Seeds Become Fruit and Fruit Becomes Seeds

Writing is like speaking a language and writer’s block happens when you’ve gone a while without speaking it. It’s like any other exercise, to be strong, one must practice. I’ve been flexing my writing muscles over in another place on my laptop the past few months, watching chapters take shape, quotes find place, and points be made. I share an illustration in one chapter that a friend told me a few months ago, a story about his grandfather. His grandfather was whittling wood from the pile. “How do you know what it’s going to be,” my friend asked him. “Well, son, this block of wood you see is an eagle. My job is just to take away all the parts that aren’t eagle.”

Writing is a bit like that, taking a big block of wood (or cheese, for you West Wingers among us), kind of knowing what you want it to be and then stripping away the words that don’t belong until you’re left with a halfway presentable piece.

Sanctification is also like this and sometimes we get out of practice there too. I forget who I’m supposed to look like (Christ) and stop submitting myself to the whittling away process of sanctification. I react rather than respond. I succumb rather than submit. I falter rather than have faith. And then one day I wake up and realize my muscles have atrophied and responding in right action feels more difficult than before. The old “two steps back” adage applies here.

I tell a friend last night (incidentally the same friend who told me the story about his grandfather months ago) that most of us are just walking in the faith we have for the day, but sometimes the Spirit makes a thing clear to us, we ignore it, and our path begins diverging from God’s best. We’re not hopelessly lost, of course, grace, grace, upon grace. But we begin to carry that seed of rebellion or disappointment in our pocket, caressing it, secreting it away, and sometimes it becomes so hidden we even forget it’s there. But it’s still clinging to our every day just the same. Bitterness. Resentment. Fear. Doubt. It begins to inform every relationship, decision, and season of our lives. It still seems like a tiny seed hidden away, but it’s actually become a monstrosity in our hearts.

I’ve had some realization about one of these seeds in my life the past few weeks. It startled me with its presence and the clarity with which I first saw it. I felt shocked that such a thing existed and was informing nearly every relationship in my life. Every friendship—even with my husband—was teetering on a question of trust. My trust had been tried in a friendship and I carried that distrust with me everywhere, trying to sense if a person was trustworthy, could handle my true self, and would respond kindly. I’ve had to stop, reflect on what God’s word says about trusting flesh (my own and others), and reorient my heart toward the people I love and the God who will never harm me.

All of life for the Christian is spent hearing, listening, reading, and knowing God’s word and then also doing it. But our culture, even our Christian, culture, doesn’t really make a lot of space for that. We appropriate our culture’s verbiage for everything and then wonder why simple obedience in the face of hard things is so hard. Simple obedience is hard. It causes us to flinch from its pain. “Anyone who says differently,” as Wesley, dear sweet Wesley said, “is selling something.”

Our culture is selling us something, ease, success, cheeriness, perfect abs, airbrushed images. But most of us, if we’re honest, are just a block of wood getting chiseled away at by the Master Maker. There’s an eagle in there somewhere, but not yet, not today. Not until we see Him face to face in glory.

If you have the time today, I encourage you to get a moment of quiet and ask the Lord if there’s a seed you’ve been carrying in your pocked. Maybe it’s from the fruit of a disappointing relationship, maybe it’s what you dream about planting to make a name for yourself, maybe it’s a bitter root forming, or maybe you don’t even know it’s there. Ask him how it’s been informing your day, your actions, your view of him, your view of others. And ask him if he’ll remove it and plant in its place a seed of faith for a different outcome. That’s what I’m praying for in place of the seed of fear I’ve had: Would you plant in me faith for a different outcome? I know he can and so I’m asking him to.

Not Many of You Should Become Writers, Readers, Publishers, or Editors

I read this quote from Tim Challies this morning and then I had a thought this morning and wanted to share it with you. Here’s the quote:

“It has long been my observation that there are two kinds of books being marketed to Christians. There are some whose foundational message is what you need to do and others whose foundational message is what Christ has already done. The first make a model out of the author, the second make a model out of Jesus. The first place the burden for change on personal power while the second place the burden for change on Christ’s power.”

A few years ago when Nate and I were still living in DC, we were really struggling to find a church home. Most of that is on my and Nate’s shoulders. We came to DC feeling bruised and a bit jaded with the practices and structures at play within the theological camp we aligned. A few years out from then, we still have pretty firm objections and strong opinions on how some of the power structures play out in the circles in which we run. But within our year in DC we were not members of a local church. We attended a church for a few weeks where there was some pressure to become members quickly, but I objected because membership—to me—is a very serious thing. It’s not just signing my name on a paper. I believe it’s a sacred act. We finally landed at The Falls Church Anglican about nine months into our time there, but at that point we were sure we wouldn’t be in DC long, and didn’t entertain an attempt at membership.

During my year in DC, a publication I had written regularly for for years reached out to me with a few pitches. I said no a few times, and then finally, I thought, I need to give them a more clear reason. I communicated my hesitation in writing for them was due primarily to the fact that I was not a member of a local church currently. I was still very connected to our church family in Texas, I had good community, albeit far away, and I was earnestly in search of church home—but as a couple, we were not covenanted with a local body of believers.

Here’s why I want to share this with you today:

In the digital world we’ve fashioned for ourselves, it is very, very easy to have all the right answers and look the part you want to play. Much has been written on the ease of self-promotion and the lack of realness (In fact, Catherine Parks releases her new book Real today. I endorsed it for the publisher and I endorse it here for you, too. Buy it here.) , so I don’t want to overstate anything. However, my concern is for you, dear readers.

Last week my friend Lisa Whittle talked about “inspiration addiction” that many have. We hop from one inspiring blog to an inspiring post to an inspiring podcast to an inspiring image to an inspiring quip to an inspiring book . . . you get my point. We can be addicted to the beauty around us so much that we forget these are real people creating real content with real stories in their lives. And because much of the promotion is done by self, there’s no check or balance. Unless we trust people to self-check themselves, we have no idea if the words we’re hearing or reading are reflective of a faithful life or a sham.

When my editor reached out to me with a pitch, she assumed that because I’d been a faithful church member and church staff in the past, that I had continued in that vein. It was my heart to continue in that vein, but the truth was another matter. I wasn’t a faithful church member, I was currently a wounded, wandering Christian without a church home. I feel no shame about that season of wandering, it was necessary for my good and God’s glory. But I also knew I didn’t want to pretend to be something I wasn’t. And I wanted my editors to care about the fidelity of the writers they publish. And I wanted readers to trust this publication wouldn’t publish writers whose lives weren’t faithful representatives of what they wrote online.

This isn’t a war anyone will win on their own. It is up to writers to be honest about their lives, publishers to be unwilling to publish people who say one thing and act another, editors to ask and not assume when pitching pieces, and readers to be truly discerning readers. This is a job for all of us. If we want integrity and fidelity in Christian publishing, it’s on everyone’s shoulders to get there.

I know you’re a reader because you’re reading this. And I think I can safely assume this isn’t the only thing you’re reading. My encouragement to you today is to be a discerning reader. That’s going to play out differently for each of you, so I can’t say how exactly, but I want to encourage you to expect more from writers. These days it is so easy to submit work to an online source and get published, and once you've tasted the (lackluster) glory of being published, it doesn’t take long to build yourself a platform and taste more success. Anyone can do it. And that’s exactly why everyone shouldn’t.

