How Do I Know if I'm Settling in My Search for Spouse?

For a lot of years I thought I was going to have to settle for a husband. I was never the girl getting asked out dozens of times and having to perfect my "I think Jesus is calling me to be single...for now" refusals. I dated occasionally, lots of first dates, usually with men I knew fairly well already, but nothing ever really seemed to fit. I began to think maybe my expectations were wild, maybe my requirements were too extreme, maybe I was waiting for some guy who didn't exist. 

I don't know when it happened, somewhere in my 33rd year, but I began to believe being single was actually better than all the mid-life marriages I was surrounded by. Many of my friends were getting divorced or on the brink of divorce or just sort of "meh" about their spouses. I heard more about how hard marriage was than about how good it was. I watched couple after couple face circumstances they didn't expect and end up in the arms of another or just passively facing life together as roommates. I knew that wasn't what I wanted, but I also knew I was getting older and the pickin's seemed slim. The question, for me, became not "Should I settle?" but "What is settling?" That's a hard question to answer for any unmarried person because it doesn't really have a solid answer. You have nothing to compare what not settling looks like because, well, for obvious reasons, that person isn't on your radar. There were plenty of guys I admired for their work and theology ethic, and for their love for the local church and their families. But either they were married to someone else or they hadn't noticed me in any fashion. It was easier to answer the first question (Should I settle?) than to answer the second: What is settling?

It turned out that I didn't need to ask the question or find the answer, because at the proper time and not one minute sooner, Nate and I began to have conversations.

Friends, there was no spark. There was no voice from heaven saying, "This is the one." There was no giddy butterfly in my stomach fluttering up into my heart. There was no chorus of angels announcing my wait had come to an end. There was none of that. There was not one bit of assurance that this guy would be anything other than a guy with whom I had a series of cool conversations about pacifism. The question of settling didn't come into the equation, it didn't have a chance to, because in the space we'd embarked on, I began to think of him as my friend.

Without doubts, without questions, without "What ifs?" Nate was simply my friend. I won't deny there was the hope of something more, but there wasn't space for it to breathe, not much. Not really at all. He was so completely clear with me from the very beginning that it was friendship, and not until he picked up his phone and called me to ask me on a date, could I assume it was anything more. And once it was something more, he continued to use his voice to ask me on more dates, ask me how I felt about continuing to date, and then ask me to marry him. And since then, there have been thousands of more asks from him to me. 

He was not the first to ask me on a date, but he was the first for whom there was a complete absence of doubt for me. People ask: "When did you know he was the one?" I never knew he was the one (I don't even know if there is a such thing as one.). What I knew was day to day to day to day, I was going to walk forward as long as I had faith as it led me to the altar. And then, only then, would he become my one, the question of doubts and fears and what ifs and expectations always taking a backseat to the vows we said standing in front of our friends, family, pastors, and elders. 

We have a really beautiful marriage. It's not perfect. It's not without disagreements or failures or misunderstandings. But it's a really beautiful marriage built on a singular point: faith. Not faith in one another to never fail us, but faith in God that we came together without doubts, with the confidence of our church family and elders, with the joy of our families, with the cheers of our friends. There was faith that we weren't settling. 

God, in his goodness, gave me a husband beyond any of my wildest hopes and dreams, with specificity and precision, with attentiveness to my needs and my wants. God crafted a husband for me as specifically as he crafted me himself. I have not one single doubt that my beloved is mine and I am his, and I never have had one doubt. 

I wanted to say this because since we've been married, I've encountered so many couples for whom doubt was a big part of their dating and engagement. A feeling they couldn't flee from, an uncertainty they couldn't get past, a sense they couldn't shake, a feeling of settling. Or there were doubts of others: concerns of immaturity, fears of unequal yoking, desires to protect from what seemed not good. And yet, they got married just the same, and every day since then their marriage has suffered for it.

These marriages began on what they could see and feel (looks, money, chemistry, security, appearance of godliness), and not on what they could not (faith from God and in God, hope from God and in God, love from God and in God). They made a pragmatic decision to marry for whatever reasons, and now their marriages have suffered for it. It might have seemed to them and others that they were not settling as they said their vows to one another based on appearances, but deep in their hearts they were settling for less than "perfect peace" (Isa. 26:3). 

Listen to me: if you are married or will be married, there will come hard times when money will be scarce, looks will falter, houses will be lost, jobs will be gone, churches will be difficult, and children will be a source of ache: what sustains you in those times is that strong and certain faith in the God who drew you to one another. If you married your spouse, or they married you, without a certain faith and an absence of doubt, ask God today to give you the gift of faith that this is your beloved and ask him to give your spouse the same gift of faith. God wants to give you that gift! He's longing to give it to you. 

If you are unmarried, trust God. You will know you are not settling because there will be not only an absence of doubt in you, but an absence of doubt in them, and an absence of doubt in your community.  If you do not have community, then do not get married. I mean this. Wait. To get married without a strong, loving community who will speak truth to you even if it's painful, is to invite trauma into your marriage before you've even started. If you feel the presence of doubt, the question of whether you're settling, might that be the Holy Spirit, protecting you from future angst and trauma? Marriage is so full and so fun and so wonderful. I want that for you, but you have to want it for you and you have to believe it can exist for you. God wants to give good gifts to his children! Believe that he wants to give you bread and fish instead of a stone and serpent. 

Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?  If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! Matthew 7:9-11

The enemy is crouching at your door, waiting to devour you. He's waiting to devour your singleness, your future marriage, or your present marriage. Do not give him a foothold by moving forward without faith. Trust the Lord: it would be better to remain single than to be in a marriage headed for divorce as soon as the vows have been said. 

*I also recognize that there may be some couples who thought they had this absence of doubt in themselves and their community and moved forward, only to find themselves in a train wreck of a relationship today. I ache for you and pray God would show himself to be enough for you in the wake of disappointment, failure, and sin. He is enough. Put your faith in HIM and not in a fixed, healed, or whole marriage as you would see it. I'm praying for your marriages today. 

Sowing in Tears: Vulnerable Bloggers and the Crushing Whirlwind of Fame

Nate and I first heard Andy Crouch talking about the relationship between authority and vulnerability on Mike Cosper's podcast, Cultivated, several months ago. I ordered Andy's book, Strong and Weak, immediately, Nate finished it a few weeks ago and I finished it this morning. If you've read anything by Andy, you know he's remarkably talented at communication and articulate in a way the church culture today needs. Today's thoughts are born from what I'm learning through Andy. 

In the past decade or so we've seen an uptick of tell-all, self-described Christian bloggers and storytellers, particularly women. There are some common themes in their writing: they're funny, they're sacrilegious in the sense that they'll talk about anything, they seem common, relatable, real. It's something that was missing in the buttoned up culture of Christianity most of us came from. And it's refreshing in a way. It also tastes like sewer water in a way. But it's refreshing until the sewer water aftertaste comes. Most of these tell-all bloggers have gone from Christian-lite to Universalism or embracing new doctrines, and eventually being famously farewelled. 

What is refreshing about it is there is a kind of vulnerability present in the beginning. Sure, it's from behind a keyboard in a house far away, but the writer is tapping out her treatise dressed in last night's pjs and yelling at the dog to stop barking and ran out of coffee yesterday, but plunks on with her piece. There's a vulnerability that's appealing about that: they're real people with real problems and probably have bed head too.

There's also a vulnerability that can be manipulative though. It's the sort that only opens the shades enough so the mess can be seen, but not enough that the writer is actually vulnerable. It costs nothing to tell you I'm writing this in my pjs with the dog barking at the neighbors and drinking chai tea wishing it was coffee. To be a tell-all blogger costs virtually nothing. We can wax eloquent about our reputation and how painful some people's comments can be, but most of us well-adjusted adults can still go to bed and sleep fine because all that cost is out there, not in here. 

