Slow Growth Equals Strong Roots

Finding Grace, Freedom, and Purpose in an Overachieving World

Mary Marantz

• Publisher: Revell
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN:
  9781493434329
• Print ISBN:
  9780800738464
• Topic: Theology & Religion

You cannot achieve your way into worth

You know her. Maybe you are her. The woman who feels like she must always be "on." The one who is always performing. She walks into every room relentlessly hard on herself, always attempting to deliver an A+ performance, because she believes this is the bare minimum standard she has to achieve just to be invited to most tables. You would never know by looking at her the hard things she's had to overcome. She succeeds, almost compulsively, in this urgent attempt to outrun her own muddy story. But she is walking around now, reduced to this burned-out, brittle, fragile, ashes-to-ashes version of herself. She is, at last . . .exhausted.

When gold stars, highlight reels, and seeking approval from strangers on the internet are not enough, Mary Marantz gives you permission to stop running. In this unique, powerful devotional filled with stunning photography, she shows you how to move from achieving, striving, and performing for your worth to the grace, freedom, and purpose that come from knowing your identity and calling are determined by God.

You are not in a race with anyone. Good things take time. REAL things take time. And slow growth equals strong roots.

Part I: Breaking Ground

No. 1 Walk Among the Fireflies

And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, “We have seen extraordinary things today.”

LUKE 5:26

I’M NOT SURE WHERE all the fireflies have gone.

When I was little—a gap-toothed, skinned-knees mess of curly brown hair—growing up this wild thing, untamed, on the top of Fenwick Mountain, there was no shortage of fireflies. Lightning bugs, as we used to call them. On those hottest July nights when the tall pines on the edge of our neighbor’s yard blurred and bled into one another—this twisted tangle of stark, bare arms, these puppet masters pulling all the strings and casting shadows of our most-feared demons against the deep blue fade of twilight giving way to the darkness—our whole world could be seen by the light of a million fireflies. Like a fluorescent night-light protecting us from all the monsters hiding in the shadows. An Appalachian allegory of the cave, lighting up these mere reflections of the versions of ourselves we might one day become.

We would sit like that for hours—leaning back and propped up on the palms of our as-yet unscarred hands, the blades of thick, freshly cut crabgrass stabbing at the backs of our knees—telling ghost stories against the silhouette of imagined apparitions that were never really there. A million points of light blinking in and out of our existence. As if one day we might just disappear right alongside them.

I’m forty as I write this. And for years I’ve watched the summers pass without the slightest glimpse of that electric neon yellow burning up the night sky. Where there used to be a million miracles, now it can be hard to see even one.

Growing up tends to do that to us.

Somewhere among the mortgage payments and stainless-steel appliances, the retirement funds and the endless piles of laundry, we lose that wonder for a life we have spent a lifetime dreaming of. I used to sit with a blue spiral-bound notebook outside the trailer where I grew up in West Virginia, drawing sketches and dreaming of the real house I would one day have. Now all I’m tempted to see is a kitchen that needs updating, perpetually dirty dishes, and a boiler in the basement that—if all its coughs and sputterings are any indication—we’re going to need to replace pretty soon.

We lose ourselves in our obligations and color-coded to-do lists. We feel tired all the time. We drink more wine than maybe we should. Food has started to lose all its flavor. And we just let the episodes run on the latest binge-worthy television show, one after another after another, until all the plotlines blur. We’re numb. We’re checked out of our own lives.

And we’re not even sure we would recognize that wild-thing, untamed version of ourselves if she came and sat down on the couch beside us with her skinned knees and tangled hair, looked us right in our exhausted eyes that are mirror reflections of her own, and asked the question we’ve been asking ourselves for far too long now:

“What happened to you?”

I once heard a photographer named Will Jacks say, “Be willing to walk among the fireflies.” When he said that, I took it to mean be willing to slow down, be willing to walk in wonder, be willing to see the smallest things right in front of you as the miracles they really are.

Becoming an adult tends to put blinders on us. It makes us forget to see the things right in front of us that used to give us wonder. The things that used to give us pause.

And it got me thinking: what if fireflies cease to exist in equal and opposite proportion to the amount of time you spend noticing them? It reminds me of Julia Roberts with her pixie cut and fairy wings in Hook, telling all the children to clap if they believe. But never once letting on just how much other people’s clapping was a lifeline for her.

Without it, she didn’t know how to breathe.

For years I wasn’t sure where all the fireflies in my life had gone.

