Neglecting the Holy Spirit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Celebrate Christmas with Me

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

. . .

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

Jesus Holds Shaking Leaves

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shame, Sanctification, Singleness, and Marriage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Sour Fruit of Self-Disclosure

I have an article up over at Christianity Today on the pressure of push-button publishing and the trap of self-disclosure: A few weeks ago, the writer Glennon Doyle Melton announced on her blog that she’s getting divorced while in the same breath saying that Love Warrior, a book on life and marriage, is still forthcoming. It was a post not unlike most of Melton’s writing: raw, emotive, quaking with transparency and defensiveness at the same time. While she has a questionable view of orthodox Christianity, her words seem to be carried like torches along the hallways and byways of the “wounded warriors” who read her.

I have never been a particular fan of Melton’s writing, but I bear no ill toward her. Marriage is hard, and I am married to a man who walked through the pain of a spouse’s infidelity and the crucible of divorce. Despite our best intentions, sin crouches at our doorstep, and it takes a determined will and the grace of God to rule over it. That someone can write a book on marriage in the same year they announce their divorce is not a sin as much as it is a reflection of questionable discernment. Although Love Warrior may have beautiful words and compelling stories, Melton is an example of a writer who has succumbed to the pressure to prematurely make public what perhaps ought to be kept private.

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, is another example (and I should note that Gilbert and Melton are close friends). Last summer, Gilbert announced her divorce from her husband and then recently revealed yet another self-discovery story—that she’s in love with a woman (the real reason for the divorce). However, I’m less interested in the personal dramas of Gilbert or Melton and more concerned with the larger trend they represent: the altar of personal narrative at which both readers and publishers worship. Writers, too, are complicit in the problem. It’s one thing to go through personal pain and quite another to turn pain into a story for mass consumption that’s put forth to thousands of women as a tacit “live by” script.

Gilbert and Melton aren’t alone, of course. Many of us give in to the pressure to make public what God is still doing in private. We have become blinded in the instant gratification of push-button publishing and platform making. Publishers eat it up. Readers often scan and share or “like” without processing deeply. Writers feel constant pressure to perform and produce the next hot thing. We’re all gluttons for information, content, formulas, and beauty—none of which are wrong in and of themselves, but we’ve all grown fat on a feast of viral blogs, short-lived best-sellers, and pithy articles. There is a demand, and so we supply.

Continue reading The Sour Fruit of Self-Disclosure at Christianity Today.

Singleness, Lydia, and the Church at Philippi

Sayable is still on hiatus, but I'm writing elsewhere in the wild world out there. Revive Our Hearts asked me for some thoughts on singleness and the local church a few months back, and the post went live today. I loved writing this one because there's so much richness in this passage on Lydia and the church. I hope you'll check it out whether you're single or married. It's important for both to see the value of singleness within the local church. 

One of the things I appreciate about the Bible is that it gives us exactly the information we need—no more, no less. Sometimes this means we have to extract meaning from its riches, and sometimes it means we trust that we don't have all the details for a reason.

In this passage, we're not told whether Lydia was married, but the implication (the fact that she leads her own household) is that she is not. Whether it's because she never married or was widowed, we aren't told—so we trust the specifics of her story to God.

This passage encouraged me deeply in my years of singleness and continues to encourage me less than a year into marriage. For years I felt thwarted of ministry opportunities because of my singleness. There seemed to be no place for me in the local church unless it was in children's ministry, to which I didn't feel a particular call. Lydia's story fueled me to believe that God did want me to exercise the gifts He'd given me and not wait until marriage to do so.

Within the story of Lydia are eight observations that may encourage both the Church and women to whom God hasn't yet given the gift of marriage. They encouraged me and set me on a course for continued ministry within marriage instead of waiting for marriage to magically set my ministry in motion.

Continue reading eight observations on Lydia and the local church. 

Gone Fishing for Hope

I know this post will feel like whiplash after the last two posts and I don't mean to do that to you. But this morning I read Psalm 127 and it's sticking to my gut in an uncomfortable way. It's sticking to my gut in a way that confirms some things that have been otherwise floating around: Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.

It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

I read it through twice, three times, and then a fourth. I am no stranger to this Psalm, I know it to near perfect memory. As I read it this morning though, I pictured my life in it in a way I never have before. Until I owned a house, felt the danger of a city, lost the fruit of my womb, and had enemies, it was easy to picture this Psalm as it was sung in ancient days, but not these days, not my days.

