Of Garden Roses and Name Changes

I spend all morning at the social security office and at the DMV(s). I go armed with a Texas driver's license, a passport, a birth certificate, a marriage license, two proofs of residency, forms filled out, and find, once again, bureaucracy is all about that inconvenience. A name change is all I get after several hours in lines and in traffic. (Tell me again why they don't put all of the DMV services in just one building?) A whole day off feels thwarted when I finally get home, plus I'd forgotten to drink coffee in the morning. I slump in our estate sale chair and sulk silently to myself: nothing about this season feels like it's easy. The first three months of our relationship, pre-marriage, were brimming over with blessing, but also ease, in some ways. God just felt so faithful and so surprisingly good around every corner. But the last three months—post marriage, post move, post new church/job/community/city—sometimes I wake up in the morning and want to bury my head back in the pillow. It's all so much new.

I tell a friend today I've finally decided to give myself a year to acclimate. If, after a year, I can feel like myself in just one of these new identities, I will consider it a win.

I make coffee, open a cookbook, and get under a blanket to read. Something about food and traditions makes me feel like everything is going to be okay. Our daily rituals together: French press in the mornings, breakfasts of eggs (three for him, two for me) and sweet potato hash, some sort of fruit and greens, sometimes bible reading, and then again at night, slicing vegetables, browning meat, setting the table, lighting the candles. These are the times I feel most myself, and most like someday all of this new and foreign will feel as comforting as the sliced cherry tomato on the wooden cutting board or the amount of time I know it takes to make a perfect steak on the cast iron. These are rudimentary things, but sometimes it is the comfort of the small things.

I page through the cookbook and find a garden rose in it from six months ago, when he first brought me flowers he picked from his garden. They were in a short Mason jar and I knew I would love him forever then. Has it really been six months? Forever is such a very short time and such a long time too.

I know these months of transition are only months, and soon a year, five years, ten will have passed before I know it. I want to slow time sometimes, still it, just to remember, but I also want to speed time, run through it, because it is so hard. We miss our friends and our community, the people who love us best. We miss laughing hard and loud and deep and long, and beers out on the back porch. We miss being known. We are our best friends and favorite persons, but we miss who we are when it's not just us.

Today my name changed from Lore Ann Ferguson to Lore Ann Wilbert and he came and sat down beside me on the estate sale chair: "Thank you for taking my name," he said, and I said, "Of course, what other name would I ever want to take?" And it occurs to me that a name change is a very small thing that takes a very long time to grow accustomed to. So too with life here, I suppose. What is a new address? Nothing, really, but also it is everything too.

Old Houses, Bach, and an Unfinished Marriage

"Crosswicks is a typical New England farmhouse, built sometime in the middle of the eighteenth century, so it is well over two-hundred years old. Its square central section has been added to haphazardly over the years, white clapboard somehow tying it all together, so that the house rambles pleasantly and crookedly. A dropped ball will roll right to the central chimneys, and the bookcases we've build in are masterpieces of non-alignment." Madeleine L'Engle, A Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage

Madeleine might as well have been talking about our house. One of the oldest Denver proper houses built here, a farm that shrunk and squished until the the past fifty years, when new bungalows and cottages grew as the new farmland crop. Our bookcases lean slightly awaiting the carpentry that will fit them snugly into the next hundred years, I hope. No floor is level, no window the same. But we, like Madeleine, make a home here, fitting ourselves into a thing never finished.

Marriage, too, is a thing unfinished. Brimming with unresolved beauty, always coming round corners to find pleasant surprises, or more corners, but never finished.

I have never deluded myself into thinking marriage would bring all the resolve I longed for or the culmination of all joy. I have been the product of a broken marriage and understand the fragility of two sinners in close quarters till death them do part. Marriage has always been seen as another long walk hand in hand in the same direction, same as any other holy thing. But it is the constant unfinishedness of marriage that surprises me. The same conversations with small changes. We grow, we mature, we lean in to one another, we learn, but we are not there.

Someone says to cut myself some slack, we're only two months in, but how many months in is it before you feel the creaks and groans of an unsettled house cease? Ten? Twenty five? Seven hundred?

