Gathering Seashells and a Wasted Life

One of the spaces on the Internet that is quickly becoming my favorite is Fathom Magazine, a once a month online publication doing everything with excellence. They've been asking me to contribute for a while, and I finally did a few weeks ago. My piece Gather Your Seashells While Ye May went live yesterday with their February issue. In it, I try to navigate the waters of the "Don't Waste Your Life" movement and how it has crippled us more than freed us.

Here is an excerpt and I hope you'll click through to read the whole piece: 

It is nearly twenty years now since a strange tincture of fear and passion filled the hearts of my fellowmen and me. We heard the the cry of Don’t Waste Your Life, it took root, has been proven, and has been found wanting. Life, it seems, won’t be wasted, no matter how hard we’ve convinced ourselves it might.

I, along with hundreds of thousands of other college students from all over the world, listened as a midwestern pastor by the name of John Piper put something like the fear of God in us. His illustration of a retired couple spending their last years traveling around the United States and collecting seashells—and his call to not be like them, to not waste our lives—rattled us. His book by the same title circulates among the same demographic still, swelling the hearts and minds of young people who still fear their lives may only be mere drops in an ocean instead of the crest of a tsunami of change.

To waste a life gathering seashells has become the joke tinged with a little bit of fear that it might become us someday if we don’t stay sober-minded and radical at the same time. 

A few months ago my husband and I visited my family who live near the sugar-white sand of the Gulf of Mexico. He and I took off our shoes and ran down the beach to dip our toes in the clear and turquoise blue waters. We spread our fleece jackets on the ground and sat there for an hour. The waves reached the shore and faded back into blue, leaving behind an almost perfect line of cracked shells on the squeaky sand.

He gathered a few white and orange and speckled brown ones and put them in his pocket to keep. We listened to the roar of the water, the fishermen to our left, and the gulls over us, the squeak of runners on sand behind us. We magnified the Lord because he created all of it for his glory, but also for our good—because what is beauty if not the best good we can find on earth? And then we stood up, shook our jackets, walked slowly back to the dunes, found our shoes, and left. 

The fear of a wasted life still rings in my ears along with the waves of the sea, but twenty years have not only aged me—they have matured me. Our collective parents (whose lives, our naïve twenty-something minds thought, were surely being wasted) are growing old now, surrounding themselves with trinkets and grandchildren and memories as long as they can hold them. Is this, we think, what we once thought of as a wasted life? This age, this wisdom, this seasoned life, better with age and tougher too, hardened by suffering, softened with blows, the ones for whom eternity grows sweeter still? Dare I call this a wasted life?

Continue reading...

Ministry in Rural Places Matters

I wanted to tell you a story today because it's a story I remind myself of often. It will require a little bit of back-story, and some details about my most formative years, but I will try my best to be succinct and clear and honoring because what the world doesn't need is another tell-all. 

When I was seventeen years old I came home for a weekend from the summer wilderness camp where I was working. I was in the passenger seat of my parent's car and we were driving up the long driveway to our home in the wooded and beautiful Bucks County, PA, and just as the woods were clearing and the house was coming into view, my parent told me we were moving. They had been looking at property six hours north, a few miles from Canada, where they could buy a farm on two-hundred acres with cash after our home was sold in PA.

That's the short version. Sometime later—I can't remember exactly, but not long in my recollection, we all piled into our vehicle (all seven kids at the time and our parents) and made the trek northward. The trees began to grow shorter, the fields bigger, the air thinner, and the temperatures colder. It was the year after an ice-storm that had left most of that part of the country without power for weeks and the trees looked like someone had taken a scythe to them all at the same level—iced tips had grown heavy and broken them off. It looked desolate to me. I loved our home in PA. This place looked like a land headed into a deep, long frost, full of strange people with strange accents and dilapidated houses and shut down farms and cheap land. It looked less like a Promised Land and more like a place of mass exodus. 

Somehow my parents had gotten connected with some folks who had also moved from Pennsylvania a few years earlier. They had no history of farming, sustainability, food preservation, healing the land, or any of the aspirations my parents also had, and yet they were doing it, one field, one animal, one jar of canned beets at a time. We pulled onto the dirt road leading to their home and I didn't know it then, but I was about to meet two people who never pretended to know where they were going, but showed me the way just the same. 

We spent a few days with this family, looking at farms all over the county, and when we ended up buying one, it was less than two miles from this original homestead. They became our friends. They became our only friends. He was a musician, she was an artist (and neither of them your run of the mill either—both wildly talented from the art scene of Cincinnati). Their children worn linen and denim and bare feet and there was this wild freedom that existed in their home. It wasn't without restraint, that's not what I mean, but just this beautiful sort of room to stretch and grow and dialogue and think for yourself and always the word Gospel, which was a word I didn't understand as they used it. I knew the gospel as a thing old men in suits or young men with chic-tracks or old women with felt-boards used it, "Believe the gospel and ask Jesus into your heart," sort of way. But after the asking of Jesus into your heart happened, there seemed to be no use in my world for the gospel again. 

But these folks talked about gospel as if it were a thing alive and real and for today, a thing that could change you today and today and today and today and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and forever. There was no end to the richness of this gospel of which they spoke. They used it as fluidly as they quoted Wendell Berry and talked about grass farming and creation care and this was before any of this was cool. They were just up here in the middle of nowhere on a few hundred acres trying to live faithfully in the context God had put them, and that's where I met them. 

I have hundreds of examples to give you of how they became, for me, a bedrock of certainty. When my brother was killed, Paula was at our house immediately. Rick spent the morning on the phone with the organ donors. When my parents split, Paula listened to me cry and process. Rick helped my brothers learn the work of manhood wasn't limited to work of the hands but work of the heart. When I struggled with the theology of the church we all went to, Paula helped me parse it, process it, and always, always, always used the word Gospel in this strange way that still felt awkward and crumbly in my mouth. Rick was the first person who ever married the burning of creation care in me with the word of God—helping me see the creation mandate wasn't simply to marry and have babies, but to live on the earth as stewards, small-c-creators, subduers but not abusers. They are some of the deepest thinkers I know and without question, the hardest workers. Nothing is uninspected, no aspect of church, theology, politics, farming, culture, or art. 

Eventually, many of you know the story, I left that place, disillusioned, disheartened, sure that what I understood to be the message of the Church was not something I was willing to stake my life on anymore. But the curious use of the word gospel never left me. There was something about the theology this family read that grabbed ahold of me, stuck to me, there was something of truth in this way of being. Vulnerable and true, faithful and humble, away from the three point sermons and clever acronyms to dictate how to date or how to commit or how to have a healthy church or how to do anything Christians were supposed to do. There was life in this way of thinking and I wanted it. I wanted it desperately. 