Every single time I press “save and publish” on Sayable, I think of James chapter 3. I encourage you to go now and read the whole passage:

Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

God's No is a Yes

When I was single I acutely remember sitting behind a couple in church. His arm around her, her shoulder leaning into him, and I physically ached. I felt so unfelt in my singleness, untouched, and unloved. Of course I knew I was loved, by God and by others, but touch, for me, was where I felt my lack the most. I wasn't alone in this feeling and it led me to write this piece for Christianity Today years ago and has formed in me a desire to think through touch in a more comprehensive way—the basis of the book project I'm working on. Details here. 

I am conscious of that painful ache often in church once again as it's impossible to avoid the plethora of blessings in the form of babies on Sunday mornings. Fathers standing off to the side with babies in the crook of their arms swaying right to left. Mothers intuitively knowing what their babies need, and yet still so much they're learning. All the folks behind them with smiles that reach their eyes, knowing the common and collective joy of a newborn. I catch Nate's eye every once in a while and know he's thinking it too. The ache. We feel it most when we're captive in a row with our church family: I have to be here. I have to see this. And I still can't have it. 

Last night we met with a couple with whom we're doing premarital counseling and one of the questions we talked through was, "What dreams do you think you'll need to give up in marriage." This morning I'm thinking through all the noes we've gotten from God since we said yes to one another. They are plenty. They sometimes feel never-ending. They all feel unexpected. And they all hurt. 

Life for the Christian who is captive to this earth, and captive to the Church, is going to be a series of noes again and again. This is why the prosperity gospel is so damaging to our souls, lives, and minds. We are ultimately yes people, but our primary yes is to Christ, and that means we live caught in a yes-world to sin for a season while we look like fools for saying no. I could have had touch and plenty of it in my singleness, but saying yes to Jesus meant saying no to my flesh. The problem with saying so many noes to so much in life, is that we can begin to project those noes onto God. We can begin to believe he is a God of noes instead of a generous, always abounding, abundant, and faithful Father. Because we feel the death of our dreams, we can begin to believe he is indifferent to our desires. 

The thing is, though, when I look behind me at the slew of noes God has given me in life, I see how each one led precisely to a better yes. I'm not sugar-coating this either. I'm looking at deep, difficult disappointments like death, divorce, financial strain I didn't think I could survive, depression, sickness, prolonged singleness, doubt, and more—each of these led me to dark places where the light, when it finally came, shone brighter than I could have hoped. 

II Corinthians 1 shows Paul explaining why something he said would happen didn't happen in the order he or the Corinthians expected. He's saying in the face of disappointment: God is not a God of no. He always keeps his promises. 

One of the great tragedies of mediocre faith and biblical illiteracy is that we can confuse our dreams with God's promises. We can begin to believe that simply because we have a strong desire for something, or a deep longing, or we can't imagine ourselves without it, that God intends it for us. And we can get caught in a loop of perpetual disappointment—not in the failure of a dream to materialize, but in the failure of what we think God has promised to be delivered. 

Paul is saying in this passage that all God's promises have their Yes in himself. But the promise is not the house we want, the spouse we want, the baby we want, the job we want, or the health we want. God is the promise. The seal of the Spirit is the promise. The coming of the Messiah is the promise. The Father's love is the promise. And the answer is always yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. 

Wherever we find ourselves captive—in our job, our home, our marriage, our singleness, the row at church behind the couple who finds comfort in touch or the parents passing their baby-blessing back and forth, we may feel the no of God. He may be saying no to our dreams, but he is not saying no to his promise. He is saying, "Hang on. I'm coming for you. And it won't be long now." 

How Can I Be More Like You?

I'll never forget the year of my life when I lived with my pastor's family in New York. My whole life was in the throes of some trauma around then and my little attic bedroom at their home was safe and warm. There were predictable rhythms in their home: dinner every night, devotions in the morning, guests constantly, really special holidays (and every excuse to celebrate something or someone), and always, always thoughtful questions. 

My pastor was the first person I heard use the phrase "Be a 'There you are!' person instead of a 'Here I am,'" and the concept, for me, was life-changing. He modeled in his words and actions, and particularly by his questions, what this meant. He has always been about the other. His intention is to disarm, put at peace, draw out, and care for the person in front of him. And one of the ways he does this is by asking thoughtful questions. 

I was painfully shy when I came to live with them, was deeply caught cycles of fear and shame, and struggled to look many adults in the eye, and yet, night after night, we'd be called on to both answer thoughtful questions and ask them. Particularly of our guests. The prompt was, "Lore, do you have anything to ask our guest?" And I'd go into a mad mental scramble trying to think of a question that didn't make me look dumb, when all along, the exercise was mostly to make our guest feel welcomed. Sometimes our questions were rudimentary: Do you like your job? Sometimes they were deep: How did you choose the work you do? Sometimes they ebbed into personal: How do you feel about the work you do? But there were always questions. 

I left that home changed in many ways, but the primary of which—and the value I hold most dearly still today, is a desire practice my "There you are-ness" by asking questions. It's one of the questions I get most often from you, dear readers: How do I become a good question-asker?

It's hard to teach this in writing and is best done around folks who are good question-askers. So the first thing you should do is find someone in your community who seems to always ask questions. They're also probably someone who isn't the life of the party or who shines when the spotlight is on them. They might be a bit of a wall-flower, so you're going to have to chase them down and ask your first question: How can I be more like you in this way?

(Actually, that's a great question to ask everyone. "How can I be more like you in this way?" says to the person to whom you're speaking: I see you and I admire this quality in you. That's a good start.)

The first thing to understand about asking good questions is that answerers can see straight through your genuineness. If you're asking questions because you simply want information, it becomes clear almost immediately. If you're asking questions because you simply want to turn a conversation in the direction you want it to go, that also becomes clear. Both are disingenuous. So the first rule of question asking is that it's not about you. It's about them. It's about their heart, their story, their cares, their joys, and their sorrows. The second rule of question asking is: they direct both the information and the direction of the conversation. Think of it like a stream you step into. You don't know if it's going to widen to a river, an ocean, or amble along forever, you're just going to walk in it as long as it continues.  

The third rule of question asking, especially if you're a follower of Christ, is our questions should be aimed at the heart of the person to whom we're asking. Most people in most contexts are uncomfortable both asking and answering about the heart. We don't like to intrude and we like less to be intruded upon. But for the Christian, "the matters of the heart are the heart of the matter." As I said, you can't control whether they widen the stream or turn the conversation in another direction, but you can control the question you ask when you first get in. 

"How's your heart doing?" is, I think, the easiest way to state your intention (I'm after your heart) and ask a question. People are always taken aback by that question. We're used to being asked about our day or our plans, but our hearts? Ick. Back off. It's a humbling question to ask because the risk of rejection is high for the asker. But the risk of an unchecked heart is greater—and worse—for the one being asked. So risk rejection and ask. 

Here are some other great questions to have in your pocket: 

How did that situation make you feel? 

What did your response to this thing tell you about yourself? God? The other person?

Who told you the lie that XYZ? 

What's your story? 

Are you where you thought you'd be at this point in life? What would you change? Why?

