Diamonds at the Grocery Store

She has packed three tiny plastic jewels. They are her treasures and today, I’m not sure why she eagerly puts them in her pocket to bring to the grocery store.

We aren’t out of the car for even 5 seconds before she’s shouting at a young couple walking toward the megolith American foodstore.

“EXCUSE ME!” she shouts and I frantically try to stop her from embarrassing us both.

“Sweetheart wha--”

“This is for you,” she says, and places one of her small jewels in the man’s hand. “To make you happy. Merry Christmas!”

And the three of us adults stop in our tracks. He is bumbling with words. The young woman at his side squeals a little with joy.

“Are you sure?” he says, rolling the small plastic faux-diamond in his hand. “You want to give this to me?”

“Yes, sweetie,” I lean toward her and say a little quieter. “Are you sure you want to give those away?”

She nods fiercely, “YES. I have three to give away today.”

----

We are in the grocery store and she is all sniper-eyes. She’s looking for the right recipient. A grandmother with her young grandson rolls by us next to the watermelon.

“EXCUSE ME!” my daughter shouts again and the woman looks startled with the tiny shout. My girl proceeds to hand her a jewel and the same conversation commences.

“Oh wow, I don’t even --” she begins to say.

“Have a good day!” my girl says and hops along next to me again. "Merry Christmas!"

----

An elderly woman is hunched over the fresh bread, her long coat sweeps the floor as she surveys each bag. Her hair is snowy white against the backdrop of all this mayhem.

“Excuse me,” my little says. The woman does not respond.

“Excuse me….” she tries again and now reaches toward her slightly bent arm. “EXCUSE ME.”

(She’s still learning the art of gentility.)

“Here,” she hands her the last of the diamonds. The last of her pocketed treasure. The woman is startled, overwhelmed with the beauty of the moment, speechless. 

“What’s this for?”

M pauses, “For you! Merry Christmas.” The woman stood still, unmoved and watched as my girl danced away.

Her joy was spread. Her love lavished.

----

I am overwhelmed at global tragedy. Thousands dying at the hand of nature. At shocking news articles of sweat factories and the clothes they make so we can bargain shop. I’m sick to my stomach with pictures of children who are forgotten, abused, left to die. I’m knee-broken at the stories of women who are raped, abused, sold, shamed. The men who sell, the men who use, the men who are abused. The endless ticker tape of hate, judgement, injustice, arrogance. School shootings, domestic assaults, street wars, car accidents that steal the lives of children, and so on and so on and so on.

You know, right? You know it too? That sickening drone of the real world that spins everywhere around us, in us, below us.

I sit at our table and I’m wrecked and I cannot do a thing. I say it, “What can we possibly do about any of this?”

I cannot do much. Our bank account balance runs continually low. My ability to change the world from my small cedar-sided house seems very unlikely. Seems insignificant. Seems pointless. Until I look at my daughter.

----

I might not know how to end child slavery.

But I know how to love a child. I know how to look her in the face and say “Fight for good.” I know how wrap her hair in braids and push her toward kindness, compassion and unmerited grace. I know how to teach her that speaking up for those with no voice is better than staying silent.

I might not know how to end racism.

But I know how to speak truth. I can make our home and our table diverse. I can make her world bigger and change the way we speak, the way she speaks, and not keep silent. I can foster relationships and understanding across the street, across the block and into the heart of the city. I can show her that treasure hoarded is no treasure at all. The best kind of treasure becomes more valuable when you give it away.

I don’t know how to end homelessness.

But I can give my child a home, so that she’ll grow to understand the value of love, safety and shelter. That in her heart she’ll understand the weight of what it means for those who have no one, nothing left. That she’ll understand we are not entitled or enlightened, but just profoundly fortunate in this season to have food, clothes, a roof.

I don’t know how to fix the brokenness.

But I can carry a broken heart here — with her, with myself. I can show her how Jesus sits with the broken and busted up. How he extends grace and teaches freedom from sin. How he loves without judgement and still inspires everyone who follows him to lead a life marked by obedience and grace.

I may not know how to change the world but I can show her how to love the ones who live in it. And maybe that’s a good place to start.

---

She has pocketed three more jewels today, and she’s decided it’s better to give than receive. “People in this world need people who love them,” she tells me at bedtime last night. “We need to pray that they have people to love them.”

Yes, indeed, this is a good place to start.

Here is the Perfect Place

Today, it is only 9 days until Christmas. Every nook and cranny of this house looks like Christmas — whether it's the hidden pile of gifts, the tinsel that has somehow wandered from the tree to my slippers, or the bucket of Christmas fudge my mother made, just begging to be consumed. It's everywhere. It's in our speakers, on the television, on the radio and twinkling from our neighbors' windows. And we start our days with squeals as the Advent calendar is opened, chocolate tumbles out and a little note reminds us what activity to do and who to pray for. Mother says "Let's make the recipe jars today!" and my little begs, "Christmas cookies today?" and my calendar for the week could all be categorized under some "Christmas" reasoning. Rehearsals, movies, gigs, wrapping, etc. 

I see Christmas everywhere...

And yet, in my own heart, in this tiny beating knot of life within me, I find something missing. This morning, I'm looking at the list, the want-tos, the to-dos, the need-tos, and I whimpered a little. My mother, the one who knows me best and has carried my bleeding heart on her hips since I was a wee babe, comes close. She wrapped her arms around my shoulders and I leaned into her warm robe that smelled of her perfume and some Irish Breakfast tea. 

"Whatever it is you think you need to pick up today, let it go," she whispers this into my hair. My hair that is still wild with curls and is knotted on the top of my head. The hair that is unruly somedays and feels a lot like my temperament. Unpredictable. Moody. Wild and knotted. "Don't pick that stuff up." 

And she doesn't mean this in the "don't take responsibility for your life" sort of way. She means it in the "that's not your burden to bear. That burden is too heavy. That weight is not your life sentence." And as her words cover my heart, I feel it. I feel that sense of my heart putting down luggage, putting down my packages and all of the things I'm convinced make me stronger and better. I'm blowing the dust off my hands — the dust of expectations, worries, fears. 

