Jesus Storybook Bible DVDs Giveaway

I don't know when I first began to understand the bible was not a blueprint for life, that David was not a model of how to slay giants in my life and Balaam's donkey wasn't my cue to listen for God's voice in odd places. It seems foreign to me now, to think of the Bible that way. Here was the whole story of God and I spent my whole life trying to make it the story of me.

The Jesus Storybook Bible, by Sally Lloyd-Jones, takes a holistic and simple approach to the gospel, from Genesis to Revelation and is appropriate for the youngest of children—though I don't know many adults who can read it without choking up themselves.

Sometimes I find the intricacies of the gospel seem so complex, the questions mount, and before I know it, I doubt God's goodness and faithfulness and love for me. One of the opening lines in the book is, "They were lovely because God loved them. Because He made them."

They were lovely because God loved them.

I recommend you buy this book right now, go! Buy it even if you don't have children, but most certainly if you do.

For You!

I'm giving away the four DVD set of animated Jesus Storybook Bible. The illustrations are by Jago, the same illustrator from the book, and it is narrated by British actor David Suchet. I think its value is far greater than money alone, so even if you don't win, I recommend purchasing them. The DVDs were given to me by Zondervan for review, so in return I'm gifting them to one amazing family!

To Enter

Winning is easy, really easy, and I hope fun.

I know a lot of you read Sayable and you feel like you know me, but I don't know you! If you'd like to enter to win the four DVDs, tweet me a photo of your family or leave a comment on this post on Facebook attaching a photo in the comment. If you don't feel comfortable showing your faces in public, no problem, email it to me here. If you're single, upload a photo of people who are like family to you.

I'll pick a winner Saturday at noon and contact you through whatever medium you shared your image with me. Cannot wait to "meet" your families!

This contest is now closed. The winner was Jonathan Wilson and family from Conway, AR. Thanks all! Seeing your family photos was one of the highlights of my blog-writing days!

All of Us Strangers Sitting on a Footstool

Somewhere along the way I forgot I had a story. It is more accurate to say somewhere along the way I forgot I was living a story.

There's so much noise these days and I don't know how to shut it out and down and over and out. Our home is a quiet place, filled with simple things, but it is a small place, and there is no hiding from life's noise. The coming and going, the phone calls with family, the boyfriends, the dishes piling, and the laundry. Some have said the single life is simple, but I dare anyone to say that to me who has had 32 roommates in a dozen years. As soon as I learn the rhythms and graces of one, she marries or moves and I plunge into another lesson with another girl. I cannot complain and do not: these girls have been family to me, each one of them slipping into her new life while I mourn her leaving, she has been family to me.

One and I are walking yesterday and the sun is setting, "You're going to move with me?" I ask her, because we will close up shop on this house soon I think. She tells me she doesn't know how to process the invitation that I would want her to meld her life with mine. I feel a sense of Naomi in that moment and she my Ruth: where you go, I'll go; only I am the one saying to her: where I go, you come. (Ruth 1:16)

It is foreign to us both, the togethering that happens with strange people in a strange land. And we are all strangers, I think, we just haven't awakened to its reality yet. Or life has been kinder to you than to me. Or perhaps, after all, it has been kinder to me than to you. We shouldn't bother ourselves with such things.

I am scrubbing the laundry room floor tonight and I know I ought to feel at home in this place, but it feels more a placeholder to me, a dog-eared page, a bookmark: Don't Forget What God Has Done Here. And I don't know if He means this house or Texas or this world, but it could be any and is all. We are all so enamored with making a place for ourselves when it is He who has made a place for all of us. His thumbnail is the sliver of moon, heaven is His home, the earth is His footstool, dare we even imagine we could build a place for Him? (Isaiah 66:1)

The air catches beneath the tablecloth as it settles centered, dust particles float, and I put the broom in the corner. The dishwasher and the washer both run, their steady hum sounding steady with the air-conditioner. It smells like lemon furniture polish and maybe the grapefruit in the bowl on the table. We have made a home here, placed ourselves in the center of our story. The doors revolve around us, the world revolves around us, and I wonder sometimes how little idea we have of His grandness and this home a vapor, our lives a breath, our whole story His.

Tin Foil Hats and the Mark of the Beast

You'd have thought I put on a tin-foil hat this afternoon when I tweeted, "Scuse me for being a little wary of conspiracy theories. I grew up thinking Keith Green was the antichrist & Social Security numbers were the mark of the beast."

