The Effortless Eternal Feast

We were caught in the rain this morning, he and I and the dog. We saw the lightning, heard the thunder, but the cool and quiet morning was too much to resist. It was no use trying to run or find shelter, the rain came fast and hard and cool, drenching the ground and us. I have always loved the rain, prayed for it selfishly in Texas because it cools the blistering hot for a few moments. I prayed for it less selfishly this year because I am watching our garden thirst and I love our garden more than I love the momentary refreshment of rain. This is what gardening does in you. 

I have been watching a tiny pile cherry tomatoes build on our counter. I suppose if I was more impatient or less of a planner I might have popped them one after another into my mouth already. But I am patient and I have a plan for these small orbs. It occurs to me that time + money + water + sunshine + dirt + worry = a small handful of cherry tomatoes, when it would be much easier and cheaper to buy a plastic box of them at the local grocery. Nate is there right now, I could call him and say, "Hey, will you grab a box of tomatoes while you're there?" and he would. So easy. 

Yesterday the sermon was about the incremental degrees of sanctification and growth, about how we are more consumers than cultivators and creators. I think, of course, of my garden, of the small pile of tomatoes on my counter, and of the rain I've been praying for. I think about how much faith there is in gardening. How we drop a seed into the dark, damp earth, do what we can, and then just wait. 

Our sunflowers are almost ten feet tall, still unbloomed, throwing back their heads and just absorbing all the light they can. The dahlias are half that high and blooming faster than I can prune. The heirloom tomatoes are flowering, spitting out little yellow blossoms faster than I can count. Two months ago these were silent plots of dark earth and I checked them every day, impatient. 

When we came home this morning, wet, our flesh freckled with goosebumps from the sudden rain, I thought of how life is made up of small adventures, small moments. Tiny, incremental happenings. Ways we mark or note or remember time. If we only consume the adventures of others (which I am prone to doing with my Netflix mysteries and my bedside library books) and create none of our own, it is easy to stop noticing the glory-to-glory changes. We lose our measuring stick. 

A garden is a measuring stick. And so is the growing pile of cherry tomatoes on the counter. So is praying for rain. And so is getting caught in it when it comes.  These all reminders of the slowness of growth and the fruit of growth and the prayers and answers to prayers. The engagement of living. Tiny notches in the wall marking from one year to the next, one degree of glory to the next. 

I find myself growing more slowly in sanctification the older I get. I wonder if this is a common malady or if I am more flawed and more sinful than others. The stark and clear sins with which I wrestled five or ten years back are mere specks in my rearview. Now the challenge is to not settle, to not grow comfortable, to not assume, and to not grow stagnate. I want the quickness of youth back, the hard right turns and the slamming of the breaks. There was thrill in that. There was the impatience of watching a seed sprout, checking every day to see if there were any changes. And there were! Praise God, there were! 

But life now, like the little pile of cherry tomatoes on my counter, is less dramatic. No longer ripe for dime a dozen opportune moments of youth, now just ripe for the eating. Now it is just the work of slow, quiet faithfulness, lifting up our heads to see the goodness of God in the land of the living and in the land of the dying too. Because he's there too. He is at work just as much in the provisional feast of harvest as he was in the seed and the sprout and the blossom. We just have to remember to look and to see. 

I don't know which of these seasons you're in and I suppose some will laugh at a mere 37 year old waxing on about feeling old and I also suppose that's okay. I am so much older than I was ten or 13 years ago, when life felt more like a race at which I was perpetually in threat of losing than simply getting caught in the rain while on a walk with my husband and dog at 7am. And I suppose I will feel much the same about today when I reach 47 or 50. Incremental changes; quiet, whispered prayers; yes, small, hardly noticeable. Until they're answered. And we're left with harvest and rain and an effortless eternal feast. 

Dear friends, I am working on a project behind the scenes (unless you're a Patreon supporter) that will use most of my writing muscles this summer. So if Sayable has seemed a bit quiet, this is why. 

The Dirt Reminds Us

The older I get, the less I feel at home in any institution, group, community, or place. It's not that I want to be defined by what I'm not. It's just that my eyes are crusted with the dirt of living, dim with suffering, blind to any inherent goodness in politics, denominations, ideals, or opinions. As my sight grows dim, though, and I see less, I also see more. 

I think this is how it is for most of us. Either this, or we grow stodgy and arrogant, planted deep in the soil of whatever ideology we feel responsible for making (or breaking). We become old dogs who can't learn new tricks or old preachers who choke out passively worded apologies to protect our institution instead of the women within it. So, the alternative is to let our eyesight instead grow dim to this world and her various institutional pillars. Which is where I find myself more often than not these days. 

I mourn this shift in some ways and invite it in others. I wish there was some thing, some place, in which I could plant a flag and claim mine from now until I die. I mourn the disenchantment with particular theologies and practices, groups and networks. Sin does that and there's no way around it. As long as we are here on this breaking earth, as long as the kingdom is not fully established, as long as eternity is only written on our hearts and not the place in which we dwell, we will find ourselves saddened by the state of things. 

Oh, there is hope in the midst of it all too. Don't miss that. I'm what they call a hopeless romantic or an idealist or an optimist. I can't help but be delighted by trees and sunlight and the buds on my dahlias out back or the poetry my husband read aloud to us on Sabbath. I can't help but be enamored by oceans and mountains and to feel small before them. That smallness, though, is what makes the true optimism grow—and with it, the enchantment of here diminish. 

A couple of years ago I lost my political affiliation and nearly in the same breath, though by a different cause, began to feel less at home in my denominational affiliation. Since then the losses have only mounted. I ask my husband a month ago: is this what a mid-life crisis feels like? This monumental sense of loss of home, of being, of place? Is this why there are boob-jobs and Maseratis and affairs and everything bigger and seemingly better? Because somewhere along the way we lose our place and scamper to fill it as quickly as possible? 

My theology won't let me fill it though. And, if I'm honest with myself, my place in theology was errant if it could be lost in the first place. This isn't a mid-life crisis as much as it is a waking up. Waking up with sleep in our eyes still, yes, the Sand Man my grandfather called it as he took his two strong Scottish thumbs and rubbed it out, but waking up still. The thing is now we know our eyesight is dim, before we thought we saw it all so clearly. This is the beauty of youthfulness, I suppose. 