I've often thought about Mary and her constitution. I've wondered at the woman God chose to carry His son. I think about her form and poise in these final days. The nights when she cannot sleep and the anticipation of what's to come seems too heavy to bear, and the delivery is an unavoidable certainty. When she's riding donkey-back and Joseph is leading her and the questions of love and choice, destiny and promise, deliverance and hope are all intermingled with the fear, the worry, the doubt. And God takes her to a stable, and creation around her is coarse, smelly and less than ideal. Here He tells her — lay this burden down. Here your burden becomes a promise. Here your weight becomes a watershed. Here, where you submit your body and soul to a greater plan, it becomes less about you and that's where the beauty happens. That's when the stars shine brighter, the angels sing louder, the earth nearly cracks under the beauty of what has come. 

Here, when the tiny beating knot of life within you begins to beat in sync with the knot of life that will save you. Here's where you find true joy. True rest. True peace.

And I think of this as my own mother wraps her arms around me today. The things that cause my mind and heart to race are nothing but a waste of time. But if I lay low, let them go, give into the greater gift of delivering peace, joy, and The Gospel into this world, I find that the things I have dropped become the things that "grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace." I think of Mary and stables, and I'm letting go of the coarseness in my heart, the mess of soul, and the stench of my sin, and I'm always caught off guard by the beauty when God says "Yes, here. This is the perfect place. Here is where I bring my promise."

I'm back to sipping my coffee, and Toy Story is playing in the background. Several Christmas gifts sit unfinished on the shelf next to me, and my daughter exclaims "I've lost the baby Jesus in the sun room!" She is worried and I tell her we'll find him. "But he's MISSING," she says and bites her lips. "BABY JESUS IS LOST FOREVER."

I want to tell her that's ok — plenty of us enter into this week before Christmas wondering if Jesus is actually going to make an appearance in our lives at all. But there's time, I tell her. We have time to find him. And come Christmas morning, we'll see his face, new.

When We Were on Fire

Within the first chapter, I found myself wishing I had Addie's phone number.

Mostly to say, 

"FRIEND,

I was at that concert too.

Probably that youth group.

Definitely that mission trip.

I also memorized all of the words to Father's Eyes." 

(Ahem, I may or may not still know them.)

----

I find I'm tempted these days to put all of my young Christian subculture experiences under the same category as all of the dispensable, awkward, and worth forgetting stuff. 

Not long ago, a friend and I caught up while driving, our eyes fixated on the dark road ahead of us, and we reminisced about the days from "before" my life fell apart. We tossed around names and places, addresses and old houses, churches and stories of a life that seemed fuzzy at best. Fuzzy mostly because I was trying to forget it. 

"I hate her," I said to my friend, almost in a whisper. "I hate the old me, you know? Like…I think about the things she did, the things she loved, who she was and I can't think of anything I like about her. I don't like any of it. I'm embarrassed by her."

She sighed and nodded. She knew her, that girl I proclaimed to hate. She knew her and called her friend.

"I remember her," she paused. "She wasn't that bad. And she made you who you are today. She's still a part of you." She went on to remind me of the good things. The things I had forgotten or had buried with the corpse of my memory. 

It wasn't all bad. Some of it was really good. It wasn't perfect. It might not be what I'd recommend now. And sure, some of it fed the trough that led me to where I ended up at 22. But I can't look back and toss it all away. I just can't. There is something to extract there, and you know who did it well? That Addie Zierman girl.

---

In "When We Were on Fire", Addie extracted. She took the pieces of all those years and laid them out like a rag quilt in front of the reader. She didn't say everything was ok, or that all of the strategies and plans worked. She delicately and honestly peeled back the layers of what it was like to grow up as one child of the 80s & 90s Christian subculture. She said things straight, gently, without mincing words, without dodging the issues. She said it and laid bare the facts — leaving the reader to see it plain and clear. 

It was how I'd want to be able to say it all, without all of my loaded cynicism and sarcasm getting in the way. 

"It's refreshing to read the words of someone who's main mission isn't to tear apart the entire Christian subculture," I said to a friend. "Even if we all know some things were weird, or handled poorly, she leaves it to the reader to come to their own conclusions. It's really, really refreshing." Addie never made it her mission to single-handedly rip the clothes off of a broken system. In fact, if anything, she looked back at the broken body of Christ and managed to simultaneously see all of the broken pieces of all of it without calling the whole thing "ugly." 

I'm still learning how to do this. How to call something like it is. How to take a step back and know what's over is over. How to slip back into the beauty of the body of Christ again without holding all of it's failures against everyone else. There were moments of the book where I felt I was sitting side by side with her. She said the words I thought. She thought the words I said. And I realized that maybe this journey out of the Christian subculture isn't always a solo one. Maybe a lot of us have sat in coffee shops or next to a bottle of wine and asked ourselves "How did we get here?"

And then something else Addie handled like a pro? The art of saying one thing while meaning another altogether. I mean — in some cases it was brilliant. It was that moment where you said, "Wait. You're not talking about what I think you're talking about anymore, are you?" I underlined passage after passage, writing in the margins things like "Yes, this." and "There it is." I made the book my own and thanked her quietly time and time again for saying the thing I didn't know how to put my finger on.

So here's what I'm saying. Addie Zierman's book "When We Were on Fire" releases TODAY. And I think you should read it. I'm not saying that because I'm trying to force you to see things from this side of the water. And I'm not getting paid to say any of this.

I'm saying you should read it because Addie writes one amazing memoir, and I wanted more. I wanted more stories, more anecdotes, more of what she's learned, extracted and where she's headed. Truth be told, that's how I always want to feel at the end of a book.

Take it from me and whatever is left of that Jesus Freak, purity ring wearing girl from 1995…it's so good you guys. 

Addie Zierman's "When We Were on Fire"

Big Fears in a Tiny World

"I didn't want to tell you," she said. She was nervous, her eyes wet with tears. "I didn't want you to be mad at me." I am reaching an arm around into the back seat to reach for her hands. We are bound for a wedding with dear friends and she is kicking up her heels in a white flower girl dress. I see the beauty of the innocence spinning on her hips, but the heaviness of sin weighing on her heart.

I'm saying things like never ever, would I ever be mad. And you can tell me anything in the whole wide world and it won't change how I feel about you. I'm saying these things, and reaching for her hand, and choking back my own tears because as quickly as she's saying those words, I'm watching the shadow of innocence disappear on the horizon behind us.

