God Grows a Blog, God Grows it All

{I'm taking my annual blog break December 20th-January 3rd. I'll be back to kick the year off with my favorite group of writer's for the first Five Minute Friday of 2014!

It's a time for me to refocus and to just relax into life with my family over the holiday. I hope you'll do the same. I hope you'll quiet the noise and take some time to be. 

Be with Jesus who came to be with you. 
Be with the friends and family that God has given you right before your eyes. 

I'm grateful for each of you that take time to read my scribbles in this place. Wherever God takes my word offerings know that you are the dearest of readers to me. I can't wait to share more in 2014. For now here are a few words (and some playlists!) to leave you with as we close the book on 2013.}

Cease striving. I read it in between the lines as I ponder Advent.

It's no accident that our calendar puts this celebration of Christ's coming at the end of the year. A mere week before we start another trip around the sun we sit elbow to elbow in church with candles balanced so that melting wax doesn't scorch our skin to remember the Son who dared to trip around the sun with us in human flesh.

And I can feel the pull when I look at January 1st looming just ahead. The way that I think every year that I have to be more and do more. The words that I write? They burn a hole in my soul some days. They have burned their way from brain, to fingers, to screen and some times it can feel so futile to write post after post to the few that read.

Here is the truth about it all.

God grows a blog. God grows a soul. God grows it all. 

God is a master gardener and He can grow as much as He wants in fallow ground.

I think it was Jennie Allen who said that she has never met a writer who knew exactly what they did to make their words take flight and soar to the top of the bestseller. They all say that they really couldn't explain it. They all say it is God-sized.

What is your dream? What is that thing that you think no one sees even though you pour your heart and soul out and into it? 

Keep doing that. Keep doing the art that makes your soul full and trust that God will take it where it needs to go. 

I know that platform matters. I know that in this world where everyone is a writer or artist or creating something it can seem like there isn't room for more. But might I just say that there isn't room for more, but there is room for you. 

I'm happy to make space on my bench.
I'm happy to scoot over so that you can do your art right next to me.

And if you get that book deal or make that cover art or sing that hit song or sale a billion e-books or get that amazing job or birth a beautiful baby or tackle that pile of laundry or adopt Ugandan orphans or kill all those dust bunnies for good or take cookies to the neighbors or buy your dream house or clean out the attic or whatever it is that you put your hands too...I'm going to be cheering and believing that God grows blogs and souls and He dares to do it any day of the year.

This year I'm embracing God's ability to make much out of little. 

I'm going to keep believing that I don't need thousands of devoted readers. I just need one God who can take my little and make it His much. I want to encourage us all to embrace this truth and then stand on this side of the sun once again a year from now and worship the God who did it all.

{Oh, I almost forgot. Two! Count them two! Playlists for Christmas! Enjoy and allow the gift of music to draw your heart deeper into Christ's coming and promise to come again.}

In the Bleak Midwinter                                         Christmas Shake


{One last thing. I'm finishing up Dressember and I'd love to raise a little more for the work of the International Justice Mission. You can follow the final days of the project on my instagram feed and read more about how you can take part in ad"dress"ing issue of injustice globally.}

The Only Lesson We Need to Know

ABCs, 1,2,3s, and Cookie Monster's googly eyes fill nearly every inch of her waking hours. She thinks purple is the prettiest and books are meant to be stacked and read by the pile over and over again. Every book on growth and development pushes the pressure down harder on my shoulders. These are the years that form the basis for who she will become. The lessons learned now are bursting with a lifetime of meaning.

I rock her longer than a nearly two year old really needs to be rocked before bed and I sing one more round of "Jesus Loves Me" and pray to myself and out loud for anybody and everybody I can think of. I turn on the Jesus music and I dance wild and she dances by my side and I know that we are learning the same lessons together.

I don't care how long you've walked the dusty path of needy Jesus following. I don't know if you've been decades in the journey or you are fresh on the path, but what I do know is that we don't ever stop learning and relearning the basics.

Jesus loves me...but do I know? Do I really know that in the everyday when the bank account dwindles and the busy gets in the way of simply living and loving?

We bring out the big Storybook, the one full of real Hope, and we read story after story and I stumble out of bed before I want to read about a man blinded and knocked on His back by the Light of the Living God. And the Word comes alive and I am made alive again in Him, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

The Bible tells me so...and it does and it is the very Word of God. The wonder of it all that in a world of a million man scrawled books God wrote His own bestseller.

Her little arms stretch skyward and they never quite reach far enough for that last goldfish or stretch wide enough for all the toys she wants to carry. It is the weak that need the strong. It is the broken that need the Healer.

They are weak, but He is strong. 

We are the weak. We are the broken. He is the strong. 

There is no final test in the Christian life. There is no diploma to be earned. No graduation ceremony for those who work their way through the ranks of faith.