I can remember the exact moment one of my parents removed a Keith Green record from the player and returned it to its owner under decided instructions to never play it in our presence again. I also remember the day I walked into the social security office at age 19, signed my name, and apparently my soul, over to the devil. The lump in my throat was surely the first sign I was hell-bent on hell. Truthfully I just wanted my driver's license and to stop getting paid under the table.

We cannot grow up unscathed by anything; we all carry the bumps and bruises of what our parents thought was best (Hebrews 12:7-11). Some will bear the presence of scars and some will bear the fruit of pruning—but we're all carved out, shaped through, and pricked by the reality of life in a post-fall world.

And we're all children of somebody broken by the same reality.

You don't have to look far back in my family history to see dysfunction; in fact, a good hard look at just me will probably keep you busy for a good long time. We're a mess, all of us, all the way back to Genesis. I don't write about my family often because I love my parents, I know they love me, and I'm convinced they were doing what they thought was right. And, trust me, the antichrist and the mark of the beast are a small fraction of the oddities we embraced while I was growing up (and also a small fraction of the beauties of growing up in my particular family).

A few weeks ago I had a discussion with someone who landed on a very conservative position on a tertiary doctrine. My soul and flesh blanched, and my first thought was for the children. The children! Adults can navigate these difficult matters with a decorum of sanity, but children? Children are simultaneously the most accepting and most polarizing creatures. The world is so black and white to us as children, right and wrong, good and evil. We accept what is good, abhor what is evil, and call spades spades.

At some point, though, introduction to gray areas must happen with children, and eventually we need to decide for ourselves where we land on gray areas. Open-handed theology, secondary or tertiary doctrines, even matters of finances or what is considered modest—these must be areas where we are given the freedom to wrestle and own for ourselves in light of gospel implications. We are exposed to violence, politics, death, joy, sex, divorce—some of us are exposed to all and all are exposed to how everything is broken in a sense.

But the very first brokenness we encounter as children is our parents—and that is so very difficult.

I'm not a parent, but I imagine how difficult it must be to have concluded ideals that broke my child and for them to see my own flawed nature so clearly. I know, as a child, how very difficult it was for me to realize the devil didn't reside in every song with a drum line; or that I wasn't going to hell in a hand-basket when I got my little nine numbered blue card. It wasn't wrestling with the music, though, or the number that was most difficult—it was the acknowledgement that Mom and Dad didn't know best even if they were doing what they thought was best. And that that's okay. Because God.

Every one of us has a story about our parents. We laugh about how over-protective they were, or under-protective. And for those of you who are parents, your children are crafting those stories about you right now. Some of them will be nostalgic "remember whens" and some of them will carry the weight of brokenness you tried to protect them from, but our prayer ought to be that these stories are told with greater perspective and deeper truths.

We pray we would not be like arrows kept in the quivers of our warrior parents, but that we would hit the mark, strong and true—even from broken bows.

Project TGM: Theology, Gospel, Mission

There was a new kid on the block in 2012 named Project TGM: Theology, Gospel, Mission, and they recently asked to make me the newest kid on the block (and the first woman to join their team.) I jokingly said to them yesterday that I have seven brothers and ain't skeered of them, but I'll be honest, it's a solid line-up over there and I'm humbled they asked me. I hope you'll join me over there today, but also make a habit of heading over there for some great pieces by regular writers (Owen Stracham, professor of Theology and Church History at Boyce College, Logan Gentry, pastor at Apostles Church in New York, and others) and occasional guests.

My inaugural post is up today on how the greatest need for women is not parenting/marriage/singleness advice or tactics, but gospel realignment. Please hop over and give it a look! 

"Titus, A True Child in Common Faith."

I say to a friend recently that it may be those who have suffered most who trust most.

I hope you don't take offense to that—it is okay if you do, though, because it probably means you haven't suffered and it is coming for you. I promise. I pray sooner rather than later.

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We come in the world with our fists clenched and go out with hands open and I think God did that on purpose—a visual picture of the wrest that our lives will be and the peace that comes when we enter final rest.

What I mean is that I've never met a Christian who has tasted death, whose home has been visited with deep suffering, pain, or loss, who does not know that He is found in the mourning and His mercies are new every morning.

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In the past few months I've encountered some new writers, so many lovely people who love Jesus and love His bride, but two stand out and I want to say a few words about them and then ask something of you.

He is a poet-lawyer. The old joke is that lawyers lie, but this man tells truth and tells it beautifully. His blog is one of my favorite places to visit.

His wife is the same. Not a lawyer, but a poet and a mother. Gentle. Honest. Beautiful. Sparkling with life and faith.