That wanting led me to Texas and to a culture that uses the word Gospel ad nauseum, so commonly it's almost as if it's another word like taco or elevator or mushroom. Just a word we insert into every sentence in order to remind us of its great power—a power I once did not know it had and a power I am prone to still forgetting every day. But I have never forgotten this family who still lives on a couple hundred acres in upstate New York, whose farm has grown and still stayed small, whose children have spread their wings and flown, and at whose table I sat this past year talking while Paula canned beets at the end of summer. 

Whenever I think about who I want to be when I grow up, especially as I am now the age Paula was when I first met her, I think about them. There are bits of the story that might change (dairy farming, upstate New York), but the overarching principles stay the same: faithfulness for the long haul in quiet, unseen, wild, difficult places. 

I wanted to share this story for a few reasons, and I know it's long and I hope you've borne with me. More and more there is a felt urgency toward planting churches in the city. It seems every week another article goes up on the Big Name Blogs with ten reasons to live in the city, five reasons to plant in the city, twenty-five reasons why the city is better for your kids, and so on. And every time I read those articles, I feel a little ache inside, because the crossroads of my life happened on a remote farmstead in a town of 800 people in a place of mass exodus to The City in a state known mainly for its city. The trajectory of my life was altered in a profound way not by people who used clever acronyms or ten steps to anything, but who woke each morning, lit the wood stove, drank black fair trade coffee in the still dark morning, and who put one foot in front of another in a day of faithfulness. They are those of whom the world is not worthy and if I didn't tell you their names in this piece, you would never hear of them. 

And that matters. 

They matter. 

I know, refugees and multi-cultural endeavors, and millions of people in big cities matter too, but people in small places matter too and the ripple effect of their lives can reach millions too. I said to Nate last night that I do not want to think highly of myself, but I am here and writing this today and being read by you and thousands of others because of their faithfulness. Because the word Gospel was not forgotten or overused but a real, living, life-changing word and it changed mine.

The Internet is a beautiful thing (or can be) and I don't know where you're reading this from today. Perhaps you live in a city and have a quiet pulsing desire for ministry in the rural context. Perhaps you're already in a rural context and feel at times like your ministry there is void or small or unnoticed. Or perhaps you're of the "city is better" mindset and can't see the worth of rural ministry because the numbers don't add up. I don't know. I guess I just wanted to say that someone sees you. Someone sees your faithfulness. Someone sees the faithfulness of those rural folks. And it matters. It mattered and matters to me. I am a life that was changed by it. I thank them for it regularly and they are humble and so it seems like no big thing to them, but to me, it matters. To God, it matters. And if it matters to someone, it should matter to everyone, however insignificantly, it should matter.  

Counseling and the "Inconsolable Things"

If you ever get the chance to pay someone $100+ dollars to sit across from you and tell you all the things you're doing wrong and call it counseling, I suggest you do. It sounds like a lose-lose, but I promise if the counselor is good (and mine is), it will be worth every penny. You would think you would leave a room like that poorer both in money and in strength, but the truth is the money is an investment for the aching muscles you're exercising. It's like the gym for your soul. You stretch, you grow, you ache, you get stronger. That's the hope anyway. 

I've been learning, for example, that most of my life has been spent trying to do two things. The first is protect myself and others from bad experiences (or what I perceive to be bad), so much so that I want to rewrite the story as it's happening, tying myself into a pretzel if it will make them feel better until I get eaten alive. The second is that what I have always thought to be a disposition toward patience and long-suffering is actually particular species of passivity and avoidance. Counseling is glorious, I tell you. 

Like the gym, though, all these sudden realizations about weak muscles eventually become realizations that you're stronger than you think you are while also realizing you're a lot weaker than you think you are. It's this beautiful conundrum and I still don't know how it works. I confess I'm weak and I can't make everyone's story more beautiful and, in that, I find the Spirit strengthening me to be faithful to whatever story He has for me. I know I must seem daft to have not known this before, but counseling, I tell you. 

Zack Eswine has written about the "inconsolable things," his book: Sensing Jesus (Which you can no long buy, but you can purchase The Imperfect Pastor which is a tightened, more polished version of it. Though I will always have the softest spot in my heart for the original, less polished sort.). I wanted to share them with you today in hopes that they encourage you like they've encouraged me. 

“Inconsolable things” are the sins and miseries that will not be eradicated until heaven comes home, the things that only Jesus, and no one of us, can overcome. We cannot expect to change what Jesus has left unfixed for the moment. The presence of inconsolable things does not mean the absence of Jesus’ power, however. Rather, it establishes the context for it. There in the midst of what is inconsolable to us, the true unique nature and quality of Jesus’s  power shows itself to be unlike any other power we have seen.

This is what I mean. Jesus teaches us that the faith of a mustard seed can move a mountain. “Nothing will be impossible for you” (Matt. 17:20). So we bring faith to what troubles us. And according to Jesus it would seem that there is nothing in the world that we can’t fix if we just have the smallest seed of faith.

But this is not the conclusion Jesus draws for us. This challenges our Herodian ideas. Though nothing will be impossible for us with faith, “you always have the poor with you,” Jesus says (Matt. 26:11). The paradox emerges. When it comes to poverty, there is no knockout punch or decision in your favor. You must step into the ring with faith, knowing that you will not win in the way you want to. Faith takes its stand amid an unremoved trouble.

The inconsolable things, therefore, are identified first by the “cannots” of Jesus’s teaching. These things he identifies as impossible for any human being. For example, no matter who we are, “no one can serve two masters,” no one (Matt. 6:24). Even if we are wise and knowledgeable by his grace, there are still things and seasons in our lives that we “cannot bear… now” (John 16:12). No matter how strong a will a person has, “the branch cannot bear fruit by itself” (John 15:4). No matter how many oaths we take or how much we spin words into boast, we “cannot make one hair black or white,” Jesus says (Matt. 5:36).

These cannots from Jesus teach us that sickness, death, poverty, and the sin that bores into and infests the human being will not be removed on the basis of any human effort, no matter how strong, godly, or wise that effort is. The power to give this salvation is inconsolable as it relates to us. We cannot give people the new birth with God (John 3:3-5). We cannot justify someone, make her righteous, sanctify her, give her adoption, convict her of sin, or change her heart (Luke 19:27; 1 Cor. 12:3).