Madeleine writes of practicing piano: "I was working on...the Bach Two-Part Inventions. One is never through with the Two-Part Inventions; they are the essential practice needed for the Well-Tempered Clavier." And I understand her a bit better than I did when last I read her memoir. One is never through with the Two-Part Inventions, the marriage, the leaning in, and leaning toward. It is beautiful thing, but it is a thing unfinished.

Under Every Rock and Branchand Peach and Pan

We are settling into a quiet rhythm, he and I. Early to bed, early to rise, it matters not whether we are healthy, wealthy, or wise, I suppose. We have one another and we have a Savior who is good and does good. Yesterday in our exegesis meeting at work, in preparation for the sermon on Psalm 51, we talked about a God who in His goodness does good—and I cannot leave that alone this morning. I wake next to a husband, we make coffee, he reads and journals on the back porch while I make frittata in a cast iron pan, the dishes are unwashed and we have eaten, he starts his workday six feet from me while I write in my sunny morning nook. No one needs to remind me of the abundant blessings of a good God these days. It is everywhere and I am its best detective.

It has not always been so but I wouldn't trade a single one of those days if I was asked.

This morning my husband takes my hand over breakfast and prays we would be "More gentle," and my heart catches, sure I have somehow wounded him in the past fifteen hours to warrant the adverb. "Have I hurt you?" I ask, when he releases my hand and picks up his fork. "No, not at all," he says, "I just want to pray for an increase of the Holy Spirit."

It is easy to forget the goodness of God in the land of the dead and it is just as easy to forget the goodness of God in the land of the living. I am a goodness detective, but for too many years I have been a darkness detective, certain every comment, every deed, and every action was the swift hand of an angry God.

Oh, He is fierce, don't get me wrong. His anger lasts for a moment, but it is anger just the same. He is not safe, as Lewis said, but He is good. And this is the truth that has hinged every weak and wounded year of my life. This does not feel good but He is good.

I remember this morning that it is not the void of goodness (or of gentleness) that makes us beg for more, but the present indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the good God, who beckons us more and more into His bountiful abundant life.

All the Questions Without Answers

I stare blankly, my eyes registering her eyes and her story but I can’t remember her name. This happens more often than not right now. I’m shrouded in a gray fog only I can see and sometimes it’s all I can see. The questions are all the same: how is marriage? how is living in Colorado? how is your new job? how is your new house? I’m grateful to be asked at all, but how many times can I reply with ambiguous gratefulness, “God is so good and generous to us!” just so I can avoid thinking through the whole ramifications of the question? How is marriage?

How is Colorado?

How is my new job?

How is our new home?

They are good, but all so tender and new, hardly recognizable in their current form. When does a seed begin to bear fruit? When it drops into the dark earth? When it breaks apart? When it presses through to light? When it blossoms and blooms? Or does it happen back, far back before that, when it is still part of fruit itself? I don’t know.

A friend tells me this morning she feels like she’s walking in a fog and I hear it but it isn’t until I pray for her at the end of our time that I remember God made fog too.

Maybe he made fog so we would slow down, stay home, remember we are dust. Maybe he made it because the earth needed only a mist and not a heavy rain. Maybe he made it because we can’t see through it and we need mystery because we need faith. I don’t know why he made fog or why we spend seasons walking through it, our hands outstretched for some semblance of normalcy, something hard and certain and firm and known.

I think about Elihu, Job’s friend who got it mostly right,

Behold, God is great, and we know him not; the number of his years is unsearchable. For he draws up the drops of water; they distill his mist in rain, which the skies pour down and drop on mankind abundantly. Can anyone understand the spreading of the clouds, the thunderings of his pavilion? Job 36:26-29

Father, I confess this season is abundant in its blessings and rich in your visible goodness, but I also confess the fog feels suffocating sometimes. I know not why or how you make rain or mist or spread the clouds or cause thunder—and I know even less how to walk with faithfulness when so much of my day feels like groping in the dark for a familiar place. But I also remember with the psalmist, to “Praise you from the earth, fire and hail, snow and mist, stormy wind fulfilling your word!” I think of Christ on the stormy Galilee and Noah on the boat and Moses on the cusp of the sea and even Jonah in the hot desert and I remember you hold the weather on earth and the weather in my heart and you decree it all and you are great. When the fog clears and I see you face to face, let it be all of you I see and not the faces in the crowd or my identity or calling, but you.