Today though, I see my home in Denver, the financial loss we took on it. I see the gunman shooting six times into the police-officer on the ground in my new city. I see the year now of sleepless nights, learning to share a bed, putting a night person and a morning person on a similar schedule, waking with a new puppy every hour to few hours, a husband who rises in the four o'clock hour most mornings. I see the two tiny humans we lost in unceremonious ways, gushing away from my womb, out of our quiver, into their watery grave. I see enemies, accusations against me, us, our small family, our decisions. This Psalm infiltrates the fibers of my life this year and leaves nothing untouched.

. . .

Being a child of divorced parents left a undeniable impression on many, many, many things. One of which is I decided if the Lord ever gave me the gift of marriage I wouldn't wait until our marriage was in trouble to get marriage counseling.

So, almost a year to the day of our wedding, we met with a counselor last night for nearly two hours. The first thing we said was, "We know you're not our Savior, we just need help processing all of this." We were a deluge of facts, bulleting down a list of All The Things. We sat close to one another and adored and loved one another not one iota less than a year ago, but with a heck of a lot more weight to all of it. We spilled it all. And at the end of it he said, "I'm wondering something: do you guys know how to feel emotions?"

I pictured the silly magnet on my Gram's fridge when I was little for a minute. The grid of different faces we now call "emoticons" (as though our generation invented the smiley face...) with a "Today I'm Feeling..." title in some eighties version of Comic Sans. And I thought to myself, I don't know how to feel anything except exhausted.

We said no. No, we don't.

. . .

My personal challenge for this month is to Engage Emotions, but all this month has taught me is that I have no earthly idea how to engage anything. I'm like a whack-a-mole with my heart: the moment something foreign or heavy or scary or angry pops up, I pound it back down before it takes over with a force I can't fathom. But I'm so angry. I am. I'm not angry like a raging fury, I'm angry like a rolling storm over a Great Lake, picking up rain and force as it comes.

I'm not angry at a specific person or even God, but I'm angry that two barely married kids were thrown into situations we had no idea about. I'm angry that Nate's contract wasn't renewed only a few months after getting married and a month after buying a house. I'm angry that in the face of all the stress my body couldn't hold two new barely formed babies. I'm angry that a hundred applications and demoralizing interviews left us with only one offer—on the other side of the country. I'm angry that there is evil in the world and I saw it and now every siren and suspicious person ushers in a low grade anxiety. I'm angry that our house was worth what we had it listed for, not a penny less, and we ended up losing so much on it because we couldn't float lives in two different states. I'm angry that my husband's heart has been having issues for months. I'm angry that I haven't gotten a full night's sleep in a year. I'm angry that I went to the doctor yesterday and listed out all the things and she said, "Sleep is going to be one of the most important things you can do to heal and restore your body."

I'm angry because God's word says He gives His beloved rest and all of this makes me feel like I am not His beloved after all.

But I'm angry, like I told our counselor yesterday, in a standoffish way. As though I'm viewing an intricate painting in the National Gallery or a complicated sculpture or a biopic. That's someone's life but not mine. I feel angry on behalf of the girl I was a year ago and the girl I left behind somewhere along the way.

Today I shared a bit of that with some friends and fellow writers and one said, "I have often marveled at how detachedly you write about all you're going through on your blog. Now I see from what the counselor says how you do that! Seriously, though, I wonder if writing about all this for the public while in the middle of it serves to exacerbate the emotional distancing. Writing inherently distances us from our inner life simply through the process of externalizing and reifying it. I wonder if this might contribute to that kind of detachment."

She said the words Nate and I have been thinking and talking about for a while. And for one moment, it felt like permission to do what we've been talking about: putting Sayable on hiatus. To learn God's word is about God and for those back in ancient times, also it is about and for you, and it is also for me. For my weak heart and disengaged emotions. For my inability to feel anger or sadness or frustration or joy for myself, for fear of what it might say about the Holy Spirit inside of me.

