likewise, in that same chapter of Luke’s Gospel, we read about the prophetess Anna, who on the day of Jesus’ circumcision was also biding her time in the temple. Anna, the text tells us, was long-widowed and hadn’t left the temple since her husband’s death eighty-four years prior. She stayed there day and night, worshiping, fasting, and praying. Anna was waiting too, and when she spotted Mary and Joseph with the infant Jesus, like Simeon, she immediately began to praise God. “She talked about the child to everyone who had been waiting expectantly for God to rescue Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38 NLT, emphasis mine).

Prayerful expectancy. Waiting expectantly. The word expectant or expect comes from the Latin words ex (“out”) and spectare (“to look at”). To be expectant means to look out for or await, which is exactly what Simeon and Anna were doing in the temple all those years. They stayed in place, watching and waiting with expectant hope for the presence of God to pass by. Simeon and Anna waited nearly their whole lives for Christ to reveal himself. Day after day, they consistently showed up to the same place to wait in expectant hope for the fulfillment of God’s promise. Simeon and Anna embodied the very definition of faith as described in Hebrews: “confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (11:1).

The practice of open center pruning often takes up to three years, with long periods of rest and waiting between pruning sessions. Japanese gardener Jake Hobson notes that after a hard prune, a tree’s trunk is often wrapped in burlap to protect the newly revealed and tender bark from the elements during the recovery and resting period.5 During this time, the gardener watches the tree, waiting for healing and the slow results of transformation to be revealed.

Deep, radical transformation does not take place overnight. It is a slow process, requiring time for healing, waiting, listening, watching, resting, and recovery. Like a pruned tree, our souls need this time. Staying in place, especially when we’d rather be moving forward or climbing upward, is a difficult but necessary part of deep soul work. Most of us are probably more comfortable with the “make it happen” mode, rather than the “do nothing” mode. But we can’t rush through the staying and waiting in order to hurry on to growth and transformation.

The Benedictines call this slow, transformative work conversatio morum—“conversion of life.” As Elizabeth Canham says, “The monk realizes he is not yet fully the person God created him to be, that he is on the way to knowing himself as one loved and created in the divine image whose call is to be as Christ in the world but who has not yet arrived.”6 Sometimes, even as we are in the midst of uncovering our truest self, we are called to stay right where we are. Not-yet-there is not a perfect place, nor is it always a comfortable place, but it’s an important place. Like the nine-month gestation period of a pregnancy, a soul waits for its time to arrive.

Let Yourself Be Looked Upon

In the hours and days following my descent into the dark night of the soul in Tuscany, I struggled with a host of new and unfamiliar emotions. Unable to avoid the knowledge and insights that had been revealed to me, I was forced to sit with the pain, grief, and fear that had risen unbridled to the surface. I looked and acted “normal” on the outside—I participated in the conversations, excursions, meals, and companionship of my fellow travelers—but all the while I was reeling on the inside with questions and uncertainty. There was no opportunity to flee from or press back the discomfort. I was forced to face it head-on and stay present to it.

Each morning that week, Jamin sent us back out into the garden, armed with our journals, Scripture, and questions for reflection, and each morning I picked up my wrestling match with God where I’d left off the day before. The subsequent matches weren’t, thankfully, nearly as wrenching as that initial descent on Sunday morning. This was a quieter, more contemplative wrestling, a reckoning of sorts. God had led me into a new, unfamiliar, disconcerting place, and there I stayed—quiet, observant, waiting.

Each morning I sought the same spot, retreating to a secluded bench tucked under an arbor. Hidden by a veil of flowering vines, I could see into the garden, but with my knees pulled to my chest, I was almost entirely out of sight. I felt the need to be small and hidden, and the bench under the arbor became my hiding place.

I didn’t journal much during my forty-five minutes or so at the bench, nor did I spend much time reflecting on the questions and prompts for the day. Instead, each morning I sat with my back against the cool stone wall. I listened to the sound of water splashing into a nearby fountain, the sleepy drone of bees nosing into lavender, a rooster crowing on the other side of the wall. I breathed in the scent of jasmine and felt the warm breeze on my face. I observed tiny emerald lizards emerge from beneath the shrubs to bask, unaware of my presence, on the sun-warmed paving stones. I watched light dapple the leaves, heat shimmer in the distance, and clouds skitter across the sky.

