You are one person.

One person with finite abilities.
One person with specific needs.
One person who should only take on one person’s responsibilities.

A mother needs time to be motherly.
A wife needs time to be wifely.
A worker needs time to accomplish her work.
A human being needs time to just be.
…to be quiet.
…to think.
…to dream.
…to plan.
…to refresh.

In this age of quick news, good and bad both happen fast. The good things make you want to cheer, to praise, to give money, to give attention. But you are one person, and you cannot cheer every good thing. One finite person needs to do one thing, need to trust that others will pick up the cheering, the praising, the fundraising, the attention-getting.

Since you are one person, you cannot do all the things.
You should not do all the things.
You are enough,
simply being you,
cheering when you can,
supporting when you can,
and spending your evenings being quiet,
breathing,
being,
thinking,
and dreaming.

As a kid I moved around quite a bit. My family shifted around the country as my dad responded to job offers, and we landed in Lincoln, Nebraska, just in time for me to start junior high. So much of who I am and how I view the world has been shaped by these moves. I honed my skills of empathy as a I grew, in large part because I was often the new girl in the classroom. I began to read people more clearly, to figure out who they were and who I was in comparison (which, yes, has a downside as well!). I also developed a nice acquaintance with cities and geographies across the United States.

Aside from one year on Lookout Mountain and three more in St. Louis during my college years, I’ve remained in Lincoln for the rest of my life. For so many years we were the ones who left for new adventures, but for much of my adult life, I’ve become the one who stayed. Eventually I even moved back into the zip code of my teen years—which really threw me for a loop. The longest house I ever lived in was the first one I shared with Jeremy, though I bet we’ll break that record with our current address.

I’ve stayed.

And others, dear to me, have left.

The grief connected to others leaving is a slow-burn kind of grief. My life doesn’t change drastically when a loved one departs Lincoln. My little family unit remains stable. Our address, occupation, schools, and church stay constant. Meanwhile the friends are dealing with a tumult of changes, some that go quickly and others that move slowly. Perhaps it’s a bad job situation, or even a long interview process that leads to a job offer. With some girlfriends I’ve spent years praying for God to reveal the next step. The sadness in my heart is a delayed one, like a knife cutting painfully slow. There’s not much to cry about at first, there’s just the day after day of it all—the long unveiling of future plans. Houses get sold. Moving trucks are filled. And then there’s simply an empty hole where an entire family used to be. But I keep driving my kid to the same school—now minus a beloved friend—and on Sundays we keep showing up to the same place of worship—minus a beloved friend.

I often text or email or message with the words, “I miss you,” but surely that gets tiresome to the ones who have moved on. My sentiment is 100% true, but I wonder if they don’t know what to say to it anymore. Do they feel responsible for the missing part? Are they so busy trying to create a new life in a new city that dwelling on us left behind feels exhausting? I suspect yes on both counts. But even saying “I miss you” doesn’t feel like enough. The bonds we’ve created together have to become elastic in order for us both to survive. Time will tell whether the friendship will be sustained long-distance or whether it’s best to let the other move on to other relationships that inevitably require time and energy.

I am not the kind to easily let these bonds go.

I miss our friends with an intensity that sometimes surprises me. After years of finding comfort in these relationships, I often feel like a boat cut loose from the dock, only without purpose and direction for awhile. The friend who was quick and witty, direct with her words and love, who could handle my worst at any moment of any day has moved away. The one whose heart matched mine and had a gift for affirming others has gone on to bless a different community. The one who mentored me during the hardest years of life has left, and the one who nurtured my early marriage and raised babies alongside me now lives states away. More dear ones are moving on to new adventures very soon, and their departures leave another hole in our world.

As much as I grieve these losses and as much as I hate to say goodbye to these incredible people, my rational mind knows that the goodness in their characters is being spread much like dandelion’s seeds that blow in the wind. Wherever they go they will find new people and they will bless them amazingly. It helps to believe in a sovereign God who actually cares about the movements of our days. Though I feel terrible being left behind, I know that God has called them to new locations to do new things. And you know what? He has planted me here, to do things both new and old. I know that God cares for His children and allows these hard times to grow and stretch us, to make us more like Himself, to cause us to depend on Christ. So while my friends depend on Him as they start new adventures, I can cry and still depend on Him right here in Lincoln, Nebraska. He is doing a new thing… and sometimes staying steadfast and relying on Him is one of the hardest things to do.

