Meet Bethany

Bethany Lundgren is a model of courage. She is a mom of three (ages 5, 3, and 1) and the Children’s Ministry Pastor at City Church in Minneapolis. She is also no stranger to struggle and the art of perseverance. A little over a year ago, Bethany and her husband Trygve had their third child, Evie, who was born with Down’s Syndrome, in addition to numerous other health complications.

As we sat in my living room that dreary autumn afternoon, Bethany taught me something of hope; how we see beauty in brokenness and, even more, how darkness and struggle can somehow cause goodness and light to shine even brighter.

The interview

Melissa: How do you define beauty?

Bethany: You hear people say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I think that is true to the extent that you think of beholder in the sense of people who are intentionally trying to see it. I think that you can miss a lot of beauty when you're not looking for it, and when you're trying to have it only line up with certain categories or certain definitions of it.

I think that people or things are the most beautiful when they most closely align with how God designed them to be. So the most obvious example of that is nature, being exactly how God designed it to be, and you see so much beauty there. But I think that when I see beauty in other people or in moments, it's when I'm seeing them just being them. When striving stops and there's a rest and an open hand towards doing their thing and living out who they are, realizing that it doesn't have to be anything in particular. And all a sudden, I think that's when things and people get beautiful. Is when they're just riding the flow of who God has designed them to be.

Melissa: I love that. Thank you. Where do you see beauty in the world?

Bethany: You could list off just a gazillion things, but my kids for sure. And oftentimes when I see them just hit the rhythm of things. Maybe they’ve struggled with something for so long, like learning how to put on their shoe, or learning how to actually stop and ask their brother if they're okay when they fall, or they wrestle with things over and over, and then all of a sudden it's like they get it, and it's beautiful. You see them all of a sudden succeed at something or have empathy and care flow out of their heart.

I see beauty in people choosing to forgive or to act out courage. The boy in our grade school programming at church who volunteered the other Sunday to pray for the ministry we were going to be giving our offering to for the month. Stepping up in courage and doing something that is going to be hard to do. So many things are beautiful.

Or when people give or act in ways that don't actually benefit them. I think that is beautiful. There are moments where you see somebody living beyond themselves. Where you know it’s a huge sacrifice for them to do what they were doing and they are no better for it. It's not like they're [getting] ahead or looking really fantastic to a lot of people because they did that. But they did it. I think those are the quiet moments of beauty we're lucky to see. Maybe something done for us, or something that they've done for other people that not a lot of people noticed. I think those are gifts from the Lord when we get to see that from other people.

Melissa: The next question is about the brokenness that you're experiencing in life now or a time that you've experienced brokenness.

Bethany: Ever since I can remember, growing up I’d make a birthday wish. I don't think it'll take away the effectiveness of it to say that I always pray that I would be in God's will. And then sometime, beginning in college, I started praying that I wouldn't miss a thing that the Lord had for me. I think that the ways that I have seen or experienced the most brokenness have been the moments where I have wrestled with the fact that the Lord's story for me is not what I would have chosen and my grieving that or wishing that that were different and struggling with it imperfectly.

I think one of the earliest [examples] of that was brokenness in my parents’ marriage and them divorcing. And a brokenness that my dad has continued to struggle with over and over again over the years, and the ripple effects of that pain and hurt, and the fact that it's not easily solved, and not always clear cut; what it looks like to be a good daughter, a faithful daughter, to him in the midst of those struggles.

And then my husband and I, we've had two miscarriages. That was definitely a story I would not have chosen. Wrestling through that, and delay and sadness, and questions with that.

And, now, learning what it means to be a parent of a child with special needs. When we had Evie, who has Down's Syndrome, I didn't know what to think about anything.

And then walking through the first few months of realizing that not only did she have Down's Syndrome, but she had a lot of other medical complexities that have made this start to her sweet life just a struggle. And we are still walking [that] road and trying to figure [it] out on a day-to-day basis.

Melissa: In the midst of some of these broken times or places, I’m curious if you've seen some beauty breaking in at points?

Bethany: It's interesting how you phrased the question because one of the things that I've been reflecting on is [how various people and] authors talk about [how] music [is] really the space between the notes, or the silence between the notes. And that is where music is actually created. I've been reflecting on that a lot in this season of feeling brokenness, and hurt, and struggle in the things that we experience in this life.

I think we're able to see beauty because we experience hard things, and when you walk hard things and if you choose to have eyes to see it, kind of like I said a little earlier, I think there's so much beauty that we wouldn't notice if everything were always dreamy, and perfect, and that sort of thing.

And so I think that we see beauty more clearly because of the brokenness.

The second thing that I have been thinking about is in the Psalms, David is always in the midst of so much junk, or on the run from somebody, or something's going on. And in multiple different places, one of them being Psalm 31, he talks about the Lord setting his feet in a spacious place. And the Lord has not abandoned him.

In the midst of our family walking through this last year or so, [I’ve been] really feeling that the Lord has done that for us, He has given us a spacious place. Not that things have been easier or there haven’t still been things that have swirled around us and felt incredibly difficult, but it feels like we're standing in this spacious, protected place because of the beauty of people loving us well.

And just exactly what we needed being given to us in the craziest of ways that only God could do. Like giving us on the day of a hospital transfer, a paramedic who also has a daughter with Down's Syndrome, and would spend the whole time showing me pictures of her daughter and how she's thriving and loving life. [That was] exactly what my heart needed on that day.