The closer eternity gets for me, the more I feel myself drawn to the earth. I know I said earlier I feel less at home there, but the fact is I feel the gravitational pull toward it, though less the ideal form of it and more its real form. I want to be more acquainted with dirt and seeds and the grittiness of sin and the blindness of people who don't even know eternity is a thing. I say to Nate I am too comfortable here, by the big box stores, in our house in the suburbs, where I can't meet a neighbor who's not a Christian (serious ones, evidenced by the mutual invitations to one another's churches). I need friction, tension, strong Scottish thumbs against my crusty eyes.

Our garden needs to be weeded before we leave for ten days. Our housemates will care for its watering and perhaps pick its first fruits, but the weeding is all my job. I will move the plants aside, bend deep to the soil, and pull errant roots from it. My mother-in-law says a weed is just a plant in the wrong place. I know there's an allegory there somewhere but the dirt is calling and I must go. 

I need the dirt to remind me this earth is my home, just not yet. 

Walking in the Faith We Have, Not the Control We Don't

I am barely awake before the litany starts. All the shoulds and coulds and wishes and wants come one after another. They're not all bad; they're the list of things to pack for an upcoming trip, they're the things I need to do before we leave, they're the piles of things I wish I could pack in a return suitcase: lilacs, mountains, foggy mornings, fires at dusk, time alone with my husband. 

He and I have been talking about the difference between wanting a thing itself and wanting the approval from others that comes from having the thing. In this case the thing is not a thing at all, but a child. May and June are ripe for conversations like these and I suppose visits to IVF clinics and adoption applications rise after respective Father's and Mother's Days every year. We're all just trying to plod through life, putting our feet in the footprints left behind for us. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage.

But, what if first never comes? Or second? Or third? What then? Where do you put your feet then? 

Then is when you have to decide: am I doing this because it is expected of me, because it is the logical "next step," or because I am truly being asked by God or given to by God? Am I trying to force the thing because everyone else around me has the thing and I feel twenty steps behind them if I don't too? Is God actually asking this of me, calling me to this, or am I trying to control my outcome because the alternative feels scary and lonely and very unAmerican? 

I know I am dancing on the fringes of some sacred cows and these thoughts of mine very well might make some nervous who have been given a different calling. Please know I am not judgmental of anyone's decision, but I am mighty suspect of my own motives for my own life. What do you do when God has not given or made clear a path for the thing everyone thinks you're supposed to move heaven and earth to have? 

I have no earthly idea. 

When I was single with no prospects for marriage, occasionally someone or a group of someones would be talking and the topic of online dating would come up. I have a good amount of friends who met their mates online and so I cannot argue with its success rate. But I knew, deep in my soul, it would not be walking in faith for me. I knew God was asking me to trust him with the outcome completely. To not even look, search, move, or say "Pick me." And I also knew this was an unpopular and really, really, really difficult thing to do. I knew it looked foolish to others. But I felt deeply confident in my spirit if God had marriage for me, God would orchestrate the events necessary to give it to me (even if someday one of the tools was online dating, I knew it wasn't today). And then today turned into tomorrow and then into the next month and next year and then one day, there he was, standing in front of me in the foyer of our church. We had a two minute conversation of which he remembers most and I remember little. But God did that, not me. I was walking out and heard my name behind me and then a friend introduced us and it was good. 

The only way I can describe how I feel about a controlled effort to have children for us is that same feeling of certainty: if God has this gift for us, I have to trust he will give it to us. It doesn't remove the need for acts of faith, in fact, it increases it (again, for me). It is an act of faith to rejoice with my pregnant sisters. It is an act of faith to bundle a box of baby gifts off to Portland when my best friend births her second. It is an act of faith to look up from the couple in front of me at church cooing over their new one. It is an act of faith to absorb the comments parents make about how rested we look and how easy they assume our lives must be. It is an act of faith to look at the lack and see a gift. 

God is not wasting this time. And he isn't absent in it. And his goodness isn't far off and his gifts are plenty, if I'm looking in the right place. Mother's Day is a reminder of what I do not have, but every other day is a reminder of what I do. I have an attentive Father and a present Savior and a tender Spirit, who knows my heart far more intricately than I do. He knows if I was wringing my hands and fretting about how to bring a child into our home, I would not be looking at him. He knows how "fear and anxiety leads to control and manipulation" and how these wreck relationships in spades. He knows what is best for me is to trust, look at him, let him absorb the comments, let him absorb the stabs of fear and the hits of pain. He knows he's working in the waiting (and not the waiting for a child, but the waiting for the culmination of all things). 

One of the great tragedies of the modern church mingling with social media and the American dream is we all think everyone should be doing what we're doing, or doing it the way we're doing it. Our problem isn't always that we lack faith for ourselves, but we lack faith for others. We think if it doesn't look like the choices we've made, then the choices are wrong. But when I read Scripture, I see a great many ways in which God makes his kingdom grow. There is one door, one way, and one path, yes, but it requires many different measures of faith to get everyone on it.

I wonder how many of us are waking in the morning with the litany too. All the shoulds and coulds and wants and wishes. The list of everything we're supposed to do crushing us before we've even opened our eyes. The kids should be in three activities a week. I should work out more. He should take out the garbage without me asking. She should be nicer and she'd get married. He should ask out more girls. They should discipline their kids more. I should discipline my kids more. My boss should promote me. I should shop at this grocery store instead of the other one. I don't know what your litany is, but you do, you know it better than anyone. What would it mean for you and your faith and your joy today, if instead you looked to Jesus, the author and finisher of your faith, and asked just one question: What do you want of me today? 

And then took one step forward. 

Answering Your Question

About six years ago I closed comments on Sayable and have only regretted it once or twice. I closed them for a few reasons, the primary of which was I wanted Sayable to be a place that encouraged contemplation more than discussion. So much of the online world centers on discussion and I didn't want to be hosting one more place for it. I wanted discussion to be happening in my home, my community, and my church, but I didn't want to be responsible for moderating it online. For me, that was a good choice. At the same time, though, I didn't want to be irresponsible as a writer and not provide a place for readers to be heard if they felt led. I opened a contact page and haven't looked back. Alas, it has created a beast in the form of email for me, a beast I have not mastered or even tamed slightly.

You readers seem to be more willing to get raw and real and vulnerable in an email, I suppose, than in a comment. You ask more questions. You ask for prayer. You ask for advice. You rant. You rave. You ramble. It's glorious. I wouldn't have it any other way. Generally, though, keeping my personal/work inbox at a minimal level is enough work for me. Delving into the emails coming in from Sayable and giving them each the response I wish I could would be a full time job in itself. It would probably be two full time jobs. I cannot, in good faith, give that much time to responding. My position has been (mostly) to not respond. If you've gotten a personal response from me (as in, not an auto-response or a response from someone assisting me), you're among the precious few.