It’s become more common to see pictures of adorable infants surrounded by their mama’s IVF needles. Really, it’s very artistic and creative, and in the middle is the glorious result of all the pokes and aches women have faced in order to produce a snuggly babe. These pics? Yeah… they’re a little different. If I had saved all the syringes since my diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis some 14 years ago it might equal a small mountain. And what do I put in the middle of the picture? An image of me walking down some stairs or putting away the dishes? Ha! Not quite as charming. I am a work in progress though, and I am not ashamed of the medication that keeps my joints functioning. None of us are promised easy lives, and what you see above is a bit of my burden and how art can be found in anything—even images of syringes without a chunky cherub amongst them.

I don’t know why God gave me the eyes that he did. I see loveliness in the most ordinary of places and get caught up in the way the light flickers over a t-shirt, the way a tulip curves beyond it’s vase, the way glassware drying next to the sink gleams. I have an eye for the beauty in ordinary life, and that’s oftentimes what you’ll see represented on my blog.

While I want to be great and accomplish something incredible and make a book someone wants to read, I wonder if my life will instead look a bit like the gleaming glasses next to my sink. Very ordinary most every day, but, hopefully, extraordinary for the people I’m closest to. Perhaps my legacy will be the little bits of myself ordinary self that I’ve given to Jeremy and to Livia, to my family and to my church family. Whatever happens long after I’m gone, I know there will be a large number of files on this computer that show off the sweetness found in the ordinary. Because I think, many times, that the ordinary is actually extraordinary.

Case in point: salad in a jar. I made them yesterday with wonderful people from church, and this week I shall eat them. I think they’re lovely.

When she was little we practiced pew-sitting. We realized that it was a rare occasion that our squirrelly little one had to sit still next to us, and so we literally practiced on the 8-foot pew—picked up somewhere along my parents’ many moves across the country—now taking up space in our dining room.

When Livia was three each Sunday felt like a little bit of a crisis for me as a stay-at-home mom eager to receive rest and rejuvenation. Our church tragically burned down that summer, and I remember writing our pastors an email and begging for children’s church to be reinstated, you know, for the single moms who really needed a break (and me, PLEASE!). God bless those people who love crazy three year olds; for me it was, let’s say, a challenging time.

As it turns out, our daughter didn’t stay three forever. She grew in stature and in maturity, and sitting at church became easier and easier. We moved from those days of goldfish snacks and soft-sided toys to crayons and books, and then to listening fully to the sermon and participating in the service.

I will say this for church: it is one of my favorite spots of the week. There are myriad of spiritual reasons why I need church—why anyone does—and that is to get my heart re-routed to what God says is important. I have the memory of a gnat and forget day-to-day, if not moment-to-moment, who I am and Who God is. Worship on Sunday becomes a “reset” button for the rest of my week. But I’ve found a delightfully unexpected joy in the regular act of church worship, and it is the quiet action of sitting with my family, hearing God’s word.

Every Sunday we go to church. It’s what we do. In the early days of our marriage, Jeremy and I had lengthy discussions about why we went to church, and interestingly enough, our strong-headed natures (which caused lots of fireworks the first two years) kept us faithfully attending church. We were students, which meant we were really tired and always behind in some sort of classwork, but when one partner was lazy the other wasn’t. We went to church. That same stubborn determination continued when we had kids, only it was remarkably easy to make it to church for a period of years as we had moved to the same city block as our home church. It just gets embarrassing when you sleep through a service instead of rolling out of bed and down the block with the other parishioners.

So now we are in church every week because we need it. Because we love it. Because God does something different there when His children are gathered to worship Him. Because our souls get fed the spiritual food they crave. And because we are loved well by that rag-tag group of human beings, from every walk of life it seems, gathered together under one roof because we are each other’s family in Christ.

In the pew at Redeemer my little family is focused on the same topic for 90 minutes each week. The Holy Spirit moves in us differently, and we welcome the work He is doing. I get to reach out on one side and hold my husband’s arm. I can reach out on the other and pull my daughter to my side while singing choruses. (Note: she’s now moving farther and farther away from me in the pew. Y’all behind me can watch the Progression of the Teen Independence these next few years. Get yo popcorn.) We are a family, and we go to church together. I am not in control of Livia’s thoughts about church, and the way she’ll interact with God and His people in the future is not up to me. But I hope the truths she finds in our church—and in our home—will carry her forward in this life until she meets the Lord face to face.

