31 Days of Chasing Light

As of last night I went to bed without an idea and with no intention of doing a 31 Days series this year. We've been on the road visiting family and my sweet girl woke up this morning with a stomach bug. We took to the highway to avoid passing the sickness onto her cousins.

While driving a stretch on I-40 I was thinking about people I know currently struggling through dark days and hard grace. I was thinking about the 24 hour news cycle and all the ugly, scary awful in the world tempting us to despair. A low fog hung over my heart and the sky and I felt the pull toward the darkness.

I began to think about my own life and some dark days I've walked through recently and in the past. Corrie TenBoom's sister Betsy famously remarked from her death bed in a German concentration camp, "There is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still." Her words have stayed with me and I've seen God prove them true in significant ways.

I'm beginning to be a light chaser. I'm learning when it is darkest that the light has a way of breaking through the cracks. I'm convinced that we learn to see the light by looking for it in the every day mundane. In fact God's word tells us that the light is in our hearts if we are in Christ. The same creative gift that God used to speak first light has spoken light into our hearts. It's there.

^"For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

2 Corinthians 4:6 (ESV)

This month I want us to be light chasers together. I want to chase down the light in the darkest parts of our stories and the most boring parts of our day. If you believe that God is speaking in the everyday and Betsy's words are still true then dare to plumb the depths of the pit with me this month. 

I'll be posting each day and on the weekends I'll offer resources, books, music, etc...to help you find the light. Join me in using the hashtag #chasinglight to share via tweets, instagram pics and facebook statuses how you're pursuing the chase in your daily life.

My Summer in the Rearview Mirror

The summer is slowly fading into the rearview mirror. I took what I called a Summer Sabbathical which meant I stepped away from regular blogging and retreated to the quiet of writing without the pressure to publish or stay on a schedule. It might have been the best idea I have ever had.

Our summer has been all over the place. My husband started a new job. We moved into a another {temporary} house. We went swimming a lot. We traveled some. Mostly we just tried to find pockets of time with the one's we love. It was good. It was what I needed after last Spring's unexpected storyline.

Back in the Spring I decided to step away from the buzz of social media to write and slow down. It was a great choice and along the way I learned a few things. Things which have made me more aware of how I spend my time and direct my energy. I'm easing back into this blogging thing but I thought I would start off by sharing what I learned along the way this summer.

Busyness is a choice. 

I knew this. I really did, but it wasn't until I slowed down completely that I began to question the choices I make on a daily basis to fill my time. I choose to do many things because somewhere along the lines I began to see them as necessary.

As I wound down my pace I recognized much of what I was doing on a regular basis was not tied to God's calling on my life but on a litany of things I think others expect of me. I was astonished at how much margin I began to see in my life when I turned off those outside voices and leaned into the One Voice that matters. 

Balance is key

My summer was a bit experimental. I removed most everything from my plate. Guess what? The world did not fall apart. Imagine that.

But here is the rub. I love blogging. I love being a part of online community. I want to be a writer.

This is where I find myself now. I have hesitated to jump back in fully because I know I struggle with balance. I crave balance in my life and am very sensitive when things get off kilter, but I also find it difficult to strike the necessary balance. I bet a lot of you can relate. I prefer not to spin plates. I like my plates squarely on the table piled high with good food. You too? Pray for me in this, ok?

My voice is bigger than I realize.

I've been blogging for five years and in that time I have stuck to topics that feel safe to me. The stories are sometimes messy but most of the time I try and keep it kosher. I have a rabid fear of conflict.

I don't have a deep desire to be controversial. In fact I get extremely frustrated with writers/bloggers/talkingheads who feel it there place to be inflammatory on purpose. The Lord really spoke to me this summer about the way He has gifted me. I am a discerning person and have always had the ability to cut to the heart of the matter. I have recognized that I need to do this more in my writing.

With that said don't expect me to go wild responding to each new cultural uproar that comes across the news. Part of being discerning is knowing how and when to respond. I pray that I can be faithful as I use my words boldly to point back to the Gospel.

Those are just a few things that I have wrestled with this summer in between jumping off the diving board, tickling a two year old's tummy and applying sunscreen generously. Fall is here and I'm feeling tired and refreshed all at once. The words are flowing, cup of tea in hand and my record player is spinning. Let's do this!

