 At night I wear a mouthguard. I also wear a CPAP mask, wax ear plugs, and an eye mask to block out any light that might try to break through. It’s like I’m going for total sensory deprivation which, in some ways, I might very well be. Either way, I’m sure this is a very special sight for my spouse. 😉
The mouthguard has nothing to do with my sensory deprivation. In fact, it’s pretty new in my nighttime getup. It all started when I woke up one night in the middle of the night with excruciating jaw pain on my left side. I tried to take care of the pain on my own. I made an appointment with my dentist, but in the meantime was able to get in to see my primary care doctor. After describing the pain to her as an electric shock moving along my jaw on the right side of my face, and her doing a thorough exam, she diagnosed me with Trigeminal neuralgia, a nerve disorder causing chronic pain. She prescribed a drug to use as needed, and encouraged me to keep the appointment with my dentist. Soon, I was able to get in to see my dentist. At that appointment, my dentist was not at all surprised that I was dealing with the nerve disorder. She reminded me that when I first established care with her, she had noted (aloud to me and in my chart) that it appears that I might be a person who grinds her teeth. Teeth grinding, I have learned, is usually caused by stress, and can lead to broken teeth (I had cracked one), and can exacerbate the trigeminal nerve. To stop my teeth from grinding, my dentist fitted me for a custom mouthguard, instructed me to wear it every night, and to continue with the as needed pain medicine my doctor had described. I’ve thought a lot about the ways in which my jaw being clenched and my teeth grinding have caused me great pain, and I’m mindful of all of the ways my heart, mind, and spirit have felt clamped down recently–each clenched and grinding in their own ways. And how, even when it feels like my heart is opening ever so slightly, something will happen that clamps it right back down again. Over and over. At every pass, the entirety of who I am clenches–from stress, from fear, from fatigue and worry. There are countless causes for each of us, I suppose, but the result is always the same. From the closed-off place, it’s easy to “dress rehearse tragedy” or “borrow trouble.” It’s easy to leap to the worst case scenario on everything. That person who cut you off in traffic? Surely they were out to get you. The boss praising your co-worker? Certainly that means they think you're a terrible employee. The news story about some new terrible thing happening in politics? It’s the end of the world as we know it. There’s nothing good. There’s nothing positive. Not. One. Thing. Psychologist Albert Ellis points to this as one of the three errors to human thinking: “When something negative happens, we ignore all the positive that surrounds it.” Everything is “awful” and “terrible,” and there’s not one good thing happening at all. Clench and grind. Now, I don’t think Ellis is suggesting that we all just need to realize the power of positive thinking to get through difficult times. I think he’s saying that the negative parts of life are true, but that is not ALL that is true. The only problem is that we are so closed down due to pain or worry or grief or fatigue, we close ourselves off to anything else–anything positive– reaching our heavy hearts. A Sufi master once wrote, “God breaks the heart again and again and again…until it stays open.” It is this broken, wide-open heart,” Fr. Boyle writes, “that is able to fall into the immensity of the God of love.” In other words, instead of us grinding our teeth, or grinding at work, or grinding ourselves into the ground with worry, fear, stress, or something else, we find our true ground in God who is love. From this place, our hearts learn to open again beyond all that has clamped it shut, and we are mindful of what goodness or positivity remains around us. It’s not an easy thing to do–to get grounded and stay grounded. In fact, over and over again, we must be grounded again. Refreshed in God’s presence and the presence of God in us and the world around us–even when there’s a whole lot of awful begging us to clench and clamp our hearts, minds, and spirits to anything but more pain. There’s so much ugliness and uncertainty in our world right now, but do not be fooled, friends, that is not ALL there is. If you’re willing, God’s at work to break open your heart to the beauty and the goodness that’s here too–it’s always here too. Every moment is begging us to ground ourselves in the God of love in hopes that when we do, we will remember that it is from this love that we came, to this love that we ultimately return, and by this love that we are called to live. And when we clench our jaws, or our hearts, so tightly, we lose this ground and find that all that’s ground up in the process is us. No amount of clenching our jaws or grinding our teeth will get us through these difficult days. Only a supple heart–regularly broken open by God for the love of God will see us through. This week, may you be opened. May you be grounded. Pr. Melissa  I have always seen these photographs in magazines or online of people wearing swimsuits and stocking hats as they get into an outdoor hot tub, under the stars, surrounded by snow. My summer-loving heart has had at least some curiosity surrounding this notion of being warm-ish in the wintertime while enjoying the great outdoors. So I was excited this past week when I could create this winter magic on my own outside, in the snow, under the stars, in my little inflatable hot tub.
