All of Us Strangers Sitting on a Footstool

Somewhere along the way I forgot I had a story. It is more accurate to say somewhere along the way I forgot I was living a story.

There's so much noise these days and I don't know how to shut it out and down and over and out. Our home is a quiet place, filled with simple things, but it is a small place, and there is no hiding from life's noise. The coming and going, the phone calls with family, the boyfriends, the dishes piling, and the laundry. Some have said the single life is simple, but I dare anyone to say that to me who has had 32 roommates in a dozen years. As soon as I learn the rhythms and graces of one, she marries or moves and I plunge into another lesson with another girl. I cannot complain and do not: these girls have been family to me, each one of them slipping into her new life while I mourn her leaving, she has been family to me.

One and I are walking yesterday and the sun is setting, "You're going to move with me?" I ask her, because we will close up shop on this house soon I think. She tells me she doesn't know how to process the invitation that I would want her to meld her life with mine. I feel a sense of Naomi in that moment and she my Ruth: where you go, I'll go; only I am the one saying to her: where I go, you come. (Ruth 1:16)

It is foreign to us both, the togethering that happens with strange people in a strange land. And we are all strangers, I think, we just haven't awakened to its reality yet. Or life has been kinder to you than to me. Or perhaps, after all, it has been kinder to me than to you. We shouldn't bother ourselves with such things.

I am scrubbing the laundry room floor tonight and I know I ought to feel at home in this place, but it feels more a placeholder to me, a dog-eared page, a bookmark: Don't Forget What God Has Done Here. And I don't know if He means this house or Texas or this world, but it could be any and is all. We are all so enamored with making a place for ourselves when it is He who has made a place for all of us. His thumbnail is the sliver of moon, heaven is His home, the earth is His footstool, dare we even imagine we could build a place for Him? (Isaiah 66:1)

The air catches beneath the tablecloth as it settles centered, dust particles float, and I put the broom in the corner. The dishwasher and the washer both run, their steady hum sounding steady with the air-conditioner. It smells like lemon furniture polish and maybe the grapefruit in the bowl on the table. We have made a home here, placed ourselves in the center of our story. The doors revolve around us, the world revolves around us, and I wonder sometimes how little idea we have of His grandness and this home a vapor, our lives a breath, our whole story His.

Shelf Life

I have a shelf life of two years, three years max. Once I overheard someone say of me, "She's obviously wife material, my only fear is her aversion to commitment," and the words replay in my mind.

A friend told me last week the lies she tells herself the most are always in second person: you aren't smart enough, you aren't pretty enough, you aren't enough. I tell myself the truth, though, when I use the second person: you won't stick around long enough.

A man put his hand on my head many years ago and spoke these words: "He has given you a flexibility of spirit and there are those who will see you as a flitting butterfly, going from one thing to the next, but remember this: He has given that flexibility to you, He has made you adaptable and transient." I looked up from under his hand into the eyes of someone who knows my soul well, knows its propensity to fly the coop. I smiled; she smiled. But she still cried when I last left her house on my trek back to Texas.

The blessing of my singleness has been flexibility. It is moving quickly and easily, changing careers every few years, worrying little about accumulation of things or resources. It can be a selfish existence, but it can also be the quickest way to remember every single day this place isn't home and ought not feel like it.

The curse of singleness is the same curse on everyone—for man it is to work, to toil, and to commit; for me it is to birth, to nurture, and to commit. A pregnant friend told me once it wasn't until after the shock of knowing a child grew within her wore off, that she realized she had to be committed to this. Nine months of her body shifting and shaping, with an alien thing in her that would come out—the labor process terrified her. But she was committed not because she chose to be every second of every minute, but because the blessing is also the curse: it's a long painful commitment and there is no going back.

Though no child grows in me, and perhaps never will, I understand the angst of long, painful commitments, of nurturing when I feel like running, of entering in when I long to draw back. At times I feel unwilling to do this, to stay, to prolong my shelf life—I just want to go home. This week I want to go home to the northeast corner, some weeks I want to go home to my hometown, most days I just want to go home.

This morning I stopped on Romans 8 and stayed there, committed to it:

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

I rarely think of corruption in the way I think Paul meant it here. To me corruption is Wall Street businessmen and the Russian mob, politics and big government. But it also means to crumble, to rot, to fall apart. This is what we're doing, friends, all of us. Our shelf life is crumbling, rotting, and falling apart. We're bound to do it, all of us.

But.