There is much to look forward to in the next couple of months around this space, heck this week is gonna be pretty stellar. Wednesday I am over at Kristen Welch's place for her Works for Me Wednesday series. I hope you'll read because I am sharing the nitty gritty raw place of what it means for me to say "Yes." to God right.this.minute.

Also, I'm going to be spending the day this coming Saturday in The Nester's newly renovated barn with a circle of writers. I'm looking forward to gleaning wisdom from others especially Emily P. Freeman and Christa Wells who are hosting us!

Lastly, I'm about to make a long time dream a reality as I upgrade and rearrange this space. Wednesday I'm having a vintage-inspired photoshoot and by mid-October I hope to launch! All of that right before I journey down to Greenville, SC to hug a few necks and soak up the goodness at Allume. Thanks for your patience and your faithfulness to read my words and encourage me so deeply. I'm a whole lot of grateful!

Revolutionary Rest

Rest is work.
 
That is the last thing any woman wants to hear in a series about how to integrate more focused rest into our lives as moms. Because the last thing any of us need is more work. The reality is in order to arrive at a place of rest in my day to day life I have to work hard to make a life that leads me in the direction of rest.

Rest is not something that naturally happens in my life. Left to my own devices I will pile more and more onto my plate until I simply can’t go any further under the weight of it all.

I will keep telling myself in the midst of writing my to-do list that I can’t let go of anything. Between the things I want to do, have to do and just plain do I start feeling suffocated. If I am truly honest I take my to-do list and I make myself believe it is a have-to-do list. Sister, you are not the sum of the things you marked off your list today.

You are more. You are meant for so much more.

As I’ve journeyed into the art of learning to intentionally rest and find rhythms for my life, family and work that give instead of take, I’ve discovered a few core things to meet that end.

There is one keyword to keep in mind. Intentionality.
 
I am beyond imperfect at the practice of intentional rest. In fact, I’m imperfect at everything I do, but guess what? I’m loved by God. The perfect One who calls me away from my to-do list and into life in Him. The One who knows me by name and calls me away from it all to lean back into Him like a swaying hammock and be held. That’s a nice mental image, isn’t it?

But we don’t get to just lay in a hammock all day. No, there are things to do and the dishes don’t wash themselves. Intention. The purpose with which you intend to do something. If we don’t find ways to move our lives toward that restful place with God we won’t ever make it there. 

I want one thing clearly understood. Rest isn’t just making time to read a book or watch t.v. or even sleep. Rest is the deliberate slowing down of the noise in our brains and lives so that we can hear from God. 



There is a competition for our attention between the pull of busyness and the noise of everything we believe we have to do. Want to be counter-cultural? Stop “doing” things. Stop committing to more and more. Limit your children’s extracurricular activities. Don’t sign up for one more bake sale, book club, Bible Study, small group, or volunteer opportunity.

I’m not suggesting the commitments I listed above are bad. What I am suggesting is we often fill our schedules to the brim and continue to wonder why we feel physically, spiritually and emotionally empty. Gluttony is more than eating too much. 

I’ve realized it is easier to complain about our marriages, children, and lack of time than to actually tackle those areas with intention. Why is that? I think, for me, it is because I don’t want to do the work those things require so instead I tack on another task thinking somehow I will accomplish more. Less isn’t more. More is more, right?

WRONG.

A few weeks ago I did something that downright revolutionized my life. It is so simple to do and I recommend it to everyone, especially the busy mamas out there.

Grab a sheet of paper and a pen. Write down your priorities for this season of your life. Your priorities can be as general or as specific as you want them to be. My list has about ten things on it and range from a passionate pursuit of Christ to focused attention on improving my writing. Feel free to read my whole list.

After you’ve written down your priorities. Make a list of the things that take up your time. Once that is done line the two lists up beside each other and mark through each thing on the list of things that take up your time that don’t help you meet your priorities for this season of life.

It might be painful. You may find there are things on your current list needing to go which you truly love. This doesn’t mean you give up something you love forever. It does mean you possibly give up something you love in order to cultivate something that you love more. 

