Keeping Your Heart and Giving it Away

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. Proverbs 4:23

It's a misquoted, misused, and abused little proverb that has given a lot of people a lot of heartache. Here's all it means:

Life happens, it springs forth out of you and me and everyone we know. Life is beautiful and messy and complicated and confusing and joyful. And it can be all those things without all those things being wrong or evil.

So keep your heart, know it, put it daily before the Lord, because you will create beauty with it, you will mess things up with it, and you will complicate life with it. But our hearts are not eternal and these angsts of life are not either.

When you guard your heart, guard its greatest treasure, Jesus alone. And trust that He is doing all the guarding necessary too.

Completion

I'm trying to be careful to not write much about my relationship with a good man. I know the seeping envy that hearing too much of that talk can do to hearts. I am my brother's keeper, and my sister's, and I want to steward well. The truth is this fall has been one of shaping, shifting, breaking, filling, hurting, misunderstanding, loving, trusting, and hoping. I have a feeling marriage is all of those same things, only fuller and harder.

My hands have been so filled with good things over the years that I have found it difficult to open them and choose another good thing. Paul said singleness was better and that soothed me for a long time, pacifying my desire for a partnership and love. It soothed me so well that I found such deep substance in my singleness after my cries wore off. Not always perfectly—there were still times I longed for someone, anyone really, to be mine. But most of my time I enjoyed my freedom to think, be, say, do whatever I felt full license from the Holy Spirit to do. I felt full.

Fullness is good until you find yourself trying to fit just one more thing, especially if it is of particular importance to fit in, like a boyfriend or fiancee or husband sort of importance. Then that nasty full feeling makes you feel your selfishness and gluttony in sickening ways. You come face to face with how very much you've been building a kingdom that looks like Christ's, but using your own cook and cleaner and interior designer. His kingdom, my throne.

Last week in a meeting with a couple who've taken us under their wing and love, I was asked, "What do you want? Deep down, what do you want?"

The answer I gave was cushioned and caveated by "When I let myself," and "But I don't think it's possible," but deep down what I want is just a life of simplicity. One where I am not standing behind a blog façade, where I greet my neighbors over the fence, and can peaches and keep my front door open and unlocked. That is what I want.

The next question he asked was: "Why can't you just do that?"

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All this week I've been paying very close attention to what I want, really want, and here's why: because I know and trust the Holy Spirit within me, I know that my deepest wants and desires bring Him joy, and if they bring Him joy, they bring me joy.

There are so many things on the surface that compete for my joy, things that pacify me, or tide me over, but the truth is God created me for His glory, so something about what I love naturally brings him joy.

I know this is meandering and may not make much sense, but I want to help myself and you understand that what we want deep down is not marriage or love or partnership or singleness. Those things are good, but they all come with a price. What we want deep down is for our joy to be full—and Christ wants that too, He said so. What brings us joy and completes that joy is to remain in His love.

I have not remained in His love in recent years. I have known His love theologically, but there has still been a part of me that has eschewed His love and groped instead for the cross—and not His cross, but mine. The cross I thought He was asking me to bear by being single or ministering beyond my capacity or choosing a life I didn't necessarily want, but thought He wanted from me.

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Life is simpler here at home. Oh, there are complex things here, but the life people live is simple, robust and yet unencumbered by so much of what I have found myself surrounded by in recent years. Here I remember who I am in the deepest parts of me and I am loved and my joy is made full.

It is joy that fills us to complete, not duty, calling, or the expectations of others.

What do you want?

Greatly Shaken

This afternoon Psalm 62 worked its way through my mind: He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken. Greatly shaken.

I have felt shaken in recent weeks. Shaken by my own expectations, by the expectations of others, by my sin, and by the sin of others. Here's the thing, though: I've been surprised at how surprised I am.

Somewhere along the way I bought the story that He was my rock and salvation, my fortress and I would not be shaken. I know suffering comes and sin steals for a season. I read the Bible and see it is full of people for whom things did not go well. But shaken? Knocked off kilter, rattled around?

Ah. Greatly shaken.