But the redemption of our bodies is not long off, not at all. And this, oh this, I can count on and commit to—it's coming. If we're His children, it's coming. He's coming.

And He has no shelf life or homesickness or fear of commitment—He's in, all in, forever and ever.

The Remembering Room

In Texas they build homes with north facing windows, which is the exact opposite of the North (where we build homes with south facing windows), but which is a very sensible thing to do here. The only window in our home that gets any sunlight at all is the laundry room and so I have found my morning coffee tastes best in here, so long as I can keep lint dust from getting in it.

I sit on top of the dryer, my feet spread across to the washer. The sunlight falls on my fingers and I wish we didn’t need appliances and that this could be a sitting room, or a quiet room. At the very least it is a sunlit room, and for that I am grateful. Even if I am surrounded by detergent bottles, tool boxes, and ironing boards, and it smells a little like Downy Fresh and less like line-dried clothes.

A laundry room is a catch-all and I think that must be written in the bylaws of laundry-room-dom. We have a garage and I suppose that is a better place for hedge- clippers and drills and toolboxes. We have a pantry where, if we moved things around a bit, we could stock the plastic cups and spoons, and paper plates that we only use when there are too many people over, which is rarely, and so they go mostly unused. There are two baskets of laundry in here, both filled with towels because towels are an orphan thing in a home where nothing belongs to everybody.

Continue Reading over at Antler: Because Our Words Matter

Perfect Life in a Perfect House with Perfect People

All I wanted for my birthday was a day with my three favorite people in Texas, my two roommates + recently married roommate who still counts. Today we went to go see Lincoln together (because I'm a history & constitution nerd) and then came home to home that smelled of the chicken and turnips in the crockpot ready for us to eat by candlelight with wine, followed by my favorite pumpkin pie and a fire in the fireplace. Perfect. I know.

More than one person has told me that my photo stream is a constant flow of perfect images that make our home seem idyllic and warm always. I usually laugh and tell them it's partly true, that IS how our home is. But it's also true that our bathrooms get dirty and sometimes we have miscommunications and sometimes people are sad or mad, even if I don't frame that moment in a filtered photo.

I took the opportunity tonight to take a photo of our less than orderly table with a less than proper roommate digging into the roast chicken. Just to say, hey we're not perfect—but we're okay with that.

Here's why I write about my home so much, and why I take photos of it, and delight in it:

It's very tempting, for single women particularly, to place deep stock in the future home. To dream about what it will look like, to stockpile images and Pinterest boards and magazine pages, to wish for what is not—and lose sight of what is. And what is might not be what you dream about it being. Maybe you don't have the crockpot you want or the set of knives all your friends got when they got married. Maybe you're waiting until you marry Mr. Right before you light candles for the dinner table or use a tablecloth.

It's also very tempting to place our worth and security in our home today, to indulge ourselves in DIY projects or keep up with others in terms of decor and furniture—to own whatever we can in place of what is not ours to own today. It is tempting to feel that since so much seems to be withheld from us today, we are going to grasp and grab whatever we can in the meantime.

_______________

So as much as I'm able, I'm going to write about my home and keep a steady stream of beautiful photos of it.

I treasure my home. I do. I treasure the people who inhabit it, I treasure the moments occurring in it, and the meals shared in it. I treasure the small touches, the artwork from all of our international travels, the thrift-store finds, and the teakettle we use every day. I treasure it, but I do not own it and I do not let it own me.

And I want to communicate that to my unmarried sisters and brothers. I want them to know that these days are numbered, whether marriage is your future or not, your days are numbered. Singleness is not an excuse to let life pass you by while you mourn what is not your portion for today. But it is also not an excuse to indulge in creating a self-made kingdoms of you.

My challenge to you (and to me every day) is to evaluate what you're treasuring and to find beauty in today's portion—it's there and it's yours for the enjoying. Don't wish yourself living in my home with my roommates eating at my table—where is your table? Who is sharing your life? What is treasured in your home?

_______________

Photo filters make everything look better and the gospel does the same for us—the ordinary becomes extraordinary, the mundane becomes beautiful, the normality is filled with joy, and the everyday is special. It's that way because our hope isn't in today, it's in something much greater, much deeper, and much fuller. It's in the hope of heaven for tomorrow and the sufficiency of Christ for today.

Go and fill your Instagram up with beautiful things. Real things. Happening right now, today, to you, in your life. Find them, they're there.

