I have had an image floating around in my brain for several years. It is flooded with blue water and light. There is a white dress floating in slow motion – say, 48 frames per second. A little girl, blonde hair streaming out is with a man dressed in black dress pants, barefoot. It is almost like a still frame, this moment suspended in time. I have looked for it on the worldwide internet and come up with nothing. I decided it was some strange memory of my own, seen from a distant vantage point. Because that little girl was me.

You may not have grown up in the Baptist Church. I did. Rock Hill Baptist was a small congregation by today’s standards – maybe even small for back then. The church, founded in the 1800s, was built on the land of my Great-grandfather, George Henry Cunningham in 1894. My grandparents also were members there and raised their children in the church. My mother did the same. Daddy was a deacon and treasurer of his Sunday School class. We were there every Sunday and every Wednesday night. It seemed that most of the congregation was related to us in one way or another. The people there were kind and loving and salt of the earth. It was a safe and secure childhood in my little world.

This Christmas is already different from all that came before. My heart has been captured by new thoughts and new friendships. God’s Word is a sharp sword clearing a deep and wide path through tangled woods, opening a clear path for my feet to walk, allowing the sunlight to pierce through what was a dark canopy over my head. Does this season look different for you?

After a long year of pestilence, God has picked me up, moved me over to a new place, and set me down. I look around in wonder. I am no longer walking alone. There are women in front of me, pointing the way. There are women beside me, who call my name in joy, who take my hand in theirs, who walk beside me. I am overwhelmed.

There must be something in us that longs for holy ground. A holy place where we can easily find our God. I think of the holy places I have visited over the past weeks. Places built by human hands and heartfelt desire to honor the holy, to touch the Spirit – which I know is God – and to feel His presence.

My journey into holy places started in Arkansas. I had changed our course westward to visit two glass chapels – both built in the quiet of the woods, both designed by the architect E. Fay Jones. The first one we visited is called Thorncrown and was built through God's grace a few miles above the mountain town of Eureka Springs. We were the last visitors of the day to peer up into the wooden rafters that reached to the heavens, leaving as the couple who had arranged to be married there arrived in a bright red pickup truck. The groom was happy to oblige with having their picture taken although his bride had not yet slipped into her dress.

God created them for watching. They stand alert, unmoving, waiting. Their eyes look straight into mine. Direct. Searching. Their ears, high and open, tilting, rotating toward the slightest sound. Their noses are dark and round, twice the size of their almond eyes, hiding their mouths underneath.

They are interrupting my sunrise watch, these deer who silently arrive each morning, quietly waiting to see if I am friend or foe. This morning there are fourteen of them; bucks with their awkward antlers, does who lag slightly behind, and the fawns who stay mostly hidden in the taller grasses.

Friday morning, I awoke in Tucson. In the 1970s themed hotel where we were staying, I had played Linda Ronstadt's album Hasten Down the Wind on the record player and sang along to,

“By the rivers of Babylon

Where we sat down

And there we wept

When we remembered Zion

For the wicked carry us away

Captivity require from us a song

How can we sing King Alpha's song in a strange land?

So let the words of our mouth

And the meditations of our hearts

Be acceptable in thy sight

Over I”

Or at least that is the way I remembered the lyrics…

The morning after night number two in the desert. The sun shines hot against my face and my shoulder and the side of my leg. The dog snaps at flies that buzz her. The prairie grasses balance glowing feather tops shimmering in the smallest breeze. Purple mountains rim the horizon line. The blue of the sky is the deepest, most intense color I have ever seen in the vast heavens over my head. It is morning.

It is the night that makes me nervous. I want to sit under the darkening canopy as the moon becomes visible in the southern sky and the first stars appear. It will be a while before the sky is blue-black enough to play backdrop for the starry host. I have seen the thousands of lights spread across the heavens. But by then the cold has descended and I don't tarry – seeking instead the warmth of my blanket.

She was still there, the woman and her dog in the rain. I had seen her an hour before as we turned right off the frontage road on our way to the family-owned restaurant here in Amarillo. The rain clouds had hovered across the skyline as we drove into town, blue and heavy with misty sheets of rainfall in the distance. We had loaded our belongings into the Quonset barn with polished concrete floors, Pottery Barn furnishings, and the homemade brownies welcoming us under their glass dome and then climbed back into the car in search of dinner as the rain started. It was our fourth city in seven days. We had explored Memphis and Eureka Springs and Oklahoma City on this journey to see some of America.

This summer I had the privilege of watching a pair of nuthatches sing their calls back and forth to each other, taking turns to fly in and then out again of the blue and green woven basket that held sand buckets and shovels and their babies. At first, they were cautious and noticeably hesitant for I had invaded their space.

Weeks before, I had started lifting out of the basket the big yellow dump truck when I realized there was a pine needle-colored nest with bird eggs somewhere halfway down. Oh no. I backed away; sure that I had destroyed some momma's happy home. Jeff told me a couple of days later he had seen a nuthatch fly into my writing shed. Open-air, tin-roofed, rafters high, it overlooks the sandbox where Barrett and Mikah build sandcastles and dig for treasure. The perfect place to raise a bird family. I kept my fingers crossed.

Yesterday I had a twenty-minute sweet and exciting conversation with a woman who could be a friend one day. She doesn’t fit into my usual circle of women who look like me. When I first saw her a week ago, I selfishly prayed, “Lord, no, no, no… I don’t want to go there!”

You see, during this year of fear and pestilence, God has had me treading water in mighty waves of silence. I thought he had me on a sure path in one direction, but He has been preparing my mind and my heart to swim in unfamiliar waters to a different shore.

We have some rules in place in our family; always slip folding money into the red pot of the bell-ringers at Christmas, always buy cookies from the Girl Scouts who show up at your door, and whenever possible, stop to buy lemonade at neighborhood children’s stands. This week, as Maybelle and I took a morning walk, there were three siblings with a table set up, open for business. “Oh no,” I thought as I approached, “I don’t have a single dollar on me!”

"What are y'all selling?" I asked, thinking I could return with cash. The middle child, a girl, held up a new blue kitchen sponge. "We have a sponge for 3 dollars." I decided I didn't need a sponge at the moment. The youngest volunteered, "We have lemonade and tea. Do you want a sample?" as he held up a large blue Solo cup. By now I have noticed the table; instead of the rather traditional pitcher of lemonade or small disposable dixie cups, these entrepreneurs, in addition to the aforementioned sponge, have small red bottles lined up in rows on their folding table.