About a Table and a Man and a God Who Doesn't Sleep

This is a story for everyone, but it's mostly a story about hope and faithfulness and a kitchen table. I'm supposed to speak about singleness in a few weeks but I can't help feeling like I've given up my card, as though I'll be the one all the singles sit and roll their eyes at, "Easy for you to say, you're married." And it's true, in some ways some thoughts I have about singleness will sound trite and less than tried and true, but here is a truth: I was single for 34 years and now I am married. That means I am a statistic in two ways: people are staying single longer now than ever, and most people do in fact some day get married. I am not the exception, I am the rule. And I pray for those of you who are part of the first statistic, you will someday be part of the second.

But now here's my story.

A few years ago a girl came to live with me. I'd known her since she was 14 and knew the cards she'd been dealt set her up for some disappointment in life, and I knew I'd be helping to carry that baggage for a season. What I didn't know is that I'd often feel like a single parent with her. In the midst of walking through that season, a friend of mine pitched an idea to me. He said, "I think it would be good for her to work on a project and I have a project I'd like to do with her." It seemed he had a friend, a man recently divorced who helped lead the marriage reconciliation group at our church, who had opened his home up for men to live in throughout the past two years, and who invited more men into his home every week for dinner, conversation, and friendship. One problem: this friend did not have a kitchen table.

So my friend, and my little girl, they embarked on a project: Project Farm Table. It was to be a surprise for the friend and so it was. When they gave the table to the friend, he nearly wept and said it was the best gift he'd ever been given.

Six months later I sat at that table for the first time and listened to the recipient of the gift share some of his testimony. I didn't know it then, but at the intersection of my friend, my little girl, this table, and that man, I would meet my husband.

This is a story about a table, but it's actually the story of so much more.

For years I wondered what was wrong with me, why no one wanted to marry me, why God was holding out on me. What I didn't realize was that my future husband was walking through the discipline of God and the failure of his marriage. For 13 years while I whined about my singleness to God, God was shaping my future husband in the crucible of marriage to someone else. God wasn't holding out on me, he was working in both of us an eternal weight of glory.

For years I felt convinced that online dating or other mechanisms to meet a husband was not the best for me. I felt firmly convicted that service to the local church and to God was the mechanism through which God would bring marriage if that was His plan for me. I wrestled, complained, struggled to do this well, but I trusted Him in it. I put my hand to the plow and served, trusting that if God had a husband for me in the local church, then I would know because he would be a man who was faithfully serving, leading, showing hospitality, walking in grace, humbly accepting the discipline of God and other men I knew and trusted. Nate was a man well known by my friends, my elders and pastors, and others. Trusting Nate, following his lead, loving him came swiftly and easily because he had faithfully given himself to the local church in every way. No stone was left unturned in his life—he was fully submitted. And at the proper time we came face to face with one another.

For years I was certain I would have to compromise in a thousand ways if I ever found myself faced with marriage (and did compromise over the years multiple times in multiple ways), but with Nate I found we were both running so hard and so fast toward the kingdom that we were only helped by the presence of one another. He helped loosen chains of fear binding me back and I spurred him on toward confident leadership. My fears that I'd marry someone who didn't challenge me spiritually and intellectually were baseless. My fears that I'd marry someone who was lazy or indulgent were silenced. My fears that I'd have to marry someone who I wasn't attracted to or didn't enjoy were proven wrong. Nate is my better in every way. I don't say that with an ounce of false humility, I truly mean it. I do not know a finer person, a more humble and gentle man, a harder worker, a more faithful friend, a kinder neighbor, a more generous accountant, or a better servant of God.

Nate was all of those things before meeting me—after submitting himself to the discipline of God in his failed marriage, in his desire to understand and grasp the full counsel of God instead of cherry picking pet theologies, and in his faithfulness to the call of God to minister with the grace he'd been given. He was inviting men into his home, ministering to broken marriages, addicts, serving them around his table, showing hospitality, parking cars at our church's lot, not watching pornography or struggling with sexual sin, leading arrogant and broken men in reconciliation to God and to their wives as much as it depended on them. He was doing all this when my friend and my little girl made him a farm table.