----

I'm explaining things to her that I haven't had to explain yet. I'm telling her things today that are breaking her heart and I feel like I'm patching holes with bubblegum on a breaking dam inside of her and I realize this is why she needs Jesus.

And don't even mean this in the, "Jesus takes it all away and makes it better" sort of way. I mean that she needs Him in the same way I need a shelter when the storms really start to rock my heart. I need something immoveable, unshakeable. I need the voice that shouts at those waves. And I can't be that voice to her, because mine is still shaking.

I can try a million times every day to be her savior, but the truth is, I can't be. And maybe somewhere deep down, admitting that is the actually the saddest and hardest thing to do. I gave birth to her. I held her tiny hand as it curled around my fingers. I kissed her nose and told her that inside her is a song and I will always be listening. I'm the one cooling her forehead on feverish nights; I'm the one dropping an extra marshmallow into her hot chocolate on chilly fall afternoons. I'm raising her, training her, teaching her, holding her, hugging her, but I cannot save her. I cannot rescue and fix her heart. And this perhaps is breaking my heart even more. Once again, I realize that even in parenting, one of the greatest gifts, a lesson I have to learn is less of me. Less of me. Less of me.

I remember my pastor from years ago who said that "parenting is a series of painful releasings", and I feel it when I'm relinquishing her pain to her Heavenly Father and asking why does she have to feel the weight of so many things? Why do children have to know pain? Why do the young ones have to come face to face with things that want to steal, kill and destroy them? Why the littles? Why the tiny ones?

---

I'm scrolling through my phone — Twitter, Facebook, news feeds — and oh the stories. Mothers losing babies, fathers losing the fight to be the hero, true headlines where evil wins, and I'm feeling all sorts of empty.

---

A boy recently made advances toward my daughter, and she felt helpless. She felt like she had no voice. She was scared to speak up and shame followed close behind as she wondered where to turn.

I hear people say rape culture, and something inside of me recoils because I think, "No, surely we're not all that bad, are we?" I want to believe and hope for all the beauty and all the best ... until I see my four-year-old shamed by another, and she runs to my arms because there is no other safe place to run. Because we're told "boys will be boys", people laugh and say it's cute and "he'll grow out of it", while a young girl wonders if she's the one who was wrong all along. She's asking me why a mean boy also wants to be her boyfriend and why he accosts her daily with sexual requests and now she's afraid by speaking up, she'll be the one get in trouble, get a wrist slap, be told that it's part of growing up. And she runs to me in tears with a long list of fears inside her tiny world.

And it all feels like quicksand. I'm not an alarmist, I'm not a bell-ringer. I'm not going to burn people at the stake or demand reform in household traditions. But I feel like I've brushed up again against the shattering of a broken world and the real need for a real Hero.

----

I'm watching her speed down the sidewalk, her bicycle picking up speed, her pace quickening and her voice caught up in a shriek of joy. The neighbor asks me how she likes school and I mention that I've pulled her out and we're homeschooling, and she says "Oh what a shame," and before I break into a run to catch my carefree child, I smile and shake my head, "We're good, actually. Really, really good."

Lessons of Autumn

My window is open which is a small and gentle grace today. I am working to the soundtrack of drops of rain and falling leaves while my daughter shouts to me from the still green backyard.

"Mom, do wooly bears like wet stuff?" she hollers at my window, her boots covered in autumn mud and her hair wild as ever. I make-up an answer, a convincing yes, and tell her to look again in the fairy garden and under the leaves that hang low on the corner of the house. She nods and runs off again, magnifying glass in hand. Today we are searching for the almanac-friendly caterpillars, and she is desperate to hold one, balled up brown and orange, in hand.

"Wooly bears cocoon for the winter," I tell her. I'm reading the explanation of them online and stop when I get to the words, "Their hearts stop. Their guts freeze. Their blood stops."

Their hearts stop. But their life doesn't. Something in them preserves them through the season when everything else dies. They are born to gently graze death and beat it by the warm thaw of April. Sometime in spring, a tiger moth emerges. A new purpose. A new name. A new shape.

I guess I know this lesson of nature well. And maybe you do too.

Sometimes, in order to get from here to there, from this side to that side of things, from the running leap of faith to landing on your feet in Tomorrowland, something has to happen. Something must happen and will happen and it may feel a bit like death. 

Your heart will stop and your blood will freeze and from all outside angles and all interior feelings, it will feel as though your life has come to an end.

But do not fear (the message of hope is wrapped up in the cocoon of a farmer faithful caterpillar).

Your spring is coming.

When You Can't Be Good Enough

While I know that there are people out there who don't like me, it's always jarring to have them confront me to my face. Knowing and hearing are two different things. So recently, reading a negative response to my story, was a bit like an electric jolt to my ego. Or maybe the opposite of an electric jolt. Perhaps something like biting into an apple only to find that it's rotten. Something a lot like that.

I processed as this reader complained. That it was all ridiculous, berating me for not leaving my pants at my ankles and accepting the shame. And I wish I could tell you it didn't eat me up right away. And they asked, How can we sugar coat this and say it's encouraging? They asked — how can Christians keep doing stuff like this?

I rolled my eyes. And then I cried. And then I got angry before chewing on the words, and spitting them out because most of them were garbage and something was missing. I rambled about this to a friend and she said, "I wish you could tell them about where you were in life and WHY it happened," and though my friend meant well, I didn't want to defend myself. 

Defending myself does nothing, I say. How do I show this person the Gospel? Because I could ignore this, and maybe that's the best response. Let it go and move on because where there's one, there a hundred others, and no one likes poking an ant's nest.

But in starting to ignore it, I felt like maybe I had one chance to say just one thing, and then next time, I'll ignore it. Maybe I won't even finish reading the comment at all next time.

So here's what I'd want to say to that reader:

Dear stranger, 

Hi. I don't know you. Or maybe I do. Maybe I see you every Sunday and we exchange casual greetings. Maybe you're thousands of miles away and only know me through these black and white letters on a screen. Maybe we'd enjoy a meal of bread and wine together and laugh about the same jokes and cry over the same movies.

So, hello.

I'm so sorry that you are disappointed in Christians. In me. In the whole mess of the world that keeps happening and keeps turning and keeps falling apart all over again.