The gospel does not make lead-footed friends of us. Our salvation is secure, but we are not cemented in place, stuck with no forward or backward motion. The gospel sets a feast before us, but it is not a feast of fructose and ease, it is one that gives us what is best for us. And sometimes being shaken is best.

There is a passage in Corinthians I hear quoted often in reference to struggles: We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.

But it is the words before and after that catch me off guard, that shake me down, that pull my pride into a vortex of the Holy Spirit:

"We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed, always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh."

So He is my rock, my salvation, my fortress. He is also my comfort, my shelter, my haven. But all this shaking? All this crushing? All this pressing? It is for Him, for His glory and my good.

Maybe that is simplistic. I know it sounds simplistic to me today, as though I should be beyond this concept. But the truth is every time I think I'm beyond it, I get surprised by how much I still need it.

He is better. In the midst of being greatly shaken, His words stands firm and He is better.

The Enemy of Good

I'm no liar so when someone asks how I am I rarely say, "Fine." My go-to answer, though, is just as distasteful: "Busy." It's been a season of life, going on a year now, where I've felt under the laundry pile of the life. I think to myself, "I really need to get out from under this stuff," but the truth is I've hardly had three days in a row to stop and take stock of what's keeping me busy.

This fall in particular I'm juggling four things that could be full-time jobs in themselves. And this morning I cracked a little bit.

Because I am not enough.

I cannot be a good friend, minister, writer, fiancee, blogger, thinker, designer, sister, daughter, and Christian. I pulled into my parking spot at work this morning, took a deep breath, tried to mentally prepare for another busy day at the office—and I cracked.

When I crack I don't make a scene, I don't cry, I don't get angry or shout. When I crack I shut down, I slump over, I feel defeated and want to quit everything but know I never will. I'm an internal processor so when I don't have time to internally process life, life processes me and it doesn't go well.

Charles Spurgeon wisely said, “Learn to say no. It will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin.” And I not so wisely have turned myself into a pretzel trying to learn Latin. Not actually read Latin, of course, just do the mental equivalent of it. It takes its toll on my energy, my spiritual growth, my relationships, and my ability to do anything well.

I don't see life slowing down anytime in the next weeks or months. In fact, I know I'm on the threshold of what could be one of the busiest or deepest growth seasons of my life. I want to be faithful with the time, to redeem it, to rest in it, to rely on the Father through it. But this is my confession—busy is the other four-letter word for me. I hate busy. It is just as much a thief of my soul as being "fine."

I'm spending some time in the word this week specifically asking the Lord to refresh the right spirit in me, to remind me how to rest, even amidst the busyness of this next months. I'm asking Him to break the things in me that keep me running in my own strength and to restore to me the joy of simple salvation. Salvation that is not dependent on doing anything well or even doing it at all.

What refreshes you in seasons of busyness?

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28

Believey

When I was in my early twenties I had someone in my life who was *believey for me, for all the things about myself she knew to be true and all the things I doubted. I knew if I could ever get over the funk that was my life in my twenties, I wanted to be that sort of believey for someone else. That someone else lives in the bedroom next to mine now and she is in her early twenties and she has been a lot of things to me in the past seven years. But today she is one of my very favorite persons in the world. I believe all sorts of crazy things for her and sometimes I crawl into bed with her in the early morning hours to tell her all the things I believe for her. She grunts and groans. But sometimes she writes things like this and I bust with belief.

When you’ve lived in so many different houses and so few homes, its tempting to stay on the sidelines. Sometimes a house doesn’t feel like a home because it just doesn’t. Sometimes a house doesn’t feel like a home because I hesitate to let it. Just about the time a place gets the comfortable pulls and tugs of home, life always seems to send me somewhere else. Which is always easier when you're leaving a house and not a home.

Read the whole thing. It's a beaut.

I guess I want to share this with you today because maybe you're in your early twenties and life is a funk. Or maybe you're in your forties and you know someone in a funk. I'm not into psycho-mumbo-jumbo "Believe in yourself, achieve anything," garbage. But I do think there's something beautiful about believing the promises of God on behalf of someone. I was the half saying, "Help my unbelief!" but my person was the half saying, "I believe." And at some point in the past three years I could say both with confidence.

Don't underestimate the significance of encouragement, of saying to someone, "With God in you, I think you can do it."