We need lessons in the basics all the time. We need to learn and relearn the basics of faith, hope and love until it is all we truly know. There is only one lesson to be learned and it is Jesus mighty to save even me.

Space to Belong

I missed my 5 minutes this past week, but the prompt has really stuck with me and I've been writing in my head ever since I saw the word "Belong" at the top of my screen. In a few more than 5 minutes I'll share how that word has been shaping me and reshaping me.

Let me tell you about the last two weeks. It feels like we have circumnavigated the globe with a toddler in tow. We were one rental car loaded down with bags and a haul of goldfish crackers to rival any episode of Deadliest Catch. I've packed and re-packed bags and settled into strange beds and settled a wee girl into her pack-n-play in closets and corners strung across five states.

I've hugged family, blog friends, old friends and new acquaintances. We've shared about our missionary journey and vision for ministry and it has been good and hard and a whole lot of flinging our hearts out into the wind for anyone who wants to see.

We finally returned home two weeks and two days later. It was 9pm and the car had to be unpacked and we had a little girl who just wanted to stretch her legs and pull out every book, every toy, every thing that belongs to her. You could just see it in every muscle of her face. She was home and content to the core.

She had been carried along on this journey and she had been mostly compliant. Yes, we did purchase earplugs at one point because the constant screaming of "Maaaamaaaaaa" from the back seat was becoming a bit too much, but she was mostly compliant which is really all you can ask from a toddler.

I have struggled again and again with a sense of belonging. Always falling on a feeling that I don't and that no amount of preparing, primping or priming the pump of life will make me fit in to this world. All I know is that when I looked in my girl's tiny face last night I realized that I have created, even in a double wide trailer, a space for her to belong.

Somehow in all my desperate longing for belonging I have made a place for someone else to belong and in so doing I feel with a deep sense that I am where I belong.  Often we wait for someone to make a place for us to belong, but I never realized that giving that gift to someone else is what creates that connection in my own heart.

I'm of the opinion that most of us are looking for a place to belong. We are looking for a full-time pass to sit at the "cool kids" table without a second thought. But that isn't the world we live in. We are a world of exclusive clubs and gated communities and we love to decide who stays and who goes- I mean Survivor, the Bachelor, American Idol...need I go on? 

What if the balm to the hearts of the un-belonging is for us all to make spaces for each other to belong? 

What if the way I find a place to belong is by giving you a space to be? 

Jesus had a group of disciples and I think they might have been misfits. They were smelly fishermen, a tax collector, a super smart doctor type and maybe none of them had ever felt like they fit, but He gave them that. He called them out and said "Come, follow me and I'll give you a place and a purpose."

 We can offer that to one another because Christ has offered that to us.

We Stand There By Grace

There are a million times in my short life that in hindsight I see what could've been, maybe even what should've been, but what wasn't. Some of us look back and we see what was and how God plucked our feet clean out of the mud and set us on a rock. Many of us have forgotten all of that.

Wherever we stand we stand there by grace.

I'm a passionate person and I've got strong opinions about nearly everything. I imagine that most of us do. We have an innate desire to be known and heard and I get that. There are things in our world that are going on that are so heartbreaking and horrific that they beg to be spoken out, shouted out against.

I worry though that some of us are shouting out without looking behind, or in, or better yet, up.

A quick scroll through facebook or twitter can often make my blood boil. As another blogger put it recently, "If you are not kind on the internet, you are not kind". I would take it a step further and say if you are not kind on the internet or to those who are different than you then you don't understand grace. Period. I'm beginning to think I barely understand the marvelousness of grace.

Take any hot button issue and put "I would never..." in front of it and you have a person who has forgotten how God, in Christ, plumbed the depths of sin to rescue. Maybe you have lived a grace covered life and have done it all "right" or have shaken your head at stories' about mamas who saw no other option and made a choice you deem as "selfish".

I have shaken my head along with you, but God also has brought me face to face with women, not unlike me, whose lives are my could've beens. Those women have humbled me down to the holy ground that is God's grace.  I don't claim to understand the mystery which is why my life is different than another person's life.

All I know is that God's grace poured out through Jesus' blood is the great equalizer. 

If I believe that He reached deep for that abortive mother or willing sex worker or pedophile or suicide bomber or...name your ugly sin, then I have to believe He reached that deep for me. I'm not different. Given the right circumstance, the right configuration of my life, you could find me there in those dark places, desperate, alone and horribly lost.

Our's is a try hard, do good, show your trophies kind of world where we leave little room for those we deem undeserving. Christians are just as susceptible to this thinking and we often use the internet to flash our trophies of moral superiority.  It would do us great good to see ourselves as the undeserving. I desperately need to see myself as undeserving.

I believe facebook would grow a bit silent with such thinking.

Grace is the biggest kind of brave and maybe the marginalized could come out into the light if we would be courageous enough to see that we haven't earned one bit of our life. Grace erases the margins until all that is there are people who need, desperately, Jesus who rescues us all from the same depth.

