IN THE SECOND PERSON

You can stare at a blank page for an hour and not write anything.

Or you can just start to write, push past the fear, whatever it is, and just start.

You can conjure up memories from when you were nine, writing stories with your best girlfriend, or you can tell another story from when you were in your teens, mourning the loss of things held dear. You can tell anything you want, but you're always telling yourself this: the story you're telling has already been told, and probably better than you can ever tell it.

You should push past that fear and encounter the worse fear: that the story you're telling won't be true in six months or six years and you will disappoint everyone who wanted it to be true.

And everyone else who already knew it wasn't true will gloat, hook their thumbs behind their suspenders and say "I told you so." Only they won't say it to you, to your face, they'll say it to themselves and anyone else who is waiting around their table for a morsel of self-importance.

After that fear there's another one and it's the fear that what you write will change someone's life so dramatically and drastically that they tear the page from the book, fold it into small pieces and carry it with them in their wallet or their journal. And that fear is accompanied by the reality that you know you don't even believe half of what you write, not, at least, until after you've written it. And if that makes you a hypocrite, well, at least it's not retroactive.

But deeper still you're afraid that what you say won't matter at all. That no one reads or cares, despite how facts might say otherwise. You're afraid that your small voice in a clamoring crowd is just noise and then you're afraid that that's not enough for you, even though it should be okay.

You scribble short fiction, four paragraphs or less, because anything longer takes you places in your mind you'd rather not go.

You're afraid that if you let your mind take a foot, it will take a mile and you've gone down that road before and the scenery left something to be desired.

But you can't help but wonder if this time it will be different, if this road, this book, this piece, might set free that fluttering, flightless bird stuck in the depths of you.

So you try. You stare at that blank page. You stare at it for ten minutes. One hour. You stare at it and then start writing, in the second person, because to say I is to own fears you don't want to own.

"Be without fear. This is impossible, but let the small fears drive your writing and set aside the large ones until they behave – then use them, maybe even write them. Too much fear and all you'll get is silence."AL Kennedy

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SOME OF OUR PARTS

I had to take Strengths Finder for work a few months ago. I had test anxiety, but it turns out I'm Intellection, Relator, Strategic, Input, & Ideation. I don't know what those mean when teased apart from one another, but together they make a whole and that whole is me.

(And I'm in the .08th percentile with those odds, so I have that going for me.)

(Or not.)

Have you seen the photo of the earth that has been circulating recently?

My computer screen at work is large, as large as the iMac comes, but at the end of the day, it's just a 27 inch iMac screen in a couple thousand square foot office, in one of the smaller towns in the DFW metroplex of Texas (probably the only really large thing in this equation). But I opened those high resolution photos and gasped at my 27 inch screen. I scrolled down to Texas second; New York isn't visible and I know that because it's where I looked first. There, under the cumulus clouds, on January 4th, it was life as usual for some on these parts.

Did you know that when you're looking at a photo of the real earth, there are no border lines or country distinctions? It is just land and sea, every man for his own, a grand and graceful show of glory.

Soren Kierkegaard said, "Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are."

Sitting in front of a 27 inch iMac I am faced with the fact that I am very, very small. And my distinctions are very, very meaningless. And my boundaries and borders are very, very nebulous.

I have a roommate who is a quiet voice of reason in our home full of opinions and personality, and she won't let us put her in any category, box or otherwise. If we say that she is an introvert, she shrugs her shoulders and rebuts with witticism. If we say she is peaceful, she points out all the ways she is the antithesis of peace. If we want to know her love language, she demands that we give and receive them all from her. I am grateful for a girl like her in my life, because aren't we really the sum of our parts?

I have been dividing things in my heart the past week, trying to determine where I land and why I land there and how to communicate it and if it needs to be communicated and this is what I have concluded, just tonight: I am a very small pile of strengths in a very large earth without boundaries, and the God who's adopted me has the whole World in His hands (and who's kidding who? He's got the whole universe on his thumbnail.).

What I am matters very little. Where I live matters less. What I do is a drop in the bucket. Whose lives I affect is minimal. Whose hands I hold is debatable. What strengths I have are susceptible. And what percentage I fall in is pitiable.

Someone said to do what makes you happy and here is what I know: there is no greater joy than being a minute part of a whole that shouts by its very nature of the Glory of God.

Enoch walked with God and was no more.

I could not do better with my own small life.

 World in Hands

A LOVE STORY

All I asked for the new year was a little less of everyone's drama and a little more of my own.

And I meant it.

This week I realized that it's been a drama free year for me. Not even relatively. I mean, it's been completely drama free. My car has never once broken down. My heart has not once been broken. I have never been short on finances. I have always know what I was doing and where I was going and how I was getting there. I have had the answers at my fingertips and whenever I have not, it has been fairly easy to find answers. I land consistently on the same theologies and haven't once thought seriously about running away from anything.

I'm accustomed to a rocky ride, this life of mine has not been without its waves and storms. Once a friend said to me, "Lore, for someone who loathes drama as much as you do, you're always in the middle of some epic drama!"

A few years ago a man put his hand on my head and said, "The Lord has good things planned for you, not disaster. I see a book, and the title is not a Greek Tragedy. Your life is not a Greek Tragedy. Your life is a love story that ends happily ever after. I feel like your life is a love story. Your love for God and your love for people and people's love for you. And what that love accomplishes and how it triumphs..."

And I'll be honest, my heart scoffed when he said those words. I'll tell you why: because the story of my life has been a laughable Greek Tragedy and my love for God at that point was nil, my love for people was waning, and people's love for me felt like the only thing holding my feet to the ground.