The next step is to regularly ask yourself if the things you are doing line up with your list of priorities? That small act will encourage you to avoid adding things that don’t help you create a life that keeps you refreshed and leaning on Jesus.

I am sure someone is reading this and thinks that I am oversimplifying it all. There are definitely times when we have to do things that we don’t want to do for a certain purpose or over-arching reason. There is always grace, but I would ask you to be as honest with yourself as possible about what you can cut out of your life in order to make room for rest. Every little bit will free up some space to rest.

I’ve been at this intentional rest thing for a few weeks now and I can already sense a freeing of my spirit. It has caused me to recognize how much I was making decisions out of fear that I wouldn’t get things done.

One thing that has emerged from my self-reflection is that I’ve discovered that I was already cutting things out of my life, namely, joy. Yes, I’m beginning to think we are always pruning something away from our lives even in busyness. The unfortunate thing about this realizations is I am nearly certain I was pruning joy away from my life.

I know “intentionality” is a buzzword these days. It’s a buzzword I am okay with if it means I get more of the life I love. If being intentional leads me to a more God-soaked marriage and work that overflows from my life instead of sucking it dry then I am all about it.

Jesus, has never been anything less than intentional with me. His pursuit of me from the Cross to the grave and straight on into eternity is with purpose. I want to pursue life in Him and this one life I am gifted with the same intentionality.

{Take some time today to prayerfully make a list of priorities and compare it to the plates you are spinning these days. Does it match up? What can you cut out? What areas can you refine to fill you up instead of drain you?}

(in)motherhood ladies, if you missed the first two posts go back and give them a read!
Rest for Your Souls
GET OVER IT! {Mama-Guilt that is}  (Over at Heidi's place!)

For Those Walking The Cliff's Edge {How To Balance In a Broken World}

Photo Credit: by Ophelia photos via Compfight cc
 
I don't have all the answers. In fact lately I've felt more full of questions than anything. An accident two weeks ago and news that broke over my heart like a crashing wave just a few days ago have left me heavy hearted.

I only know one thing and it is that I want to have the answers.

These words, as of late, have stuck in my throat just under the surface. I admit that there are times when I wonder if God is asleep at the wheel. I own that I have leveled my questions at God as vehemently as Job ever did and with less cause.

Because how do you live fully alive amidst the sorrow of death and a broken world? How do you believe in fullest life when it is slipping away for those around you?

  "Christians should not be optimists; we know too much about sin. We should also not be pessimists, for we know the living God." ~ Tim Keller

I have that feeling like when you speak up in a quiet room and all eyes turn on you. The eyes are expectant and waiting on me to answer with words that calm and mend the tear. I stumble through because I've never been terribly deft at saying the thing that is just right in the moment and sewing has never been my strong suit.

Time creeps and I listen to the Spirit's groan on my behalf and the words do come. They rise to the top and they aren't accusations against God, but rather they are an indictment on myself and my lack of faith and fearlessness as a child of God. From the end of ourselves we can see the beginning of God's hope and there are more than enough answers to fill eternity.

What do those in the valley need the most from those of us tenuously walking above them on the cliff's edge? Aren't we always just once false step away from the valley? The truth is yes, we are, and regardless of sounding trite I'll say it. Choose joy today because tomorrow is never promised.

Joy is a fountain of hope in a bone dry world. 

Your Bible study sister whose marriage is falling apart and all the best efforts for restoration have failed. The family with the diagnosis so unthinkable it leaves you gut punched in and feeling helpless.

They need you to live the joy today. Because if we don't live joy today then who is to believe us when we say that there is hope tomorrow? 

I don't mean that we feign happiness or put on brave faces and ignore reality.

Fires blaze, tempers flare and prodigals don't come home and there has to be a truth big enough to transcend the pit. Women go in for routine exams and come out cancer patients. Grandparents memories vaporize into thin air and we need a theology that is robust enough to carry the burden. A truth that ascends the mountain and shines light down to the valley, to the darkest places. 

Those trudging through the valley's depths need you to bring meals, cry with them, be angry with them,watch their kids, send texts, give until it hurts, be the Church, but the bigger picture being painted is that they need you to stop living small. 

If you believe a big Gospel then you can live a big life.