A few months ago a friend helped me sort messages into those that were just saying general thank yous and those who wanted a response directly, and there they've still stayed, unanswered. Nagging in the back of my mind constantly. On principle, I'm quite okay with their unanswered state. I am a wife, a friend, a housemate, a home-maker, a home-group leader, and I have full-time work on my plate. I have to give those things my primary attention. On my less principled days, though, I feel the presence of those emails stalking me around. 

I spent about an hour this morning reading through a hundred or so emails, and thought to myself, "There is so much overlap here, what if I just answered these questions in blog format?" Many of your questions I've already answered (and I'd encourage you to avail yourself to the search bar or tags below—which is the best way to finagle your way through 17 years of archives), but some I might have a new or different perspective than I did before, or just want to revisit for your sake. My aim will just be to occasionally answer some questions, maybe weekly, maybe less often. I still cannot respond to all the emails, but if you asked a question and I tried to answer it, I will try to send you a link. I will not quote any question directly, because there really is a lot of overlap and it would be better to present the question as an amalgam of them all. 

I jotted down a few of the questions here, so if you see yours, just keep an eye out for it later: 

Why do you have a male housemate? (You'll be delighted or dismayed to find that now we have a male AND a female housemate!)

What advice do you have for someone who is engaged or married to someone with a mental illness?

How do I make new friends? 

How do I live an intentional life? 

Do you endorse everything someone (Jen Hatmaker, Jack Deere, Brene Brown, Madeleine L'Engle, etc.) has said just because you reviewed or recommended their book?

How do I trust God when I've had nothing but loss in my life? 

Why should I listen to anything you've written when you're married to a divorced man? 

Do you recommend writing under a pseudonym? 

What would you recommend to someone who thinks they're called to write? 

What do you do when you can't make yourself not doubt God?

Should I date/marry: an unbeliever, divorced person, someone with mental illness, or someone I don't feel peace about? 

Thanks, as always, for reading, friends. Some writers write because they can't not. Some write because they want bigger platforms or publicity. Some write because they have something to say and want to be heard. Some write because they say it's like breathing for them. That's not me. I don't need to write. I write for you. As long as you keep reading, I'll keep writing. So thank you.

Passions and Singleness

I feel like I've been throwing you all sorts of links to writing I'm doing elsewhere, but I had an emergency root canal yesterday and producing any sort of coherent thoughts today feels near impossible. So here's some writing I did while not under the influence of pain medication.

First is a piece  I wrote for my church on how marriage isn't the only status that illustrates the gospel, singleness does too. Here's an excerpt, and here's the full piece. 

My marriage didn’t make the gospel more true to me. In fact, marriage in some ways tempered my ache for the coming King. All my years of being single had taught me to long more, hunger more and treat chastity as a sort of fast not waiting for a husband, but waiting for the ultimate Groom, Christ. But in marriage I’ve often felt the itch of my longings more satisfied by my husband than by God. When I’m lonely, he’s there. When I’m lacking, he tries to provide. When I’m fearful, he tries to comfort. When I should be looking to the Savior as my ultimate companion, to the Father as the ultimate provider and the Spirit as my ultimate comfort, I settle for merely looking to my husband.

In many ways I understood a more intrinsic truth of the gospel in my singleness than in my marriage: We are all still waiting, regardless of our marital status, for the return of our Groom, for the marriage feast and for an eternal life together. My prolonged singleness was preaching a more inclusive truth of the gospel than my marriage—which is merely a picture of the covenantal love between Christ and His bride. (Continue reading...)

And here is a piece that was published in the Winter print issue of Light Magazine (a publication of Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission) on how to view your work if it's not your passion. Here's an excerpt, and here's the full piece now available online. 

We can begin to believe simply because we’re passionate about something or feel a certain inclination toward it, God means it for us now or in the future, but God’s Word never promises this. Over and over God tells his children to be faithful, work hard, trust him, and empty ourselves. We’re reminded in Scripture of men and women who worked a very long time and never saw what actually was promised to them (Heb. 11).

When we believe a desire for a vocation means we will get to do it all our life, we’ve made the passion for the thing our idol. How much better to trust the work of our hands to the Creator of all, knowing he takes what is a formless void and makes it all beautiful in his time? Our work is good because, when all was still a formless void, God was preparing us for good works (Eph. 2:10). (Continue reading...)

The Little Anger that Grew

I got a little angry last week and then I got a little more angry this week and that's okay, I guess, if you live by yourself and never have to communicate with real people whom you love or you don't love Jesus. But I don't live by myself and I do love Jesus and my little anger has been spilling over. And, as anger is wont to do, when it spills over you realize it's not so little as you first pretended it to be. In fact, it's a monstrosity. 

The particulars don't matter much and also they're so varied and vast that it's not really the particular of the moment that I'm actually angry about, but all the other things so when the particular very little moment happens, it turns into a very big thing. The thing is: I am not an angry person (this is what all angry persons say, I think, probably). I extend grace like it's next year's credit. I overlook like it never happened. I bite my tongue and choose my words very, very, very carefully. And, at the bottom of all that seeming goodness: I'm angry. 

Mostly I'm angry at my body. If there is an infectious malady I did not catch within the past three weeks, I'm unaware of it. Plus I cracked my tooth on a wheat berry and tweaked my lower back painfully and had the blessed curse on all women on top of it all. It was like merrily all the way until suddenly 37 said, "And now, for our next trick, your body is going to remind you it's fallible from head to toe!" I pride myself (literally) on rolling with the punches, but there are some punches from which you cannot get up.* 

And so, as anger does when there is no shred of pride left to keep it from bubbling over, I've been angry. I can count on more hands than I have the number of times my dear husband has said to me in the past few weeks, "I think you're overreacting/being harsh/feeling tired/need to give them more grace/need to give yourself more grace/misunderstanding/being unkind." So, literal insult to literal injury, my body is falling apart and my soul is falling apart. 

This morning I woke up all prepared with what I was going to say (since not saying, not saying, not saying until I can't not say anymore is a real sin struggle of mine) about a certain thing to a certain someone. I sat down to start work, armed with a lit candle, a Mason jar of water, coffee (which in recent weeks tastes like dishwater to me but which I keep drinking), and my Bible. I wish I could say there were stunning words of life and now I'm all repentant and changed and free of anger, but the truth is I'm not. I'm still angry. Again, the particulars don't matter and they're 26 bullet points long and probably matter a lot less than I'm giving them credit for. But what I realized this morning is really, there's only one bullet point that matters: I'm angry at God. 

