Arise

10The Lord said to Joshua, "Get up! Why have you fallen on your face?"

Joshua 7

In my middle school class, we're going through the Old Testament, and we've been talking about promises and identities. We're in Judges now, but a few weeks ago it was Joshua. Time and time again we read the words, Be strong and of good courage...I will not leave you nor forsake you...the victory is yours...be not dismayed...I am with you. God shoves at Joshua in ways that we don't expect. He tells him that he has won battles that are not even glimpsed on the horizon yet, and not only that, but he tells him to believe that those things are true.
In the darkest hour, the Maker assures His creations that He redeems and He is there.
In that classroom on the upper level of the children's ministry building, I've found that I've been preaching to myself these past few weeks. I came home today after teaching on Gideon and the lies that we tell ourselves and the truth of who we really are, and I was planting irises on my back patio and I thought,
Do I really believe what I told the girls this morning?
My answer was a resounding,
No.
We took some time to write down the things that we feel about ourselves that aren't true and maybe limit us, and I put on the list "small" and "inadequate." Then we made a list of promises and truths about who the Lord says we are, and I wrote "called" and "chosen" and "designed with intention." I think I made them do that because I needed to do it. Because this morning I didn't feel like I was called or chosen or even designed intentionally, I felt small–very small, and inadequate.
I felt incapable.
And so I was honest, out there in my backyard surrounded by purple flowers. I told the Creator,
I don't. I don't think I believe everything I told them this morning. I feel unworthy and lost and less than and I don't know how to stop feeling those things. 
And He replied gently in that way that He always does with a pressing on my spirit and a hope-filled grasp at my heart,
Get up daughter. Rise up. Why are you on your face when I have lifted you from this mire?

And that was it. I repented then and there of my pettiness and doubts. Because He was right, He is right. I am meant to be a Joshua. I am to cross my Jordans. I am a repairer of the breach, a restorer of paths, a right-hand redeemer, and a bringer of grace. No matter what I feel about myself in my darkest hours and my long valleys, I am not tiny. I don't need to stop feeling like I am though, I only need to realize that it's untrue.
I only need to believe that I am His.

I am being redeemed and He is with me.

This is just a simple truth that I want you all to know.

You are His.
You are precious and cherished and cultivated daily. You are called and chosen. You are designed with meaning and purpose. It is for you that He split the seas. It is for you He gave all. You are mighty and victorious. You are peculiar and ever-loved.
You are one sheep out of one hundred, and He left the other ninety-nine to seek you out.
You matter.

So get up friends. Why lay in the dust from which you came? He has prepared a glorious position for each and all of us, and we can claim that identity with with power and certainty. We can tug at it and shake it and cry out,
I am new! I am new in Him and none can undo what He has done and promised! None can mar His intentions and perfect plan and beautiful design. I am new, I am new, I am new. 
The darkest hour always passes, and it is when we realize that we are claimed, then we can step out of the wake of our dead selves and into the calling He has for us.
We are children of the King. Royalty and a priesthood, daughters and sons, princes and princesses.

We are worth more than the irises.

The bend in the road.

“What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God’s future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether. They are part of what we may call building for God’s kingdom.” 

– N. T. Wright

The things I've learned this year, some are like thunder and others are like tiny white buds. I've experienced the boisterous and vivacious and the gentle and small, small, small, all of which are true and genuine. It's April, and I understand things better. I get it now. 
All this matters. 
There is purpose in this seemingly heart-rending and insufferable existence. There is meaning behind your sorrows. There is redemption after your weeping. There is a plan for your drudgery. There is joy coming in the morning. 
Each day awakens, and each day brings dusk. 
And you? You are alive. Your life means something. You mean something. Do not doubt the necessity of your feet on this spinning planet. Even if it seems unbearable, I promise you, there is a reason for that. We are ecclesiastical in the sense of the third chapter of the book. We are not always fickle, we are simply human. We hurt and we heal. For as Anne says, "There is another bend in the road after this." Or rather, this too shall pass. And friends? It does. You wake one morning and the sun is spilling and you realize that you've moved on. Yes, things ache and throb, but you have stepped past the dark place and you are His still. 
Don't give up. 
Maybe you're tired, or you feel like you have no meaning or impact on those around you, let alone the world. Maybe you think everyone else is making a difference but you. Maybe you can't see a silver lining. Maybe you're just done. Maybe you don't see the point. Maybe you're rejected and you feel alone and abandoned and that no one cherishes you. Maybe it's not fair. Maybe you've failed. Maybe you're at the very bottom of it all and your weakest point. Maybe you've lost everything, or never had anything. Maybe the impossible, the unthinkable happened. Maybe the odds aren't in your favor. Maybe you're lost and have no sense of direction and this is just a void. Maybe you're empty.
Maybe you're in the dark, the dark, the dark.
But there is a bend in the road my friend. 
It's coming. 
Do not yield. Press in, lean in. Shoot straight, and continue on the course. Even still, in the blackest of nights, the North Star is there. Your purpose is a compass, His presence is a reassurance. You are building God's kingdom. And maybe right now you're in a trench, covered in mud and dust and dirt, and you don't understand why this is even happening, but it matters. That trench is for the foundation. You will build on it. There will come a day when you climb out, you reach the top of the pit, and you look back down and He will say, "See? See how I stayed your hand there? See how you trusted Me in that corner? See the sure, straight line which you dug in the deepest, darkest part? That was because you kept on. That was because you had faith." 
You will turn the bend, and all will be well. 

One day, when everything comes to fruition and redemption is finally accomplished, we will look at His work by our hands, and we will see the goodness and the glory and the reasons. We will have crossed our Jordans. We will have lived our Ecclesiastes. We will have fulfilled His grace. 
We will know.

Arrivals.

1For He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever.

– Psalm 136

There's no place I could go where you won't find me.

– Bethel Music

17For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us 

an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

– 2 Corinthians 4

There will be days of restlessness. They will plague you with their incessant interruption, their unwanted presence. There will be days when all you want is that slowness you used to partake of. There will be days of fatigue and constant sacrifice, days of doubt and suffering, days of giving up.
I promise you, there will be days when you will give up. 
And yet, His purpose for you remains unchanged. 
You still wake up. You still breathe. You are still there. You speak and move and change and grow and shift, even as you feel your feet sliding backwards. Even as you stumble. Even in your disbelief. Even if the mountain is too big. 
He has a use for you.
You need only extend your hand. 

That is one of the hardest parts of this. I won't lie to you, and I won't deny it. It is difficult and trying. Because more often than not, we want to wallow in our pain, we want to lay on the ground with our arms wrapped around our stomachs and be enveloped in our aches for just a while longer. We want to make it about us. We want to reject His redemption and His sovereignty. We want to rest in our suffering, because if we do not remain there, we must continue on into even more sorrow. So we allow our wounds to fester. We slap His hand away when He assures us that He can bind them. We tremble and quiver like the snapping willows in the winds of November. We march back and forth, across the same small space. We lie and say we're alright. 

We lie and say we're alright. 

We're not though, not really. And we won't be until we allow Him to begin to heal us. Until we accept again that He uses all for good, even if we don't understand it. Until we gain perspective, pull back onto our shoulders the weight of glory. Until we resolve to remember the hole in our ear which speaks of the servitude we promised when we nailed it to His door. Until we welcome His goodness, despite our doubts and grief. 

You can live your whole life holding hands with anguish. Or you can choose to take the Savior's instead. 

It is alright to not understand, to not be okay, to have restless days. We're only human, and He does not fault us for that. He does not expect perfection, but only that we would strive to be better and remember His promises. There's nothing harsh in that calling, not an inkling of condemnation towards us in His character. 

You're not in this alone.

His comfort and healing are consistently available to us. Our restlessness is our own. Remind yourself of your purpose, and all will be well. Live gently, but allow ferocity into your spirit. Claim your name as a warrior, even a wounded one, because you are in the legion of the Maker and the Hope-bringer and the Giver, and He has the power to make this all bigger than just you.
Do not allow your circumstances to cut you at the ankles, but gather courage and let Him aid you in your stance. 