Marriage is hard. Let’s not pretend it’s a basketful of fuzzy kittens all the time. What happens when two very different people with their own preferences, visions, agendas, joys, personalities share a life? Sometimes it’s fireworks—both the scary and the pretty kind—and sometimes it’s drudgery. Usually it involves self-sacrifice. And many many times it is beauty and friendship and camaraderie that only comes after hard-fought battles. Why are the good things in life the ones we must fight for? The ones we must work hardest for? I’m not sure, but I do know that the sweetness of my union with this guy wouldn’t happen without a million “I love you’s” and another million “I’m sorry’s.” True love isn’t cheap, my friends, but it is absolutely worth the work. That falling-in-love stage lasts a hot minute, and the rest, the deeply good stuff, comes via grace. Grace given and grace received. Over and over and over again.

I peeled a post-it note off my bathroom mirror yesterday with more than a fair bit of sadness. Something I had been praying for, with great hope and expectation, did not happen. The friend’s name, in heavy Sharpie, and the request we had laid before God day in, day out, was a solid “no.” As I crumpled the little paper and threw it away I realized that “no” is an actual answer. And it threw me for a loop. All this time we had been praying for a “yes” and that’s a good and right thing to pray.

In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly. Psalm 5:3

It’s right to ask God for favor and to lay our hopes before Him. But the way I crumpled the post-it, the feeling I had in my heart was, Oh no, He didn’t answer this prayer. The reality is far different, however, and it’s one that I have to accept as an answer—though with different feeling. He answered, and right now the answer is “no.”

It’s hard to ask for our heart’s desires, to want those “yes’s” and to hear solid “no’s.” It doesn’t mean the prayer will never be answered the way we want it to, but it also doesn’t mean the post-it should be crumpled and chucked and the issue forgotten. I should have left it up on the mirror, and I should keep praying for my heart’s desire for this particular person. God alters hearts as well as everything else, not one area of this world functions apart from His control.

In the Lord’s hand the king’s heart is a stream of water that he channels toward all who please him. Proverbs 21:1

The Lord does whatever pleases him, in the heavens and on the earth, in the seas and all their depths. Psalm 135:6

The post-its are an idea stolen from a friend who is a faithful pray-er, and I want to be faithful in that arena in 2018 as well. I want to remember the needs of my friends and to hold them up to our Sovereign God on their behalf. My faith in God means that I trust His word, and His word tells me that He hears our cries.

The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:17-18

A new post-it will go up today, and that friend’s name will be recorded once more so my short memory and easily-distracted eyes will not forget her plight. We look for favor from the LORD, for the “yes” that brings joy, and until then we trust that God sees her need and will comfort and guide her in the “no.”

Running late to a doctor’s appointment, I still had a folder’s worth of new patient information to fill out. A personality quirk of mine is that I enjoy filling out forms, so I was buzzing along at a breakneck pace, answering questions that had obvious answers, until I hit the one that always throws me for a loop. Occupation. My pen hovered above the form, hesitant at even knowing the correct answer. Birthdate, spouse, medication amounts. Those things all have concrete answers, but this one? What did I feel like saying today?

Photographer. No, I’ve reduced my photography work back to the very infrequent photoshoot and am now shooting for the sheer pleasure of it because…

Student. Is taking one class per semester a reason to fill in the blank with this word? I mean, it is a graduate program so it takes up a substantial part of my thinking power each day, but no, this doesn’t work…

Writer. Nah. Writing, too, is now simply for fun. Or for school. But it’s not a paid endeavor. Hmm, are there any paid endeavors for me right now? No, I actually pay people to teach me stuff.

Church volunteer. Probably the truest description of my days, but it feels awfully weird to put that on a form for the doctor’s office.

SAHM.

Those four little letters put together do not make me feel awesome about life if I am honest. When I am dropping off a 7th grader for a large portion of the day, dare I call myself a Stay At Home Mom? It brings to mind bon bons and The Price is Right. Being a woman of leisure who buys only the cutest in athletic clothing, but rarely uses it to work out. It’s perusing Target more times than makes sense, being a lady who lunches, taking luxurious naps after all that exhausting work of shopping and eating.

Uh, wait a minute. I do take naps. Scratch that last one. I also really enjoy lunches. And Target. Okay, whatever.

My fight with the SAHM term is a real one because I find it to be reductionistic. The only word I really love out of the four is “mom.” I’m not really a “stay at home” person and now that I think of it, I might be a very strong-willed adult because, DON’T TELL ME TO STAY AT HOME THANKYOUVERYMUCH. Still, I feel like it reduces me to something I am not, to less than what I aspire to, to less than what I actually do and produce each day. So I will take back the SAHM label and explain a few things about it.