So friends, for the sake of my marriage, my home, my heart, and my love for the Lord, I will be putting Sayable on hiatus for a few months. I don't know how long a few months is, it could be two, it could be six. It may seem easy to write about emotions and mourning and decision making as deeply as I do here, but it takes a lot out of me in all honesty. It takes a lot of me. Part of my problem is I've begun to write for you instead of writing for Him, and I've been brutally honest with you, but struggled to bring my everything and my nothing to Him.

I cried hard today while writing this and it was the most cathartic thing I've done in a year. I know it is the right thing to do. I will miss you, but I miss my heart more.

I need the Lord to build my house, otherwise all my labor is indeed vain.

Thanks for your patience

In a faulty attempt to improve the reading experience for those of you who are subscribed through email (Which is a fat lot of you—thank you!), I have switched the email delivery format of Sayable to Mail Chimp. Along the way (partially because of the fact that I've been blogging at Sayable since 2001, have eons of archives here, and haven't updated my blogging platform for about five years), the process was clunky and I lost about a third of those who were subscribed via Feedly. If you were one, I'm terribly sorry. I love that you've come along on this journey so far and would love to have you continue, but it will mean taking action on your part to re-subscribe on whichever feed aggregator you use. Through the amazing power of Twitter, the help of some quick-to-offer friends, and 2.5 hours with Mail Chimp support, we were able to muddle through and transfer most of the subscribed readers! Praise him. I was ready to throw in the towel (blogging is fun except for all the technical stuff).

I got a deluge of emails this morning from people thanking me for switching the email delivery to a more readable format. To give you an idea of what they were dealing with, let's just say it was like a dash of 1996 in their inbox every morning. Here's a screenshot:

Not exactly a pleasurable reading experience.

Here's what she looks like with the update:

So! Thank you for bearing with me in the process. There's always a bit of frustration when in order to serve some readers you end up sacrificing some more. At some point I will need to do a complete overhaul of Sayable from top to bottom, back to front, and hope we can make that a more seamless transition for all of you. Also, after a test post went through and it was looking like Mail Chimp was a lost cause, I made a snarky comment in the test post (image above). That's my total depravity showing through and I'd ask your forgiveness. I really thought it wasn't going to work at that point and was just trying to at least save Feedly subscribers. But God.

Forgive me?

If you'd like to read Sayable through the new and improved interface in your email, just insert your email address on the sidebar and voila.

You're the reason I keep writing here. If I had my druthers I'd probably hang the whole thing up and out to dry, but you wonderful people who keep coming back and keep encouraging and keep praying and keep learning, you're the reason I'm sticking it out. As long as God gives me freedom to do so, I'll keep honoring His gift and showing up here. Thank you.

Why Sex Isn't the Best Thing Ever

One of the best blessings to me in my singleness were friends who did not make marriage an ultimate thing in my eyes by only telling me the beautiful parts of their marriage, but who told me the difficulties of it as well. They also prayed for me actively to someday have the gift of marriage. I hope I am doing the same for my still single friends who desire the gift. I want them to know its not all romance and intimacy and good feelings and great conversation. But I also want them to experience the gift themselves so they can both see it and minister out of it. One thing it is very easy to believe during the long fast from sexual intimacy that is godward singleness, is the option to have sex will make things better. Most of us wouldn't be so foolish to say having sex makes things better, but it's darn easy to believe the option and permission to will make it better.

But sex doesn't make things better.

Not in the way you think it will.

Sex is good, God created it, he blessed it. He made it the integral piece in the procreation of humanity—science thwarts it and succeeds it but even science admits the masterful design of two humans making more humans. Sex is great, but it does not make all the angsts of longing for intimacy before marriage go away. All those angsts still exist within marriage, they just take different forms.

I know it's easy for the married person to say this, you protest, because at the end of the day I can still have sex. But what I wish I could tell every unmarried person I know is until we realize our issues are much deeper and more profound than a sexual itch for satisfaction, we will still find our desires unmet. Within marriage and without.

The blessing of sex between a husband and wife is not to relieve stress, to make me feel desirable, or to make my husband feel strong and manly. It is not even to conceive and bear children. These are all benefits, but none of them are guarantees. God doesn't owe us relief from stress apart from him, the guarantee I will always feel desirable (I don't), my husband will feel capable and sufficient (he doesn't), or children will be borne. God doesn't even owe us sex within marriage. None of the things we think sex will accomplish (and indeed try to chase inside and outside marriage), are guarantees.