I'm sitting at that farm table now, in our kitchen, in our new house in Denver. And I'm marveling at God. God who never sleeps, nor slumbers, but keeps. He kept both of us while we were making foolish decisions and good ones. He kept both of us while we were holding tenaciously to beliefs we had and our confidence in them and in Christ. He kept both of us in the midst of difficulty, trial, faithfulness, and sadness. He kept.

I wanted to tell you this story for a few reasons:

One, if you are single, remember: God is not sleeping. Two, if you are in a difficult marriage, remember: God is not sleeping. Three, if you are serving your local church tirelessly, remember: God is not sleeping. Four, whoever you are, in whatever circumstance you're in, remember: God is not sleeping.

He's keeping.

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The Long Way Home: thoughts on getting married and making a new home

"What are you most looking forward to about moving to Colorado," I ask him. We are driving toward the city in a rental car, downtown Denver dwarfed by the snow-capped peaks behind it. "Making a home," he says, and reaches for my hand. I feel a bit of a sob catch in my throat and I'm trying to not be melodramatic, but the sob is real and the emotion is too.

I have numbered the dreams that have slipped from my palms over the years and a home was the one that died the slowest death, particularly the dream of a husband in a home. To paint the walls, to settle in, to build something as permanent as anything on earth can be: this is the work of a home.

He grew up all over the world, moving every two to four years, and my adulthood has brought 18 moves in 14 years—neither of us really know what it means to be home anywhere. We have learned to make people our home and Christ our haven, and this sustains us, brings us joy unspeakable. Who needs painted walls and front porches when you have relationships forged in time and depth?

Home, I am finding, beside this man who every day surprises me more with God's providence, can be in the common grace and goodness of unity. As we move toward one another—and move toward Denver—I am moved by God's faithfulness to His plan, not ours. If it was up to us I'd have been married in my early twenties and he wouldn't have gone through a heartbreaking divorce. We wouldn't have suffered the humbling consequences of our own sins through the years, leading us straight to one another in the proper time and proper way. We would have spared ourselves the meantimes and meanwhiles and built our own kingdoms of mud and sand.

But God.

Home is not a place or a house, it is not painted walls or deep roots or knowing your neighbors or longevity. Home is Christ and Christ is the giver of good and perfect gifts, even the ones that take the longest to arrive.

Note to my readers: 

In the next six weeks we have to sell a house, buy a house, pack up two houses, get married, honeymoon, leave Texas well, move to Colorado, transition his job, and start my job at Park Church—I know that might sound like a cakewalk to some of you, but to me it sounds like a lot. Because of that, I'll be putting Sayable on hiatus until just the thought of writing doesn't give me hives. I love you, my sweet readers, thank you for rejoicing with us in our engagement. Nothing about the timeline of our lives right now makes a lot of sense, but we are so deeply loved by our community here, and so full of peace about one another and the next season, we cannot help but worship God for His gifts to us today. We are overwhelmed by His goodness. 

Fear of Flying and Dying and the Death of Me

I am not so afraid of death as I am of dying, the long slow fall into oblivion. And it is not attached so much to plane crashes and car accidents as it is to the slow death of the everyday. The "punctual rape" Richard Wilbur calls it and it is vulgar, yes, but true of sorts. Every day a little more is shaved off my life and I grow a little closer to the final sleep—and eternal wake. It is the every day dying I do to myself that pains me so much. This is the real dying I fear.

I wake this morning crippled by fears: what ifs and whens, hows and whos. The conversations I must have and the questions I must ask and the corrections to be ministered and the challenges I must accept and the prayers I must pray and the asks I must petition. These seem insurmountable when I list them out in the still dark hours. How, God? and Why Me? —these are the questions I ask.

The thing about death and dying is you can't stop it. He who numbers and knows our days held the date in his hand before the foundation of the earth. The thing about death and dying to self, though, is it seems like you can stop it. Don't have the conversation. Don't submit yourself to correction. Don't give up what you want. Don't let go of this grudge or that fear or this offense or that dream. Hoard it all in the belief that you can have it all and take it with you when you breathe your last.