I was wide eyed and wrestled long into the night wondering what I could do to put pressure on some of the gushing wounds around me. I kept coming back to the same place- embrace life, hands open, palms up. This isn't a seize-the-day kind of philosophy it is a letting go of anything but God kind of living. It means holding the hand of God tighter and more intentionally than you ever dreamed.

That knot of fear you feel in your stomach is the way you know that something is worth doing. Love bigger. Fight for joy. A little bird told me that scared is the new brave. Which must mean if I'm shaking in my boots then courage abounds. Those in the pit need to know that joy still exists above them in the heavens.

Children die. The best among us fall to illness. My very own parents died. This world is broken off at it's root and the root that is God is beckoning us to find our life in Him. It is the only salvation in a world in desperate need of a rescue plan.

For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

1 Corinthians 2:2-5

The most miraculous thing in all the world is that He stooped to save us. The most miraculous thing is that we weren't all consumed in an instant by a holy God. We are alive and though death is nipping at our heels and we ache as it crashes up against our weak frames we can claim life in Christ.

Those aren't trite platitudes in the face of real life suffering. That isn't a verse-a-day kind of Christian devotion. It is robust Gospel living that is just that a Gospel for the living, a Gospel that lives in the face of death.

That is permission to walk fearless. That is a green light to go to say "Yes!" to God and everything He has given. Even if the whole world breaks and falls our foundation is sure and certain. Might our last words be a battle cry that death never ever wins for those who are in Christ. And let every word from now until then be sure and certain that God is for us.  

Brave Husbands and a Brave Choice

Airport shot heading to Kenya one month ago.

He looks up at me and says it again, the thing that he has said to me a thousand times.

"Just tell me if it is too much. Tell me if something needs to change. You are my first ministry."

He's says it so plainly and I envy his ability to be direct. I'm the girl who chases words down. I hunt them and find that they are all too often elusive in my daily life and relationships.

The words spin out of control in my head and never seem to make it out of my mouth the same way they come out of my pen.

I swallow the fear and push down the words.

I want to tell him that it is all too much. I want to tell him that I want a nice neat life where everything is known and controlled and where he stays put.

This girl with wanderlust turned a woman who lives fearful. 

I used to be the girl that wanted to see the world and then I got scared of everything, of the way a plane banks and steals my sense of control.

But he still hangs hard onto his wandering heart and that has taken him to North Korea and all over the African continent to fill empty cups with water and Gospel hope. I've done my fair share of adventuring, but I stay home more often than not these days with a toddler and a fort to hold down.

I don't tell him "no" and he keeps going and pushing and watching God bless the work of our hands and the ministry we've committed too. 

You see, I don't not pour out the fear because I'm afraid. No, I don't pour it out because Jesus poured out His blood and calls me to more.

I'm not saying that we should bury feelings or suppress the truth. I'm saying that sometimes we have to choose to step forward into big things without excuses. We can't look behind us and plow the ground in front of us. If some else's grass is greener then we are only left to assume that they let God tend and grow it.

When our husbands are called to something brave we have a few choices.

We can block them at every turn and live small fearful lives. 

When you quench the Spirit your husband's spirit will be squelched.  Don't think that you can live in the sin of fear (and it IS sin sister, it IS) and see your life and those you love flourish. It won't happen. It will choke you and everyone you love and it is the rock hard ground that illogically breeds the hearty seed of resentment.

We can say "yes" but live the "no".

You can look into your husbands eyes and sob out "yes" and then you can wake up every morning and live the "no" in ways that prevent him from stepping out boldly. You can withhold prayers, your support, your self all while speaking empty words of solidarity. We have to carry our cross without carrying a chip on our shoulders.

or...

We can tell the truth, that it scares us pale and breathless, but instead of living "no" we can cling to Jesus and live the "yes". Even if you are scared say "yes" and live "yes".

When we hit our knees fear hits a wall.

That wall is Jesus and He is the perfect love that perfects us and kicks fear to the curb. If we're scared of our calling then maybe we don't know the sound of the Saviors voice that beckons us forward. 

He looks at my eyes and he can see the fear that swims in their green depths and he knows that it can damn near drown me at times. He knows that his calling, OUR calling, tests my faith on every front and he isn't insensitive to the thorn in my side. 