To be truly vulnerable, there must be risk involved, and risk comes with the people closest to us, the ones who matter most to us. If we use vulnerability as a tool, or even a shield, the world sees us wield and we get our jollies from it, it's not real vulnerability. It's manipulation—gaining approval, gaining a following, gaining a title by being real, authentic, etc.. 

John says this, "He must increase, I must decrease," and that's an awfully difficult thing for any communicator or faithful worker of any sort in this world to do today. By virtue of our work, we run the risk of increase. How does one decrease—embrace true vulnerability, the sort that involves risk with those closest to us and never becomes a platform on which our ministry is based, because our boast is Christ alone—and yet also be faithful? Especially because one of our callings as Christians is to show the world we are not better than them, that Jesus came for the sick, and that we all are in equal need of Jesus. How do we be weak and in our weakness become strong, without outshining the strongest One of all? 

I don't know the answer to that, not fully. But I think it looks a little like saying "I don't know" when asked questions we really don't have the answers to. It looks like saying less when we might be expected to say more. I think we can expect some growth, perhaps explosive, perhaps incremental, but we should also expect to be able to say "I can't be faithful to love Jesus and people, and have things in my life I refuse to lose." I think it means never getting to hob-nob with the big folks and maybe never getting noticed by anyone but the Master of the house (Who's waiting, with joy, to say "Well done, my servant."). 

If you're reading blogs or books or going to conferences and gushing over how vulnerable the communicators are being, ask yourself what the cost to them truly might be. You probably don't even know, and might not even be able to see until decades later when their kids are grown or their marriages have been through hell or they confess they've become an addict of drugs or alcohol or their ministry falls out from underneath them. 

. . .

There was a period last year when everywhere I looked in my life there was pain and loss and I could barely breathe as I walked through it. Yet I kept writing through it, trying to find redemption quickly. I thought it I could redeem something bad quickly enough, then it would become good. But a wise friend and fellow writer said this to me: 

"I have often marveled at how detachedly you write about all you're going through on your blog. Seriously, though, I wonder if writing about all this for the public while in the middle of it serves to exacerbate the emotional distancing. Writing inherently distances us from our inner life simply through the process of externalizing and reifying it. I wonder if this might contribute to that kind of detachment."

The cost to my writing vulnerably was unseen except to those who knew me personally. It might have seemed to you that the cost was in people knowing my junk, but that's never felt like much of a cost to me. The real cost was to my soul. Writing quickly about what was going on was taking a great toll on my emotions, spirit, and mind. I had to take a break. And I did. And it was really helpful to me, and I hope, really helpful to you, the reader. 

If you read and love a blog, a book, an author, or a speaker, and marvel at how much they just get you, they feel kindred to you, ask yourself at what cost is their story coming. You're not responsible for how they wield their gifts, but you are responsible for how you wield your listening and worshipping. The truth is real vulnerability takes time, a lot of it, and there probably won't be a celebration but a crucifixion that follows it.  

One of my new favorite writers is Anne Kennedy, and she said this about these sorts of leaders: "Don’t be fooled. The woman reaps what she sows. Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy, but those who sow the wind won’t get anything back but a destructive whirlwind on the last day." 

I want to be one who sows in tears—quiet, real, deep, agonizing, and vulnerable tears. 

The World Spins Madly On, but Find Joy

It has been nearly nine months since I pressed mute on the clamoring crowd and invited in the poets and home-makers and song-singers and the unknown pastors. I made it my aim to listen to the folks who were just going about their days, practicing quiet faithfulness in a world gone rogue. Here's what I've found there: joy. 

I unfollowed the instagram feeds showing me their perfect salads day after day because when you're in the middle of moving for the third time in two years who has time to make a salad with every color of the rainbow? I unfollowed all the obvious Republicans and Democrats on Facebook—if I could tell their political leaning by their status, I unfollowed. I muted all the pithy pastors and wanna-be-published-ers racking up their followers on Twitter. I mostly stopped mindless scrolling and but mainly stopped mindless clicking. I stopped reading anything on the Big Christian Article/Blog Sites unless I knew the author personally. I wanted to be as woke as the next person, but I could not sacrifice my soul on the altar of information, and my soul was wilting. 

Instead I started reading fiction again (I'm super into mysteries right now, like this and this.). I started making salads when I could, but also was just a-okay with eating a PB&J for the seventh day in a row because everything was packed. I started reading non-fiction that didn't beat me over the head with All The Things Wrong With This World and instead stuff that was interesting to me as a person and a human (Like this, and this, and this. Oh, and this.). I opened my bible before I opened Twitter most mornings. I found myself genuinely sad when tragedy hit, but not really sad or surprised when the next political brouhaha happened. I gained a gross distaste in my mouth for quick Christian articles that are a dime a dozen. I read blogs about making homes and preserving tomatoes and folk music and the process of illustrating children's fiction and rural pastoring—the slow, faithful work of being. All these people, doing what they were made to do, and finding such joy in it. 

I expected to find monotony and boredom, wondered what people were writing about when they weren't trying to get hits or likes or link-backs or their fifteen seconds of fame. I expected to find simplicity, deep thoughts, and intentionality, but I didn't expect to find joy. 

It's pretty brilliant what you find when you're not waiting for applause or note or double taps. You begin to find joy in the way the sun coming through the curtain hits the wall not just one day, but every day thereafter. You're amazed by it day after day. You pay attention to the ombre of an overwatered leaf and to the cadence of a sentence and not just the content—and in these, you begin to find joy. 

My friend Steve said this yesterday, "The day you stop trying to do the thing God gave to others and instead do the thing God gave to you is the day your contentment blossoms." It's an awful lot like what dear old Beuchner said, "The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet." Or what the master said to the faithful servant in Matthew 25: "Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master."

Don't you want to enter into the joy of your master? I do. I really do. But I can't do it if I'm following naysayers around at a rate that would make our ancestors go mad. There are probably a lot more of me, maybe even you, out there right now, and I just wanted to check in and say, nine months in, it was good decision for me. If you're considering it. If you've grow battle-worn and are walking around limping with your arms and legs so battered they're numb, check out and check off. Shut it down. Close it. Unfollow (Even Sayable. Seriously. If this place is just noise for you, click that unsubscribe button. I admire you for it.). 

Some books that are helping and have helped me in this little journey (And seriously, the best way to start this journey of unplugging from the mass of media, is to engage in media that fills that gap and points you in the right direction):

The Tech-wise Family (short, solid, very practical)

12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You (mid-length, readable, and practical)

The Big Disconnect (long, full, very informative)

Abundant Simplicity (mid-length, solid, and convictional)

Morning Bible Reading and Manna for Today

I used to believe that a regular morning routine was out there somewhere in my life. Maybe it would come when I finished college. Maybe when my job didn't require so much of me spiritually. Maybe when I lived in a quieter house. Maybe when I got married. Maybe when I got better sleep. Sometime in the past few years I've realized that just isn't going to happen. Ever. People might say life is what you make of it, but sometimes life just makes you, doesn't it? 

Life reveals you. It finds you out. It sneaks up on you with pranks and cranks and crabs and empty bags of coffee beans. It just doesn't take long to be thrown off rhythm, feel overwhelmed, and to just throw your hands up. I have been there, friends, I am there in many ways. Life just hasn't felt kind to me the past few years and finding a time to read, reflect, pray, praise, and memorize has felt like me trying to solo backpack across the Sahara. I've got the supplies in my pack, but I haven't got any idea how to this. 