It's not because he isn't giving me something I want. And it isn't because he's giving it to someone else. It's not because he isn't good and isn't doing good all over the world. It isn't because he isn't kind or just or generous or merciful. He is all those things and I know it with my whole heart. I'm angry at him because I feel far from him and I've felt it for a while. 

It shows up like I feel far from my dear husband or I feel lonely like my best friends live on opposite sides of the country or I feel far from the dream of ever living in the northeast on two acres in a farmhouse with a row of peonies and a couple kids or I feel far from being the person I want to be in body, in spirit, in soul, and in mind. I feel very far off from all this, yes, but mostly I feel far from God. 

I've been listening to the Psalms this morning and reminding myself that God is unchangeable and omnipresent and never far off. That even if I feel far off or see myself as far off, he cannot be far off. Just as true as all the other truths about God I know, his presence is true. Who he is, is true. But also where he is, is true. And his nearness is my good (Ps. 73:28). 

This doesn't sort out my anger. It doesn't resolve it. And it doesn't quell it. But it does point to the true source of it and that, I think, is probably a helpful place to start. It makes me wonder how much of the shouting in the world today (wars, rumors of wars, blog rebuttals and careless tweets, sarcasm and misunderstandings) is really just because we're angry at God. We feel overlooked by him. We feel unheard by him. We wonder, "How long, O Lord?" We keep thinking other people can solve or abate or resolve or even handle the anger we feel, but all along, the only one who can truly handle it is the only one who can truly resolve it. 

I don't know where your anger (even if you're not an "angry person") is directed today. Maybe it's toward your family or your husband or politics or your kid or systemic problems in the world or the Church or your finances or your singleness or maybe you already know it's toward God and you're way ahead of me. I don't know. I'm praying for both of us this morning, though. That's all.

*Every time I talk about anything to do with health, I get 27,000 messages telling me what to do or not to do or what worked for you. Thank you. But please don't. Okay? 

Marrying a Real Person, Not an Illusion & Going Through Hell for Faith

I have two pieces up on Christianity Today this week. If you're curious and want to read more, here are some short excerpts and their respective links: 

Get Thee to a Flawed Wife: A letter of encouragement—and realism—to Christian men considering marriage.

To the single men who are considering marriage and feeling hesitant, I issue this invitation from Elisabeth Elliot’s Let Me Be a Woman: You do not marry a ministry partner; you marry a person. You do not marry someone like another man’s wife; you marry your wife. You do not marry someone like you; you marry a unique woman. And you do not marry someone perfect, you marry a sinner.

The same goes for women in their search for a husband. After marriage, you are not committed to your call more than you’re committed to the person, husband, man, and sinner before you. Nowhere in Scripture is “pastor’s wife” the attribute of a godly, good wife, nor is “deep theologian” the attribute for a husband. The only four qualities we need to understand in our search for a spouse are littered throughout the Scriptures and true of every married person on earth. (Keep reading.) 

Jack Deere Went Through Hell to Come to Faith: The theologian’s memoir is refreshingly raw about the wounds he’s suffered—and the wounds he’s inflicted.

This rawness is rare in the church today. We are often told by leaders that they sin, but Deere’s memoir is refreshingly full of his sin. It is not gratuitous in any form. We never get the sense that he wants to gain our pity or empathy to manipulate us into thinking he’s better or worse than he is. He is simply factual (to our knowledge) and unapologetic to his reader, while increasingly more repentant toward those against whom he has sinned—God foremost among them.

In a world where, all too often, leaders present themselves as one-dimensional characters (primarily speakers, teachers, pastors, musicians, or writers), Deere shows us we are irreducibly complex beings. Our bodies matter. Our souls matter. Our minds matter. Our emotions matter. Our histories matter. These together form the whole of who we are, and any true ministry we do out of the whole is going to be wholly complex. Otherwise, it will be anemic, one-dimensional, and devoid of power. Deere recognizes this now. But it took hell to get him there. I haven’t even mentioned the half of it in this review. (Keep reading.)

God, Make Us Good Question Askers

I'm not allowed to say I married up or my husband is the best of anything (I'll get a talking-to later on if I do.). But let me say this: I really respect him. He gets up every single morning to start his day with Scripture, journaling, and messaging various men with whom he walks. It is rare when he doesn't have the answer to any question I ask him (about politics, history, science, sports, or literature). He reads current events, theology, poetry. He reads about farming, he reads about prayer, and he reads people. 

If you met him it would probably take a long time before you knew any of this about him. He never name drops whatever theologian he's reading or quotes poetry or statistics or how he knows western history like the back of his hand. In most conversations, he's the most quiet. And this bothers me. 

It really, really, really bothers me. I feel irritated often in conversations with others because if they would shut up and let him talk, or even ask him a question, they'd probably learn a thing or two. I've learned more in my three years with him than most of my life beforehand. Most of what I've learned, though, isn't what he knows and has taught me, it's how he is. 

The other afternoon he and I were having an impassioned conversation (as impassioned as two people with head colds and other maladies can be) about racism, policing, perspective, and the way we talk about all of these things in church culture. I voiced my frustration that he doesn't speak up about his perspective more when we're in the company of others—particularly those who seem to like the sound of their own voices. And he said this, "Sometimes I think asking questions is a better way to dialogue than just giving my perspective." 

The thing about asking questions in conversations, though, is first, all it does is make the other people who are already talking talk more. Second, it doesn't leave much space for him to share his wisdom (which is solid gold if you ask me). And third, it can make most conversations feel unfinished because there's always another question. 

The other thing about asking questions, though, is you learn and, if the questions are wise ones, the person you're asking them of learns too. 

Is being the first to say something worth the cost of being wrong once another states his case? 

Is asking for clarification again and again going to cost us something more than our pride? 

Is asking an X-ray question of someone who might have a limited view on something only helpful for us as the asker, or could it be helpful for them as the speaker? 

Do we really think our perspective is the most right? Or that we don't have more to learn? 

Would we stake our lives on what we're saying? 

Are we willing to say, "I don't know."?

Could asking a question instead of sharing a view, help us toward true reconciliation and peace?

Are we willing to leave more conversations unfinished knowing all of life is a process and none of us have arrived yet?