This presence of inconsolable things reminds us that healing is not the same as heaven. Miracles are real and powerful, but they do not remove the inconsolable things. Those whose leprosy Jesus healed coughed again or skinned their elbows. Those who were blind but now able to see could still get a speck of burning sand stuck in their eye. The formerly lame could still fall and break their leg. Lazarus was raised from the dead only to find his resumed life filled with death threats. Moreover, the raised friend of Jesus would die again someday, along with this company of the healed. Bodily healing in this world is not heaven. Sickness and death are inconsolable things. Their healing reveals Jesus but does not remove sickness or death from life under the sun. A soldier survives combat only to die in a car accident on the way home (or forty years later of cancer). Miracles never remove our need for Jesus.

In my first pastorate we began to make ourselves available as elders once a quarter on a Sunday evening. Our intention was to invite people to what James teaches us in his letter about coming to the elders when sick for prayer and anointing with oil (James 5:13-15). During those seasons of prayer and worship nearly everyone was nourished and encouraged in their faith. A handful of them were even healed. I remember a young girl whose eyes were fading into blindness. The doctors that week were astonished to learn that the cause of the trouble had disappeared. We all rejoiced in amazement and gave thanks to Jesus. I still do. The peace he gives is a sign, as we will see in a moment, that he is here.

Yet, Joni’s healed eyes did not remove eye disease or blindness from the world. Healed eyes humbled us into tears of gratitude, but this did not mean that Joni’s life was no heaven or that ours was. She was still a middle-school girl within a lovely but broken family, with all the realities of a fallen world and an untamed heart. So were we. It’s like being a hero. the moment the hero rushed into the burning home to save a young boy resounds with a sacred dignity. At the same time, we know that buildings still burn. The little boy still has a whole life ahead of him of grace and joy but also of ache and inconsolable things. The hero himself still lives on too for another forty years. But heroes aren’t always so, as a long life of broken moments reminds each of us.

Inconsolable things reveal and refer to the ache that exists in every created thing and within even those who have the Spirit of God (Rom. 8:18-23). There is an ache within us that will remain even if what ails on the porch is blessedly mended. Jesus demonstrated there are some things he did not change but left as they were for a time, until he comes. We minister the peace of Jesus amid the troubling unremoved. He walks there with us and leads us through. Jesus empowers us to resist both adding to the damage and hastily trying to do what only Jesus can.

I've read this passage in Sensing Jesus ten or more times and know it cognitively, but there is coming to me a real, deep, painful change inside me in recent months. It both empowers me to say, "I cannot" and frees me to trust that sometimes faithfulness for me is simply obeying without the pretty ending here on earth. If that's you too, I'm praying for you today, that we would rest knowing we exist in the Already/Not yet of the kingdom. That Christ has come but he has left some things still unconsoled and he is coming again. 

Seasons, Readings, Writings, and Thanksgivings

I've been a bit MIA around these parts lately. Part of that is due to our month long fast and the other things my fingers found to keep busy. Part of that is just that it's winter and winter, for me, has always been a hibernation time. I think God created the seasons for a reason and he means for us to live into them instead of living into the seasons we make for ourselves. I think part of the reason our world is so tired and hurried and anxious is because we are constantly trying to force unnatural rhythms onto life. We take vacations in the summer and fill our autumns and winters with activities galore, never minding that God designed summer for growth, autumn for harvest, winter for rest, and spring for planting. If we were to truly live into those seasons just as they are, I think we would be less prone to throw around words like "contentment" or "season of life" or "exhausted" as lazily as we do. God meant for winter to slow us down, to slow our production, to sometimes cease our growth, and to let dead things die if they must. And none of that is bad. It's just our perspective that needs to change. 

Also, though, I've been sick the past week and it's easy to talk about hibernating when you can't breathe out of your nose or your mouth and when your head feels like it's under twenty feet of water. So there's that. But also, seasons. 

I read a lot throughout January and although most of my reading wasn't online, I did read a few pieces I wanted to share with you. They might interest you too: 

I cut this one out of our Sunday Times and taped it to our fridge I loved it so much. The Poet of Light by Christian Wiman on Richard Wilbur. 

If you've seen Look & See: a portrait of Wendell Berry, then you probably had the same complaint I did: we hardly saw anything of Berry himself! But something I loved about the documentary was the delightful presence of his wife. Here's an article on her that made me want to be a wife like she is. 

This was a quiet podcast for a quiet evening, both of which I quite enjoyed. Krista Tippett interviewed John O'Donohue for OnBeing. 

Speakings of podcasts, Nate and I worked through this series from Beau Hughes (The Village Church, Denton) on shame. I cannot recommend it more highly. 

I hope you took a few minutes to read Rachel Denhollander's words at the conclusion of the Larry Nassar trial. This is a great follow-up interview at Christianity Today with her. 

I subscribe to Poetry Foundation's Poem of the Day feed and you might want to as well. Listening to poetry is such a good discipline. Reading it is fine and good too, of course, but poetry is lyrical and best experienced heard. 

Also, I just wanted to say a heartfelt thank you to all of you who support Sayable on Patreon and who have downloaded the e-books. I have gotten so many messages from you saying you're being encouraged by the work there. That means so much to me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I am only 30 away from 200 supporters on Patreon, at which point I'll be starting to coach a small writing group. Details about it will come after that point, but I will say there will be an application process and it will be opened first to Patreon supporters. I will only be able to invite 20 people into the group (which will last between 12-16 weeks, still undecided on that), so if you are at all interested you'll need to begin preparing a 300 word non-fiction writing sample (on anything). There will be a cost for participation in the group, but it won't be astronomical, just to cover my time coaching. I read through my tentative plan to Nate last week and started getting pretty excited about this endeavor. Everything we'll be doing has been part of my process of becoming a better writer, thinker, and receiver of criticism. I hope it helps each of you as well. Again, more details on that after we reach 200. Grateful for each of you. 

View from the sickbay. Harper is under there somewhere...and Nate, I think. 

Living Water at a Broken Well

I have a post over at my church's resource page today. Here's the beginning, click through at the bottom for the entirety. 

A week before my birthday my husband prayed it would not be like the last two. In 2015, I witnessed the violent shooting of a police officer. In 2016, my husband was gone on a trip that didn’t go as planned—a terrible disappointment—and I celebrated by making myself banana pancakes and sharing them with my dog. It was a sad, rainy and lonely day. In 2017, I was supposed to be camping with a few close friends, but instead I spent the day moving from my bed to the bathroom, losing yet another little life inside me, our third miscarriage in three years.