We need to speak loudly in our world about the way sin has broken us and keeps shattering people and places over and over again. Planes fall from skies, waves break banks and flood homes, children are stolen and disappear, girls are enslaved to brothels where they are used and thrown away used and thrown away, families' starve, there is not enough and this world is sick and bleeding out and the grace drenched need to speak truth and love over the wounds, but we can't do it from a place of self-righteousness.

We can only speak from a place of Christ-righteousness. 

No trophies of our own held high, only Christ dead, buried, and gloriously, victoriously alive and searching for all who are lost. Even me. Even you. He dares to save us all.

How to Calm Those Raging Mama Storms

Some mornings the hours from 8:00 am to noon can feel like a hundred years.

My sweet toddler rose early completely dissatisfied with every option offered to her. Breakfast was a messy failure. Getting dressed was an act of war. Outdoor adventure turned into a mouthful of potting soil. Tap dancing in the little red wagon became an exercise in gymnastic tumbling. A climb up on the kitchen chair ended in a graceless fall.

I'm prone to graceless falls myself- motherhood failures of the most graceless kind. 

I held. I cuddled. I sang. I wiped up the 400th spill of the morning. I fussed. I slammed. I sighed. I offered snack after snack after snack. I wiped tears, mud, grass stains, trace amounts of blood and a mouthful of dirt clean away.

All before 10:00 am.

I tightened my jaw and gritted and barred frustration and just felt plain ugly on the inside.

No matter how ugly the wee girl can act on the outside I am certain that I'm usually acting uglier on the inside. She throws her tantrums sprawled on the floor and I throw them inside my heart.

I need the grace that pursues to chase me down on the days that I am running bull-headed toward impatience. Ok, I need it to chase me down everyday.

I foolishly thought that raising little people was about fashioning children that are obedient and good. That seems like a noble goal, but maybe that isn't the heart of God? Maybe that isn't the goal at all. Maybe raising good children isn't what all this mama-ing stuff is about?

Could it be about raising grace loving children and a grace hungry mama?

It seems that these days, these long-houred-short-yeared days, need to be flipped on their head. I've got to learn to turn my face up when the day turns upside down. I need to learn that kneeling down my worn knees raises up a better mama, a more Christ-like and loving mama.

I put on the Pandora and set it to the Andrew Peterson station, the one that is a mix of good Jesus-filled songs that croon rest over our trying-so-hard day.

I pull out the Jesus Storybook Bible and find the one about Jesus and the wee man. The one where the God-man sees right past the outside and into the heart even when we are hiding. Isn't that what He always did? Found folks in their sin and cut right to their hearts. It cut right to my heart.

I write in crayon for her to see all the fruits of the Spirit and I tell her I am sorry that I haven't written them on her life today.

Sisters, all the retail therapy, anti-depressants, anger management, perfection driven living, venting sessions and candy bars in the world can't fill up a starving-leaking-like-a-sieve heart.

We need Jesus.
We need to know that we need Jesus if our children are going to know they need Jesus.

When they storms churn up anger and dredge up all the ugly we need to know that their is a way out and the way is always grace.

A few practical ways to calm the raging mama storms:

• Turn on music that speaks peace over the situation. My favorites are Andrew Peterson, J.J. Heller and Shaun Groves
• Read Scripture aloud. Grab your Bible and just start reading out loud. It will calm you and scare your kids- in a good way. 
• Throw your apron over your head- I've always loved the story about Jonathan Edwards' (the theologian) mother that said she would kneel in a corner of her kitchen with her apron over her head to spend alone time with Jesus. The kids knew to leave her alone. Must have worked because I think she had 18 kids. 
• Tack the fruits of the Spirit up on your wall and review them every.single.day. For yourself not for the kiddos.
• Put yourself in time out. Nuf' said. Sometimes we need it. 

5 Ways to Hold Your Children Together in a Broken World

She climbed right up on the table on hands and knees to cup a sweaty mason jar brimming with sweet Southern nectar. She gulps big and I turn around just in time to see glass turned up. I scoop her up and put her down on the ground. All thirty inches of a child who knows no fear of heights or hurts. I'm the only one that saw visions of an imminent fall and broken glass. She knows only freedom to roam safe within the walls of our home.

I'm a mama less than eighteen months old. I'm prone, so very prone, to fears of all things big and small. Big fears that storms will come and winds will blow us over or disease will wipe us out in the prime of our life leaving wee girls alone. Small fears that plans will alter and disagreements will happen and I will be left alone. Alone with my thoughts, alone with my fears, alone. Somehow my fears always end with me alone.

Isn't that all of our fears? That we will end up alone with no advocate, with no one to stand in the gap for us?