There is such a wealth of Bible study tools out there and such a deluge of books to read on why studying the Bible is good, and often times I find it easy to get caught up in what they all say I'm supposed to do...and feel guilty when for whatever reason I can't. I'm going to tell you what I've found works for me, over many years of practice, and having to throw out a lot of "best practices" to find the ones that are sustainable for me.

I love deep Bible study, but I find what I need for deep Bible study is the constraint of a class or gathering or a group of people. I need that accountability. This is the way I've been created. However, what sustains me and actually brings me joy in the day to day grind, is not deep Bible study, but daily manna. Enough. Just enough. It keeps me coming back the next day wanting more and more and more, and often times leading me to a time when I'm able to get back into deep study of the Word with others. But not every day can be that time. I just wanted to say that because I think there is a deep thirst for the deep Bible study and we ought to pursue it, but there are just some seasons when the constraint and accountability of a class isn't available, and we still need the Word. 

My daily routine (right now) looks like this—and it may seem like grazing to some people, but it may seems like over-eating to others. Take what helps you, leave what doesn't. God knows what season of life and change you're in, and He never changes. 

Most weekday mornings I have my beverage of choice in hand and am sitting down by 6:45. I'm trying to gradually move that earlier and earlier. I read my Scripture memory card one time (currently Psalm 34:13-14). I read my daily growth card one time, asking God for help. I open my small notebook and write the passage of Scripture I'm rereading (Currently Amos: my best practice for Scripture reading has been to read the same book over and over, sometimes 20 times over the course of a month or two, one chapter a day.) and the date, and I write O, I, & A down the side (Observation, Interpretation, and Application), leaving a space at the bottom for a prayer. I read one chapter from Amos, make some observations about what is happening in this passage. Then I make some interpretations about the character of God, the character of man, and where Christ is seen in the chapter. Then I apply this to my today. Then I write a short 2-3 sentence prayer. All of this takes less than 30 minutes. 

After I read Scripture, I'll read a chapter from a book (right now The Gift of Being Yourself by David Benner), open my daily notebook, see what's on the calendar for the day, what's on the menu for tonight, and what tasks I need to do. Sometimes I'll pray as I do that, asking God to help me be faithful, to see him as sufficient, and for the Spirit to lead me as I work. Nothing fancy, just breathing staccato prayers, as I call them. Help. Thank you. Please. I praise. 

I know there are some of you with six kids and chickens in the yard and a baby nursing, and there are some of you getting up at 5am to navigate hellish traffic on your way to the office, and some of you for whom mornings are really difficult, facing the day feels heavier than most of us can fathom. I want you to know that today, as I read Amos 1 again, reading how God protects what is his and disciplines those who come against it, I prayed for you. I prayed that the things battling against you, attempting to obliterate your areas of strength, your trust in God, and your clarity of mind, would be crushed by the Lord and his Spirit would comfort you in the process. He cares for you. He knows the season of life you're in and the things you can't bear, and he's bearing them for you.  

Maybe a long, deep drink from the well of his Word seems impossible today, but if you can get a sip, take one. Stick an index card in your back pocket with a piece of Scripture on it. Meditate on it while you wash dishes, while you're at the red light, before you rise up. God knows you are dust, he made you out of it. Do what you can, with his help and comfort. 

Bread for the Body, Hope for the Soul

A week ago Monday we got a new bed (king, Tuft and Needle), we started taking a conglomeration of supplements, and I got some specific prayers prayed over me. This week was full of joy, hope, good sleep, and a sense of peace I haven't had in a long time. What came first, the supplements? The sleep? The prayer? I don't know, actually, and whenever I've tried to put my finger on the source of the peace, it eludes me. 

This past weekend we took almost four days to just completely rest, turn off our few electronics or leave them at home, read a few novels and a few non-fiction books, get our hands dirty in soil, swim (and scrub) in our pool, take a spontaneous trip to a suburb of Dallas we both love, slip into church and slip out, take some inventory of our health, joy, fruitfulness, and marriage, and just spend some good time talking through some things we needed or wanted to. It has been the most restful four days I can remember.

I've been thinking a lot about health the past few months. Mine hasn't been at its best for over a year. Doctors couldn't put their finger on it and so it's just felt like a giant mystery. The whys mount and the answers aren't found, and meanwhile the rest of my body has suffered for the lack of answers. But alongside this physical body, there's also a spiritual one and an emotional one, and those three are more intertwined than most of us acknowledge. I have felt at times paralyzed in all three of those areas this year and have struggled with the limitations. 

Yesterday as Nate and I drove home from a gathering we talked about how the recognition of our limitations is actually a really healthy thing and if all the past few years have been is simply that, we're okay with it. We are not superhuman or invincible, we're not saviors, we're not the strongest or wisest person in the room, we're not the most healthy physically, we're not the ones with all the answers. This has been a humbling journey for both of us and, on this side of things, we're able to see how the aching, humiliating, and longing has brought us into a better place. 

There have been days over the past two years where the spiritual, physical, and emotional manna I wanted to horde wasn't available, and I've just had to subsist on what I knew on that day. God is good. God is faithful. We are weak. We do not have what it takes to see this through. We have failed. We are hurting. And yet, every day brought new manna. I can't explain that kind of goodness and I can't understand it—and in many ways, if I'm completely honest, I don't want to repeat it. 

The past few weeks have felt like the morning before Sabbath when the Israelites were given the double portion of manna (Exodus 16). They still weren't given enough for the whole week ahead, but they were given enough hope for tomorrow and strength for today. I feel that hope and strength coming back to me. 

I feel it when I speak with others, sharing God's faithfulness and listening to their stories, their pains. I feel it when I wake from a good night's sleep. I feel it when I remember we're fighting a spiritual battle and those take different kinds of prayers. I feel it when I am able to think and speak clearly. To be candid, I feel it in my entire body, as the physical symptoms begin to come into focus and I can stare at them freely, without shame, without confusion. 

Maybe you're in a Sabbath weekend right now, enough for tomorrow and today, clarity coming quickly and answers abounding. Or maybe you're not. Maybe it's Monday or Tuesday or Thursday, and you're wondering if God is hearing and answering and coming and bringing and healing. I don't know that he is because he did and is for me. I know that he is because that is who he is.

He promised to never destroy his people and he's not destroying us, even as we feel chipped away at and refined in every place. He's pressing, but not crushing, wounding so he can heal, lighting fire to so he can burn away what's not eternal, pruning so you can grow, but never destroying the parts of you that image him. 

I'm praying for you today, if that's you. God isn't surprised by our anger or sadness or disappointment. He isn't. He's not surprised by our lack of faith or the presence of doubt. He's not swayed by our bad theology or—get this—our seemingly perfect theology. God is a Sabbath keeping God. He keeps the Sabbath for himself (Gen. 2:1-3). He keeps it for you (Ex. 31:13). He made it for you (Mark 2:27).

Sabbath is coming soon. And until then, today's bread is enough, I promise you, it is enough.

The Tyranny of Waiting

There have been times I thought patience a gift of mine, and other times I couldn't see past the thing I'd fixed my gaze upon, desperate for the kind of relief I thought it would bring. I've never been foolish enough to assume perfect happiness or contentment would come with the thing itself, but I did think it would abate the wait. 

"Yes, but would you trade the thing you got," a few friends and acquaintances would say to me, when I would try to say how the thing didn't bring the satisfaction I thought it would. The question pricks at my skin and heart and I want to protest, and so doing, betray a defensive heart: I wouldn't trade it for all the world. But that doesn't mean it has brought the infinite joy and satisfaction they still imagine it would in their own wait. 

Because there is always something else for which to wait. 