The truth? Spring is coming, even in the midst of your heartache.

Sit in the warm, mellow sunlight. Listen to the cello. Run through parks and trails and forests and along streams. Devote time to Him. Speak of your afflictions. Cultivate community. Cherish what you do have. Don't be alright, and then be alright. Read stories of impossible accomplishments. Create and make. Serve. Thank Him. Embrace purpose. Live and live and then live even more. 

For tomorrow comes. She comes in spite of your disbelief. 

EVEREST ANTHEM

The smallest mountain climber, or even, the smallest mountain.

Tiny warrior.

The turnip.

Little grumpy old man.

Wide-eyed, hustling every night.

My favorite nephew.

On January 8th at 11:47pm, I swear you made my heart skip a beat. 

Welcome to the world little one.

I can't wait to conquer the peaks with you.

How to live a remarkable life.

My mama always told me to live sideways. She never said those words exactly, but she showed me with the way she ambled through meadows and rambling, long, drawn-out conversations and fed the birds and walked strong, shoulders square. How she drank her coffee black and planted lavender and oak trees and wasn't afraid of the spiders or the dusk. She preached it with her brimming confidence and Chanel N°5 and hair pulled back in a hot kitchen while canning plums. My mother embodied sideways living for my entire childhood. I owe her everything for that. 

Some of the best things I've learned are the things my mother never said to me but always meant. 

My mama always told me to live sideways. 

Not a lot of people get that. It's not something that's written like a map on your bones. It's a subtle, simple thing, and you have to learn it. If no one ever taught you to live horizontally, the thought of it probably even causes your heart to clench, at a least a little bit. 

Surprisingly, it's the people who you would most likely expect to live vertically who understand best how to live sideways. Maybe it's because they have everything and realize that they really don't. Or maybe it's because of a sunrise that they should have missed but didn't. Or maybe their mama never told them either but she showed them too. I don't know. All I really know is Johnny Cash had it right when he was asked what paradise was and he replied,

"This morning, with her, having coffee." 

Most of our lives we're told that success and victory will only come if you live vertically, but that's a lie, and that lie leads to an unremarkable life. History tells a different story. The people who dared to live in the dirt, the ones who slowed down, those who chose to stop climbing mountains and instead began to push them aside, the people who dared to wave banners or stand instead of sit, those are the most remarkable people. Those are the people whose stories that you read make your spirit swoon and poetry suddenly makes sense. 

G. K. Chesterton once wrote that "...we need this life of practical romance; the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure." Many of us–myself included at times–have been negligent of this pursuit. We become so wrapped up in the secure, that we dismiss the strange as completely and unequivocally unnecessary. We forget wonder, and we forget how to slow down. See, we have mistaken the rush and necessity of success in this life for the secure, but it isn't really. It's the small satisfaction you get from welcoming simple moments into your life. It's the pleasure of the raw. It's a life lived looking and noticing through rose-colored glasses. And we have written the strange off as too strange, as foreign or daring, but once you recognize the strange for what it really is, you understand that it is not meant to make you quake in your boots always but rather only to lead an adventurous existence daily and with a spirit of jubilee. The strange is the way things shift, the growth that spills out of the constancy of someone's life. It's not always brave and courageous and dangerous or snapping and biting. Yes, sometimes the strange is a sunset in Budapest instead of Alabama, and sometimes the strange is simply the arrival of the dusk.

Sideways living is a romantic insistence; it's the welcome embrace of the familiar and the dare of the unfamiliar.

This past year was maybe the hardest of my life. 

Things happened that I didn't want to happen, things that I never dreamed could or would happen to those that I love. The month of February almost killed me. I still remember quite clearly a week of coming home from classes and laying on the cold floors of my dark house and just sobbing, weeping the hardest I had ever wept in my life. 

There was this one day when I couldn't catch my breath.

I panicked. I gave up. It was a dark day, and I sat on my kitchen floor next to a cup full of tea that wasn't even warm anymore and I shouted up to Christ. I told Him that He had abandoned me, and I got so frustrated and sobbed so hard that I began to hyperventilate. I learned to be angry at God this year, in a way I didn't think I could. Truthfully, I felt like He ripped my heart out of my chest, and I thought He did it on purpose. And with that thought came months of grey and despair and restlessness, and finally a silver lining.
But then October arrived, and I felt as if everything constant and sure in my life had been snatched from me in a moment, a decision, and a choice. I found myself wavering and not knowing who to turn to because I was trying to be the shoulder again, but I was just as weak. And there I was again, in that bleariness and bleakness. I stood by the river one morning, and threw handfuls of stones and dirt into the water while I breathed loudly in desperation and hurt. I felt abandoned, and I wanted to blame the Maker. Philippians didn't say what I wanted it to, and I didn't even know how to say what I wanted it to. Honestly, I'm still standing in the wake of October and her harshness. I was sitting in a new pastor's front room with my family on Christmas Eve, and I looked around me and thought, How did I get here? From what I had, to here. How did this happen? How is the one thing I never thought I would lose gone?
And I still don't know the answer to that.

I learned what hopelessness is this year. 

I learned what it is like to be deserted. 

I'm going to tell you one of the hardest truths I've learned. 

Living a remarkable life hurts. 

There is safety and certainty in vertical living. If you're always going up or going forwards, direction is so evident. Most people don't even need a compass, where they're going is incredibly clear to them. Their path is marked, and it is marked well. Because people tell you what to do when you live vertically; they even tell you who to be. And dismissing those around you who may have been dealt a lesser hand in life is a little bit easier. It's less risky to ignore the less fortunate when you live vertically.

I chose to be like Christian, in "The Pilgrim's Progress," this year. Part of me knew when I decided that, that I would regret it, at least a little. And I do. And I don't. Christian turns away from and loses almost everything, but he also gains even more.

The things that have been taken from me and my loved ones this year are things I never for a second thought would be lost. Yet they were. It's December, and the impossible became possible this year. 

It's because I am choosing to live sideways. I understand that all of these tragedies and hardships are consequences of a horizontal life, because a vertical life is an apathetic life, and when you don't really bother to care, hardly anything hurts. But when you live sideways, when you actually stop, take a step back, look around, and breathe, then pain arrives. It's almost like you're inviting him in. You tell him, I decided! I decided to care! Come get me. And he does. 

And he almost kills you.

But still you wake up. Because with tragedy comes the promise of redemption. I know that's what 2015 will be for me, a redemption year. Because after Christian goes through the valley of the shadow of death, a new day comes when the sun rises and he meets Faithful. You have no idea how much I want that redemption, how hard I yearn for that faith, how many times I have repeated to myself, 

Come January, please come. 

I have been home for December. The other day, I went and sat outside, up against the shop wall, in the cold and with a steaming mug of black coffee beside me. I was writing in my journal. I had planned to write a lot actually, but the only words I put on the page were these: "Not everything lasts forever, and that is okay." And then I leaned my head back and looked up at the white sky and breathed. Because I was still alive. I had that day. I had purpose, and I still do. I chose to live sideways in that moment, not behind in the past and my loss and regrets, and not forward into the worries and cares of my future, but then. Right then. In the welcoming presence of my childhood home and the unknown that will come about in this next year, and in everything surrounding that.
I heard the late geese migrating.
I watched the steam float above my coffee cup.
I felt small wooden splinters digging into my hand.
I noticed the frost on the dead grass.
I recited Keats and Ecclesiastes under my breath.
I pulled my sweater tighter around me, and felt tininess and largeness.
I dwelt in the presence of my Maker, and the closeness of my family.
I lived, I lived, I lived.

I lived, I lived, I lived.