When I hear those who are not married say "But at least you get to have sex! And live with your best friend!" Well, first, I'd warn against saying at least in regard to much. But second I want to say your words betray a much, much deeper need and the fact that you think sex or living with your best friend fixes it tells me you don't see your need as clearly as you think. If you think I'm just saying this because I'm married, trust me, I've been sayingthingslikethisforyearsandyearsasasingle.

I've heard the illustration of the gift of sex for a man and woman in marriage like this: it's glue holding you together. But in my limited view sex is more like a reminder: I am not my own anymore, I am part of someone and sex is a tether to remind, seal, and strengthen the binding. Outside of marriage there would actually be no reason or benefit for sex because union with this specific person—my husband—doesn't exist. What I mean is, until he was my husband, he wasn't my husband and sex wasn't necessary (1 Corinthians 7:2).

I know this sounds very pragmatic but I want to be a bit pragmatic if I can. Our view of sex has been so colored by films and imaginations and images, and in many ways I want to sit down and say: sex just isn't as great as you think it is, and we don't need it like we think we do. It's greatness is not in how it makes us feel or how it destresses us or how awesome our orgasm is. It is only truly good in relation to the person with whom our body is intended by God to be joined with. Can sex outside of marriage feel good? Yup. Can masturbation curb the itch? Yup. But do either of them express worship of God with the gift He's given in the right context of covenant? No. Therefore, outside marriage it is not good. And inside marriage it is only good if it points to our incompleteness apart from God.

Unmarried friends, the sex you desire and think will satisfy your longing will not. Married friends, you still feel unsatisfied? Like your longing for something is never fully realized? All of this emptiness points to a greater need and a greater longing. Sex within marriage, if anything, makes the lack of complete culmination even more profound because no matter how perfect it is, it still isn't enough to still the longing in our hearts for God. Fasting from intimacy outside of marriage is preparation for how even within marriage we are still apart from our Groom until the culmination of all things.

My need is for Christ. In marriage and out. Sex is a gift from God but it isn't the ultimate gift and it certainly doesn't come without baggage of its own. We live in a broken world, my friend. If it doesn't feel perfect it's because it's not, and it's okay. Christ, our perfection, knows our longings and knows we are dust.

And that's better than sex.

Screen Shot 2016-06-17 at 10.06.46 AM

Would You Please Like This?

It's hard to be far away from all the people I love. I grew up three hours away from here, the people who are most like family to me outside my natural family live eight hours away, my natural family lives all over the east coast. My group of friends from college lives all over the US. The people who have been my church family for the past six years are in Texas and the baby relationships I'd just begun to tend in Denver feel like another life ago. Nate and I have met a few people in the DC area, but we're going slowly in relationship building, trying to work on our own marriage in ways we weren't able to for the past year. I feel like a spider trapped in a web of my own making—threads of my life stretching out in every direction, too thin to be maintained well. Sometimes it can feel like the only contact I have with friends all over the country is through social media. They read Sayable, comment or like or retweet images and quotes I post. I do the same through the channels they give me. It is limited, though, and can feel like an itch that never quite gets scratched. It can be easy to create narratives our heads about the details surrounding a snippet.

In the past few days a few friends have called me with some concerns. "We heard this, and didn't think it was true, but wanted to make sure." Or, "We heard this, but were pretty sure there was more to the story." And, well, there was. Assumptions had been made about our lives, our home, our marriage, our puppy, our finances, and our friendships. Some of it meant I needed to make some follow-up calls with far away friends and clarify words I'd said, or didn't say. The story isn't finished yet, but the loose ends, to the best of my ability, are being reconciled as we try to be faithful to be at peace with all men.

Some of the assumptions above, though, came not from my own mouth, but the thin snapshots on social media and this blog. Russell Moore has a fabulous post up on Moore to the Point about how happy, clappy images and quips can send the message to others that we're all happy and clappy, ruining an opportunity to show the whole picture. Much has been said before about the perils of social media. I've written before on why I think it's important to show beauty in our lives, but it is true we are accustomed to only showing and seeing a thin veneer of what is below the surface.

In another era people were born, grew up, and died in the same place. Every bit of their lives was someone else's business, but now we've made privacy a business in its own right. Social media gives the illusion that everyone is transparent and honest, but we're all spin doctors, making the best things and the worst things better or worse, depending on the response we want to elicit.