The folks I've learned the most from are people who've employed the Socratic method. They've asked questions, drilling down eventually to the deepest question, until I am gutted and vulnerable and see the inadequacy of my position or place in all its ugliness. And then those people have come down from their pulpit or platform or across the table, and stood beside me, saying, "I'm in this mess with you. Let's walk forward with more willingness to learn and hear and love and heal together."

My husband does this and he does it so well most people don't even notice he's doing it. They probably leave most conversations feeling heard and loved or maybe they leave thinking they showed him. I don't know. I do know I want to be more like him though. And more like the Christ from whom he learns.

Here are a few of the questions Jesus asked (and here are 135 of them):

Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? (Matthew 6:27)
Why are you so afraid? (Matthew 8:26)
Do you believe that I am able to do this? (Matthew 9:28)
Do you still not understand? (Matthew 16:9)
What is it you want? (Matthew 20:21)
What do you think? (Matthew 21:28)
Why are you thinking these things? (Mark 2:8)
What were you arguing about on the road? (Mark 9:33)
Where is your faith? (Luke 8:25)
What is your name? (Luke 8:30)
Who touched me? (Luke 8:45)

We're Sunday People, but Sometimes We're Saturday People too

My first Tenebrae service was less than a decade ago. I said "Excuse me?" to the elder who served me communion because I'd never been served it and certainly never had the words, "The blood of Christ shed for you," accompanying it. In my circles we take communion or pass it, rarely by intinction or only on special occasions. "As often as you do this," has become often and rote and tacked on at the end of the service. A cardboard cracker with a plastic cup of Welch's. 

"My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me," sounded from the balcony and the candles were extinguished one by one by one by one. We who have walked in darkness walked out in darkness that night. 

We all know that Sunday is coming and our Easter best will prove it, pinks and blues and spring greens masking how still dark some of our Easters feel. He is risen, he is risen indeed, but some of us still feel the bleary-eyed darkness of Thursday and Friday and Saturday in our earth encrusted eyes and ears accustomed to nos. I feel like Peter around Easter every year, full of disappointment and denials and "How longs?" and "Surely nots." I feel as he must have felt when Christ rebuked him, called him or the spirit within his words, "Satan," and instructed him behind him. That's the kind of disappointing I think I am to the God of the universe sometimes and Easter doesn't resolve that, no matter how many times we echo "He is risen indeed." 

We who have walked in darkness still sometimes do. 

I have been thinking about all the nos I've gotten in my life. Hoards of them, echoes and echoes of them, big ones, little ones. Nos from those who knew better and nos from those I didn't think knew better. It's easy in an Instagram, celebrity, and loud, loud world to assume most people live in the kingdom of Yes. Even the marginalized who make it make it sound like they won't take no for an answer. But the great majority of most of our lives is no. Sometimes it's not yet or not quite or tomorrow or someday, but most of us don't have that sort of futuristic information. We learn to live with no. 

I think about the disciples today, on this Good Friday. The king who they thought would take a throne is dying on a cross and it is darkness, darkness all around.

This is a no. 

No matter how you rationalize or rush to remember and remind that we're Sunday people, they weren't. Not yet. They were still Friday people and Saturday people. They were hearing the darkest no of their lives and no takes a while to heal from, so I understand all the doubt floating around on that first Easter morning. 

I will always be grateful for Easter mornings, for Resurrection Sundays, and for pinks and blues and spring greens. But I also feel a deep sensitivity for those for whom Sunday still feels like a Friday or Saturday. For those whose ears are so tuned to no, they can't imagine a yes. This is most of us, if we're honest. Even the pastors and theologians and church staffers who will wear pink or gingham ties and go to bed bone tired Sunday night from serving. Most of us know the light is coming and is here, in part, already. But we'll all head back into Monday and most Mondays feel like walking among a people in darkness who haven't yet seen a great light. It is good work, but it is hard, and it reminds us all to say and keep saying, with our ancient brothers and sisters, "How long, O Lord?" and "Come quickly." 

The King has come and is coming again. But today, on this Good Friday, and tomorrow on this Black Saturday, and in a few days on a mostly ordinary Monday we still see in part dimly. I need reminders that the full light of life is coming, maybe you do too. 

A few months ago a pastor at my church paraphrased from the Westminster Catechism during communion. He said, "As surely as I can taste the crumbs of this wafer and the juice that washes it down, this is how sure my salvation is." I think of this every week now, as I take communion: "My salvation is as real as the crunch of this wafer, as real as the sweet sharpness of the fruit of the vine." As often as I do it, I have to remind myself because I am a forgetting sort and a busy sort and the sort who gets caught up in doing more than being, in saying more than believing, and in gospeling more than being gospeled.

Before Easter Sunday I am more like Peter but after I am more like Thomas. I need the tangibleness of a Savior who offered to the doubter his nail-scarred hands and broken side: "Touch me," he said, "Thrust your hand into my side and believe." I need the physicalness of a Savior who knows how the nos condition us to disbelieve and who offers us something to feel, to touch, to see, to know. Communion, however rote and however unlike I wish it were done in my circles, is this reminder to the Sunday people and the ones still stuck in Saturday, that he knows our frame, he knows that we are but dust today. And there is a better, more eternal, Sunday coming. 

Full, Not Busy

For a little over a year, I've been making an intentional attempt to call my life full instead of busy. The idol of busyness is one Christians are particularly bent toward worshipping and busyness can also become the shield we use to protect ourselves from adding unwanted appointments to our calendars. For a long time I've tried to curve myself into a person who counts unbusyness as important as busyness, but more and more I'm realizing even that needs some adjustment.

My life is full, but it is not busy. My days are full from the moment I wake until I sleep, but most of the minutes and hours are not appointed to places, people, and things, as much as they simply happen and are kept full, or catch me being attentive to them. I have a lot of margin built into my life on purpose so there is time to pause during something that must be done (for work or home or family) to pay attention to something that might be done (like listening to a friend for a minute or praying with someone or sometimes staring out the back door, like I'm doing right now, at the golden buds of spring and red-tipped Photinias, and listening to the birdsong). If our lives are scheduled to the brim—even with good things—it doesn't give us time to see or appreciate humans as more than an appointment or nature as more than the ground on which we walk from car to coffee shop. My life is full, full and brimming over, but it is not busy. 

