I am so blessed to have beautiful, soulful, women friends. I had lunch with one, Jane Foster, on Friday. Especially after all these years, hearing Jane share her story still touches me. (See Jane Foster’s Story)

Jane was telling me about a custom hat she is having made by a woman out west. The woman’s husband has been very ill, so she is homeschooling their children, caring for her husband, and the custom hat business helps them make ends meet.

“Look at me. I am 72, and I am still here, and here you are making me a hat!” Jane told the hat-maker, who thanked Jane for restoring hope.

It is never about the hat.

This week, I finally got over to Kalamazoo and Joel and I watched the finale of Dancing with the Stars. The results were shocking, but the dancing and the special music, was, well—very special! I loved Lauren Daigle’s singing “You Say”. Here are some comments about the story behind her writing that song:

It was the day after my very first Dove awards, and I remember being completely overwhelmed. I walked into the studio, and Paul and Jason, my producers, were in there and they’re like “All right what’s going on in your world, how’s it been?”

It was the first time we had written since How Can It Be…I just remember feeling like so much had happened the night before, wondering How do I come back down to normal, how do I come back down to reality? And I started realizing these patterns of really high highs and then, okay now there’s a low. Really high high, now there’s a low…And Involving expectation in that space can just leave you kind of questioning your identity- Where do I fit in, where is my security, where is my footing?

So when writing “You Say,” I just remember feeling for the first time pretty conflicted. It was definitely the first moment in just being an artist that I was like Okay, where is all this going excactly? And I know that we’ve all faced moments in life where we can feel a crossroads happen— where we can see the past and also see the future, and realize how we are supposed to exist in the present. And it was one of those moments where I could see where things were going and I knew exactly where I came from, and I needed those worlds to still be married. (CCM Magazine)

Here is the first stanza of Daigle’s “You Say” lyrics:

I keep fighting voices in my mind that say I’m not enough
Every single lie that tells me I will never measure up
Am I more than just the sum of every high and every low?
Remind me once again just who I am, because I need to know (ooh oh)
You say I am loved when I can’t feel a thing
You say I am strong when I think I am weak
You say I am held when I am falling short
When I don’t belong, oh You say that I am Yours
And I believe (I), oh I believe (I)
What You say of me (I)
I believe

Songwriters: Paul Mabury / Lauren Ashley Daigle / Jason Ingram
You Say lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

When she was 15 years old, Daigle had an autoimmune illness that kept her down for about two years. She says that is when God taught her about her character.

Today I had Christmas Tea with another precious friend, Kathy Zerler. As we sipped on tea made from the peppermint Kathy grew in her garden, dried in her basement, and blessed by her meditative working of the mint with her hands, we treated ourselves to a few “cards.”

We exchanged gifts. I gave her a hand-crocheted kitchen scrubby, home-made jalapeno jelly, and yummy socks. She gave me fabulous glass containers to hold crackers and nuts on my kitchen counter, more peppermint, and an eye pillow and soap made from lavender she grew.

We shared how each of our spiritual lives are deepening—my two year commitment to the Dharma Path, and Kathy’s renewed commitment to bible study and contemplation. I read to her from Rupert Spira’s The Transparency of Things: “Non-Duality is not an immunisation against feeling. In fact, it is the opposite. It is complete openness, sensitivity, vulnerability and availability. Actually, suffering is our resistance to feeling, rather than a feeling itself.”

I confessed to feeling like our lives are being pulled away from one another, and read a bit more from Spira: “Consciousness is absolute Freedom. We allow this Freedom to express itself as it will, how it will, where it will and when it will. In one body/mind this might take the shape of a character that is quiet and sensitive, whilst in another it may express itself in a wild and exuberant way. We should not be misled by appearances.”

It is never about the hat or the tea.

P.S. When Jane received the hat, she sent this photo, and a message saying she thought the hat needed to be named. She decided to name it the “Giving Hat” because her husband gifted her the hat, it is giving her so much pleasure, and the proceeds that will go to cancer research is giving others a chance at a longer and better quality of life. Here she is in the “Giving Hat.”