But here I am, looking back over the past year and a half, and all I can see is good things. Love stories. Happily after after. Love for God. Love for people. And people's love for me. And what that love accomplishes.

And how it triumphs.

How it triumphs.

Yesterday's early morning drive sans traffic gave me time and space to think about the -ingness of the gospel—that ongoing work of the gospel. How it's already finished and not yet finished and so we stay the course, walking, running, living ongoingly. I thought about how drama in our lives is God's way of moving heaven and earth into our path, insurmountable obstacles without Him. And just because we spend a year standing arms outstretched on a mountaintop does not mean there is less of heaven to be known and less of earth to be lived.

This morning, though, I sat on our couch, wrapped in a blanket while my two wise roommates spoke truth to me, challenged and loved me, because here's the truth: a drama-free life doesn't mean a sin-free life and oh, how I dearly wrestle with the sinfulness and selfishness of my heart. A drama free life means that the dim glass is a little clearer, but we still don't see Him face to face. And I long for that. I long so deeply for that.

I am grateful for a year of joy, a year where the bigness of God has been evident, a year where the love has been abundant, but I mean it too when I say that if 2012 is wrought with drama of my own heart's making or my own circumstance's bringing, I am ready for it. Bring it on, I say.
 

SECRET GARDEN

We have a quiet backyard, our own secret garden I called it when it first took my breath away a few months ago. This was nestled next door to our flat, empty, brown lot? This quiet haven filled with trees and rocks and stepping stones? And it could be ours? Our own secret garden?

It is a quiet backyard. We have filled it with a hammock, a clothesline, a firepit, chairs and a pedestal table. We are putting in raised beds for vegetables soon. I feel too lucky when I come from work, a mere one minute drive or five minute walk, and can hide out here where the birds chirp and I feel safe.

But to be truthful, we have a train running through our town, its whistle blaring in 15 minute increments. Our neighbors have their own little zoo brewing, made up mostly of barking dogs. And we live inside a triangle of traffic with three main highways bringing the DFWers home in every direction. So though I can imagine real quiet, what I really hear is incessant barking, constant traffic, and a jolting whistle.

I've been thinking about boundaries these past few weeks. Psalm 16 says that the boundaries have fallen for us in pleasant places and I cling to that some days. I'm surrounded by good gifts, this I know, but sometimes the path He's put me on feels anything but pleasant.

Sometimes my soul breathes deep and just asks to be home. Home home. Heaven. Safe and quiet, peace-filled and finished.

Because although the perimeters of my life have fallen in good, true, loving places, outside all it seems is chaos and noise. And that noise gets in my soul sometimes. It starts speaking lies and I feel claustrophobic. I begin to believe things about God, myself, and others that simply aren't true. I begin to feel that my safest and most secret places, the gardens I tend with my blood and tears, are being encroached on by deception and falsehood.

There is that steadiness that remains—that deep knowledge that behind these boundaries, by the blessing of the Holy Spirit and the grace of God, I am safe. Held. Comforted. Known. Loved. Secure.

But in my soul I'm still looking for a new country, a better one.

I'm not sure that that's so wrong.

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. Hebrews 11:13-16

The Gospel from the Red Light District

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”

Flannery O'Connor

A flat fronted van, we are in four rows, our luggage in a fifth. Our driver only speaks Nepali and our host broken English.

"These lower caste." He says, his arms spread wide, encompassing everything we can see from small, square windows. A shanty-town, blue tarps, brown ground, bloodshot eyes, this was the price they paid for their last name.

"So there's no getting out of this?" I ask. "Not even if they get an education?"

"Education? No. These lower caste. No education for them."

"So how do they get out? What hope do they have?"

He shrugs, looks forward again. I wait for an answer. "Sometime they get jobs out of here, out of Nepal. Thailand. India. You know?"

It's a few years later and I am meeting a girl named Rehka. She shares a last name with that of my Nepali host years ago, but she's traveled to America from India. I ask her if she is Nepali. "Yes!" She nods, her eyes lighting up. "You know Nepal?"

"I know Nepal," I say. I remember the shanty town, the tarps, the hopelessness of faces caged in by genes and a system so unjust to my western ethnocentricity.

Rehka is beautiful, with the light, gentle look for which the Nepali are known. Her wide set eyes are bright, her skin clear, her smile brilliant. She laughs easily and is comfortable immediately among us. She sits gracefully on the floor of our office and tackles a menial task I've been putting off in the busyness of the week. She chatters in Hindi and English, switching easily between the two, even though neither are her native language.

She seems like royalty in joyful servitude. A humbling juxtaposition.

And yet, Rehka was sold by her older brother into a scheme more complicated than she could have ever imagined.

Mumbai's Red-light district: 

24 lanes—60,000 women for sale.

The caste system is as unjust as it seems to any westerner raised in an equal-opportunity culture. If "If you can dream it, you can achieve it," is the our mantra, then "Keep your eyes down, and get what you're given," is the mantra of the lower castes. Illegal activity, therefore, seems to be the only way for them to get a little pocket change—which is all her brother received in the trade for her life.

Rehka was drugged repeatedly and driven to Asia's largest Red-Light District in Mumbai, India. Passed from person to person, each one a different link in a chain that closed more tightly around her over the next week, until she was caged completely.

For the next few weeks Rehka was drugged intermittently and beaten regularly. When her resolve and will were finally perceived to be broken, she was delivered the news that she now owed an insurmountable debt to her captors which could only be paid back one way: sex.