What I didn’t know from those photographs is that there is something that happens when you go from an air temperature of 19 degrees to a water temperature of 104 degrees: You lose your breath. Google tells me that this happens because a reflex has been triggered in the airways, causing a sudden dilation and sometimes a slight spasm. During this initial and sudden shift in temperature, the body tries to adjust to the sudden influx of warm air and, as it does, a person can experience something that feels like a momentary shortness of breath. I accentuate that it FEELS like a momentary shortness of breath because while this is, in fact, the sensation we experience when moving from cold to warm temperatures, we aren’t actually short of breath. Our breath hasn’t been lost and it hasn’t been taken away either (despite what the song from the original Top Gun soundtrack would have us believe). What’s actually happening is that our blood vessels are dilating–expanding and getting larger–as a way to help release some of the sudden heat and regulate the body from the inside out. Science did its job, and my body followed suit. After a few intentional, deep breaths, and a few more moments in the balmy hot tub water, my body’s breathing became normal once more. Allowing me to see that what had felt at first like a complete loss of breath was really just a portal into a new reality. I don’t know about you, but lately I have felt short of breath often. Not from the temperature extremes, mind you, but from the sudden shift in all kinds of climates of which I am a part. I am breathless over the shifting political climate and what it means for me and the people I love. I am breathless over the shift in health status many in our congregation have found themselves undergoing recently. I'm breathless over the shift in our capacity to genuinely care about one another without first asking if the other is worthy of such care and support. I am breathless from all of the shifts that cause worry, and breathless from all of the shifts that bring about uncertainty, and breathless from every shift that has brought me to countless sleepless nights. I wonder if you feel breathless too? What I try to remember in times like these is the lesson I learned at the hot tub the other night: My breath is not being taken from me. I have not lost my breath anywhere, it just feels that way. My body is trying to regulate my temperature. It’s trying to bridge the gap between this moment and the next, not by shutting down. Not by making my world smaller. Not by isolating or removing me from reality entirely. My body–and your body too–is trying to lead us from this moment to the next through dilation. Through the growth and expansion of our blood vessels. By the grace of our Creator, our bodies understand intuitively what our conscious selves often do not: Growth and expansion are the bridges we need to help us all move between these moments that take our breath away…even when it feels like we should all just hole up in our own little corners and batten down the hatches until the moment passes. But we don't need less…we need MORE. More compassion. More togetherness. More walking around our neighborhoods with eyes WIDE OPEN to what is needed right now. We need more self care, and more communal care. And more bowing heads in prayer instead of bowing our heads over our cell phones. We need more love and more justice and more tangible evidence that these moments that have left us feeling breathless have not actually stolen the breath of LIFE from us. So, my friends, in these breathless moments–no matter what they are for each of us–let me remind you to take a deep breath. And another. And another. Remember that, despite how it feels right now, the breath of our lungs has not been taken away, it's still here. At our disposal. Helping us expand and grow in ways we didn't even know were possible. Breathe deeply, my friends, and be encouraged. Pr. Melissa  On Saturday this past weekend, I spent some time peeling, de-seeding, and cubing butternut squash that we had grown this past summer in our garden. So that the quash was ready to use and did not get too soft simply sitting in storage in our basement, I vacuum sealed it in food bags and placed those bags in the freezer.