This, the tyranny of the wait, is the plight of all—no matter your age, location, weight, marital status, parenthood status, career, or pursuit. We are all waiting for something and the thing for which we wait seems to both suffocate us and crush us in our waiting. 

Twelve wants to be twenty-one. High-school wants to be college. College wants to be career. Career wants to go back to college. Single wants to be married. Childless wants to be with child. Stay at home parent wants to be an empty nester. Elderly wants to be young again.  

I have never met a fully satisfied person and I have never been one either. 

I have been thinking a lot of Jesus in the gospels this week, trying to point the way to the kingdom to a bunch of bumbling fools who followed him around waiting for the big hurrah and nearly missing it when it came. This is like the kingdom, he says, and this way to eternal life, and I go to prepare a place. This way, he's saying, again and again. The psalmist said, "Look up! Look up!" All some way of saying "You're thinking too small, you're settling for too little, you're messing about with mudpies in the slum because you cannot imagine the holiday at sea [Lewis]." 

We're so desensitized to the wait because so many have what we want that we imagine it is normal enough to get, and once we have gotten, we set our eyes on another wait. I've fallen for it myself. I got marriage and after bumbling about for a few years, we've got a home, and kids would seem next. Well, we tried for kids from the start and it just didn't work out like we thought, but now we've been thinking lately: how much of our "What's next?" is prescribed by culture and expectations, and not by the tasks put in front of us by the sovereign God of the universe today? 

I want to be a waiter, an expectant, active, jubilant waiter. But I want my wait to be for the One Thing and not the many things. God is a good Father who gives many good gifts, but not because we make lists, giving them to him and staying on our best behavior. He gives them to us because he's good—not because we are. And no amount of cajoling, pleading, or pointing at those to whom he's given the gifts will force his hand. He gives because he's good and withholds because he's good too. 

When my friends and acquaintances ask, "But would you trade the thing you got?" I want my answer to be, yes, I would trade it for the One Thing we're all waiting for: Jesus. 

O Lord, we wait for you;
your name and remembrance
    are the desire of our soul.
My soul yearns for you in the night;
    my spirit within me earnestly seeks you.

Isaiah 26:8,9

I don't know what you're waiting for today, to grow up, to settle down, to have financial security, to get married, to have babies, to get good news, for your son to come home, for your husband to see you, for a hug, for a promotion, for joy. I don't know what it is, but God does. He sees and knows and is attentive to you in it. He also wants you to want him more than you want the thing you want.

That thing? It won't satisfy. I promise you it won't. I know this because I have never met a satisfied person. We're all still waiting, so let's all wait for the One Thing together. 

When Being Ourselves Means Bearing Bad Fruit

I left Texas two years ago, strong, able, capable, and sure, in the delirium of vows and on the cusp of summer. I came back here weak, knowing my frailty, and my failure ever before me. Limping more than running, praying more than proclaiming.

A week ago I sat in my car with a friend, though, and she said I seem stronger, surer, less fearful of the opinions of others. I went home and asked Nate, "Is this true? And if it is, am I gentle or unkind in it?" We had a fine talk and he said something that hasn't dislodged itself since then: I think one reason you might be stronger is because you've spent the past two years living with someone who encourages you consistently to bear the fruit of the Spirit instead of the fruit of your own sin. 

For 34 years I lived with 42 roommates. With the exception of a few homes that weren't perfect, but sure full of joy and fun and mutual service to one another, most of the homes I've lived in were reaming with dysfunction. It's hard to press that many sinners together in such close quarters without all sorts of insecurities rising up, proclivities pushing out, and humanity running over. Those places were bastions of sinfulness—not because we weren't mostly trying to walk in grace by faith, but because we were at varying places in the long walk of obedience in the same direction.

There were days I cried myself to sleep under the weight of shame I had at my failure to love all those girls fully, my own insecurities rising up and cursing me and others. And other days I cried myself to sleep because I was doing my best to love—even in tough ways, and all I received in return was the hurt that hurt people cause. It was painful. Really painful. It was good, don't get me wrong, and I wouldn't change it if I could, but there were days when it was excruciating and when I felt my whole self was being sucked up in the vortex of the sin of others—knowing they could very well be being sucked up in mine too. 

Here's the thing, though: I thought that was normal. I thought that's how every home functioned.

I thought in order to feel at home, everyone in the home needed to be free to express their best and worst self, but the result was often that they were free to inflict their worst self on others. I thought being at home meant I could be lazy when I wanted or indifferent or I could close the door when I didn't want to face the dysfunction outside it (but couldn't hide from the dysfunction inside it). I thought it meant bearing the brunt of the shouts and screams of others, the slammed doors, the cold shoulders, and the willful selfishness. In my sinfulness, I thought that was normal. 

A friend told me recently the person she feels most like herself with brings out the worst in her, and I ached inside. We believe a lie when we believe "being ourselves" means permission to be angry, manipulative, indifferent, and unkind, in the presence of the one with whom we feel at home. 

Of all the challenging things I've found inside marriage, one hundred percent of them are the fact that my own selfish inclinations have no place to hide—and they also have no place to express themselves. They're suffocated to death (and rightfully so) in the presence of one who lives and walks by the Spirit, bearing the fruit of the Spirit, and always encouraging me to bear it as well. There isn't space for us to lash out toward one another or "be ourselves," because that's not who we are. We're children of the living God. We're sons and daughters. We're chosen people. We're royal priests. We're a people for his own possession. What gives us the right to live as though we're children of the enemy? Expressing anger or giving a cold shoulder or manipulating others or preferring ourselves over others? Those are the fruits of the enemy. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control. Those are the fruits the children of God bear. 

I'm weaker than I ever thought I would be, but there is a strong and certain confidence in me born partially because it's the first time I'm living in a home where "feeling like ourselves" isn't our currency. I've died a thousand deaths over the past two years, death to selfishness, death to preferences, death to priorities, and in all that pruning, fruit has begun to grow. 

I don't know if you're unmarried or married, a mother or a sister or a brother or a friend, but today, I'm praying that the areas of our lives where we're grasping to "feel like ourselves" or "express ourselves freely," would begin to die today. If we're children of God, we know "to die is gain," "unless a kernel falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit" "sown in weakness, raised in power," and on and on. So much of this upside-down kingdom means dying to what feels comfortable, not getting our preferences, setting aside our expectations or desires, and being raised to walk in the glorious freedom of self-forgetfulness. I'm praying that for all of us today. 

How to Pray When You Don't Know How to Pray

Suffering comes in waves, I find, in multiples of two, six, ten, eighty. Never one at a time, trickling down the side of life. On Monday everything is fine, but it is Friday now and a boy has been killed and a friend is miscarrying and a family I love is fractured and another friend is in the hospital and a girl I know is afraid of some consequences and more friends faced the end of hoping all things and another friend is running away from those who are trying to love her. It's a tattering, shattering, clattering week. I cannot contain the sorrow, it falls out like a floor beneath us and overflows like a sea that drowns us. 

I am sitting on the back patio and I have just pressed end on my cell phone. What do you do when there is so much stuff of life crammed into fifteen minutes two-thousand miles apart? Where do you even start to pray?

I have learned this year to pray staccato prayers: help, thank you, please, I'm sorry, I worship. The Father has no need for the flowery sort of prayers, perfectly formed with pristine theology. Those sort of prayers are more for us than for Him. It is right and good to learn to pray (To the Father, through the Son, with the help of the Holy Spirit.), but at the end of it all, when our snot and tears mingle and the choking sadness is too much to bear, staccato prayers will do. He knows it all before we say a word. 

David said this, 

You yourself have recorded my wanderings.
Put my tears in your bottle.
Are they not in your book?