I watch her eyes dart from me to her daddy and back again. She is searching our eyes for fear. She is searching our faces for signs that she should fear. I kneel down to her level and tell her to be brave. I tell her that we are standing right here and she is never as alone as a heart can feel.

I talk to a woman in the evening years of life. The years when our eyes turn homeward a bit more and the idea of staying here in this ragged bent and broken world starts to lose it's luster. I realize that the world only gets more broken the longer you stay.

How do you teach your children to walk straight in a broken and bent world? 


She is small now and I can shade her eyes from the hurt and horror that is the daily newsfeed. I can shelter her from Oklahoma tornadoes and from people in bondage around the world, but at some point the brokenness will break in and break her and the only way that she can hold together is in Christ.

He holds us together till the end and maybe the end comes at the hands of wicked cancer or at the hands of a tsunami or even at the hands of another human just lookin' for some cash for a fix. All I know is that in Christ no matter how the brokenness breaks us God has made a plan to make us whole and better than new for all eternity. We've got to learn to live that not just mentally ascent to it by singing a round of "In the Sweet By and By" at grandma's funeral.

We have to break the spell of the brokenness by believing that winter will not last forever and a King has come, will come and break it for all eternity. 

5 Ways to Model Wholeness in a Broken World: 

• Serve- Acknowledge the brokenness by being a means of grace to the suffering among us. Get your hands dirty serving in your community or in another country. 

• Share- Make your kids aware that this is a broken world, but that there is one solution; Christ. Teach them to share that truth with everyone they meet through words, deeds and joy.

• Give Thanks- Make gratitude the posture of your own heart and train your children to do the same. 

• Live without fear- Bad things may happen, will happen, but God says perfect love (which He gives us!) casts out fear. You can live without fear and you can teach your kids to do the same. You can't raise a child and hold them back at the same time. 

•  Make your home a haven- Your home can be a haven from fear for both your kids and your community. It doesn't have to be fancy. Just swing open the doors and invite folks into your imperfect life to share grace. 

29 Things {My Birthday Post}

Yes, this day has come...It is my forever birthday. It is the first of many 29th birthdays!

It is no secret that life has been a bit out of control for my family as of late. A big move, transition from stable income to ministry support raising, constant travel for support raising, yeah, big stuff. I'm nowhere near perfect. I'm more than a work in progress. I am a work in regress some days. But even with all of these changes and my own scramble for intentionality and single hearted Jesus adoring living I feel more like "me" than I ever did in my early twenties.

So without further adieu I give you 29 {silly,serious and sarcastic) things about me for my 29th birthday!

1) I love bright colors, but I married a color blind man. Go fig.

2) I once lived in an igloo for 3 weeks.

3) My husband calls me a music snob because well...I can be. Bonus material: Top 5 favorite musicians/groups of all time- U2, Paul Simon, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, Patty Griffin and Andrew Peterson.

4) My hair could be a habitat for small woodland creatures if I stopped doing anything to it. It has a life of it's own.

5) Motherhood has pretty much been the best, hardest and most fulfilling thing that has ever happened to me.

6) I majored in Women's Studies in college, but I don't consider myself a feminist. We can talk about that later.

7) I think I have some pretty sweet dance moves. My husband likes to inform me that I dance more like Elaine Benes. Kill joy.

8) I'm not an avid t.v. watcher in general, but if I get sucked in I can get downright obsessive about certain shows. LOST made me into a crazy person. I'm still working on a cross stitch of Downton Abbey.

9) I have traveled to four out of seven continents. I'm relatively certain I will make it to six of them before my journeys are through.

10) Myself, my older brother, my daughter and my nieces and nephew on my side share the same big toe. What I mean is that our big toes look exactly the same. It is known as "The Faison {my maiden name}toe" and is evidently a super dominant gene.

11) Words are my kryptonite. They are what really can get to me. Written words. Sung words. Words spoken. I'm a writer for sure.

12) I hate wearing shoes with laces with the exception of my Converse sneakers. Oh and I also hate socks. My feet feel like they are suffocating- anyone else?!

13) God's grace is the most amazing thing. I've been blessed to have an eye for it in my daily life. I think I am only just now beginning to realize what a rare quality that is.

14) I have enormous writing dreams.

15) I am an INFJ.

16) I am a self-taught cook. I really didn't know much about cooking when I got married 7 1/2 years ago, but I think I hold my own pretty well these days.

17) I married the perfect man for me. He balances out all my crazy and somehow manages to love me in spite of myself most days. Bless him.

18) I'm 4'11" on a good day. I had a 9lb 1oz baby. Yup, I did that.

19) Once I was asked to speak to a group of women and was told it would be around 40-50 women. I arrived to find out it was a huge conference of over 500 women. True story.

20) I have a cardigan sweater in nearly every color and I'm not ashamed to say it.

21) I've read the Anne of Green Gables series all the way through almost every year since I was 10 years old.