Can I just bend your ear for a moment, and ask if perhaps you missed something in my story? 

I'm not trying to sugar coat what I've done in my life. But I will say this — I've learned the Gospel and message of Jesus Christ is not for the people who figure out how to get it all together. The message of the Cross isn't that we finally got our lives in order and we're not all a total mess anymore. The message of the Cross is sweet to our bitter souls, and that's the only sugarcoating that's happening here.

Jesus came for the people who can't get it together. For the people who keep disappointing people. For the people who are caught with their pants down and dragged into the streets. We are the sick ones. We are the prodigals. We are the Israelites wandering and complaining, doubting and hoarding what's not ours to keep.

I don't wish to sugar coat anything. But instead, wish to point you to the sweet message of the Gospel. That is the only sugarcoating I provide. That over all of this rotten aftertaste, Jesus still chose to love us and die for us. Even the Bible says that "God demonstrates His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." While adulterers are unzipping their pants, and addicts are tying the tourniquets, while the trigger is pulled or the words are thrown like darts into the heart of another person, and while we idolize our belongings and gorge on our feasting tables while thousands die every day from disease, malnutrition and abandonment, he STILL chose to love and die. STILL. EVEN THEN.

Believers will let you down. Every single day until we're home in Heaven, we are all works in progress. Sanctification is both done and in progress. We are a holy and chosen people, and still a people who are desperately hoping today will be the day that we get it through our thick skin and hardened hearts that we are saved from it all, and will finally walk in full freedom.

Jesus wouldn't be our physician if it didn't mean we were fatally sick. Last I checked, I'm not healthy. My only hope is Jesus. My only hope is that He died for me before I even knew that death was my penalty.

We are throwing ourselves at the mercy of the Cross, and putting faith in the work of Christ. Not our own works. Not our ability to say the right words, or even to make it all right in the end. Not our ability to understand and explain, or reason our way out of all of our bad decisions. I sin because I am a sinner, and there is no sugarcoating that. To expect anything different from me or my actions is a work of faith. If any good comes out of me, it's because something in me is miraculously not blackening or spoiling in the heat of separation in this world. Anything good in me is a work of the cross. 

So dear friend, who I may or may not know, the next time you're disappointed by someone in the faith, remember that they are an example of why ultimately the saving work of grace is so amazing. 

Mind vs. Body, Episode 1

If you have ever tried to lose weight, or have successfully lost weight, or maybe even just tried taking your body under control…. this is for you.

I am 5 months into this weight loss journey, with almost 35 lbs gone and behind me and not to be found again. As someone once said, "Lost weight? No no. I'm getting rid of it. I don't intend on finding it again."

But I wanted to give you an honest review of what these five months have been like. Now, I have to tell you, most of my journey so far has been an internal epic throw down battle argument conversation between my mind and my body. The two don't always agree. 

So here's how it went down.

Pre-week one: Sister calls excitedly, announces she's joined a national weight loss program and that "Hey! You should try it too!" 

Mind: Huh, maybe we should.

Body: It's a scam. Eat your donut.

Three weeks later sister calls again. "I've lost 8lbs!"

Mind: Well, huh.

Body: Oh no.

I drop my morning croissant and say, "Oh. That's awesome. Ok…Ok that's awesome." And then quietly go sign up for said weight loss program.

Day one:

Mind: We can do this.

Body: This is dumb. Give me my chocolate covered pretzels.

Day two:

Mind: Ok, this is annoying. Give me more fruit because they're zero points which means GIVE ME THE WHOLE BOWL.

Body: See? Told you. This is dumb. You can't do it.

Day 7: 2 lbs lost.

Mind: LOOK!

Body: Yeah, ok. That's kinda cool.

Three weeks later:

Mind: I can't believe this is working!

Body: I can't believe this is working!

Two months later:

Mind: SERIOUSLY. Can't believe this is working.

Body: OMG we're such a team! Go us!

Two months later + a day: Run into a friend at a school event. She says, "Gosh, you'd be so pretty if you were skinny."

Mind: Push her into the pool.

Body: "Well,… you… your face would be pretty if it wasn't so ugly."

Three months later: Someone notices and says something about how I'm losing weight.

Mind: SEE?! It IS working. We're winners! We're on top of a mountain! We can do anything!

Body: I guess. You're annoying me though. 

Four months later, now 30 lbs lost: 

Mind: Ok body, we're gonna have to get over this plateau. It's time to kick some things in gear.

Body: I don't like the tone of your voice.

Four months + a day:

Mind: We're gonna run!

Body: I hate you.

Four months + a day + 15 minutes of running:

Mind: I hate you.

Body: The feeling is mutual.

Four months + a week:

Mind: Yay running! Look at us go!

Body: Your knee hurts. Or is it your hip? Or your feet? All of them. They all hurt.

Five months:

Mind: Listen body, the only way this is gonna work from here on out is if we work together. We're running. And then we're doing that insane 100 jumping jacks, russian twists, side lunges thing. And then I'm going to give you lots of water! And we'll be able to wear a new dress size soon!

Body: I still think this is dumb. Also, you lost me at "work".

Five months + a day:

Mind: See? We can run! We're fine!

Body: You just inhaled a fly.

Five months + two days:

Mind: Feel those muscles? Isn't that awesome?!

Body: Care to go up stairs and get me something? Oh you can't move?! HOW AWESOME IS THAT.

Five months + three days:

Mind: 100 jumping jacks!
Body: Your pants are falling off of us every time you jump. You're embarrassing me. Plus, I'm pretty sure the neighbors are watching.

Five months + two weeks:

Mind: Hey look, three more pounds lost.

Body: I think you're on to something.

I'm hoping at some point these two get on the same page. But until then, I am always mediating this conversation. So if you're wondering if the process is easy, I would argue that YES it is easy, and NO it is all hard work. 

I guess it depends on who you're talking to. 

Remember the Magic

My sister was engaged on Christmas Eve when I was 8 years old. We lived in a small, mountain country town in upstate NY and every Christmas Eve, a small group of us rode around in a tractor-driven hay wagon, singing Christmas carols to each lit-up house on the tiny four streets through the village. Festive church members would bundle close under wool blankets, all of us kids bounced wildly with Christmas anticipation, and the joy of the occasion fell gently with each quietly sung line of Silent Night.

