Behind our home, there is a dirt-paved, trash can-lined alleyway with power and telephone lines arching overhead. And in that dusty, tumbledown alleyway, there is an unexpected gift—a row of the brightest flowers, growing tall and wild, along a neighbor’s chain link fence.

I really love exceeding (my self-imposed, often-unreasonably-high) expectations on the first try. Admitting to being a beginner is hard for me. But I’ve been a beginner enough times to know that God will meet me in this season where my weakness is not so easily hidden, that he is equally present as I figure things out by multiple trials and errors as he was in my fruitful rhythms and routines of the previous season.