We Cannot Complain About America if We Do Not Listen to Others

I went on an epic rant to one of my best friends this morning (she was raised and leans more liberal, I was raised and lean more conservative, but no subject is off limits in our friendship and it's one of the reasons I love her so dearly). It was over text message and we were both getting ready to leave for trips so not the most opportune way to rant, but when you live on opposite coasts, you do what you can to keep the spark alive. My frustration had to do with a liberal elite smugness and a GOP's smug we-told-you-so base I'm seeing in response to the election. Calls for "safe spaces and honest dialogue" and incredulity at the election outcome by liberals, and an absolute outright gloating and total blind-eye to the President-elect's foibles, failures, and future blunders by conservatives. I was grateful, in one sense, that most of the Christians I know and respect did not vote for Trump, but that alone illustrates the issue: I surround myself with people with whom I agree. It's called a confirmation bias and we all have them. The trick is to know you do and to not demonize the ones who don't know, but to instead educate them and yourself along the way.

If you lean liberal and are simply scratching your head at the results here, read Hillbilly Elegy. It will do more to help you understand the situation at hand in one sitting, than this entire election season tried to do in one and half years.

If you were raised in a poor, predominantly white town, it would be helpful for you to understand what is actually going on in cities where perfectly normal and legal citizens of this country with varying races are simply trying to live, read: American Passage

If you were raised in a predominantly white evangelical setting and have trouble understanding the unrest by African-Americans, read: Letters to a Birmingham Jail

If you were raised in the north or the south, and are sure you aren't racist, read: The Warmth of Other Suns 

If you went to college pre-1990 and can't figure out why Millennials care so much about the cost of higher education, read: Paying the Price.

If you were raised in a home where your parent's income was considered Upper Middle Class or above, read: White Trash

If you were raised in a home where welfare, food stamps, and the food pantry was where you or your friends got food from, read: Bobos in Paradise

If you were raised in a home that leaned liberal or leaned conservative, but what you see happening today doesn't reflect what you were raised to believe, read: Strangers in their Own Land.

If you are a pacifist or think all war is unjust, read The Heart and the Fist.

If no one in your immediate family has been deployed, read Tribe.

None of these books solve the crisis of divide at hand here, but they do give us a small glimpse into what "the other side" might be thinking or processing or what has bolstered their belief in what's right. Rebecca Reynolds said it well in her post today on Thistle and Toad,

The beliefs of the average American are neither formed nor altered by reason. For the most part, our religion and our politics begin with affective impulses more than formal, cognitive research. What we believe about God and country is usually born in the gut, in the center of desire, nightmare, and imagination.

Many of us find our political and theological instincts early in life, then those instincts tend to interweave with a smattering of real life relationships. Over 15-years-worth of Thanksgivings, we hear that FDR destroyed America (or that he saved it). We hear praise or criticism of unions. We hear what happened to our aunts and uncles in California, or in rural Tennessee, or in Chicago as a result of legislation passed in D.C. All of these stories converge to form and then confirm a metanarrative that becomes a framework for how we interpret the entire world.

Few of us bother to fact check those metanarratives. They become too personal to vivisect. All of these beliefs have faces, because they are connected to people and situations we know.

None of us can truly understand what another person felt was at stake in this election or is at stake in the coming years, but we can certainly do our best to try. It's not as simple or cut and dried as the one-issue voters and die-hard Democrats want it to be, but none of us will grasp that if we continue to crave both "safe spaces" and "honest dialogue." The two are at complete odds with one another; there is safety in numbers, but not if all the numbers look, think, and act just like you.

If you turn away from those who don't think like you, you simply cannot complain about the state of politics in American today, you do not have the right to choose an America that only works for you or people just like you. Chance offense or hurt, your own or others, but actually listen to someone with intent to hear them instead of listening with the intent to change their mind. There's only one who changes minds, and thank the Holy Spirit, it isn't you.

If you have books or a category you think should be considered, comment below.

Is Blogging Dead?

Someone said blogging is dead, but what I hope they meant is the rat race of push button publishing and flurry response to response to response to response blogging is dead. No one can survive on that sort of writing, nor thrive, not the writer or the reader. I hope that kind of blogging is dead. But back in the early hours of the 2000s, when blogging still felt like a secret from the rest of the world, it felt so alive and made me feel so alive and I've been hoping to find that spark again. I emptied out my subscription/feed reader and started fresh, slashed my Instagram follows by more than half, stepped back from Facebook and Twitter (Forever? For a time? Who knows?), and in an orchestrated attempt to listen to the sounds I love most, I cloistered myself with the living bloggers. And by living bloggers, I mean the ones who are still writing about real life, waking to the perpetual morning, who could write a whole chapter about the way to slice an onion or the leaf they found while walking.

I used to think a writer was just one who writes, but I have become less generous, I think, and believe now that a writer is one who withholds words from the public until they have gotten them right in the private. Having something to say doesn't mean it ought to be said, but saying it, like the poet said, makes it real. The sad predicament of all the saying happening is things which oughtn't have become real have become so and we have ushered ourselves right into a tragedy, just by the words we write and say and publish. We may disagree and I find I am okay with that too. Opinions are in plenty but listening is rare.

I met a woman a few months ago who wanted to be a real writer, to publish on the sites that circulate among the brand of evangelicals within which we both find ourselves. Those in the know would tell her to write for more, grow her platform, but I told her to be faithful with her small space, her blog. It has become a dirty word in many ways, coupled with churlish comments about "mommy" or "niche," while I think the problem is that blog became a word at all. I prefer to think of it as an invitation, read or don't. Your choice. But I want out of blasted pressure to perform tricks and jump through SEO shaped hoops. I told her in ten years those sites she wanted to write for would be forgotten, but the exercise of daily writing on her blog would yield fruit ten-thousand times—not just the book writing sort either, but the working out of her salvation sort. Be faithful, friend. I called her friend, even though I didn't know her because I knew the churning in her soul as near as I knew my own.

When I looked at the "blogs" I felt I had to be reading, I found a common thing among them: they were all instructive in some ways. Instructing me how to think, how to pray, how to be a church member, how not to be, how to think about the election, how not to think, how to be a friend, how not to be a friend, how to train kids, how to think about everything in the whole world that can ever be thought of. I was suffocating in the hows of life and forgetting to simply love, enjoy, and cherish the life right in front of me. Not to hedonistically drown myself in the throes of whatever today brought, but to stop and think, not of what everyone else thought I should be doing or thinking or saying, but what did God want to teach me in this single, solitary life?

This whole year feels like a waste when I cut and paste it next to the How Tos of most articles and blogs I was reading. I was a failure from start to finish. I did not think right, treat right, walk right, hear right, or see right. I measured my success by how much shame I felt when I went to bed at night and this is no way to live, and yet this was the way I saw many of my sisters living. Surrounding themselves with Pinterest and Blogs and Articles and Books and People and Photos and Friends and Ideas, but never stopping to think: within my home, within my family, is this helpful? Does this work?

Last winter a friend of mine told me if I ever wasn't sure what my calling was, or if I lost sight what I was supposed to be doing as a wife (since this has been the besetting struggle of my year: how do I do this?), to stop, look at my home, my husband, and say: what does it mean to look well to the ways of my household right now? And then to do that. It might mean caring for my husband actually means believing him when he says he loves me or says I'm beautiful. Or it could mean reading the Word rather than doing the laundry. Or it could mean making him healthy dinners every night and packing his lunch every day. Or it could mean weeping when I am hurt and laughing when I am happy. This concept has recalibrated me every day this year, sometimes in big ways and sometimes in small ways.