I didn't know my brother-in-law was proposing. Of course, no one told me. I was 8, a chatterbox and already a romantic. The secret would not have been safe. I remember it was snowing. At least, that's what my memory has done to it. Snow falling as he stood in the center of the hay wagon, a 19 year old nervous boy proclaiming something about Proverbs, choosing a wife, and bumbling his way through a poetic proposal, to which my sister cried and said a thrilled yes. 

It was magic.

Pure magic.

----

I have a friend who jokingly says (though half the time I'm prone to think that under all that joking is a serious point) that every time someone takes out their phone to Instagram something, they're stealing the soul of the moment. Last year, a bunch of us sat lakeside and sang songs with guitars and banjos. Someone slipped out their camera and he whispered, "They're stealing the soul." A few of us went camping recently and I pulled out my phone to 'gram the occasion, and he said it again. Some moments shouldn't be photographed, he says. Then says he's joking. 

But I think maybe he's right. 

Maybe we're stealing the soul from things.

Maybe we're stealing the magic.

-----

I saw this article today — Bestagram: See photos capturing the single greatest moment of people's lives — and it's beautiful, really. Last photos of lives shared, triumphant moments of overcoming difficulties, Paris proposals…you get the idea. Sometimes I wonder though, are we stealing the magic? Am I? I know a gazillion posts get passed around the internet these days about what you should and shouldn't instagram, what Facebook is for, how we're all oversharing, and how we should all feel guilty about it. (Maybe not that last one, but that's usually my takeaway.)

I love sharing online. I love photographing every stupid little thing. For each photo I post on Instagram, there are probably 10 sitting in my photo library that I chose not to post. 

But then I went camping last weekend. As we drove into the heart of the Adirondacks, my signal went from 5 bars to 2 bars to a relentless "searching…". At&t couldn't be my best friend up in those treetops, and suddenly my phone was a useless piece of metal, plastic and glass. I snapped photos but most of the time, kept it tucked away in my pocket, or under the dirt-covered flannel in my pack.

And instead of trying to capture everything for a bestagram, we just lived. We hiked, camped, cooked food over campfires, told stories, played music, and 90% of it didn't end up on my iPhone. You know what I realized? It wasn't any less awesome. 

And in my memory, it now is 100% more magical.

----

I am an idealist. A romantic. I like good stories, sifted memories and beauty. I will remember proposals with snow because I have no proof otherwise. I will remember staring at the stars by campfire with the smell of pipe smoke swirling around us while music played quietly in the background because I have no other record to tell me otherwise. My memory is my greatest keepsake, and let me tell you, it's all beautiful.

Sometimes I wonder if we're stealing the soul. What if a memory is only made better because we can't remember everything? What if the memory is better because you remember your single most important life moment in rose-hues, when the reality is... some guy was smoking a cigarette, photo-bombing your single greatest moment.

----

Tonight, friends are coming for a backyard fire. I will probably take out my phone. I won't feel guilty about it. But there's a good chance that the next time I feel the magic stirring, I might put it away. Turn it off. Set it in airplane mode. Force myself to capture only a memory.

And then remember it with magic.

The Quietness, Rumi and a Stack of Books

Last night, I lit candles in my room, shut the door and grabbed the stack of books I am working through. Madeleine decided to pass out from exhaustion at 6 p.m. (because, we all know, being 4 is exhausting). I had a sudden wide open evening. A movie watched. Evening chores finished. A white blanket tucked into the hardwood sleigh bed frame was a retreat. So the books sat, each tucked with a bookmark made from scraps of paper or drawings that my daughter delivers to me all day long. Each partially read, half-consumed, some underlined, some dog-eared, maybe one uncracked completely.

How the Irish Saved Civilization
Till We Have Faces
The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats
East of Eden
The Essential Rumi

Poetry falls into my lap often lately and I don't deny it. I don't find it boring or plotless, rather it seems to help me tell the story of my own life when I seem to have lost all of the words.

I feel poetry in the mountainside and in the ice cold swimming hole water. I feel it in silent gaps of conversation, in pine cones ripped apart in our hands, in stars that hang low by quiet summer campfires.

So I work my way through each, tiny morsels of words and stories, all one giant narrative somehow interconnected in my head. This morning, I'm cracking open Rumi again. Whether he meant to or not, Rumi had a grasp on Grace and in this poem, I see grace and mercy and a reminder that "Quietness is the surest sign that you've died." I am prone to try and make myself better, and sometimes I hear the Spirit close, saying: "Be quiet. Let your old self die. Let her go. She is exhausting you with perfectionism, judgement, lists of un-met expectations and mental thrashings. She is frantically running. You have no business associating with her anymore." And by the end, I am humming Sara Groves' "You are the Sun". Taking some kind of comfort in acknowledging that I am the moon with no light of my own. Still You have made me to shine.

 

Quietness by Rumi
Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You're covered with thick cloud.
Slide out the side. Die,
and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign
that you've died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.

The speechless full moon
comes out now.

My daughter is awake by sunrise. The quiet space of my bed and stack of books tumbled into some half-open by my pillow, some on the floor, and a four-year-old suddenly appearing at my side, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

I want to flip the script, I think. I want us to be born into color daily, swinging in hammocks and resting under stars, climbing mountains and understanding more about how small we are in the beautiful and breathtaking grand scheme of things.

The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece
of straw
blown off into emptiness.
—Rumi

A Bedtime Letter to Madeleine

Kiddo,

Tonight, as I looked over at my bedside stand, I realized that it's lacking the usual parenting books that most recommend. My side table is not topped with stacks of parenting advice, surviving the little years, or anything like that.

My bedside is still poetry and fairytales. When I lay down to sleep, I feel not all unlike you.

I am full of prayers and questions and things unfinished for the day. I am a mix of kicking off blankets, asking for water and wondering why we actually pray.

Tonight you asked me why we pray before bed.

Part of me wanted to say "I don't know" because it seems like some of our prayers go unnoticed these days.

But I don't say this to you. Instead, tonight I tuck the blanket tightly around you and say that we end our day looking to the one who created us,

"He created you," I say and you smile big. "He created your hands," and I grab them in mine. "And your perfect nose," and I squeeze it once as you laugh.

"And he finished making you said, 'Wow, she's beautiful"..."

"Just as I am?" you ask.