They have four sons and it is the youngest I want to tell you about. Titus. I don't know the full details of his sickness, but that is primarily because his own parents and doctors and specialists do not know the extent of his sickness. Here is what is known: Titus does not grow. His small body just doesn't grow. So while his older brothers grow up, and his parents grow on, Titus stays small, unable to fully process nutrients. I have experienced great loss, but I understand my loss. There is logic and sense to be made of my loss, but this?

This?

I don't understand this.

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But here is what I know: his parents love the Lord, they love the Church, they love the Gospel, they cling to the goodness of God in the land of the living, and trust that He is good in the land of confusion.

So would you pray? Would you pray for wholeness for Titus? Would you pray that Seth and Amber would suffer well in this process, that their pain would not be without meaning and purpose? Would you pray that there would be clarity, but even more, that there would be healing? I believe that God can heal and He may, but I also believe He may not heal, but that either way He is good. And Seth and Amber, they believe that too.

Pray that their faith makes well.

I wrote this post on Sunday, planning to post it sometime this week. Today Amber updated us with news on Titus and Seth made me cry with a song he wrote about the Goodness of God. 

Table Manners

A handful of the last of the basil from our garden tossed with some chicken and mushrooms, some cheese I call Money because it's worth so much, and we eat dinner around the dining room table. One might think all I write about is tables.

But if it was a small fruit feast that fell us into death and it will be a fine full feast that ushers us into life eternal, I suppose I can write about all the tables we'll sit around in the meantime.

My roommate Season is getting married in three days. In June she told me about her "summer crush," in September she said yes to the ring, and now she will stand beside him and marry him.

And so our table is gone.

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The past few weeks things have gone missing from our home, small things, a rug, a chair, a vase. They go missing from our home because they now belong in her home. And our table, the one we've had for two years, the hand-me-down one from Ikea with the broken chair and the wobbly leg, it now sits in our garage awaiting its trip to her home too.

In its place sits a solid new table with three chairs and a bench. It's bigger than our old table. It doesn't fit in the breakfast nook. We've moved it three times since it arrived and now it's found its home—in the divide between the living room and the kitchen. Centered and topped with a tablecloth, a bowl of fruit, and two taper candles in brass candlesticks. It has found a home in our nearly fractured home.

I have done my mourning already. When all three roommates find love within three months time, one cannot help but get her mourning done quickly. I have let my sad sit deep and my jealousy weed out and my fears brought near and I have heard God say, I'm still setting a table for you if you want it.

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We gather around our table, more so in times past than times now, but we are gatherers. We enjoy one another and I have feasted at this table, this table and the old one. I have feasted in this home and am not ignorant of the blessing it is to have feasted so fully.

On Thursday we will gather sixty and more in a lodge in the Ozarks, we will give thanks for our nation and our history and for family and for marriage and for my roommate and her almost husband. And then on Saturday we will feast again after the vows have been given and spirits are high.

And then we will come home, to the monotony of life and school and jobs and chores, and we will feast around our new table. We will feast on apples and carrot sticks and peanut butter and jelly, and we will feast on chamomile tea and coffee in the morning. We will feast with one less person in our family, and that's sad, but we know it's not the end.

It's just one more table of our meantime.

And people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at the table in the kingdom of God. Luke 13:29

A Garden of Grace

I know I'm not a parent, but I am a child. And not only a child of my earthly parents, but a child of God. I know what it is to be parented well and I know what it is to be parented poorly. And either way it is an ever increasing lesson to learn to be parented—even for parents and grandparents and uncles and presidents and brides and CEOs and beggers and choosers. This is an important read, I think, for all who are parents and all who are children (which is all of us). Here's an excerpt, though I encourage you to read the whole thing:

The fundamental right thing is to see the relationships rightly, to understand what is going on. What is your relationship to God, and how can you mimic that in your relationship with your children? Therefore be imitators of God, Paul says, as dearly loved children (Eph. 5:1). We are to be children to God, and this will help us understand how our children are to be children to us. We are to learn the nature of all our authoritative relationships by imitation.

 So if you look at the sweep of redemptive history, you see that our story begins in a garden, and it ends in a garden city. Our task as forgiven sinners (who have been given access back to the tree of life) is therefore -- through the gospel -- to rebuild Eden. You are called, fathers and mothers, to rebuild little Edens in your homes, only better. This cannot be done apart from worship, obviously, but you need to make sure you bring a coal from the altar back to your home every week.