Table Manners

A handful of the last of the basil from our garden tossed with some chicken and mushrooms, some cheese I call Money because it's worth so much, and we eat dinner around the dining room table. One might think all I write about is tables.

But if it was a small fruit feast that fell us into death and it will be a fine full feast that ushers us into life eternal, I suppose I can write about all the tables we'll sit around in the meantime.

My roommate Season is getting married in three days. In June she told me about her "summer crush," in September she said yes to the ring, and now she will stand beside him and marry him.

And so our table is gone.

__________________

The past few weeks things have gone missing from our home, small things, a rug, a chair, a vase. They go missing from our home because they now belong in her home. And our table, the one we've had for two years, the hand-me-down one from Ikea with the broken chair and the wobbly leg, it now sits in our garage awaiting its trip to her home too.

In its place sits a solid new table with three chairs and a bench. It's bigger than our old table. It doesn't fit in the breakfast nook. We've moved it three times since it arrived and now it's found its home—in the divide between the living room and the kitchen. Centered and topped with a tablecloth, a bowl of fruit, and two taper candles in brass candlesticks. It has found a home in our nearly fractured home.

I have done my mourning already. When all three roommates find love within three months time, one cannot help but get her mourning done quickly. I have let my sad sit deep and my jealousy weed out and my fears brought near and I have heard God say, I'm still setting a table for you if you want it.

__________________

We gather around our table, more so in times past than times now, but we are gatherers. We enjoy one another and I have feasted at this table, this table and the old one. I have feasted in this home and am not ignorant of the blessing it is to have feasted so fully.

On Thursday we will gather sixty and more in a lodge in the Ozarks, we will give thanks for our nation and our history and for family and for marriage and for my roommate and her almost husband. And then on Saturday we will feast again after the vows have been given and spirits are high.

And then we will come home, to the monotony of life and school and jobs and chores, and we will feast around our new table. We will feast on apples and carrot sticks and peanut butter and jelly, and we will feast on chamomile tea and coffee in the morning. We will feast with one less person in our family, and that's sad, but we know it's not the end.

It's just one more table of our meantime.

And people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at the table in the kingdom of God. Luke 13:29

How to Play the Sunrise

This morning a friend from Texas who now lives in upstate New York posted an image of the sunrise over the Hudson and I felt my heart constrict: this is the sunrise I know. This upstate sunrise, these trees, these leaves, theses rivers. I breathed and missed. I came to the laundry room to write. I do this because it is light here in the morning. And the sunrise in Texas today, it took my breath away. It's a bit hard to see through the neighbor's tree, hard to hear through the sound of the traffic and landing airplanes, but it's there, full, and beautiful. An easy rival for my upstate New York sunrise. Easy.

My roommate told me the other night I romanticize everywhere but here and I suppose that is true for every place I've lived. A friend asked me last night what I miss most. About New York, I asked her? No, just about anything, what do you miss most? Yesterday and the day before I was texting with one of my little girls from home and we're talking about how no matter where you live, you always miss home, and when you're home, all you know is that you're never home.

I suppose I have lived too many places to be home anywhere, but being home and being present are two different things—and I can be present anywhere.

I gave some people a good scare in the past few months—the wanderlust burgeoning inside of me and the desire to leave and go somewhere entirely new rising up. Our lease was up a few days ago and knowing we're month to month sets me free and binds me tight all at once. But I have commitments here, a homegroup full of women I love, a ten-month program at my church, roommates who I love like family, and a job I still can't believe I get to do. I have reasons to be present and these keep me.

_____________

Two autumns ago my pastor talked about authority in the church, discipline and love, and it was the first time I understood that discipline is the fruit of love, and not the other way around. He loves his wife, so he puts his laundry in the basket. He loves us, so hard conversations happen sometimes. In the same way, the Father loves us, so He disciplines us. He keeps us, even when we don't want to be kept.

And you all know that I don't love Texas. I don't. I miss the northeast. I miss mountains. I miss open-door policies. I miss dropping by anyone's house for dinner. I miss riding my bike to the grocery store and front porches. I miss the sunsets. I miss rivers. I don't love Texas.

But I love sunrises. Spectacular ones that take my breath away in the morning. And today I'm grateful, deeply grateful that real love might not come fast and furious amounts, sweeping us up in full measure. Sometimes loves comes in quiet ways, in laundry rooms with a row of succulents on the windowsill and the sunrise in all its glory.