Springtime, though, always seems the most full to me. These are the days when I must force myself out of the musts and into the mights more often. Being a freelancer means I can choose my hours, but more work means fewer spare hours from which to choose. I am grateful for the work, though, because I like to work. But I think the discipline of changing my verbiage has helped form this true love of work instead of the begrudging duty it used to feel like. When my life is full, I love my work. When my life is busy, I begin to despise my work. And if my primary work is to be faithful, I want to love faithfulness. It reminds me of Psalm 85:10, 

Steadfast love and faithfulness meet;
    righteousness and peace kiss each other.

The beautiful picture of love and faithfulness joining, righteousness and peace kissing is one I want to have threaded through all of my life. I know hardship and trials and pains and disappointments come, but the nearer we come to the coming of our King, the more what is good will begin to join and unite and bring joy. This is good news for the busy people who need to be satiated by their Savior more than their schedules and the full ones who need to see fruitfulness is more about faithfulness than accomplishments. 

Here are some beautiful things I've read in the margins: 

When You Can't Afford to be A Good Mom by Hannah Anderson

Bodies of Truth by Abby Perry

In Defense of Irrelevant Films by Brett McCracken

The Idol of No Pain by Rachel Joy Welcher

And my favorite, Jesus is Coming, Plant a Tree by N.T. Wright

Living on the Earth We Have

The first two years of marriage, for us, were a whirlwind. Dating was six weeks, engagement another six, moving, moving again, moving again, setting, sort of, into a place we knew we wouldn't stay but what else could we do? We planted a little container garden on the patio of our rental and salvaged the tomatoes the skinny city deer missed and the chile peppers they knew better than to eat. And with the same gusto we had dreamed of staying in Denver we dreamed of leaving DC.

The creeping realization that city life was not for us didn't prevent us from returning to the Dallas area, but the comfort of returning to our church family was all the pull we needed and in two weeks we will have lived in our home for a year. This is the first March in three years I'm not thinking through moving preparations. I pinch myself at the coming wonder of living within the same walls for twelve whole months plus one. And so we have been learning to dream. I would like to say again, but there is no room for dreaming in a world of survival. We have survived three years together and now we begin to dream. 

For months that dream has been routing us toward the hope of someday living on a plot of land, not to own it or to be owned by it, as Wendell Berry says, but to be stewards of it. We know the dream will take years to unfold and we are patient for it. Whiplash will teach you patience is a good friend. But the dream—sometimes—is just good enough. 

Sabbaths are for dreaming, we often say to one another. Mondays and Tuesdays and Thursdays are for doing, for faithfulness, for being instead of going. But on Sabbath we dream. No limitations and no realism. We feed our dreams on Sabbath because God knit those dreams as surely as he knit us—even if they will never be realized. One week we are farmers and another we are church planters and another we are city-dwellers. One week I found an old retreat center for sale in the Adirondacks and we dreamed for a moment of stewarding it and what we might do with all that beauty. If our friends are sharing our space on Sabbath we tell them they can dream too and we'll water it, tend it, see where it might go for a day. We who were perishing for want of a vision, come alive within it. 

On Saturday morning, we measured our back yard space, mostly concrete with slivers of earth on the margins and a lima bean pool in the middle. Then we spent the day weeding and tilling the margins and building 18" cedar wood raised beds. Our muscles ached and my skin was radish red by evening. The beds are still empty, awaiting dirt this evening, plants in a week or so, and roots in a few more weeks. But we stood back and admired our work, remarked to one another how much we enjoy hard work, and have felt the strange inklings of rootedness begin to take. 

"The act of putting these here and the planting to come," he says, "makes me feel more rooted here, regardless of what God does with our future. We're trying to be faithful, to establish wholeness from this concrete yard in Flower Mound, Texas. We're trying to take part in its redemption now." It reminds me of what the poet Gary Snyder said, "Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there.” 

One of the most insidious lies to ever enter the Christian faith is that what we do on earth has no place in the new earth. That "It's all gonna burn," as a friend once joked while we walked the coast of Maine on a brisk November day.

All creation is groaning and we are too, that's more the truth, and these groanings are too strong to ignore. The groaning leads some to the city and some to the country, some to shepherding and some to sheep-herding, some to gardening and some to cooking, and sometimes it leads us to do the best we can with what we have today. And then to dream on Sundays of the earth to come. 

Learning to Want at the Beginning of March

I made it a few skims into the NYT Book Review yesterday before slinging the paper away and declaring I was so weary of progressivism and their better-ness peppered through every article. Every chance to bash the Other and slip in names having nothing to do with the subject at hand, but everything to do with making selves feel better about themselves. I did not vote for this current administration, am not a Republican, and have about as little tolerance for populism as for its counterpart, elitism. 

All that to say I made my way through one article, not ironically a piece on how progressives are optimistic (and conservatives are fear-mongers) which I suppose depends on your point of view any which way you look at it. (I know some pretty heady conservatives who are wildly more optimistic and less screechy than some rattled progressives who always seem to be wringing their hands about something.) My point is, when you're so far left that anything to the right looks terrifying or so far to the right that anything to the left looks horrifying, of course you're going to disagree on whether you're the optimist or the pessimist. Somewhere in the middle is harder to be and see and stay. From that vantage point it's harder to tell who is the real -ist about anything because they all just look like regular people trying to figure out living and life and religion and family and finances and food and jobs and dreams and doing their best with what they have today. 

But it all has me thinking about optimism and in particular, my own. 

March, they say, comes in like a lion and out like a lamb, and, I say, takes a certain type of constitution. Up north March is bipolar, a foot of snow followed by a spate of 60 degree days followed by another foot of snow. It is muddy and chilly and breezy and its scent is dirt and earth and a distinct one which you cannot describe but which everyone knows to be Spring. It has always been one of my least favorite months because I suppose I am probably a pessimist at heart. But March for the past three years has brought some sweet gifts (Our first date in 2015. Harper's birth in 2016. Moving back to Texas in 2017.) and I don't want to get into the habit of hoping for a bumper crop of goodness every March.

I, like most middling sorts, waver between ever getting too optimistic or too pessimistic about anything. I don't want to be the sort who begins to expect good things around every corner (disappointment is a brutal beast), but neither do I want to be the sort who braces for bad things just because. An old pastor of mine used to say, "Expectations are resentments waiting to happen," and I've found that goes either way. If it's not good enough or if it's worse than I thought, resentment can surface. Better to hold it all loosely, mustering the belief that I have all I need anyway. And I do. But also, we are human, made to want. 