It's an illusion, see. The belief that we can keep our lives and also we can keep all that is life, or what seems like life. Christ came to give life abundant, but the greatest lie we believe is He won't and so we must get it ourselves.

I believe it sometimes. Do you?

I fear flying and car crashes, death and dying, yes, but right now I fear conversations and submission and saying, "Not my will, but thine," far more. The irksome presence of people and demands and desires pressing on me more than I want them to or think I deserve them to.

My pastor recounted a story to me recently about pastoring people and the expectation that sometime they'd finally get it together and his job would be easier. But that's not the job of a pastor, he said, the job of a pastor is to shepherd sheep and it never ends.

I think this is the role of the person too, at least the Christian person. To shepherd sheep. Dying, bleating, complaining, fussy sheep, who smell and press in and run away and push back—and to wake every morning ready to do it again. To come and die, to lose our lives that we might find them in the face of the great shepherd who leads us—yes us, yes you—beside still waters and restores your soul in paths of righteousness.

And all this for His name's sake. For His glory. For His renown.

Barren Fields and Fruitful Vines

At the risk of sounding like I'm not looking forward to transplanting to beautiful Denver at the beginning of June and starting a job I can't wait to do, I have formulated a canned response to: "Are you so excited!?" I am so excited and I am also so, so sad.

The Lord does give and does take away, but he doesn't always do it in that order. Sometimes he takes away and then he gives, and oh how he has given in the past season.

He has given so well and so plentifully that I cannot help but mourn what I will lose by stepping into other good things. As I navigated making this decision, walking through it with several pastors, elders, and friends from my church, it seemed the more Denver was looking like a probability, the more I longed for what I had already here. The morning I got on the plane to Colorado with one of my best friends for a scouting trip, I was certain I would leave my time there deciding to stay in Texas.

But when we got on the plane after our trip, it was clear to both of us: Denver would become my home sometime soon.

It felt like both a generous gift and a strange gift. The timing felt (and still feels) awkward and uncomfortable. The community of people I have around me currently is the richest I've experienced yet at my church; the home in which I live is not without its struggles, but I love it deeply; a man who captures more of my affections every day in every way snuck quietly and surprisingly into my life; nothing about this timing makes it feel good to exit this place.

And yet there is more surety in me about what the Holy Spirit is doing and where he is taking me than I can remember.

. . .

This is just a testimony of sorts, it's not a formula. I'm not saying, "Let go and let God," or "Stop trying to control life and everything you ever desired will happen for you." Those are unhelpful statements at best and terrible theology at worst. What I am saying, though, is I came into 2015 with my palms up and a blank slate. I thought I made a wreck of some things in the previous year, but God knew those things weren't wreckage, they were seeds, and their time hadn't yet come.

James 5:7-8 says, "See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand."

I thought I was wasting away last year. Dormant. Standing there, waiting, and for what? I didn't even know what I was waiting for. But just as I prepare my heart in this day, surrounded by rich bounty, God has been preparing my heart for the past two years, in a fallow field I thought was wasting away. The ground produces best when it is allowed to rest, to sit unused, empty, tilled, waiting for the right time.

Is now the right time? I don't know. I can't possibly know, and I have learned that all the certainty in the world doesn't mean we always get what we want. But I have also learned to trust that barrenness doesn't mean uselessness.

Wreckages and Seeds and All the Difference in the World

Adrienne Rich said, in one of my favorite poems,

I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail.

and that feels a lot like life sometimes. At least life right now. There's some wreckage I don't want to explore. I don't want to use my words to find the treasures that prevail here. I'd rather just be heartbroken and walk through grief as it comes, instead of purposing with my words.

A friend told me a few weeks ago my life had been like a fallow field for a long time. Furrowed, plowed, ready for seeding, but still standing empty, waiting for the proper time. She was referring to a plethora of good, good things happening in my life right now—seeds and shoots and promises coming through from the dark, dark earth. But with growth also comes pain and these growing pains hurt worse than almost anything I've known.