A birthday is simply a marker, an anniversary of sorts, a stake in the ground: I have been alive for 37 years and am now in my 38th year. But when that marker is marked doubly by sadness, tragedy or pain on an ongoing basis, it creates inward stasis. Moving forward seems impossible, so staying in place seems the way of safety. There comes a paralyzing fear of feeling anything in regard to pain; instead, it seems better to become stoic and indifferent to it. We know life holds suffering and God is sovereign over it, but when the suffering comes in waves and leaves no corner of our hearts and lives untouched, it can be tempting to find the deepest corner and bed ourselves there permanently, praying we can bear it. The Bible is not silent on this stasis, though, nor does it offer demands too insurmountable for the broken. The Word of God and the gospel offer living water even to those waiting by broken wells.

On the morning after my birthday this year, my husband read John 5:2-9 to me, the narrative of another person in his 38th year, another man who was waiting for wholeness too, while he watched others receive what he desired:

Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.

Over the past month, I have been asking the Lord to show me the way out of my insufficient corner and into the way of trusting God with all my emotions, frailty, paralyzation and sorrow. He has been using this passage as a roadmap of sorts, and I am grateful for it. This passage is descriptive and not prescriptive—meaning it tells us what happened then, but not necessarily how it should always happen. But it does show us a common malady in the hearts of men and the posture of our Savior.

Read the rest of this post at The Village Church Resources. 

Three E-books Now Available For You

Through the generosity of my Patreon supporters and with the help of my sweet friend Chandler (who has been helping me with all the minutia of Sayable), I'm super excited to offer three e-books for your perusal. Right now they're only available to Patreon supporters, so we'd love to have you join the fold over there. You can give a dollar a month, two dollars, ten dollars, fifty dollars—really, whatever Sayable is worth to you and you can afford. Every bit helps and it also helps me to know who's vested in what happens here. 

Kissing the Wave is named after the often mis-quoted Charles Spurgeon who said, “The wave of temptation may even wash you higher up upon the Rock of ages, so that you cling to it with a firmer grip than you have ever done before, and so again where sin abounds, grace will much more abound.” It is a book of essays written through the years on suffering, storms, faith, and doubt. 

Sleeping Alone is named after the first essay I ever wrote on singleness many, many years ago. It is a book of essays on singleness, dating, guys, girls, and waiting. Writing through my singleness was one of God's best tools of sanctification for me and I hope this ebook encourages you as you read. It encouraged me to write. 

Two Become One is a book of essays from my first year of marriage. A lot of folks say the first is the hardest year and some others say it's the easiest. I don't know that I could say either, but I do know it was full of lessons about leaving, cleaving, and clinging to the cross. 

If you'd like to get your hands on one or more of these, hop on over to the Patreon page and pledge as much or as little as you like. Once you do, you'll be able to access the links to the ebooks on my latest post there. And, as always, thank you for making what I do here a joy and a blessing to me. 

Practicing Hospitality Imperfectly

One of the seven values of our home is the practice (that is the making mistakes along the way of learning) of hospitality. When we practice hospitality instead as entertainment, that is, the act of amusing or performing for our guests, we miss a very important quality in the intended expression: the administration of care to brokenness, the being of a hospital. 

Of the making of Pinterest boards and Hygge books and shiplapped magazines there is no lack, but what does it mean to be a hospital at the dinner table or over coffee or in the doing of daily tasks around the house? How is doing laundry or washing dishes or having difficult conversations or listening an act of hospitality in a culture that wines and dines and lauds the farm to table spread in an autumn cornfield at dusk? When these latter expressions are the pièce de résistance, the thing we think of when we think of hospitality, how does the mere folding of socks, packing of lunches, and being seen with your hair undone express a better hospitality? 

These are the questions that have rattled around in me for the entirety of my life. From my earliest memories, I have been surrounded by the earthly, simple, practical act of hospitality. For years of my teens we had three different families living with us in our home, giving over entire floors of our house to them, siblings squished in bedrooms, dinners rowdy affairs. I don't want to paint those experiences as perfect, they were, without doubt, some of the most difficult of my teen years (and, I'd venture, for the adults as well), but they happened. The sharing of resources and home and opinions and reputations was commonplace in our home. Some of the most painful memories of my life happened in those spaces and others, where our family was meshed with another family, imperfectly but still done. The option for a closed door was never one considered. This way of life felt natural to me, still feels natural to me, although I am learning it carries dysfunction in me too: a belief that saying "no" is not an option. This is why I am still learning to practice hospitality and not perfect it.   

How does one practice hospitality, the being a hospital, and yet also confess they are not the Great Physician and there are some maladies even a good soup and hearty homemade bread cannot fix? I do not have the answer to this question, though it seems like it should be easy, but here is how we generally think about our home and hospitality: 

We can only give what we can give. If we do not have it, we cannot give it. If we cannot give it, we cannot give it. But Christ can and so sometimes the best act of hospitality is to say: I cannot, but he can. To administer the grace which says, "We do not have what you need to become better. But we do have Christ." 

We sometimes must let things be awkward. If every space in an evening or a life must be filled with small talk or inventions of stories, there is no space for the awkward growing pains of maturity to stretch. Being quiet for longer than the noted beat of acceptable silence reminds us in sometimes painful ways that not all is resolved yet, that we are still in process, and in need. Most of us ramble to fill that space and in doing so we crowd out the small voice of the Spirit who may want to move the conversation in another direction entirely. Part of true hospitality is times of quiet, sometimes awkward quiet. 

And yet, we must also move toward the person in our home, initiating questions, drawing them out, being a "there you are" person instead of a "here I am" one. We ask questions like, "How does your heart feel about this?" or "What is this sadness teaching you about God?" or "What is being revealed in your anger/fear/pride/hurt?" instead of only "How was your day?" "How is your job?" "How are your kids?" The heart is the wellspring of life and so we must get at the heart if we are to minister life. 

We eat good, nourishing, healthy food at the table almost every night. There is no magic here, no fix to the world's problems, no Pinterest worthy spread. There is only true food that nourishes a body because bodies matter too. Hospitality is not only about caring for the emotional or relational needs, but the physical ones too. We light candles every night (I have some beeswax ones in squatty jelly jars right now, if tapers don't work for families with young kids), we use cloth napkins, we eat on real (but mismatched) plates. We nourish the soul while we're nourishing the body by using real things instead of disposable ones or the finest china. We want to remind ourselves that we are real things in a real world on a real earth and if hospitality doesn't extend both inside our bodies and outside our front door, it's not real hospitality. 