*Nan's word, not mine.

The Love of Laundry

I used to dream of canning peaches and hanging laundry on lines, letting it billow in the northern breeze. I was set on a life of simplicity, kneading bread dough by hand, peeling apples at a wooden table marked and scarred by time and use. Reading storybooks aloud to calico-clad babies and lighting candles every night on the dinner table. This was the life of which I dreamed and felt within my grasp. It never materialized and I felt the ache of that deep in my gut years over and over. Sand slips more easily through fingers than through an hourglass and it is so very hard to hold time for long. I signed leases and moved houses and states and tables. I forgot those dreams or buried them beneath convenience and the fear of missing out on real life while I waited for dream life to happen.

I spent years placing my hand over the ache of want, stilling my heart of its desires, trying to live well in today. Aren't we such foolish creatures? To think we can capture a vapor and own it for any measure of time?

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No bridal showers would bring me the things that made a home so I dove deep into thrift stores and bargain bins, my home made of second-hands and hand-me-downs. It feels lived in but I wonder how well I have lived in it? Someone else marred my table-top, someone else chipped my favorite bowl, someone else created my art.

But this is the life I love. This reusable life. It reminds me life is a vapor and time is short and things are falling apart and I am too.

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Richard Wilbur wrote,

The soul shrinks

From all that is about to remember, From the punctual rape of every blessed day, And cries, "Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry, Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam And clear dances done in the sight of heaven."

I have never forgotten that poem or the autumn day in college when I first read it. Love Calls Us to the Things of This World and it means we must love the vapor too because it is the stuff of life—the laundry, the rising steam, the clear dances done only in the sight of heaven. We love the marred table and the calico clothes and the lit candles because these are not the meaning of life, but they help us remember the work, the dirt, the mess, the grit of life.

Convenience is not our friend, my brother and my sister, ease is not our aim.

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A threshold waits in front of me, a coming home of sorts. Marriage and life with a man so wholly different than me and so wholly loving to me, it makes me wonder how you start fresh with so many years behind you. So many scars and mars, chips and cracks—how do you make new with so much old?

I don't have an answer to that friends, but I know love does call me to the things of this world. It is an angst I wrestle with daily in these months. How to be distracted, my attentions divided by good things? Without love I am a clanging symbol, a noisy gong. And love is work. All of love is work. Beautiful work, like canned peaches and billowing laundry, rising steam, lit candles, but still work.

Let there be nothing on earth but the work of love, even if some days it looks only like laundry.

She is Beautiful

I met the Church this week and she is beautiful. Her hips are wide and she sways to the praise of her God. She laughs loudly, her head thrown back, two rows of gleaming teeth; her sound is joy. She is too short or too tall, too much, not enough. She sips her wine slowly, savoring the taste of life. She gulps the last drops, never afraid to do anything boldly. She is half a century old, she is twenty-two. She is a writer a speaker a story-teller a friend. She adopted her children. She lost hers.

I met the Church this week and she is beautiful.

I gathered with some women this week, thinkers, dreamers, ministers, travelers, speakers, writers. They are half the Church and there was nothing halfway in our gathering. There was robust fullness, women fully there, fully present, fully themselves. There was no competition, no idle chatter, no small talk, and no shortage of prayers or tears. There were rooms fully alive in the fullness of God.

I am a Church-girl, I have always known it. There is nothing, nothing, I love more on earth than a diverse community of believers wrought together by one common thing: an uncommon man. On a local level, this means I serve her, I love her, I pray for her, I believe in her. On a broad level, this means I see her place in the manifold plan of God.

We are His plan. The Church is it. Without the Church we are factions of individuals broken by the things that set us apart. With the Church we are reminded it is our brokenness that binds us together, planting us deep on the level ground before the cross.

The Church is beautiful because she has met with God. She has seen Him and been seen by Him—fully, all her blemishes and beauty, all her brokenness and bravery, all her boldness and belief.

I met the Church this week and she took my breath away.