But sister, if you married him and you believe that God has called you to whatever it is...a ministry, a job change, a business idea, a crazy God-sized dream...well, then God called you too. He called you both and that might look different on any given day, but you are both called to the same obedience.

When he looks at you and asks if you are with him say "yes" and live the "yes". 

Find your place in your husband's calling and live it full and fearless. Believe you have a place in his calling.

My husband is the bravest man I know. He's walked away more than once from the security of normalcy. He has done the uncomfortable, the uncertain, the unpredictable. I've watched. I've lived all of the choices and the one I come back to is the "yes" and "yes".

If you want a marriage that thrives say "yes" and live the "yes". 

My husband has made me more brave and with every "yes" fear dies a bit and we live our calling, together, just a little bit more.

{I'm posting this to welcome home my brave and bold husband from a three week stint in Kenya. I'm so blessed to be living the "yes" with him.}

For the Older Ladies at Zumba (My Take on What Miley Cyrus Needs)

I drag myself into my morning exercise class not exactly ready to Cardio Jam as the name would imply I should be. I positioned myself in the middle of the pack and tried to get my mind set to break a sweat and bust a move without busting, well...anything else. 

The class is an assortment of older retired women and young(ish) mamas. We start the class off slow moving and grooving to whatever song the instructor spins first. I look thrilled at this point, utterly beside myself with glee over the twisting, turning, shimmying and shaking.

Ok, that might be an overstatement.

About a quarter of the way through the class a few of the older ladies with the determination and grit of a thousand of us young women start hamming it up. They shimmy. They shake. Their joy just starts spilling out all over the place and pretty soon we're all laughing and hollering and the spell of glum ho-hum Monday life is broken.

They smile and show off the crows feet and laugh lines and they are intensely beautiful. 

I catch one of their eyes and she casts her grin my direction with a little shimmy thrown in to boot.

I turn all misty and feel silly and a bit crazy because it is just the everyday.

Two weeks ago a young woman who seems to me was only a short time ago a little girl Disney star shook her business on television to the shock and awe of the general public.

Don't bother going to look at the video. It won't improve your life.

Some things you just can't unsee and the twerking and jerking that Miley Cyrus did and the stone faced Robin Thicke (another topic for another day) who stood there and let it happen is not something that any of us really need to see. 

I told myself not to write about it. It just seemed too expected and as if I couldn't bring an ounce of nuance to the discussion so quietly I excused myself from the conversation.

Until this morning when those older ladies let loose on the rest of us with their joy. Until their smiles and their paving the pathway to glee happened to me on a Monday morning.

As I watched (yes, I did watch it on the internet the next day) Miley humiliate herself in front of millions I grieved our culture and what it does to young women, particularly celebrities. It was like watching a controlled experiment gone horribly wrong. I was watching how the deadly sins of greed, self-indulgence, false liberation and pride can kill someone in real time and it made me sick to my stomach that we as a culture let that happen and often cheer it on.

The bottom line is that the biggest need of any of us is for Jesus to wreck and rearrange us and for the Holy Spirit to indwell and change us from the inside out.

Jesus is the canvas for change in our lives, but people are often the paint He uses to make a gorgeous work of art out of us. I watched those older ladies this morning dancing like no one was looking and it blessed me and all I could think was, "We need more of these types of ladies in the Body."

We need older women who cup joy in their hands and throw it around like confetti. 

We need women who bear the lines of age and wisdom and smile through them and tell us to keep going that it only gets better and better the closer we get to Jesus. 

We need ladies who believe in modesty and self-control and who don't even know what twerking is. 

We need women with silver in their hair to show us how to speak with grace and walk with Jesus. 

I realize that Miley Cyrus is a grown woman. All of us at some point begin to make our own decisions and forge our own way, but I am so grateful for the women that have lined my path with encouragement and whispers of grace. I'm afraid for those who don't have that in their lives. 

It is easy to say that we live in a different world from years ago. It is easy to throw up our hands and let the world ride the cultural steam engine straight to hell, but we don't get to say that we had no part in it. If we truly want to say that then we best be clinging to the timeless truths of Scripture AND showing the women behind us how to do the same.

