A patch of irises sits beyond our backdoor. The iris have grown there longer than I can remember. They may have been planted by my great grandmother, or the Craven family who lived here before her. I know they’ve weathered some hard years. One year, a child picked them all just as they bloomed. Some years, they bloom before the last winter freeze. Before we lived at the farm, I’m told the whole iris patch was mowed down with aims to kill it for good. I don’t believe the iris bloomed that year, but they did grow back to bear their purple blooms. This summer, my girls dug in the dirt beside the patch and uncovered a hidden brick pathway. Somebody gave careful thought to how and where to plant those hardy perennials. Though I’ve yet to learn how to give them care, they still greet me every year with their color. No matter how short a time the iris gets to bloom, no matter how the weather and the hands of others affect them, they follow their design. When the earth gets warm and damp after the cold, they turn beautiful again. My kids’ discovery of the brick pathway gave me more thought to them this year, and how resilient they are. A few difficult years in a row won’t stop them. Even a lawn mower can’t kill them. These trials seem to result in more hearty growth to come. An iris patch will produce blooms for an average of 3-5 weeks a year and the iris are content to stand as bare stalks for the rest of the time. It’s as if the iris is hardwired to know, even if a child picks her the very day she blooms, the whole year was worth it for the beauty she brought that day. So she’ll do it year after year. When I think of the one who planted the iris patch, I think of the human struggle to trust the goodness of what we share with our hands, and with our lives. Some seasons you bloom just before the freeze. Some seasons you are mowed down by life. Perhaps a perennial faith keeps choosing to trust there is purpose in the bloom before, even despite the freeze—so there’s purpose in opening again. Before I was born, hands planted a bulb in the dirt, not knowing who would enjoy it. And each day, hands are at work to share good gifts. In Scripture, Job spoke of the resilience of plants that sprout again after being cut down (Job 14:7). When he remembered them, he remembered hope. And how he needed hope. At the peak of bloom, Job’s life was mowed down. With all his livestock destroyed and his ten children killed, his flesh was eaten by pain, while his friends mocked him and his wife told him to go die. In Job’s grief, he compared his life to a withered flower (Job 14:2). Yet even amidst those thoughts, he remembered the plants which sprout again, and though his memory of hope was a small passing thought, it was there in the growth he’d witnessed before—buried deep within him. Rooted expectations are powerful no matter how softly they rise. Job’s life did bloom again. And perennial faith does not require that one never feel small, though it invites the soul to be awed by the simple memory of hope.  “For there is hope for a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease. Though its root grow old in the earth, and its stump die in the soil, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put out branches like a young plant.” Job 14:7-9

When I was in the throes of my mid-twenties, feeling blindsided by the reality of life, someone I looked up to told me, “Whatever feels like love to you, feel free to go and do it.” There was both deep goodness and hidden instability in that moment. To understand why, you may need to know the season I was in. During most of my teen years, I struggled a lot with religious shame. I coped with it by giving myself a rigid dress code and pretending to be uninterested in boys because it made me feel more righteous. By now, I felt I’d lived enough hypocrisy in high school to last a lifetime. I wanted my twenties to be different, yet internalized mindsets don’t untangle on their own. With an early faith built largely on what I suppressed, I’d grown to fear many of my own desires—including everyday, ordinary impulses to share moments of connection with others. The habits of my younger years kept bleeding into the present. I needed to change something. I longed to freely let go of “cleaning my outsides,” so I could give attention to my inner life. Jesus’ words to the Pharisees left me feeling exposed. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence” (Matt. 23:25). Though I longed for authenticity, I felt trapped by fear. What if I make the wrong move? I believed if I kept trying to give my energy to “keep the outside of my cup clean,” I would have nothing left for the inside. And I felt scared I’d take it too far. For me, cleaning the inside of my cup meant learning how to live my faith from desire more than duty. I wanted to live, not from obligation, but a life that genuinely resonated with the specific design of my person. I felt overwhelmed between what to throw out and what to hold onto, and I truly needed words of assurance. Don’t be afraid to practice love. “There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love” (1 John 4:18). I firmly believe it’s the essence of what my Christian mentor wanted me to know when the words were shared: “Whatever feels like love to you, feel free to go and do it.” On the one hand, those words ministered to me. They gave me the gumption that woke me from a kind of paralysis. And on the other hand, “whatever feels like love to you” is a phrase my mentor later wanted to rephrase. Of course, I knew I didn’t want to go crazy. There were certain moral lines I knew I wanted to stay inside. Yet, for sake of authentic faith, certain structures had to go…and I didn’t know which. My mentor’s advice made me wonder… maybe I can depend a lot more on an inner sense of love? Well, when I exercised the things that felt like love to me at the time, it resulted in damaged friendships, boundary issues and depression. Just like music needs certain structures to guide emotional expression, my love needed guardrails as well. I may as well have jumped on a stage, pulled out a banjo, and played whatever felt like music to me. (I don’t know banjo music.) The definitions I find of the word “music” vary greatly. Some emphasize words like “organization, structure, pattern, rhythm” while others emphasize words like “art, expression, emotion, experience.” The music I most enjoy has a great balance of both. Emotional expression without structure, or vice versa, can become either chaotic and annoying, or boring and empty. The downside of “whatever feels like love to me” is that it quickly becomes chaotic to the point of misery. It’s no wonder that when Paul instructed Timothy on how to lead well, he said, “The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion” (1 Tim. 1:5-6). Paul didn’t want chaos for Timothy and offered structure for the mission. Scripture teaches authenticity, and it also teaches the structural pillars of health and joy. While my mentor’s initial advice didn’t share that structure, it still became a gift that helped me find courage to stop ignoring my heart. The moment when I considered “what feels like love” helped me acknowledge how my life at the time drained me. My heart felt unengaged. The cycle of duty and burnout I lived did not speak of harmony, and my life felt off course in ways hard to name. Proverbs warns that the wellspring of life comes from the heart and that we must care for that wellspring with vigilance (Prov. 4:23). If my heart is sending me alert signals that my way of life is draining me, wisdom requires me to notice. A heart built on duty, while desire goes ignored, is a heart where love needs room to breathe. In the book of Exodus, when Jethro saw Moses living out of a grueling sense of duty that left him completely empty, Jethro called Moses to pay attention, saying, “What you are doing is not good. You and the people with you will certainly wear yourselves out” (Ex. 18:17-18). The level of exhaustion Moses was serving from, left him where he could hardly live from love anymore. They found a solution which balanced responsibility with the genuine needs of Moses. When I become so afraid to listen to my heart that I ignore the moments which leave me weary and empty, I am invited to more. Jesus’ call is “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). The instinct that love needs structure is entirely correct, yet love also requires emotional authenticity—and it’s entirely worth the risk to practice learning to balance both. It’s good to notice when a path leaves me struggling to love from my heart, and to consider what love would do. Love won’t rush me to decide a new way. Yet, it won’t leave me defeated by the fate of an empty life. The imperfect advice I received still helped me find the courage I needed, and we are loved by a God who takes our human attempts at love and redeems them for good. So, if you know moments of paralyzing fear yourself, I want to pass the encouragement on—even if I say it imperfectly. Don’t be afraid to go and practice love. While religious shame stifles your spirit, true structural health will protect it. The goal is a harmony of love that springs up from a tended inner life—from the rhythms of a clean heart, a clear conscience, and unfeigned trust in God.