I nod, "Just as you are."

"Wow mom." Your head goes into the pillow as you take this in.

I tell you that's why we pray. To remind ourselves that we need the God who created us to also be with us in every step. In the beginnings and in the ends. We can't do any of this life without Him, even when we think we're doing it without Him.

It is a suitable answer for you. You ask me for water one more time, and explain how that last sip is the one that really puts you at ease. I reach for the glass because I know this is true. Water is your nighttime cure. It settles you and somehow tells your body, rest now, the day is over, what's done is done. 

You are long asleep as I climb into my own bed. I looked at you once to see your perfectly formed nose nuzzled into your favorite blanket. Tonight I am not reading the 10 Steps to Training a Child. I am laying back, looking to the One who is our beginning and end and giving quiet thanks. For you, for this day. I ask and pray and surrender and rest.

I am not that unlike you my dear. I am still a child in so many ways.

My head is full of questions. My heart is full of poetry and fairytales. And I am thirsty for water.

A Good Night for Summer Gifts

I stood in the poetry section of Barnes & Noble and cried. An older couple walked by and ignored me as I quietly sniffled.

See, I can't even fully explain to you why I was moved to tears.

It was the summer solstice; the day the sun lingers the longest at the door. We say a million goodnights tonight instead of 999,999 and somehow that extra nod is the one that makes me swoon the most. Like a suitor who holds the key to your heart and turns it just enough in a smile to make you ache with the goodness of love. The height of the year, where I feel as though the seasons have reached their summit and each way we look, it's all good, lush and living. It was that night.

Everyone was abuzz about the supermoon again. I wanted to tell someone about last year,
how a few of us chased the moon far out of the city,
laid quietly on blankets
and listened to David Crowder sing about the stars.

How for a few still moments,
it was only the glow of the moon reflecting peace over our restless souls.

But I didn't. I didn't say anything. I drove to the bookstore on this supermoon-lit night and wandered the aisles, because what else is a girl to do when she still has an hour left to her babysitter? I accidentally found the poetry section, which isn't all that hard to find, but I wasn't looking.

(Like most things, when I want them, they're never found. I find them when I'm not thinking about them at all.)

Mary Oliver's name almost shouted to me, and I know you think it silly that I'd even put it that way, but if you knew how long I'd been looking everywhere for her or something like her. And I cracked the new, untouched book open, it's crisp cream colored pages letting go into hands for the first time ...and I read:

NORTH COUNTRY
In the north country now it is spring and there
is a certain celebration. The thrush
has come home. He is shy and likes the
evening best, also the hour just before
morning; in that blue and gritty light he
climbs to his branch, or smoothly
sails there. It is okay to know only
one song if it is this one. Hear it
rise and fall; the very elements of your soul
shiver nicely. What would spring be
without it? Mostly frogs. But don't worry, he

arrives, year after year, humble and obedient
and gorgeous. You listen and you know
you could live a better life than you do, be
softer, kinder. And maybe this year you will
be able to do it. Hear how his voice
rises and falls. There is no way to be
sufficiently grateful for the gifts we are
given, no way to speak the Lord's name
often enough, though we do try, and

especially now, as that dappled breast
breathes in the pines and heaven's
windows in the north country, now spring has come,
are opened wide.

I did what I promise to rarely do — buy a book brand new. We like to buy them used, beat up, pre-loved and pre-read and such. But I wanted this one new.

I told God the other night that sometimes I believe He's stingy. Now mind you, what I believe and what is true are sometimes two very different things. And I see this belief reflected in the way I parent, in the way I live and the choices I make. I don't buy very many things new. We thrift and consign and flea market, and I love making a home up of such things. But I rarely go for the top dollar. Or the best. Or the thing that would be first at home to us. (For a bunch of mixed reasons — some ethical, some frugal, some probably self-denying reasons.)

So I bought this Mary Oliver new. Because, there are long summer nights, where I'm reaching with every part of my heart for heaven and I know, deep down, that I have to believe God gives actual gifts. He's not just a needs-driven God. I realized the other night, as I lay still under the muggy summer midnight breeze, that I've come to expect God will only make my life bearable with the things I need, with limited enjoyment, limited pleasures. I've made him out to be a stingy giver — tight fisted, grumbling about excess, frowning about shiny and new. I've made him the dark underbelly of Materialism — something along the lines of an accountant for the in-the-red believer.

"There is no way to be
sufficiently grateful for the gifts we are
given, no way to speak the Lord's name
often enough, though we do try..."


"It is okay to know only one song if it is this one."

Hushed by Perelandra and Peonies

Everything in me feels hushed. Not even by my own doing, but by some giant force of quiet on my soul telling me it's time to step closer, lean in, slip off my shoes, look for the shimmer on the surface of all things. It whispers that all things fallen were at once perfect, and perhaps can be once again.

It nudges that the kind of beauty that aches and hurts and craves isn't a bad thing. C.S. Lewis wrote in Perelandra,

“Long since on Mars and more strongly since he came to Perelandra, Ransom had been perceiving that the triple distinction of truth from myth and both from fact was purely terrestrial - was part and parcel of that unhappy distinction between soul and body which resulted from the fall. Even on earth the sacraments existed as a permanent reminder that the division was neither wholesome nor final. The Incarnation had been the beginning of its disappearance. In Perelandra it would have no meaning at all.” (emphasis my own)

And it was this paragraph that made me gasp a little as I read. I remember driving to a friend's house and thinking about how it all makes sense if it's not all supposed to be disconnected.

Beauty.

The amazing.

The unimaginable.

The fairytales and folklore.

The hunger for love and goodness, happy ever after and an untouchable world.

It's all just a giant looking glass into a world that exists just past the edge of the horizon. A shadow behind the sheen. A silhouette behind the veil. 

Just beyond the gray-washed cloak of this post-Eden world.

The kingdom of God is not a far off place. The division was neither wholesome nor final.

All of these things aren't the end all. The end is not the beauty. The beauty is the beginning of where there is no end. I don't want to receive Grace and hide it away. Grace is not the end. Grace is the birth to all of the things that we once counted as lost. 

So then, in light of all this, I feel hushed. And quieted. 

I wonder if everything good in my life is a shimmer of all the things that are actually good, or meant to be good, or will be good.