That Their Faith Would Not Fail

I woke this morning with words of prayer on my mouth. Not prayers for me or prayers for my friends, but prayers for my pastors. I go to a large church with many pastors and their job is difficult. They shepherd, lead, teach, preach, train, study, repent, and live very publicly. Our leadership works hard to keep our church from being celebrity driven in a Christian culture that feeds on celebrity, but to whom much is given, much is required. One thing required of our leaders is their lives are in the public eye. A friend once told me, "I hope someday you love Jesus as much as you love the Church," and I haven't stopped thinking about it since. I disagree with him most days because I think I love Jesus more than I love the Church. Sometimes I agree with him though, because sometimes it's easier to talk about loving the tangible church than it is to talk about loving a somewhat intangible savior. But most of the time I'm scratching my head wondering why he even said it.

I love the Church because I love Jesus. Loving the Church, the local church, the men in leadership over me, and the people who make up this body is the natural overflow of loving Jesus—loving what He loves.

Brothers and sisters, love the church. I know that isn't always easy, but the thing that makes it easiest for me is to first love my pastors.

Love the church by loving your pastors. If you struggle to love them, pray for them.

Your life is wrought with struggle, pain, study, leadership, discipleship, doubt, fear—many of the same things your pastors deal with, but think of how different your leadership would be if you knew you had people who were actively praying for you? When I remember that Jesus intercedes for me, it's a game changer. When I know one of you is praying for me, it puts flesh on that intangible intercession of Jesus.

Jesus is pleading on behalf of pastors everywhere. Emulate Him.

“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” Luke 21:31-32

Delivering Hope: What being saved through childbearing can mean for the unmarried

I woke a few mornings ago and felt the familiar void. It is no stranger to me and I know it acutely. I feel the angst of it in my belly, the fear of it in my heart, and the curse of it every moment.

A friend sent me a link to an old sermon in which the pastor preached a strong and stalwart message about women being saved through childbearing (II Timothy 2:15), and I turned it off five minutes before its conclusion. “Why did you send it to me?” I asked my friend because we have been having ongoing conversations about these subjects and my soul balks at the customary consolation prizes of womanhood. For one who grew up hearing a woman’s highest calling was to be a wife and a mother, yet finds herself as single as the day she came squalling into the world, a future swaddled in babies sounds bleak.

This is my call? To bear what I cannot bear? To hold up a bargain as impossible as Sarah’s to her husband. As impossible as God’s to Abraham? This womb is dead, or feels dead. Oh, I have plenty of years until it is pronounced medically dead, but the hope has died. It has died seventy times over and dies each day a little more.

It is 2013 and most of my good-church-girl friends married a decade ago. They are all declaring the babes in their wombs, “The last!” and I barely hope for a first. To them two or three is enough, the curse lasts far beyond pain in childbirth (Genesis 3:16) and they have seen enough of life to know promises about babies on schedules or Sunday-School attendance stars will not guarantee the safe arrival of their little ones to spiritual-adulthood. So it appears neither of us are saved through childbearing after all. We both limp with one hand held to God our helper and one hand anchored to earth our friend. Where is our salvation?

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In an early morning class last week we read Romans 4 and I wept tears in the second row. I felt them coming on again in this coffee shop on a Saturday afternoon. A thorough study of Romans is not for the faint of heart, and not for those who feel they have somehow escaped the curse by either perfect children or singleness.

The end of Romans 4 is about Abraham’s body, his circumcision of flesh, and calling into existence things that do not exist: his seed. God, who is the only author of life and the only bider of time, has made a promise that even with hope against hope still seems impossible. A father of many nations? A boy from these loins? From the barrenness of Sarah’s womb? If pain in childbirth was the curse on all daughters of Eve, it would seem Sarah’s only curse was she would never feel the twisting beautiful pain of birthing anything.

Anything but hope.

My friend was also in class that morning and I sent a text to him: “This is it!” I wrote. “Maybe this is part of how we are saved through childbearing!”

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Even if we never birth a child, we birth hope. We are built to birth hope. It lies restless in our womb, expectant in our hearts, and unlimited in its gestation. We are crafted to see the future, to look at what is not and believe God will still do what He said He would do. We are made to birth hope into impossibilities. I think about my sisters, those whose deepest desires are to take broken places and make them whole; who have been hurt, neglected, broken, and cast away, and who still come back strong and desperate to see wholeness birthed in dark places.