King Solomon has some wisdom for us here in Ecclesiastes 12:

Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. The Preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth.

I love that the Preacher "arranged many proverbs with great care." He was attentive to the beauty of how a thing sounded, what it looked like on the page, how it rolled off the tongue: he wanted to delight with the truth. He was a spin doctor in his own right. We emulate our Creator and Maker when we take truth and take care for how it displays beauty and goodness. There is nothing wrong with those thin veneers and snapshots we display on social media. Social media is a limited tool, but a tool used properly does its job well.

What a tool does not do well, though, is communicate the whole truth. For instance: when I post an image of our garden in its full June array, what it does not show is the labor we put into making it such. It doesn't show sweat dripping down our backs, dirt under our fingernails, and weeding. It also doesn't show the days and weeks leading up to its beauty today where it was merely seeds and then sprouts we wondered if would ever grow up. It doesn't show the whole story of how a garden came to be. Each of those stages, though, are both true and beautiful in their own right—as ugly as they might seem in the moment.

King Solomon goes on:

The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

King Solomon is saying: beware of making truth of what you do not see, what the Shepherd has not given. Our imaginations are endless, we can write books, blogs, tweets, and posts on something beautiful every day for as long as we live, and none of them are true and dear as the Shepherd's own words. Even the words He gives us to say only show a limited amount because we cannot know the wholeness of all truth here on earth.

Friends, I hope if you use social media you use it as a tool, both as a viewer and a user. It can be a beautiful way to reach across the miles and be comforted that our friends and family think of us. But use that tool to create something more beautiful: depth and longevity. The next time you're tempted to build your own narrative on a snapshot, pick up the phone, dial a number (I know...), and ask your friend how they really are, what's really going on in their hearts and lives. Ask how God is blessing and disciplining them. How He is teaching and loving them. How you can be praying for them and thinking of them.

You might never get a like or a comment or an adrenaline hit from it, but I promise you won't be disappointed.

This past week I've gotten to have a few hard conversations, but they were all better than I could have imagined with my limited perspective and laptop.

The Toolbelt of Your Sufferings

Look back at all the hardest things you've walked through in your life, as many as you can remember, make a list of them, do it now. Here are a few of mine:

I grew up in a legalistic home. I was secretly rebellious in every way I could fathom. Yelling, shouting, and physical expressions of anger were commonplace in our home. I was abused sexually at a young age. I lost my younger brother in a fatal accident when I was 19 and he was 14. My parents divorced in a messy and long process. I was had to deal with ramifications of my parents marriage and divorce for a very long time. I was single far longer than I imagined I would be. I went for years in the church without understanding my sin or the cross fully. I went through a period of unbelief in God, certain He had forsaken me. There were times when I had 0 dollars in my bank account. My mom was in a horrific car crash. I moved more than 23 times in 15 years. I lived with 38 different roommates. I was overlooked for job promotions and not paid as much as my male counterparts. I married a man who had been previously married—something I could have never imagined in my twenties. I miscarried twice in five months. We walked through a really difficult church situation in a new marriage in a new city. My husband lost his job three months into marriage and was unemployed for the next five. Within the space of four weeks we experienced three violent crimes and one vandalistic act on our property. We moved cross-country twice in one year. I have been lied about and slandered in public arenas. We just walked through this.

There are more that should be on this list. They happened to me, to members of my family, or by members of my family. They're part of my story, but not entirely my story to communicate. But they happened and they were hard.

Your list probably looks similar to mine—not the same things, but certainly the same level of difficulty for you personally. We cannot compare pain. If you take two men who have never experienced pain of any kind, and give one a paper-cut and amputate the leg of the other—both of them will still say their pain level is at a ten. For some of us, what seems to be paper-cuts to others are pains of the deepest kind. So this is my list of deep wounds throughout my life. Places where in each thing I was certain there was no end to the pain in which I found myself.

But look at your list again and this time view each of those things are tools in your arsenal for ministry. When a friend speaks to me of her longing for marriage—I get it. When I hear of someone who lost her sibling in an accident—I get it. When friends are walking through divorce or the divorce of their parents—I get it. When a sister miscarries—I get it. When someone loses their job—I get it. When someone walks away from the Church—I get it.