My friend Jen Pollock Michel in her book Teach Us to Want says, 

"The fluency of holy desire can be learned: it can even be learned by praying the Lord's Prayer again and again—although, to what may be our surprise, the Lord's Prayer does not levitate us into some dimension where earthly concerns cease to matter. The Lord's Prayer is a prayer for us, here and now. It teaches us to reenter our lives with greater allegiance to Christ and his kingdom while allowing us to pray for everyday, earthly desires."

It seems to me the main problem in progressivism and conservatism and elitism and populism is not that we want too much or too little, expect too much or too little, but that our lives are too little arranged around the "other world for which we were made," to paraphrase a quote from Lewis (136), and too much arranged around this one. 

But also, this "greater allegiance to Christ and his kingdom" lets us "pray for our everyday, earthly desires." Instead of our earthly desires dictating the terms of the kingdom, the kingdom of God makes space for those earthly—but good—desires to root, surface, grow, and bear fruit. 

I have a lot of earthly desires, and many for our country right now, many for my church, my family, my home, my own body—the earthly temple in which the Spirit dwells. But all those desires terminate on themselves or turn themselves into some convoluted confused upside-down kingdom (like the Academy Awards last night—simultaneously decrying an inappropriate sexual culture while showering awards on films with beastiality and a sexual relationship between a 24 and 17 year old) when they are not within the generous bounds of a created order—which, by its nature, means we do not make the rules. 

My desires must be for something higher, God himself and his kingdom. 

This is why I glad to not be a registered anything or pledge allegiance to anything on this earth. My allegiance is to God, to his order of things, and my optimism is rooted in the coming kingdom, not in the fruition of all my "disordered loves." The world is in disarray: children slaughtered in schools by people with guns made for slaughtering, mental gymnastics abound by barely clad women talking about objectification, wars and rumors of wars, and everyone thinks they're the real optimist, the ones with the real solutions. But God's kingdom gives us permission to grieve at what is while hoping for what is to come at the same time—to be true eternal optimists. 

It might be on the picket lines that our points are made, but it's at the tables where progress is made. It's there where we can be honest about what is terribly, terribly wrong, but also true about what is beautifully, achingly good. 

Feeling Our Way Toward a Light So Lovely

Throughout 2018 so far I have been reading through the Psalms slowly, feeling my way through them chapter by chapter, verse by verse. This past weekend Nate and I were a part of an Art and Prayer retreat at Laity Lodge (one of my favorite places on earth) and to our delight, it was on the book of Psalms. Nate is also working his way through the Psalms so it was a real blessing to both of us to soak in the entire book for four days. 

During Lent I added the book of Acts to my daily reading. The book of Acts and I have a squirrely relationship. So many of my formative years were spent in it—mostly intended by church leaders to push parishioners toward a Spirit soaked life, but becoming mostly a millstone around my neck. Part of that is I never really read the book for myself so I believed wrongly about many things and did not know what to believe at all about other things. Five years ago that changed when a pastor from my church took a group of us through the entire book, line by line by line. It was, without doubt, one of the most Spirit-filled experiences of my life and profoundly healing. 

This morning I read Paul's words in Acts 17: 

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for
'In him we live and move and have our being’;
as even some of your own poets have said,
‘For we are indeed his offspring.’

That phrase "perhaps feel their way toward him and find him" feels like such a generosity from God this morning. I am so much a part of a thinking tradition now and live among a people who think more than feel much of the time, and find often the feeling parts of our faith are thrust to the margins or outskirts or what we call "mountain top experiences," the sort no one wants to deny but everyone agrees shouldn't be normative. It seems as though in my previous church tradition I felt pressure to have a feeling moment at every service, in every prayer, at every retreat, in every song. The pendulum swings as it is wont, though, and I cannot remember the last time I wept or felt my way toward anything resembling God and found him there. 

This weekend, though, as we covered the gamut of psalms, praises and laments, questions and doubts, assurances and ascriptions, I felt an inkling of something akin to feeling anything. Permission perhaps? 

In many of the "Spirit-filled" churches the felt emotion of preference is mostly joy, as in if you don't feel joy there must be some secret sin lurking about in your closets. In many of the "Word full" churches the emotion of preference is surety, as in a ready defense and constant apologetic and never, never, never sadness or brokenness for long because, goodness gracious, we know the Gospel and the hope therein. But these are the same broken mechanisms at work in both, namely: we're uncomfortable with uncertain emotions. Or the motions of uncertainty. 

You know who isn't uncomfortable with uncertain emotions? Poets. Artists. Psalmists. Musicians. Mostly. This is why I love that immediately after Paul uses the words "feel their way toward God and find him," he quotes some of their poets. Paul is saying there is something about a poem or verse or piece of art or music that stirs something inside us sometimes—and it's not always sola scriptura. Paul says some who feel their way toward God won't even find him in temples made by men, and that the boundaries of our dwelling places are determined by God and not men. Psalm 16 says our "boundary lines have fallen in pleasant places, indeed we have a beautiful inheritance." 

This seems to me wildly permissive of God and not the God I understand him to be most of the time.

We are drawn to him (and not just once but again and again and again) by his beauty and not always in the dwelling places and temples made by human hands (A cathedral made by pine trees perhaps? Or the bluff of a canyon? Or a flat rock on the summit of a mountain? Or a poem?). Not always in rigid, unbending theology formed more by the other Christians with whom we spend most of our time and less by thousands of years of church history or by the sound of water falling down a rock cut. Not always in the lyrics of modern worship music but sometimes there, and sometimes in the ancient poets too. Not always in being right and going to bed satisfied you won every argument or know every technical theological term, but sometimes in simply listening to what is beautiful even if its truth is a more difficult wrestle. 

Madeleine L'Engle writes in Walking on Water, “We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”

A light so lovely they want with all their hearts to know the source of it and to "perhaps feel their way toward God and find him."

Application for Writing Mentorship

When I was 15, a friend a decade ahead of me took an interest in my writing, encouraging me along and not letting me get away with sloppy self-editing. Then when I was in my early twenties, I had an older mentor who did the same. In college I was surrounded by professors who simply would not accept anything less from me than my most excellent work. All of these helped make me who I am today. I am not the world’s best writer, but I am willing to be edited, willing to slay my darlings, and wanting to say things as well as I am able to say them.

I am not yet old (I don't think!) but I am recognizing more and more the need to pass the baton and to take part in encouraging those with a clear gift for writing to hone their craft. I made it my aim after I began using Patreon, that when I reached 200 supporters, I would begin a small mentoring group for writing. I first opened it to Patreon supporters, but I still have three openings and I would like to extend an invitation to those spaces to all Sayable readers now.