I can’t stop thinking about it all week. And I think about it when I wake early a few mornings ago, feeling the familiar ache of the barrenness accompanying singleness.

Abraham’s faith was credited to him as righteousness. Faith in the hope against hope God was who He said He was and would do what He said He would do. Sarah, our barren sister, laughed at the promise and so Laughter was given to her for the rest of her days, a reminder that sometimes the only pain in childbirth we experience is 80 years without childbirth. A reminder that God is a God who saves and He saves by bringing life from dead things, hope from hopelessness.

Penned sometime this past spring. 

For the Weary Christian

It's been a few months of feeling discouraged and one of the effects of that is I simply don't want to write for you. I don't want to write at all, but I especially don't want to write for you. I don't want to be found out, so to speak. I don't want the world to know my first love feels likes seconds and my *gospel wakefulness feels tired. I don't want you to know I've been struggling with condemnation, fear, insecurity, uncertainty, and weariness. I am ashamed of those feelings—especially because I know they are anti-gospel and they are born in me as a result of not reveling in Godward affections.

Tonight I was remembering some of the things that set my soul free a few years ago. Not the sermons or books specifically, but the realizations:

1. I am the younger brother AND the older brother. I hate restrictions and I love approval, I hate poverty and love lavish attention.

2. God is not more or less interested in me because of my legalism or licentiousness: His provision is the same for both.

3. The gospel doesn't only carry the power to save me, but also sanctify and sustain me.

4. I cannot put God in my debt by being good, holy, or faithful enough.

5. All my righteous acts are like filthy rags.

6. God is not beholden to my view of Him. My concept of good is not His definition of good. My ideal of His faithfulness is not His attribute of faithfulness.

7. Man's approval is impossible to attain. God's approval is completely wrapped up in His Son.

8. God is not surprised by my lack of faith or my abundance of faith, by my questions or my fears, by my pride or my sin. On the threshold of His kingdom He will not deny access to me because I didn't understand an aspect of theology or walk in complete faith in certain areas.

9. The Holy Spirit is not tapping His toe waiting for my faith to be big enough or my ear to be tuned. He dwells in me, empowering me to accomplish everything God has ordained for me to accomplish with every gift He formed me to have before the foundation of the world.

10. God is for my joy. He is most glorified when I am most satisfied in Him. My complete confidence and joy in the Holy Spirit, through the finished work of the Son, to the honor of the Father, brings the triune God glory.

It was encouraging for me to simply write these things out, and so I thought I'd share them with you. Perhaps you're struggling too, or perhaps you've never experienced gospel wakefulness, and these points will help you along that way. Either way, I hope you're encouraged. Also, I suggest you take a few minutes to write out what the gospel means to you, or has shown you. Even just to remind truths or clarify errors in your thinking.

*Gospel Wakefulness is not my term, but Jared Wilson's . Jared wrote a book by the same title, but he has also written extensively on it on his blog Gospel Driven Church. Jared is one of the most Godward gazing people I know. His blog has been a constant source of encouragement in the past few years and I recommend every one of his books with full assurance you will be encouraged. Seriously, buy his books. All of 'em.

Perfect Provision, Perfect Protection

No one has to be convinced that something went wrong somewhere in the bodies and beauty department. Stand in a grocery aisle and figure out how to beat those pesky inches, woo your disinterested man, and find more perfect clothes for perfect bodies. Something has gone wrong. So where?

It was at a tree. A food laden tree. Something good, beautiful, and delectable gone horribly wrong.

(Will Deutsch)

It began at the beginning of beginnings, Genesis, where food was made, food was eaten, and where all of our food issues began.

Strange, isn’t it, that one of our principles struggles is still there? With food?

We starve from it, binge on it, measure it out, disgust ourselves with it, pride ourselves on it, obsess over recipes, and TIVO our favorite cooking shows. Rarely do we see food as the perfect provision and perfect protection that it was designed to be. Provided for our health; protection from death.

God created food: a perfect provision for His creation. Then He clearly defined it as right or wrong: a perfect protection for his children. He set up His boundaries, endlessly good ones that felt good too, until they bumped up against the one ‘don’t’ rule: don’t eat of this tree.

