Lauren & The Pruned Vine

(Above): Lauren with our oldest son, Isaiah, after he was just born. She was one of his first visitors!

I had just started painting the pruned vine from John 15 for InterVarsity Staff Conference when I got the text.

“Lauren is in a coma. Please pray.”

Lauren Markel was a close friend and InterVarsity staff colleague. She had been battling DIPG (an inoperable brain tumor) for 4 years, and now was in the battle for her life. John 15 was Lauren’s life passage. She talked about it all the time.

At that moment, my soul hit a fork in the road. Should I keep painting?

There was a part of me that wanted to stop. Not because I needed to stop in order to grieve or pray, but because it would have been easier to escape that way.

I wanted to flee into busyness. To flee into numbing through controlling my environment and mindlessly blast through my inbox.

But there within my office, as I held my brush in my hand and stared at the text with the news, there was a beckoning in my spirit that said, “keep going.”

The chaotic thoughts and confusion and pain and questions needed to be funneled into the river of prayer through creating.

There was no other way they could come out.

When I have faced the darkness before, the Lord’s invitation was to sit in the pain and lament.

But sitting in the pain of loss didn’t mean literally sitting on my couch growing restless with each passing moment. Or trying to pray when I couldn’t find words. Not this time. This time, my soul needed to move. I needed to paint a way through the pain - literally.

Creating a Path
Through Lament

The path took the form of a pruned vine that wept for her, that wept for all of us that felt the sting of the curse that day.

And so, as I painted shadows and light and creases within the vine - bending and twisting towards the sky, there was a rightness about it. A sense of confidence that yes, this is what I need to be doing right now.

Not work emails or phone calls or finishing up other projects. Not even journaling my prayers or kneeling in lament. For this moment, this was my work. And it was holy work.

My brush and paint became the pathway for unleashing all the uncertainty, the sadness, the prayers welling up and spilling over in strokes of Payne’s Grey. The water droplets pregnant with paint rained down the claybord, holding within them the weight of waiting.

Would she die or would she live?

The paint dripped down the claybord with the gravity of water and time.

Sometimes there are no words that will suffice. So, with the force of color and movement and form, the grief made its way out into the pruned vine - stripped bare of expectations and the glory of fruitfulness. What remained on the vine was raw and exposed weakness and vulnerability. The kind that is hard to look at, hard to sit with. And it was true.

Intercession and Paint

The next day, on October 25th, 2o19, I joined a 24 hour prayer movement to pray for Lauren’s healing while she was still in a coma. I took the first slot from 1-2pm. While I was painting and praying for her that day, I felt God invite me to dance in worship. This isn’t something I typically do while painting and it felt awkward, but the call was so strong I had to yield.

And as I danced, I pictured Lauren and the joy she experienced when dancing in worship.

Lauren loved to dance.

A few hours later, I found out that 2 pm is when Lauren passed. I believe that is the moment she went to dance with Jesus.

Returning to the Vine

The vine stood there silent as death and brooding with the color of loss.

It was uncomfortable to look at because it was the visual truth that was too raw and vulnerable to name verbally.

It just stood there testifying defiantly against any attempt to fix the situation.

Any attempt to rush on towards hope or resolution was pulled back with the weight of the vine - its roots pressing forcefully towards the depths.

This vine would not be hurried on towards hope or transplanted towards warmer weather where it could bloom. No, it would remain where it was.

Hope would have to come on its own time, as it always does. And hope would not come from journeying on towards warmer weather. No, hope would come from within.

There is no moving past it. There is no rushing on to make it easier or more beautiful. There is only staying where you are planted and taking it into the roots.

Hope From the Roots

In preparation for this painting, I met with a Vinedresser to learn about the process of pruning. He told me that after harvest, the leaves no longer are pushing their energy towards making grapes. The fruit has been taken to the wineries, and so the vine has a new focus.

The energy from the sun is soaked up by the drooping and tired leaves, spent from the harvest. The leaves push the last bits of their remaining energy inward and downward into the roots until they finally fall, exhausted to the ground.

Then winter arrives. It covers the vine with snow as it slowly passes by. And in late winter, the Vine is pruned. It is stripped of all its glory. And it looks like death.

The vine pruned in winter is dormant and as silent as Holy Saturday. There is no sign of life. For a time, there is no movement. Silent and brooding.

But, while on the surface it looks grey and lifeless,

the pruned vine is actually latent with life.

Underneath what we can see with our eyes is what happens underground all winter. The vine has been waiting for this. It is expectant.

And at the right time, it bursts forth at bud break.

New life erupts with the power and strength hidden within what looks like death.

Not from the energy of the sun. Not from fertilizer.

It pushes its first leaves from the reserves in the roots.

Lauren knew this. She lived it. She perceived something we often fail to notice in these days: how resurrection really comes.

In the last year of her life, when she was too weak to get out of the house, she prayed and interceded for ministry from home.

Her leaves had fallen off and she was dying, but she took all of the light she could soak up in Jesus and channeled it down in prayer - for us.

Lauren knew that revival doesn’t come out of our human strength and striving, but out of an inner strength and dependence on the only one who can bring new life. And she stored up that life in her roots for all of us.

What if the resurrection we are all seeking, like the bud on a vine, sprang forth not from what we see with our eyes but from an internal power that dwells from within?

Maybe we are standing before the Pruned Vine ourselves these days, hopelessly asking for spring. But let us pray as Lauren did. Because the prayers offered in the dark are pushed underground. And they are the source by which new life rises in its time.