Yes, this last year has been a hard one. There has been many a time when I felt like Bilbo, and wanted only to crawl back into the safety of my hobbit hole, into the warm yellow light of vertical living, but I didn't. Instead, I kept on the path, journeying sideways with the magic and the beasts and the humans about me. Learning, discovering, bleeding, finding, losing, battling. Loving. Because sideways living requires loving, and as C. S. Lewis said, "To love at all is to be vulnerable." But it's worth it. I swear it's worth it. I would know.

So slow down. Breathe a little deeper. Dare harder. Drink more coffee, and very well make it black. Drive miles. Battle battles. Remain. Wake up. Show up for people, even startle them. Read Jude, and read it again, and again. Walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Go, and stay, be an hundred different places in heart, mind, and soul, but choose to be fully present more often than not. Laugh. Weep. Grow and shift, embrace the changes. Discover Christ and allow Him to discover you, intimately and in a real manner. Pursue people. Build a home. See the world. Think outside of yourself for once. Give, give, give.
Be "as kind as summer."
Live remarkably.
Love.

Dear World-Shaker, otherwise known as, How To Be Fiercer.

Sometimes I feel invincible.

There have been nights, till three in the morning with sleepy words and messy hair and brave discussions on theology and how we're so certain we're going to fix the world. Evenings of a mellow, buttery sun–the golden hour–and guitars softly strummed, ukuleles in laps, songs everyone knows on everyones lips. Nights on the rooftop, eyes up at the sky, wool socks, and knitted blankets and quilts pulled tight around shoulders as we spin as fast as the world, because we're growing up and no one can stop us. Days full of chasing joy and dance parties in orchards and road trips with windows rolled all the way down and camping on the sand at the sea, the sea, the sea and big cups of coffee in a messy kitchen and shoulders touching and dashing through a forest of blackberry bushes and falling in love and out of it and ferry rides and piles of journals bursting with ideas. Those moments when everything is right even though it's not, because companionship and friendship and then.

Sometimes I feel inadequate.

Like I never did enough or I should have chosen something else and I'll never actually make what needs to happen happen. There are days when I'm frightened. My voice gets caught in my throat before the words can come out to someone who cares and then they never do. The fear that I haven't done enough, won't do enough, it's crippling. And maybe, in the middle of church, hands in mid-clap, eyes wide and sure, I forget and I miss a beat and I doubt. What am I doing here? Is this even right? I turned the wrong way somewhere, tried to move the wrong mountain, didn't I?
We often don't recognize that we can always, always change our minds.

You can begin again.

I think the reason we don't actually believe that is because we don't say it to each other. Face to face, one human to another, mistakes and regrets pushed aside, and with fleshy, rose colored lips forming the words, You can start over. No one ever actually says that to anyone. Because we don't want to be wrong. We don't want to have to look at someone later and think, I never should have told them that. They were right. They missed their shot. False encouragement is a betrayal no one wants to commit. Most of us like to keep our transgressions to a certain number, and so we avoid the subject, we don't take the risk. We only allude to the fact that it's never too late. We hesitate, and the pause we take swells larger and larger till we forget how we were actually going to reassure them, instead we mourn with them.
Regrets are real. Maybe you should have let your dad kiss you on the forehead that one time you were leaving the house in a hurry. Maybe you shouldn't have even gone. You should have said sorry. You should have stayed up later around the campfire that one night and sang with your friends and listened to the crickets and prayed those prayers. You should have taken that class you always wanted to. You should have learned to surf. You should have visited Big Sur. Maybe you should have fought harder for her. Maybe you should have let him go.
Maybe you should have done it all, or nothing at all.
Maybe you should have.

Marina Keegan once wrote that "The notion that it's too late to do anything is comical." And she was right. There are a lot of things I want to do. There are a lot of things you want to do too. Own your nows, and you can possibly do them all. It's going to sound lame and mother-ish, but all you have to do is believe.
Risks not taken usually translate into regrets. And disbelief in yourself breeds unflattering inconsistencies in other areas of your life.

As human beings, we don't really owe each other anything, but I think we should tell the truth and try a little harder for one another.
So be here, with me.

Climb Mt. Everest.
Swim with dolphins.
Become an editor.
Start a nonprofit.
Grow your own garden.
Stand on a bridge and shout.
Jump.
Learn another language.
Greet your neighbor.
Leave your favorite book in a coffee shop.
Love with abandon.
Give the homeless guy your shoes and coffee and second chance.
Get back up.
Go see the state of Oklahoma.
Create your own company.
Quit your job, and build stuff instead.
Fly to Ethiopia for six months.
Paint.
Get married, or don't.
Visit your grandfather.
Fight.

Try and try and try.

Those times when you feel invincible should rule your life. They should consume all the grief you feel for the times you didn't. And this is me daring you, to live with abandon, to strike out in courage, to leap. This is me being human with other humans, and I want you to as well.
Come.
It's never too late.

6Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.

Deuteronomy 31

"To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel. That is the purpose of life."

You can read Marina Keegan's full essay here. Also, go buy her book, published posthumously. It's worth every penny. 

The words at the bottom are from the film, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Watch it. Then go to Iceland. 

The Gardener.

"What I cannot now comprehend – be it mine to wait the disclosures of that blessed morning when, standing at the luminous portals of Heaven, I shall joyfully acknowledge that, 'You have done all things well!' I look forward to that time when all Your inscrutable dealings will be unfolded, when inner meanings and purposes now undiscerned by the eye of sense – will be brought to light, and all discovered to be full of infinite love! Other refuges may fail – but I am as secure in You, as everlasting love and wisdom and power can make me."

John MacDuff

"Some of the greatest discouragements will not come only from those who are against you, but those who are standing beside you."

Tim Chaddick

This year has had two major themes running throughout it, woven with golden and grey threads. 

Beginnings and grief. 

Many a wondrous wonder has happened in my surroundings these past few months. I have seen friendships blossom and deepen, hearts and hands and bones and flesh become tied together and one, new life be created, stories shared, arms extended, mountains crumble, and long, slow days seep into gentle evenings shared with kindred spirits. It was oftentimes easy to say, "There is no valley here."
But many a trial has come as well. The valley seemed to stretch for miles and miles and miles some days. And silver linings were scarce to nonexistent. I didn't understand a lot. I felt lost as that grey thread knitted itself into my chest cavity and brought me to my knees. I felt betrayed. Angered. Sorrowful. Hopeless.

I hate goodbyes.
I am terrified of them.
And I have had to say a lot goodbyes this year.

The Maker is good though. He is such a gardener in character. I have seen Him till the rocky soil of my soul, felt Him press the seeds of grace into my disillusioned being, listened to His gentle whispers as He fed and watered and cultivated my heart. The Maker knows all. And thus, I trust Him with His trowel. I allow myself to be planted. I am ready for His design.
I partake in the goodbyes.
This last month, on a lonely, grey summer day, I was sitting on my back patio repotting my houseplants. I was covered in dirt, the knees of my jeans stained with soil and the thighs with white gouache, my hair pulled up, and my hands cradling my lavender plant, and I had been busy arguing with Christ about whether or not I should be able to understand why everything happens the way it happens. I was near tears, and so frustrated, when I heard Him.
I know all, He told me.
That's not enough, I retorted. Why shouldn't I know it all too? Why can't I? 
And I felt His calm presence, His reassurance as He said again, I know all. 
I slapped my thighs. But I want to understand, I said.
You will, He encouraged me. But right now, that is not necessary. It's not part of my design, it's not part of my plan. 
I did cry then. I don't understand that either, I confessed.
You don't have to, He said. Because I do. I know all. And that is enough. 
And I lost, there in my backyard, having one of those conversations with the Gardener of life that you can never win. I'll confess I was still angry for a while after that, just sitting there in the dirt, tears trailing down my face. I wanted to know. I wanted to know why all of the bad things that had happened this year had happened. Loss. Tragedy. People leaving, choosing not to stay. Feeling isolated. Those goodbyes. I wanted to know what they all meant, what they were all for.
But I don't get to know.
And I don't have to.