Praise God He entrusted you with the opportunity to minister out of your weakness, pain, loss, and life. You are 100x more postured to minister to others with those difficult experiences in your life than without them. So too, this hard thing you're walking through right this minute, it is working in you a greater glory. Paul said,

I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. Philippians  4:11-13

Each of those excruciatingly painful circumstances of your life cannot be wasted or thwarted by a King who's on His throne. He doesn't excuse Himself from the throne when you walk through all sorts of fiery trials. No. He is there, with you, groaning alongside you in your suffering, knowing each of the difficulties you're walking through will become tools in your belt of ministry and are working in your a glory greater than you can imagine today.

Here is the secret to worshipping through the list you have in front of you: He strengthens you. He girds you up. He bolsters you. He restores you. He heals you. He sets you forward to minister out of what you have been through. And He will do it again and again and again for as long as we're on this side of the new earth, for His glory and your good.

The Attributes of God

There are eighteen attributes of God posted on the walls of the Kids Village rooms at The Village Church. Learning those attributes, committing them to memory, and pulling them out whenever I have doubted the character of God throughout the past six years has been one of the most life-changing disciplines of my life. After I posted this photo, several people asked for the full list or a link to the posters. A few of the guys in the Comm department told me they'll think about getting something up in the next year, but until then, I asked for permission to reprint the complete list. It was written by Anne Lincoln Holibaugh, the director of Kids Village for years and one who worked hard to create a well-oiled machine in that area. She's brilliant. If you know her, tell her (and all the Kids Village/Little Village people) thank you today.

Here are the attributes in list form. Below, if you click on the image, there's a high resolution image I put together that you can print out and put on your fridge or frame or wherever it would be helpful for you to visualize the bigness of God on a regular basis. I really mean it when I say committing these characteristics of God to memory has been one of the most life-changing disciplines for me. They're easy to remember, they remind me I am not God, and they speak to nearly every lie I am tempted to believe about Him.

God is:

Wise: He knows what is best Generous: He gives what is best Loving: He does what is best Good: He is what is best Unchanging: He never changes Creator: He made everything Provider: He meets the needs of His children Holy: He is completely perfect Just: He is right to punish sin Glorious: He shows his glory and greatness Sovereign: He has the right, will, and power to do as He pleases Compassionate: He sees, cares, and acts when His children are in need Merciful: He does not give what His children deserve Attentive: He hears and responds to His children Worthy: He deserves all glory Deliverer: He saves His children from wrath Refuge: He provides places of safety for His children Almighty: Nothing is too hard for God

If We Have to Foreclose, is God Still Good?

On Thursday we signed the contract for the sale of our house in Denver and on Monday, God willing, the buyers will sign it. For many of you who had your houses on the market for years+, the relief we're feeling can sound hyperbolic, but I'm going to be uncomfortably honest about why we are relieved. (Uncomfortable for you, maybe, I have nothing left to protect here.)

The Denver housing market (particularly where we bought) was more than double the market in Texas where we'd come from. We knew that being near to the local church where I'd be working was a non-negotiable for us. We wanted to practice hospitality, to have a home that was convenient for others to stop by, and where we could be invested in the life of the city community.

From the day we moved in, our house was just that. Not a day went by that there weren't people at our house—sometimes three different people would stay in our guest room within a week. We welcomed a brand new baby and her parents home from the hospital for a week when their renovation project wasn't done yet. We had people spend every holiday with us. We had many late nights with people around our kitchen table and on our back porch. From the moment the house was ours until the moment we locked the doors behind us (accompanied by a few friends who came to say one last goodbye) we tried to be faithful with the gift of the home.

It was an expensive home (for us), and a quirky one. It was a farmhouse from the 1800s that had been added on to multiple times. When we bought it, our realtor said, "This house doesn't even have a place to put a TV, it's going to be hard to resell." We didn't care for two reasons: we didn't own a TV and didn't plan on selling. And then suddenly Nate's contract wasn't renewed, the Denver job market for his skill set wasn't as big as we thought it would be, and my paycheck (which we had planned on just squirreling away since his was enough for all our bills) wasn't enough to sustain us in that house. We had to sell.