I'm weeping as I write those words because I can't talk about all the things weighing on me right now—that's part of the wreckage and the seeds: both things pressed in deep places, hidden from the public eye.

The difference between wreckage and seeds though, is that one falls apart and produces nothing, and one falls apart and produces everything. And it is important to remember the difference and to keep on remembering it.

Something is breaking apart in every one of our lives. Something is giving away and changing and shifting and breaking. Some of it feels like wreckage and some of it is a seed. Some of it we need to dive straight into to see the treasures which prevail, and some of it we need to trust to the deep, dark earth and the sovereign hand of God who makes everything produce fruit in its season (Jeremiah 17:5-8).

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. John 12:24

Seven Thoughts on Idolatry

I.

I am not like those Israelites in the wilderness, the ones who handed over their riches to make the likes of a golden calf. I clutch to my idols in their original form. I do not trust a maker of any sorts with my valuables, I trust only myself. I adorn myself in them.

II.

I wonder sometimes if all the Israelites gave Aaron their jewelry on that day, or if there were some who held back because an idol in their hands was better than one melded with a hundred thousand other idols.

III.

Remember when Rachel hid the idols of her father's household in her satchel? She carried them with her just in case. Just in case God failed her, just in case He didn't come through, just in case the unseen God wasn't as dependable as the seen gods. Just in case He didn't give her what she wanted.

IV.

Sometimes the only way you can spot an idol is to have it wrenched from your hands. Empty hands can reveal idolatry.

V.

Sometimes idols in the ancient Near East were the big kind you envision in temples, massive stone or golden statues with people prostrate around them in every form. But common ones were small ones, pocketed bits of clay and wood and rock—things they could pull from their pockets at a moments notice, to fill the void, cure boredom, feel validated, and seek answers from.

VI.

The message to the idol worshipper is the same as to the law worshipper, the same to the younger son as to the elder, the same to the Gentile as to the Jew: that idol and that law will only reveal your need for a Savior and a Father.

VII.

Underneath the gold and silver plated idols was the stuff of the earth: clay, wood, rock. All that glitters is not gold. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Then you will defile your carved idols overlaid with silver and your gold-plated metal images. You will scatter them as unclean things. You will say to them, "Be gone!" Isaiah 30:22

Mini-Me-Making and Disciple-Making

I added up the meetings this week and they valued in the too many for any introvert. They happened in prayer rooms and offices, across coffee tables and over coffee, on our couch late at night and on my bed early in the morning. Listening, talking, walking.

We are in the work of long-suffering, of listening when it seems better to speak, of obeying when the odds suggest we not. We are submitting and silencing, seeking counsel from the wiser and counseling the weaker. It is a lasting joy, but a long-suffering one too. It is hard fought for, but sweet when it comes. It is not popular.

It is easy to create copycats. To say to say as I say and do as I do. To teach to follow me as I follow Christ. But I am not an Apostle or Christ and I quake to tell anyone to follow me. I cannot even trust me, please do not trust me. We ask for the Holy Spirit and we keep on asking, more and more, a helper and comforter, a keeper.

. . .

Today is the two-year anniversary of a little girl on my doorstep. She had a few suitcases, some guitars, no money, no car.

I have known her since she was 14, but really I have known her my whole life. We are different in many ways, but the same questions wrest our souls and tempt our hearts. Two years is not a very long time, but it can feel like an eternity when you are walking with someone who hates God and sometimes hates you too.

Then one day she was crafting a wooden baby Jesus for a nativity scene present and the God she'd crafted in her own image all her life became real. We joke about her blood on the lamb, but four hours in an emergency room on Christmas Eve was no joke. God became flesh and dwelt among her, in her, and through her. And she was changed.

I won't deny I have been holding my breath for weeks, afraid to let it out. But today is the two-year anniversary of her coming to Texas and the two month anniversary of the day that everything changed for her.

God saved her. I got to watch the change, but I was powerless to save.

She is so much like me in so many ways, and so much like others in so many ways, but she is more and more like Jesus and the Spirit inside of her than anyone else.

I tell someone the other day that she is my letter, like Paul said of the Corinthians, "You are our letter, written on our hearts, known by all." But not my letter, written by me for others, but "a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts."