Sorrow will be nonexistent in Heaven, but the point of sorrow I think will be fuller. It'll be a culmination of incandescence when we get there. We'll look at Him after it all and say, Oh. Oh that's why. And it'll be more than enough, that knowledge then and there. It won't hurt. It will just be. The goodbyes will finally have reasons behind them.

I feel like I'm not an easily discouraged person. But for some reason this year has just found me with a lesser helping of faith, a more trying demon on my shoulder, and I constantly seem to be knee-deep in mud. I know that it's preparation for what's to come. I understand that. But it's been a lot of goodbyes, and a lot of them were ones I never imagined I have to say. There is a part in Jude that talks about awaiting mercy and how love is on the way. After a lot of these goodbyes, I've found myself dwelling on that. There was even one grey day when I was so desperate I wrote the words above the crease of my elbow.
"Await mercy. Love is coming."
I didn't believe them at the time. I've found that I do that when I face a trial or suffering attempts to consume me. I press hard into the Gardener's promises, even though there is no solace there for me at that moment. But I know, I know that there will be. I know the truth even when I call Him liar.
These are good lessons He is giving me this year. These are difficult times He is pushing me through. These are worthwhile.

The other morning I sat in my kitchen on my counter, and I was okay with not knowing, so I told Him. And I confessed that at that moment, I was awaiting mercy. I did believe love is coming. And I closed my eyes and wrapped my hands around my warm, white mug full of tea and He whispered into my spirit.
He said, I know all. Yet still, child, you know some. 
So I went upstairs and put a label on a jar full of coins and dollar bills, because I do know some things. That is something new he is showing me. That I do get to know some things, and those are the ones I should be concerned about. My plans to be in the dirt – with Him, the Gardener – reaping and sowing and blooming and ripening are things that I do know. My focus and presence should be towards them, those little seeds of plans.

Because hellos are coming too.
Jude tells me that, and the Cultivator of my soul assures me of it.

Dynamite.

Note: People are probably tired of hearing my thoughts on singleness. Maybe you don't want to read this because I've already said too much. So don't. I won't blame you. But I always assume that what I feel and think might encourage at least one person, and so I take heart, and publish what oftentimes seems like redundancies. 
Jesus said a lot of things three times. 
I am most definitely not Jesus. But Eloise's Nanny also said a lot of things three times. And I'm kind of like her, so I figure it's okay to repeat myself. 
So. Here you go, here you go, here you go. 

I found myself apologizing the other day for being single. 

I’m sorry you're alone, I told myself. I’m sorry you’ve been passed by. I'm sorry you're missing out. I’m sorry no one wants you.

I wanted someone to say all of that to me so badly. To come up to me with open arms and press me against their chest so I could finally just cry out those tears that have been brimming. But no one was there, so I said it to myself. 

But I didn't cry. Not like I thought I would
Instead I felt sick.

We are constantly apologizing for or are being apologized to, because we are single. And I see now that that is wrong. We don't have to apologize for being alone. You don’t have to apologize to me because I am alone. It’s not bad. It’s not a mistake. It’s not a sin. I am not single because no one’s noticed me or I didn't notice the right person. I am not single because I’m selfish. I am not single because the men I know are selfish. I didn't walk by my husband in the coffee shop and miss him. I didn’t deny someone’s pursuit even though I shouldn't have. I am not unattainable nor perfect. I am not a "Paul," and destined to go at it by myself. I want a husband. I want a family. I want to be loved and cherished and have someone devoted wholly to me. I want a human, a man, to be gentle and honest and transparent with.

Yet I am alone.

But I refuse to apologize for that anymore. Like I messed up somewhere along the way or missed my chance. And I don't want you to tell me that you’re sorry for me anymore. As if being alone is bad, and I only get half of a life. 

A big part of why being single is hard, is because we act like it’s wrong. 

Yes, marriage is a beautiful design, fashioned by the hand of the Carpenter. He intends for us to love and be loved. But when we walk around in despair because we don’t have that in the way we think we should, and then other people around us attempt to comfort us and tell us that someday we’ll get there, as if we are destined to reach that, we will always be unhappy. 

We will always be apologizing for being alone. 

It’s not okay. And I am not okay with it anymore. I'm done with it. I'm done with being pitied and pitying myself. I wrote that in my journal, those words, and then I also wrote,

So here's to being dynamite. 

Because I want to make a difference. I want to be big and blossoming and a giver. I want to shoot off sparks and blaze up the pathways of life. I want to be a world shaker, and I'll be darned if you tell me I will only be half as good without a husband while I do that. And I'll be darned if you think I am a lost cause or a sad case or not as influential as I could be. And I'll be darned if you think the most important thing in life for a woman to have is a rock that sparkles on her finger, because the truth is, she's what sparkles and if you don't see that, look again. We are who we make ourselves out to be. I am lit, for the cause for Christ. And I refuse to be put down or to put myself down because I have yet to fulfill a divine construction that God gifted us with. There is no excuse, and no excuse is necessary. 

I once wrote the words,

Why is it that we make excuses for singleness?

It's not a disease. It's not a sin. It's not a personal failure. It's not a shortcoming. It's not the edge of a cliff. It's not something you should have to reassure yourself it is okay to be. It's not God's obvious will for your life forever since nothing else is on the horizon. It's not a problem. It's not a bad thing. It's not because you're not trying. It's not a season of your life to 'date' Jesus instead of a boyfriend. It's not your church's fault. It's not something to be ashamed of. It's not the definition of you.

If you are under the impression that any of those is correct, I regret to inform you that being single is simpler than all that. 

Being single is just you, alone. It means that you are alone, you are one person, you are yourself. It is just a fact. And you have no need of defending or refuting it. Your only task is to live it.

Don't get me wrong, it's alright to fail at embracing your current state of being and get mad that no one puts their arm around your shoulders, but at the end of the day, you have to recognize that this is what it is. You have to stop looking for something better, other than being better. 

You are singular. 

And the less time you spend dwelling on and despising that fact, the more time you will have to do beautiful things. 

Don't make yourself out to be half a person. I dare you not to. Because trust me, you can do wondrous things for Christ now. 

Alone. 

Doing lovely things alone is not an impossible feat. 

If there is one thing I would add to that, it is this.

Singleness is not something we have to apologize for. If anything, what we owe an apology for, is the fact that we are lazy, and we are not dynamite, because we are too busy saying sorry for something we shouldn't be saying sorry for. We are too afraid to be bright, as if it is an inconvenience, to be a solitary mess of atoms and shine the most radiantly. 

Just because you are alone, does not mean you cannot be incandescent. 

I am actually good at being alone. I realized that a few months ago, on a blustery morning. I was walking towards campus, just coming from Starbucks, iced coffee in hand and the wind whipping my hair about my face while thunder rolled up above but the rain had yet to arrive, and I took stock of myself. A smile had creased the sides of my mouth for the past half hour, and as I heard my sandals slap on the concrete and pressed my fingers against a hole in the thigh of my jeans and glanced at the black gouache staining the back of my hands and wrists I thought, I'm happy. And I stuttered a little, because it was only a few weeks before that that I penned the words in my journal, There is no silver lining. But that morning, there was. There was a silver lining, and I was living in it. I was happy.
I am happy.
Most of my days are spent alone. Yes, surrounded by people oftentimes, but more often in solitude. I've taken to cultivating the garden of my heart, curating the collections of my bones, attempting to speckle wisdom throughout me and around me.

I am getting over myself, and I am brilliant and beaming and alone and I refuse to apologize for that. And you shouldn't apologize to me for it either. I'm not saying I will leave the wishing and wanting for a husband in the wake of doing all these lovely things whilst I am alone. 

What I am saying, is that I am determined to run into him while I am doing all these lovely things alone.

I don't want my future lover to find me pining away in self-pity and the pity of others while he has been a mountain climber and dream-chaser all this time. I want him to find me in a collision of luminosity while I am pioneering changes and making things better for those who need it.