If we don't want our daughters to emulate Miley, Ke$ha or Lindsey then we have to give them something worth far more than fame and fortune. We have to teach them the value of a daughter of the King and we have to long for it, live for it and cling to it more than anything else in our own lives.

We have to embody it to the point that our daughters, biological and in the faith, can't help but start following our lead.

There will always be Miley Cyrus's in this upside down world. Our job as warrior women is to fight for the daughters that will come behind us. Our job is to clear a path so that they can run up next to us and say thank you for showing me how to get to the light.

I was feeling dark this morning and the white haired women in my exercise class grabbed my hand and ran for the light.

Miley is just one of many young women groping in the dark.

I want to be a woman whose hand she can grab.

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.

Not Just a Trip (In Which I Tell You About Something Amazing)

Two years later and I can still feel the gritty dirt between my toes and the scorching equatorial sun burning into my lily white arms.

It's morning and I roll to the side of the creeking wood framed twin bed scooched next to my husband's same creeking wood framed twin bed and place unmanicured cracked and dirty feet on the cool cement floor. I hear the nuns across the yard singing morning prayers. I put the kettle on our makeshift stove as I pray over an unknown day as peaceful harmonies rise heavenward.

They say that New York City is the city that never sleeps but Ganta has not hushed once in the night with hollers of joy over a football game that saw Barcelona victorious and indistinguishable screams carried on Liberian winds from somewhere deep in the bush- places that we dare not go with our white skin.

The electricity won't come on until long after we've bumped down the road to our office. We will greet the guards and pray the internet works. We'll also pray for our stomach's sake that the man in town will have only used half a gallon of palm oil to make our egg sandwiches today.

We lived to the rhythms of Africa. The beautiful, violent, raw rhythms that made our life there. 

When we finally returned home to the familiar we were asked, "Did you have a good trip?" I had to choke back tears and indignation. Some folks thought we had just gone on a bit of a holiday, a couple of do gooders done with their good and now home. Most people just didn't know how to ask so I quickly realized I couldn't hold it against them.

But that place, the place God called us, left us utterly rearranged. 

We've been taught to see those serving for the sake of the Gospel overseas as super-spiritual. We've fooled ourselves that they are a different breed, and in some ways they very much are, but in many ways they are not. They've chosen the path of most resistance and sometimes their own hearts can falter on that path. I saw mine falter over and over.

Some days it was simply the simple stuff that made the hard places- like the days when James at our favorite town market didn't have the potatoes or the drunk chicken man (another story for another day) was out of frozen chickens or the days when stepping out our front door just felt like stepping onto another planet where we were undoubtedly strangers.

There was also the day that we buried a friend's young son. Malaria. Again. And when I say buried I mean we paid for his burial because the family couldn't afford it. That isn't a fact we brag about, that is reality and it was hard and I heard my husband choke up in a way that I never had that day. That is the hard that leaves you changed. The hard that makes you a different person, unable to put it into words.

Then there was the loneliness. The distance  from the ease of Western life and of family and friends within a day's driving distance. The lack of fellowship with others. The difficult working relationships even with other believers. The toll it can take on a marriage. The toll it can take on the body. The days of uncertainty and oh, the puking. Yes, there was the getting pregnant and throwing up on an unlucky goat on the side of the road.

The days when I wished to be anywhere, but where I was. 

God took my weaknesses and He used the guise of overseas work to expose it under a magnifying glass. He peeled back each layer and laid my heart bare on the shores of West Africa. He made me a stranger in a foreign land to show me that this life, this desperate scraping to live righteous and straight, is all just wandering in a foreign land.

So when we came home and we were asked about how our trip was you can understand the offense. It wasn't a trip. It was our life and it was good and hard and a million other things, but it wasn't a trip.

This is where I get to the point of this story, because my faithful readers know that I always have a point. 

I'm going to talk plainly for a second because I want you to hear me loud and clear.

There are women on the field right now living the life I just described and the Church has made them into superheroes, but reality is that they are reluctant grace needy strugglers who need buckets of encouragement. They need you and me to reach across the miles with words and soul strengthening hope to wrap them in love. Love that will push them and pull them on to life where they are and doing what they are called to. They are single women, wives, young mamas, and older women and they need a space to connect.