What's hard for you today? What's a joy for you today? 

How can I pray for you? 

There's a prevalent belief out there that we always have to have the answers to the questions we're asking. For example, I'm only asking how your heart is because I already know it's a wicked, dark hole that hardly sees the light of the gospel and I'm going to preach at you until the crack of light gets in. But that's not really helpful, not in the long run. How much better to care for the person in front of you by showing interest in their life, heart, fears, and more, and seeing where the conversation goes. The thing you set out to prove might be the final result, but the journey there will be deeper, better, and more like Jesus along the way. 

Here's another post I did on why and how Jesus asked questions. 

How to Sleep In the Middle of a Storm

It occurred to me this morning that there's another side of the "at leasts" among us. There's also the "at mosts." You know the sort: again, you're sharing grief, pain, sorrow, anger, or some other struggle through which you currently walk, and they're there waiting to interject a "But God!" or "Well, at least it's not worse!" They're the eternal optimists or, more likely, the ones who are uncomfortable simply letting someone experience pain, suffering, or the depths of what God wants to bring them into. 

Just as I was guilty this past weekend of casting judgement on a fellow family member at my church, I can be guilty of "But Goding" myself all the time. A friend confessed a few years ago that he was learning how to walk into the depths of what God was doing in his life, instead of just in the shallows. He'd learned to bounce, rebound, robotically respond with the greatness of God, without letting the person across from him, or even himself, feel, process, or experience the deepest parts of their pain.

If we truly believe God isn't wasteful, if we truly believe he is sovereign, then we have to learn to comfort others and ourselves without distilling complex experiences down to a platitude—even if the platitude is true. If our response is quick and automated it says more about us than it does about the pain of the other, or their faith in the God who holds them. It says we're unwilling to really wrestle with our brother or sister and instead just want to get the hard stuff over. It says we're unwilling to really listen to them and just want to get a word in edgewise. It says we think our wisdom is better than God's wisdom in allowing this season to unfold for them. It also betrays our lack of trust in God to hold them, even though there may be darker days ahead. 

When we offer up a mere platitude in the face of someone's suffering or confession of weakness, it says more about our lack of faith than it does about theirs. 

True faith acts on the truth of God's word and sometimes Jesus simply wept, sometimes he asked questions, drawing out the mourner or the one in need of healing, sometimes he just fed them, sometimes he fell asleep in the middle of the storm, sometimes he removed himself from the crowds. It is true that he was proclaiming the good news everywhere he went, but good news does not always come in the form of words. Sometimes it comes in the form of weeping with those who weep, the provision of food on the table, and the sight of one who can rest in stillness, without talking, even in the midst of the storm. 

The "At Least" Among Us

You and I and everyone we know has been there. We're finally mustering up the strength to be vulnerable and not just transparent. We're putting our fears, emotions, anger out there, hoping to simply be heard. And as we're speaking, we're watching the person across from us, their face changing from the tense desire to sermonize back or jump in when we take a breath. It grows softer, sadder, and somewhat madder. "Well," they say, "at least you don't have to deal with..." And your heart drops. 

I've written before about the danger of saying "at least" to the married or the single, and I suppose whatever struggle it is through which we currently walk, that's where we see the at leasts among us. A single friend said recently, "Well, at least you can try to get pregnant, my eggs are just drying up over here." A father of three said, "Well, at least you don't have other kids keeping you up all night." Someone who's struggled to conceive at all says, "At least you can get pregnant, I can't even do that." A moment of vulnerability for one becomes a competition for another. 

The thing about saying "At least" to someone—particularly someone who's confessing their own anger, fear, grief, or sadness at the circumstances of their life, is it negates their wrestle and it naturally elevates our own. It tiers the very specific means of sanctification and grace God is working in our own lives and separates his people into the haves and the have nots. Having many blessings can offer a form of dominance in the Christian culture, but for some of us, it's a race to see who's suffered the most—that's the real currency in our hearts. 

Yesterday at church while we sung about the sting of death being gone, my voice broke. I couldn't say those words and I wanted to, I wanted to. A few rows ahead of me someone worshipped passionately, both their hands raised, fingertips stretched out, abounding with energy. My heart wrenched and the words, "They've probably never even experienced death closely and here I am, all my life, life marked by death down to my very body." I knew the wickedness of the thought immediately and knew it wasn't true, it was a lie of the enemy trying to arrest me from processing why I struggled to worship the King and instead casting judgement on my family member. The lie felt more real, though, it felt like the most real thing in that moment, far more true than the words our church was singing or their rootedness in Scripture. I wanted to believe my pain was worse than theirs. The invasive weed of "at least" was taking root. 

I have been really struck the past month by the old adage that we're all fighting a hard battle and how I cannot be there for all the people I love because I'm fighting a hard battle too. My battle is not better than, worse than, or even equal to another's. It's simply the thing God has allowed into my life in order to shape, form, and sanctify me into more like him.

Whatever you're facing today, that thing that seems insurmountable, terrible, or just plain unfair? God is at work in that. He's not wasting it and he's not wasting you in middle of it. 

The next time we're listening to someone share what is breaking their heart today, notice the invasive weed of "at least" and pull it out right then, if we can. Ask the Spirit for help, if we can't. He is there to help us do hard things and comfort us when we feel alone. Places where it might be prone to pressing through the soil of our hearts: over coffee, at church, on social media, with other moms or those who want to be moms, with other single friends, when a friend loses something or when they gain something. We don't have to say "at least" to anyone in whatever they're facing because God is never doing the least of anything in our lives. He is always doing the best—even if it feels like the worst. 

Pitting Cherries and Not Another Podcast

Last Thursday, a week ago, I bought a cherry pitter. Having no reason to suspect that cherries might be on sale this week (but of course they would be, it's nearly August), I find myself more prepared for the laborious task of pitting six pounds of the burgundy orbs.

Friends laugh at me for the lack of gadgets in our home, but if I had to go another season using a cheap paring knife, my fingernail, and a whole afternoon to pit cherries just so we can have cherry pie in January...well, that wasn't going to happen. It's a small tool, not electric, not even the size of a garlic press or a can opener. I've already pitted a pound and it took me a quarter of the time. But it still took time. "Just buy a can of cherry filling," you might say, "or at the very worst, a bag of frozen cherries. There's souls to be saved, work that needs to be done, and you're standing there pitting cherries?"

Yes. Yes I am. 

Nate and I took the long way home from dinner on Tuesday night, through the bit of countryside still mostly untouched by the creeping metroplex of Dallas and Fort Worth. I forget what the subject was exactly, but he lamented the amount of time people have these days. Everything is mechanized and technologized and passive income is all the rage and it leaves so much more time for folks to spend their days reading theology or politics and commenting on every single issue whether they have suffered or worked or lived much at all. Everyone considers themselves an expert because they read about it in a book or a blog or listened to a podcast where people purported to be experts because they read about it in a book or a blog or they, too, are podcast listeners. We are a society of commentators, each one of us abridging, abutting, amending, or simply adding our own two cents to every issue under the sun. 

That's why I've taken so long to buy a cherry pitter. 