In five years, a child goes from infancy to speaking in full sentences, writing simple ones.

In five years, a gangly middle-schooler graduates valedictorian.

In five years, a hard-worker at a blue collar job in America can make $125,000.

In five years, Rehka was raped an average of 20 times a day. About 36,500 sexual assaults. At the equivalent average of $1 an act, and yet she still could not pay the fullness of her "debt" to her captors.

When she met the director of our rescue program in Mumbai, she was broken and void.

I met her seven years later, carrying herself like humble royalty.

Rooms in Mumbai's RLD 

where girls are raped repeatedly daily

As I ask her about her story, she glows, recounting how excited she is to be a part of a ministry that is rescuing girls like her and rehabilitating them, loving them, counseling them, offering them something that supersedes any caste system: the gospel.

When she says this, I realize that the rescue of trafficked victims is so much more than beating a system, shutting down brothels, arresting pimps, madams, pornographers, and greedy older brothers. The rescue of trafficked victims is the reflection of the heart of the Father.

The Father says, come to me, all you who are weary, burdened, heavy laden.

All of you.

All.

The caste system seems to be the most unjust system of any religion I see around me, subjecting humans to begging, stealing, and selling humans. The sex-trade system seems to be a system of dogs, beating children into submission to horrific acts. The rescue of these girls seems impossible, 60,000 women in this one Red-light district ALONE. The finances insurmountable, a $32 billion a year industry globally.

But for the gospel.

The gospel.

The gospel breaks into these Hindi castes and levels them, setting free captives in Red-Light Districts and in shanty slums. The gospel breaks into my western ethnocentricity and levels me at my heart—these are humans, living, breathing, thinking humans, no different than me. The gospel is the only thing that can penetrate the hearts traffickers and victims alike—the only thing that can free them from the cage of greed and the brothel cage.

"Fear not, for I am with you;

   I will bring your offspring from the east,

   and from the west I will gather you.

I will say to the north, Give up,

   and to the south, Do not withhold;

bring my sons from afar

   and my daughters from the end of the earth,

everyone who is called by my name,

   whom I created for my glory,

   whom I formed and made."

Isaiah 43:5-7

Today is Human Trafficking Awareness Day.   

If you'd like to share this post on Twitter or Facebook, consider using this copy: A true story from @loreferguson on the Red-Light District: http://bit.ly/w4HFUr  #humantrafficking

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If this post impacted you, please consider making 

a donation to one of these fabulous non-profits. 

Sower of Seeds International—working to rescue and rehabilitate girls (full-disclosure: I'm employed here, but they didn't make me write this).
Unearthed Pictures—producing media to raise awareness.
International Justice Mission—a non-government organization working to shut down the illegal trade of humans globally.

A QUESTIONABLE BEAUTY

It happened when I was nine, a skinny fourth grader, mousy brown hair and a stubborn soul. I don't know what I was told to wear that morning, but I know what I wore because it is there, memorialized in color, on a 5x7 school photo. Glasses were new to me and I had picked out blue plastic frames; it was the 80s, but still? I wore a patterned blue shirt, blue shorts, sandals with blue socks. I thought this meant I matched.

When the photos came, as they did every year, in a big white envelope, I stared back at the face staring back at me and that's when it happened. That's when I knew what I was sure everyone must have known all along: I was ugly.

It was the comparison of the girls beside me, their hair in ribbons and their pretty plaid dresses pressed and flounced. It was the realization that my hair would never be sleek and shiny, or blond. It was the truth that my features would always be bigger or smaller, while the features of other girls would always be more beautiful, more feminine, more anything than what I could ever be. It was a belief that I've carried with me my entire life: I'm ugly, maybe someday I'll be a swan, but today, I'm the ugly duckling.

So when my roommate asks me to resolve to love my body this year, its nuances and its curves, its imperfections and its perfectly crafted parts, I balk. I can't do that. Loving others comes oh so naturally to me, loving myself is always a resolution for next year.

When a friend asks me to write a blog on whether looks matter in relationships, I tell him that I'm probably the last person to write that blog.

When I have a conversation with a friend the other night and I'm talking about the doubt in my soul regarding so many things related to looks (mine and others), she stops me and says, "What are you afraid of?"

What am I afraid of?

I'm afraid of two things: the first is that I'll find what is not beautiful to be beautiful, the second is that I'll never be found beautiful.

So I want to know, really, what is beautiful? And does it matter what is beautiful?

WHAT IS BEAUTY?

I say it often enough about nearly every person I know, every piece of art in my home, the spate of days we've been having in Texas, the sunsets that make me gasp, the conversations I have with friends; it is never difficult for me to find beauty in every single thing I know. I'm prone to finding beauty in so many things, my friends just roll their eyes now when another exclamation comes from my mouth.

But what is beauty outside the eye of the beholder?

What is beauty when it can be teased apart from shiny magazine spreads and museum walls and computer screens in a midnight bedroom? What is beauty when it is seen through the lens of the gospel and nothing less?

I only know to start with the fact that Jesus spent his earthly time and energy teaching us to turn a kingdom of classes into a kingdom of completion. His interest was in the poorest, the lowest, the outcast, and the richest, the most corrupt, the most beautiful. This morning my pastor spoke how Christ came to reconcile us to Himself and us to one another, but what most struck me is that Christ came to reconcile us to ourselves.

Ourselves.

Myself.

My self.

IMAGO DEI

Self love is not a topic I want to talk about when I think about beauty. Here's why: I want all the beautiful people to start loving the unbeautiful. I want the perfect people to start loving the imperfect, the unlovely. I want there to be an impact that is measurable, tangible, and I don't know that self-love is the most productive way of getting there.