Everyone who ever came through our doors loved our house and we loved our home so we didn't think selling would be hard. Our realtor set an amount that basically would have us walking away without losing money, but not making any. We were fine with that. We got a contract on it, but then they backed out. Then we got another one, and they backed out. One more, and they backed out. And then again, but they backed out. We were so confused—we weren't being given reasons for the repeated back outs, and we were more than willing to fix things or adjust our price, but weren't really being given a chance to talk it through with the buyers. Each time it just felt like a punch in the gut.

We were hemorrhaging money at this point: Nate had taken a major pay cut in this new job, we had moving costs for moving across the country again, to the fifth most expensive city in the U.S., even with a house as far out of the city as we could get commute-wise, our rent was the same as our mortgage in Denver. Plus we were fixing things along the way in the house in Denver, draining our bank account even more. There comes a point where you know the options in front of you are not only limited, they're humbling—even humiliating. We were talking about foreclosure.

We had put down more than 20% on the house and we kept asking the question: "How much can we walk away with?" We wanted to buy a house in DC at some point, even if it was half the house we had in Denver. To even think about things like foreclosure felt so defeating for both of us. Nate has always has not only stable jobs, but extremely well-paying jobs, and I have tried my best to stay out of any kind of debt. We were not the sort of people who foreclosed. Or were we?

God began painfully, painfully, painfully pruning any assumptions we had about provision. He started that process when Nate lost his job, dug the scalpel in deeper when months went by without a job offer, even deeper when we began to put groceries and home repairs on the credit card, and it seemed he was gouging out all our pride by the time we had to ask the question: is foreclosure our only option?

In the midst of that process, we began to ask a different question: "How little can we walk away with?" At first the answer was, "Enough to pay off our credit card debt and the taxes we owed on Nate's 2015 1099 salary." But slowly the answer became, "We can walk away with nothing. We can lose it all."

I've been in the church all my life and I've never heard anyone talk about this. I've heard people talk about it in a nuanced other people sort of way, or a testimony of how God restored all the locusts had eaten and all that, but I've never heard anyone process this in the midst of it. How painful it was. How humiliating and humbling. How there is absolutely nothing I could do to ease my husband's anxiety about it. How there was nothing he could do to ease my fear about it. There comes a point when you just stand there desperate and empty before God and you can't do anything and you feel utterly alone in the process. This whole year led us to that moment on the couch, with tears in our eyes, and the reality before us. We could do nothing on our own.

Losing a couple thousand dollars would be hard, but losing nearly 100K felt like a punch in the stomach we would never recover from.

In this process, we confessed all this to our community back home in Texas. We listed out the difficulties, we expressed we had needs only God could meet, and we asked for prayer. It felt humbling and hard. This wasn't how I envisioned the first year of our marriage to be. None of this was. It felt like God took every imaginably difficult scenario for one of his kids to walk through, and put them all in front of us this year, a row of dominos each one leaning into the other in succession.

At the end of April we got an offer. It was far below what we were asking and had some expensive contingencies included (we'd put a new roof on), but it would leave us with almost exactly the amount needed to pay the taxes and the credit card, not one cent more. We accepted the offer and started holding our breath for the next month and a half waiting for May 23rd to come, and praying we'd make it financially through this month of bills.

A week later one of our best friends came to visit bringing with her a stack of cards from our church family in Texas. Inside were letters of encouragement and love for us—and as we opened each one, out fell money. It added up to the exact amount we'd need for our mortgage in Denver for one more month.

I cried.

This was not how I envisioned this happening either. Accepting those gifts from people who we love and who love us felt hard, but a good hard. We haven't felt the enveloping love of our church family in a long time and to feel it in such a gutting way was—I can't even explain it, it was hard. But good. But hard.

There's no pretty ending to this story, friends. I can't wrap this up for you. We wanted to tell you for a few reasons though: God gets the glory and He does it through His Church.

We moved to Denver for His glory and His Church, and we left feeling brokenness in both of those areas, but in the face of the brokenness, He still gets the glory and He still uses His Church.

But He also brings us to the point where we have to stop asking ourselves: "How much of myself can I keep?" and start asking ourselves, "How much can I give up?" Sometimes that's easy, and we're on the giving side of the equation, stuffing envelopes full of money to send to friends who need it more than we do. And sometimes it's unbelievably painful and we look to all the world like we're losing, losing, lost. But He empties us just the same and it's hurts so good.

. . .