We sometimes say "No." As noted above, this one still feels wildly uncomfortable in my mouth. I have a lifetime of saying "Yes" behind me. Yes to the extra mile. Yes to the extra cloak. Yes to whole spaces of a home. Yes to open doors. And yes to open lives. But sometimes saying "No" is best. I think generally folks are either "Yes" folks or "No" folks, and we each must learn to curve into the unnatural word, turn it over in our mouths, utter it occasionally until we realize the world won't end if we say it aloud, and then practice saying it, sometimes saying it at the wrong time or in the wrong way, but practicing it nonetheless. I am learning to say "No" now more than ever before and this too is an act of hospitality, I am learning. It is saying that I am not the Great Physician and I cannot solve the world's problems, I cannot even solve my own, and so sometimes I must say it right out loud: no. 

If you come to the Wilbert home for dinner or coffee or breakfast or Christmas or Easter or homegroup or a weekend or a year, you will feel each of these things in some way in the way we practice hospitality today. Because it is something we value, it is something we hold dearly and inspect often, looking for holes or ways to make better or ways we have failed to make good. We value hospitality, but we are far from perfect at it. Christ is the perfect expression of hospitality, the one who entered in and allowed himself to be approached, the one who brought the best wine and ultimately showed himself to be the best wine. We look to him not as our model of hospitality, though, but as the only one who "makes all the sad things come untrue." 

Here are some books I've read through the years that have helped shape, right, and challenge my perspective on hospitality: 

The Hidden Art of Homemaking

The Life-Giving Home and The Life-Giving Table

Glory in the Ordinary

The Quotidian Mysteries

Acedia and Me

Keeping House

What Silence Says

We have been fasting for more than a week now, from news and media, from certain foods and from other things too, resetting our minds and bodies from the deluge of Christmas cookies and the muddiness of media. It has been good, cleansing, and helpful. Nate and I both wrestle the two headed monster called Depression and Anxiety, and when we feast on the empty calories of food or information, we are weaker for the battle. He says to me last night as we brushed our teeth and got into bed: "Fasting is hard but it reminds me that God is our provider, redeemer, and joy." I need those reminders. 

In the absence of some distractions (and the presence of a sugar/dairy/bread free mind), I've been reading more, listening more, and reflecting more on my own heart. For all the writing I do on Sayable, a casual reader might think I was adept at mining the depths of my own heart, but the raw truth is these words are more often the skimmed surface of a deep pool I fear to swim within. The past few months have troubled those waters, though, pulling me under to, as the poet said, "the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck." I am a story-teller, we all are, and there is no better or more rapt audience for my stories but myself. I tell myself the most true or most false stories every single day of my life, and the part I tell to others is the mere tip. But the thing I want to come for (and the thing Jesus did come for) is the wreck itself and not just the story of it. 

That's a painful thing to acknowledge for me. I suppose it is for any of us, but for a writer, one whose vocation it is to make things sayable, it feels more painful to acknowledge. My job is not to tell a compelling story about God or life or theology or marriage or sin or suffering: my job is to hold up all those things as simply what they are, without the embellishment of false optimism or false peace or false idealism. I am not called to make the great resolution, but to leave what God has left unresolved until he resolves it fully. 

January is a time for fasting or exercising or doing or being or becoming and I suppose all of us are having these stirrings or awakenings in our souls, realizations that things are not all as they should be or could be or might be. So I wonder today, what is the Lord revealing to you today, as you fast from eating or intimacy or speaking or scrolling or socializing or numbing? In the new and quiet space, where the many-headed monsters are being silenced by your silence, what is God showing you needs to be adjusted? Left off? Walked away from? Deleted? 

Fasting is good for our bodies and better for our souls. I've said elsewhere the hunger pang we feel for the thing or food or person, is there to point us to our greater and deeper hunger for God. And "what we are really longing for," Sheldon Vanauken said, "is God." 

These Hibernation Days

I hope your Christmas season has been warm and rich, full of reminders that you're loved and there is so much for you to love. Even in my moments of stark disappointment, when I can easily list out all the ways I've felt overlooked by God or others, I remember, "I have so much and so many to love. Even if [fill in the blank], I have been given much by God to be invested in, to love, to hear, to reconcile, and more."

As we move toward the new year, still plodding through the dark days of winter, I am always reminded of God's good design for winter. The old adage, "Bloom where you're planted," is cute, but nothing blooms all year long. Everything appears to die and some things do die. We know seeds must drop to the ground and die before they can be broken open and begin the process of blooming again. Winter is a fallen seed, before it has sprouted again. It is God's gift to us, to teach us of the value of rest, quiet, hiddenness, and death. 

I began the Seven Ways series a few week ago and want to continue today. I said one of the Ways we practice not a work/life balance, but a work/rest model in order to see God as our Creator, Redeemer, and Joy. 

So much is said about work/life balances, especially in the career world. Stay at home parents or spouses laugh at that though, because work is life and life is work and there is no easy seamless division for what is work and what is just life. In many ways, this is a gift from God though. Life is toil, even the weekends are, and when we make these clear delineation of the two, we can begin to grow frustrated when our "life" time (or me-time) is infringed on by work. So instead, Nate and I try to talk about our weeks, months, and our year in terms of work/rest. 

Work is times of faithfulness, of sometimes going beyond our abilities or preferences to get the job done. To be faithful in small places to provide, prove, refine, care for, and supply. This is most of our week, month, and year. We want to go to bed tired at night, spent from being invested in people, in service, in hospitality, in counsel, in vocation.  

Rest is times of knowing God's faithfulness, of seeing the ways our God is our Creator, Redeemer, and our Joy. It is not about us, although it is a gift from God to us. I've written previously about how we practice Sabbath in our home, but this also applies to things like winter or holidays. These are dim days where we feel our frailty and fragility, and where the light of Christ has come and is coming still. These are the days we intentionally step back from much of the daily grind and, instead, look up. 

I am just as proficient at naval gazing as the best of them. It is so tempting and easy to look down at myself or at the world and try to dissect all the missing parts or broken places. But to rest, for me, means I pick up my eyes, look up to the hills, and know my Helper comes from above. It means intentionally not fixing what Jesus has left unfixed. It means not rushing to be or do or go or see something. It means taking my hands off what I want to control. All of these ought to be regular practices but, for us, it helps to have a regular day where we remember in startling clarity how far we've wandered. Our Father is our all-sufficient hope, Christ is our all-sufficient sacrifice, and the Spirit is our all-sufficient help. We need a period of time to just remember, reflect, and rejoice in these truths. 

We practice our sabbath from sundown Saturday to sundown Sunday. That might not work for you, but find something that does. We take our cue from the natural seasons, too, and rest more in the winter. We hibernate. No human body is capable of doing all we demand of it all year, we must rest. For many, "rest" waits for vacation days. We've spent all of our vacation this year traveling, driving, seeing family, engaging folks we rarely see, and we come home and need a vacation from our vacation. I don't think God designed rest to be like that.