I need my hands to be busy with real work—not just mind work. Mind work is good work too, I won't argue that, and technological advances are things of beauty (the attributes of God as creator at work), but when everything exists to make our lives easier, faster, more automated, and less work, well, what else is there to do but commentate? We become merely observers of life and not partakers in it. 

Whenever I feel a tinge of shame creeping in because I eschew Fast and New and Quick and its accompanying accusation that while I stand there pitting cherries for four hours, there's gospel work I could be doing instead, I want to remember that pitting cherries is gospel work. It might not be the kind we raise support for or throw neighborhood parties for or write pamphlets for or send our kids overseas for, but it is still producing in me (and, I'd argue, in those who partake January's cherry pie at our table) something good. It is keeping me away from the commentary, the blurring lines of experts, the pundits, armchair preachers, and seminarians who think because they know how to pronounce Barth and have read the entirety of City of God, they know anything about real life. 

If you hear a note of sadness (or its stinging cousin disgust), it's very real. I am saddened by how much everyone is an expert in their field, but how little they know of real work in real fields. "Stay in your lane," is the most lamentable phrase to enter Christianity. God has made us infinitely complex and we squeeze all of that complexity into one thing and call it a calling. But we need to feel the soil in our fingers and the pop of a cherry being pitted and to learn how to make a proper bed and the frustration of a weed that overtakes our garden and the stinging loss of life and the relief that comes from learning something works not because we read about it but because we tried it and failed miserably—or, glory be, succeeded. We need the whole gamut of work and rest and the exercise of our mind that comes from learning new laborious skills with our hands, and the exercise of our bodies that comes not from getting in a run, but waking early and feeling its limitations, its mutations, and its inability to be perfected. 

I hope my disgust moves along quickly and is replaced by wisdom, but I am weary of the commentary and I hope, I hope, I hope you are too. I hope you turn off, unsubscribe, stop buying books, turn down the volume, and listen instead to the dandelion men, the poets, the sages, the ones who have suffered full lives and have earned the right to commentate on what they have seen and known. I hope you will live an examined life of your own, and not just spend it examining the lives of others.

I hope you'll buy a cherry pitter too, just for the act of slowing, stopping, and feeling the ripe, red flesh in your fingers for a few hours, the juice that pools on your raw pine tabletop. I hope, for a minute, you'll remember you are dust and your thumb will get a cramp and your fingers will be stained and January will feel a long way off. I hope as you crack these red orbs, you're reminded of how a few weeks ago your body was cracked open and blood was shed, and how a few millennia ago your Savior's body was too. I hope you run out of time and don't have enough to spend one blessed moment pontificating on your silly blog about how much time people have these days. If you don't, it's okay. I'm grateful I mostly did. 

*Just to be clear: you don't have to pit your own cherries: perhaps you're raising little ones, or managing a garden of your own, or engaged in some other act that takes time and doesn't result in much praise or notice or a strong, consistent feeling of accomplishment. This is what I'm talking about. Abstain from the glut of information and commentary on it and just, you know, do something.

God in What is Not Said

His is an unassuming wit, the gentle sort that surprises you, and only after you have known him long enough. I am not amused by puns or foolish antics, but by dry wit, the understated kind, the kind my husband has. He has always made me laugh and I have always loved this about him.

Laughter, though, does not echo in these hospital halls or if it does, it is strange and out of place—like our pregnancy this time. “Ectopic pregnancy literally means Out of Place,” my husband reads from the Internet and later writes a poem about the out of placeness we feel in this experience of intermittent infertility followed by miscarriage after miscarriage and now, this. We hold our collective breath for nearly a week in the hospital while I continue to bleed, bent in pain, and we continue to pray. And then I am wheeled into surgery and we lose the baby before we lose me.

I don’t laugh for a month. Nate doesn’t even try to make me. The hours pass slow and monotonous, like the poet said, “a punctual rape of every blessed day.” Even when I am well enough to leave our bed, I don’t want to. Even when the scars don’t pull with every movement, I feel them still and the emptiness they betray. We're not the sort to pretend things are fine when they're not. We're not afraid of mourning, of being sad. We aren't going to pretend we have jubilant and full hearts when the truth is we've felt emptied of joy, and instead brim over with emotions that seem out of place and our control. There's no shame in our grief and we feel no shame for it. We're not in some sort of rush to sweep the bad things away and spring clean sadness from our hearts. Sadness has its purpose too.

One night a month after, Nate and I talk before bed as we often do, turned toward one another, and a surprising laughter comes from within me. He makes me laugh for an hour or more and then again when we turn out the lights and face away from each other.

Someone asked me a question recently: "What's comforts you in infertility and pregnancy loss?" I answered the Psalms. They have been the best comfort to me in the past few years. But there is poetry too, and not of the biblical sort, that has comforted too. I read a poem by Mary Oliver when we were in the hospital and it lingers still with comfort.

Poetry says what cannot be said in prose. And sometimes it says what cannot be said at all or sometimes what should not.  Good poetry leaves much to the imagination and even more to interpretation. Its purpose is not to force the reader into a well-worn pathway, but to surprise instead with inflection, wonder, and—perhaps—emptiness. What is not said is almost more important than what is.

Grief is like that, for me at least. God is at work in what is not said more than what is. He is found in spaces, emptiness, quiet pauses and plots and pieces. He says without saying, "Notice me in this thing or this sight or this void? See me in the ways I preserve and protect and keep?" He is almost an afterthought in many ways. He is a surprise.

The best comfort to me in grief has been the Psalms, yes, but also poetry, and also surprising laughter, filling up from inside and pouring over. The sort that makes my stomach hurt, the kind that makes my eyes water, the kind that makes me stop and notice, for one minute, when my hands feel limp and lifeless, that all things are still held in his.

Heavy, by Mary Oliver

That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying

I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had his hand in this,

as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel,
(brave even among lions),
“It’s not the weight you carry

but how you carry it -
books, bricks, grief -
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not,
put it down.”
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?

Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?

How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe

also troubled 
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love to which there is no reply?

What to do When Your Friend Loses a Baby

Two weeks ago I was experiencing the most intense and sudden pain I've ever had. After an hour where I was just trying to bear it, Nate overruled and we went to the ER. After all night in the ER, we were admitted the next day and there for five days, during which we had every manner of good, bad, terrible, hopeful, and excruciating news about our pregnancy. Our faith was high after one meeting with a doctor and was crushed in the next. It was an invasive and demoralizing stay (what hospital stay isn't?) and in the end, we ended up losing the baby and one of my fallopian tubes in surgery. 

A few months ago our Home Group spent an evening talking about mourning. It was a strangely lively discussion in part, I think, because as western Christians we're not very good at it and we don't want to be. We want to be Happy Clappy Christians who bounce back quickly with the Will of God on our lips and a song of praise in our hearts. We don't want to engage the long difficult process of mourning. We don't want to have a formula for mourning or a plan for it. We had talked about weddings the chapter before in our book and I mentioned it was strange how much attention, dreaming, planning, and money we gladly put into weddings, but how unprepared and shocked we are when we must mourn. Yet, it's death that's certain for all of us, not marriage. 

This could be titled What to Do When Your Friend Miscarries or Five Things to Do When Your Friend Has an Ectopic Pregnancy or Ten Things to Do when Your Friend Has a Stillborn but the truth of the matter is no miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, or stillbirth is the same. There are varying complications, varying circumstances, varying emotions, and varying humans involved. There is no right way to approach or bless or check off deeds well done. 