22) I once gave a homeless woman highlights in her hair. Someday the full story will make it into a blog post.

23) I have a dream of winning a blue ribbon at the NC State Fair for my strawberry jam. Yes, I think it is that good. I also have a not-so-secret dream of growing enormous vegetables ever since I saw a PBS documentary on people who grow giant pumpkins. Those would also be entered in the fair. I love the fair.

24) When I graduated from high school I moved to the NC mountains and I've never wanted to leave. I'm a full-fledged mountain mama.

25) Waterparks may be my favorite thing ever.

26) I got a perm at 13 and my hair never went back to being straight. Best.perm.ever.

27) Chocolate is a food group in my life.

28) I don't particularly like to watch sports {other than ACC basketball} but I do love a good live baseball game.

29) You, reading this? If I could I would wrap you in a hug that says out of all of my quirkiness I want you to know that I'm in this thing with you. All this life and mothering and aching to be like Jesus while failing a whole lot. I'm right here with you. Right where I want to be.

Happy Birthday to me!

25 Truths Every {Motherless} Daughter Needs to Know

1. You are always first and foremost a daughter of the most high King. There are no orphans in the Kindgom of God.

2. It will never not hurt. Whether you are eighteen or eighty that mama shaped hole will always ache. I wish that someone had told my twelve year old self this.

3. The richest of  life's blessings can live right next to that hurt. Don't let fear tell you any different.

4. You will miss her in the strangest moments. When you splash water from the sink all over your new dress on the way out the door to church. When you're driving in the car and that song comes on. The one that she danced around the kitchen too. The tears will swell and sister, let them fall.

5. Not everyone has a perfect mother even if she is living. Some women don't have a mother at all even if she is living. Sometimes that is harder than not having a living mother. Always reach out to love that type of motherless daughter.

6. Some women have amazing mothers. That is something to celebrate even if our own mothers aren't with us.

7. Having your own children will bring the loss of your mother full circle. It will feel like hurt and healing all at once.

8. You will feel more passionate about the calling of mothering than you ever imagined possible. Embrace that passion. It is one of the few gifts we are given as motherless daughters. We know the power of motherhood and what a power it is.

9. Your husband won't know what to do with your grief, but he will let you cry. Don't expect him to know what to do with your grief. Just let him be that shoulder to cry on. I've soaked my husbands shirt with ugly crying more than a few times.

10. There will be days when you wonder if you know how to do anything right. You wish that you could pick up the phone and call your mama for all that advice she never got a chance to give. Don't let those days defeat you. Your ability to love and care for yourself and others does not hinge on you having a mama of your own. Don't believe that lie.

11. Mother's Day will be bittersweet. Make it more sweet than bitter. Plant flowers, go for a run, eat the best dark chocolate you can afford, whatever you need to sweeten your day and your mama's memory.

12. Fear from loss can keep you from loving fully. The loss of your mom will make you fear losing other things and whisper that it is all right to hold those you love at arms distance. Don't listen to it.

13. You are never not your mother's daughter. Death can't take that from you. She is woven into your very own DNA. 

14. It is important to teach your children about your mama. You are the only memories that they will have of her. Make a photo album of her just for them. Let them give her a name just like they would any other grandmother. Celebrate her birthday. Make it about her life for them, not her death.

15. Some of us had great moms and we lost them. Some of us had moms who failed us during their lives. Most of us had a combination of those two things. Grieve all of it not just her physical death.

16. There are more than enough mamas to go around in the family of God. Pursue relationships with older women and let them pour into you.

17. Know that you are beautiful. The temptation is only to see the cracks. Some of our mothers failed to tell us that in real time and it has left deep scars. God says we are beautiful and no amount of our mothers saying that or not saying that changes that fact.

18. You will wonder what it would be like to have a relationship with your mom as an adult. Don't romanticize it. You might have been best friends, but you also might have butted heads in a very real way.

19. Write it down. All those memories, the way she rubbed in her foundation and swept eyeshadow across her lids, write it down. {Another great way to achieve #14 for your children)

20. That need to please that you have deep down in your soul, you know what I am talking about. That part of you that wants to hear your mama say "That's my girl!" one more time. Let it go. She is proud of you. God says that who you are in Him is enough and...you are and it is. 

21. Sometimes we need a good cry about all this mama-less living. Let yourself have those moments. Preferably with a cupcake.

22. Choose joy. When you are tempted toward self-pity. The loss of our mothers does not define us. Choose joy. 

23. Remember that you are not alone. We are a rare sisterhood. I'm holding your hand and I'm going to squeeze hard when this road gets rough.

24. You don't have to live under a cloud of loss. God's grace is sufficient and you can embrace your own family in the freedom of that grace.

25. Be a mother to someone. A motherless daughter knows the power of motherhood. Be that in someone's life.

The Truth About the Way Through Fear

Don't think for a second that bravery is not being scared.

