Tracesoffaith

I hope Bryan Adams doesn’t mind if I borrow his iconic song title from the 1983 hit. If you’ve been reading here for a while, you know most of the time it’s hymns that bubble up out of my subconscious, but occasionally it’s 80s and 90s hits. As my teenage daughter informed me recently, “Mom, you grew up in the best era.” You won’t hear any objections from me.

In the United States, tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day. Now, Adams is Canadian, so he observes Thanksgiving on the second Monday in October each year. But I’ll celebrate tomorrow with family and friends. Those who attend fluctuates from year to year. I’ve learned to adjust to that after a childhood of large gatherings with the same faces every holiday.

The photo for this post is the original banner I used for this Tracesoffaith blog in 2014. It brings a smile to my face. I don’t recall what Psalm 78:35 says, but I looked it up for us:

“They remembered that God was their Rock, that God Most High was their Redeemer.”

It’s a solid verse, but I don’t recall exactly why I chose it. I went with tracesoffaith because it was a play on my name, Traci. An early tagline was “Finding traces of God in everyday life.”

Speaking of life, tracesoffaith sort of took on a life of its own. It became my social media handles, and often times when people see me at conferences, they’ll say, “Are you tracesoffaith?” Those are cool moments.

Writing here has been life-altering. I’m incredibly grateful for the many friendships I’ve made. With the help of social media, it’s helped me reconnect with a number of friends and family who I might have lost touch with otherwise. It’s helped me navigate church life, even as that journey took some wild twists and turns. The blog became a place where I could share about scripture, what I was learning, how it opened up to me as I read and studied year after year, and how that changed me too.

I’m not sure if it’s because I played it safe or because I attempted to share personally from my own experience, but by and large, readers have stuck around and I haven’t received much pushback from my writing or my church wanderings. I’ve learned curiosity is a great trait to have in both a conversation and with life in general. I know now, everyone has something to teach me, and I love learning.

Engaging in this space means I’ve bought more books myself than I could ever read in a lifetime. It connected me to an agent, who found me an editor, and together, we wrote two books. Along the way, I’ve had countless opportunities I never would have been granted if I hadn’t hung up the virtual Tracesoffaith sign, open for business.

This Thanksgiving, I wanted to thank each of you for taking part in this work. The emails and messages, the interaction on social media, getting to meet in person (my favorite), I’ve loved all that. I’ve written about it before, but I find God typically gives me words for a season rather than “word of a year” as shared by others. A phrase I hear regularly these days is this: “Jesus still sticks.”

And he does. Some days, I feel as if I might have more questions than answers when it comes to faith (and parenting, but that’s an entirely different post). Let’s keep pursuing Jesus, though. He is the Author and Perfecter of our faith. The Bible tells me so. Happy Thanksgiving.

One of the most formational spiritual practices I’ve had for years is to read Scripture every day. For more than a decade, I’ve led a private Facebook group that reads the Bible chronologically in a year. Adding spiritual practices like observing Advent and observing the liturgical calendar, contemplative prayer, and using essential oils to guide the emotional faith journey have only deepened my faith walk.

This advent season, I wanted to bring these pieces together in a new way. I’m inviting you to join me on an eight-day prayer experience called “Perfumery in the Life of Jesus.” In biblical times, a perfumer would use fragrances to represent beauty, worship, and divine presence.

Using a PDF guide, you can spend 5-10 minutes a day applying a variety of essential oils (including the three most closely associated with the life of Jesus of Nazareth), and praying with eight contemplative prayer exercises. I’m looking forward to this minimalist approach to the holiday season.

Sunday, November 30th, at 8pm EST, I’ll lead a live session praying Day 1, a breath prayer using Psalm 141. You can start the exercises that day, and repeat as desired, or use the Guide in a time frame of your choosing. I hope you’ll consider including this guide in your Advent season.

Use this google form to sign up and join a group of us in observing Advent together.

I’m sharing about the doTERRA specials here so you can have an easily accessible ebook walking you through the specials. Good November 17-21, or while supplies last! Whoooo loves a good deal (I’m wild about the new owl diffuser, available in our holiday collection)?

In 2018, I created a post that included “50 Rich Conversation Starters for Around the Thanksgiving Table.” This list was largely compiled from actual questions I asked myself on my social media pages. It’s been fun to hear how readers have used the list themselves for in-person gatherings. It can certainly be used year-round.

A pastor friend of mine asked me if I’d considered doing another list of questions for those unchurched people in our lives. I loved the idea, and a few years later, “40 Questions for the Unchurched” was created. I hope you’ll utilize both lists, feel free to print them out, and would love to hear how the conversation starters have served you. There’s tremendous beauty in committing to converse with one another in today’s tumultuous social climate.

“40 Questions for the Unchurched”