And we each take our sunrises, wherever we are, one in succession after another, on our pilgrimage to Zion, our pathway to heaven. We take comfort in the small loves, knowing they work in us greater things.

Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. As they go through the Valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength; each one appears before God in Zion. Psalm 84:5-7

How to be missional when you get out of bed

A friend stopped me in the hall tonight with a question and I gave a short answer but told her I'd blog the long answer later. This won't be a creative post, but it will hopefully be educational at least and encouraging at most. My friend's question was along the lines of: how do you, as an unmarried person, reconcile this [tonight's sermon on covenantal relationships, specifically marriage] with your singleness?

My short answer:

While I am unmarried the Church is where I am united primarily as a giver and helper. Note that though I use the capital C Church there, it plays itself out in the context of my local church, which, by extension, is my home most locally.

Long answer:

A few years ago I decided that unless I were to craft for myself a creed of sorts during my single years, I would be in danger of letting these years pass me by in either purposeless and vain ways OR in begrudging and self-righteous ways. I know my nature well enough to know that I can't exist in nothingness very well—and judging from nearly every conversation with every single person I know, neither can most of humankind.

Here's my personal creed on how this unmarried person lives in covenant (and it will probably continue in context if I become a married person living in covenant):

My housemates are my primary covenant relationships

In this season of life the girls with whom I live are my first priorities when it comes to covenant. That does not mean they can call first dibs on me, my time, talents, etc. What it does mean, though, is that I will drop almost anything for them. In regard to my finances, time, talents, and wisdom—they are my primary partakers, they get my first-fruits. Because there are four of us, those things are divided, but overall, I seek to defer to them in all things for their good and my sanctification.

This might sound like I'm steam-rolled, but I think if you knew any of us you'd see that's not the case at our house. Everyone in our home has a voice and an opinion, and everyone in our home defers to the others 9.9 times out of ten. If that seems like a recipe for division, well, you're invited to come over anytime. Because...

My home is a place of peace

The first words people say when they see our home is, "So cool!" or "So homey!" or "Love this place!" The second thing people say is, "It's so peaceful here." And it's true, for the most part. We're not perfect people and so one of us feels underfoot sometimes or maybe unheard or overcrowded, but overall, our home is home of peace.

Peace is not just a pretty painting on the wall, though, hanging there passively waiting to be disrupted. No. Peace is an active agent. There is a world of difference between being a peacemaker and peacekeeper. In our home we are peacemakers. We are makers of peace. Peace with one another. Peace with situations. Peace with the onslaught of the world that assaults each of us throughout our day. My aim, at the end of the day, when I say, "Goodnight family, I love you," is to settle it before bed: you are loved, you are known, and in this home, behind these doors, there is no onslaught toward you. This is important because...

My home is my primary place of ministry

I work for a busy non-profit, I lead a homegroup, I write this blog and for many other publications, I have lived in five states and still have close friends to keep up with in all of them, I have a huge family all over the US who I see rarely, I go to a large church with many opportunities to serve,...the list goes on. Outside of my home there are opportunities to minister in a million places. But here's the problem with that, for me: if my home isn't in order, I'm not going to serve well outside of it.

Therefore, my home is my primary place of ministry. Whether that means I invite people into my home (ie. homegroup), or whether I give the best of my ministry (prayer, counsel, love, etc.) to my housemates, or whether home is simply the place where I sit deepest under the ministry of the Holy Spirit—whatever it is for that moment, home is where it's happening for me. If it's not in order here, it will not be in order when I leave & go do other ministry.

How it works for me

Whatever I choose to do gets filtered through those creeds and if I choose not to do something, it's probably related to one of them as well. I do not hold to these perfectly (ask my housemates), but they are ingrained in my spirit deeply enough that they are nearly second nature at this point.

I said this to my friend in the hallway tonight: I'm 31 years old and I have more than a decade of housemates behind me. I have messed up royally many, many, many times. Even with these housemates. In no way do I have the corner on Housemate of the Year Award.

These have tightened up over time and displayed themselves in a myriad of ways depending on the home in which I lived, the people with whom I lived, and the season of life in which we were, but they have generally been kept over the past six or seven years. I have lived with (at last count) 28 housemates in a decade; I have lived with crazy, kind, manipulative, wise, gentle, funny, and angry people, and I have been all of those things in return. No home is perfect and I'm not seeking perfection in my home.