Bravery is being shaking, quaking in your boots scared and walking forward anyway.

Here is the truth, the very hard and honest truth. One day it will all be over. There will be no more seconds on the clock or second chances to live without a regret littering the way.
 
The only way to the other side is to walk straight through and every step might be drowning in fear, but moving forward is the only way. 

Once I was on a backpacking excursion through the canyon lands of Utah. I wasn't feeling well and we'd been out for two weeks and were lost. The day was just too much and I sat down. I sat down right in the middle of the trail at dusk and I cried big alligator tears.

Evil wins the victory if we sit down where we are and sisters, brothers, I have been guilty, more than I would like to admit, of sitting down in the middle of the trail and refusing to get up.

Here is another very honest, raw and real truth- Good can exist side by side with the bad and if we refuse to move forward because we are afraid of the hard, the hurt, the helplessness that we risk feeling then we might very well be rejecting the full, holy and heartening good that is just ahead, over the vista that looks so far away.

The rain outside is pouring down and I hardly know a soul in our new town. The insurance has stopped and the bank account will get one more paycheck from my husband's former employer before we are left with what is in it. This is where the fear mounts and the question remains.

Will we keep walking forward? 

My temptation is to sit down right where I am and just weep hard the fears and frights that are tapping on my shoulder. The only thing that can make me rise right up out of fear is to turn up the voice of Jesus louder than the whispers of my fearful heart.

The voice of Jesus gently calls me forward. His Word is more truth than any one soul can bare. It is the most raw and real of all truths that the broken and bruised is new and whole in His light. 

One day when all of this is over- all this faith walking and blind jumping after a God whose promises are always calling us forward- I'm going to brush these fears away like old dried up cobwebs and know deep in my soul that all that I worried would've, could've, should've didn't happen because God never once let us go.

We can walk fearless because there is nothing, not one thing that this world can do to us, that God hasn't already finished, paid for in full.

I've been blow away this morning by the response to this post. It seems like God is whispering to a lot of folks' heart. If you wrote about fighting fear today add your link below. Let's turn this God whisper into a holy roar of truth.

His Faithfulness Precedes Him

I’m standing on this side of things hoped for, but yet unseen.  We’ve moved in and out of thecountry and across town more times than I can count over the course of our seven year marriage and we’re about to pick up roots one more time and move to a new town and a new calling. 

I don’t have the slightest doubt that this is what we are supposed to do. We’re leaning hard into Him for the big stuff, the God-sized stuff. 

I’m beginning to think it is all God-sized stuff.

A year and a half ago we moved back from the coast of West Africa. My belly was bulging with a wee one on the way, my husband had no job and we had nowhere to live. I remember that summer wrestling with anxiety over where we would sleep, where this little one would sleep, where we would call home.   

In the end my husband found a job in a new city and started it the week after Labor Day that year. We found a rental house that was affordable and more than we needed. All the big stuff was covered. God showed up in a big way for us. 

Still I had anxiety about life in general. I knew no one except some family that lived in the same city, but an hour away. An hour isn’t exactly within “Can I borrow a cup of sugar?” distance.  We began to hunt for a church. In the past this has been a frustrating task so we braced for awkward worship experiences, meet and greets and the inevitable getting to know you stuff. 

I hate “icebreakers”. Can I get an “Amen!”? 

What we didn’t realize is that God had already gone before us. We found a church within a couple of weeks and one of the pastors turned out to be an old friend. Still as a woman, particularly an expectant mama, I longed for someone who already knew me to put their arm around me and let me know that they saw me and were praying for me. 

Assurance came wrapped as a gift. 

A friend who I had never met gave me a baby gift. Did you catch that? A friend who I had never met gave me a baby gift. We were visiting a church small group for the first time and she had heard that I was pregnant. I now know this friend to be a crafting ninja and one of the kindest, sweetest, most giving women I know, but at the time I was shocked and surprised that she had a beautifully wrapped handmade gift for me the first time we met. 

That gift was more than a gift. It was a hug straight from God. It was the evidence of things that I had not seen in the midst of anxiety and fear. It was evidence that God goes before us into every circumstance and makes a way for the big and the small. 

A few weeks ago I had an emergency doctor’s appointment and I sent out a text to a group of local friends looking for someone to watch my now wild girl. Women that I never imagined being a part of my life a year and a half ago responded in unison to meet this need. God arranged for them to meet my need long before the moment the need was felt. 

I am confident that He is doing the same for you friend. He doesn’t play favorites. 

For women who are grounded in one place and doing life together- make sure you look around at those coming into your circles. You might be an answer to prayer. You might be the radical kindness that a newbie is in need of to make them feel at home, to make them feel like they belong in a new place.

A year and a half later and God’s call is taking us to another set of “new” everything. New home, new community, new church, new ministry. I’m standing on this side of faith and I’m scared that I won’t make any friends in the new town. 