I got to talk with one of my good friends the other week, and I told her this. Not in so many words, but the meaning came across. And she expressed everything I've felt while trying to come to this realization and conclusion. It's not fair, when you really think about it. I'll be honest, it's not fair. Because yes, time goes on and seems like it runs out, and one morning you're nineteen and on fire and don't care that no one loves you yet because you're going to do great things, and the next moment you're twenty-five and no one still loves you yet and you're tired of doing great things and it seems like everyone else has everything you ever wanted. It's really not fair.
But I am a big believer that life isn't fair, and it never will be. And I don't want to live a life so wrapped up in the belief that I am insufficient or dull or less luminous because some guy never asked me to marry him, that I don't do the things I should. That is such a waste; that is what is pitiful; that is what we must needs apologize for.

I do want to mention that the Church is guilty in all of this as well. We have approached singleness as if it's something we need to fix, or it's a season, or a ministry, when really it's just a bunch of people who need to be told they're capable–because they are. We have been foolish. We have acted as if we can cure people, or as if someone might be missing out because they haven't achieved the status of wife or husband, or as if one person is insufficient compared with a team of two. That's sad. That makes me sad. I don't want the Church to look at me anymore and say, Are you married yet? Do you need a boyfriend? Don't worry, we'll find you someone, and then you can be so close to Christ you'll never believe it...You're missing out. You need your other half. You'll never fully understand Christ's love till you're in the arms of that guy. I'm so tired of hearing things like that. I just want her to say to me, What are you doing for Christ? Because all throughout the Bible, God makes it so clear that singularity is key. Singularity is important. It's like we missed it and messed it up. Somewhere along the way, we forget that the whole point of marriage is for two people to become one. One. Single. Person. That's it. That's what marriage is, making one person. So why do we continue to sell other people short? It is ridiculous, the manner in which we approach the Christian life and walk. A couple is one. Yes, they are two people, but that does not mean they have twice the impact or twice the power or twice the influence that someone else has for Jesus. They are simply working together to do awesome things, while another is working to do awesome things as well.
The moment we recognize marriage as a beautiful picture that God designed and everyone gets to desire, but no one is promised, is the moment that people will get over themselves.
Marriage is most definitely God's intention for men and women [Genesis 2:18], but it is not a requirement.
Honestly? The Church doesn't need to "minister" to single people in the way that she does. They aren't broken. Yes, they need exhortation and encouragement and strengthening of faith, but most importantly, they need to be reassured that God created humans as capable creatures, and they are one of those capable creatures.
The less time we spend hanging out together trying to find a partner for this battle of life, means that we have more time to build wondrous things for the Carpenter.

I don't just want to meet some guy anymore. I want us to be holding hammers, knee deep in mud, arms covered in a brother's blood and someone else's load on our backs, fierceness written on our bones, and I want to look him in the eye and him to realize that we didn't spend our time waiting for each other, but dared to meet one another in the field.
I want miles of white out there when I fall in love, because I want to be in the middle of the harvest.
I want a marriage that starts in the middle of John 4:35. 

So here's to meeting in the trenches of life, blazing like none other. 

Here's to shining so bright you blind the ones you're helping.

Here's to setting everything behind you afire.

Here's to doing lovely things alone.

Here's to owning all of this.

Here's to being dynamite. 

Importance

I have a small book of things I want to do with my future children. Important things that I got to experience and so I know and remember their tastes, or those that I didn't and I can't wait to discover alongside my own littles. 

Things that will mean something and things that will create a more magical childhood. 

But in the back of that book, I've also slipped some letters. Words of encouragement for my sons. Sage pieces for my daughters. Things I wish I'd known when I was a child. There are also letters to my husband. Because I believe that when you begin a family, you create something, and you get to decide how it is made, how to cultivate it, what is necessary. There are things I will not fold on concerning my future children. There are things I want to instill in all of them, and I want my husband right beside me as I do it. 

I want it to be an us thing. 

A we thing. 

A together thing. 

And this is one. 

I don't just want to preach this to my daughters. I want to live it out, and I want to marry a man who will illustrate it with a ferocity only matched by me. 

This is important to me. 

"I don't want my daughter to grow up in a world where she has to constantly wonder if she's beautiful enough. I want my daughter to grow up in a world where she constantly wonders why beauty is the most important thing for a woman to possess. Why is it greater and more valuable than qualities and characteristics like humility, kindness, gentleness, encouragement, a wild heart, a fierce spirit, strong shoulders, bravery, ingenuity, compassion, wisdom, intelligence, curiosity, and a life for Christ?
I want that to be the question of her existence, the one she presses towards daily to prove wrong.
Why does it matter most?
I want my daughter to hear words out of my mouth like, "You are smart. You are generous. You are selfless. You are capable. You can learn this. You can discover that. You can do it. You are courageous. You are plenty and abundant. You are cherished. You are incredible. You are Christ-like." And when someone looks at her and says to her, "You are beautiful," I want her to turn to them and tell them that that will not woo her, it will not win her heart, it will not rest in her bones with the weight that other words might.
She doesn't need to know if she's beautiful or not.
She needs to know if you noticed that she can climb mountains. If you saw that she can dance for hours on end because her legs have strength. If you understand that she not only recites poetry, but hears it thrumming through her blood daily. If you place worth on the fact that she is practical and able. She needs to know if you will ask her about Neruda and Dickens and Tolstoy. If you will reach your arms around her waist when she is ninety. If you can tell by that twinkle in her eye that she knows some of the answers before you, and if you're okay with that. She needs to know what your price is. And if it's only how she looks and who she is, rather than who she can be and what she does, then you are not the man for her.
She needs to know if you care that she is more than.
I want my daughters to view the world differently. Not by way of a rose-colored lens of beauty, but with all the greys and blues and smaller colors that we often forget. I want them to question everything in balance with what is around them and their abilities.
I want my daughters to feel eternity on their backs and an endlessness that brings hope, the weight of glory with insistence.
I do not want to subject my daughters to the cage of being beautiful, the confines of loveliness. I want them to have more.
I want them to be more."

Just you and me

Can we climb a mountain together? 
Just you and me? 
Our feet tired and swollen and dusty after trekking miles long. We stop by the rivers and soak them. We collect smooth stones and you skip them, once, twice, three, or four times, but I don't. I could never skip a rock. Our backpacks are weighed down by branches and the books we decided to carry, small johnny jump-ups pressed between the pages. My hair sticks to the sweat on the back of my neck, and your hands and face are weathered and brown. We watch every sunset and every sunrise. Starlings whistle above us. Sometimes we climb the trees just to watch the stars and constellations blink or to glimpse the moon a little fuller, a little brighter. I recite poetry aloud to you, my voice echoing through the seemingly endless length of woods surrounding us. You read from Dickens at night, next to the campfire while the warmth crawls across our faces and dries the tears hot on our cheeks when tragedies strike the fictional. And in the dawn, oh in the dawn, we wash our hair in the lightest of light with lavender soap and river water. Often we tremble with exhaustion, but more often we relish the long days spent in the wilderness and forest and adventuring. Wanderlust is fulfilled. The earth becomes our backyard. We are discoverers. 
Can we climb a mountain together?
Just you and me?

Shrugging off anchors.

In church, we've been going through the story of Joseph, and today we talked about guilt and forgiveness and grace. I like reading about Joseph because there's reconciliation and weeping. It's one of the only times in the Bible when it's actually written that a man cries. Most of the time we're left guessing what the characters are feeling, the state of their emotions. But not with Joseph.
Joseph sobs.
When he first meets Benjamin, he sobs so hard that he has to leave the room to keep up his charade. I love that. I feel like I know him because of that.