So what was Eden like? Here are just a few initial thoughts. They are only initial thoughts -- I have discovered that going back to the first chapters of Genesis is a process that repays us with new glories every time we do it.

First, don't go into it thinking that God is looking for opportunities to crush you. If He were doing that, you would already be flat. The ways you are failing your children (in ways we will shortly discuss) are not ways in which God is failing you. And when you fail, He does not respond to your failures the same way you tend to respond to those who fail you.

(For those of you who are kicking and screaming and getting your panties in a general twist because I just sent you over to Doug Wilson's site, if you could for one minute breathe and in the second minute think of the title and content of this, I'd think it would go a bit better for you. We plant gardens of grace first in our own hearts and minds and those gardens begin from small seeds.)

How to be missional when you get out of bed

A friend stopped me in the hall tonight with a question and I gave a short answer but told her I'd blog the long answer later. This won't be a creative post, but it will hopefully be educational at least and encouraging at most. My friend's question was along the lines of: how do you, as an unmarried person, reconcile this [tonight's sermon on covenantal relationships, specifically marriage] with your singleness?

My short answer:

While I am unmarried the Church is where I am united primarily as a giver and helper. Note that though I use the capital C Church there, it plays itself out in the context of my local church, which, by extension, is my home most locally.

Long answer:

A few years ago I decided that unless I were to craft for myself a creed of sorts during my single years, I would be in danger of letting these years pass me by in either purposeless and vain ways OR in begrudging and self-righteous ways. I know my nature well enough to know that I can't exist in nothingness very well—and judging from nearly every conversation with every single person I know, neither can most of humankind.

Here's my personal creed on how this unmarried person lives in covenant (and it will probably continue in context if I become a married person living in covenant):

My housemates are my primary covenant relationships

In this season of life the girls with whom I live are my first priorities when it comes to covenant. That does not mean they can call first dibs on me, my time, talents, etc. What it does mean, though, is that I will drop almost anything for them. In regard to my finances, time, talents, and wisdom—they are my primary partakers, they get my first-fruits. Because there are four of us, those things are divided, but overall, I seek to defer to them in all things for their good and my sanctification.

This might sound like I'm steam-rolled, but I think if you knew any of us you'd see that's not the case at our house. Everyone in our home has a voice and an opinion, and everyone in our home defers to the others 9.9 times out of ten. If that seems like a recipe for division, well, you're invited to come over anytime. Because...

My home is a place of peace

The first words people say when they see our home is, "So cool!" or "So homey!" or "Love this place!" The second thing people say is, "It's so peaceful here." And it's true, for the most part. We're not perfect people and so one of us feels underfoot sometimes or maybe unheard or overcrowded, but overall, our home is home of peace.

Peace is not just a pretty painting on the wall, though, hanging there passively waiting to be disrupted. No. Peace is an active agent. There is a world of difference between being a peacemaker and peacekeeper. In our home we are peacemakers. We are makers of peace. Peace with one another. Peace with situations. Peace with the onslaught of the world that assaults each of us throughout our day. My aim, at the end of the day, when I say, "Goodnight family, I love you," is to settle it before bed: you are loved, you are known, and in this home, behind these doors, there is no onslaught toward you. This is important because...

My home is my primary place of ministry

I work for a busy non-profit, I lead a homegroup, I write this blog and for many other publications, I have lived in five states and still have close friends to keep up with in all of them, I have a huge family all over the US who I see rarely, I go to a large church with many opportunities to serve,...the list goes on. Outside of my home there are opportunities to minister in a million places. But here's the problem with that, for me: if my home isn't in order, I'm not going to serve well outside of it.

Therefore, my home is my primary place of ministry. Whether that means I invite people into my home (ie. homegroup), or whether I give the best of my ministry (prayer, counsel, love, etc.) to my housemates, or whether home is simply the place where I sit deepest under the ministry of the Holy Spirit—whatever it is for that moment, home is where it's happening for me. If it's not in order here, it will not be in order when I leave & go do other ministry.

How it works for me

Whatever I choose to do gets filtered through those creeds and if I choose not to do something, it's probably related to one of them as well. I do not hold to these perfectly (ask my housemates), but they are ingrained in my spirit deeply enough that they are nearly second nature at this point.

I said this to my friend in the hallway tonight: I'm 31 years old and I have more than a decade of housemates behind me. I have messed up royally many, many, many times. Even with these housemates. In no way do I have the corner on Housemate of the Year Award.