Yet this is the tree from which they ate. First the woman and then the man.

Ignoring the plenty and subversively skirting the mandate by a subtle legalism, “God says don’t eat of it AND don’t touch it,” she fell the boundaries that God so lovingly placed on her and him and all of us.

Don’t we do this too? Don’t we see the plenty and choose instead the smaller portion, the lesser good? We add to the boundaries given. Sinking deeply into diets or delectable feasts, feeling helpless against the siren call that is food.

God calls out: Where are you? And we hide, behind exercise, behind enhancement, behind extra weight. We hide.

We hide because it is easier to hide than to be known. We’ve eaten off the tree of knowledge and now we think we know.

Yet still He seeks us. Pursues us. Finds us, shivering and scratching under the weight of man-made garments and expectations. I’m there. Are you too?

And all this because we added to what God said. He gave good boundaries and we made them smaller and tighter, thinking that more rules will keep us safer. God has said don’t eat of the fruit, but we think that it’s safer to just not touch it at all?

This is our great sin. This is our great fall. We add to what God has said and the boundaries become cages. We imagine He is a harsher God than He is.

We eat the fruit thinking it will make us like God and really all it does is make us into our own god. And we are powerless gods, always trying to find things to bulk us, beautify us, fix us.

All the while He is still giving perfect provision and perfect protection. The second time was in a much less beautiful environment. Dark, though midday, the place of the skull. A broken, bleeding, and bruised man. He is saying it is finished and we can hardly believe it is true.

So we are still adding to it. Principles. Practices. Helping God, we think, with clearer expectations on His people and on us. Don’t eat it, we say, or touch it. Or surely you will die.

The truth is that we are finished. Perfect in Christ’s eyes and through His provision. Nothing can be added or removed from you to make you more of who you’re intended to be in Christ.

He looks on you and sees clean, pure, perfect righteousness and beauty.

Dried Grass and Crumpled Flowers

When God knit this person together, He did so with an optimism of the best sort for everyone else and a pessimism of the worst sort for herself. If there is good to see in others, I will see it, and if there is anything out of place in me, I will caricature it until it is as ugly to the rest of the world as it is to myself. Others call this narcissism. I call it human-nature. We’re all plagued with an evil eye toward ourselves—even if our greatest flaw is thinking the best of ourselves and the worst of others. Thinking the best of ourselves comes laden with baggage of the self-sufficient, and who needs sufficiency of self if we have not been failed by all others because of our inability to keep them satisfied? “I don’t need nobody else, just me,” is the blight of men everywhere since the enemy fell from legions of angels whose sole concern was Other Than, if only because nobody else could satisfy self like self.

There are a myriad of ways out of this navel gazing—and trust me, I’ve tried them all—but the only one that works is putting two eyes toward the cross and centering them there.

Jesus did it for the joy set before Him, though, and we do a disservice if we do anything motivated by anything other than the same joy. Too often we talk about “bearing the cross” and “picking up our cross,” and I don’t want to mislead you, making you think anything about the Christian life is anything less than a cross. It isn’t. But it is so much more than the cross—and therein lies the joy set before us.

The narcissism that keeps us desperate for the approval of man, the compliments of others, and the affirmation of the achieved, is desperately flawed in that it sets its joy on something less than eternal.

So press on, friends, for the joy set before you. Endure the cross of your ugliest aspects and the gross imperfections of others—this world is a vapor and what lasts is so much more. Treasure, too, the beauty found in others and in yourself, but do it with an eye toward the eternal where the only One we’ll be making much of is Christ.

Perfect Life in a Perfect House with Perfect People

All I wanted for my birthday was a day with my three favorite people in Texas, my two roommates + recently married roommate who still counts. Today we went to go see Lincoln together (because I'm a history & constitution nerd) and then came home to home that smelled of the chicken and turnips in the crockpot ready for us to eat by candlelight with wine, followed by my favorite pumpkin pie and a fire in the fireplace. Perfect. I know.

More than one person has told me that my photo stream is a constant flow of perfect images that make our home seem idyllic and warm always. I usually laugh and tell them it's partly true, that IS how our home is. But it's also true that our bathrooms get dirty and sometimes we have miscommunications and sometimes people are sad or mad, even if I don't frame that moment in a filtered photo.