As I worked, a cinema-like scene ran through my mind. Of the simple seeds that began in a simple mound of dirt in our backyard. With tending from my spouse and I–along with Mother Nature–the mighty vines of the butternut squash plant climbed the trellis we had put up for them. Then, having run out of room, they twisted and climbed their way along our green beans, in and out of our pepper plants and onion, even making it as far as our rhubarb and our horseradish plants. Finally, it flowered–big, beautiful, yellow flowers that gave way to tiny butternut squash that would–in time–grow to the very items I was cubing on Saturday. The movie playing in my head eventually gave way to thoughts about how the seeds we plant today have the ability to do such astonishing things–and I don’t just mean in our gardens. The seeds of independent decision-making that we sow in our kids today have the ability to grow independent thinkers. The seeds of hope we sow with our neighbors today have the ability to grow hopeful communities. The seeds of justice that we sow in our actions today have the ability to grow a more just world. Of course, the same thing can be said for the other side of the coin: Seeds of cruelty sown today have the ability to grow cruelty to be harvested at a later date. Seeds of radicalization sown today have the ability to radicalize an entire generation. Seeds of hate sown today have the ability to grow a more hate-filled world. You’ll notice that I used the words, “have the ability” for seeds on both sides of the coin. This was intentional. Any gardener will tell you that a person can do everything right and still not harvest what they intended. This is because there are so many factors that must come together in order that good fruit is plentiful at harvest time. The same is also true on the other side of the coin. A gardener can do nothing right–no weeding or watering or pruning or tending–and have a harvest beyond their wildest dreams (side note: There are entire YouTube channels dedicated to this way of gardening–they’ve dubbed it “lazy gardening”). In short, there are no guarantees. Yet, even in the face of so much uncertainty, gardeners do what they can. They start seeds indoors. They plan out crop rotations and garden layouts. Even “lazy gardeners” prepare the soil, put seeds or seedlings in the ground, lay down mulch, and string up trellises. They stay true to their gardening approaches–sure–but they do what they can, when they can, where they can, as they can. They create the conditions in which growing, fruiting, and harvesting are most likely to occur, and then…they wait. In this very tumultuous time in our nation and in our world, we would do well to follow the way of the gardeners. We would do well to remember that while seeds sown in cruelty have the ability to grow even more cruelty to be harvested later, that is not necessarily a foregone conclusion. Neither is it a foregone conclusion that the seeds of justice that we sow in our actions today will necessarily grow a more just world. We often don’t have sole control of either outcome. What we do have control of is what conditions we choose to help create. We can choose to create conditions that make it very difficult for seeds of cruelty to put down roots. We can choose to tend the seeds of justice like our life depends on it growing and fruiting for a bountiful harvest (because it does!). We can do our part–in our own corners of the community, nation, and world–to make it easier for hope, justice, and a sense of belonging to each other to bear good fruit at the harvest. And–at the same time–we can refuse to give our minds, hearts, and spirits over to the idea that anything is a foregone conclusion. When things look bleak at the start–just as they have for a lot of us in this first month of 2025–it can feel like more of the same is all that there is to come. But friends, that is not a foregone conclusion. We have a hand in what is harvested here. We can influence the growing conditions around us, and do our very best to impede all that is harmful and death-dealing from growing exponentially. We will not always succeed, but we won’t always fail either. We only fail if we stop trying and assume that there is nothing we can do. So, while my household is enjoying the good fruits harvested from our 2024 garden, I encourage all of us to turn our attentions to the garden of 2025, and see what might be needing done already. There’s tending to do here. There’s planning to do here. Some seeds are already in the ground, and we have at least some say in creating the conditions they need to grow–or not. To fruit–or not. To make it to harvest–or not. In our fear, our upset, and our exhaustion, may we remember that we, too, are gardeners–and we are not powerless so long as we stay in the garden…even in the midst of such cruel and divisive seeds being sown around us. Doing what I can, as I can with you, Pr. Melissa |
Pastor Melissa enjoying time on her hammock.
Rev. Melissa Sternhagen
Rev. Melissa Sternhagen was called as the pastor of St. Paul Congregational UCC in June of 2020. Prior to her call to St. Paul, Pr. Melissa worked as a hospice chaplain in the Ames, IA area, following pastorates at rural churches in Central Iowa and Southern Illinois. Pr. Melissa is a second-career pastor with a background in agribusiness and production & supply operations. She received her M.Div. from Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis, MO, and holds a MA Ed. in Adult Education and Training, and a BA in Organizational Communications. Archives
March 2025
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