Her disciple-making is from and by Christ alone, I merely, as my pastor says, "got to play."

Mini-me making is a passing fancy. Disciple making is a long-suffering joy.

Creating the Weak

A few weeks back I sat across from one of my pastors while he delivered the news of my deficit. The words came in a halting tumble, the words of a messenger, not the accuser. "Do you see evidence of this in your life," he asked. I let out my breath because no accuser is louder than the enemy in my own head. I am all those things and more, the list never stops, never ceases; pile on the claims and I will swallow every one.

"I have heard the claims," I said, and I've been checking my heart and home and hearth to see if there is any wicked way in me.

He leaned in as I recounted the weeks leading up to this moment and when I finished he said, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't want to bother you," I said, because it was the truth, but also because I was afraid.

. . .

I don't remember when it was that I realized if God knit me together, with all my parts and pieces, then he knit me together with all my proclivities and purposes. That the same careful attention he gave to my shape and my size, he gave to my mind and my heart.

For the girl who had only ever known a deep and turning angst in her soul, this made a poem out of a pauper. I had always wrested with depression, anxiety, an unnerving panic at inopportune times. But I had also seen purpose and beauty and a haunting art to all of life too. The horrible badness about me cut me deep enough to let the piercing lightness all the way in.

Even the mundane moments, the 10,000 little moments, all of them little crosses, little funerals, the little concerns rising—these all turn me again and again to Him.

. . .

"There is an impulsivity to you," he said. "It's part of what makes you a treasure to us. You're, what's the word, bohemian? Never going to go with the flow, always on the fringe, an artist. As you submit your weaknesses to us, I don't want you to lose the treasure of those perceived weaknesses. It's what makes you you."

. . .

It has taken me a very long time to learn—and I haven't learned, but am learning—that the world is full of people to whom one way makes sense. Wrestle this way, no, not that way, this way. Be this way. Stand over here. Be this. Eat that. Don't go there. Advice is a thousand times more common than real affirmation and real affirmation is so heavy laden with flattery we most times can't see anything straight.

And this we know: in our weakness, He is glorified. In our weakness, He is made strong. In every way we cannot do, it is because He has done. In every "I don't know," or "I have failed," He says, "Come to me all you who are heavy laden." And in this we rejoice.

I did not rejoice, sitting there, across from a pastor who loves me, knows me, who is for me, and, which is more, who is for Christ formed in me. Who of us rejoices when we hear our accusation? But I rejoiced later and 10,000 times since. Every day a reminder that I have miles to go before I arrive at eternity's door. Every day a reminder that God knew what He was doing when he knit me—just as I am and full of so much more.

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. John 9:3

The Most Important Thing About You

When I was in high school I read the A.W. Tozer quote, "The most important thing about a man is what he thinks about when he thinks about God." There's no way I could have known that what I thought about God then, and would think about him for the next decade, would run my shred of faith straight into the ground.

I cannot begrudge my misunderstandings. Sometimes we have to subtract until we've reached negative space before we can add what is true and holy and right and good. I would dive back into the depths of darkness once again without a second thought if I knew I would surface with the riches I found in 2010. And those riches?

His character. Namely, what I thought about when I thought about God.

Since 2010 these attributes are my buoys, my buffers, my strong-tower, my defense, my comfort, and my control. When all around me is sinking sand, I know who my God is in His unchangeableness. He is immoveable, unshakeable, ever present, and always good.

Whenever what I think about God is incorrect and it informs how I think about everything else, I sink and quickly. But when my soul feasts on the truths of his character and his attributes, I am sustained. The most important thing about a man is what he thinks about when he thinks about the most important things about God.

Joe Thorn's new book, Experiencing the Trinity: the grace of God for the people of God, does such a fine and succinct job of displaying God's character and I hope you'll consider grabbing one of these small books for yourself. Actually, what I hope you'll do is what I've done with his small book, Note to Self, and buy fifteen copies to give away. So many of us are limping along in our faith, with our eyes set on circumstances or ourselves. How much better to forget ourselves and see Him, robed in truth and beauty, splendor and goodness?