I took the opportunity tonight to take a photo of our less than orderly table with a less than proper roommate digging into the roast chicken. Just to say, hey we're not perfect—but we're okay with that.

Here's why I write about my home so much, and why I take photos of it, and delight in it:

It's very tempting, for single women particularly, to place deep stock in the future home. To dream about what it will look like, to stockpile images and Pinterest boards and magazine pages, to wish for what is not—and lose sight of what is. And what is might not be what you dream about it being. Maybe you don't have the crockpot you want or the set of knives all your friends got when they got married. Maybe you're waiting until you marry Mr. Right before you light candles for the dinner table or use a tablecloth.

It's also very tempting to place our worth and security in our home today, to indulge ourselves in DIY projects or keep up with others in terms of decor and furniture—to own whatever we can in place of what is not ours to own today. It is tempting to feel that since so much seems to be withheld from us today, we are going to grasp and grab whatever we can in the meantime.

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So as much as I'm able, I'm going to write about my home and keep a steady stream of beautiful photos of it.

I treasure my home. I do. I treasure the people who inhabit it, I treasure the moments occurring in it, and the meals shared in it. I treasure the small touches, the artwork from all of our international travels, the thrift-store finds, and the teakettle we use every day. I treasure it, but I do not own it and I do not let it own me.

And I want to communicate that to my unmarried sisters and brothers. I want them to know that these days are numbered, whether marriage is your future or not, your days are numbered. Singleness is not an excuse to let life pass you by while you mourn what is not your portion for today. But it is also not an excuse to indulge in creating a self-made kingdoms of you.

My challenge to you (and to me every day) is to evaluate what you're treasuring and to find beauty in today's portion—it's there and it's yours for the enjoying. Don't wish yourself living in my home with my roommates eating at my table—where is your table? Who is sharing your life? What is treasured in your home?

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Photo filters make everything look better and the gospel does the same for us—the ordinary becomes extraordinary, the mundane becomes beautiful, the normality is filled with joy, and the everyday is special. It's that way because our hope isn't in today, it's in something much greater, much deeper, and much fuller. It's in the hope of heaven for tomorrow and the sufficiency of Christ for today.

Go and fill your Instagram up with beautiful things. Real things. Happening right now, today, to you, in your life. Find them, they're there.

A Better Fruit

I may be a complementarian, but I dole out my respect sparingly enough. I do not believe that every woman needs to submit to every man and I do not believe that every man can righteously wield power over me with wisdom or criticism. I believe that every practical act of ours on earth ought to be a reflection of what happens in the Kingdom. It seems clear that the Trinity beautifully displays a threefold relationship I'm happy to take my part in as helper—equal, but distinct.

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One of the few who has won my hard[ly] earned respect is a pastor who moved to my native north from the Bible-belt to replant a church. He's an author, speaker, and blogger, and never once have I heard him put out anything distracting from the glory of God. Not once, that is, until he stepped on a seeming hornet's nest a few months ago.

He unwittingly quoted someone who had prefaced something controversial before they said it, but he quoted it without the same warning. And well, we'd all like to be able to pull back our words a time or two, wouldn't we? Fortunately it was on a blog and so he removed the entry after a discussion ensued when a fuss was raised from an opposing movement (in this case Christian feminists), and issued an apology.

It was in poor form, I'll give you that. But I took neither offense to it nor did I see the need to address it. Why? Because the most freeing aspect of being a complementarian, for me, is trust. I trust that he has people in his life who will point out any error and, in fact, they did—but nobody seems to want to draw attention to that because it would imply that hierarchal systems actually work without the undo drawing of attention by the masses, gossipmongers, and those who take offense easily.

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It may have taken a few minutes to get here, but what this post is about is trust.

It seems to me that on a very base level the problem of the feminist movement and the patriarchy movement, and indeed sin itself, is principally a lack of trust. We have, from the very beginning, been attempting to wrench what was not given in the search of what was labeled off limits.

The whole garden, every tree and plant, the dominion over the whole earth was ours—everything but this one tree, and yet this one tree is the one Eve took the fruit from and gave it to Adam to share.