I’m afraid that I won’t have anyone to watch my daughter when I have a doctor’s appointment. 

I’m tempted toward anxiety over a million things outside of my direct control. Some of you are sharing my shoes. You have moved to a new town away from community and family, your husband is without a job, you are a new mama and you feel isolated and alone. There are a million different versions of my shared story. 

Faith is the substance of things hoped for and God promises that He is always on the other side of life’s question marks with more than enough answers to our heart cries. Some of those answers come with faces and handmade gifts. 

I have no idea what my new community will be like. It might be hard from beginning to end, but undoubtedly God is there. He goes before us. His faithfulness precedes Him and makes it safe to follow His lead. 

The Move and An Opportunity to Bless

I can't find which end is up right now. This big, brave move that we're about to make seems stuck in slow motion and buried in boxes in need of sorting. Friends, I'm going to be MIA for the next week. Partly because of all the moving business and partly because we're cutting our internet off in a couple of days. All of it is scary- including the internet-less situation.

This is the stuff that this blog is made of. The stuff that God is re-making my fearful heart out of. Fearlessness and faith all rolled into one ball of life and lived out for you to read on the screen.

Thanks for reading and right now if you wouldn't mind would you pray for me? Pray that I can love my family well and that all of this anxiousness would be turned to joy and praise for a God who revels in showing up big for us.In the meantime let me tell you about some amazing friends of ours who are doing some thing big and brave themselves.

The Clarks are a family of six (4 boys including a set of twins!) already and are going to folding into their family a beautiful little girl through the ministry of adoption. They are selling raffle tickets for a chance to win something amazing from Thirty One Gifts! I can't begin to share with you about this family. They work for Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters- a camp ministry that engages teens as well as men and women of all ages to live radical lives of faith for Christ (it is also where me and the husband met and married!)- where they teach students how to share the Gospel and grow in faith through the ministry of service.

It would really bless my socks off and encourage my heart if you would click over and enter the raffle with a $10 donation. This family loves Jesus and your small investment will place this little girl that God already ordained for their family in their home to be wrapped in His loving arms.

Who doesn't want to be a part of that?

Off to do some more packing, sigh...Thanks for every single tweet of encouragement and facebook message along the way!

A Brave New Neighborhood

I grew up on the same road that four generations had lived and breathed out their lives on. A row of houses squeezed in between sprawling fields of cotton, tobacco and soybeans. I ran barefoot across my yard and climbed the squatted cherry trees and never worried for a second about the neighbors because most of them were family or forever friends. The older folks on the street would invite me in for lemonade and an oatmeal creme pie on hot Carolina afternoons and I wouldn't think twice about slipping myself behind their worn wooden kitchen tables for a snack. Loving my neighbors meant just being known and my neighbors all looked the same. Southern. White. Church-folk.

I moved away as soon as my car was fueled up and the ink on my high school diploma was dry.  I journeyed out of state for college and never found my way back to Quarry road. I've now lived all over the Old North State and overseas on African shores. I discovered that when Jesus said to "Love your neighbor as yourself" He wasn't necessarily talking about the person next door. He meant everyone, everywhere, every second. But often for us it really is our own neighbors that need love, that need Christ. Regardless, they are often the folks that we avoid in our culture that trains us to view privacy as our sacred cow.

Very few of us still live on the same road with our same family ties that we were bound to as children. We're a generation of gypsies and often we land in neighborhoods with no one around that we know. Our neighborhoods look vastly different from the ones that we grew up in thirty plus years ago. Even in the South we don't often live side by side with people that look and sound like us anymore. From our church seats we're instructed to be missionaries and take the Gospel to the ends of the earth, but for some of us the ends of the earth have come to us in our subdivisions and we've labeled our neighbors as "different".

We live toe to toe with Afghanis, Burmese, Liberians, Somalians, Laotians, and every flavor of Latin culture. Every tribe and tongue are on our front doorsteps, but we often shut the door to keep their noisy music and the smelly unidentifiable aromas out. The aroma of the Gospel is the same in every culture and the language of grace can be spoken by anyone who has ears to hear.  You will probably never visit Nepal, but what if Nepal came to you and lived right down the street with children the same age as your own? The nations are just on the other side of our front door, but most of us are guilty of shutting the door and double locking it. Some of us are itching to move. We are itching for our neighbors to move. We would rather talk about how much they bring down the property value of our home than talk to them face to face about where they come from and dare to find out how we are the same.

It isn't just ethnicity that creates a barrier. As a Southerner I am privy to the use of the term "trailer trash" or "white trash". I've used it in conversation. I won't lie about that fact. It is a term that encompasses a lot of folks and in conversation a raised eyebrow and the repeating of that phrase creates a universal definition with a common understanding. Like the Jeffersons some folks born on the poorer side of the tracks are some times able to move on up to nicer neighborhoods. Some of them live next door to you and you're contemplating moving because of that fact.