What should you do when the hope of a baby is crushed by loss? 

First, ask your friend. 

I know the old "What can I do?" question is tamped down by many well-meaning grief experts who assume answering a question is too difficult for any grieving person. But that assumes a lot of a person's mental or emotional health. For some of us, that question is the most helpful because it doesn't assume what works for someone else works for us.

I am never going to be a strong verbal processor. I am never going to want to cry or talk it out with more than one person. I am usually going to want some space and quiet and someone to just sit beside me on their phone or with a book who isn't doting on me. For most of last week, one of our housemates (the female one, who was one of my roommates before I got married, and is still a good friend) came home from work every day at noon with a drink or lunch, crawled into bed with me, and we watched British bakers for hours. This was medicine for me. For someone else, though, that might feel invasive and they'd rather you just dropped food off at the door and left without a word. Or someone else might want the phone away, the tv off, and to talk for hours. Ask your friend what they need. If they don't know what they need, ask them again tomorrow or in a week. 

Second, be careful with your stories. 

Sometimes it's helpful to hear your friend talk about their friend who had six miscarriages after being infertile for six years and then had an ectopic pregnancy where they removed one of her tubes and then, miracle of miracles, birthed six babies right in a row without any complications. I can't think of an instance in which that might be helpful to hear when you're grieving, but maybe there's someone out there who would love to hear that story. For most of us, though, it's probably not helpful. What might be helpful is saying, "I'm sorry this is your story and I pray beautiful things come of it." That sounds a bit trite, but not as trite as comparing someone else's pain with yours. 

My mom (who has had eight c-secions) texted me the other day and simply said, "Every woman's body is different." She didn't try to compare her experience of having eight small living humans cut out of her body to my experience of having one small dead baby and a fallopian tube cut out of my body. She just let the stories be different because they are. Sure there are similarities of surgery and hormones and recovery and things like that, but our bodies are different. They heal in different ways and in different paces. Even the comparison of miscarriage to miscarriage isn't helpful. Some women might hardly know they're miscarrying, others, like myself, have seen the baby as they pass. There's a difference of trauma there. Some might experience the emotional loss of the baby more deeply than others, some might generally bounce back quickly. Some ectopic pregnancies end in a quick miscarriage, some end with the mother's death (the leading cause of mother's death in the first trimester is ectopic pregnancy). How could we compare those stories in a way that is sensitive and caring? So much better to simply say to your friend something like, "I know this story isn't what you hoped for and I'm sorry. I hate this for you. I'm praying God heals what is broken in your heart and he heals your body." 

Next, some practical things. 

Line up a few meals. If your friend eats meat, include some red meat or fish. She has probably lost a lot of blood and she needs iron. 

Offer to go grocery shopping for her household. Ask her if she has a normal list, but if she doesn't, buy lots of good healthy vegetables, fruits, and meats. And ice cream. 

Bring her a little basket of care. A friend brought me organic hand lotion, essential oil room spray, a face mask, flowers, and a gourmet cookie on day three of our hospital stay last week and it was the biggest blessing to me. The room spray especially since by day five our room was worse for the wear. Don't underestimate the need for a woman in mourning to care for her body. She may be struggling with hating her body at that moment and it isn't wrong to equip her in seeing it as a unique and beautiful thing. It will help her heal.

Schedule a cleaner for a week or two out. Here's the one we're using this week. 

Bring her coffee or lunch. 

Run errands: Make some returns for her or go to the library or take the dog to the vet or weed her garden. 

Babysit her other kids for a few hours. 

Essentially, your goal is to not hover around her while she's grieving, but to simply serve her and, if she needs it, you can be near enough that she can cry or talk with you if she wants. Most of these things come naturally to folks when there's a new baby to celebrate, but few of us care for a grieving mom in the same way. Just because there's not a new baby to celebrate doesn't mean there aren't still complicated and difficult things happening in her body. 

When my younger brother was killed suddenly when I was 20, I was struck by a few things: how well cared for we were in the immediate aftermath, and how long and confusing the process of mourning was. I had no rubric or understanding of grief and wasn't sure what I was supposed to feel or when. I don't think most of us do. This post isn't meant to provide that either, but instead to say: Be prepared for mourning. Plan for it. Count on it. It's a certainty as long as we live on earth. Enter into it. Don't mourn as those who have no hope, but mourn with hope in practical ways. 

*For all the lively discussion our Home Group had about mourning, they were there every single step of our hospital stay, from the ER, to the eventual surgery, to getting home and recovering. They truly know how to mourn with those who mourn. 

How Do I Make New Friends?

When I was a tiny tot we learned a song in our preface to Girl Scouts (I think I was a Daisy or a Brownie or something like that). You probably know it too: Make new friends, but keep the old ones. One is silver and the other is gold. They didn't tell us which one was silver and which was gold, but the rhyme stuck as it was meant to. 

A question I get often is, "How do I make new friends?" I'd like to send it right back if I could because I don't know how you make new friends and I'd gander it's different for you than it is for me. I am a northerner transplanted in the south, I married in my mid-thirties, I am one of eight children—all male but me, I have divorced parents and am married to a divorced man, I struggle with doubt, depression, and anxiety, I hate living in suburbs or cities, I love my church, I have three lifelong friends all of whom live in different states, I do not have children, I'm a social introvert (meaning I get my energy and am most productive when I'm alone, but can often do that in public places—like the coffee shop in which I'm writing this now).

My point is, my circumstances, history, proclivities, etc. are going to be different than yours and my way of making friends is going to be different too. A comparison between the way you make friends and I make friends probably just isn't going to be helpful—comparison usually isn't helpful in most circumstances. 

It is true that making real, true, deep, lasting friendships is difficult and it takes some serious natural talent or some serious dedication or some strange Spirit-empowerment, but it is also true that making real, true, deep, lasting friendships does not come easily to almost anyone. We live in a seriously transient world right now and the fight has never been harder to hold on to lasting friendships. But the biggest fight we'll have in regard to friendship is the belief that everyone else has it better. 

The older I get, the more aware I am that my days are limited. Not just my future days, but my today days. I cannot manage the sort of deep life-on-life friendships we're sold as the ideal with the amount of people in my life. I have a choice: revamp how I view "friendship" and simply be faithful with the people God has put in my life even if they're not all the "golden" friends I thought I was promised in Kindergarten. Or I can resolutely demand more of my relationships than they were meant to give. I can demand a version of "friendship" the Bible doesn't offer and feel disappointed constantly when real life relationships fall short. 

The "silver and gold" friendships I was told exist: we do everything together. We laugh. We fight. We cry. We're at each others houses every other night. We babysit the other's kids at the drop of a hat. We mourn everything together. We celebrate everything together. We go on vacation together. We go to concerts together. We were bridesmaids for one another. We get pedicures together. We swaps stories and no subject is off limits from our "processing tongues." We sit together in church. We never forget the other's anniversary or birthday. We always know exactly what to get them. We have so much "relational capital" that we know what we're doing wrong before we even do it. We never disappoint one another. We are the other's best cheerleader. We manufacture drama on occasion, just so we have something to get impassioned about. We have our own hashtag on Instagram and if you click on it, you'll see the history of this golden friendship. 