But here is the argument I'd like to make: if we do not love the self we have been given, we are exercising ungratefulness toward the God who created us in His image. We are, in essence, rejecting God who dwells in our temporal temples.

And I would add this, when we reject what God has called beautiful in others, even if we ourselves do not find it instantly attractive, we are denying what God has created in them.

When I call that fourth grade photo ugly, I look at the imago dei, the image of God, and I blaspheme what He has called good.

When I look with a critical eye at the mirror tonight while I wash my face and brush my teeth, I blaspheme what he has called good.

Hear me when I say that simply because God has called it good does not mean it has not been broken by the fall. It has and this is my great, great comfort on days when I feel the curse of having the body of a woman and all the lovely things that entails in particular times of the month (!).

There is a brokenness that accompanies us wherever we go, hanging on to our backs like a trained monkey. But sometimes we chain that monkey to our own back, buying magazines, feasting our eyes on what is even more broken, in hopes that we can attain what? More brokenness?

DO LOOKS MATTER? 

Yes. Oh yes they do. Praise God they do. Praise God that He put us here on earth with a garden to tend and pray to Him that we tend it well. Pray that we tend our own plot well and pray that we are attentive to the plots of others. Praise Him that He created different sizes and shapes and colors and genders. Praise Him for His creativity in design. Praise Him that we find anything lovely at all.

Paul says "Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." God help us to find beauty wherever we find these things. If we do, we will find that beauty is found readily.

DO LOOKS MATTER?

 No. No, they don't. Not really. Not in the end of the story (which is really just the beginning). No, they don't matter here on earth where we will all either grow bellies or waste away to nothing, where the grey hair eventually goes white or disappears completely, where wrinkles grow exponentially, breasts sag, and strength fails. Beauty is so fleeting, so temporal, a vapor.

Gone.

But, which is more, and so much more beautiful, looks don't matter because one day everything that does not glorify the Lord will be purified out of us. Everything. Every sag, every wrinkle, every mark, every love handle--and, don't miss this, each and every perfect nose, every straight tooth, every sculpted muscle, every six-pack abdomen. Every health nut and every couch potato, every beauty queen and every street child. If it is not proclaiming the majesty of the Only One due glory, it will be consumed by the All Consuming Fire.

My fourth grade me and my 30 year old me. My best version of me and my worst version of me. My joyful reflection of Him and my mirror's sickening reflection of me. All of it will glorify Him. 

THE REAL QUESTION

The question is so much more than What is Beautiful? or Do looks matter? The question is, am I valuing what God values in me and am I valuing it in others?

No matter what my fourth grade photo instilled in me, He is the standard of my beauty.

The real beauty in that is because He is the standard, I know I can't ever measure up.

There is nothing good in me but what He has redeemed for His glory, so I am always the ugly duckling who was picked even in my ugliness. He didn't wait for my inner swan to grow. He's not waiting for some future version of me to materialize. He's not waiting for me to match a magazine spread or even grow happy with this earthly version of me. He's after me seeing the depth of what He's done in me. Through me. With me. For His glory. Alone.

He's after me seeing Him in the mirror.

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Related resources that I've been mulling on: 
Do Looks Matter on the Gospel Coalition Blog
New Year, New Self-Control by Jen Wilkin
January 8th sermon by Matt Chandler (This will be online in the next few days)

Every Single Season

We've been having a spate of perfect days in Texas. I suppose there are no perfect days anywhere, but if they exist, they are present and accounted for here. The skies are clear, a spotless blue, the temperature is 72, the air is sweet and breezy, the sun warm and not wearing out its welcome. Every day I sit outside on our back porch and breathe in sun.

Last winter I cozied and busied myself inside with wintery things, trying so desperately to make it feel like a familiar season, but when summer hit and the real cabin-fever set in (who wants to be outside when it's the 68th day of temps above 100?), I wanted those January days back.

This winter weather is getting every bit of me it can.

While I am calling to mind the things for which I'm grateful this week, it seems that singleness is topping that list for real. I italicize that because I have exercised that muscle of gratefulness before, but it has never felt familiar, good or right. It has always felt like a cheat, stealing away the best years of my life, chances for babies, young love and all that.

But the past week I have seen it nothing other than a sweet, sweet gift. I used to be jealous of my friends who married young, fresh faced and fertile, and I think it's worked out well for them. But I wish I hadn't spent my jealously on that.

I say to my dear friend last night, after we laugh at her three-year-old's antics and she challenges and encourages me, "I have literally spent the best years of my life doing things that my younger married friends may never get to do—and I have never been grateful for that. Ever."

I don't know if God has marriage for me someday, plenty of my friends say it will happen and there's always an acquaintance I see at a wedding who nearly pinches my cheek and says "Next time it'll be you!" (Note: if you're pinching the cheeks of 30 year olds and saying that, please stop.) I don't know if my own children are ever in my future. I don't know if a wedding is in my future. I don't know if I'll ever be loved with the sort of love I have looked at jealously. I don't know.

But here's what I know: I don't want to waste this season, this perfectly crafted season. I want to live it large, open, others-minded, with risk, faith, and possibility. I want to live it in its time, fully embracing this gift for this day. I want to keep my eyes on the blessings of this portion and I want to live it as abundantly as the Spirit allows.

Back in New York it's snowing and icing. My favorite people are curled in patchwork blankets and shoveling snow. They're making crock-pot soup and drinking hot tea with honey. It's winter there, a New York sort of winter. But here, in Texas, we're having a different sort of winter and it's not wrong or misplaced or a cheat, it's by design.