This morning Pastor Mark talked about the guilt that the brothers felt. How they lived for twenty-two years harboring a secret, unsure whether Joseph was alive or dead, but certain that they could not confess what they had done. He spoke of their fear. There is a part in chapter forty-two of Genesis, when the brothers are explaining who they are, and they say that they are twelve brothers. Ten of them are present, Benjamin is at home, and one—Joseph, one is no more.
One is no more.
They still count him. They still consider him a brother, alive or dead. They still think of him daily.

They have carried Joseph with them, and the grief and shame and despair and bitterness over what they have done, for the past twenty-two years since the day they exchanged him for twenty pieces of silver.

Their brother never left them. He was a weight on their back since the moment he was dragged away by the slave-traders.

I think we all carry weights like that. I know that I have. But that is so wrong. That is so wrong of us to do. Pastor Mark said today, That is an affront to God. And it is. It is a slap in His face to bear useless burdens of guilt and bitterness and anger and resentment and animosity. To say to Him, This one? This one is just too big for You. Not even You could understand. I've got to keep it on, I have to wear it, it makes me who I am. It took me a long time to see that. That that is a sin. Years, actually. But one day I sat on the edge of my bed, weeping, and realizing that this was on me. All of my condemnation and guilt and perpetual suffering, that was my doing. And I had to get over myself. I remember clenching my fists and pressing them onto my thighs while I heard the words my Pastor had said that morning in church, over and over again in my head.

Don't you dare be condemned. 

And then and there, I had to own up to my shortcomings.
I had to let it all go.
I had to forgive.

I am pleading with you now, if you haven't, do the same. Just get over yourself. Don't walk around blaming yourself or others. Don't harbor those sour feelings. Don't wallow in bitterness and unforgiveness. Don't let that weight hang on your back. Don't walk around with an anchor around your neck.
Shrug it off.
Because we can never truly be alive in Christ unless we take off our own guilt and put on his yoke and burden. It is not our job to judge the heaviness of our shame and sufferings as too much for the Carpenter to carry. And I think it's important that we tell each other that. That we say, It's okay. It's okay to feel sorry about something. It's okay to be in pain about something. It's okay to let experiences and choices you or someone else has made shape you in some way. What is not okay, is if you dwell in that. If you live there, and you refuse to let it all go and forgive. It is not okay to let that rule your life. I think we're scared to say those things. I think we're afraid of being thought of as un-compassionate or unfeeling or harsh. But it is too detrimental to stay silent about this. And I will not be quiet anymore. I will not let you drown for my fear of being severe and inconsiderate.

Do not let unforgiveness and guilt sink you.

Don't live with something you don't have to. Confess it. Cry about it. Grow from it. Let it go. We all make mistakes. We all sin. We all mess up. We don't all have to choose to go down with our guilt and suffering. We don't all have to wear anchors. In truth, no one does. So be bigger than you make yourself out to be. Be more forgiving, more understanding, more intentional. Do not be one of Joseph's brothers, waiting twenty-two years to be redeemed and forgiven. Be a Joseph. Name your past Manasseh and forget about it, and then call your present and future Ephraim, and expect plenteousness.

Animosity and guilt are not only worth nothing, but they are devices that will suffocate you and engulf your existence. They will pull you further from the One who loves you most. They will make you a stranger to Him. And they will cause you to sin, and create a rift between you and He who can save you.
Don't go down in a ship with the national guard standing by, arms outstretched and ready to catch you.
It would be a tragedy, because it would be your choice.
There is so much more of a wondrous life for you if you get over yourself. Christ has so many more valuable things for you to do than to spend your time feeling sorry for yourself. There is devotion and adoration and beauty, if you only take a breath and surrender. I promise that it is worth it. I know it doesn't seem like it would be, I have been in that position. I once locked myself up in bitterness and then caged myself with guilt. And it feels like there is no way out. But I want you to know, you need to know, there is. You don't have to continue in the way that you are. You don't have to be the same. You don't have to wear that heavy weight. You can shrug it off. You can be redeemed and relieved and renewed. And it is so much more beautiful than you can imagine. Friends, it is so much more glorious to worship and follow Him if we are not trapped by the things we have or have not done.

Hurt and guilt are all-consuming, but only if you let them be. Grace is ever-present, but only when you accept it.

I was a bridesmaid more than once, I am a gatekeeper always

It's a quiet Sunday morning here in my little house. There are white hydrangeas on my table, a growing sunlight in the window, and warm coffee in my clover pot. I read Mark 13 this morning. I liked the end best, when Jesus spoke of how we are watchmen, servants, and gatekeepers, and we are awaiting his arrival home, but unsure of the hour or the day. There is so much truth in that, so much anticipation and edge of the seat-ness. So much impatience.

I was discouraged the other morning. I had been at home alone for a little less than a week, and much like today, I was up in the early hours and at my kitchen table. There was the sun, tea steeping beside me, a branch of eucalyptus on the breakfast tray. I was painting and waking up. I was also half-heartedly scrolling through my friends' lives. Sometimes I do that in the morning, just to make sure they're okay, just to see if I can pray for anyone, just to know what they've been doing and where they are.
Many of them are still donning on the white dresses and getting on their knees with a ring in their pocket. They are walking down the aisle and standing underneath huge floral arches. Others are past that now. They have swollen bellies and tiny babies and piles of wooden blocks all over the floors of their new homes. They are creating families and memories and growing, growing, growing.
And the thought has arrived to me again.
This is only the beginning.

I know it is, because I have heard the stories. I know other women. They talk about how they have been a bridesmaid at least fourteen times and they laugh as they say that there are still weddings every summer. And I laugh with them, but inside I begin to panic, because when I go home and look at my two dresses hanging on my wall or the bouquets on my desk and bookshelf, I think, I can't keep doing this. There's no way. I'll break in half. I imagine adding twelve more dresses of chiffon and lace to my closet and suddenly I can't see straight anymore. You can only hang and dry-out so many posies before you become overwhelmed. Before you need to give up.
I am full of love and joy for the people close to me who decide to become one with each other. I'm brimming with it. But it's not endless, it's not a boundless love. It took me so long to say that, let alone accept it, because I thought people would hate me once they knew. But it's the truth, and sometimes I am ashamed of it, and rightfully so. I'm not a machine, but I am also a flawed human. I get tired of being happy for everyone all of the time. I grow impatient with my own state of being. Jealousy creeps in, ugly little thoughts rear their heads. Why not me? I often find myself thinking. What am I doing wrong?
I hate days like that, when my desperation becomes so evident that it chokes me and I feel dirty. Days when I throw my hands in the air and stop being the gatekeeper. I go into the house and tell all the servants we've been stupid, the Master has no idea what He's doing and He's not coming back. And I try to take control. I leave the gate unattended in the throes of my impatient anger, my blood thrumming hot in my ears and cheeks, sure that I am right in this.
Certain that He has left me.
Certain that I have to do it all myself now.

I'm really good at not waiting for things. I'm also really good at lying to myself. I'm trying to change that though. I'm trying to get over myself, to stand at my post, to live patience constantly.
It's difficult.
I find though, that in those desperate moments, I am only thinking of myself. And while I don't have the ambition to be unceasingly happy, I don't want to be selfish either. So I have this faith that this is the year Christ will release me of that burden. And I already know how He will do that, I just have to accept it, be consumed by it, become smaller because of it.
Every woman who is single should reach a point when she realizes that while having a husband would be nice, she doesn't necessarily need one. She can still serve the Savior without a man. She can still help people without a man. She can still live life abundantly without a man. Knowing that, presents a sad restlessness in her heart, but knowing that, will also make her better.
I want a husband.
I don't need a husband though.
Potential is not fulfilled by a person of the opposite sex. It's fulfilled by enrapturement and complete devotion to Christ. No matter how many dresses I hang in my closet and on my wall, I am supposed to press on towards the mark. No matter how many bouquets I dry, I am supposed to keep climbing. No matter who is with who while I am with no one, I am supposed to remain at the gate. If I only hold my nieces and nephews and my friends' children in my arms, I am supposed to be satisfied. I want you to know, that last one kills me. It really does.
To stop being selfish requires thinking of yourself less, learning humility. A man on instagram wrote this morning,
"I've found the more I try to not let the people around me feel lonely, the less I feel it myself. Or to say it another way, the more I love the people around me in a way that isn't about me, the more I feel full and healthy."
That resonates with me. Because although it is okay and somewhat justifiable for me to get tired of being happy for everyone who has what I don't, it's not very Christlike. And what I want the most out of this life is to be like Christ. To be His only.