Might I ask you to think twice before you put your home on the market? 

You worry about your kids safety. I get that. It's legitimate and I'm not proposing we all move to areas with known meth houses. You are just plain annoyed with your neighbor's disrespect and disregard for common civility. I get that. Their destructive dog has torn up your yard one to many times. Our world is topsy turvy and bad things happen and they often happen to us at home. What I am proposing is that we let our guard down a bit and we lower our holier than thou standards to see those around us not as a label, but as a needy soul in desperate want of grace.

Last summer at the beach I had a discussion with one of my nieces after I said something I really shouldn't have about an encounter with some people who were different from us. What I said was not edifying and certainly didn't represent a heart changed by the Gospel and ready to extend that to others. I realized as I was saying thoughtless words that I was being ungracious to say the least and started back pedaling and trying to undo the damage to my sweet niece's thinking that I probably incurred, but this missionary mama realized really quick that no matter how long we lived in West Africa it doesn't change my hearts hard bent toward self-righteousness.

I don't engage those next door because the fear that takes up residence in my heart stops me. It isn't the resident down the street that repels me from loving. It is the fear residing in my own bones that stops me short of extending grace and truth to the people cooking dinner, washing cars, nursing babes, planting flowers, raising kids, riding bikes, and watching sports right down the street.  People that might be more like us than we ever imagined if we'd get brave enough to knock on their doors and peak behind the curtains. 

The mission field has come to us in our neighborhoods. My family is about to move to a new town, a new set of neighbors and it would be easy to stay inside with the shutters drawn. If I am honest that is the easy route. The method of neighboring that is most comfortable to me; you live your life, I'll live mine. We'll get along just fine. The Gospel calls us to more. More grace. More tolerance for the unkempt lawn. More boldness in sharing Christ. More love when the neighbor's kid shoots our cat with his pellet gun. More compassion for all that goes on behind closed doors that we may never know about. If we leave these neighborhoods who will bare the "more" to hurting hearts in need of the sweet balm of the Gospel?

Friends, the fields are ripe for the harvest. Fewer and fewer of us are willing to labor. Many of us would rather pack up the farm and move away. Don't. Ask for Jesus' eyes to see those around you. It might just change the whole world. It might just change you. At the very least it will change your perspective.

When the Small is Really the Big

The mountains in our lives are mole hills to God, but even the mole hills are not hidden from His gaze. A week ago I was praying hard. I was praying hard for things that I couldn't see. Sometimes you pray for small things when what you are really asking for are enormous, if-God-doesn't-show-up- we-will-not-make-it sized things. 

Our life is full of unexpected right now and there are more questions than answers scattered along this faith road, but still we walk. I had a hope. A hope in the midst of a tight budget that I might return to Allume this year. Last October I gathered with women from all over to talk all things blogging and Jesus. It inspired. It grew my vision. It made me just a bit more fearless. I was hoping to go this October, but we're about strike out into a new God-sized dream and funds are limited to say the least. We're about to ask friends, far and wide, to join in this dream with us financially for the foreseeable future and that is a step of faith that is more than a bit daunting.

While praying for a means of purchasing my ticket for Allume I felt God's nudge. Do you know what I mean? That moment when you know God is saying more than what meets the eye through your circumstance. He gave a nudge to my heart reminding me to not stop short in believing for the small things. I've got to believe Him for ALL things. If I am willing to pray that God would provide for a ticket to a blogging conference then how could I shirk back from believing that He will provide every thing for where my family is headed? The little stuff and the big stuff are all the same to God.

That is why it really shouldn't have come as a surprise when I opened up twitter to see that a friend, an anonymous friend, heard this need. This woman heard it in her heart from the same God, by the same Spirit that speaks to me and loves me and calls me, that she should be the hands and feet of His Son in my life. I'm humbled. Humbled right down to the holy ground that is all of life for anyone who dares to follow Christ. 



I want this person to know, whoever she is, that God used you in a big way. Yes, you bought my ticket to Allume and that is a tremendous gift, but you also showed my weak faith that every step on this journey my family is about to leap into without a net is already taken care of by a God who sees me. A God who even cares whether or not I go to a blogging conference. How much more does He care that we have enough to pay the bills?

In the end all of it is God-sized and the dreams we dream with pursed lips and through blurry eyes filled with tears are heard by the heart of God and some times whispered to others on our behalf. If we believe the small we can believe the big. Rejoice with me sisters. Some of you are walking through impossible circumstances and every little thing seems to require a mountain of faith. Some of you are hoping for your own anonymous Allume ticket. He knows the plans that He has for you. Walk strong in Him, pray even when your words falter, believe that God is for you and will supply every need. His riches are endless.

Thank you sweet anonymous friend. Thanks be to God who shows up big in the seemingly small.