What would rest look like for you if you simply removed your hands from plowing, planting, sowing, harvesting for a bit this winter? What would it look like for you to rest, not so you can prepare to work again soon, but so you can remember you are the seed and not the farmer? 

A Case for Marrying Later

I have read and heard and read some more of the case for marrying young, but the more I think about it, and the more I see faithful singles in their late twenties into their thirties and forties and beyond, the more I actually do believe with Paul that it is good to remain unmarried, if not forever, at least then longer. 

What I am not saying is prolonged, aimless, meandering singleness serves anyone (including, if God wills, your future marriage). What I am saying is the purposeful, intentional, poured out life of an unmarried person for the good of the church, the community, and the earth, is a very great gift and should not be squandered or squelched by the growing concerns of married people about late marriages. 

I think the reason many—in the church especially—are concerned about this trend of later marriages is because for so long the main medium and message has centered around the family instead of around faithfulness. Procreation of children, family morals, concerns about marriage issues—these have formed a boundary line of sorts around the sort of things Christians care about. This is why singles have felt alienated, marginalized, and overlooked within the church for so long: unless they both want marriage and are actively involved in the getting of it, there isn't a box for them. Which is unfortunate. No, it's something more than unfortunate. 

I know I don't know much about marriage yet, but I do know a thing or two about being single far longer than I originally hoped. What I found in the prolonging of my singleness was not less fruitfulness, but more as time went on. I found a curious and surprising freedom of flexibility. I found I was able to love the Lord and others with fewer distractions. I found I was able to give of my finances quickly without question. I could travel easily, serve easily, and spend long periods of time in thinking, processing, and praying. What I am not saying is the often quoted line that "singles have more time and finances than married people." What I am saying is I had the same 24 hours in my day then as I do now and the same tight budget then as I do now, but I was able to spend those hours undistracted by the things marriage has called me to now. 

Some of the most faithful Christians I know today are unmarried. They are using their gifts to show a different side of what faithfulness might look like when one doesn't have children, a spouse, a mortgage, or some other constraints. They are making a case for late marriages not simply because of the kind of marriage they might have by delaying it (hopefully more mature, grounded, wise, and sanctified than if they'd come into marriage at 20 or 22), but by being extraordinarily faithful in their singleness.

To all my readers who are unmarried, thank you for being faithful and I pray you grow only more so. The Church needs to see your example of faithfulness. The Church needs to learn marriage isn't the most sanctifying agent, but age, maturity, and submission to God are, and no one is exempt from those three things. The Church needs your hands, your minds, your insights, your passion, your longing, your gifts, not because we are needy and greedy, but because for too long we have not valued what you bring to the Christian life. 

You stand in the company of Martin Luther, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, C.S. Lewis, Amy Carmichael, Joni Eareckson Tada, Mother Theresa, William Wilberforce, Florence Young, Gladys Aylward, Lottie Moon, Corrie Ten Boom, my sweet friend Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, the Apostle Paul, and Jesus—men and women who married late or never married at all, and of whom the world is not worthy in many ways. Faithful men and women who gave their most fruitful years not to bearing children or pleasing wives, but to the bettering of the Church and world. These are giants in my mind and they make the case for marrying late all on their own.

Marriage is a gift and it is not wrong or sinful to long for it—it is a gift I wouldn't trade today for anything, but those years of singleness were a gift too, not just to me, but to others I hope. If you have not married young, there will be sacrifices and it is good and right to mourn over those unmet desires, but then, friends, stand up in the company of those men and women above. Your undistracted, unhindered, anxiety-free faithfulness can be a gift without compare. You have not been wasted and God has not wasted you.

Marry late or not at all—God will not waste you. 

When You Cannot Yet See the Great Light

A quiet, pulsing comfort when I'm reminded, in no uncertain terms, that we don't always get what we want, is we haven't been promised most of whatever it is we want. Marriage? More money? Bigger house? Health? More kids? Kids at all? None of them are promised. The years go by with no prospective spouse, the bank account always seems to be dry, every month a painful reminder that no seed has taken root in our womb. The reminders are everywhere, we don't even have to look far. Name anything you want and haven't yet got and there it is, your reminder. 

Today, though, I woke on this fifth day of Advent and the second day of a miscarriage, remembering the child who was promised to me. God promised a child would be born to us, a son, given to us (Isaiah 9). He was not the child I wanted last night as silent tears tracked down my face, but he was given to us the same. 

I know that doesn't seem to be a lot of comfort for all of us who are still waiting, on days we feel the not-yetness more than the alreadyness of the kingdom. But this isn't some grand cosmic Jesus-Juke. It is Jesus, before juking was a thing. And he is actually enough. Even when he doesn't feel like it. 

This morning I'm listening to Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring and the words from the third stanza comfort: 

Through the way where hope is guiding,
Hark, what peaceful music rings;
Where the flock, in Thee confiding,
Drink of joy from deathless springs.

Through this life, where hope is guiding, listen: what peaceful music rings. Where we all trust Jesus and drink from eternal and living water. 

Everyone I've talked to this December has been weighed down by the busy, the rush, the flurry of activity, the demands of family. I am laying in bed for the second day in a row, though, captive to my broken body, forced to face my sadness, our emptiness, the not-yetness. But this morning, I find myself weeping while reading Isaiah 9 because everything God has promised me is true. He is a God who keeps his promises. 

Jesus: the joy of all my desires. The one in whom I find all the yeses and amens of the Father. The perfect gift. The promised and delivered gift. 

Link Love for the Journeying People

It's been weeks and maybe months since I've shared some things I've read around the Internets. I know no one reads blogs anymore (that's what they say) but sometimes I happen along a blog or seven or an article or two that I think more people ought to read. I love the blogging format for what it is: an opportunity to invite the world into today's thoughts. It's one of the reasons I won't quit anytime soon (even though they say no one reads blogs anymore). I love knowing here, today, right this minute, this is how I see the world. It may change in two years or twenty, but for a moment, this slice of life is served up. 

So for that reason I'll also keep reading a few blog sites, a regular rotation of what my soul needs to feast on: other writers stumbling along in words and life, offering their crumbs or delicacies or finest fare for those in need. I need too. 

Winn Collier has this Advent reflection. 

Bethany Douglass on Thoughts for the Overwhelmed Homeschool Parent. I am not an overwhelmed homeschool parent, but I know many of you are. I was glad to see the grace in this and you might need it today. 

Again, not a mother, but this advice is for every Christian. Carolyn Mahaney on her Biggest Mistake as a Mother. 