That all winds of love and joy here are small tastes of what is complete in God. From the clip of a peony, to the sweetest kiss of love from my daughter, in rainstorms and early camp mornings, coffee and poetry, art and down comforters, long tree-covered walks and gentle words of forgiveness. And even the pain. The hurt. The hard tears, the disappointments, the shell-shocked moments. All pointing to a sheer veil that will be lifted.

Soon, I pray. Lift soon. 

I tell my sister that I don't know how, or if it's even possible, to live in such a manner that all is a reflection of God and his goodness, his abundance, his faithfulness to the end. I don't know how to do it, when I'm annoyed that the floors aren't swept, or dishes aren't done, or whining is the only language my daughter knows how to speak.

How do I speak a language of another world within a world that feels so utterly disconnected and broken from how things should be? This grace, this hush — it's tethered to my soul and keeps pulling me back. At dawn. At dusk. Grace is rich and speaks quiet and a curtain twists slowly in the breeze, and I know it's so close and here. 

Metaphors, the Rat Race, and Slow Showers

It was another morning on the beach. Another day of nearly 12 successive walks on the beach. Sand, shore, shells. Run, chase, walk, breathe. We stomped through shallow pools while the high tide pulled the ocean away from below our feet, and I considered every beautiful analogy the ocean offered.

Everything, great and small, points to Him, to beauty, to imagination. Stories are in every element of creation and nature, and if I'm tuning in, I feel like I see and hear them all.

And instead of feeling the usual overwhelming sense of gratitude toward the great analogy played out around us, I was irritated.

I was annoyed that the ocean was so big, and I was so small. I was annoyed that I looked at shells and saw my heart. I was angry that watching my daughter chase birds made me think more about a blog entry instead of her.

I am prone to always dig below the surface in my own life. Sometimes this is beauty. Sometimes it's distraction. I admit, there are times I end up extracting another meaning out of a situation simply because I am unable, unwilling or too bored to experience what is actually happening.

I wonder how different my words and relationships would be if I stopped viewing all things through the spin of my wild mind.

On that beach, while my daughter chased birds, I told myself to forget about the extra meanings and possible metaphors. I actually shook my head and closed my eyes and told myself to listen, and breathe, and then watch and experience.

Extracting is good. Mining for the deep things is a hard and necessary work. Sometimes I need to look at the world around me and realize that God is still speaking through the work of His hands. I want to notice how interwoven and connected everything is.

And sometimes I want to just get dirty feet, feel the heat of the sun and notice how my daughter's curls form perfectly on her shoulders on a humid April afternoon. I need days full of her crinkled nose and storytelling. I need to pay more attention to the words I say to her instead of the words I'm writing inside. It's all happening so fast, I think. While I'm mentally adding and erasing metaphors, I'm accidentally erasing myself from my own story. Those little things? The things that are happening in front of me? These are the joys I am tucking into my pocket and remembering these days.

-----

This morning, I woke up racing. For no good reason. I jumped out of bed, started the routine like an internal alarm was constantly ringing, constantly telling me I was behind schedule. Which I wasn't, but I felt it.

And in the shower, I furiously scrubbed my head and felt my heart pumping in my throat. A list began in my head, and prayers spilled out of my lips until I sensed one thing.

STOP.

I whispered it to myself and let the hot water run. I breathed. I slowed.

----

I'm exhausted from exhausting myself. Yesterday Emily Maynard tweeted this:

"If we want to live a wholehearted life, we have to cultivate sleep and play, and let go of exhaustion as a status symbol." - @brenebrown

— Emily Maynard (@emelina) April 30, 2013

I wanted to shout yes! And then wrote it down in about three places. And retweeted it. And then told myself to chill out.

Because internally, I'm a mess. I'm racing. Running. Writing. Noting. Observing. Calculating. Adding. Praying. Begging. Shouting. Crying. Dying. Listing. Working.

And I'm exhausted of it all. That is not the person I want to be. That's not how I want my daughter to remember me: a mother who was never at peace until she was laid to rest.

----

So today, I'm recalling the beach. I'm looking at a long list and just taking another breath. I'm doing the next thing, and then doodling in the margins. Internal conversations sound a whole lot more Gospel & Jesus-centered, and less me-centered. Not because I'm a good Christian, because that's hardly the truth. Rather because I need to center my life around something unmoveable, unshakeable and un-Andrea-metaphorical.  I need the center spoke of my life to be made of wood and grace, not my sweat and fears.

Yes, I need to pay the bills, continue writing, be a mother, finish work, wash the dishes, and so on. But the condition of my heart does not need to reflection the chaos of my hands. 

Let the checkered flags be wrapped up and stowed away. I was not tapped to run in this rat race.

The Hollow Beginning of Spring

It's a cold Tuesday for the 9th of April. I tell myself this because surely it should be warmer by now. So I'm saying 50 degrees is chilly, and the tiny purple flowers wilted overnight, so that's some kind of proof.

I have just dropped the car off at the auto shop. Men in blue jeans and oil stained blue jackets smile at me as I hand the keys over. Places like this always remind me of a garage I imagine a grandfather would have. One old calendar stained with grease, one sign that says "This too shall pass" and another that hangs crooked with some sentiment of days gone by and good cars gone bad.

The city stroll provides the constant hum of traffic, rain-soaked sidewalks and the hint of spring everywhere I turn. Landscapers have already started work on this avenue's mansions. Collections of leaves leftover from the fall, tree branches that did not last the winter, scattered everywhere. I'm left to dodge them and step around the things that are dead and are now gathered into piles. (When I was a kid, these were burn piles. And we'd gather around them on spring and summer nights, on evenings after an afternoon of clearing the yard and underbrush. My father would light up a cigar to keep watch, we'd call it a bonfire and smell the old, smoking wood. We'd toss in anything that was garbage-worthy and watch how fire destroyed most things. But, here, I digress.)

With my hands in my pockets and music stirring my heart, I can only think of Pride and Prejudice. Or the old motherland. Or New York City. Places and eras where walking was and is so standard, that any other option seems lazy, too time consuming, or just completely unnecessary and inconvenient.

My boots are splashing, and I feel my cheeks warming red to the crisp breeze. And I think of Mr. Darcy and Lizzy, and this:

"I am afraid, Mr. Darcy," observed Miss Bingley, in a half-whisper, "that this adventure has rather affected your admiration of her fine eyes."
"Not at all," he replied; "they were brightened by the exercise.