All of this I suppose is just a way to say to you that if what's in your eyesight when you look up is what everyone else is doing or thinks you ought to be doing, clear the way, friend. Clear the paths around you, unmuddle the simplicity of the gospel. It is Christ who cares for you and cares for your provision, far more than you can ever care for it. So let the dead things drop, find out what they are and let them drop. Maybe Sayable is one of those dead things for you. Go ahead, unsubscribe. I won't be offended, I promise.

I'm slowly, slowly coming back to a way of writing that I used to love. Sharing links to beautiful writing. Sharing books I love. Writing quietly in the still dark morning hours. Caring for the needs of my household means writing and reading what stirs my soul and mind, not draining it. Maybe blogging is dead. Or maybe it's just the frenzied way it's done that's dying.

Here are some places I've subscribed to recently:

Food Loves Writing: Just some everyday things, words, photos, recipes. Thistle and Toad: Beautiful writing on really hard things in life and culture.  The Beautiful Due: Poetry and Letters to Winn.  The Rabbit Room: A smattering of music, poetry, fiction, and non.  Cloistered Away: Homeschooling mama with simple suggestions for life.  Deeply Rooted:  Words on faith, life, and family.

Neglecting the Holy Spirit

Yesterday a friend called to ask for advice. Another friend had told her to proceed one way, a counselor had told her to proceed another. I knew in a sense she was asking me to affirm one or offer a third way. I offered a third way by asking instead what did she think the Holy Spirit was asking of her? It turned out the Helper had shown her a way in which at the end of the scenario, she would need not only the Help of the Holy Spirit, but also the Comfort if it went as we expected. The Holy Spirit was offering a third way and, I think, the right way.

Nate and I have a saying in our house: Be faithful to the word of God and not a certain outcome. It has saved us from a mighty many scrapes and, to be honest, thrown us right in the middle of some of the hardest predicaments of our lives. To use the word of God not only as a buffer in the midst of storm or the roadmap to treasure, but also to believe the Book of Life may lead to certain death in this world, but it will not return void forever, is a risky thing to do. What seems smart, seems sufficient, seems wise isn't always what the word of God and the Holy Spirit would ask of us.

Some of us Christians don't very much like the business of leaning on the Holy Spirit, and with good cause. How many of us have been the recipients of heavy hands on our foreheads and spittle from a prophet's mouth, men who were purported to be "led by the spirit," but spewed lies leading to unmet expectations for years later? How many of us have been on the hearing end of someone claiming Jesus told them to get divorced or buy a Mercedes or their son or daughter would be saved on such and such a date, or they would get what they wanted in a certain situation? We all have hopes and we all have preferences, but pinning "the Holy Spirit told me so" onto our hopes feels more like a Get Out Of Jail Free card than the narrow road to Kingdom dependance—which looks more like "If it be God's will," than most of us give Him credit for.

What my friend, in the midst of prayer and weeping, had sensed the Holy Spirit telling her to do went against psychology and churchy ideas of tough love, but even more than that, it went against her own flesh. She was, like Paul, compelled to do what in her flesh she did not want to do.

Ah! This, my friend, tells us we're on the right track.

In an age when it's all about our stories and our preferences and our feelings, we ought to pay attention when what we are compelled to do seems at odds with what our flesh and the culture around us wants us to do. I am not saying we ought to stick around when we're being physically or sexually abused (and I know the line is fine here), but some of what we Christians call abuse is really just the brokenness of humanity in such tight quarters. People are sad and it affects us. People are grieving and it's uncomfortable for us. People are suicidal and we have to be attentive to them. People are angry and we hear them say untrue things. People are fearful and we cannot understand why. This is the sort of brokenness most of us are pressed up against every day. It's everywhere, we can't escape it, though so many do and end up building tiny castles with massive moats and standing upon the highest towers refusing to hear any criticism or complaint which makes them uncomfortable.

Paul said, "I bear on my body the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ." You think for a minute he would have stayed under the whip, the burnings, the shipwrecks, the lashings if the Holy Spirit had not compelled him to? No, friend, without the Holy Spirit he would have been sunk. He would have skedaddled. He would have slunk away, swam away, sprinted away. But with the Holy Spirit he was able to say, "But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong." II Corinthians 12:9,10

Friend, seek solace knowing the wounds you take today are for the sake of Christ—who came into brokenness in order to save to the uttermost.

Some Gentle Comfort for the Election Sore

Yesterday afternoon our neighbor held a bottle of wine up over the fence and shouted for us to come over and bring the pup. We love our neighbors. When Nate and I first looked at our rental house one of the things we remarked about the neighborhood was how in the mere hour we were here, the amount of young families, children, and elderly folks walking around made living here appealing. Over the past eight months we have gotten to know most of the neighbors living on our block and more around the neighborhood. Our pup is something of a local celebrity amongst them all. But our next door neighbors are, we have agreed, the best neighbors we've ever had ever. We love them and when we move, we will be most sad to leave them. We sat around a fire, drinking wine, and talking politics for a few hours. That might sound like a nightmare to some, but in a season where deep friendships are few for us, a rousing conversation around a fire in the aftermath of the election was good. They are smart people, and have lived full lives.

A trifecta of a work contract keeping me busier than I planned, a season where, as I said, deep friendships are few, and a decision to stay off Twitter and Facebook for a while had me not very aware of election news last week. I was saddened by the outcome in some ways, and in some ways, I'll be honest, I'm expectant. I told Nate on Wednesday morning this is much like when we have friends about whose relationship we are not excited, but for whom, after marriage, we choose to cheer, encourage, pray for, and point to Christ as the center. I do not think there is anything sinful in healthy skepticism, but I do think cynicism is a slow-killing poison that too many of our countrymen drink willingly, and we do not want to take part.

I read this from Dan Rather a few days ago on a blog I read regularly, Beauty that Moves. It summed up my feelings well. I am an American and Donald Trump will be my president. And if you are a citizen here, he will be your president too. There is no question of this. Every eight years, for the most part, the presidential party swaps places. Mourn that if you choose, but also it is good to recognize that, character flaws and all, men set up the American self-government experiment to swing back and forth with gentle predictability. The best way to participate in politics is to participate in self-government ourselves. Another word for that is self-control and we all need a bit more of that fruit of the Spirit.

It seems bringing up the name Ann Voskamp brings opinions to the surface wherever and however the mention comes. Ann was one of the first bloggers over a decade ago to exchange emails with me in the newborn years of serious blogging. She will always be, for me, a gentle cheerleader and friend for it. Regardless of whether you enjoy her prose and poetic way, no one who has met her can deny that she exudes the fragrance of Christ. I loved this interview she did with my friend Katelyn on Christianity Today. Ann has taught (and still teaches) me so much about gratitude and the spiritual discipline of it. If gratitude isn't yet a part of your daily rhythm, I hope this article encourages you to start today.

Speaking of gratitude, we're living back on the east-east coast now and "Daylight Saving Time" (in quotes because you can't see me rolling my eyes) has ended, so it has started getting dark by 4 and is dark by 5:30pm. I am firmly of the belief that if it is dark, one belongs in hibernation mode, so it is taking a lot of gratitude to keep me from going to bed until seven at least. I am always reminded of the Norwegian secret to enjoying a long winter when we step over the threshold of short days. The word is Hygge and I'm sure you've heard of it. It's become something of a hype in the past year. Whether it's a myth or a way to sell books, all I know is the concept of enjoying these short days and long nights is one I need and maybe you do too. Here are some suggestions on how to (and how not to).