I am making it a point to feel less discouragement and less jealousy, and to throw myself wholly into friendships and family. I want to foster growth in people. To give them a beautiful space where they feel safe and warm, somewhere they want to be. I want to offer more of myself to things that are important: causes, charities, movements, words, fellowship. I want to encourage people more. I want to be a shoulder, a strong back, a helper, a guide. I want to be interested in people, to hear their stories and listen to their voices. I want to be passionate. I want to change things. I want to do things. I want to make things.
I want the pile of knitted baby blankets in my bedroom to grow, and then I want to give them away, one by one. And I want to be glad as I do it.
This message isn't just for me though. It's not just for single women, or even just for single people for that matter. Because I know some of you have mistakenly believed that it would all be different once you're married, it would all be different once you've started a family, but now that you've done that and it's still the same, you don't know where to go. These words are for you too, and here is where you should go.
To Him.
Sell out for Christ. Everything you are and everything you have should begin to shrink as you do this. You will find yourself simpler, your life tinier, and you will be thankful for it because it means that you can serve Him better, with more heart. It's not easy, I know. There will be a day when I hang a third dress up, and I'll probably cry. There will be a week when I give more than one blanket away, and I will sob. But I will stay at the gate. I have faith in Him and I trust in Him.
I know that He is coming home to me.
So gain perspective on this with me. Jesus is important. People are important. And the fewer moments we dwell on ourselves, the more time we can give to those who need it and are worthy of it. To wallow in self-pity is not only unattractive, but it's also addicting and infectious. It will rub off on those around you, I promise you that. And personally, I would rather create a world of humble, kind, heart-givers who are servants of the Carpenter and constantly on the lookout for those in need, than a world of fist-shakers who look to themselves only. Broaden your gaze, light your lamps, and do things that are important, for He is coming back and we must needs be ready. I don't want to be caught inside the house, pining at my table for someone I'm not even sure of when He arrives home. I want my banners ready, strung up above the door and shivering in the cool breeze. I want my gaze fixed out towards the path, and I want to quiver with excitement when I first see Him approaching. I want to run to Him, dashing through the field because that way is shorter, my voice echoing back to the servants as I announce His arrival, and I want Him to catch me in His arms and swing me around as we laugh.

This is a turning point for me, this year. I'm standing on the cusp of making important decisions again, and I am determined to make them bright and worthwhile. I don't want to live desperately anymore. I don't want to live impatiently anymore. I want to be beautiful and smart and kind, but most importantly, I want to be a grace-giver and grace-bringer. I want to demonstrate and illustrate Jesus in a manner that is anchored and certain and authentic. I want to live out my own words. For you see, I was journaling the other morning, and I wrote about how I wasn't overlooked, but undiscovered. And I needn't sit still any longer, but go climb mountains and build bridges, because that's where the sort of man I want is, climbing mountains and building bridges. Part of being a gatekeeper is trusting that the Master knows what is best and has prepared a path for you. That's why you still look for Him daily, you hope in Him entirely.
And so I have to go.
I have to climb mountains.
I have to build bridges.

I am daring to shake off my impatience and discontentment this year. Are you willing to as well?

The words from the man on instagram are those of Ian Pratt. He is wiser than I think he knows, so go check him out. It is important to note as well that I feel that wanting a husband while you are a single woman is healthy and Christ-driven. Here are my thoughts on that. 
Also, Trader Joe's is currently stocked with ranunculus and hydrangeas. Go. Go now. 

Being a comforter by way of the Comforter

I think we all come to a point in our walk with Christ when we get it. We understand that He is everything and all, and life without Him is insufferable. We don't want to wake up without the Carpenter. We don't want to exist in a world without the opportunity for redemption and grace to overtake us. We don't want to walk around without worship constantly written on our lips, but not only that, it seems impossible to do so. We are so changed and changing so much, that it becomes hard to remember who we used to be or could be without Him. Everything else pales in comparison to His proposal. We want nothing more than to be the bride of Christ.
I'm there now.
I woke up this morning, and before I rolled out of bed I thought,
I am so uninterested in a life without my Savior. 
There is a part in the beginning of "Pilgrim's Progress" when Christian turns from his family because he cannot convince them to come with him. And he leaves them, saying, "Life! Life! Eternal life!" as if it's something that could replace them, or was worth more than them. I always had trouble with that. It's hard for me to imagine turning away from my family. Leaving them behind because I have inadequate words to convince them of the truth. It just never settled with me, the idea of walking away from those dearest to my heart for something that so many people doubt and is so fantastic that it requires increasing amounts of faith daily.
Now it's different.
The Lord will slowly overtake you. He ruptures small pieces of your heart and soul, and fills them with Himself, but He does it subtly. So subtly that sometimes you don't even notice, until one day you wake up and want nothing but Him. Till one morning you realize that you would deny yourself anything to be His. The cost is great, but it becomes less and less as you sell yourself to Him more and more.

It's almost five years ago now that I sat in a church I hated, but now love, on a Resurrection Sunday. My pastor told the story of how Christ died for us, and then he said,
You owe Him everything. You could live a hundred times over, and still not deserve what He's done for you. So we ought to at least give Him our short existences. He calls for at least that.
And I cringed in my seat as he said the next part. I can still remember my fists getting tight and the way my stomach began to hurt.
If you're life isn't all about Jesus, you may want to rethink where you stand with Him. It is necessary that you sacrifice everything else for Him. He should be the greatest thing, He should be your all.
He wasn't that to me, back then. I sat in that church and I could think of many things to add to the phrase, "Jesus and..."
Jesus and my family.
Jesus and school.
Jesus and books.
Jesus and friends.
Jesus and a big house.
Jesus and success.
Jesus and victories.
Jesus and perfection.
Jesus and understanding.
Jesus and a future husband.
Jesus and everything I wanted, could want, and will want.
I was so uninterested in a life that was only about Jesus. It gave me knots in my gut and my chest got tight as I tried to think about Him being the most important and only thing in my life. It seemed impossible. I couldn't fathom it without feeling sick.

I've noticed that I do things slowly. I learned to love the things I love over a long period of time. I fell into friendship with Kirsten over a number of years and letters. I grew in faith through days and weeks and months. I changed who I am, little by little, part by part, piece by piece. I acquired a taste for coffee over the course of a summer. I accumulated a tiny library of my own, book after book after book.
And softly, gently, without my knowledge, Christ drew me to His side and by the time I noticed, I was far removed from this earth and enraptured with Him in a manner that renders me able to leave all this behind without qualms or regrets.
I am so incredibly small now.

This year has been really hard. Some things are so heavy in this life. I haven't experienced many of them personally, but recently a few have come close to my heart, and I've noticed more and more how much my friends have experienced loss and pain and suffering.
I have to confess to you, I don't know what to say to people anymore. I don't even know how to write things that might matter to them, or comfort them. I don't know how to be there. And I want to. I want to be present and impactful and kind and gentle. I want to be in their lives in a way that is something they need, a sweet spirit, a shoulder, a strong back. I've spent so many nights on my knees because of this. It's eating at me. It hurts sometimes, how unsure I am, how difficult it is to open my mouth. Because this is a new desire for me. I think this is a season of big things, and suddenly I've uncovered in my heart the yearning to say what needs to be said. Not just to listen to people, but to speak life and peace and hope into them.
It's so hard.
But as Jesus has become more apparent to me in all things, as He has enveloped me more in His arms, I find that I don't need to do those things, nor do I have to worry about those things. He is sufficient. When it's not "Jesus and..." but just "Jesus," you only have to have faith that He will speak for you. Because your heart is His. It's what He wants to say, and what He wants to say is never wrong. It is intentional and beautiful. It is right, always right. It is perfect.
I try too hard.
I get in the way.
But I am learning not only to be tiny, but to be still as well, and to let Him be there by me and oftentimes in the place of me.