And I'm so very, very thankful for it.

Grace Grabbed

It's the story of ten men who wanted pity and got a miracle instead. And it's the story of me.

I know my leprous spots. I know them well, the loss of feeling, the flesh rubbed raw, the broken parts of me that I want to hide and can't.

All I want is a little pity and He gives a miracle instead.

Last night I remember the ten lepers who were healed and the one who comes back and I want so desperately to be the one who comes back. I want to not forget what He has done and what I could not. But forgetting is what I do well and here is why:

I asked for pity, received a miracle, and am desperately afraid that the miracle was a one time occurrence, so I run. Because what if He sees that He has healed me? What if He takes it back? What if I stumble on this and fall on this and lose this, and He takes back the miracle?

I run instead. Grab my grace, gather my wits and run.

This week I am exercising gratefulness. Because to return to the miracle worker is humbling, to return is to submit that there might be more brokenness to be healed, to return is to say to Him "There is more of me that can't reach You."

Last night our church gathered for the first night in a series of five nights of prayer and praise. I opened my eyes during one song, looked across the room at arms spread wide, voices ringing out, heads thrown back, and I heard the sound of gratefulness.

Gratefulness that says "I was looking for pity and got life instead."

Brian Kershisnik

Hemmed by Hills

I grew up hemmed in by hills and have lived among them always. I feel safest in them, sitting at their valley feet, breathing in their grey air. I feel small inside of them, aware of majesty, struck by insignificance, brought low by awe.

These are not white capped mountains, these are the simple rolling arcs of the Appalachias, The Blue Mountain Range, The Smokey Range, the Adirondacks—these are the mountains that are laid low, and lowered by time. They are old mountains. Whenever I am tempted to think of the small mountains as young ones, I remember instead that it is the peaked, white ones that are still in their formative years. No, these mountains, the hills of my life, they are old, grandfathered in, green and lush, mature.

When my family was still whole and together, we climbed one of these mountains and I stood out on a rock near the edge, beneath me a patchwork of farms, the hills of Bucks County. Not too close to the edge, my dad said, but I hardly heard him. I was small, but I remember that moment clearly. I breathed deep and was so tall, hulking over the miniature barns and greens. I breathed and was so small, a tiny person on a rock jut at the top of a mountain, a speck to any one of the farmers, if that.

Someone told a story after that, about how a friend had gotten caught in a storm up on this mountain, slept under a rock until the forest rangers found them. I imagined that was me as I hiked down the mountain, spying for rocks that would suffice as cover, looking up at the sky, willing it to rain.

I felt safe on that mountain, standing on that rock jut, willing it to rain. I felt safer then than I have felt much of my life since then.

Now I am always looking for mountains.

Point Mountain, Bucks County, Pennsylvania

Natural Born Fearer

I am a natural born fearer.

Hard conversations scare me. Heights scare me. Bills scare me. Risk scares me. Being too much scares me. Not being enough scares me. Traffic scares me. Being alone scares me. There is no happy medium in my soul—if it can be done (or done to me), I am probably afraid of it.

2010 was a year of risk for me. I did things I swore I'd never do, I got rid of things I wanted to keep forever, I moved to a state I hated upon first sight, I quit things that hurt to quit and I left somewhere that is branded on my heart as home. I stared fear in its face and gave it the bird. It was risk born of desperation and I recommend this risk. I think that sometimes the only thing to do is to do it big or not do it at all.

Staring fear in the face and moving ahead anyway, though, didn't alleviate the fear, it was just shoved aside for a bit.

So when I embarked on 2011, my word was fearless.

I wanted to take all the same risks, live just as flexibly, with open hands, but I wanted to bolster those actions with a full-bodied faith and confidence. And I didn't want my confidence to be in the fact that I could do all the things that I'd been afraid of doing before, I wanted my confidence to be in the character of God and His faithfulness to His word.

Our little home spent all day outside yesterday. God gave us a home with trees and a deck, and a December 31st for the books. It was 72 degrees, warm, clear, perfect. We perched on hammocks and chairs; I spread my notebooks and bible out, put my ear-buds in, and ushered in 2012.

Fearless, I read, in my notebook from January 2011. Right there. Penned into the page, I read a word that seemed so impossible last December 31st. I was eeking by on pennies, making art to my heart's content, joy-filled, peace-filled, but I'll be honest with you, I was shaking in my shoes every time I walked through the door of my church and I felt panicky at the slightest bit of interaction with people outside my roommates. I was doing it, but I was doing it shackled by a fear that stuck to me like bad cough at Christmas.

I checked my heart yesterday, and checked it again. I gave myself a few hypotheticals, a few scenarios. Wait for it, I told myself, wait for it. You'll find that fear somewhere.

And yet, I couldn't.

The vestiges of it, the residue of it, and the hints of it were gone.

He is faithful to His word. This year He showed that faithfulness by being faithful to my word. He imparted fearlessness in me. For now. For today.

And that is the miracle of 2011.

TOP FIVE REAL-LIFE HEROES IN 2011

Steve & Sara //
Six years ago I was kicking the dust by my car after church in Tennessee and a blond guy walked up and made some crack about my "Yankee license plate." I got my dukes up, ready to fight this dude, whoever he was. "Easy, easy," he said. "I'm from Connecticut." Then he introduced his girlfriend, a tall strawberry-blond goddess. There's no way I could have known at that moment what these two would become. There was nothing easy about that first year we all meshed and became what we call The Makeshift Family now; but I will tell you that of all the people I know in my life, and especially this year, Steve and Sara are on my list of heroes. They will deny it, make excuses for it, laugh it off, but it's true. Their story isn't mine to tell, so I won't, but rest assured—if you want to see faith exercised, wrestled, grasped, and lived, these are the people I know who do it best.