Real friendship as the Bible talks about it: Wisdom is our friend (Get that? Not that our friend is wise, but that wisdom itself is our friend.). Rich people have lots of friends, but the poor few. Gossip separates friends. A friend loves at all times and in all things: they don't manufacture drama, assume the worst, or hold on to resentment. Someone who gives presents gets tons of friends, but someone who is pure in heart and whose speech is gracious is the friend of a king. The wounds a true friend gives are faithful, the kisses an enemy gives are profuse (Yikes!). The sweetness of a friend is in his earnest counsel (his truthful words). A friend is someone who wounds so they can point to the healer, regardless of whatever "relational capital" has been built up. A friend is one who is closer than family.

See the difference? 

In the former paragraph, which is the idea of friendship many of us are given, especially females, it's mostly someone to hang out with and "do life with." In the latter, it's rich with good counsel, loving wounds, purity, graciousness, wisdom, freedom, and love. There's nothing in there about time spent together in quantity or quality, a long history, "relational capital," or common interests.

It is not wrong to want to keep friends or make new ones, but sometimes our idea of what friendship is needs some adjustment. I love a hundred people, but we never get to hang out because we're all trying to be faithful with the things God has called each of us to. My very few closest friends are women I can talk to without having to caveat, explain, or say very much at all, we can offer one another counsel, tears, prayer, or a listening ear. I have never gotten a pedicure with any of them and none of us go to the same church. Our friendships are founded on the principles of Scripture and not some illusion given to us by sitcoms and Instagram stories. 

I don't know very many people (I can't think any) who don't feel lonely. The most alive, faithful, caring, generous people I know, all feel the pangs of loneliness in aching ways. Even the most extroverted person I know, the one with the best marriage, or the one who always seems to be in the center of popularity, is still reckoning with the reality that their soul is still apart from the One who created them for eternal friendship. We live with that reality. We live, aching for the kind of perfect knowing, perfect intimacy, and perfect companionship we know God promises us in himself and none of us will find it entirely here on earth. 

I cannot answer the question "How do I make new friends?" But I can ask you this:

Is your concept of friendship based in Scripture or based in comparison to the friends you think others have? 

Are you being a good friend, as outlined in Scripture, or only desiring it from others? 

Are you able to accept that most people feel lonely, even if they project something different?

Are you a good question asker? 

Do you assume people are generally doing their best, being faithful to what God has asked of them? 

Are you being faithful to what God has asked of you? 

If you can answer all those questions honestly, I think you're on the right track toward making friends. You may not keep all these friends for life—God brings all of us into different seasons and lives for his glory and our good, and those friends may change through life. But I can promise you, if you obey Scripture and ask the Spirit for help, you will find no better friend than God himself and you may begin to see the seeds of friendship everywhere. 

Grief Course Giveaway

My friend Fabienne Harford is a coach, teacher, and writer who has put together a course on grief  I think many of us might need. She reached out to me a few weeks ago to see if she could give the course away to a Sayable reader and of course I said yes. Learning to walk into the deeps of grief, instead of staying in the shallow end of quick assurances to myself and others that, "God is good and is doing good," has been one of the hardest disciplines of my life. Responding with trite answers, avoiding awkward silences, rushing in where I should hold back—these are difficult lessons for the Christian. Fabienne wants to help you grieve well, but also truly grieve. Not only death, but disappointment, hurt, fear, unmet longings—whatever it is, she wants to help you walk through it honestly and with hope. Here's Fabs: 

After I lost my dad, I went to a counselor for the first time in my life. I sat across from her in our session and she asked me my goals for therapy. I told her, with absolute sincerity: “I want the feelings to stop.” With a gentle smile, my counselor broke the news to me that she wasn’t in the business of removing feelings and instead she spent the next few months introducing me to my ol’ buddy, grief.  

I counsel clients myself now, and I have no shortage of people who walk through my doors wanting to know how to make those pesky negative emotions go back underground. I tell them the same thing I tell myself regularly - if you get rid of the negative emotions, you will also get rid of a lot of things you treasure: intimacy, joy, connection, and your ability to bear the image of God (who, as it turns out, feels all the feelings).

Grief doesn’t ‘make the feelings stop.’ But it does make sense of them and put them to work to help you harness hard things to become healthier.

The reason many of us don’t know how to grieve is because we haven’t had a lot of practice. And that’s not because we haven’t had our fair share of emotional injuries; it’s because we tend to think grief only comes into play in the most extreme of circumstances.

Grieving is about healthily processing the bumps and bruises and injuries on your soul. It can help you harness all of life’s painful curves: friends moving away, singleness, infertility, disappointment with your career, sin patterns, the weird twinge of a friend saying something unintentionally hurtful, loss and disappointment in all its forms.

Grief is about navigating a fallen world where brokenness lurks around every corner. It’s about learning how to hurt well - in a way that leaves us walking even more fully in freedom and healthy wholeness.

Just like physical injuries, emotional injuries that aren’t dealt with don’t just work themselves out. Unaddressed wounds tend to result in us (1) losing access to certain emotional faculties or (2) becoming the walking wounded:

• Some of us just shut off our feelings when something hard happens. We tend to look ‘healthy’ in a world that values positivity and is uncomfortable with tears. But while this approach may make you ‘low maintenance’ and easy to be around, it generally results in essentially amputating a part of your emotional capacity, making it harder to access parts of you that lead to vulnerability and intimacy over time.
• Some of us just learn to live with gaping emotional wounds. When someone brushes up against the wound at all, we look down at our bleeding souls and blame them for carving us up, when in reality those wounds were there long before. Some of us notice the seemingly disproportionate reactions, and call ourselves crazy never realizing we’re reacting to something very real, even if it’s not the exact situation on hand.

I know all this and I still want to avoid grief most days. I don’t like to feel hard feelings. Because (spoiler alert), hurting hurts. But God has been gracious enough to allow specific losses into my story that made avoiding grief impossible. So I have experienced, not by choice, but by grace - the true reward of grief.

If you want to learn more about what it looks like to treat an emotional wound, check out the grief class! I created this content because I truly believe that learning to grieve well has been one of the most fruitful (if painful) endeavors of my life so far.

What does the grief class include?

(1) Six online videos you can watch whenever you want. The videos cover:

• What is grief & why do I need to do it?
• Skills for facing intense feelings
• The thoughts we have about our wounds that make it hard to process them
• How can we help our brains make sense of life’s curve balls?
• Tasks of processing wounds in a healthy way
• Grieving with God

(2) A workbook to help you work through specific wounds in your life

(3) A group study option is available that includes cool conversation cards to help you process with your pals!

Course Giveaway

If you want free access to the class as well as a downloadable workbook, all you have to do is:

Follow In Process Collective on Instagram and leave a comment on any photo just letting me know you saw this post on Sayable! It could be a question you want answered, a thought you wanted to share, or anything really. I'll choose a winner on Saturday, July 30th. 

If you'd like to order the course, click here. 

Thanks, Fabs! I hope and pray this course will be a great help to the church. 

Yoga, Mr Rogers, Fauxnerability, and Listening

Is it too soon to share another smattering of links I read this week? I hope not, there were some good ones in here. 