I am really excited to begin this group on March 1st. Before I issue the invitation to be a part of this group, though, I wanted to say a few things.

If your aim is to be published, this is not the group for you. Most of the advice out there for folks who want to get published is all about making connections, networking, building a platform, getting an audience, etc. I don't want to disparage those efforts, but I think the thing our world is really thirsting for is not more writers, but better writers. Becoming better writers takes time, feedback, brutal honesty, humility, a willingness to edit and be edited, patience, the ability to hear the word no, and not see a no as a deterrent but instead as a tool to shape and hone writing.

I will not be helping you get published quick because I think quick publishing is one of the worst things that's ever happened to good writing. I will also not be connecting you with any publishing platforms or sharing your social links or blogs during these 12 weeks. My job in this mentorship will be to help you become a better thinker, writer, and submitter of your own work on its own merits—not the merits of your story or who you know or wherever you think your work belongs.

There will be one week when I encourage you to submit your work on your own, without a personal connection, to an online or print publication where you know your piece would work. So much of the writing world these days is about who you know, but it's almost become like Tinder for dating. It removes the need for awkwardness and humility and messing up and learning along the way. I want to hold your hand in this process, but I will not do it for you.

Now that we’ve talked about what this mentorship won’t be, what will it be?

It will be a place where you will exercise the muscles of non-fiction first person narrative writing (much like the sort you find on Sayable). We will not be doing fiction writing of any sort. These will be short and long essays. Let your personal ideas, thoughts, and perspectives flow. The best writers know what they think about all kinds of things, instead of simply regurgitating whatever research or popular opinion is floating about. What piques your interest? Gets you excited? Makes you sad? What do you fear? What are you willing to confess? What do you know about God? What do you not know about Him? This is the stuff we’ll talk about and work through. There are plenty of deeply theological writers out there whose lives are woefully uninspected, who find themselves caught off-guard in all kinds of pride and arrogance and fear and doubt and more because while they knew much about God, they overlooked inspecting their own hearts. Calvin said, “Nearly all the wisdom which we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”

You will be annoyingly aggressive with your own writing. You will let others be annoyingly aggressive with your writing. You will edit, embellish, omit, and extend. You will “kill your darlings” and you will cradle them rarely. You will not force your words using cheap tricks like alliteration or cliche.

You should expect to commit about 15-45 minutes a day to writing, depending on how quickly you write and how much you procrastinate. There is also one book you’ll need to read, plus one article and podcast each week. Plan on spending about 2-3 hours a week on this.

You will need to purchase one of these books: On Writing, Walking on Water, Bird by Bird, or The Writing Life. It doesn’t matter which one, just pick one that looks most interesting to you. You will need to have it read by the beginning of week two, so buy it soon and get started.

You will need to find two people in your life who know you, flesh and blood, in real life (no online buddies), who will commit to reading a few of your pieces before you hand them in (as assigned). You will need to commit to listen to their advice. These should not be your mom or your aunt, unless your mom or aunt are handier with a red pen than they are with effusive praise.

You will need access to and familiarity with Google Docs as it will be our main tool. I will not be mentoring on how to use it. If you have questions, google them. I will explain more in the syllabus, but familiarity is a must.

The cost for this 12 week mentorship is $120. You will need to paypal the entire amount before March 1, 2018, to have access to the group. Once you’ve applied and been accepted, I will send you the paypal information.

If you can do all this and want to commit, then by golly, I want you apply! Apply here by February 25th. I will let you know the final decision by February 26th. The group will begin on March 1, 2018 and conclude on May 17th. 

EDIT: I know I said I was going to keep the writing mentorship applications open until Sunday, but I have a few hundred and I cannot keep getting so many a day for the next few days. I'm going to close applications Wednesday by 4CST. Sorry for the inconvenience. And THANK YOU for your overwhelming response! What a gift to know so many of you care about writing well. 

Beholding Beauty in All Its Forms

When God created his people, he put them in a garden. Before he gave the mandate to work, to be fruitful and multiply, he set them in the center of beauty, goodness, and life. It is almost as if he wanted them to be primarily people who beheld rather than produced. It didn't take long for the beauty of the best to be thwarted by the enemy though, and so absorption of the self instead of the Creator has been stealing our gaze ever since. We are still all worshippers though, some of us blindly and some of us perennially reminded to lift our eyes to a better hill, one from which our help comes. The temptation to produce our own glory instead of absorbing the glory God wants us to behold is always near to us and we must become experts in bouncing our gazes back to him. 

Here are some (hopefully) true and beautiful and good words I've read, said, listened to, and feasted upon this week. 

Listen

We listened to this short talk from Andy Crouch this past week about high friction and low friction and I cannot recommend it more highly. It has been ringing in our ears for over a week now. 

Beau Hughes is the pastor of The Village Church Denton (once a campus of my church, now a plant of it), and he shared these words with us last week. It was one of my favorite testimonies in my near ten years at TVC. 

I spoke with my friend Christine Hoover about her new book, Searching for Spring, and my own journey with waiting for marriage, babies, and just all things slow coming. 

Sing

This album is coming soon from Audrey Assad and you're going to want to feast on it. 

Sandra McCracken just released her newest and it's the perfect Lenten soundtrack. 

This album has been going nearly non-stop in our house the past week. 

Short Reads

This interview with Karen Swallor Prior and her husband Roy is one of the best things I read online this week. Take a few minutes and feast on it. 

A few months ago Eric Schumacher sent me the draft for this article at Risen Motherhood. It was just before our most recent miscarriage and what a blessing for both Nate and me to read. 

My friend Tony Woodlief is (thank God) writing more regularly again. This piece on parenting his new twin boys in this season of life is rich, rich, rich. Read through to the end. We all need this reminder. 

Long Reads

Nate and I have been dreaming of a big backyard garden since we first saw our property in Denver. It hasn't come to fruition yet, but we're still dreaming. This book is helping. 

This is a memoir written by an upstate New York farmer. She's from one side of the Adirondacks and I'm from the other, but the culture, weather, farming, people, and anecdotes are all very similar. I loved this book. 

I first read this book in high school and started rereading it again last week. I'd forgotten how perfect it is. 

. . .

I hope you find some beauty in some of these recommendations or other sources you find on your own. I hope you can still your own hand of production long enough to appreciate the gifts, minds, and works of others. And I hope, more than all that, you can lift your gaze to the good, good Father who gives every good and perfect gift in its right and perfect time and never one single moment before.