Here’s the text for the 9 June 2025 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Scott Mills on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

I was at a baseball game one summer evening in 2006 when I got the call that my sister had given birth. My then-boyfriend and I were watching the Chicago Cubs play at Wrigley Field, alongside his parents, who were visiting from England.

I answered my mobile, and my dad yelled down the phone-line: Trey, you’ve got a niece and her name is Kenley!

I then yelled to my boyfriend, his parents, and all the folks around us we didn’t even know: I’ve got a niece! Her name is Kenley!

My boyfriend’s mom cried out: You’re an uncle!

And everybody cheered. The Cubs lost that night, but there was joy in the stands for a new life.

That baby niece is now 18-years-old. Kenley graduated high-school in May, she’s off to uni this autumn, and this week, she’s visiting me and my then-boyfriend-and-now-husband in London, before we travel to Rome for her graduation present. Kenley’s life is at the beginning, full of promise.

My then-boyfriend’s-mom who declared me an uncle at the Cubs game: she became my mother-in-law, Joy. And sadly, on Easter Sunday this year she received the unexpected diagnosis of advanced cancer. And last Bank Holiday, she died.

Kenley’s life is on the brink of opening into adulthood; Joy’s mortal life has ended, and opened, I believe, into the mystery of eternity.

There’s a line from the Bible, which was made into a famous song by the Byrds:

What’s weird about this season for our family is that so many of those times and purposes are jumbled together in this moment: we’re packing holiday suitcases at same time as we’re ordering flowers for a funeral. We’re launching Kenley’s young adult life into the world now, at the same time as we’re offering Joy’s life to the world to come.

It’s really hard, and really bewildering. But also there’s so much beauty in this rise and fall of living and dying. Because I trust, as a Christian, that God somehow holds it all together – our young selves and old selves, our births and deaths, and everything in between.

I believe God knows us and loves us forever – and none of my seasons, or Joy’s or Kenley’s,  or yours, Scott – none of our seasons will ever be forgotten by God,