If you're feeling like a bad housemate or an angry single person who feels like the best years of your life are being thwarted by having to live with roommates instead of the person-of-your-dreams, I'd encourage you to sit down and write out a creed for your life, your home, and your ministry. The enemy wants to steal, kill, and destroy, and he's going to start with the place you spend most of your life and the people with whom you spent it. Don't let him. Be proactive. Be on guard.

Conclusion

The pervasive presence of the gospel in your home is going to be your best weapon against the enemy. If you're feeding yourself a gospel of Cosmo or Sport Center or The Food Network or classic literature or social media, you're going to feel thwarted by the enemy. Preach the gospel to yourself, infuse it into your conversations with your housemates, speak it to whoever comes into your door. Be intentional.

Your lease isn't the only covenant you're living in right now. Don't let the opportunity for covenantal relationship pass you by.

This is a silhouette piece I did of the four of us for Christmas last year. Don't we look like a friendly sort?

Related posts:

To the Men To the Women A dual challenge to Singles Living Single: how to do single well Every Single Season

How to die beautifully

There are things I ought to have learned in science class, but I was too busy hankering for art class to pay much attention. Did you know that the reason the autumn leaves are so spectacular in the northeast is because the weather has an indecisive air to it? It’s true. One night it’s cold enough to frost and the next day it’s warm enough to kayak in a tshirt. In the mountains the reds and oranges are deep and rich, and in the valley fields the green is vibrant and lush. The sky is almost always a steel blue, nearly grey, but still clear. I cannot describe this well enough, I know. I’m sure I tend to romanticize it because I tend to romanticize everything. It makes for a better story, see?

But trust me: it is beautiful here. Even today, while it rains steadily outside the side porch where I complete my wedding tasks of the day, it is beautiful (of course it helps that my wedding tasks for the day were to take buckets of flowers and make them into eleven presentable bouquets).

Tonight I’m going to leave these bouquets of roses and hydrangeas, seeded eucalyptus and ranunculus here on the porch. Outside, where temperatures will probably dip into the forties. I’ll leave them here. And for the same reason that the leaves get more and more spectacular, I have no fear for these flowers.

It goes against my gut to do this, leave them outside. Because flowers bloom in the warmest months, I assume that that’s where they’ll thrive best. But a year in Texas is teaching me that while the heat may force a bloom to open, it does little to sustain it.

We all need a little indecisive air, a bit of a chill, to be sustained.

I had a conversation with a friend the other day and she’s asking the right questions: why does it have to be so hard sometimes? Why does it have to hurt?

I don’t have answers for her. I’m finding the more I know, the less I really know.

But I know this: those leaves wouldn’t take our breath away if they weren’t dying in the process.

And I don’t like that. That makes me uncomfortable. I hate death, it is nothing but stings and barbs. But I love life because it is nothing but newness and cycles.

I love life because I know that I will die a million deaths until that final one, but each one makes me a little more vibrant in the process, and each one brings the promise of newness. That’s something I can plant my soul in.

This post was originally posted in October, 2011. But in honor of peak week at home, I'm posting it again. Enjoy your leaves northern friends!

THE BIGGEST CATCH

She's a little like Jesus in that she always teaches me in allegories. Gardens and graveyards and apple picking—there's always some lesson lurking beneath her well timed speeches, and there's certain to be a prayer at the end of it all: go and do likewise. Tonight she's talking to me about fish.

She can stand at her kitchen sink and overlook the Grasse River. The thing about this particular juncture in the Grasse River is that it is the last dam from that river flowing down the Adirondacks and into the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The house used to be an old mill and that dam was once crucial to the life of the home and, in some ways, it still is.

It is at that dam that the salmon who make their way against the current from the Saint Lawrence end their journey. They jump and twist and spin and no matter how hard they try, they cannot make it over the dam.

It is a lazy fisherman's sweet spot. A bastion of swirling thirty inch salmon meeting their demise through hook or weariness.

But this is not the allegory she spins for me tonight.

We are talking about prayer and she is talking to me about asking big prayers, specific ones, naming things, not so that I can claim the things themselves, but so that I can hold a quivering hand to God full of childish requests and I can praise Him when He answers so specifically back to me.

I am not a big asker.

I stopped asking God for anything three years ago when I determined that He was not good and did not intend good for me. I let the anger build and boil inside of me until two years ago when I stopped asking God for anything for a different reason: I finally understood the gospel was the fullness of God for me, and what more could I possibly want? This girl was done asking because her cup runneth over.