I hope and pray your week is full of good, constructive conversations about our President elect and the state of our country. After spending Friday in the city we call home for now, touring the Capitol, the Botanic Gardens, and a few museums, Nate and I decided to put ourselves through a refresher education on World History. We have been working on a spreadsheet overview of it, free documentaries and films we can watch, books we can each read or read selections from, and, if possible, sites we can visit. This is our way of remembering what a brief experiment America is, and how we are mere drops in the bucket of history. I think it will take us two years, at least, to get through, hopefully longer. Anything to avoid cynicism. Our spreadsheet is incomplete, but if you want to take a gander (or if you have suggestions for additions!), here's a glimpse at it. Below, you can see the Capitol building through the leaves at the Botanic Garden (which I have decided, is surprisingly best visited in the fall).

Celebrate Christmas with Me

I grew up with good, normal, American Christmas traditions, but in my late teens and throughout all of my twenties, my family went through a deep and visceral fracturing that did not leave holidays unscathed. For most of those years I distanced myself from any family holiday gatherings because it felt like taking sides in a war I couldn't win. It may not make sense to some, but it often felt like the choice between walking into a war zone or pretending the war didn't exist—and selfish as it may seem, the way to survive for me was to not choose sides with my presence. For most of the those years I was co-opted into other family's gatherings, an extra seat at their table, a pair of socks or a book or nothing under the tree for me. I was so glad to be there, though, that gifts mattered little to me. I wanted the feelings of the season, the reminder that even though my world felt broken, there was hope and wholeness somewhere. What I learned, spending Christmases with so many different families, is that hope and wholeness exists in Jesus alone. Every family was a mere shadow of the family yet to come. This freed me on the cusp of my thirties to begin crafting traditions of my own, whether or not I would ever have a family of my own. I didn't want to wait for marriage to begin traditions; I wanted to start now. I began to craft them on my own, and invited others into them. Those traditions helped build on the traditions that Nate and I are now making as a family.

I know it's only the beginning of November, but some of my Advent traditions begin in late November, so I wanted to share them with you now so you can get a head start.

The first family who invited me into their family Christmas makes these every year. They are so popular in our hometown, that nearly everyone makes them. Here's a funny story: I was once at party where they were served and where one of our pastors and his young son were. After trying a few of them, another attendee leaned over to my friend, the pastor, and said, "You might not want to let Jack have any of those cookies," pointing at the Rum Logs, "I think someone spiked them." We all had a great laugh afterwards. These are alcohol free but you wouldn't know it from the taste. They are our favorites and they never last long.

Last Christmas a friend introduced us to Good Earth Sweet and Spicy Tea and I have not turned back. I drink both of the caffeinated one and the decaf one almost every day throughout the fall and winter. It is my favorite drink without question.

A few years ago a family from my church invited me to Andrew Peterson's Behold the Lamb in Dallas. I was spellbound the entire time. Not only was the performance funny, somber in all the right places, and felt like being in a living room with the musicians, it was poignant and felt so full of expectation. I've tried to go every year. Here is the list of cities it's coming to this year. Go. You won't regret it.

Partially because Christmas has felt more sad than hopeful for me every year for the past fifteen years, and partially just because I think by nature I tend toward being more melancholy during the winter months, I find I'm less of the Holly, Jolly Christmas sort, and more of the In the Bleak Midwinter sort. I have to not only listen to the deep and soulful music, but also the fun and jovial sort. But I also find my heart swells with expectation when I let it enter into the darkness we would feel without Christ. Young Oceans Christmas album has been a constant for me the past several years. Also, I am loving Christy Nockles new's album, A Thrill of Hope this year.

A few years ago Russ Ramsey released Behold the Lamb, a book of readings leading up to the birth of Christ, and I have always gravitated back to it in December. He's a very descriptive writer and you feel like you're right there with Mary when she gets the news, with Joseph in his dream, with the Shepherds by the star. But he's also deeply theological, and there's some convicting work in this book of what it means to follow the babe born in the manger.

One thing I've noticed about myself around Christmas is I tend to get fixated on a certain song or certain passage of scripture and it plays on repeat for me. This isn't bad of course, but a book I've come to appreciate each year is Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas. It begins in November and some days the chapters are long, sometimes they're just poems, sometimes short observations, and they're all by different authors, so it doesn't feel dry or the same every day. I cannot endorse the theology of each one of the chapters, but if you're a discerning reader, I think there's some great food for thought in here.

Last year for my birthday some friends in Denver took me out for breakfast and gave me this candle as a present. December felt really dark to me last year for a lot of reasons, but this candle felt constant and its scent strangely just gave me hope. It reminded me that we were not alone and that a great Light had come. Plus, purchasing these candles supports cool things. And they last so long. I've had a few now and they've all lasted longer than other candles of similar size.

Nate and I have been in purge mode for the entirety of our relationship (moving from Texas to Colorado to Virginia and soon (hopefully!) to Tennessee in only 16 months makes you pare down your belongings pretty quickly). We also have been formulating some principles behind gift-giving and, if the Lord gives us children, how we want to instill generosity but also intentionality in our gift-giving. For us, right now, we've adopted a four gift rule with a catchy rhyme. It's working for us, and helps us be really mindful about what we're giving and why. Something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read. 

If you know me, you know I'm adverse to shopping almost always, but especially at Christmas time. I will do almost anything to stay away from malls, Target, even grocery stores during December. About a decade ago, though, I realized I was always forgetting gift-wrapping until the last minute—and I realized I was spending $30+ for just a few gifts to be wrapped and then unwrapped (likely the next morning because I procrastinate...). So I started looking at those brown paper bags from the grocery store a bit differently. Recycling and avoiding last minute wrapping rush and fitting wrapping into my philosophy of simplicity? I have been wrapping my gifts in brown paper tied with bakers string for over ten years now and I don't see that tradition ever changing. Some years I stick a sprig of evergreen or rosemary in the string, some years I've wrapped up a bit of bark or a candy cane. I mix it up a bit, but it's usually always the same. This helps me keep it simple. It also helps me remember that everything under the tree is just a thing. It's special for a season, but it is still ultimately just a thing, and someday will be recycled itself. I don't know about you, but I need all the reminders of that that I can. I saved some images on Pinterest over on my Traditions board so you can get some ideas. My best advice is just look at what's around you and make it work. Save money, time, and still make it special.

. . .

I hope your Advent season is rich and full. And I hope if you're still unmarried you don't wait for a spouse and children of your own to start traditions. Start now, even if they're just small things no one knows about but you. Redeem this time, even if redemption in this season feels weightier or harder than it might appear to be for others. And if you're a parent, remember this, the things I remember most about Christmas when I was small are the oranges and Granny Smith apples in our stockings, the oatmeal breakfast with craisins and cinnamon, and waking up to a cold house but a warm home. I cannot recall even one gift I received throughout my childhood, though I know I had them. I remember the presence of my parents and the warm simplicity of our home and holidays.

Jesus Holds Shaking Leaves

Today is Election Day 2016. I haven't been alive for very many years, but in all those years this has been an Election year for the history books—and today, that comforts me. I heard someone say a few weeks ago: In 100 years none of us will be here. I felt very, very small when I heard him say that, because, well, I am small, but also because 100 years is nothing really. Our country itself is only two and a near half of that. The times that 100 years have passed away in history is staggering when I think of all that has happened. I am not saying we are inconsequential or that our actions or inactions don't matter, but I am saying, we're not as strong as we think we are.

I came downstairs this morning and saw this little leaf clinging to my kitchen window screen and thought of the song by Rich Mullins:

Sometimes my life just don't make sense at all When the mountains look so big And my faith just seems so small So hold me Jesus, 'cause I'm shaking like a leaf You have been King of my glory Won't You be my Prince of Peace

And I wake up in the night and feel the dark It's so hot inside my soul I swear there must be blisters on my heart Surrender don't come natural to me I'd rather fight You for something I don't really want Than to take what You give and I need

And I've beat my head against so many walls Now I'm falling down, I'm falling on my knees And this Salvation Army band is playing this hymn And Your grace rings out so deep It makes my resistance seem so thin I'm singing hold me Jesus, 'cause I'm shaking like a leaf You have been King of my glory Won't You be my Prince of Peace You have been King of my glory Won't You be my Prince of Peace

And I thought that today maybe we all needed to remember how we are dust, leaves dropping in the autumn of history, clinging to screens for dear life, hoping yet another announcement or news program or article will offer the hope we're looking for, but maybe we also needed to remember that our King Jesus holds leaves too.