If you keep up with me on Twitter or Facebook, please note that I've logged out for a few months. When I was looking ahead at this year, I knew I wanted to repeat the break from them both that I took in January. That month was so holistically good for me. We are subscribed to the New York Times, the New Yorker, and a few other literary magazines, so we aren't without news and views aplenty. I just appreciate a good step back from the flurry of opinions and the demand to Have One On Everything All The Time. That's exhausting and no one can do it well, though most of us try. I want to always read, listen, and observe more than I talk, commentate, or teach. That was a long way to say first, I'm away from Twitter and Facebook and second, I'm reading less online right now, so Link Love may be sparse this summer. 

Nate and I went to go see Won't You Be My Neighbor this past week and while Nate insists his "allergies were bothering him," I freely admit to openly crying through much of it. This piece from Jason Gray at The Rabbit Room on a biography about Mister Rogers is beautiful. 

I finished up the spring semester of the Writing Mentorship a few weeks back and mostly just feel like I received such a gift in knowing these writers. Sarah Willard is one and I hope you'll spend some time with her contemplative, creative, deeply profound writing here with Table for Three at Blind Mule Blog. 

While you're at it, Annie Parsons submitted her final project to Fathom Magazine and they published it. It was a perfect piece in my estimation and I'm so glad it's getting the attention her writing deserves. On the Yoga Mat as it is in Heaven. 

Almost all of my friends are verbal processors (really, except Nate, I think all of them are). I am not. This means most of my time with friends is spent listening to them, sometimes asking them questions, but mostly listening. There are times when I can resent this lopsided way of friendship, but mostly I do want to be a good listener. This piece on Mistakes I Made with my Grieving Friend made me remember what a gift a good listener can be if they are active in their listening and not just passive (which I often am).

This piece from Chuck Degroat got me all sorts of choked up while reading it. I think the Church is learning more about this (and hopefully maturing in our hiring processes and willingness to promote based mainly on giftedness), but I still lament how common narcissism is and how we seem willingly blind to it in many ways. If you're in ministry or want to be in ministry or are ministered to, please read this: Fauxnerability in the Church. I don't get angry about much, but I am angry at how many of my brothers and sisters walk in narcissistic behavior and even more angry at how many more of my brothers and sisters are duped by it. Let's be aware of these patterns, church, and faithful to address them as sin and not simply "personality quirks." 

How Do I Live an Intentional Life

I do not so much happen to my life as my life happens to me. By nature I'm a bit passive, wont to fear of trying anything in which there is a possibility of failure, prone to finding the easiest way out or through a situation, and likely to ignore problems instead of facing them. The good thing is I know this about myself and feel constantly armed with fresh candoitiveness. Mondays are my favorite, tomorrow mornings are too—"fresh, with no mistakes in it, yet." I love Januarys and also Septembers. Any chance for a do-over, I say. 

It is strange to me then that I get asked the question (often): "You seem to live your life so intentionally, how do I do that?" Oh dear, she said, I have no idea. 

The truth is I am less intentional about my life than I am introspective about it. I think it is easy to confuse the one for the other. The former means coming at life well and the latter (for me) means to look behind at what happened well. These are two very different things. One is active, determined, and disciplined. The other is insightful, thoughtful, and optimistic. The former knows failure is imminent and plans for it, the latter muddles through the aftermath of failure for the lemons and makes lemonade. I make great lemonade, but, dear reader, do not confuse this with growing a great lemon tree. I am introspective, but intentional I am not. 

 "I think, therefore I am," the old philosopher said. He didn't mean, of course, exactly that when we think we become what we think about. But, as the old physician said (kinda), "You are what you eat." So what we think about, or eat, becomes what we are. So if you're introspective enough you will become a form of intentional. So when you ask me, dear reader, or observe some element of intentionality in the way I live, be assured: I am near constantly making up for lost time, wishing I'd done better yesterday and just fumbling through today with faith. 

There are a lot of type-A, planner central, smart women out there. They're writing blogs and making print-outs available. They're the queens of check-lists and goal-making and Big Idea Spreading. I am not that person. I will never be that person. I do not exist well in foreseeing the details, I exist best in the exploration of them afterwards. I'm the person you want at the table after the poorly planned party, not the one you want in the room for the planning meeting. 

So when you ask: "How do I live an intentional life (with the subtext: like yours)?" I just want to say get that illusion out of your head. I'm muddling through life just as messily, regretfully, haphazardly, and winging-it-ly as most of you. My only counsel is that we become good and honest inspectors of our lives. 

Life passes us by so quickly, more quickly than every before. There is hardly a moment for breathing or praying or thinking or stopping or stilling or being. And we make ten-thousand excuses for why that is in each of our lives (the kids...my spouse...my church...my job...my body...). But if we're wondering why any semblance of intentionality eludes us, that's why. We're so busy planning and planning more, that we don't stop to reflect, relearn, rewire, and repent.

If you sniff intentionality in what you read on Sayable or know of the Wilberts, please know it's because we fight hard to have intentionality in one area: space. We know the importance of stillness. We know the importance of remembering we are not God. We know the importance of awkward silence, making room for the quiet ones to share after the loud ones have gotten all their talking out. We know the importance of walking in faith instead of just wisdom. We know the importance of true reflection and repentance to one another and to God. And we won't let anything infringe on it. 

There is an inordinate amount of pressure on God's people from God's people these days to Look Busy for the Kingdom of God is at Hand (and it is), but busyness is not the way of the kingdom, faithfulness is. And if we're looking to our rights and lefts to see what faithfulness is, we've got it wrong. We've got to look at our Master, the one who entrusted us with a home or a family or a church or a job and a future. He's the only One who measures our faithfulness. 

The life of intentionality is a life of faithfulness to God. A willingness to confess we messed up.  A willingness to say no to what is good for what is better. A willingness to cheer others on in what God has called them to, and to stay faithful to what He has called us to. That's an intentional life. It has very little to do with planning or house mottos or how we spend our holidays or our Sabbath rhythm, and very much to do with looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. 

I Feel Called to Write. Now What?

A few weeks back I mentioned I'd be answering some of your questions here on Sayable. Today I'd like to write a bit in response to the question, or a variant of it, I get more than any other: What would you recommend to someone who thinks they're called to write? 

I've written much on this subject before, so if you'd like to read more, just click on the writing link at the bottom of the page. Now I will tell you what I tell every single person, regardless of their obvious gift or visible lack of chops: if you feel called to write, you must read, you must write, you must listen to those closest to you, and you must not think about the outcome too much. 

That seems like a silly answer, but I think the questions behind the question for a lot of people is: "I feel called to write and therefore need to grow a "platform." Do you suggest I do that in blogging? Growing my social media channels? Write books? Where should I publish? How do I get my name out there? What if no one reads my blog? What if I work really hard at it for a year and still no one reads my blog?" 

First, the word "platform" is an awful one and one I wish would never enter the vocabulary of a writer. It steals the beauty of the vocation right out from under its feet, making it about readership instead of readers. We ought to care very much for our readers, those humans with stories and hurts and feelings and intellect. And we ought to care very little about readership, the masses of people reading or not reading. So first, if you feel called to write, root the word platform out of your vocabulary for now. It may become a necessary evil if you get the the publishing a book phase, but for right now (even if that's your end goal), it's just a distraction. Omit it entirely today. 