If I have to boil down this season of my life to one BIG lesson it is this: The Church is called to bear one anothers' burdens. This means we enter into the mourning and rejoicing, confession and repentance process, discipline and discipleship, sharing all things in common—including but not limited to, finances, fears, joys, food, homes, cares, and prayers. If your politics, pride, personality, and proclivities don't like the sound of that for some reason, it doesn't change the precedence set forth in scripture.

If our politics of capitalism, of pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, of each man for himself gets in the way of us admitting need, weakness, or inability to do something, this is what the Bible says: Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Philippians 2:4

If our pride in self-sufficiency, independence, and self-righteousness get in the way of admitting we cannot accomplish something, we feel weak, or we physically cannot make something materialize where it is not, this is what the Bible says: But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 2 Corinthians 12:9

If our personality limits us from asking for help, for admitting we feel disappointed and disheartened, for confessing we cannot see a way through what life is throwing at us, this is what the Bible says: Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. 1 Thessalonians 5:11

If our proclivities lead to a stubborn or ungrateful demeanor to anyone who tries to help, this is what the Bible says:  And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Colossians 3:15

It's been hard to walk through this year in a way that holds both the hope of eternity and the hardness of life in tension with one another, to feel humiliated but also humbled, to recognize sin in my life and others', and to say at the end of it: it's beautiful and broken, but God's way is best.

She/He Reads Truth discount code

If you're a regular reader of Sayable it's no secret that regular writing has been, well, not so regular for nearly a year. Part of that has been the season of life and work for me—I've learned over the past 16 years of blogging that there are ebbs and flows, and no guarantee the words will always be there when I want them to. Part of it has just been how spiritually difficult this year has been for me. Maybe there are some of you out there who could make it through a year like this like a champ, I am not one of you. A few weeks ago I was confessing to a friend how difficult writing has been and she encouraged me with these words: just write about what you're learning in scripture. You don't have to teach, apply, or prove anything, just read scripture and write about it. 

One of the places I have been writing for this year, She Reads Truth, has enabled me to do just that: write about scripture. In the lack of wisdom I have about any of the other things I'm walking through, the Bible never leaves me feeling empty. I always feel full when I have eaten at the table of scripture. The feast of the Word always fills its hearers—whether we feel like it or not.

She Reads Truth is about to begin a summer series on the book of Acts and they've graciously given my readers a code for a 15% discount on your Acts book orders. To be honest, I never used the books before Lent, they were primarily just scripture and I could just use my own Bible. But during the Lent study I used the She Reads Truth book and found it actually to be very helpful in that I could scribble in the margins in ways I don't do in my own Bible. It was a refreshing way to look at scripture (how many of us just glaze over the words in our well-worn, well-read Bibles?). Plus, they're gorgeous and I love celebrating the gifts of art and beauty within the Church.

If you'd like to order a She Reads Truth or a He Reads Truth book or bundle, use this code at the store and get 15% off your order: LORE15. The code is good until Monday, the 23rd of May.

I'm looking forward to reading along with you!

Public Displays of Christian Affection

She drew small circles on his back with her manicured nails. He sat up straighter and leaned forward. I averted my eyes and kept on singing about a God who satisfies all my deepest longings while feeling like a fraud of a worshipper: the single girl who longed for the kind of touch she saw in front of her. What do we do about public displays of affection in the church? I faced this dilemma every week as a single woman, when it felt like the last time I’d been hugged, kissed, or back-scratched was when I visited Grandma. In church, I saw that affectionate touch knew no generational bounds, popping up among new couples, old couples, and middle-aged couples alike.

Now, I’ve always been a proponent of good hugs, muscle rubs, and kisses on the top of my head. Within dating relationships I was mostly a good Christian prude, but among all the other relationships I was the first to give out hugs. “A good hugger” will probably be my epitaph; among my circle of friends it's been called the "Lore Hug." (I could be known for worse and so I'll take it.)

For all my love of hugging, though, there was something about public affection between couples, particularly in church, that always rubbed me the wrong way. I’m not alone. A few weeks ago, I saw a friend posted her pithy observations on church PDA, and people flooded to the comments to declare “pet peeve,” “creepy,” and “get a room.” I knew where they were coming from—I’d felt that ick factor too—but I waited to respond, and another thought came to me: Shouldn't the church be the one to reclaim healthy physical touch, even public expressions of it?

Continue Reading at Christianity Today.