Tomorrow morning we will wake up with a new President Elect and our King still on the throne. That's good news no matter what.

Shame, Sanctification, Singleness, and Marriage

When I was still unmarried and wrote about singleness a lot, sometimes I'd get particular responses from people who'd been single a year or two longer than me OR twenty years more than me, "Yeah, just you wait...it gets harder." I was trying to be faithful with what the Lord was teaching me and I felt ashamed that I wasn't 36 or 37 and single, or 55 or 60 and single. It seemed like there was no good age to be to talk about the difficulties and the blessings of the season in which I was called to by God.

Now I've been married a year and I've heard from married folks things like, "Just you wait, it gets harder," or "You've experienced nothing yet," or with eyes being rolled, "Honeymooners..." and more.

Or from single friends, "As hard as it is, at least you get to have sex," or "But would you really trade marriage for singleness again?" or "At least you get to live with your best friend," and more.

And I'm realizing, I'm walking in shame about whatever season of life I'm in. God called me to be sanctified in singleness until the year 2015, and then He called me to be sanctified in marriage, and who knows what the future holds. I have been married for a mere 16 months, easily the best and the hardest 16 months of my life. God is still sanctifying me deeply—and in many ways this time of sanctification feels more painful than it did when I was unmarried, though I know ahead of me there will be times when the sweetness of the season makes it worth it.

I don't want to be ashamed of the fact that I was unmarried for 34 years, many years longer than many people and many years shorter than other people. I'm not ashamed of the fact that God gave me a rich season of singleness that I love to talk about and testify about to others in that season. Singleness was God's best gift to me—and I said that often while I was in it, so it's not some nostalgic longing for yesteryear that has me saying it now. I longed for marriage, prayed for it, but tried my best to be faithful to what God was calling me to that day.

I don't want to be ashamed of the fact that at 35, I've only been married a year and while most of my peers are coming into their second decade of marriage, I am still a baby at it. I don't know how to do it well, but I also take great delight in it. Please don't say to someone who is newly married, "Just you wait." You have no idea how they are being painfully cracked open and splayed out today. You have no idea what kinds of identity they're wrestling with. What things they are grieving. When you say, "Just you wait," you're telling them to live in fear of tomorrow.

My favorite quote from my favorite thrice married woman is this: “This gift for this day. The life of faith is lived one day at a time, and it has to be lived—not always looked forward to as though the 'real' living were around the next corner. It is for today we are responsible. God still owns tomorrow.”

What is your today? What is the today of your friends and neighbors? Instead of warning them of the trouble to come (which no mere man can ever predict either the extent or the circumstances), get into their messy beautiful life of today. Ask how you can pray for today. Ask how you can encourage them while it's still today. Ask the Holy Spirit how He might have you minister to them today. Some of my present day heroes are women in very different circumstances than I, still unmarried at 55, just married at 50, a mother of nine and a mother of two, an unmarried 22 year old. They're all living different stories, but all faithfully binding themselves to the anchor of God and the ship He is steering. I want to be like that and I want you, whatever season you're in, to be like that.

I am praying for you today, for this gift for this day.

Really, Truly, Deeply? Really?

I read a quote from two of my favorite people the other day: "In a gospel-centered marriage, we can be really, truly, deeply known and at the same time really, truly, deeply loved." I've learned more about the gospel from one of those people than anyone in my life so I'm reticent to push back on this idea, but it wouldn't be the first time I've given him a hard time, so here's my careful pushback to this common idea in the church. 1. Even within marriage you will never be wholly known by one another. 2. Outside of marriage you are still known and loved.

Within earthly marriage, which is a beautiful picture of the gospel, we are still clinging to these earthly tents. We can never be truly known inside any human relationship and indeed we are not meant to be. There is beautiful ahava, a give, a love within marriage. A selflessness, a caring, a joy, for sure. But there is not the elusive juxtaposition of being fully known/fully loved. This only exists within life in Christ. When we say this what we communicate to married people is they're missing something if they don't feel truly known by the other person. And we communicate to unmarried people they can never be really known outside of marriage.

The church should be the place that gently lifts the heads of two people in a less than perfect marriage (which is all of us) and sets their eyes on Christ as the one who knows and loves them fully now, so they can be set free to love and know one another as fully partially as they're able here on earth.

The church should be the place that gently lifts the heads of unmarried people and shows them how men like Paul and Jesus and women like Lydia and Mary were fully known and loved by their Father, but fully misunderstood by the men and women around them—and yet they still pressed forward in love doing amazing acts of church planting, bearing the Son of God, miracles, and writing more than half of the New Testament.

Neither married people, nor unmarried people will ever feel as really, truly, and deeply known as the ache in our hearts tells us we ought to feel. It is so easy to paint the picture within the Church that marriage can be the nirvana of earthly existence—but friends, if marriages quells all the longing inside of you for something more, than your marriage is not actually gospel-centered, but earthly-centered. Marriage should smack of a holy discontent and a fervent desire to be fully known and fully loved by Christ alone, who then empowers us to walk by the spirit in how we love and know others incompletely.

In the same vein, singleness should meet that holy discontent in the middle and know with full assurance that waiting for marriage to feel known and loved is foolish. Start now. First, Christ does it with more ardor than any spouse ever will. Second, the relationships you have in your life right now can be some of the richest you will ever know if you will submit yourself to being known and loved in them. It's an act of submission, to be sure, letting your weaknesses be seen, challenged, and pressed into, but Christ has set a good example for you in His submission to His Father on the cross.

Friend, you may be in the happiest marriage known to man or the hardest, you may be joyfully single for life or you may be limping through every day in your wait, but you are fully known and fully loved now. Go now, and love and know as truly as you're able—albeit imperfectly—knowing the gospel is no respecter of marital status even as it displays the perfect union of Christ and His bride.

Autumn is for Reading

Whenever the days get shorter and the nights longer, I want nothing more than tea after dinner and to wear wooly socks. I bought a puzzle from the 1960s at a thrift store for one dollar and twenty-five cents last week and it is 1500 faded, musty pieces. We began working on it a few nights ago, with intermittent trick or treaters, and it will probably take us all winter if we let it. Another short day, long night pastime I love is reading, which I suppose is no secret. Here are some we've been enjoying in our home: Hannah Anderson sent me the manuscript for this last spring and I read every word then, but having the real book in my hands made me want to give another go at her new book, Humble Roots. Attention to creation, the care of it and the learning from it, is something I think we in the church need more of. A pivotal time in my faith was when a friend taught a four week class at my church in New York on creation, the New Heaven, New Earth, God's role in it, and our role in it. It was deeply formative for me. Writers like Wendell Berry, Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, Walter Bruggemann, and more began to inform my concept of the land, the food we eat, the way we produce it, and the care we give to the people walking on it. Hannah's new book is now added to that section of our bookshelves because she takes lessons from the earth, much in the same way Jesus taught through parables, and teaches her readers about humility, peace, worship, and community—all through the lens of the gospel and scripture. When I wrote my endorsement for it, I said, "This is the book I've been wanting on the shelves of Christians everywhere," and I meant every word. If you have a longing in you for roots and a certainty in you of the hope of the new earth, I highly recommend reading Humble Roots.