If the sovereign God who has recorded our wanderings and gathered our tears in a bottle, kept track of them in his book, cannot handle our staccato prayers (Help. Thank you. Please. I'm sorry. I worship.), he is probably not the God of the Bible then, and instead a god I've made in my own image. God, the real God of the universe, can handle the smallest and shortest sufferings and the largest and longest. He has sent His Spirit in order to, "help us in our weakness, because we do not know what to pray for as we should, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with unspoken groanings." 

If the Spirit himself, the God, intercedes with unspoken groanings, I think he can handle our staccato prayers. 

Help. 

Thank you. 

Please. 

I'm sorry. 

I worship.

I think you have most likely slammed up against suffering of your own this week because suffering never comes in small doses but in multiples of two, six, tens, and eighties, You're pressed up against some of these same people or the same people by degree, plus people of your own, maybe your own suffering. I'm praying now that we would be strong enough to be weak pray-ers, knowing the Spirit surrounds, above, below, around, within, making what is weak strong. 

When the Ordinary Feels Anything but Glorious: housework and the housewife

I suppose like almost anything, we have a version of what something might be like that is invariably different than what it is actually like once we're one or two years or weeks into it. Home-making is one of those things for me.

When I was in my early twenties, wont to reading poetry about laundry, stories about bread-making, and looking longingly at my married-with-babies friends while I trudged through my office job, I thought home-making was a high and holy calling with warm smells and constant joyful feelings. When I crossed the threshold of marriage, I started working out of yet another office a week later. Dinners still felt hasty, chores filled the margins, and I thanked God repeatedly for a husband who made it clear from day one that dishes would be his job so hold my peace about it—and I have. 

When I was single I lived with no fewer than three girls at all times and so chores were a shared burden, the only laundry I was responsible for was my own, and meal-planning was more of group texts trying to get at least one night a week for us around the same table and less budgeting, shopping, and menu planning. Now that I've spent a full year working out of the home both at housework and paying work, I've discovered a growing dislike of all the laundry, mopping, sweeping, and dusting. Things mound up and it isn't until I see Nate wearing smart wool socks with his dress shoes and scrounging through his t-shirt drawer that I realize, "Oh, the laundry..."

I'm sometimes embarrassed that I'm a stay-at-home wife now, as though we have to have kids to justify me staying at home and working out of it. The question, "What do you do all day?" looms heavily and when people ask, I sometimes stumble over my words. I do stuff all day, but not the stuff that seems to matter, not the kind of stuff I used to do, meeting with people, writing ferociously, preparing speaking engagements, thinking through women and singles in the church. I do a bit of that still, but mostly, I take care of our home. Before marriage that seemed mysteriously glorious, but in reality? It's hard. Not the work itself, but the junk it reveals in my heart about satisfaction, joy, glory, selfishness, and laziness. It has been one of the most revealing part of marriage for me personally.  

Housework in marriage isn't better, but it's different. And there doesn't seem to be much glory in it. Before marriage, I didn't take my glory in it and it didn't matter because no place was solely my home. Now our place is my domain. Nate works hard out of the home and I work hard in it. And, just like any job I've ever had, there are days I'd trade if I could. It doesn't feel very glorious to fold the same dish-towels every week or sweep the same floor, especially one like mine that just seems to grow dirt. It seems less than glorious, it seems hopeless because it's never done. 

Courtney Reissig reached out to me a few months ago to do an interview with her about working from home as a new wife in preparation for her new book, Glory in the Ordinary's, release. I had a few minutes last night to read through the book and I read it cover to cover in an hour or so. I wasn't sure what to expect because more How-tos and cleaning schedules and promises of fulfillment aren't what I need in this home-making journey. I am not fulfilled in this role and what I love about Courtney's book is that she doesn't pretend we ought to be. She and I have similar struggles in house-work and her vulnerability about it in Glory in the Ordinary was disarming and helpful. The book is full of scripture supporting the necessity of work but also the difficulty of it—which, I don't know about you, I need to hear. The glory in my work is not for myself or even for my home, it's for God, which means what matters most is not how clean my corners are, how perfectly scheduled my laundry is, or how seamless my menu-planning is, but my faithfulness to the God who has called me to it. 

In my interview with Courtney, I said this: 

At the end of Little Women, Friedrich Bhaer says, “But I have nothing to give you. My hands are empty!” Jo puts her hands in his and says, “Not anymore.” I think of my life like that a lot. My hands feel empty much of the time, not because they are, but because my work feels empty or meaningless. But a friend told me shortly after I got married, “If you look around and feel torn in a million directions and aren’t sure what you’re supposed to be doing, “Care for the needs of your household,” it’s that simple.” I’ve gone back to that hundreds of times this year. What is in my hands are the needs of my household and that is contributing to society, whether it looks like it or not. Right now, I’ve been entrusted with this home, this husband, this work, this same bed making every day. That is my contribution and it is not a small one. As insignificant as Josephine March’s hands might have looked in Professor Bhaer’s, they were capable of, as she said earlier in the book, “A great many things.”

Whether you're a seasoned stay-at-home wife or a working mother, both struggling to get it all done, whether you're unmarried and trying to incorporate these rhythms into your life now or an empty nester whose house stays clean for the first time in years, I recommend picking up Courtney's new book. Its themes ran through my mind and heart all morning as I set aside a chunk of time to tackle some as yet unorganized closets, wash our linens, and sweep the floor—again. This work is working something, not just in our home, but in me. 

Glory in the Ordinary just released yesterday. Check it out here. 

Unicorns, Hard Marriages, and a History of Singleness

Opinions are in plenty and so are experiences. We all have both and are rarely short on either. I have often heard the opinion that marriage is hard and will only grow harder until sometime after the halfway point, or further still, when the synergy may still be a struggle, but not more than the thought of going through life without one another. I am married to a man whose first spouse got the itch and am the child of two parents who got it too, so I know marriage isn't a cakewalk for everyone. I know ahead of us there will be dark and hard days, maybe days when I wonder what I've done and who I've hitched myself to for life. 

A conversation with the man I'm hitched to happened over the kitchen counter the other afternoon. I chopped vegetables and he, the one who can't multitask if his life or the lives of others depended on it, spoke truth to me. It seems I have a constant, pulsing fear, lurking somewhere between certainty and faith, wisdom and the future. I fear that, like those in our lives have done, we will come to an impasse someday, cite irreconcilable differences, refuse to make up, and we will have encountered the Hard Place so many talk about so often. 

We came to marriage quickly, three months from first date to wedding date. We came at it surprised, bewildered, happily, and not at all anxious. We came at it not with hopes and dreams of tomorrow, but with what we had built up until then. There's no way we could have envisioned what the next two years would bring (every manner of richer, poorer, sickness, and health), but the future wasn't our focus. Today was. And yesterday was. I could look behind me and him and see years of failure, frailty, fear, and faithfulness. I could see tested faith, submitted lives, broken hearts, and the fellowship of the local church. It wasn't what was ahead of us that determined our path, but what had come behind us. 

My pulsing fear that there is a shoe—or more likely a steel-toed boot—about to drop on us and that our marriage will go through eons of difficulty and opportunities for affairs and abuse and all manner of sin against one another, is a future focused fear, and not a past-proven faith. We came to one another with histories behind us, men and women who had poured into us, loved us, disciplined us, and when we came together with surprising speed, no one was worried about our future because our past had proven us. 

I'm thinking about this today, again, because I read an article today about being unequally yoked and, though I agree with the sentiment, that sort of article can leave unmarried folks feeling like, "Okay, but what?" What do I do? Where is this mythical creature of wit and beauty and chemistry and Christianity? Do they even exist? And if they do, where can I meet this unicorn? 