I was praying for these women just last week and the very next day I stumbled (Thanks Lisa-Jo) across a new website and project with a vision to bring reality to the idea that my heart was sprouting. Danielle Wheeler of Not Yet There unfurled the dream of making an online community for women serving overseas. I read this and said, "Yes! Yes!" right away!

We're calling it Velvet Ashes (more about the name later) and it is going to be a home for all of us scattered across the globe. One home to come to and find connection with other women walking the same nitty gritty path of hard obedience in a foreign land. 

There is just one thing. We need to raise the funds to make the website happen. The goal is this Fall and we're making progress, but we need more folks to catch this vision and put a bit of money where their heart is.

Could you dig between the cushions on your couch or forgo a dinner out to make this happen for hundreds, maybe thousands of women that are starving for connection from the places they serve on the field? If you can then click on over to the Velvet Ashes Fundly page and donate right now! 

Then head over and give the Velvet Ashes Facebook page a like so that you know when we reach our goal!

My heart is literally racing thinking about the women who need the encouragement that I believe the Velvet Ashes community, by God's grace, is going to bring. Let's make this happen friends.

Read more about my family's new work here in the U.S. and all the gritty details of our time in Liberia on our family blog.

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.

When You Want More But It Scares You

I have a degree in Women's Studies. I've been to a handful of Christian women's conferences. I've held a lot of birthing mama's hands on both sides of the Atlantic. I've brain-stormed and worked in sticky African heat to help women rise from the ashes of war and poverty. I'm a girl mama. I've learned from women young and old what it means to internalize the Gospel and live it out.

I believe in the beauty, power, and uncontainable tenacity of women. 

I've been craving more. 

More for myself and more for us all. All of us who have met Jesus at the well and are intent on drinking from His water of life from now until eternity.

There is a stir that is happening in this generation of women. I feel it down deep in my bones. We are weary of tidy looking women's ministry and exhausting and exhausted debates on gender.

We see past sterile cookie cutter neat and clean church life to a world that is broken busted and bleeding out. We are the broken, busted and bleeding out and we we want to be the ones to push the pressure, to hold the surrender flag out to one another and to the world to say, "...But Jesus..."

I read about the idea last week and it spoke right to my core.

Women. Gathering. Jesus.

I was excited and then...well, then...I wasn't.

You see what is happening isn't safe. The goal isn't to have a bunch of women that look a certain way and ascribe to certain rules of spiritual law. Nope, it is to gather women from across the Christian spectrum to think, storytell, dream, relate and actively hope in Christ.

That all sounds a bit utopian if you ask me.

I don't go around shouting my opinions (which are many) on this blog because I truly desire to live in grace and let this blog be an extension of that journey. A blog can be a powerful mouthpiece and I don't trust myself to have the grace and self-control to use it with restraint. Don't get me wrong, I don't fault anyone who does use their blog to exposit their thoughts on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness- truth is that I admire you because all to often my rabid fear of conflict keeps me from speaking up. 

Over the course of the past few years I've started really listening to other women and their journeys and going again and again to Scripture to iron out of it's pages what Jesus had to say about us, the female gender, the Daughter's of Eve.

The one thing I know for sure is that we have value to God. 

He had a purpose in making us women and that purpose was not simply so we could clean house, cook supper, birth babies and show a little leg. We are part of His redemptive story and every mundane thing that we do to love those who live with us, down the street from us and on the other side of the world matters.

I want to be a part of a group of women that gets that truth and embodies that calling- even if it gets messy along the way. Because it will get messy along the way. We are more alike than different and it is that alike-ness that is the very likeness of God, His very image etched into every curve of womanly beauty.

Even though I am not sure about what I think about this movement, this rushing wave not of feminism, but of God-sized redemptive hope, I'm still going to join it.

Maybe you should too.

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. 

I Love You But...

At the core of each of us is a longing to know unequivocally that we are loved. 

When I found out I was pregnant with my first daughter I thought about all the things I wanted my daughter to know without question. At the tip top of my list was that I wanted her to know beyond any doubt that she is completely and fully loved.

I mean really loved. 

I want her to live all of her days knowing, from the start, that she was and is loved beyond measure.

Read the rest of the story today as a part of the Confessions of an Imperfect Mother Series over at Beauty Through Imperfection! 

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.