Until my friend Katelyn Beaty sent me her new book, A Woman's Place, the book I most recommended to men, and male pastors particularly, was Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In. Now I will add A Woman's Place to my list. Katelyn was specific in her research, articulate in her communication, and impassioned with her cause in this piece and I love this book. She not only showcases the various ways every woman works, she makes a case for a "cross-shaped ambition" much needed in the work of women today. "The ambition God invites us to is a cross-shaped ambition: to embrace our inability to have it all so that he be our all. Likewise, the contentment to which God invites us is a cross-shaped contentment: to choose to say "thy will be done," to willingly embrace our own constraints, because it is often through human weakness that God most clearly displays his power and glory." If you care about women and want to see the work of women flourish—both inside and outside the church—I recommend reading A Woman's Place.

Another thing we love to read are novels, particularly long ones. Nate had recommended a series to me which, based on the covers, I had no interest in. Call it snobbery, call it whatever, they looked like cheap beach reads for nerds. But they were also thick, 600+ pages, and that's my favorite quality in a novel, so I picked up the first one. It is called The Passage, by Justin Cronin, and I couldn't put it down. For the next few weeks I read all three every night before bed and during our Sunday sabbath time. The writing was captivating, the story was surprisingly good, and the character development was solid. I was sold. I've had a few people ask if these are "clean" and to be honest, I don't know what that means. If you want a book without any coarse language or the brokenness of humanity, these aren't the books for you, but if you want to read a compelling story of good versus evil where every good is touched with evil and every evil began as good, this is a solid series. The conclusion at the end of the third novel had me in tears. It was, without question, the best last 100 pages of a story I've read in a long time. There are three in the series: The Passage, The Twelve, and The City of Mirrors.

Happy reading!

This post contains affiliate links, so if you buy any of these books (or anything on Amazon after clicking on them), you help contribute to keeping Sayable alive and functioning. 

Shame on Me: Embracing Accusation

I like to think of myself as flexible, in spirit and person. I am naturally judgmental of myself and not of others, and prone to dissecting my inadequacies with a double edged sword, painfully and precisely. Some call this naval gazing or introspection. I am learning it can be a tool of the enemy to split the Gospel into sections, applying some to me, all to others, and none to the parts I stumble over naming. Last night we ate soup and homemade bread and in the middle of dinner pulled up a Shane and Shane song on YouTube. We don't usually keep electronics at the dinner table and by usually I mean we never do, but we were talking about shame and the enemy's ploy. I had sent this quote from Pilgrim's Progress to Nate earlier in the day and we were talking about some shame I have been carrying around like a child carries worthless treasures in his pocket: sticks, stones, names that really do hurt you.

“Shame tells me what men are, but it tells me nothing of what God or the Word of God is," said Faithful. 

It seems to me we're all carrying shame in some fashion. (Shame is different from guilt, although we often confuse the two—guilt is a true reminder of what you have done, shame is a cloudy reminder of what others or you perceive you have done—but neither are too far gone from the expansive cloak of the gospel.) Few of us will take the time to tell the difference between shame and guilt, and even fewer will raise our hands and say, "That's me. I am stumbling under the crippling weight of shame." It is so shameful, see, to confess shame. For the guilty it is easy to point to a specific instance in which the sin was committed, to say, indeed, I have done the thing. But shame? Shame slinks and crowds and cordons and points and laughs and we all feel like blind men groping in the pitch for something to feel guilty about because the shame is too much to bear without a certain wrongdoing to make right.

We can repent for what we did wrong, but it seems impossible to repent for the compulsory constant feeling that we've done something wrong. This is shame. Guilt sends you to prison. Shame keeps you out of it but makes the whole world a prison. You cannot go anywhere or see anything without a pulsing reminder that something isn't right. This is shame.

Years ago my pastor said when the enemy comes and tells him he's a failure, he's wrong, he's terrible, he's a loser, he tells the enemy back that he is right. He is all those things, and more. This is why the gospel is such beautiful news, he said, because all the things the enemy says about him are true—even worse (lust is as adultery, hatred is as murder!), but Jesus. Sweet Jesus.

Somewhere along this year I've had my head down so far I could only see the strewn failures behind me, there is nothing I can do to make any of this year make sense or be made right. I feel shame about marriage, my body, my fear of violence, our loss of financial security, our home, church, all of it. There is not anything in life unscathed from shame these days. If you note something beautiful about any of it, the thing quickest to my lips and heart is how I have failed at all of it. And this won't make sense to almost anyone, but it makes sense to the enemy and he has taken every foothold he can in the process. And you have places just like that in your life today too.

Last night, that quote from Pilgrim's Progress, the song from Shane and Shane, my best friend reminding me that whatever accusations come my way are true, but not as true as the gospel which covers them all—these things are raising my head, slowly, surely, reminding me of truth. If this weighty shame is not telling me something about God or the Word of God, then it is not of Him, it cannot be.

This morning I read in Colossians and circle all the times the word "all" appears and it is many. The first chapter is full of them, they're everywhere. I am reminded that there is no part of my heart or soul that is not covered completely by the gospel of Christ, whether a true failure or a percieved one, His grace is enough. It is all and enough.

The Kind of Wells We Find at Home

I had promised myself to post more here these days. To be a hunter of beauty and a finder of joy in a season where everywhere we look are reminders of fracturing and fragility. I don't really believe that, though, I think. Lately I've been reminded of how whole and perfect and beautiful things are and are becoming. Staying away from the angry articles and interviews and response blogs and angry response blogs and retweeted tweets is helpful for that though. Eternity really is written on the hearts of men, but I guess sometimes we think hell is eternity and not heaven. I've been grateful for heaven this past week. I went home and on my way there I sent a text to Nate: "Where is home for you?" I asked. "If there's anywhere in the world that feels, smells, tastes like home, where is that, for you?" He responded a bit later. "Virginia or D.C., I thought, but now that we're here, it doesn't. Maybe Germany. Not Turkey. Not New Jersey. Not Michigan. Not Georgia. Maybe Texas, I lived there the longest. What about you?" I wasn't sure how to answer but as I continued to drive north and the bite of cold worked its way into my bones and the leaves grew more and more brilliant, I knew it was here, or at least here was the way to home. Eternity is written on our hearts, but earth is worked into our soles, embedded there with soil and leaves and tastes and scents of home. And so, I went home for a few days and it was lovely. New York in the fall always is.

While I was there I made it my aim to spend time with two women I love and with whom my time is always too short when I stop there for a few days. We had good conversations and talked about hard things. Mostly they talked and I listened but I felt my heart swell with love for both of them. And I also felt it swell with the kind of admiration I want to have for more people and don't. They are walking through hard, hard, hard things and doing it well. Broken, sad, hurting, questioning, but this is the kind of well I think more of us need to draw from. The deep and aching sob of hurt reaches down past the normalcy of everyday, the kinds of days full of predictable nonsense and unexpected joy. These wells are deeper than that and rare to find. I think of the book of Psalms, the 84th chapter:

Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage. As they pass through the Valley of Baka, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools. They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion.

The valley of Baka, or Baca, means the valley of tears, and another translation says, "They make it a place of wells." This is what tears do, if we'll let them. They pool in us deep caverns of proven grace, proven character, and a proven God, and they become wells. Spring rains bring life and flowers and greens everywhere, but autumn rains pull the dead and dying leaves from their stark trees, making dead things seem deader. But the poet said once, "Be like the trees. Let the dead things drop."

The dead things, I find, for me these days, are feelings of shame, fear, uncertainty. It has been a rocking year, one I would never repeat if offered prizes of greatest worth. Shame has been my constant enemy and fear its close neighbor, tears have felt at times like my only friend. But if I can just let this valley of tears pool itself into wells, I know there is sustenance to be found there. I believe it with all my heart.