These have tightened up over time and displayed themselves in a myriad of ways depending on the home in which I lived, the people with whom I lived, and the season of life in which we were, but they have generally been kept over the past six or seven years. I have lived with (at last count) 28 housemates in a decade; I have lived with crazy, kind, manipulative, wise, gentle, funny, and angry people, and I have been all of those things in return. No home is perfect and I'm not seeking perfection in my home.

If you're feeling like a bad housemate or an angry single person who feels like the best years of your life are being thwarted by having to live with roommates instead of the person-of-your-dreams, I'd encourage you to sit down and write out a creed for your life, your home, and your ministry. The enemy wants to steal, kill, and destroy, and he's going to start with the place you spend most of your life and the people with whom you spent it. Don't let him. Be proactive. Be on guard.

Conclusion

The pervasive presence of the gospel in your home is going to be your best weapon against the enemy. If you're feeding yourself a gospel of Cosmo or Sport Center or The Food Network or classic literature or social media, you're going to feel thwarted by the enemy. Preach the gospel to yourself, infuse it into your conversations with your housemates, speak it to whoever comes into your door. Be intentional.

Your lease isn't the only covenant you're living in right now. Don't let the opportunity for covenantal relationship pass you by.

This is a silhouette piece I did of the four of us for Christmas last year. Don't we look like a friendly sort?

Related posts:

To the Men To the Women A dual challenge to Singles Living Single: how to do single well Every Single Season

How to make a home

It is well past the first day of autumn but we have not shivered until today. Tonight I came home late and turned the lights off, save the string of white lights strung above our mantle. I lit the candles and the fire and am sipping tea while one roommate curls up in a cowl-neck scarf and eats leftover chili. Here is when I feel most at home in what is not home, and what I am coming to learn, may not ever be home.

I read a blog yesterday about a mother in Dubai who is making home there, as best she can, amidst all the things that war against her natural instincts.

The world clatters into our haven and tries to thwart us at every turn; we know it waking up and we know it going to sleep. The poet Richard Wilbur called it "the punctual rape of every blessed day" and the language may be harsh, but the days are nothing if not harsh, no?

I thought as I read her writing, home is hard however you make it. She has children underfoot and a husband to cheer and mountains of laundry and I have none of those things. But I do have bills to pay and a home to keep clean and a car whose check-engine light came on today, flashing at me in a fury. And I do these things alone, which, I sometimes think, is just as hard as doing them with a whole family underfoot.

Who of us chooses our cross and bears it well?

But home is what we make of it and we are all making home into something. This whole summer home has felt like a burning log, something bold and beautiful and soon to be only ashes. That is melodramatic, I'm sure, but how many of you with your picket fences and backyard gardens and daily schedules would handle the division of your home any better? I don't mean to compare, I just mean to say, be blessed and stayed in your covenant family because for some of us the front door of our American dream is a revolving one, always taking someone away.

I have to remember that home is what we make of it, but it is only our home for today. Tomorrow it might not be the same, it might not feel the same, and it might not be what we planned.

I have a friend who is getting divorced this year, nobody told her it would be this hard, she said through tears on the phone last week. I didn't know what to say because I did tell her once that it would be this hard. Another friend lost his wife two years ago. He parents on, but life is not what he expected, he says, and what he plans now for his daughters is that life would be an adventure, surprise built into their life. One more friend plans for her future, but there are so many variables she is learning to hold one hand open and one hand loosely—better to not plan too hard, too much, too deep.

When I was young, I'm not embarrassed, I dreamed of being a homemaker, donning an apron and making soup from leftovers. I still do dream of that in my moments of weakness, when I sit myself in a pile of self-pity and bask in the pool of what I think I deserve. But I am finding more and more that making a home is not so much the decor and menu and chore-charts and laundry. Making a home is making do with what I have today even if what I have today is not what I dreamed of having today.

But it is something.

Tonight it is white lights on the mantle and a lit fire, a roommate in her wool sweater and tea, quiet, calm, full and rich. For tonight I am home.

WHO CAN help US?

A friend asked me recently if I had any thoughts to contribute about what it means for a single person to be fruitful and multiply. It was nicely timed because I'd just written a post on adoption as sons based on the idea that singleness brings with it a barrenness no one wants to acknowledge, so all of that Genesis stuff was fresh on my mind. But then I went to a wedding. And watched a movie about adoption. And RSVPed to a few more weddings. And listened to some friends talk about their new relationships. And held a newborn baby. And suddenly anything I thought I had to say or think about singleness or fruitfulness went the way of hoop skirts and handlebar mustaches, that is to say, extinct.