It's a very lonely place to be an unmarried Christian in the church today. It's very easy to slip through life unnoticed, your history unfolding with no one's eyes on it, your life taking place with no one to reflect on it but you. And when the time for marriage comes, it comes with muddled emotions and confusion and disappointment and a flurry of passion and wedding planning, but little to no consideration of the yesterdays that led you to that place. I've been there, friends. I don't talk about it often on here (because it was a shared story), but I got caught up in the tomorrows, the plans, the hopes, and the future, with little consideration and insight on the paths that led us there. I'm grateful God saved us both from marrying one another and led to the spouses we have today, but that history threaded through became part of who I was standing across from Nate on June 25, 2015. 

I want to live free of a fear others have put on me by saying "Just you wait," or "Those dark days are coming," because I don't think they have to come and I don't want to spend all my time waiting for the steel-toed kick. I want to be faithful with today—not to an outcome, but to the Word of God. Faithfulness in my singleness looked like submission to my leaders, joyful service in my church, faithful relationship with others, and a willingness to accept correction, and faithfulness in my marriage looks very much the same. 

If we had come to marriage with patterns of selfishness, an inability to listen, a need to be heard at all cost, arrogance in the face of rebuke, an unwillingness to submit to one another and others, and no history of serving anyone but ourselves, yes, our marriage would be hard and it ought to be. God will sanctify us and sometimes he uses marriage to do most of it. But, I think, if we let our whole lives be one stream of sanctification, when we come to marriage, marriage itself can actually be a sweet gift. Not our defining gift, but a sweet one just the same. 

I don't want to live as those the other shoe was going to drop. I want to be faithful as long as it is called today. Hard things may come, but many hard things already have come, and my sweetest spot is still next to the man who comes home to me every night. 

If you're single, planning and hoping for tomorrow, but struggling to live in today, I know it's hard, and I'm praying for you. My best counsel is get into a local church and press yourself into the hard places. Get eyes on your struggles, sins, and patterns. It will be hard, but if God gives you the gift of marriage someday, those years of sanctification working up to it will not be wasted. 

If you're married and your marriage is hard, I am so sorry. Living side by side with someone in unreconciled differences is painful, really painful. But those differences don't have to be irreconciled, or unreconcilable. God is a reconciling God, but he always doesn't start with bringing broken things together, sometimes he just starts with just one broken heart being reconciled to him. I hope today, whatever you're responsible for, whatever angsts you're holding onto, you'll turn them over to Him, trusting him. 

If you're married and your marriage is strong, that is a gift, and a rarer one these days. I want to encourage you to rejoice in that, even publicly. Sometimes I struggle to be public with my joy because I know there are so many others who haven't got it, but I want to balance out the scales of "Marriage is the hardest thing you'll ever do." It doesn't have to be, but I don't hear very many people saying it. Rejoice in the wife of your youth. Praise your husband in the gates. Don't be surprised if your house begins to fill up with unmarried folks, wanting to learn from you because most people just talk about how hard it is, and it's hard to want to learn from those folks. Shout the goodness of God in the gift of marriage to you. 

The Crushing Illusion of Control

I've never known my own weakness like I have this year, never felt more overwhelmed with my frailty. It's nothing someone has to fix or mend or preach to me about—I know the answer is to see the cross in its fullness and my place before it, but it doesn't change the feeling. Theologically I have a spot for the place of weakness and need in regard to the gospel, but (I suspect like most of us) the actual feeling of weakness and need isn't quite as beautiful as good theology makes it seem. It's an ugly spot. There's not much attractive about limping, saying "I can't," or not having any control over how the spiritual/emotional/psychological affects the physical. It's a place where arrogance can grow—a refusal to hear counsel, an intentional ignorance toward truth, and a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps exit from whatever disappoints. It's also a place where humility can grow. I'm not sure which direction is harder, but I know neither of them feel good in the moment. 

During an errand run last week I felt the now familiar panic rising from somewhere in my chest. It stems from a specific event I witnessed nearly a year and a half ago, but it was exacerbated by thirty other events happening in my life around the same time. It is an overwhelming feeling of a lack of control. Nothing I could do in that season of life could change the circumstances of our lives: I couldn't get pregnant and stay pregnant, I couldn't give my husband a job, I couldn't fix what was broken in my work-place and church, I couldn't sell our house, I couldn't make enough money to support us on my own, I couldn't fix my husband's fears, I couldn't stop the gun violence around our house, I couldn't stop the cop from being shot, I couldn't stop someone from breaking into my car—I couldn't do anything. I felt absolutely powerless to change any circumstance in my life. And it crushed me. 

We love to quote II Corinthians 4:8 & 9, "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 we rarely begin with verse 7:  "But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us."

The surpassing power belongs to God and not to us—and the moment we get that wrong (and we will, friends), we panic, we fear, we are anxious, we search for some sort of fix to give us back the illusion of control: exercise, diets, essential oils, medication, massages. None of those things is wrong in and of themselves, but they can all numb the thing we need most: to remember God is the one with surpassing power and not us. And more than numbing us, they can crush us. 

This past year I could not numb the fear. I could not fix the panic. I could not stuff down the tears or fears or emotions or dreams. I could not fix myself. The only thing I could do was go to the cross again and again and again and again and again and again. Take my crushed jar of clay, once full of life and vitality and knowledge and success, and say, "I cannot fix this and I cannot even make you fix it when it bring it to you. I can only trust that someday you will." 

Maybe that's you today, friend. I don't know. Maybe it's not. Maybe you're on top of your game, drinking your supplements and rubbing whichever oil you fancy on your feet. Maybe your bank account is comfortable and your job is certain. Maybe you can get pregnant if your husband merely looks at you. Maybe your church is nearly perfect. But maybe none of that is true for you and you're not sure where next month's rent is coming from and your knee injury is keeping you from exercising and you've stopped buying pregnancy tests because it's just a waste of money now and maybe your church is really hurting right now, limping along. Maybe you have panic attacks on the way to the dry-cleaners too. Maybe God is healing you, but it's taking longer than you wanted. 

I don't have wild words of wisdom for you today, but I read this from Scott Sauls and Russ Ramsey this morning and saw myself in it. I need to know it's okay to limp and I need to know the leaders I respect and follow limp too. It reminds me I'm an alien, but there are other aliens here too—and there's a God who is on his throne and one cross for us all and the ground before it is level and only for those who limp.

Friendship is Messy Beautiful

The other night we had some friends over and the topic of conversation turned to how well our current theological culture seems to major on theology, polity, and male/female relationships, but what a terrible job we do at understanding Biblical friendship. We might have a few good friendships, but talking about them, navigating them, being truly God-honoring (instead of self-honoring) in them, seems to be not of great concern. We major more on what not to do and how not to be a friend to certain people, different genders, other season of lifers, than we do on what to do. 

Last summer Christine Hoover, author of The Church Planting Wife and From Good to Grace, sent me her upcoming manuscript, Messy, Beautiful Friendship, and I loved it. It's a book I want women everywhere to read. To know a woman is to know someone who struggles in friendship (it may be the same for men, but I know it is true for women). How much is too much? How little? Am I enough? Is she enough? Is God enough? Did I say too much? Too little? Who is trustworthy? Who can I confide in? Who can I be vulnerable with? Who can I cry alongside? Those are tough questions and Christine does a beautiful job of unpacking them in a way driven by the truths of the gospel, while being vulnerable about her own struggles, sins, and story. 

Messy, Beautiful Friendship releases into the world today and if this is an area in which you struggle, I hope you will consider reading it. I was deeply encouraged by it and I pray you will be too. 

Below is a post Christine wrote for Sayable to give you a taste of what's in her new book. Enjoy!