. . .

I was glad to arrive at the weekend with no knowledge of any election news, no interviews with famous Christian women, and a naive belief that God was repairing and preparing this world instead of breaking it. I dipped my toe into the latest for a minute, but found the well of my tears a better pool to swim in these days. Here are some beautiful things I've read this week:

From John Blase (whose poetry you should be reading, and whose letters to Winn you should also be reading): I’ll never forget that rainy day I wore my Scout uniform to school not knowing our meeting was cancelled. Those were halcyon days before group text messages and reverse 911s.

From Cloistered Away: Training sounds like such an intense word, but all it is: reestablishing the order and peace of the home. The goal isn’t to lead perfect lives; it’s to heed the red flags as helpful guides letting us know some things need to change. Today always offers a fresh start and new mercy. When life feels chaotic, here is what we do to cultivate peace in our home again.

From Literary Hub: Writing is facing your deepest fears and all your failures, including how hard it is to write a lot of the time and how much you loathe what you’ve just written and that you’re the person who just committed those flawed sentences (many a writer, and God, I know I’m one, has worried about dying before the really crappy version is revised so that posterity will never know how awful it was). When it totally sucks, pause, look out the window (there should always be a window) and say, I’m doing exactly what I want to be doing.

This quote from George Eliot in her Letters to Miss Lewis keeps going round and round in my head. I read it many years ago think of it every autumn. I hope you love this season as much as I do, and if you don't, I hope someday you do. Just because, no reason, just because. Below is a photo I took at home. I stood there and was reminded me of her Delicious Autumns.

Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love - that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one's very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.

Link Love for your Weekend

I know people have lots of opinions on "social media fasts," but here's what we know and are coming to know more: our souls are fragile things. Not the eternity kind, the kind that stays forever with Christ the King in the new heaven and new earth—those souls are eternally secure. But the earthly soul we carry around with us in our tent, the kind that is prone to wander, to weep, and to wonder. The soulish part of us that is so affected by things like the seasons or how much protein or sleep we're getting or the poem we just read or the poem we wish we could write or person who won't pay attention to us or the crowds we pay attention to—that part of us is the soul of which I write. Ours were wilting under elections news and Whole 30 recipes and CNN and theological how-tos and how-not-tos. We found it time for a break for our family. This morning, after being off Facebook and Twitter for the better part of the week, I found myself delighting in a poem I read this morning and a book about maps and this quote from Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water:

It is interesting to note how many artists have had physical problems to overcome, deformities, lameness, terrible loneliness. Could Beethoven have written that glorious paean of praise in the Ninth Symphony if he had not had to endure the dark closing in of deafness? As I look through his work chronologically, there's no denying that it depends and strengthens along with the deafness. Could Milton have seen all that he sees in Paradise Lost if he had not been blind? It is chastening to realize that those who have no physical flaw, who move through life in step with their peers, who are bright and beautiful, seldom become artists. The unending paradox is that we do learn through pain (pg. 67). 

I have felt that deeply in this season. There is something in all the pain of this year that God wants to teach me if I will press myself into it and not away from it and that paradoxical way of life is, as I said a few days ago, antithetical to our nature. It is, in a sense, super-natural, above nature, and only empowered by the Spirit of God alive in us. For the atheist pressing himself into pain is masochistic, but for the Christian, it is following in the steps of their Savior. The world tells me to pull away from pain and sometimes the Church tells us to live our best self now, to also pull away from pain. But the Bible says, "He who will gain His life must lose it," and if we believe the Bible, that is the phrase we cling to in the darkest time, seeing what art God may build of our shambles.

. . .

Here are a few things I read this week that I loved and hope you might too:

From Mary Oliver: But just as self-criticism is the most merciless kind of criticism and self-compassion the most elusive kind of compassion, self-distraction is the most hazardous kind of distraction, and the most difficult to protect creative work against. How to hedge against that hazard is what beloved poet Mary Oliver explores in a wonderful piece titled “Of Power and Time,” found in the altogether enchanting Upstream: Selected Essays.

From my friend Danica: You’re stuck at home. You’re not doing anything fun with your life. You can barely play through a Chopin waltz! You’re always saying No to people — don’t you think they have a low opinion of you? And so on and so on. But I am learning, and it is this: Every time I am haunted or taunted by all of the “NOs” in my life, I remember — those are simply the result of a huge, resounding Yes!

From a link I found while unfollowing 200 Instagram accounts this week: Then I grabbed another Pop-Tart (frosted strawberry this time), unfollowed all the food bloggers and world travelers and muscular princesses, and went on a hunt for regular moms with a beautiful eye. You guys? It's been life-changing. It does what social media is supposed to do - bring us together. When I scroll through Instagram, I feel part of a community, even if they don't know I'm there.

And here are two verses from a passage of scripture I've been thinking about this week, as I pray for myself and pray for my friends:

The Lord makes poor and makes rich; he brings low and he exalts. He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor. For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and on them he has set the world. I Samuel 2:7-8

I hope your weekend is rich, full, and emptied of the things that steal your eyes from Him. I will be spending my weekend enjoying being back in a place with beautiful autumn colors, like these we saw yesterday on our way to a hike in a nearby forest.

When the Dark Night Seems to Have No End

I've been wondering, these past few weeks, when did it become a sin to be sad? We have become little band-aid applicants, carrying them with us everywhere in the form of advice, counsel, scoldings, and, for those unwilling to soil our hands, corridor whispers. We are faster than an ambulance in our rush to clean the scene, sweep away the proof, and move on to bigger and better and happier things. Does anyone think, I think to myself, how silly it is to do such a mediocre job when what is needed is surgery only God can perform? Two verses, but mostly the same, have played on repeat for me in this year of sadness (Is it okay if I say that out loud? I have nothing to prove, nothing to preach, and nothing to lose.). They are from the book of Jeremiah (that great Lamenter for whom we seem to have little use in happy, clappy modern Christianity):

From prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace. (Jer. 6:13-14 & Jer. 8:11)

It is against our nature, I think, to apply pressure to a wound, everything in us wants to be soft with another's and softer with our own, to handle with care or kid gloves or not handle at all. But the greater temptation is to cover a wound lightly and call it healed: out of sight, out of mind.

I don't know when exactly the gauging came, but this morning I read my husband's text in the still dark morning and send my own back. Our prayers are staccato sorts: Help. Pray. Please. Love. Sorry. Forgive. Forgiven. Love. Love. Love. Marriage is beautiful, but sin crouches at our door waiting to pounce and we must rule over it, even with staccato prayers in still dark mornings (Gen.4:6-8). But how did we get here? How did the wound grow from small and tolerable paper cuts to tears on the way home from church and pulsing guilt for the seeming missteps of our year? We both believe in a sovereign God, don't we? Why then would we falter for one second even, in our belief that He directs our every step—even if it feels like we've fallen into a ravine and there is a cliff above us and a rushing river below us—death no matter where we look.

Maybe this isn't you. Maybe you're one of those happy, clappy Christians who has never fallen into a ravine or had to scale a cliff or navigate roaring waters. I don't envy you, although I suppose I should. My pastor used to say, "Suffering is coming for us all. If you haven't experienced it yet, it's coming for you." And I used to believe it had come for me and I had gotten through it okay. I was wrong, and there's probably more ahead. The truth is I don't understand the happy, clappy Christians. I really don't. I don't understand those who would heal a wound lightly (though I've been guilty of it a time or seven), thinking it would be enough to have paid attention for a second and then washed my hands of it, having done my part smartly enough.