And maybe you're reading all of this and wondering,

Why on earth is she writing about walking,

and wilting flowers,

and greasy auto shops

and city streets?

I find that the quiet space between the Father and I seems more frequent than I wish. It's not as though I don't hear Him still, but I find that more often than not, my heart is pushing and pulling against Him daily. Last week at church we heard how the work of Grace can feel cyclical. How there's a cycle of death and resurrection. How there are valleys and peaks, and that each is part of this greater revelation of Grace.

So for me on days when I feel I am still meandering in darker valleys,

or when I'm not convinced that all that is supposed to be dead within me has actually breathed its last,

or on days when I find God shouting to me from wilting flowers, dead winter branches,

and through grandfather-like signs on dusty blue auto shop walls,

I want to tell you.

I want to tell you that it's not all poetic reflections by twilight,
or words from my daughter that echo in my soul.

Somedays she tells me I'm the worst mother ever,
and I'm left searching for the Grace of God that meets me in rainy walks and iPod songs.

So today I'm stepping into that hollow silence,

and whispering that

even I feel nothing,

I am still, even now, even always, 

complete in Christ.
Even if nothing else pans out, 

that truth has, and is, and will.

The Mud and the Mess

These days I'm bringing hydrangeas and ranunculus into our home. They sit white and clean, stark contrasts to the dead and brown that is melting and breaking outside. We are waiting for spring on our tiptoes, children peering out the windows, craning our necks to see what is coming our way.

Daily, I know it's coming. It's at my fingertips. Muddy and smelling of old man winter and young girl spring, I'm cleaning our boots of it, and opening the windows on these nearly 50 degree days. The air is fresh, and the night  is cold, but we lay awake by longer daylight and give thanks.

I know spring is coming. I know it.

I know it because I know that life always comes after death. It's a humbling, beautiful circle. 

I know this just as I know that winter is necessary.

I know in spite of the 39 degrees forecasted on my phone, 

warmth is melting the thick lake ice. 

It's breaking the hard ground, the crocuses are breathing, 

and the sun is hot on my cheeks under the afternoon rays.

There is no doubt. Spring is coming.

And I absolutely love that Easter falls right in the middle of this messy, muddy, ripe with life season. I love that the greatest story that my soul will sing forever falls right now.

I look everywhere and I'm reminded...

that something had to die in order that something might live.

What looks bleak and hopeless is just hiding new life, already coursing through veins, just there, under the cover of death.

Winter covered, and everything quieted, and for months it seemed, the whole sky went dark. And we know it's necessary. And we bow our heads against the biting winds and say, "This is how it must be."

Because we always know that the thaw is coming. We always know that just beyond the clouds and the gray and the biting, that the sun is getting closer. We will not shake angry fists at a bitter tempest for the rest of the year, because under all this mess is what is being made new.

And I want it all to be new. This city. These streets. The lilac bushes and empty garden beds and low hanging branches.

And yes, here. In our home. In our hearts. In our bedtime prayers and at dawn when we're whispering good morning over coffee and bowls of cereal. To be made new. 

And right at Easter, I feel it.

That the cross, the death, the mess and the covering of mess and the dark sky. It was necessary. That a sky darkened, and all of creation groaned for the new to come.  Because in three days, the hands that were dead and lifeless twitched with life coursing through them. And under cover of darkness, Jesus was already redeeming the messy and muddy. Good Friday must happen so that Sunday morning we can lift our heads against the bitter tempest and say, "The Spring has come."

A Whirlwind Update:

Oh man.

Can you just take a deep breath with me? Because sometimes, even when it's crazy and busy, stepping back to breathe is good. I get wrapped up in the mayhem easily, it's true. I lose track of time and things that matter, and it can all feel really overwhelming.

But I realized it's been weeks since I've written here, a place I really love to settle into. I've neglected the posts of lists, and I've gone silent on a few topics, but that's not forever. It's just a "for right now" thing and for right now, I'm ready to tell you about some of this.

SO, some updates for you (my totally awesome friends and readers and fellow lovers of all beauty and spring and red-breasted birds that flit by open windows) —

:: I was invited to participate in the Deeper Story community via design and writing. If you haven't checked out this community of fellow writers, thinkers, strugglers and sojourners, be sure to visit them (us?!) soon. Between their avenues of Deeper Story, Deeper Church and Deeper Family, tough issues are being tackled, theology wrestled with, brokenness healed, scars revealed, and all around, love feels pretty abundant. I'll be creating monthly printables for their site, and this Friday, the first part of my story goes live with them.

*deep breath*

You guys, I'm scared. But it's good. But I'm scared.
So, join me there, won't you?

:: This girl. Just. I'm amazed by her. Every day. (Little girl, if you read this by chance in 20 years, I mean every word. You stun me with grace and love and joy every.single.day.)

My sweet girl is starting Kindergarten in the fall. I feel the whirlwind of decision making. Choosing a school, the best place to live, a plan for the summer, you name it. It might account for some of my silence lately. When I have time to sit and think, I'm not thinking about words and depth. I'm thinking about addresses and packing up this apartment again.

:: The Organic Bird continues to grow and I'm so incredibly thankful for all of you who continue to support what I do, spread the word, send work my way, share my facebook posts, etc. In the past month or two, we launched a site & brand for Mabel & Riv, I designed an ebook for The Seed Company, a few of my designs have been turned into tattoos (totally random but awesome), and I launched a new website for a beautiful store in my childhood hometown (The Apple Barrel). If I could hand out bags of chocolate and bottles of the best Irish liqueur to all of you, I would. I would give a breathless thank you, and probably tear up a little bit, and just hold your hand really, really tight. Because, really, this journey of designing and writing and building this little nest has been extra amazing because of all of you.

Ok, I'll stop being mushy now.

:: And on a final note, my awesome 19 year old niece moved in with me while she goes to college locally. We've been making some fun videos — like this:
::

In the rest of my freetime, we're talking about spring plans, trips with friends, vacation with family, moving, festivals, church stuff, crafts, cooking, you name it.

I feel breathless, and sometimes really, really tired.
Sometimes weary. Sometimes hopeful.
But mostly grateful.