“Attentiveness is vital to waiting,” says Sue Monk Kidd. She points out that the word wait comes from a root word meaning “to watch.” “Originally to wait meant to apply attentiveness or watchfulness throughout a period of time,” she adds in her book When the Heart Waits. “To wait on God meant to watch keenly for God’s coming.”7 This is what Simeon and Anna were doing in the temple day in and day out as they waited for the Messiah’s arrival. And although I didn’t entirely realize it at the time, this is what I was doing those mornings in the garden, hidden beneath the arbor with my back against the cool stone. I was watching, and in my watching, I was waiting on God. It was during those mornings of watchful, attentive waiting that I began, ever so slowly, to awaken to both God’s presence and to his personal invitation to me.

“Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God,” advised Matthew in his Gospel. “Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace” (Matt. 6:6 Message). During those mornings in the garden, I finally stopped role-playing before God. Stripped of my leaves and branches, I was my whole self, my deepest brokenness and my deepest desires exposed. “Can you let God ‘look upon you in your lowliness,’ as Mary put it in Luke 1:48, without waiting for some future moment when you believe you are worthy?” asks Richard Rohr.8 Those mornings in the garden I let God see me, to look upon me in my lowliness, brokenness, and despair, and in doing so, I began to see myself not as I always had, as a producer and a striver and an achiever, but in a new way, as a new creation. Ever so slowly during those watchful mornings hidden in the garden, I began to see and know myself as beloved.

This Is My Beloved

A few weeks ago I stood in church and sang the lyrics of a song that went like this: “If anybody asks you who I am, who I am, who I am . . . If anybody asks you who I am, say that I’m a child of God.” Most of us equate “who I am” with “what I do.” It’s often the first question we ask a stranger when we are making small talk, right? “So, what do you do?” This is how society defines us and often how we define ourselves. We are what we do—accountant, nurse, professor, writer, mother, father. But this is not how God sees us and defines us. Like the song says, God identifies us as his children. Our primary identity—really, our only true identity—is beloved child of God.

Do you remember what God said after Jesus emerged from the Jordan River, having just been baptized by John the Baptist? As water streamed off Jesus’ body, the heavens opened, the Spirit of God descended and settled on him, and a voice boomed down, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17 KJV). In that moment God named and identified Jesus as his beloved Son.

The thing is—and maybe this is true for you too—until recently I’d always considered that identifier, “beloved,” unique to Jesus. It made sense to me that God would identify Jesus, his own Son, as his Beloved. Yet I never considered that I am given the same identity—beloved daughter. In fact, I used to roll my eyes at the parts of John’s Gospel in which he refers to himself not once but six times as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (see John 13:23; 19:26; 20:2, 8; 21:7, 20). Who does that? I always thought when I came across that phrase. What an egomaniac!

It’s only recently that I realized John referred to himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” not because he was egotistical or a braggart, but because that was his primary identity: “loved by Jesus” was how John knew and defined himself. John believed in the deepest center of himself that he was first and foremost loved by God. And it was that belief and trust that allowed John to experience the deepest intimacy with Christ.

God desires that each one of us would know ourselves first and foremost as the beloved daughter or son of Christ. “Beloved” is not an identity unique to God’s own son or to Jesus’ favorite disciple. There are not a precious select few who earn the distinction of beloved. Beloved is the identity given to each one of us long before we enter this world as infants, even long before the universe itself was created, and our belovedness has nothing to do with whether we merit that distinction or not. Once we understand, accept, and embrace with our whole hearts and minds that we are beloved, period, everything else either falls away or falls into place.

“It’s in Christ we find out who we are and what we are living for” (Eph. 1:11 Message). How do you know who you are? By who God is and by who God says you are. God is Creator. God is love. God is everything. God is in everything (see Col. 1:16–17). And therefore God is in you. His love is in you, and you are defined principally by that love. This is how we understand and know ourselves: created by God, made in the image of God, embodiment of God, beloved of God.