Choosing to stay at home with Livia when she arrived was the greatest pleasure in terms of choices. Before she came, I dreamed of becoming a mother and I was dreamy about what my life might look like as a parent. I could not wait for the gift of a child, and I anticipated our adventures with excitement. It was absolutely what I wanted to do with my life and I was eager to quit working in order to be home full time. Though real life was a thousand times harder than my idealistic dreams, every time I considered going back into paid employment I reaffirmed my desire to parent Livia instead. I felt completely confident in my choice to feed her each meal of her day, to be the one to hold her hands while she learned to walk, to listen to her babbles and then words and then lengthy conversations. It wasn’t that my job was easy—no, the monotonous “at home” work of baby-rearing can be brain-numbing at times and then utterly exhausting at others. Rather, it’s what I wanted to do. I did not want for Livia to spend much time in a daycare; I wanted to be the adult around her for a majority of her waking hours.

The truth is this: I still want to be the adult around her for the majority of her waking hours.

For numerous reasons, it’s important that Livia is educated by other adults, but when she is not at school, I still want to be the person closest to her. I can feel the years squeezing away from us now. Everyone has said these teenage years fly by, and so far they are right. I feel hugely sentimental about my time with Livia—at least when I’m reflecting upon it while she’s away from me. It’s easy to feel the warmth of parenting when we’re in good moments—reading together, cuddling, talking talking talking, driving around town—and much harder when we rub up against personality differences or hard, stressful days. But still, I choose this kid. I’ve got one kid, and that one is enormously special to me.

So there it is. My pen hovers over the line, I curse the way “occupation” hitches me up, and then I quickly scribble “SAHM” and this time I think I threw in a “/student” to make me feel better about the direction of my life. Will anyone at the office even care who or what I am? Will their eyes rest on that line for more than 2 seconds before moving on to type insurance information into their desktop computer? I doubt it. My existential crisis means nothing to them, and so much to me.

I stepped outside to my back deck this morning to soak up some sunshine and warm up from the air conditioning inside. It’s my private little oasis, a bit of a secret garden now as our Rose of Sharon bushes have lost their minds and grown into gargantuan shapes. They are blooming—fabulous purple trumpets open up into pink blooms that feed everything from bumblebees to hummingbirds to hummingbird moths. The roses—hibiscus really—cover one corner and a healthy green maple towers over me on the other side. In between are succulents and cherry tomatoes, sedum and a butterfly bush and a few pots of herbs. And in between those items are WEBS. It is spider season, my friends, and I was only slightly ashamed of letting my small dog take down the first few for me with his clueless waltz onto the deck. I left the webs alone that were situated in corners away from my seat in the sun. From my viewpoint I watched them in the spiders in their homes, now a bit more wobbly in the morning, and hoped they’d catch all manner of little critters. All around me buzzed this incredible world. My deck. My sweet oasis in the sun. Though I’ve just returned from a lodge with a fabulous long deck overlooking apple trees and a deeply shaded wood, I have this privilege of coming home to a vibrant scene all my own.

There’s not a thing around us that wasn’t made, fashioned, orchestrated by our Creator God. From the spider’s ability to build intricate webs to the unfolding of the tiny flowers that face the sun on my front steps, creation has been designed by God. He put all the scientific forces into play, and when I open my eyes and really look, I see how fabulous this world is. What’s even more stunning to me is that God made human beings and that he considers them more important than these little bits of flora and fauna I’ve been enjoying this morning.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the starts, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
You have made them a little lower than the angels
and crowned them with glory and honor.
You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
you put everything under their feet:
all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild,
the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas. 
Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
– from Psalm 8

A group of teens from church just returned from a trip to Guatemala. And though I’m sure they were surrounded by impressive scenery on their travels, they left the comforts of home for people, for the LOVE of people. God honors this work and wants us pouring out our lives for people. If he esteemed us so much, crowning us with honor and glory simply because we’re made in His image, then surely we need to mimic that. We need to care. On Sunday I was so impressed by the hearts of the girls who shared their thoughts about the Guatemala trip. Sure, this was their mountaintop experience (something many of us growing up in the church experienced after going to youth camps) but it was a significant one because God taught them something through it all. He graciously showed him how much He loves his people and that it’s worth giving up your money, your time, your security to care for others.