Coco //
Part of the difficulty of choosing my heroes is that their stories aren't mine to tell, so they will only be cute, patronizing accolades to you, but trust me, there are deep and real reasons these people are on my list. Coco is one of those heroes. I tell her that to her face fairly often. I think every time I see her. I want to make sure that she knows that because the fight she is fighting is real and raw and difficult and painful and she fights is so beautifully and so filled with faith. When I ask her how she is feeling, how she is doing, she tells me. She looks into my eyes and tells me. But the very next thing she tells me is how GOOD God is to her and how bountifully He has dealt with her. To hear those words from her mouth, she can't help but be my hero. She'd be yours too, trust me.

Daniel //
My brother Daniel has been in Afghanistan for a year. He lands on American soil this morning and I can't even tell you what a sigh of relief that gives me. And I'm selfish, yes, but I'm also honest when I tell you that my brother is on this list because though I hate war, I love freedom. And Dan represents, to me, a host of men and women who are giving their lives (not in death, necessarily, but years of their lives) to defend freedom. Regardless of politics, I'm grateful for those individuals. Those people. My brothers, their best friends, my sister-in-law—these people are putting things on hold that most of us never would. That's a hero to me.

Jennifer //
Almost exactly two years ago two of my friends got married in a magically lit wonderland. Almost a month later she was pregnant. With TWINS! Nine months later, two little girls were born. And, surprise—baby number three was on its way shortly after! He was just born a bit ago. So, married less than two years and they had three babies. I saw my dear friend in October and I asked how she was and she was honest. She and I stood outside a stone building, while a wedding reception happened inside, and she poured out her heart in a beautiful honest realness that is rare. Rare. And I prayed for her. But when we walked back inside, I felt like the blessed one. Here's why: it is a thing of beauty to share the burden. Jen teaches me that there is no burden too heavy to share. And whether you are the one needing to share, or the one shouldering part of it, you are blessed.
   
You, the pilgrims //
Well. I had the list compiled, save one. I just couldn't pick that final person. Who would it be? Her? Him? Them? Who was hero number 5 for 2011?  I went into facebook and began scrolling through, waiting for that final face to surface.

Here's the problem, I couldn't pick. Your stories this year were such a myriad of beautiful and painful. Bittersweet and difficult. Life-changing and stalwartly faithful. You got married. You had babies. You fought cancer. You traveled all over North America. You moved to China. You moved to Korea. You moved to Texas. Your dad died. Your mom did. You lost three babies to miscarriage. You lost one. You gave a baby up for adoption. You adopted two. You wrote a book. You picked up your pen and started writing one. You got divorced. You almost died. You were baptized. You lost your job. You finally got one. You got a 4.0. You dropped out of college. And so many of you began a journey that a year ago was a terrifying thought.

So, not to cheapen the previous four heroes, but I need you to know that you're all heroes of sort. You and the story you're living is beautiful and painful, shaped and crafted for you to glorify Him.

Even if you feel like deadweight, a rock, unmoving, unchanging—know this, even the rocks will cry out and it's on the rock that the church was built.

And if you feel like your life is water, a vapor, fluid, changing so quickly it feels like constant whiplash—know this, we are all on a pilgrimage to Zion and your story may have more stops along the way than others.

Wherever you are, make those stops count. Make where you are count. Pursue wildly. Love deeply. Hurt fully. Laugh loudly. Trust intimately.

Write Zion on your heart and make it count. You're my hero if you're living that story.

Love you all, catch you on the other side,
Lore

Read the rest of The Best of 2011 here.

TOP FIVE POSTS YOU LOVED IN 2011

When I went to my blog stats to see which posts had garnered the most hits this year, I was surprised to see how every one of them had something to do with virginity, pornography, loving men, or somebody getting married. So I give you your top five posts of 2011, you scoundrels, you!

I Love Men // February
I wrote this post in reaction to a conversation with a friend of mine. She was complaining about the lack of good men in her circle and was dismayed at the propensity in even some of her brothers to just rise to that occasion. If women are going to say there are no good men, well, then, why bother? Fortunately, I've been blessed by men in my life who are head and shoulders above the curve--I can't say enough good about them. It's true.

Soul Pornography // August
This post has probably created more discussion in real life than anything else I've written. And because I've had so many great conversations about it, I'm not sure that I still agree with everything I wrote. However, the main point still stands, stop marrying the group and marry the person.

Married to Gladness // September
This was my response to my best friend getting married and how the only thing I felt (and still feel) about it is gladness. This was a new feeling for me, as I've watched almost every good friend in life walk down the aisle and felt an ache that sometimes landed me in depression and sometimes landed me in frustration. This new experience, pure, unadulterated gladness, this was beautiful.

Vacate // October
In which I liken my October vacation and preparation for my best friend's wedding to life, a life of rest and preparation for a wedding feast. This might be one of my favorite posts of the year, so I'm glad you all liked it too. What a rich few weeks to be home this fall!

Inconvenient Virgin // December
People liked this one. I think it's because I talk about virginity and purity and miracles and grace, and all of those things have been hijacked by a religious generation. I'm glad if you were blessed by this post. God is in the business of doing the impossible for His glory.

Read the rest of The Best of 2011 here.