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I have this other friend. We don't get to see each other often, she lives on the other side of the 70 mile metroplex we call home. But usually all it takes is a glance at one another at church or a text or a simple thought and we're on the same page. She's a talented, beautiful girl, with a talented, godly husband. They live in a beautiful home they've made into a haven. People might envy their idyllic lives, and in some ways, I wouldn't blame those people, this couple has what many people only dream of.

But they don't have a baby.

And that's what they dream of.

She and I, we're the sort of friends who enter into one another's pain, and though it is not the same, it is the same: we both want what we do not have and there is no guarantee for either of us that we will ever get it.

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The longer I am single, the more women come into my life who struggle with infertility, a staggering number of painfully quiet pray-ers.

So I began to listen. I began to listen to their stories, to their mourning, to their agony, to the ways in which they felt inferior or on the exterior or incapable. I began to listen to their tears and their fears. And here is what I am learning:

We are all barren souls, empty wombs, and carved out holes. We, all of us, long for something not yet here and it might be as beautiful as marriage or a baby or it might be a simplistic as a big screen tv or better career. We want. We ache. We ache. Deeply in us for something to satisfy the gnawing inside of us.

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Another friend of mine left our church recently, choosing another church to call home for a season. Why? I asked him. To find a wife, he said. I stared at him—if you're a good man and you can't find a wife at my church, you're not looking to your left or right. But then I realized something: there's a gnawing in him. An ache. A barrenness. A desperateness.

"It is not good for man to be alone.

I will make a helper fit for him."

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I sit in need these days. I wonder how I could ever be a helper fit for anyone and then I remember Christ's words in John: I'm sending my Spirit to you! He will help you, guide you into all truth.

He has made a helper fit for us, all of us.

So friends, I just want you to know that I understand and you understand and more than anything He understands and we, all of us, are called to help. I help my babyless friends by reminding them of God's faithfulness. They help me by reminding me that marriage and a home doesn't equal completion. Women, we help our brothers by being approachable, willing to take risks. Men, you help us by not overlooking what could be the best spouse fit for you.

But more than anything the Holy Spirit helps us all by guiding, teaching, comforting, and filling us full, to overflowing.

You may feel alone, but you are not alone.

MASTERING the CURVE: Dear Me

Dear me,

You were standing around the corner when a pastor's wife said, "pleasantly plump," and your face burned with shame because she was speaking of you.

You are thirteen. A woman because you have small changes happening in your body, but a girl still because you have smaller changes happening in your soul. You alone know the tag of your jeans says size six and you know your babysitter wears a two. She said so when she folded your clothes a few weeks before while your parents were gone for a week.

You feel the numbers between two and six as acutely as you feel your chest begin to grow and your too small face and your uneven teeth. You feel every inch between two and six and you feel the inches around your thighs, your waist, your hips, your chest. You cup your curves and you swear you will not love them. You will hate them until they know they are hated and you will carry the hate in the curves and nooks and shapes of your heart. You will bed the hate there and you will tell yourself in ten, thirteen, & fifteen years that this is why no man will ever want to bed you.

You, a five foot brunette, with clear blue eyes and a smile that fills your whole face when you let it, you grip that hidden tag on your jeans and swear it will not master you.

And it does.

All your life it has mastered you.

When you are 19 and your world falls apart, when death and divorce and courtrooms become your life, you will cook pasta for your younger brothers, determine to keep home safe because nothing else is, you will be a size 14.

When you are 23 you move to a foreign country and you spend every night on the concrete bathroom floor, vomiting and sick, you lose 50 pounds and you are gaunt, thin, a size six again. People will ask you what your weight-loss secret was and you will tell them you have bugs in your stomach.

When things begin to break again and you are 27, you create home and community and try to make it best where you are. You are a size ten when you leave New York. You bike to the grocery store, walk to the coffee shop, you are not skinny, but you love your curves because you are nourished and healthy.

When you are 29 and you live in the suburbs where everyone drives and eats fast food; you do drive but you do not eat fast food. You eat healthy food, local and happy. And still the curves they grow. You eat less and the curves are unloved again. The curves are starving and still they grow.

Those curves, those inches, and the tag on your jeans, they will master you, sweet blue eyed smiling girl. All your life you will feel them mastering you.

I wish I could take you by the shoulders, dear thirteen year old me. I wish I could take your face in my hands, lovely girl. I wish I could turn you around and point to a line of beautiful women, women who are not ruled by the tag on the inside of their jeans. Who are not ashamed of the 10s, nor boastful of the twos. Women who know that they are intricately designed inside, who look around their family and see that curves run in it—that aunts and cousins and grandmothers and mothers wear their curves too.