Just as there are women, men, and children in Guatemala who reflect the character of God, they are also here in Lincoln, Nebraska. They are in your town. As wealthy as we are here in America, we cannot be blinded to the hungry, the hurting, the lonely, the sick. If you’re a Christian, then you are called to love your brothers and sisters wherever God has placed you. Never be lulled into thinking that everyone around you is fine, that everyone in your city is fed, clothed, and nourished. It’s our job to care for others. Let’s continue to see people as the glorious creatures they are—creatures made in the image of God and esteemed by Him. Continue working for their good and by doing so you serve God.

I composed the rant in my head as I drove through the rain-splattered streets of Lincoln this morning. I AM OFFENDED, I wanted to cry. I am tired of being offended! And to let you all know just how strongly I feel on the topic, I was prepared to write a post explaining my position and drawing a line in the sand so you know precisely where I stand on this VERY crucial subject of… essential oils. Oh yes, I had a title and everything: The Luxury of Essential Oils.

But then more happened. The ache I’ve been feeling in my soul—the restlessness, the sadness, the weight and burden—was comforted as I listened to my very own words that I gave to a friend yesterday: Read Job.

I’ve read Job before. I have various themes—important ones—in mind and I cherish the book. But you see, the word of God is active. As stagnant as we know books to be, the Bible is not that book. It’s alive and powerful, it has the ability to cut right through your spirit and bring godly truths to mind. What was true when it was written so many years ago is still true now. You have to have spiritual eyes to see the spiritual truths, but if you are listening, the word of God will always speak. And it did so this morning.

I opened the pages of my Bible to Job and the scene was laid before me. You’ve got Job and his wife and all his children right there on earth and they all really enjoyed one another. They feasted and celebrated. Job’s sons and daughters and families liked to be together, to drink wine and spend time in each other’s presence. Life was good, the family was prosperous. Happy times. And then you’ve got another scene presented, only this one is in the heavenly realms. The curtains are pulled back on a picture we humans are simply not privy to and it kind of astounded me. (Sidenote: our daughter has had unsavory dreams lately, so we’ve been talking a lot about the spiritual realm over the last few days. Do ghosts exist as we think of them? I’m not sure, but I do know that angels and demons are at play all the time; this the bible is quite clear about. Followers of Jesus are on the winning side ultimately, but there is always a spiritual battle waging around us.) As it turns out, angels have meetings with God! WHAT. I don’t know if these are like your once-a-week staff meetings or if it’s more like a yearly gathering of the angelic army, but it happens. In Job we’re told it happens. And what’s even crazier is that Satan can just show up. So he does. He shows up and he talks with God in his conniving destructive way. But it’s important to know that Satan is bound by God, ruled by God’s authority, and it’s only by God’s permission that Satan can do any work whatsoever.

Satan is allowed to attack Job. And within a few verses Job is reduced to a mess of a man. He has lost all his wealth. His children have perished. His body is covered, head to toe, with sores and his soul is in utter despair.

He does not curse God.

Instead he worships. He is facedown in the dirt, reduced to mere shreds of the life he enjoyed moments before, and he blesses the name of the Lord.

The book continues and is an utterly fascinating tale of beloved friends with misguided words, Job’s grief and despair, and the God who sustains life from the first of days to the last. It’s a book worthy of your time.

So… essential oils? Well, I’ve lost my fire on the topic. But here is what I long for, friends. I long for the ability to dialogue about things we might feel strongly convicted about. As I walk into Job’s life and start seeing what God allowed to happen to him, and as I begin to read the kind-but-dead-wrong words of his friends, I think it’s important that we listen to one another’s stories. We need more of that, don’t we? When a sister is struggling, will you simply sit silently with her in the ashes for a week as Job’s friend’s did? When she says she’s in pain—emotional or physical—will you hold off from recommending an oil to cure her ills? Will you pause and simply hear what’s going on and will you pray for her?

Today we are so quick to judge. We’re so quick to want to proclaim ourselves as Remedies, Healers, and Wizards. We’re sure that we know the right candidate, the right health care options, and the right oils to make that pain go away. We’re fast to make assumptions. We know for sure that guy reached for the gun instead of holding his hands up. We’re the Judge and the Jury. We’re so wise that we’re the Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches wrapped into one.

Or maybe not.

Last night before bed I jabbed two needles into my thighs and administered a drug I hope will allow me to walk without too much discomfort. Will you sit with me in my story? Will you come watch and see what God is doing with me and will you encourage me to proclaim “blessed be the Lord”? I hope so. And I hope I will come sit with you as you swath yourself with lemon oil and perhaps touch your toes with a poultice made from healing herbs in your back garden. Let’s sit together. Let’s love one another and sit together and praise God with whatever strength we can muster.