Lift up your eyes to the hills, where your help comes from, the maker of heaven and earth! Psalm 121:1

Room for the Holy Spirit: yoga pants and the Christian

One of the reasons I'm grateful for my male friendships is because they press me in issues from different points of view. Paul Maxwell is one such guy and Christianity Today published some of the results of our conversations this week. We co-authored this piece on modesty and the yoga pants phenomenon that's taken the female fashion trend by storm. I hope no matter where you land on the subject of female modesty and male lust, you'll take a few minutes to read. Yes, we know there are far more important issues in the world, but we believe that global mindedness begins with being personally submitted in the small things. Enjoy! 

She comes in the coffee shop like she does every day. In every shape and size and age. She just worked out, she just had a baby, she just got out of bed, she’s headed out for the night, she is running errands. She is every woman—she’s you and she’s me. And she’s wearing yoga pants.

“There’s just not much left to the imagination,” thinks the guy sipping his coffee. “Not much extra room for the Holy Spirit.” He works hard to exercise discernment and accountability for the issues he had with porn in past years. He has a wife who isn’t getting younger. He has a fiancée with whom he is trying to maintain purity. He is inundated with flashy ads intended to wire male brains to think one thing about the female form. He is every man—he’s you and he’s me. And he’s surrounded by women in yoga pants.

The question of whether yoga pants are appropriate attire to wear in public has swirled online in recent years, following the garment’s rise in popularity as a casualwear staple. For millions of women, yoga pants are “the new jeans,” worn well beyond the yoga studio and gym.

Among Christians, these form-fitting pants get wrapped in the modesty debate, most recently with a viral post from a blogger sharing her conviction to stop wearing yoga pants and leggings. Then came responses with treatises on freedom and morality and lust and modesty culture. And defenses. And cynicism. And hysteria. And spite

And here we are, fighting about yoga pants.

Rather than taking sides and settling for boundaries or restrictions, we—as women and men—can talk about what it means to approach these conversations with a biblical ethic that respects the people involved, their bodies, and their sexuality, all of which were made by God and declared good. As a girl and guy following the back-and-forth, we see how parts of this debate aren't actually up for debate.

Continue reading to hear our surprising take on the modesty discussion. 

A Home That Serves Us

Our living room is dark. I have already done the nightly ritual of light-switches and locks. The blankets are folded in their corner basket and the kitchen is cleaned.

Every night we put our home to sleep and I pray over it. The kitchen that nourishes our bodies, the dining room that nourishes our souls, the front room that nourishes our friends, the living room that nourishes our minds, and our bedrooms that nourish our rest. We know the role of a home is not for us to serve, mastered by it and its demands for bigger and better, but a home is to serve us and the ministry before us.

These days the ministry before us is one another and we are not always faithful, but we love one another, love well and hard.

. . .

"Do you ever cry," one of our honorary High Chapel House girls asks me yesterday. I think hard because the truth is she saw the tears in my eyes only moments before, where they rise every day without fail as she and the other girls come home one by one. "I cry," I say. "But not for very long or very hard. I ask God that he would give me tears though. Sometimes I could use a good cry."

This afternoon I pulled in our driveway, walked into our empty house, and I felt the tears welling up in my eyes. "Is this it?" I asked God. "All this time and you're going to make me cry over a silly, impersonal exchange I had today? Something no one else thought anything of?"

But something about home stopped those tears and planted peace there instead.

. . .

There is nothing magical about our home and we are plenty flawed, trust me, each one. Yet in this home there is no onslaught toward us, we are for one another and for the hope the gospel offers today and the sanctification the gospel offers tomorrow. I am reckless in how much time I give to the girls in that way and some judge me for it. But I have seen nothing but good fruit in it, the steady, faithful work of the gospel taking root in all of our lives day by day, degree by degree.

There are no fast tracks to discipleship here, just a present peace and a palpable purpose, and today that peace and purpose disciplined me. Reminded me of who Christ is and how He saves and sanctifies and redeems within the hospitality of a home. And how the essence of the gospel is hospitality, and therefore home.

Tonight as I pray for our home and the bedded bodies in it, I pray that we would use our home to serve others and one another, but that our Father would use our home to serve us, his beloved children.