I wish I could do that for you. The truth is that I can't. But I can do this. I can tell you that near 20 years from now the mastering of your heart then affects the mastering of your heart today.

Today you looked up at your beautiful roommate, the one who is tall and graceful like a swan, slim with a flat stomach, who can eat anything she wants and never gain a pound: Do you ever feel like you're not enough? you ask her.

And she comes, sits down beside you, takes your hand in hers and dips her head and asks the God, the real Master, the one who knit you together and crafted you perfectly and knows your curves more than you ever could, she asks Him to be near, to minister, and to show you His love.

So here is what I can tell you, dear girl, He sees you. He knows you. He places you and puts you and covers you and never thinks about the tag on the inside of your jeans. He knows your sixes and your tens and your fourteens and He knows your cells and your biology and your DNA and your genetics.

He knows you.

Love me.

Written for Emily Freeman's Dear Me. 

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TRADES

You listened to part of the transcripts this morning before someone who knows you better than you do told you to stop, before you'd end up in the closet, in a ball of tears. You've never seen New York like this. Eerily silent and dust covered. A city of the walking wounded. You stare into the eyes of strangers for five, ten, forty seconds before either of you realized that in New York City you don't do that. You avert your eyes, look away, avoid, but not this week. This week you stare. And you nod at the end, sighing in unison. You are both thinking the same thing after all: what just happened?

Every park is filled, every corner is filled, every mind is filled: what just happened?

Fences are filled with Missing Person signs and the homeless aren't the only ones laying, dazed, on park benches and curbs.

You know things are going to change you, but you don't know how much, or to what length. You don't know, for instance, while you watch planes crash into familiar buildings, that in ten years two of your baby brothers will be soldiers and men, stationed in countries torn by war. You don't know that in ten years every day you will pray for peace, mostly because peace means that they will come home in one piece.

You don't know that in the weeks to come, you will open the coffee shop every morning at 5am and you will listen to your fellow countrymen wake up to the news, giving their best war-plan strategies while they hand you their dollar-sixtyfive. You don't know these things. You don't know that freedom really does cost something, but in your wildest dreams you never imagined it would cost this.

You stumble through a shell-shocked city, one wrapped in yellow caution tape. You try to make sense of what just happened.

You don't know that everyone you know knows someone who knew someone and you find out years later that you knew someone too. You regret losing touch.

You love history because when you hear about what has happened, it helps make sense of what is happening. But when what is happening is happening in real time, in your life, around you, there is no sense to be made of it.

You just stare at strangers a little longer. You both nod. Maybe you reach out and touch their arm.

What should have made us afraid, for a few weeks there, made us brave.

(pinterest)

You're proud to be an American. You are. You pray for peace. You hate conflict. You hate that your baby brothers wield guns and wear uniforms. But you love your country. You loved it dusty and shell-shocked, and you love it bankrupt and tired. You loved it confused and bewildered, and you love it arrogant and corrupt.

But you love heaven more and you long for it. So you pray only this, but every day: even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly.

Come quickly. 

(Originally posted on the ten-year anniversary of September 11.)

OIL, WATER, and the LIES we tell ourselves

I’ve got layers of lies that I don’t even know about yet. Sara Groves

Here’s what happened:

A friend told me something and I believed her. I do that. I’m a believing, trusting sort of person. The thing is, what she told me was only half true. Not half true to her—she told me the truth as best as she could, but it was only half of the whole truth. I didn’t know the other parties involved, so what could I do? I believed her. This is what friends do.

But the water has sunk to the bottom and the oil has risen to the top and with it all the floating particles that are still coated with enough water that I can’t look into that cup without seeing more of the whole story.

And my heart is sick.

Because her true-to-her story was only half of the story and now I know the other half, and the other half is my friend too, and when you love oil and water, even if they hate each other, what can you do? You believe them both with as much grace as you can muster. This is what good friends do.

But at some point the whole thing gets shaken up again and it takes a while for things to settle and while it’s still shaken you feel sicker and sicker still because there are always three sides to every story, hers, his, and the horrible, awful, honest truth. With a choice so divided, what can you do? You choose truth. This is what the truest friend does.

To choose truth, though, means to lose other things, namely trust.

Today trust was lost and I mourn that. I mourn it so hard and so deeply because I have been lied to, though neither of them did the lying.

I was the one lying all along. And that is the most heartbreaking of it all.