And walking through Target and falling in love with a really silly blanket that for whatever reason felt like exactly what I wanted to buy for Evie. And yet, I was like, "No, I shouldn't do that. We don't need this because we have tons of blankets." And walking in the door that day and having one, that blanket sitting in a gift bag on our doorstep.

I feel like the Lord has made this journey a spacious place even for the silly little wants. He's just been very tender and patient in the midst of our figuring it out.

I think that in brokenness you can wonder, “Why would God operate that way?” But I think it's just a fringe benefit of His goodness. Yeah, in the midst of hurt, that He's willing to give us eyes to see His goodness at work.

Earlier this week, Evie was more sick than normal. I actually was sick and my husband wasn't feeling well and it was one of those really low moments where you just feel trapped in the reality of your circumstances. And you look around the room and realize, we have a hospital room in our house, and we're connected to all these cords, and we can't move out of this room, and we're trying to parent three kids in this 10-foot sphere that we can't move beyond. And it's just crazy and you just feel trapped.

And then we ordered pizza and had a picnic on the floor and our daughter Elise went all about setting up this really sweet picnic spot with stools, and we each had a place, and it was wonderful. It was beautiful. It will always be a really sweet memory, but it was like the lowness of our circumstances and mood that even created the setting for that in and of itself.

Melissa: Thank you.

What you're saying is amazing. You mentioned this question of why does God do it this way, and I love how you name the positive, how beauty is this fringe benefit. There are other ways that you could look at, but I love that you look at the benefit aspect, that we get to see light [or beauty] at all.

Bethany: Yeah, the fact that He would give us the ability to grasp beauty in general is just incredible. Who are we to be able to see beauty? And He put it all around us, this good gift for us that can be exactly what we need in the moment.

Melissa: So good. Thank you. The next question is about lies. What lies have you experienced about beauty?

Bethany: I think that the easiest lie about beauty that I've wrestled with has been that another person's beauty or success is a direct subtraction of my own. And I think that that is such a rough cycle to be in.

I had a time, this season of our life where we lived in Tennessee and I was a family advocate at a hospital there. On some of the days that I worked, my job was to work in the surgery waiting room and you get to know the different surgeons and their patterns. And of course, every family member, when they're waiting for someone they love in surgery, is anxiously awaiting news of anything.

I dreaded the days that I would be giving updates to a family that had one particular surgeon, because he was not consistent. Sometimes he would come and talk to the families, sometimes he would go to the patient’s room, and sometimes he just wouldn't come at all. I had nothing to reassure the families with.

There was another surgeon that I breathed a sigh of relief whenever I would be relaying to those families. He always did the same thing, and he always came right afterwards, even when he was exhausted. He always sat down and spent time with the families.

The biggest thing that I noticed was about myself in how I would relate to these families. When it was a family that had the first surgeon who was unpredictable, I had nothing encouraging to say. I was really vague. I had to side step around everything. And with the other surgeon, I just felt like I could be so reassuring, so gracious, because I knew he was going to show up.

What I learned from that experience is that we serve a God who is the second surgeon. He is faithful and constant, and He has so much to give that we do not have to operate from a place of scarcity. As we walk out these stories that He is giving us, we can operate a place from of knowing that we have fullness in Him. And that He will show up and provide everything that we need.

In connecting that to beauty, I think that that has really changed my whole perspective of realizing that when I see beauty in someone else, whether it's physical beauty or the beauty of them rocking a gift that God has given them, knowing that that doesn't subtract from anything that God has given me, the beauty that He has given me and the way that He has wired me. The things that He is up to and that He's growing in me, that that doesn't subtract because He doesn't operate from a place of scarcity with us. He makes beautiful things out of dust, out of nothing.

That has been really freeing for me and it just compounds the beauty that you're able to see in other people.

When you see people doing their thing and being who God created them to be, I think that that has given me a lot more joy in life; to see that as awesome rather than something that needs to make me feel more conscious, or [wonder], "Do I have that exact sort of gifting or skill, or ability to dress that cute or put that outfit together?" And oftentimes I don't, but I've got other things. Like I've got other really, really great things. And just being good with that.

It’s something that I hope grows in me over the years, the ability to keep seeing awesome things in other people. And being excited and grateful for the things that I've got going on too.

Melissa: Have you had any experiences that have transformed your ideas of beauty?

Bethany: I think that the most distorted things in our world are the things that are trying too hard to be something other than what they are. And so when that striving stops and when we just take stock of what is already in front of us and [come to] a place of rest in just what is around us, whether it's looking in the mirror or looking at our surroundings, our setting, the people in our lives, all those things.

To your question, what I'm trying to say is that we're in a season of life where I don't have a lot of capacity to make a lot of other things happen in our life. Most days, I don't even feel like I really have the capacity or the time to do my hair or try to make anything extra happen. There's not a lot of extra financial capacity or time for a vacation. There's just not a lot of, "If I just make this happen."

Almost out of a place of not really having a lot of ability to do much of anything, I feel like the Lord is teaching me that you don't have to ... “just you as you are is what I love, and what I want to do something awesome with, and what I want you to see me at work in the midst of, and don't miss it. Don't miss it. See me here. And it doesn't have to be anything different than what it is.”

Mentor SeriesMelissa KucharskiDecember 23, 2018MentorSeries, impossiblebeauty