Thinking back to my time in Tuscany, I’m not surprised God used his creation to invite me into deeper intimacy with him. I’ve always been happiest outdoors, whether I am sitting on the rocky lip of Lake Superior, standing amid the blowing Bluestem tallgrass of the vast plains, or perched on a park bench at the far side of my own small wilderness. Nature has always been the place that frees me to be my truest self and the place I most often sense God’s presence. Those days in Tuscany, particularly the mornings in the garden following my plummet into the dark night of the soul, were God’s personal invitation to me to know him and love him and to be known by him and loved by him. The Tuscan garden was where I first truly began to understand what it means to be a child of God, God’s Beloved, and why that understanding is the beginning of everything.

The first morning I tucked myself into the arbor, I noticed a tiny bud buried deep in the vines, a waxy pink fist clenched closed. The next day during my time at the bench, I saw that the bud had cracked open, four stiff, triangular petals split in a crosshatch to reveal a ball of tender inner pink petals, still folded tightly inside. The following morning, the bud was opened further yet, until finally, on my last morning in Tuscany, I saw that the bud was in full bloom, a ruffle of coral petals like a flamenco dancer’s skirt encircling a multitude of bright yellow filament.

Each morning I sat under the arbor I snapped a photo of that single flower as it cracked further open, revealing its innermost center a little bit more each day as it transformed from bud to bloom. I knew there was a message for me in that tiny flower. I was still tender, still raw and exposed, reeling from what God had revealed to me in my dark night of the soul. I was still confused in my faith, confused by what I believed. But there was hope in that one small bud, once tightly closed, now opening bit by bit. I, too, had cracked open on the hillside Sunday morning, and in the days that followed, watching, waiting, and attentive in the cool shade of the arbor, I began to unfurl.

“It takes great trust to believe in the smallest of beginnings,” Ann Voskamp writes in The Broken Way.9 Those mornings in the garden were the smallest beginnings for me, but more than the garden and the place itself, it was the ample silence and solitude that offered a way into beginning to understand myself as God’s Beloved. As Brennan Manning acknowledged, “The indispensable conditions for developing and maintaining the awareness of our belovedness is time alone with God. There we discover that the truth of our belovedness is really true. Our identity rests in God’s relentless tenderness for us revealed in Jesus Christ.”10

God leads us into the wilderness, where he speaks tenderly to us, his Beloved (see Hosea 2:14). There in the wilderness we stay and wait. Sometimes there is work to be done in our waiting; we are called to build houses and plant gardens. Sometimes, like Simeon and Anna, we wait in the midst of the everyday, prayerfully expectant, steadfastly hopeful. Sometimes we are still in our waiting—watchful, attentive, trusting . . . believing in the smallest beginnings.

GOING DEEPER

Conversatio morum—conversion of life—is a long, slow process that often includes periods of what feels like indefinite waiting. Though we can’t always discern it, God is at work, even in this season that looks like dormancy. Like the tiny buds that appeared on the ficus tree, the smallest beginnings are taking place, often just below the surface.

Some questions to consider in a season of waiting:

1. Different seasons of waiting call us to different responses. Like Simeon and Anna, perhaps you are being called to wait quietly, with expectant hope. Or maybe, like the Israelites exiled in Babylon, you are being called to settle in and get to work exactly where God has planted you right now. Or perhaps you are being called simply to watch, attentive, for God’s presence in your life. If you are in a season of waiting, do you sense God calling you to wait in one of these particular ways? What does that look like for you?
2. “Attentiveness is vital to waiting,” Sue Monk Kidd says. Write down one or two ways you could be more actively attentive, even in your small, daily moments of waiting. As I mentioned earlier, I most often experience God’s presence in nature. Is there a particular place that more readily opens you to the experience of God’s presence? Where is it? Can you go to that place regularly? Or even occasionally?
3. God addressed Jesus as “my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17 KJV). Do you think of yourself in the same way, as God’s beloved child, with whom he is well pleased? Why or why not?
4. When Jesus cried out to God in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before his crucifixion, he used the intimate term for Father, “Abba,” which is often translated as “Daddy.” Try addressing God as “Abba” in prayer. Does using a more intimate name for God change how you perceive your relationship with him in any way? If so, how?