TOP FIVE BLOGS I STARTED READING IN 2011

Thoughts from Fabs // Fabienne Harford
A blog reader (turned friend) pointed me to Fabs blog earlier this year and I don't regret it one bit. From reading her process the death of her father, to reading her thoughts on living theologically, this girl has encouraged me time and time again (if her name sounds familiar, it's because she wrote that article Fasting From Intimacy, that I referenced in my top five articles post).

The Beginning of Wisdom // Jen Wilkin
A year and a half ago when I first came to Texas, someone recommended the women's Bible study at church and I scoffed in my heart. I did. That's the truth. In my experience, that sort of thing usually sported lots of emotional train-wrecks and bad exegesis. Well, Jen Wilkin showed me! Every week of her study left me hungering and thirsting for more gospel, and less me. Her blog does nothing less.

The Image Blog // Assorted Authors
I've known about Image for years, but not until recently did I begin reading their blog again. With some old favorite authors and some new as yet unheard ones, every post is carefully crafted and beautifully written. It's the only blog that I don't skim and only read when I have time to give my full attention.

A Beautiful Mess // Elsie Larson
My life will never look like the beauty of this girl's life, but one can peek can't they? I love the glimpses Elsie gives us into her home, her shop, her closet, and her heart. Every post is eye-candy!

The Autumn Rain // Allison Glasscock
Years ago I would get comments on this blog from this girl, and I don't know why, but I never lingered long on her own blog. It was selfishness on my part, I'm sure. But can I tell you a secret? Gems. Pure gems. Everything she writes is intentional. No unnecessary words. No dangling anything. Everything is beautiful. Her blogs are usually short, sometimes just a paragraph, so there's no excuse to not read them.

Read the rest of The Best of 2011 here.

TOP FIVE VIDEOS I WATCHED IN 2011

 
Adoption of Rinah // Andrew and Carissa
I saw this last winter and haven't been able to get it out of my mind. There is not much I care to do with my life, but adoption is always at the top of that short list. I love that this young couple (married only a year or so) just did it.

Surprise Adoption // Meredith Dennis
I can't even tell you how many times I've watched this video. I'm probably responsible for half of its views. Again, a young couple following the example of the Father heart and adopting into their home.

Uganda23 // Unparallel Media
Unparallel Media (a film-making team headed up by my brother from another mother, Ben Hull), in partnership with The Ugandan Water Project, spent the past eight months working on this short film. I'm biased, I know, but I also see my fair share of water-need related material in my line of work. This is great work.



Jacob's Story // Unearthed Pictures
This is, hands down, the best piece of communication I have seen regarding the sex-trafficking industry. It is a story of brokenness, redemption, and the root problem of the industry and mankind.



God With Us // The Village Church
Again, I'm biased, but I can't watch this without choking up. God. With. Us. Unbelievable. 





Read the rest of The Best of 2011 here.

TOP FIVE ARTICLES I READ IN 2011

What to Do if You Wake Up Feeling Fragile // John Piper
This article was just posted this week, so I feel a bit cheap posting it as one of the best articles I read this year, but I'm just going to go with it. If there is anything I wake up feeling on a regular basis, it is fragile. In this encouraging piece Pastor John simply talks about the reality that we are fragile, but God is not.

Women, Stop Submitting to Men // Russel Moore
It's true, the best way to get readers quickly is to attach an eye-catching title to your piece and Russel Moore did just that. I love this article. I love it because it rightly divides some very real, very raw issues affecting the church (particularly those holding to the complementarian view of gender roles).

Fasting from Intimacy // Fabienne Harford
Probably the single most helpful thing I read online this year. For a very long time it's felt like a very unfair thing of God to give us sexual desires and leave us single longer and longer--Fabs framed this season of life in a very helpful picture of fasting, and it's making all the difference!

How to Serve the Singles // Carolyn McCulley
I'm still ruminating on the truths articulated in this article. As we've come to expect from Carolyn, she hits every point succinctly and gracefully. If you are a single or you know a single (that should cover all of you), please read this article and be encouraged or encourage someone else.

How to Be Used for God's Glory // Jared Wilson
This is just a short little ditty, but it's been pooling around in my mind since I read it in the fall. I want desperately for God to get the glory from my life, but gosh, it's hard when there are so many things He's given us to do while we're on earth. Read this. Be encouraged. It's not about us.

Bonus!
Date a Girl Who Reads // Rosemarie Urquico
Just because I love it so much!

Read the rest of The Best of 2011 here.

Write < Written

 pinterest

Writer's block isn't something where you just take two and wake up in the morning healed. It's one of the most frustrating maladies I've experienced because there is no fix except to write.

And so write I do.

But all it lands me is no less than a baker's dozen first paragraphs. Some have the makings of something good and some will never see the light of day. They're the blathering younger sister of something half good, and nothing but good should do.

The problem is that I've been coasting by on half good for the past few months and so I don't even know where to start but with the blathering younger sister. (No offense if you're the blathering younger sister. I am too. I'm also the bossy older sister, though, so there's no winning in my case.)

I tried to look back and see where it all started going downhill and I've tracked it back to July, my writing hiatus. That hiatus was great for my soul, but the half-good writing that's come after it has been anything but great (or good). There were a few keepers in there, but let's be real for a minute here: I can't remember what they were, so the chances of you remembering are fairly slim. The only really good piece in there landed me a pile of emails unknowingly quoting our old friend Clive, "Friendship is born when one looks at the other and says, 'You too! I thought I was the only one.'" But here's the truth, that piece was raw and real and written in a moment of honesty that comes rarely to my soul.

