Hi everyone!! Welcome to our casa :).
It has been quite a year (years? we’re not sure anymore). Things have shifted quite a lot in our world and we thought it’s about time to drop an update. So in the spirit of getting ahead of things, please receive this as our Christmas 2026 letter! Look how early I am!
First because this is a Christmas letter let’s tell you about the kids. Our oldest, Connor, just relocated from one fantastic city to another even more fantastic city and we got to help him move, which was genuinely a blast and means he’s within driving distance now!
There is nothing better than carrying a van full of heavy things up four flights of stairs in 100° heat. Nothing. Our middle son, Lucas, is doing well, working hard, and currently sporting the most savvy man bun you’ve ever seen. Our youngest, Gloria, is thriving at University and begins nursing clinicals this fall which should be pretty easy compared to her other job of living in a house with 13(!!!) roommates.
Pixie-the-sphynx-cat is aging gracefully and saggily and spends approximately 95% of her life in one spot. (Sounds like heaven to me.) Rembrandt the Bernedoodle, almost a year old, got only about half his genetic code so he is essentially all poodle… and is a work in progress. Our dear friend owns Rembrandt’s brother, who got all the Bernese mountain dog genes and, crucially, is very well trained. We are copying everything she does and hoping for the best.
Eric is flexing his builder / futurist / positivity / entrepreneurial muscles, spending a lot of time praying and wondering what comes next, and doing some very cool work sorting out how to steward frontier technology well. He’s been learning to lean into what AI does well and how to build thoughtful guardrails around where it doesn’t: privacy, ethics, thinking, safety, keeping a real human in the loop. He vibe coded this website from start to finish! He (and Pixie) are very happy with the home office set up.
I am encouraging him to do more in this space because we’re (meaning: humanity) going to need people thinking about and building and training about redemptive uses of AI before the robots take over. We are in a moment of enormous change, and it doesn’t surprise me that he’s taking space to learn deeply about how to operate faithfully inside it: how to remain a deeply rooted human being while everything changes around us. That guy can seriously learn or build anything. It’s been fun to watch him dig in.
As for me… I’d like to introduce you to a new way for me to do what I’ve always done… The Human Work, LLC. I’ll make space to offer spiritual direction, leadership and executive coaching, and dabble in organizational consulting. One of the consolations of this season has been recognizing that the Lord always gives, even in times of taking away. The Human Work feels like a very missional way to do things I’ve done for years: caring for and scaffolding systems and souls.
As much as I despise photo shoots, Gloria and Eric had a ball taking photos for the website. Eric felt like he was in art school again!
Also, and some of you will think I am lying because I hate running so much: I AM GOING TO RUN A HALF MARATHON THIS FALL. Connor and I are doing it together and I’m up to 10 miles. Please pray for my knees. Also I get bored so if you’ve got a killer running playlist please send it on over.
And of course, yea tbh this is a very vulnerable season. But we’re choosing to sit here with faith, hope, and love. I’m also regularly tempted to get a 9-5 at Aldi for the ambiance, so you never know where we’ll end up. Appreciate your prayers as I start my practice and Eric considers what’s next vocationally. We are feeling “spannend”, a Dutch word that hints at both excited anticipation and nail biting anxiety all at once!
Guess what?????? Be Still is back. Those of you who’ve been asking, thank you. We are so grateful for the village that raised Be Still, and we are so happy to be able to get it out into the wide world again. We’re republishing the full archive and plan to add new episodes seasonally. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts or right here on this little website.
Also, Eric and I decided it’s good for us to hold onto the discipline of weekly scripture contemplation, reflection, and writing so The Comfortable Words newsletter reflection devotional podcast thing was born. Eric and I will take turns and it will show up here on pickerill.casa in both writing and audio form (real humans speaking, no fake AI people voices).
Pivot with me, if you will, for a final moment of reflection:
I relocated my dearly loved plants home from my office the end of February. That was sure strange. One little guy had nothing but two large green leaves on a stem about seven inches tall. By April, both leaves had fallen off. Now he was nothing but an ugly stem in a pile of dry dirt.
But I put that sucker outside on the back patio and said a prayer of faith (for real).
Look at him now!
So take a deep breath.
The Lord is near to us (and you) in times of pruning, in times of harvest, in times of scorching heat, and in times of driving rain.
And as we abide in the love of God, good fruit will grow…
We miss you, dear friends. And every time we receive communion in the Anglican Church we’re attending, we think of and pray for you, for the body.
Our prayer is that if you wrote your Christmas letter this month, it’d help you get present to not only the hard stuff, but the mercy of God in the midst of it.
We hope to stay in touch and would love it if you’d let us send you a next update. We won’t spam you if you join our list… because like all Christmas letters I’ve ever tried and failed to send, updates will likely come rarely, if ever.
God keep, and with so much affection!
Ride on, Eric and Julia