Seeds of Encouragement, by Christine Hoover  

My brother-in-law Travis, a farmer, daily dips his hands in the fertile south Texas soil that is his family’s very provision. In the current season, the realized hope of summer harvest has past, the remnants of harvested crops have been destroyed, and now the soil he sifts in his hands has once again taken center stage. Alongside his farmer-father and his farmer-uncles, he has already turned, tilled, leveled, and molded the soil into neat rows and borders, preparing ready receptacles for seeds. These spring days are for fertilizing--acres and acres must be covered, and then acres and acres must be implanted with various species of seeds: sorghum, sugar cane, cotton, sesame, or cabbage.

Their work--the daily wrestling with the soil--is circadian and perennial yet has only ever just begun. After planting, they will scrupulously monitor the soil, coaxing it with aeration, searching it for even the smallest of weeds, scrutinizing it for signs of pests or worms. And then they will wait, giving time and space for the sun and the rain and the mysterious and miraculous work of seeds becoming sprouts becoming stalks.

This is hard work, and the hardest part is the waiting.

A farmer, perhaps more than most, knows something about faith. He knows he must work with the unseen end in mind. He knows he must value steady work more than fruitfulness. He knows how diligently he must watch over his growing crop, quick to rid the stalks of pests and weeds. But most of all, he knows of his need for others and their need for him, because the work is long and often uncertain.

As Travis speaks about farming, it strikes me how often he mentions his surrounding farming community. He speaks of relying on his dad and uncles, who have more experience; he speaks of relying on common farming knowledge that’s been passed down through generations; and he speaks of relying on the larger farming community: “When you don’t know what to do, if you ask around, someone is going to help you out.”

When he was first learning how to combat weeds, he says, he went row-by-row and hacked them off at the stem. His dad came behind him and pointed out his mistake: “That weed will be just as tall in a week if you don’t chop it out at the root.” A lesson regarding sin, certainly, but even more a lesson of how invaluable the help and exhortation is traded between those working by faith.  

As I consider the faithful life in comparison to the farming life, a little jolt of recognition goes through me: “Let us consider how to spur one another on to love and good deeds” (Hebrews 10:24). The faith-filled life, like the farming life, is fueled by community. Paul tells us what specifically this fuel looks like: “Let us encourage one another” (Hebrews 10:25).

I imagine in his first planting season, Travis felt uncertain and inadequate. I imagine he felt this way because it’s so often how I feel as I sow the seeds of my own ministry to my children, to my husband, in my writing and teaching, and in the church we planted. No matter how much experience I have standing at the plow, I’m still prone to uncertainty, discouragement, and weariness. There is nothing that helps me more than a friend coming behind me and giving me eyes to see and remember the crops God has given in the past, or a friend pointing ahead with assurance of the crops to come.

Many times, however, my uncertainty and weariness gives way to self-pity. I look around for friends, and they are not always there. Some of that is because I avoid “asking around” at all costs. I might rather drown in self-sufficiency than admit I need help at the plow or that I don’t know what to do about the weeds choking me. It’s important, I’ve discovered, to go to others with my weariness and ask for them to pray for my drooping hands and weak knees.

But Paul doesn’t say, “Look around for who is encouraging you.” His is an imperative: Let us be the ones to act. His command is a purposeful pursuit of others, an intentional plotting: “Let us consider.” In other words, he is much more concerned with whom we are encouraging than with where our own encouragement is coming from.

One thing I know: we’re all prone to second-guessing ourselves and exhaustion and thoughts of giving up. We’re all wondering if the work we do in the name of the Lord is having an impact and bringing him glory. Everyone is thirsty for encouragement. Other women around us are among those wondering and waffling and even despairing. They are feeling unsure of their calling, their giftedness, and their work. They may be growing weary at the plow. Let us consider how we might come beside them with encouragement:

• If a seed has been sown in you by another woman, and if it’s grown up and borne something in you, tell her about it.
• If someone willingly entered your mess and helped you till hard ground, tell her what it meant to you.
• If you see the fruits of love or joy or peace or patience flourishing in another woman, point them out to her.
• If you see another woman standing at the plow, doing hard labor for the Lord, exhort her to continue on and tell her why it matters.
• If someone has taught you how to plant and to harvest the Word for yourself, express thankfulness to her.

Friendship is built upon encouragement and exhortation, because encouragement directed toward others is a fruit-bearing seed that, once sown, grows up and offers us delightful sustenance in return. “Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered” (Proverbs 11:25). Although encouraging other women is not a guarantee of friendship, it is an invitation for friendship and a certain assurance of joy. When we encourage others, we water and are watered in the process.

Living Faithfully Instead of Fancifully in an HGTV World

Someone asked, "Why do you mostly post photos of your house on Instagram?" I'm sure they meant it as a slight, a subtle jab that there's nothing more important to me than the corners of my home. As opposed to, say, selfies in cars and in elevators and chumming with celebrities and new shoes and what we ate for breakfast and whatever hot, exotic place we happen to be now. I'm not opposed to any of those things—the pursuit of joy is good but can come dangerously close to hedonism and not the Christian kind. But that's not why I post photos of my home. 

It's easy to get suckered into HGTV and Pinterest and DIY blogs these days and the temptation is everywhere. And there's something appealing about it all, working hard, changing something from old to new, or old to refinished. I think we humans were made to remake and it's all we've been doing since nearly the beginning of time. I believe in being makers, but it's a perilous close line between being a maker and being a copier, or worse, only ever a daydreamer. I'm not against dreaming, but at some point we have to put our hand to the plow, regardless of how little we have to work with or how little experience we've garnered for ourselves, and we have to make with what we have. 

We don't have to be materialists, or its just as sneaky sister, minimalists. We don't have to have the perfect subway tile or shiplap or whatever design feature is today's thing. We don't need to redecorate with the seasons and fashions. But if we're Christians, we are intended for good work (Eph. 2:10), we are intended for faithfulness (Gal. 5:22), for quiet lives (I Tim. 2:2) and working with our hands (I Thes. 4:11), and we are intended to flourish as we tend and work and keep what God has planted us in (Gen. 2:15). 

Nate counted on his fingers last night. We have lived in five houses since we got married less than two years ago, a grand average of five months in each. Before that, for all my adult years of singleness, I lived in 22 different homes. Some as long as two years, some as short as eight weeks. But I've tried, with all my human skill, to be a homemaker right where God had me with what he gave me in that time. Sometimes it's been plenty. Sometimes it's been lack. Our call is to faithfulness, not fanciness. I have loved all my homes in their own way and that's part of what Instagram is for me, a tool to love what's in front of me and to hopefully teach others to love what's in front of them too. To see the corners. To watch the way the light hits a wall or a floor or a plant. To revel in the beauty of an earthly home knowing it will never completely satisfy because there's a heavenly one ahead, but that it will still satisfy the call on my life to be faithful with little. 

I don't know what that place is for you. Maybe it's not your home, maybe it's your workplace, maybe your co-workers, maybe your children, or maybe their childish mess, maybe your garden, maybe your closet, maybe, even, your breakfast. I say go ahead and delight in it. Prepare the feast of your delight as if the King of glory was coming to share it with you. And then share it with others. They can read or watch or look or judge or not, it's up to them. Just be faithful with your today.

