Happy Friday, beloveds! My very dear friend April is doing a takeover of the email this week while I’m out of town. She’s a big word nerd, and I love that about her. I hope you enjoy her words - just not too much ;) -Melissa

His eyes were glazing over, and I could see it happening.

I was telling my husband about the word responsibility, which he had not asked about. People who know me learn not to wonder aloud where a word came from. I have to ration my time on etymonline.com the way some folks ration TikTok, because one link leads to another and suddenly it's midnight and I'm reading about how a PIE root morphed into Old German. This spiral started with the Latin respondere, to pledge back, and ran down to an ancient root, spend-, meaning to pour out a drink offering to seal a promise. Paul uses a Greek cousin of that word when he tells the Philippians he is being "poured out as a libation," and by then I was explaining that responsibility, at its root, might mean answering God by pouring yourself out.

He did not care. He loves me, and he did not care, and I kept going anyway, because part of me was sure that if I found the right sentence he would light up the way I was lit up.

Has that ever happened to you? You can tell you've lost someone, and part of you doesn't mind, because you're certain one more minute will bring them along.

That conversation has stayed with me because of a practice that has made me squirm lately. I've been taking a course on building my consulting practice, and one assignment has been to name our gifts out loud, without the joke or shrug we usually tuck around them. It has been so uncomfortable. I understand why. Somewhere along the way most of us learned that naming what we're good at sounds like bragging, and that the humble thing to do is to insist we're just like everyone else.

Now I'm wondering: who are we serving when we decide that?

I believe God has met me in every moment of my life and in each one has offered me the next best way forward. So I trust that I am exactly where I'm supposed to be, held in God's heart and hands and imagination. If that's true, the hopes and gifts I carry are part of what God is building here on earth, and they are meant to be named and claimed and offered back to God.

When we refuse to do this, I think the forces of death are the ones served. Some of us would call that Satan. Others would recognize a system working to keep everything as it is, or a culture built to lift some people up and keep others small, or as Walter Brueggemann asserted, the "royal consciousness" working overtime to keep us from prophetic imagination. Each of those "forces of death" is well served by people who have decided they have nothing in particular to offer.

What dreams has God put on your heart? And what would you happily discuss ad nauseam with anyone who showed the slightest interest?

A libation was poured out in answer to something, and I don't think any of us can pour out a gift we've refused to hold up and name.

My wish for you this week, Reader, is that you'll say one of your gifts out loud to someone you trust, plainly, without a joke to soften it. Notice how your voice changes when you talk about the thing you love. And I hope the person listening leans in and asks you to say more. That's the fiLLLed life.

Live a fiLLLed life.

God go with you...

April