God's Pursuit of Me
To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love. - A.W. Tozer
-
The Tired & The Worn Out
Don’t you yet understand? Don’t you know by now that the everlasting God, the Creator of the farthest parts of the earth, never grows faint or weary? No one can fathom the depths of his understanding. He gives power to the tired and worn out, and strength to the weak. (Isaiah 40:29, The Living Bible translation) To The Tired & The Worn Out, I see you. I watch you rise up in the morning and feed the hungry faces sitting at your table. I know you drag your worn Bible across the counter top and you…
-
contrary truth
You want to know something true but so contrary? You can have a day that feels as if the very air of the universe is aligning and giving you good gifts. Friends can send you the sweetest texts and your grocery bill can be paid by a complete stranger. You can hold the good gifts in both of your hands and count them two by two. You can laugh a little and smile some too. You can stare into the gloriously golden faces of the stellar humans who call you “mom”. And you can feel grateful. Grateful can ooze out of your lips and off your tongue and through the…
-
to live like I mean this …
Hudson Taylor, a missionary to China in the late 1800’s said, at a low point in his life, suffering from failing health, “I cannot read; I cannot think; I cannot even pray: but I can trust.” An absolute Act of the Will. That’s what trust is. A Choice. That’s obedience. To choose to act on what you know to be true and not on what you feel to be true.
-
Five Fridays (nine)
FUNNY I sent this poem by Wendell Berry in a text to my dad the other day. Luckily he thought it was funny too. FASHIONABLE Undoubtedly, this is the hardest entry for me each week. What in the world do I know about fashion? Wait. I’ll tell you. Absolutely nothing. Recently hannaH told me that a friend of hers put me (and hannaH) and our chosen style of dressing in the category of Mary Poppins. I can’t even understand what that means but I feel confident that no one alive is thinking, “Who should I ask for fashion advice? I’ll ask Mary Poppins!” I’ll tell you what I do know,…
-
All the Words We Don’t Say
In one of the many books I keep stacked beside my bed, the author talks about the value of talking through a problem. The value of naming a sadness. Which has me thinking. About that. About other places I’ve read similar ideas and thoughts. About processing and talking and sharing and explaining and All The Words We Say. The idea being that somehow talking about and giving verbal space for a sadness and a grief gives it both a reality and a vulnerability. A place to heal and a place to pass away from in the direction of moving on. Does that make sense? It really does to me. Why…
-
practice. (unwelcome though it is)
Of course at the very instant that you choose a word, the worlds are going to collide and the earth is going to tremble and you’re going to get a chance to immediately test out your shiny new resolve. Did you really mean what you said? Were those just pretty words all lined up in a tidy row? Maybe I will start tomorrow. Today is just too hard. Let me have life just toss you a couple of curve balls and a few packaged disappointments and a frustrating situation and a hopeless feeling afternoon and some lunch bag left to spoil in the back of your car and a…
-
the single word
For the past four years I’ve been following the lead of my friend Alece over at Grit & Glory as she started her One Word 365 community. The idea and the challenge is to pick one word – just one single word – to shape and define and strive toward for your year. That somehow always feels more manageable than a list of resolutions that I know I’ll never keep anyway. I hadn’t chosen my word last year when the bottom dropped out. It seemed as if all the words were being chosen for me in 2015. And I didn’t like any of them. I suppose in a lot…
-
it’s not a new year’s resolution kind of fix.
I don’t really feel like writing. I didn’t really feel like celebrating this Christmas or this New Year’s. There’s an awful lot I don’t really feel like doing. It’s kind of stacking up around me just as I am inundated with new calendars and fresh resolutions and shared quotes about potential and a clean slate. My toilet is overflowing with – well, toilet water – and that’s no metaphor although it absolutely could be. My sink is overflowing with dirty dishes because the dishwasher is broken and that’s alright of course as people have washed dishes for – like, centuries – without the aid of a square water machine. But…
-
on the eve of it all.
Last weekend our favorite baby was making his debut stage appearance as the newborn baby Jesus in a children’s Christmas play. Of course we wanted to sit in the audience for that spectacular show. Also, some sweet friends were performing as well so we loaded up our chariot and drove forth across town. The play was everything right about a children’s Christmas performance and the fact that I was expecting something completely different made the evening so much the sweeter and more adorable. Otto sat in my lap and Piper was to my left and I had no young children in the show myself and I wasn’t directing a single…
-
the long and tired list (waiting for the rejoicing)
The list and the stack is high today. The list and the stack of need and sad truths and hard decisions. Today alone I received three texts from three different friends in three wildly different phases of life with Gigantic Broken on their plates. That’s three friends today. The medical diagnosis. The seemingly never-changing situation with internal brokenness of loved ones. Severed relationships. Court fiascos. Job loss. Health issues. The weary of motherhood and holiday stress and week-by-week-getting-it-all-done. Life is hard. This is on repeat in our hearts even if we keep it from being on repeat on our lips. I look around and my eyes see so much hard.…
-
i think you’d like sara groves too.
Jo told me to listen to Sara Groves. “I think you’ll like her,” she told me. She was right. I do like her. And now I’ve been texting her lyrics to friends because I think they are so good – so solid and so true. How many hours have I spent Watching this shining TV? Living adventure in proxy In another person’s dream? How many miles have I traveled Looking at far away lights? Listening for trains in the distance In some brilliant other life? This cup, this cup. I wanna drink it up, To be right here in the middle of it. Right here, right here. This challenging reality…
-
Five Finds Friday (six)
I finally finished that article. Take that, procrastination. Piper keeps announcing how many days are left until Christmas and that’s making me feel a little antsy or unprepared or something because, maybe it’s the weather, but it doesn’t feel all that Christmas-y to me yet. Although we did tour some Christmas trees downtown this week and that helped us all to get in the festive mood I think. It’s Friday though now, friends – and that means ….. FUNNY It’s a great age when your kids are genuinely funny people. Not potty humor funny or toddler mispronounced words funny or teenager kind of ridiculous funny but just straight up seriously…
-
i’ve got you covered.
Travel weary and ready for lunch, my straggly gang and I waited in the line at Chick-fil-A. Four hours of driving behind us. Three hours of driving in front of us. An irritated older gentleman pushed right around us to reach the cashier asking who was next. His exagerated sighs told me he was probably a lot more concerned about his chicken sandwich with Polynesian sauce than I was so I ignored his line cutting. Turns out our cashier was a little less than speedy and that was alright, because we order a little less than speedy too. Another customer was to our left following Irritated Older Gentleman before all…