It’s also like a man going off on an extended trip. He called his servants together and delegated responsibilities. To one he gave five thousand dollars, to another two thousand, to a third one thousand, depending on their abilities. Then he left. Right off, the first servant went to work and doubled his master’s investment. The second did the same. But the man with the single thousand dug a hole and carefully buried his master’s money. After a long absence, the master of those three servants came back and settled up with them. The one given five thousand dollars showed him how he had doubled his investment. His master commended him: ‘Good work! You did your job well. From now on be my partner.’ The servant with the two thousand showed how he also had doubled his master’s investment. His master commended him: ‘Good work! You did your job well. From now on be my partner.’ The servant given one thousand said, ‘Master, I know you have high standards and hate careless ways, that you demand the best and make no allowances for error. I was afraid I might disappoint you, so I found a good hiding place and secured your money. Here it is, safe and sound down to the last cent.’ The master was furious. ‘That’s a terrible way to live! It’s criminal to live cautiously like that! If you knew I was after the best, why did you do less than the least? The least you could have done would have been to invest the sum with the bankers, where at least I would have gotten a little interest. Take the thousand and give it to the one who risked the most. And get rid of this “play-it-safe” who won’t go out on a limb. Throw him out into utter darkness.’

Matthew 25:14-30 MSG

The Unoffendable Heart

One of the unforeseen blessings of spending a year in near isolation was the ability to grow more proficient at naval gazing than I've ever been before. It was glorious if you like that sort of thing. There were few people to discourage, dissuade, distract me, nothing to hold me back, and with those circumstances you'd think I'd excel in every area of my personality and proclivities. But you'd be wrong. 

This morning I pulled a load of laundry out of the dryer and turned on a sermon a few friends have recommended to me over the past few months. It wasn't a sermon I felt a particular need for (after all, I've spend a year being unoffended by everyone except myself), but when more than four people you trust say, "Listen to this sermon," you obey. And so I listened as I folded laundry. 

There is no great exegesis in this hour long talk, no wow moments of Scripture's depths, and at times it sounded more like a youth pastor exhorting a youth group than a treatise on offense and forgiveness, but, friends, it is good. 

In my year of aloneness and in the absence of people and opportunities and ministry, ministry, ministry, God unearthed some things in me I'm still reckoning with. Bitterness I never knew I carried, fears uncovered, shame and offense, all of these ugly sins I'd smashed far enough down for long enough that they seemed nonexistent, but when it's just you and mirror for long enough, you can't help but see them. God has been faithfully tending to each of those areas, slower than I'd like, but with care and discipline. 

It is so easy to take up an offense about nearly anything. Feeling misunderstood, feeling a lack of empathy, missing out on something, being overlooked, not being considered as worthwhile or the best for an opportunity. Matt Nelson, in the Unoffendable Heart, says this, "The enemy is glad to serve up offendable situations all day long." I'm offended that she didn't text me back, or that he didn't reach out when he said he would, or that she didn't try to understand my heart and barely understood my words, that he wasn't as attentive as I wish he'd been, or that she doesn't see past appearances. All day long there are missed connections, missed opportunities, times when stress gets the better of us, or we've felt far from the Lord and divided with others—and each of these moments is a sliver the enemy can slide into. 

After the sermon was over and I was putting laundry away, I began to think of all the ways my seeming offenses at others are ultimately rooted in feeling offended by God. Theologically I know God is perfect, without flaw, without menace, and always good in all He does. But literally? In my life? Sometimes he feels everything but. If he intended good, why didn't he stop this? If he understands me perfectly, then why can't he make this person live with me in an understanding way? If he is without menace, then why does he let all these fiery darts come at me a thousand times a day? 

I don't really know the answer to that, though I could venture a guess for my own life: because he longs for my heart to be humble, to truly mourn over my own sin as it affects others and grieves him, and to trust him more than I trust the opinions of others. 

Mark 12:14 says, "And they came and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone's opinion. For you are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the way of God..." I read this earlier in the week and I thought about it again today while listening to the sermon: most of my offenses are because I do care about everyone's opinions (particularly my own) and I am swayed by appearances, and I am more true to myself or my own preferences than I am to the word of God. To be easily offended, or offended at all, is to not be like Jesus.

And I want to be like Jesus. 

If you've found yourself keeping a record (no matter how small: annoyances, unforgiveness, grudges, withholding love or affection as payback), I'd recommend listening to this today. 

God is not Ashamed of Our Search for Home

I have always known this world was not my home. None of us need nursery rhymes or hymns to tell us this. It is threaded through the the fabric of our covering since the first animal skins covered the first people: banishment.

We are uncomfortable, even, in our own skin, something more than ashamed and less than free. We've been trying to convince ourselves since then that we could stake our tent pegs somewhere, build a tower tall enough to reach heaven, land in a Promised Land. But that promised land has always been a place of feuding, the tower topples because we can't understand one another, and these tent pegs have grown worn and fragile in their transplanting. Can't you feel the pulse of this world is not my home? 

We are a week out from closing the door on this house and driving away with all our earthly belongings, again, in the back of a UHaul. I stand at the kitchen sink this morning, sipping coffee, eating peanut butter and jelly on wheat bread that isn't even toasted because the toaster is packed and the plates are about to be, and cannot relax my shoulders. I roll them. I tip my head from side to side. I lean back. I push forward. My body hurts. Every part of it hurts. I woke this morning thinking: I do not want pity from people, but I do want patience, if that isn't too much to ask. To say with the poet, "I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved..."

I know this world is not my home. I know it keenly in a way I think many others may think they know it, but they have never moved out of their home-state. Or they at least know where their home-state is. Someone asks where I'm from and I stumble over the words in an incoherent, rambling way. I do not have a home. I am not from or of anywhere and I suppose this is a good thing. I wish I had an identifiable accent or a sports team allegiance or hometown pride, but I have nothing except a dizzying whiplash and a jumble of addresses I try to make sense of. I carry a driver's license from one state, a bank account from another, soon a mortgage in another, a birthplace in another. This world is not my home. 

I stopped looking for home somewhere along the way. I thought it a possible dream, a plausible one. Now I begin to believe homes are for people who have numbed their otherworldliness with new kitchens and better cars and better bodies and bigger mortgages. I do not begrudge them this, though, not right now, when I want nothing more than stability and stillness and the same address for more than ten months. I have perhaps stopped looking for a forever home but I have not stopped wanting it. 

We have spiritualized the Israelite's journey to the Promised Land because we have the hindsight advantage of knowing it is a picture of the age to come. But for those weary travelers it was just a land, a plot, a place, a stillness and stability for a people who had been wandering a very long time. It was a home. 

It is good to think of the land which is to come, but it is also good, I think, to desire a land right here on earth. A place to put down roots, to stay, to commit to, to dig the tent peg in a little deeper. God wasn't ashamed to call the people who wanted that, searched for it, and found it, his own. God wasn't ashamed to call the people who just wanted home, his own. I cannot believe he is ashamed to call me his own either. (Hebrews 11:13-16)

Three cross-country moves in less than two years is nothing compared to forty years of wandering with no address, no home, and sometimes the feeling of no hope, and I cannot compare it as such. But it has been my wandering, my desert, my days of manna, and nights of crying out. It has been the tool God has used to say "Desiring a better place, a heavenly one," is good, but so is desiring a place, a land, a plot to tend, care for, and cultivate. It was no mistake that this was the first mandate to man.

Many struggle to unstick their feet from a place, but my struggle has always been the opposite, to stay somewhere long. As we pack that UHaul, drive for twenty hours, and sign our names on a dotted line, take possession of the land God has given to us, an earthly plot, it is my prayer that God uses the discipline of staying somewhere, of calling it home, of committing to it and its people for the long haul, as a means of grace and goodness to me, my family, and to those we love. 

"It is likely that conventional Christianity has wanted always to talk about Yahweh and neglect land. And conversely, secular humanism wants always to talk only of land and never of Yahweh. And most of us live in both worlds and settle for an uneasy schizophrenia, schizophrenia because we don't know what else to do, uneasy because we know better." Water Bruggemann, The Land