There are so many things this year I can't even begin to tell you but they all mount one big awful offense: God cannot be trusted. I'm horrified to say those words at all, and especially horrified that the offense hurts me worse than it hurts Him. It also isn't true, and I know this with every fiber of my being. But the arrows carrying their deceitful message come flying still. Who here hasn't felt the flaming arrows of untruth come battering down on their weary souls? If you say you have not and will not, I beg you to read the accounts of Paul again and then talk to me. What I cannot figure out, though, is how stalwart he stayed through it all.

What I am saying is the same as what Hemingway once said, "This world breaks everyone," and also "And afterward we are strong at the broken places." But to pretend the brokenness and the broken places don't happen or don't hurt or need to be fixed speedily or need some form of happy, clappy Christian healing with immediacy, is to lie, not only to the wounded, but to yourself most of all.

It is no sin to be sad. I have believed that theologically for a long time and it is being tested in the crucible of truth now. Can one be sad and still trust God? Can one mourn and still know God is good? Can one weep and still know morning is coming? Can one grope blindly in the long night without one single doubt that God stands there, somewhere and certain, in the sea of darkness?

I have thought those things might be possible and now I know they are. My sadness is not a sin, but I will not call "Peace, Peace" until the heavy hand of healing is applied all the way through.

. . .

Maybe you are sad today too, maybe the dark night of the soul has lasted far longer and been far darker than you thought, or maybe you know someone for whom that dark night is their reality. Nate and I watched a film this week where the lunacy of the main character was not portrayed as such from his perspective. To him, his friends were not imaginary, they were as real as he was. We remarked, at the stunning conclusion, how it helped us to have empathy for our friends walking through forms of depression, lunacy, and irrationality in a way we might not have had before. Their pain is as real to them as our pain is to us. I do not need to feel their pain precisely to understand its reality. I pray for this for us all.

Everyone you meet today is carrying some hidden weight, and the temptation to make your own greater in comparison, or to overlook theirs for laziness or fear, will be great. I beg you today: Do not heal a wound lightly, your own or someone else's. Do not cry, "Peace! Peace!" simply because you want their sunny disposition returned. Sit across from them and ask what hurts and don't offer counsel or advice or bandaids, ask only for the Savior to be near, because His word says He is and He is the only One who can heal all the way through to the other side.

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted     and saves the crushed in spirit. (Ps. 34:18)

Four Ways Unmarried Women can Encourage Their Married Sisters

Before I got married and was asked to write on singleness every other day, one of the questions I'd be asked often was, "How can married women encourage their unmarried sisters." I thought a lot about this question because I think it's a good one, but also because it can be easy to forget some pains of singleness once the vows are said. In order for us to truly mourn with those who mourn and rejoice with those who rejoice, it takes a great amount of empathy—entering into the sadness, fears, and joys of our sisters and brothers in Christ. What is unfortunate, though, is that the question is rarely flipped the other way around. "How can unmarried women encourage their married sisters?" I think this is perhaps due to an incorrect view that those who are unmarried are somehow lesser than and therefore need greater amounts of encouragement than those who are married. This simply isn't true. What is true is that an unmarried person has distinct and perfect gifts designed by God for their season, and a married person has distinct and perfect gifts designed by God for theirs. No one is less than, or has less than—though it's hard to believe that as an unmarried person who longs for what your sisters and brothers have through their spouses.

I know even as I write this there are those who are saying, "Well, of course you can say that, you're married. I'll bet it didn't feel like a gift when you were single!" To which I'd reply, actually, it did, and not just in hindsight. Yes, I felt the lack, and yes I mourned the reality that I might never have children or a husband, but it didn't make my unmarried life any less rich than my married life is today. If you're still disbelieving me, I encourage you to tend to the affections of your heart; if having a spouse is the pinnacle of joy for you, then your heart has settled for idolatry.

In hindsight, though, there is still one regret of my singleness: I wish I had encouraged, or known how to encourage, my married friends better. I prayed for them, loved them, tried to be specific about helping them and encouraging them when I knew how to, but I wish I had not looked at their lives and seen a form of completion that somehow (in my mind) negated my words and presence in their lives. There was a perception that the season they were in did not need my particular brand of encouragement as a single. I was wrong. Just as I needed their prayers, encouragement, vulnerability, and friendship, they needed mine.

Here are four ways the unmarried can encourage the married:

1. Fight the lie that says to you their lives are complete in a way yours is not.

This lie is not only damaging to you, it is damaging to them. Marriage does not complete a person, but when you believe it does, you remove the opportunity for them to be vulnerable about the ways marriage presses on them in difficult ways. If your answer to their struggles in marriage is always, "Well, at least you have a husband," the lie that can play on their minds and hearts is, "They're right. I have a husband. I shouldn't be struggling with this gnawing feeling of incompleteness." Now you're both believing lies. The truth is you are both complete and whole in Christ, nothing more, nothing less. The truth is also that you are both wholly incomplete in Christ, awaiting your final consummation with Christ. This is a beautiful truth if we can truly wrap our minds and hearts around it. Complete and not complete, but both in Christ, not in marital status.

I have really struggled with this in marriage because many of my still unmarried friends so long for marriage that they assume I can't possibly understand the struggle anymore, or I feel guilty talking about difficulties in this season of my life as though I'm not allowed to still struggle. God is doing a work on me in this area and I'm trying to be faithful to holding marriage up as a source of joy (though not the pinnacle of joy) while also being honest about the very real angsts within it.

2. Ask them probing questions about their marriage.

There has been an idea that one's marriage is somehow off limits for discussion. Perhaps you grew up in a broken home and any conflict meant divorce was around the corner, or perhaps you've heard men and women alike complaining about their marriages, or gossiping about their spouses. I've experienced both. There can be a paralyzing fear that if we talk about struggles we are having or our husbands are having with anyone, that we are slandering them or exposing our marriage.

The best thing for sin is to be exposed to the light, for the Holy Spirit to minister and heal, and for reconciliation to come. But often times as unmarried people, you can feel inept at asking those probing questions without seeming like you're digging for salacious details. I'll never forget being in a group of friends with one recently married and one of the other girls asking our newly married friend all kinds of details about marriage, sex, routines, etc.. I was embarrassed, but mostly because my newly married friend was embarrassed. But years later when that marriage had dissolved, I wished I'd asked more questions along the way. I wished I'd helped to be a minister of reconciliation instead of a bystander who thought I couldn't ask probing questions. You may not have all the answers (and in fact, none of us do), but hearing honest words about the difficulties within marriage can help dissolve the Hollywood version we all have in our heads—and God may use you to help heal brokenness along the way.

Here are a few questions that would be helpful for you and her: What does leadership and submission look like in your marriage? How does it make you feel? What is the hardest thing about being a wife? What are you afraid of in your marriage? What brings you joy in it? In what ways was what you were taught in the church right about sex in marriage? In what ways was it wrong? How can I pray for you and your husband today?

3. Pray with them about their needs and desires.

Something happens when I pray. I don't mean God always answers my prayers. I mean something happens in me when I pray. My heart is softened and becomes more understanding to the plight of another. I can talk for hours about a particular angst or fear or whatever I or someone else is struggling with, but the moment I say, "Father," and follow it with an earnest prayer, my heart changes. I don't mean this in a mystical way, I just think it's the Holy Spirit in me communing with the Son who intercedes on behalf of me to our Father in heaven.

When you bring your own longings, fears, and angsts to the fervor behind a prayer for someone else, something settles within you. You are able to understand and sympathize with a friend—in whatever season of life they're in—matching your longings ache for ache.

One of my good friends has a baby right now and a tiny apartment she longs to be out of. I am renting a home but ache for a baby. We are able to have what the other longs for (in a way), but pray for the other as though we both long for the same thing because we understand what we ultimately long for is God. Pray with your married sisters—even if you think they should just be happy with what they have because it's what you want.