From the start we are in search of what is not within our grasp. And if we feel powerless holding onto what does not belong to us, we grasp, we cajole, we plead, and finally in an act of spirited defiance, we take it. We reach high into the branches and we twist that fruit until what looked so good is now so bad, and we eat of it—we dominate in the name of righteousness.

And what happens is not satisfaction. It is not completion. It is not godlike presence or perfection. What happens is that we are immediately found wanting for more and nothing covers us fully enough. We need something more to satisfy.

This, to me, is the major practical flaw in movements that attempt to thwart a design, albeit a design with limits, to attain what was not designed to be ours.

We are never satisfied.

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Isn't that the look of all sin though? Isn't it just, as Augustine said, the reordering of good things until they become ultimate things? Isn't it what happens when we put our hope in a thing or an action or an apology or even a theology, instead of in God himself?

Here is why I am a complementarian (aside from the fact that I think the Bible is clear about it and I'm too tired of all the other mental gymnastics I do to add one more routine): because it goes against my nature to submit to anyone on anything. I'm aware of it so strongly that I war against anything that teaches me to reach for a higher branch of forbidden fruit.

I war against anything God has said clearly it is not right for me to have (I Tim. 2.12). I war against anything that demands action of me I have not been fit to act on (I Peter 3.7). I war against anything that says if one person has something I ought to have it too (Rom. 12.3). The truth is trust is where I belong, it is where I am safest, where I am held, where I am known, where I rest, and most of all where He has made His glory known to me.

You may call me foolish or underfoot, you may even accuse me of being blinded by my male leadership, and I am okay with that, because here is what I know: I am seen and noted, I am chosen and delivered, I am full of the Father's design, the Groom's love, and Spirit's help. The more I trust, the further into Himself He takes me.

I eat fruit from low-slung tree branches and it is juicy and full and ripe in its season.

And it is good because He has said it is good.

[If you have thoughts about this, feel free to email them to me. I do not have comments open on any of my posts, but I don't want you to think I'm not open to discussion. I am, just not on this page. Try here!]

How to die beautifully

There are things I ought to have learned in science class, but I was too busy hankering for art class to pay much attention. Did you know that the reason the autumn leaves are so spectacular in the northeast is because the weather has an indecisive air to it? It’s true. One night it’s cold enough to frost and the next day it’s warm enough to kayak in a tshirt. In the mountains the reds and oranges are deep and rich, and in the valley fields the green is vibrant and lush. The sky is almost always a steel blue, nearly grey, but still clear. I cannot describe this well enough, I know. I’m sure I tend to romanticize it because I tend to romanticize everything. It makes for a better story, see?

But trust me: it is beautiful here. Even today, while it rains steadily outside the side porch where I complete my wedding tasks of the day, it is beautiful (of course it helps that my wedding tasks for the day were to take buckets of flowers and make them into eleven presentable bouquets).

Tonight I’m going to leave these bouquets of roses and hydrangeas, seeded eucalyptus and ranunculus here on the porch. Outside, where temperatures will probably dip into the forties. I’ll leave them here. And for the same reason that the leaves get more and more spectacular, I have no fear for these flowers.

It goes against my gut to do this, leave them outside. Because flowers bloom in the warmest months, I assume that that’s where they’ll thrive best. But a year in Texas is teaching me that while the heat may force a bloom to open, it does little to sustain it.

We all need a little indecisive air, a bit of a chill, to be sustained.

I had a conversation with a friend the other day and she’s asking the right questions: why does it have to be so hard sometimes? Why does it have to hurt?

I don’t have answers for her. I’m finding the more I know, the less I really know.

But I know this: those leaves wouldn’t take our breath away if they weren’t dying in the process.

And I don’t like that. That makes me uncomfortable. I hate death, it is nothing but stings and barbs. But I love life because it is nothing but newness and cycles.

I love life because I know that I will die a million deaths until that final one, but each one makes me a little more vibrant in the process, and each one brings the promise of newness. That’s something I can plant my soul in.

This post was originally posted in October, 2011. But in honor of peak week at home, I'm posting it again. Enjoy your leaves northern friends!