I am nothing incredible without the Carpenter. Nothing at all. Not next to nothing, not partly something, not a little bit of this.
I am nothing without Him.
And I want nothing to do with anything that has nothing to do with Him. I am running from everything, my hands over my ears, and I am shouting, Life, eternal life! Because it makes sense now. I get it now. And I am confident that through these hardships and trials, He is growing me in a new way and something big will come of this. Something of Him.
I have faith that while I feel inadequate and unprepared for what my heart is burning to do, He will take hold of my hand, He will move my pen, He will put the words in my mouth. I have confidence in that. I believe that. I need to believe that.
Because I need you all to know.
I want to be His representative.
I want to be used.
I want to be a vessel.
I want to be salt.

I want to be a comforter.

As I become more His and He becomes more mine, I see how to do that. And it begins with "Jesus."
That's all.
Him, alone.

Spring come quickly

I am so ready to be done with Winter term and go home. I am tired of living off of chocolate and tea and cucumbers. I am tired of staying up till two in the morning because if I don't, I won't finish all my finals. I am tired of not having time to do small things like bake bread and paint and knit. I am tired of reading about macroeconomic policies and how to fix the economy, because the truth is, I don't even care. I am tired of not being able to go running. I am tired of not having a moment of the day to write. I am tired of the fact that my idea of taking a break from homework is doing the easier homework.
I am tired.

I just want to lay on the roof with my sister and find the big dipper and tell her my heart.
I just want calm and peace and slow days.
I just want to sit on the porch with "Anne of Green Gables" and Oswald Chambers.
I just don't want to be tired anymore.

7

He jutted his chin out towards her the way he used to when they were eight and she told him she could beat him to the end of the sidewalk but never did. "I can take care of myself Emma."

She rolled her eyes at him the way she used to when they were fourteen and he told her he could make anything grow and always did. "That's obvious Garland. But that's not what I'm implying."

They sat together in the dirt like they had for years and years and years, their palms pressed onto the cool ground, their fingers stained as they dug small holes and gently thrust the tulip bulbs into them. It was simple repetition for them, they had done it so many times before. 

They had done everything together before.

Emma pressed her hands against her thighs and looked directly at him. "I'm on the one who needs this. I need you to fulfill the order." 

He kept digging. "I will fulfill it Emma." Still digging. "But I will fulfill it under the rules of our contract."

"What if I want a new contract?" She looked away now. "What if I want to renegotiate?"

Garland bent over, his forearms straining as he pulled the pile of dirt forward and spread it over the bulbs. "We agreed years ago Emma. I'm not going to renegotiate just because of your conscience."
"What if you don't make the quota?"
"I will."
"What if you don't?"
"I will."
He was insufferable. She was sweeter than ever. They were facing one another, no longer digging side-by-side, but their foreheads almost touching as they leaned forward. 

"I"m just offering a little helping hand, some support," she said at the dirt, not willing to look at his face for fear of outright rejection.

"And I'm appreciative," he told her with his kindest voice, "but I don't need any help Emma."
He saw the tear slide down her cheek and fall onto her hand as she continued to dig. But these were his struggles, and though they were close as a brother a sister, his struggles were his struggles. Garland was never the sort of man who would pile his hardships on another's shoulders simply for the sake of doing so. He was a storm-weatherer, an uncanny tulip grower with tough skin. He stopped digging and pressed his hands on top of hers. "I'll be fine Emma. I promise."
She looked up at him, her hot breath on his face and silent tears leaving trails on her dirty cheeks. "I wish I could believe that."
He closed the space between their foreheads and pressed his against hers in a gentle manner. "You care too much."
It took her a moment to compose herself, he was so close to her face. Their lips so near. Never in the twenty years they had known one another had their lips been that close. She was undone. She pulled away, with a harsh movement that she knew she would regret later that night as she laid in bed and tossed, unable to sleep and thinking about his skin on hers. "I don't. Not really. I just want my order, else I'll have some very angry brides this spring." 

Garland laughed. Whether out of embarrassment or just because she couldn't be sure. "Of course." He pressed his hands back into the dirt, away from her, away from the air and the oxygen around her. He suffocated his hands in the earth the way he felt like she was suffocating him with her constant denial of his feelings. "The tulips are your greatest concern. That's why you're crying as you try to make a professional business transaction with me."
She wiped her eyes and laid down on the dirty earth, pressing her head to the ground and leaving her face upwards to the grey sky. "You're insufferable," she told the vast expanse above her.
Garland continued to dig. If he was insufferable, she was stubborn. And a heartbreaker. Laying there on his land next to the bulbs they had always planted together with her chest rising and falling angrily and dirt smeared all over her thighs, she was a heartbreaker. She did this every year, came and broke his heart and refused him.

Garland didn't know it then, as he pressed another bulb into the ground and eyed the woman laying front of him with an aching desperation that spoke of years of chasing, this year would be different.
Heartbreak would be no more.
Love was to abound. 

He couldn't know that though. After all, things looked exceptionally bleak and they sky was very grey that morning. One never suspects good things on a grey day. It's contrary.

Small I am

It is hard for me to spill my thoughts lately. They seem so heavy and dark and brooding and wet that I feel a small part guilty for shoving them at people and saying, Here. Take these, would you? I can't hold them anymore. 
But they're not all like that.
Last month I wrote in my journal, I can't see the silver lining in this. And I don't think there is one. I was angry at God, and not without reason. But He was patient with me. Even still, when there are the mornings when I wake up wanting to scream in anger and frustration, even then, He blesses me.
This month is better. It's not easier, but it is better. The struggles have shifted and the tragedy lives elsewhere in my heart, not in that tender place near my spirit that makes me want to shake my fist at the Carpenter. It's in a different place. Still present, but with a different presence. And now I can seek comfort in the one who can offer it most readily and beautifully. That is good. That is better than how it was last month.

And those good thoughts, the lighter ones? They've grown in number.

I was driving away from home group the other night, feeling the best I have felt in a long time. We had talked about Christ and how His forgiveness is unfathomable, how it doesn't end. One of the men there was sitting next to me, and he got really excited and he said with a choked up voice, You know what's really incredible? God has the ability to forgive everyone. No matter what they've done, what they've been through, who they are, He can forgive them. And He will forgive them if they ask. He will do that.
There are some moments in my life when I feel very small.
And as I was driving away, I put the radio on and Joel Houston of Hillsong United was sharing his testimony. And he said something that piled on top of that wonderfulness I was already bringing home with me. He said, God does not fail at things. He does not make mistakes. He does not mess up. And we don't have to worry about His plans, because they're wonderful, they're beautiful, they are not going to fail. Because God does not fail. We may fail, but God does not fail.
I felt even smaller.

There is this verse in the Psalms, where it talks about how God keeps our tears in a bottle. I know for a fact that He has all of mine bottled up from that night as I drove home sobbing and my car was full of the sound of an Australian man's voice saying things I needed to hear.
I love that I know I will never get tired of hearing the same things about Jesus that I do every week. I love that you can devote years to Him, and still cry when you think about what He gave for you. I love how Christianity renews itself daily.

Spring is coming friends. I'm welcoming her with open arms. This winter has been trying. But I'm tired of this bitterness. I'm tired of being an Eeyore when I could be a Christopher Robin. I'm tired of my soggy thoughts dripping everywhere I go. And while I know and understand that it is okay to grieve and feel bad sometimes, I want to count those blessings again, like I was doing only weeks ago. I want that back.

I just want to wake up and have my first thought be light again.