4. Rejoice with them when their dreams are fulfilled.

I've told this story a hundred times before but for the past six years I had three friends who all struggled with infertility. They each mourned differently and struggled in unique ways, but we prayed and cried for one another in the lack of what we desired: a baby for them, a husband for me. Within a year, we saw all of those prayers answered for each of us in various ways. I'm not saying this is a guarantee for everyone, but it was a sweet picture of God's attentiveness toward each of us and because we had been faithful to love and encourage one another in our particular season, we were able to rejoice with a fullness we wouldn't have had before.

It is much harder to look with jealous longing at a friend who has what you want when you've truly entered into her mourning when she didn't have it. The safeguard against jealousy is not coveting all the more what our neighbors have, but rejoicing with them when they get it. This is a blessed safeguard and an opportunity more of us should take. Rejoice, as fully as you're able, when God answers the prayers you've both been praying for them.

This has also been a struggle for me in marriage because most of my closest friends are still unmarried. I have struggled to rejoice around them because I fear my happiness will lead to their sadness. God is teaching me to model joy for earthly gifts while at the same time keeping Christ as my constant joy at the center.

. . .

In many ways these are things we all need to do with all of our friends, but many of us do them more easily with those who are in the same season as us. It is easier to pray for a husband with a friend who longs for one too. It's easier to understand infertility when you're walking through it too. It's easier to counsel difficult seasons in marriage when you've walked through them too. But crossing outside of those boundary lines can bring, I might argue, a better more lasting blessing.

I know it's hard to fight the lie that your married friend has everything you want and doesn't need your encouragement, but I beg you to fight through it, set your truest affections on Christ, trust He supplies every need according to His riches, and assume the position of being the answer to your friend's need. Your joy will be greater, I promise.

Leaving and Cleaving to the Local Church

I never thought I'd be the girl without a family, the willingly orphaned. We left Texas in tears, reading our congratulatory wedding cards on the drive to Colorado through weeping and intermittent sobbing. By we, I mean me. I love my church family in Texas, never have I left a place looking behind me as I did there; pioneering is in my blood, forging ahead, new, change, adventure. By the time we came to the end of our time in Denver, our first year of marriage was forged in the fire of unemployment, miscarriages, violence, financial loss, and a church leadership crisis. There was no one reason that pressed us out, but the compilation all the reasons made it easier to leave. We looked eastward and hoped for home.

. . .

When I first signed the membership covenant at my church in Texas six years ago, I did it with a confident flourish. My life had been changed there, my understanding of God rocked, settled, firmed, and set to rest. I would have signed my name in blood if it were an option. This was how committed I was to seeing my family thrive there. Years of struggle, walking through imperfect discipline with imperfect people, rubbing up against imperfect leadership and failure to do things the way I envisioned didn't change my commitment though. Every year, when the time to renew came, I signed the document with joy and confidence. This was my family and family will always fail you, but you don't back away, you press in. I was the church membership girl, her biggest evangelist.

When we arrived in Denver I asked about signing something, a promise, a covenant to this new body, but I was co-opted in, it seems, by virtue of being employed there. It never felt right with me, but nothing in my life felt right then, everything was new and different and I didn't know which things were wrong and which were just new. When the email came from my Texas family a few months after we left, telling members it was time to renew, it broke my heart to archive it knowing I was saying "No" to them and still didn't feel like I was saying "Yes" to anything else yet.

Augustine said, "Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Him," but sometimes that rest comes through commitment to a people and a place, and sometimes it takes a long time to get there.

. . .

Before I got married I would encourage my single friends to not view the church as some sort of social gathering or authority setting, but instead to view it as family, through and through. I believed strongly then (and still believe it for my friends) that if God had marriage for me, then it would come through the family of my church. This was an unpopular view, but I held to it without wavering.

Then, one day, in the foyer of my family's home, with our family milling around us, I met him. It was without incident, without much notice, without care. I noted his beard. He noted my recent travel overseas. We shared a few words of conversation not knowing that less than six months later we'd be sharing everything with one another. I didn't know it, but there, on the threshold of my family's home, I crossed the threshold of my married home.

. . .

We have been in D.C. now for seven months. We live in a neighboring city twenty miles as the crow flies from Capitol Hill. But for the same reason I swore I would never live here, it takes Nate a generous average of three hours a day in travel to go to and from work in the city each day. That travel time is the same reason it has taken us nearly seven months to settle on a church home, and it was not the church home we envisioned when we moved here.

We moved here broken, hurting, limping. We felt the weight of failure in every direction: our ability to hold a job, keep a job, love the church, carry a baby, feel safe, pay our mortgage, and more. No illusion of comfort was kept. We felt the fracture down to our core in a way neither of us had ever felt before. Some thought we were pining for what one pastor called, "Our hot ex-girlfriend" of a church, the thriving family we had in Texas, but the thought of comparing my family to a hot ex-girlfriend, a once and done, a flavor of the week is abhorrent to me. She was my family—still is my family, if we believe there is something spiritual about the church covenant (and I do). But that actually wasn't even what we longed for at all.

We wanted a quiet place, a family that had been pastored for 30 years by the same man who didn't use social media and who didn't care about who you knew; a place that was elder-led by an equality of elders. A still and small place, a local place, a place where we could mourn and not be judged, a place where we could weep in the back row and not be rushed to counseling or medication or quick fixes, a place where we could just say, "Hey, we're broken right now and just want a family." But we couldn't find that place and the searching grew wearisome, week after week our search taking us farther from our local village. Finally we heard about a church that would be planted in the fall and we came to know the pastor and his family. We decided that if what we wanted wasn't possible, maybe God could use us in their lives and them in ours as long as he had us here, while we made plans to relocate to a smaller city. Their friendship is a sweet one, and a needed one. He is pastoral and gentle and vulnerable and fun. She is strong and wise and kind and a friend. We love and are loved by their children. It was not the family we envisioned, but it was the family God set us in for the time we're here. The church is a month old this week.

. . .

I was telling a friend the other day that in all my years of singleness I never once felt my lack of a husband the way I have felt my lack of a church family this year. I wish I could somehow communicate this to my yet unmarried friends—the longing for a nuclear family is not wrong, and there is something beautiful and dear and illustrative of God's family in a nuclear family, but your church family is—I promise you this—a more lasting and better family than the one you envision or the one you have.

I thought I understood this before, but I have really come to understand it this year. I love my husband and would not trade him for anything on earth, he is a gift to me brought in God's time and God's way. But I ache for my church family in a way I never ached for a husband before I knew God would bring me Nate. God does not promise earthly marriage to us, but He does promise family to us, and the Church itself is God's promise of marriage and a family. It is the promise that Christ is coming again to bring His bride home. It is the promise that He is making all things new. It is the promise that on earth we are spotted and blemished and imperfect and terrible at so many things, but He is washing us with the water of the Word and He is coming to perfect us with His presence.

Friends, there are a thousand difficult things about finding a local church, compounded when you're married and you need to agree on those things with your spouse, but as imperfect as she is, and incomplete as she feels, she is God's design for covenant on earth. She is the opportunity to practice what God has made perfect in the new kingdom and new earth. I am still struggling with this reality in ways I haven't in years. Last night Nate and I talked long while the candles burned low, about the ins and outs of church membership and church membership here and there and what God has taught us and is still teaching us and it was good, but hard, but good.

Something that is true of marriage that is also true of life in the Bride of Christ on earth: disagreement about next steps or future living or big decisions don't have to mean division, they just mean you talk a little more, listen a little more, ask more questions, pray more, seek understanding more than you seek to be understood. The church is like any other family in that way: work, but oh what a good work.