Next, you must read. Commit to reading both broadly and deeply. Do not only read the authors all the cool people share about on Instagram stories. Read classics (Graham Greene, Toni Morrison, Agatha Christie, and Marilynne Robinson, David James Duncan are classics too). Read poetry (start with Mary Oliver, Robert Frost, Wendell Berry, Billy Collins, Langston Hughes to whet your appetite, move on to Denise Levertov, Adrienne Rich, and Richard Wilbur). Read short fiction (Flannery O'Connor, John Updike, Barbara Kingsolver, various short fiction in the New Yorker or Harpers Weekly). Read memoir (Madeleine L'Engle's Crosswicks Journals, Jennette Walls, Frederick Buechner, and Annie Dillard). Read popular fiction (John Le Carr, Ann Patchett, Ray Bradbury, Barbara Kingsolver).

Read theology too, but especially if you want to write about theology, make sure you read more of what's listed above. Why? Because if theological writing is the bones on which our body hangs, creative writing is the flesh. It fills out the muscles and fills in the crevices. It takes what is foundationally real and true about God and man, and fleshes it out. If you want to write, you must read.

If you don't want to read, or consider reading unnecessary for a writer, you will run out of things about which to write, you will be a one-trick pony, you will taper off, and ultimately you are not called to write, you just wanted what you thought was a quick way to get noticed. Readers can tell when writers don't read. If you don't read and you can't figure out why nobody wants to read you, this is probably a big part of it. You can't cheat this system.

Next, you must write. That seems silly to say, but it really is that simple. I just finished a twelve week writing mentorship and gave away most of my secrets in it, but generally, just write.

Don't write to be noticed, don't track your readership, don't always be in respond mode to whatever terrible thing is happening online today, don't be preachy, don't care more about your reputation than you care about your readers.

Do be a careful writer, that is, a writer full of care for both the words and the readers. Be, as Eugene Peterson says, a "shepherd of the words." Do write consistently, every day or at least every other. Do hold yourself to a word limit when you're first beginning and make it 1/3 tighter than you want it to be or 1/3 more than you're generally comfortable with. Do learn proper grammar. Do ask those who know you best to give you honest feedback often. Do write about silly things like the heat index and the way a book smells and the feel of rain on your face. Do also write about God, the way you see Him and the things you doubt about Him and the ways you want to see and know Him more. Do emulate (though never copy or plagiarize or paraphrase without attribution) your favorite writers. Do try your hand at poetry. Short fiction. Devotional writing. Do not get stuck. When you get stuck, keep writing. If you can't keep writing, go take a nap, you're probably tired and napping is essential to writing. 

Next, if you really want to write, you have to give up control of the outcome. You cannot care about what happens to the words once they're released. Every writer at every stage and at every age cares. We always care. But the aim must be to not care. You have done the work, you have called it good (hopefully). You have been care-filled at every stage of the process and now your job is to not care. Now you must trust the words to do the work in you and in others. God does that work, through His Spirit, and it is not you.

If you were faithful in the above, then you must trust the words into the world without you to explain them, caveat them, preface them, or try to make the reader understand. If you feel you must do that, then you have not been a faithful writer. This is why it's so important that we are faithful writers before we are faithful publishers. If you want to skip being a faithful writer and move right to the place where many are reading your words, you will cause damage. We only need to take a cursory glance at the Church today and the way it's both talked about online and the way it talks online, and see hordes and masses of communicators who just wanted to preach or teach or publish or get noticed without putting in the quiet work of faithfulness. So, if you really want to write and you believe God has called you to write, put aside any illusions of glory or grandeur, put aside any hopes for accolades or affirmation, keep putting it all to death (for the rest of your writing life), and trust the outcome of your words to God. 

This is the only writing advice I have. Plenty of others have more advice and you should listen to them far more than me. The only thing I have going for me is this little home on the web. It's been here for nearly twenty years (begun in 2000) and I suppose I've learned a lot about the practice we call "blogging," but I've kept myself pretty ignorant of the ways to Grow Your Readership in 100 Days or 10 Ways to Get 1000 Followers in 10 Weeks. I know God means for me to write because when I write like Eric Liddell ran, "I feel His pleasure." It is not simply because I get paid to do it or I am particularly gifted in one way or another. I know God means it for me because in the midst of ups, downs, discouragements, hopes, crushed dreams, highs, lows, failure, success, readers or no readers, respect in the writing community and criticism in the writing community, I still write and I still feel God's pleasure when I write. As long as I am able, I will write. 

I want to close with the poem from our favorite Colonist and white imperialist, Rudyard Kipling (That was a joke BTW. He shouldn't be your favorite.). I first read it when I was 13 and felt the first nudging of desire to write, and various phrases have echoed in my mind since then. I am a firm supporter in letting a piece speak for itself and this poem does. Every writer should commit it to memory—I wrote it on my bedroom wall at 13 and memorized it then. I have changed the last line to writer, instead of man. I think Kipling would be okay with that.

If you can keep your head when all about you   
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;   
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;   
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
    And—which is more—you’ll be a writer, my son!

Link Love: The Rising Cream

I'm amiss because I've been hoarding all these lovely bits of writing I've been finding recently and not sharing them with you. There are a lot of them, but maybe pick one or two and bookmark the rest for later reading. As always, friends, the cream will rise to the top, so resist the urge to fill your reading diet with click-bait and constant commentary on whatever Big Issue dominates the Internet today. Read that which encourages contemplation instead of only consumption. 

Fellow writer Laura Ortberg Turner has just delivered her baby boy, but before his successful birth, there were three miscarriages. I wept through this piece of hers, familiar with so many of the same emotions. Here's her piece, Missing Hope. 

This piece by Wesley Hill is just so well done. It is difficult to write about painful life experiences in a redemptive way, particularly when we're the one who comes out looking broken. But Wesley does this well time and time again. His piece called Love, Again is on the breakup of a celibate friendship in which Wesley fell in love. 

This piece from Beth Moore made the rounds a month ago and I saw many, many, many men share it and rave about it. Something about the applause irked me, though, because many of these same men exhibit the qualities Beth called attention to. It has gotten me thinking about the ease of applause in matters of justice and the difficulty of accepting rebuke when it becomes personal. 

Here's John Blase doing what John Blase does so well (I will read anything John Blase writes and makes public for as long as I live). He speaks of being a "wintery soul" in this and I know, I nod, I agree. 

I held my breath reading piece on Image Journal called Bent Body, Lamb. Just read it. 

I'm blessed to consider a few women in life my dearest friends, but they're all long-distance, in New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon. Seeing them is a once a year occurrence and though we try to remain faithful via text or face-time, life in the present is full. I loved this piece on Long-Distance Friendships. 

For the past few years I've felt betrayed by my body. From Adrenal Fatigue to miscarriages to unexplained weight gain to PCOS and the havoc the stress of moving cross-country three times has wreaked on my body. I long more than ever for the new heaven and new earth's promise of a new body. I loved this piece from Derek Rishmawy called Is the Body That Betrayed Me Still Good?

Finally, this piece in GQ about a novelist who was advised to not have children if he wanted to be successful at his vocation is beautiful.