Paul admonishes the Thessalonians to “aspire to live quietly and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you.”

I’m stuck on that today because I didn’t live quietly and I listened to the lies. But the lies were of my own making and they said something like this: You are big enough to handle the heartbreaking details of someone’s life all by yourself. You are big enough to have an opinion on lives that aren’t your own. You are big enough to discern truth from lies and from opinions and cries.

The truth is that I am not a part of the problem or the solution here; I am only a particle that floated to the top of his story, coated in the residue of her story. Just one small particle.

And if God did not give me the grace to handle this (at least without some amount of bellyaching), then it is probably best for me to simply bow out.

YOU, ME, and EVERYONE we know

Imagine with me a kingdom. A palace set on a hill with a town below littered with small homes of people—and a Troubadour making his way from Palace to People, back and forth. In the palace there are servants, kings, footmen, princes, cooks, and taste-testers; there are seamstresses, children, queens, and teachers. In the town there are servants, fathers, children, mothers, cooks, teachers, sellers, and tailors. And there is a troubadour making his way from Palace to People.

In the Palace everyone has a role and no one without a role is allowed in the door. There is a code of conduct within the castle walls and any outsiders are known, and all the insiders have things to say about them when their backs are turned.

Among the People outsiders are common and welcome, travelers pass through, sick people rest for a while, everyone earns his own way and they get there by the sweat of their brow. There is no protection out here and it is every man for himself. No one dares cross the threshold of the Palace.

And there is a Troubadour who goes from Palace to People to Palace to People.

From the People to the Palace he brings his stories, his lore, his songs, making melody from their harmony. He represents the town-people to the palace-people and they all clap their hands, their cheeks red with laughter and strong drink, they point and beg for more, more, more!

From the Palace to the People, he brings his secrets because who doesn't trust the ears of nearby troubadour? Plans and propositions fly mightily across the tables in the great hall when the wine flows freely and the kings toast in the presence of a mere entertainer.

The Troubadour never belongs in either place and carries with him the residue of both places, the People and the Palace. But kingdoms will rise and fall on the shoulders of this Troubadour, this ambassador, he who is never at home wherever he is, he who is just another person to the People and just another participant at the Palace.

Are you from the Palace or the People? Or are you a Troubadour, easily slipping in and out of both places effortlessly? There's no right or wrong answer here. I've just been thinking about cliques and culture and the people we trust to let in and the people we don't trust and, most of all, the people who purposefully don't fit anywhere.

SHOOTING STRAIGHT

I knew it was going to be okay when I learned that I was an arrow—shaped, sharpened, and shot to hit a target the archers couldn't hit on their own.

I knew it was going to be okay, that my parents, my churches, and my own heart were all archers in their own right, forming and formulating strategies to wage war. And sometimes my parents, my churches, and my own heart would go to bed at night, lay down their arms, and rest knowing they had done all and stood well, and now it was time to rest.

This past weekend one of our pastors spoke about fatherhood and I broke.

I broke because I have failed as a daughter and have been failed too. Because in my family there is estrangement and brokenness. There is a failure to acknowledge the good that was and the bad that shouldn't have been. I broke because all of my misconceptions about God have been rooted in a failure to understand that parents are only earthly shadows, not even a particle of the real thing—and I have gotten it backwards. I broke because my pastor read this verse: For [our fathers] disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness.

As it seemed best to them.

Best. To them.

I broke, more than anything, because if there is one thing I come against again and again it is the failure to recognize that my life's circumstances, and the people in them, are mere archers. They have done their best to craft me and shoot me straight as it seemed to them. But I am the arrow—ultimately hitting the target is not up to them, it is up to me and the Master crafter.

We are a reactive generation—holding up our parents and churches and even our own wicked hearts at times, and we are saying, "None of that now! They have done us wrong! A new way! A better way!"

But here is the truth, more than anything: the better way, the best way, is to trust that every way that seemed best to those we feel failed most by, was part of the best way for God to discipline us for our good, that we may share in His holiness.

He took all our collective brokenness, the unfair rules and poor theology, the bad politics and dysfunctional church environments, even the abuse and shame, He took all of it, bore the fullness of it, and whatever He has given to us to bear is for our good. We get to share in His holiness because of it.

Even broken archers can shoot straight arrows and even broken arrows can still hit targets.

He's already won the war for us.

Like arrows in the hand of a warrior

are the children of one's youth.

Blessed is the man

who fills his quiver with them!

He shall not be put to shame

when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

Psalm 127:3-5