Nate and I are eating the words of Wendell Berry in spades these days. This piece on him resurfaced recently and I loved it. The Hard Edged Hope of Wendell Berry. 

The Mainliner who Made [Russell Moore] More Evangelical. One of the things I like best about Russell Moore is how widely and out of his camp he reads. This piece is proof. (And I love Buechner too.)

This reflection on the Wendell Berry documentary, Look and See, is from Brett McCracken and I've thought about it so many times since I read it. Wendell Berry is a Dandelion Man. 

This blog from Timothy Willard on the Value of Retreat is just necessary for all of us. 

I hope even just one of these pieces encourages you, makes you think, or challenges you this week. These writers are all inviting us into their process, thoughts, and sacred spaces. I hope you find comfort or rest for your soul when you join them. 

Also, I just wanted to say a quick thank you to my Patreon supporters. Many of you pledged a simple dollar a month but I want you to know: that dollar a month means the world to me. It says to me that money is tight, but you care about me and you care about Sayable. It says, I don't have much, but such as I have give I thee. It says, like the widow with two mites, you're giving what you can. I just wanted you to know that small act of generosity means millions to me. That's not hyperbole. I mean it with all my heart. Thank you. 

For the Anxious at Christmas

We wrestled our way home through post-Thanksgiving traffic where all the cheery thankfulness of our nation had by then dissipated and was replaced by a mostly a grumpy, rushed, chaotic nation (of which I was chief after one too many reckless driver cut us off). To add insult to injury, while driving we listened to a sermon from an unknown preacher on anxiety, which was mostly just seven reasons you shouldn't be anxious and a lot of shouting. Thirteen hours into what was supposed to be an eleven hour drive, my anxiety was high.

And then today, it's all photos of homes decked for Christmas already and Cyber Monday deals and an empty refrigerator and three article deadlines + a book review for a book I haven't gotten through yet. Another five opportunities for anxiety. 

I've always been a more mellow sort, more prone to depression than anxiety, but I think two things happen as we age. The first is suffering adds to suffering adds to suffering. And the second is we are faced with a choice: to face the suffering or to medicate ourselves into unfeelingness. December is a month ripe for the latter. It is the one month of the year we indulge every good and beautiful thing and many distorted and disordered things. Perhaps it is all childhood and magical and sparkly and warm in your sphere, and if so, enjoy it. But that is not the reality for most Americans, or the rest of the world. There is a reason reports of anxiety rise leading up to the holidays. Folks are either completely alone or they are engulfed in the mess of materialism. Folks are in poverty or they are in excess. Folks are mourning or they are overwhelmed. 

Almost every person I know is suffering right now. Perhaps they're masking it with trite conversation or seasoned optimism, but the cares of this world are pressing against them in pain and in loss, in grief and in dashed hope, in loneliness and in fear. In our most vulnerable moments we admit it, but in December it is easy to bake another cookie, hang another garland, play another classic, and wrap another gift, to forget, for just a moment. 

Last night Nate and I watched a movie a friend recommended, and in it, one father who lost his child says to another father who has just lost his child, "You have to feel it, press into it, remember the memories. If you try to run away, to not feel it, you'll begin to forget." I wept when I heard that because there are a lot of memories in my life I've tried to run away from. A lot of feelings I've neglected to feel. And a lot of emotions I've stuffed to the bottom. I'm in a season where those are being dug up and stared at, by me and others, and I have to remember the dark before the dawn. December is always difficult for me, but this year I sense it heavier than ever. 

The only remedy for my anxiety is to remember and rejoice, remember and rejoice, remember and rejoice. Remember my God in flesh who was born in poverty and lavished with the gifts of a king, who was a baby boy born when all the other baby boys were killed, who was refused the inn and found haven with the animals, who knew loss and grief and loneliness and death. And then, when I can and only when I can, rejoice.

There is no remedy for anxiety except this: for the anxious, Christmas. 

* I know for some folks the mental illness of anxiety is debilitating, and there is no reductionistic answer to that kind of anxiety. Medication is a common grace, and one we should all feel free to use if it works for us. Also counseling (which is a common grace I'm partaking in these days). Also good, healthy foods and routines. 

Seven Ways: Ruling over Screens Crouching at our Door

Over the next few weeks I'll be doing a series of posts on seven ways we try to rule over the crouching presence of sin in our home. I'll expound on our methods for engaging the gospel in these areas of our lives, the ways we fail, and our hope for the Church more and more. 

None of these things are done perfectly. In none of these areas have we arrived. And in every one of these areas we are prone to wander, to fail, and to forget. One of the best blessings of the gospel, I think, is the fact that it never changes. When I fail, forget, and wander—the cross and the empty tomb never change. The point is not to do these things perfectly, but to actually let the imperfection of my doing them remind me of how much I need Jesus every single day.

. . . 

We choose reading, writing, and talking instead of screen-time in order to engage and flourish as flesh and blood humans.

I would say, of all the pillars we try to build our home upon, this is probably the most difficult and the one that needs constant realignment. Both my husband and I make our living by using screens and we are not immune to the allure of news, social media, and whatever new show Netflix wants us to binge upon (currently season four of Great British Bake Off). One of the reasons in my intro post on this I used the verse from Genesis about sin crouching at our door and the need for us to rule over it, is because I believe Cain tried to convince himself that his offering would be pleasing to God. It seemed like he treated it as a gray area, not a black and white one. That's just conjecture, there's no way I can know for sure, but I've always assumed that was the case. 

Technology can be like this. One side of its coin seems good: connectivity, ease, a medium for enjoyment. But the other side can be not so good: producing laziness or indulgence or jealousy, or a God-complex (the idea of being everywhere for all things). The idea is that it is not necessarily sin, but that it is crouching at my door waiting to become sin. I have to rule over that. 

Nate and I are constantly reevaluating, readjusting, recommitting, re-deleting, and rearranging our priorities around technology. It would be easy to see this as failure, but I actually think, in our current culture, that's a good way to approach this. We are both legalists in our hearts and our nature is to cut a thing off entirely (and in some ways we've done that, i.e. our commitment to not having a television), but we also know it's not sin to watch, for instance, The Great British Bake Off. 

I love how Andy Crouch subtitles his book (my running for best book of 2017), The Tech Wise Family: Everyday steps for putting Technology in its place. The creation mandate is to rule over creation, to take dominion over this garden and we cannot do that if we pretend weeds don't exist. Weeds do exist, and for us, the weeds are not necessarily the screen itself, but the time, content, and emotions the content produces in our hearts. We have to be attentive to being addicted, being anxious, being fearful, fear of missing out, fear of the current political climate, overlooking our community, or overlooking one another. These are the weeds produced in the garden of screen technologies.