I want that back.

I want to take the preach out of my write and just write.

But I'm afraid.

I don't even know what I'm afraid of. I think I'm most afraid of being known, not heart-known, but person known. I'm afraid of being the girl with the blog who writes. I hate that person because that person isn't me. That person is just a slice, one slice and 15 minutes of my day. All the rest of the time is the real me and I have a host of people who will tell you that I turn a pretty phrase, but I live one foot in front of another, one broken heart after another, one frustrating sigh after another.

A writer friend sent me an email a few months ago, "So now I'll tell you a secret because your words are too lovely, in those times when you unfurl yourself and write wildly, to keep caged. The secret is that there is no silencing them, the people who want to consume you, who think your words are an invitation to nibble at your flesh and carve and mold you until you've suited what they want you to be, until they can fall down on their knees and worship the icon of You that is nothing like you..."

So I need you to know this, but mostly I want to not care about whether you need to know or want to know, but I want you to know that sometimes I want to crawl into a hole, bury my head in my arms, and hibernate for the long haul. I have spent much of my life desperate to be known and really known, but I care less and less about this. I long for heaven more today than ever before because there there is no name to be made or had. There is no icon of wisdom and no need to turn a pretty phrase. There is Only One.

January 2012 was supposed to be another hiatus, but I need this writer's block to take a backseat and the only way I know to do that is to write it back there until it's limping along behind the ride of this page on the web.

So write, unfurled, write wildly, uncaged, until it is written and always point to the real Author—this is January 2012. Because this fraud makes her way plagiarizing the real Creative source, but she wants more than anything for Him to get all the credit.

The Earth Stands Still

It's hard to know that it's Christmastime here in Texas. The cold is gentle, the rain soft, the ground bare, and I have not set anything under the tree. There are gifts to be sure, but they'll be dispersed through the year. The candlelight service at church helps; we hear about the Advent Past Advent Future, a thousand candles are lit and our faces glow. It feels like Christmas then, for three songs and ten minutes.

A friend and I sat across from one another for a few hours after church. We are not the hiding sort and we both confess first thing that Christmas is hard when you are 31 and single. I don't mean to ask for pity here, Christmas is hard for any number of reasons for some of you and Christmas is everything wonderful for the rest of you. I just mean, at this juncture in our lives, Christmas is hard to bear. We talk about the already and the not yet, we talk about the incarnation, God in flesh coming down to us, we talk about the holy, the hush, the goodness of God and how difficult we make things for ourselves.

There has been one song on repeat for me this week because it is about uncertainty, even amongst certainty.

There is a tension we live in that reckons us broken over and over again because we know the end of the story, but we're still living out the story and it is the living that is hard.

Tonight my campus pastor taught about how the first Advent, the coming of God incarnate was only half the story, but how we often times live as though it is the whole story. We forget the second Advent. We long for it, but forget that it's coming.

We forget that what we do in the hush of today is holy in heaven because of what He has done and what He will do.

I come home and light a fire, some candles, put my song on repeat.

I want to live in the tension, but I want to live in today too. I want to know that it's His love for my today that brought the first Advent and it's His same love for my tomorrow that brings the second. But I want to know that even though it does not feel like Christmastime, it is today and today is enough.

Tonight the earth stands still, all over it, there are families stopping and gathering and celebrating something.

Tonight I'm celebrating that I do not know what tonight will bring, but I know it is full of promise because He kept the first Advent and I eagerly wait for the second.

Made for peace

Our home is a quiet one tonight. The baby (her words, not mine) of our family has gone home to New York for a week, the mature one has gone to bed (or to study for grad-school), the world-traveler is sleeping on the couch in front of me, and I am sitting here, in our collective favorite chair. The silver spoon turned wind-chimes sound outside and the heater hums intermittently.

I was born for quiet nights.

A year ago at this time I was still working from home, making tangible, touchable art every day, creeping by on pennies and coffee, and loving life more than ever before. Peace was everywhere I looked and I felt alive, so alive. I was born for peace.

I know this about myself.

And yet.

I let the commitments, the pro-bono work, the meetings, the small-groups, the good-bye parties and welcome home greetings, I let them crowd in until I am suffocating under the weight of a blocked out calendar. Three weeks ago I suffocated. I went down, down hard.

Unless you're the Baby, the Mature, or the World-traveler, you might not know that because I kept a smiling can-do face on until Saturday night. But Saturday night I came home and crashed hard.

A combination of leftover pneumonia and a sinus infection are good excuses as anything to lay low for four days, and so I take them. I tell myself, "After Christmas, you will get things in order. You will sit down. You will think about life. You will think about what went wrong this fall. You will ask for grace. And you will walk in the Spirit." And perhaps that's true. Maybe that will happen after Christmas.

But tonight I'm grateful for a quiet house. For peace.

I am no stranger to asking God why He made me the way He did. Why this gift? Why this talent? Why this personality? Why this prone? Why? I ask it of Him more than any question perhaps. And it's mostly because I'm so desperate to be faithful with what he's given me. I want to be faithful with that measure of faith. But why does He pile on the responsibility, the weight of knowledge and the drive to do more than I'm capable of in the end?

Why has He borne me for quiet nights and peace, if my life is most faithfully used in the middle of chaos and need?

I don't have an answer to that tonight.

I'm thinking a lot about Mary and why God chooses us on the merit of the miracle, but also gives us responsibilities that look less miraculous and just mundane.

That's all, friends. That's all.

 Just me. And our favorite chair.