But then two summers ago, in the year of our Lord 2020, when the world was burning down all around us, for the first time in a long time . . . the fireflies returned. The first time it happened we were sitting a socially distant six feet apart on our front porch with our friends Erin and Peter. And we all had to blink our eyes against the night sky to believe what we were seeing.

Just like that, in the height of darkness . . . the light returned.

I don’t know why the fireflies chose to come back in a year that was so hard. If I were them, I think I would have just stayed floating safely on warm currents of air to far-off places like Neverland or maybe Bora Bora, sailing off in a deep blue sea of dreams. Maybe they returned because the world got quiet enough that it finally felt safe for wonder to re-emerge. Maybe they were like the dolphins that supposedly were swimming in the Venice canals because the dust had settled and the water had become clear again. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because we were all slowed down enough to begin this act of noticing again.

Noticing the smallest things right in front of us for the wonder and the miracle that they really are.

It takes a radical act of courage to see beauty among the broken. But it is no less radical or courageous to witness the miracle among the mundane.

Perhaps this is the antidote to the problem of more: it’s noticing the magic and enough-ness of all that we already have.

So we begin this good work right here. ◼

SLOW GROWTH PRAYER

GOD,

I don’t want to wake up one day and realize I’ve sleepwalked through my entire life.

I don’t want to spend another day pretending like every little piece of this life in front of me is anything less than extraordinary.

This blue planet floating through space, spinning wildly on its axis.

7.8 billion humans.

And somehow you still see fit to bring me my people.

You care enough to give me a house and sunsets, the smell of salt air, a song that can bring me right back to my childhood, fluffy dogs and cold tangerines.

I want to see every good gift from above for the miracle it really is.

Wake me up, God.

Help me to not miss it.

Oh, how I am so afraid I’m missing it.

AMEN.

No. 2 A Tossed and Turbulent Sea

But let him ask in faith without doubting. For the doubter is like the surging sea, driven and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord, being double-minded and unstable in all his ways.

JAMES 1:6–8 CSB

I’VE ALWAYS WANTED to be one of those people who are unshakable. Unflappable. The Unsinkable Molly Brown. The kind of person who seems to have built their life upon an unwavering, rock-solid stance, their feet always planted shoulder-width apart, heels rooted firmly in the cold, hard ground beneath them. Their heads held high, spiraling ever upward toward the heavens. Their eyes fixed on something even higher that no one else around them can ever seem to see.

They don’t care when the storms rage, when the winds howl, when the wolves are scratching at the door. They pay no mind to the disappointing setbacks, the down-to-the-buzzer losses, the times when they find themselves in the unenviable position of being forced yet again to start over from the beginning. They do not grow weary of doing good when they lose their grip or lose their way and the boulder rolls all the way back down the mountain. They simply straighten their back, set their jaw, and begin the long, slow climb once again.

Equally, they remain unchanged when things do go their way. When the ship comes in, when the wind falls, when good fortune comes knocking at the door dressed in a cloak and wrapped in an enigma—the only mystery being how long she intends to stay this time. She can come or she can go. She can smile her lucky smile or turn a cold, indifferent shoulder.

Whatever happens, such people simply remain. Steadfast. And solid.

Let me be clear. I have never been that person.

I have always been more like a high-wire tightrope walker, her confidence built upon the thin, fleeting air buoying up beneath her. These billowing currents of hot air and highlight reels turned icy chill in the fickle fog of their absence, leaving tiny thunderstorms of destruction in their wake. She’s up and she’s down and she’s everywhere in between. She could be falling or she could be flying—the thrill of both those words ever-present on her lips and never really knowing which one. That is the rip cord that somehow keeps her tethered. Leaping, always leaping, never really knowing if the net will appear. And living for the next upswing of a high that will catch her just in time.

My days have always been defined as good or bad by the latest good thing that has happened to me.

One night a few months ago, a storm blew in over the water where our house sits on the Long Island Sound. It came out of nowhere and quickly turned into one of the worst gales we’ve ever seen. Or rather didn’t see. And that was the problem. We could hear the winds howling and the waves crashing against the seawall, a twelve-foot stone barrier that is the only thing standing between us and the certain disaster of our house and everything we love in it being swallowed up whole. But even though we heard it clear as day, in the darkness our eyes could only make out the crest of sea spray as it breached the wall, lit only by the spotlight from a lone streetlamp. Minutes that felt like hours wore on as the waves continued to batter mercilessly against the wall. The waters rose so high and crash...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Presentation Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• The Author Note
• The Prelude
• The Inciting Incident
• Part I: Breaking Ground
• Part II: Digging Deep
• Part III: Anchoring Hope
• Part IV: Standing Tall
• The Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Back Ads
• Back Cover