So how do we combat these weeds? 

It's not easy. And we fail often. That's not me being modest about our failures. We fail often. We are always circling around this conversation in our home. But: 

We regularly fast from certain things. I use the Freedom App on my phone to block all social media except Instagram all week + Sunday, and on my laptop during work hours. The only day it's not blocked is on Saturdays, which is a work-with-our-hands day anyway.

We have canceled our Netflix subscription no fewer than seven times in two years. Sometimes we just need a break from its temptation.

We do not have a television. (This one seems to get the most response, especially from families who have movie nights or use the television to occupy their kids. I don't have kids so I can't speak to how difficult those seasons are. But I have been a kid and I know from experience that when my parents got rid of our television when we were all little it produced good fruit in me. I know it created more work for my mom, but I'm grateful she was faithful with our young minds—even at the expense of things she probably would have preferred doing.)

We do, however, have a projector and so have occasional movie nights or documentary viewings with friends. We're not against watching content, but we do both find that when we do see a commercial or advertisement, they have a jarring effect on us. As they should. So a projector to watch a movie is a good route for us.

We do not read news on our Sabbath. Our aim is to enjoy creation, each other, and to remind ourselves that God is sovereign over the whole world, our only Creator, our only Redeemer, our only source of true Joy (more on this when I write about our Sabbath).

We do not have our phones at the table at mealtimes. Our aim is to enjoy one another and our food, as the provisions from God they are.

We do not take our phones to bed. 

One of us usually leaves our phone at home during date night and the other uses it minimally (GPS or Yelp).

We have all notifications turned off on our phones. I have always had my phone on silent (except for Nate) and no notifications except text-messages coming through (though still on silent). But this week I finally turned even text-notifications off. There are no red bubbles on my iPhone. I find in myself a sick-slavery to them and that's not what I want to be beholden to. 

These are what the Wilbert family chooses to do. These are not Biblical prescriptives, these are permissives. Doing these things permits us to look up, engage one another, trust God, trust one another, enjoy creation, enjoy our home, enjoy one another, fight the temptation to indulge, fight the temptation to check out.

You have to figure out what things give you permission and space to do those things in your family. Perhaps you have young children and the only way you and your husband are going to enjoy one another is to set the kids in front of PBS for an hour. Perhaps you have a sick family member and turning off text-notifications isn't going to work in this season. Whatever our season of life is, we have to recognize sin is crouching at our doors in the form of screen-technology, how will we rule over it? 

The Dark Grows Bright: Advent reading suggestions

Next week is Thanksgiving and then we're a month out from Christmas. The Christmas season and I have had a strained relationship for a long time. I love what we're celebrating, but I've struggled for years to enjoy the season. Decembers, for me, tend to be dark months. In my wrestle with depression over the years, it usually has spiked in December. I dislike clutter and busyness, and sometimes the whole season can feel busy and cluttered. When most families were gathering, it seemed for years like mine was splintering. Singleness felt prolonged, while all my friends were celebrating first, second, third, and tenth Christmases with their spouses and babies. 

After years of these persistent wrestles, I began to realize the way through, for me, was to slow the season down, to declutter it, to simplifying it, to use restraint instead of excess. Celebration doesn't have to be about excess or indulging. It can be simply about narrowing our focus in on One Thing: the Christ-child and his birth into a fractured world. Advent is very literally about the dawning of light. It is meant to be dark and yet getting lighter. When I began to understand, and practice Advent, instead of just Christmas, I felt my hope grow, the light grow brighter. 

Narrowing my focus over the past five or six years has been really helpful to me in this time of great angst. Staying home more, going to bed earlier, saying no more, simplifying gift-giving. And also about adding in some things that help me on the slow plod through December. 

Lighting Advent candles. Keeping our gift list to a minimum (Want, Need, Wear, Read), giving more attention to hand-written cards and less to fancy wrapping paper. A smaller, unimpressive tree and more quiet evenings beside it. More reading of advent books around the dinner table and fewer parties out. These are things I did not wait for marriage for, either, and things we're not waiting for children for. These rhythms begin now. If God gives us children, they might change some, but I'd venture not. Just as when God gave me marriage, they changed some, but not much. 

This week is the time to nail your Advent Reading down in time for the first Sunday of Advent. Here are the four I've used in the last four years, and a discount code for one for this year. 

I read Behold the Lamb of God, by Russ Ramsey, in 2013, and I think this will always be a favorite of mine. This is appropriate for reading aloud if you've got young children and nearly every entry is reaming with the light of Christ to come. Russ works through all of Scripture to the birth of Christ, showing Christ in all of Scripture. It's beautiful. 

I read The Greatest Gift, by Ann Voskamp, in 2014, and what I loved about this were the opportunities to reflect on each entry with the provided questions. This worked well for me as an unmarried person because I was doing it by myself. The questions are thought-provoking and, for the season in which I found myself, helpful in preparation for a lonely Christmas. 

For Nate's and my first Christmas, in 2015, we read The Dawning of Indestructible Joy, by John Piper. That December was one of the hardest I can remember, bookended by heart-break, sadness, and suffering. Reading this book about indestructible joy was so helpful. I remember many nights, sitting at the table, reading this aloud and struggling to believe that kind of joy would ever be possible. It was such a helpful book in a season of suffering. 

Last Christmas, 2016, we read Watch for the Light, essays from Dillard, Bonhoeffer, Donne, L'Engle, and more. I love collections of essays, but sometimes you've got to chew the meat and spit out the bones. I'd say that was the case with this one. This might be a good read if you have older children or no children. There is food for discussion, and last Christmas we had nothing if not plenty of time for discussion. I do remember we skipped over a few. But overall, I think it's helpful to read outside our camp.

We will select our Advent Reading this week and here are a few contenders: 

Come, Let us Adore Him, by Paul David Tripp

Celebrating Abundance, by Walter Bruggemann

Light Upon Light, by Sarah Arthur

She/He/Kids Read Truth also has an Advent Bible Reading Book here and if you order any of their Advent materials, I have a code for you to get 10% off! I got their She Reads Truth Advent book in the mail yesterday and, as usual, it's stunning in its production. I love how attentive they are to details, imaging the creator nature of God in all they do. 

Use the code LOREADVENT to get 10% off your order. 

I hope whatever Advent traditions you have or begin this year will be rich, warm, simple, and full of the indestructible joy of life in Christ. Jesus is the reason for all this, not just this season, but every season, the good, bad, hard, easy, simple, excessive, empty, and full. And he is making all things new right now.