But at a table the other night a friend talks about specific things she asked for and challenges my personal "Don't ask, don't tell" policy. And I had answers for her, I always do, but I can't get that conversation out of my head. I'm not the girl who asks.

_______________

Tonight my Jesus-friend is talking about how badly she wanted one of those fisherman to haul thirty inches of pink salmon up to her back-porch, how the taste of fresh fish would be so delightful and generous. So she asked. Well, she sent one of the many adoptees who frequent our house (of whom I am one) down to the riverside to ask. He brought back as fine a specimen of salmon as can be expected from one who's made the twenty mile journey down the seaway to the dam.

But here's the thing, she said, it was awful tasting, tough and old. She tossed it in the garbage and I can't be sure, but knowing her, she whipped up a finer feast from leftovers than you've ever tasted in your life and called it dinner.

_______________

The allegory here is that big asks do not always result in exactly what we thought we were getting, regardless of how fine it looks on the outside.

Who of you, I thought and she said, if your son asks for fish, will you give him a stone?

But sometimes He gives me stones, I said.

Yup, that's right, sometimes he gives you stones, she said. But does that means you shouldn't have asked for what you thought was best in the first place?

I don't know the answers to these questions. Even after she ends our phone call with a prayer and deep assurances of her love for me (she's a little over the top sometimes), I still don't have the answers. Flannery O'Connor said she wrote because she didn't know what she thought about something until she wrote about it, and I feel the same way. It's why I've written this.

Once I stood in the bed of that river, feet from the open dam, water spilling over it. I stood there in my bare feet and the fish swirled and swam around me. I don't think you can be that close to nature, that close to nature doing what it was meant to do—swim against the current, dive and jump and try and try again to get past that obstruction—and not feel the hopelessness that comes in life sometimes. Those fish are asking big asks and in the end the answer is no.

But I wonder what kind of life that thirty inch salmon lived before it was caught and brought to the table in the old mill house on the river. I wonder if he swam through nooks and crannies and over rocks and through storms to his end.

And if it was a good end indeed.

These photos are what I talk about when I talk about home. 

How to make a home

It is well past the first day of autumn but we have not shivered until today. Tonight I came home late and turned the lights off, save the string of white lights strung above our mantle. I lit the candles and the fire and am sipping tea while one roommate curls up in a cowl-neck scarf and eats leftover chili. Here is when I feel most at home in what is not home, and what I am coming to learn, may not ever be home.

I read a blog yesterday about a mother in Dubai who is making home there, as best she can, amidst all the things that war against her natural instincts.

The world clatters into our haven and tries to thwart us at every turn; we know it waking up and we know it going to sleep. The poet Richard Wilbur called it "the punctual rape of every blessed day" and the language may be harsh, but the days are nothing if not harsh, no?

I thought as I read her writing, home is hard however you make it. She has children underfoot and a husband to cheer and mountains of laundry and I have none of those things. But I do have bills to pay and a home to keep clean and a car whose check-engine light came on today, flashing at me in a fury. And I do these things alone, which, I sometimes think, is just as hard as doing them with a whole family underfoot.

Who of us chooses our cross and bears it well?

But home is what we make of it and we are all making home into something. This whole summer home has felt like a burning log, something bold and beautiful and soon to be only ashes. That is melodramatic, I'm sure, but how many of you with your picket fences and backyard gardens and daily schedules would handle the division of your home any better? I don't mean to compare, I just mean to say, be blessed and stayed in your covenant family because for some of us the front door of our American dream is a revolving one, always taking someone away.

I have to remember that home is what we make of it, but it is only our home for today. Tomorrow it might not be the same, it might not feel the same, and it might not be what we planned.

I have a friend who is getting divorced this year, nobody told her it would be this hard, she said through tears on the phone last week. I didn't know what to say because I did tell her once that it would be this hard. Another friend lost his wife two years ago. He parents on, but life is not what he expected, he says, and what he plans now for his daughters is that life would be an adventure, surprise built into their life. One more friend plans for her future, but there are so many variables she is learning to hold one hand open and one hand loosely—better to not plan too hard, too much, too deep.

When I was young, I'm not embarrassed, I dreamed of being a homemaker, donning an apron and making soup from leftovers. I still do dream of that in my moments of weakness, when I sit myself in a pile of self-pity and bask in the pool of what I think I deserve. But I am finding more and more that making a home is not so much the decor and menu and chore-charts and laundry. Making a home is making do with what I have today even if what I have today is not what I dreamed of having today.

But it is something.

Tonight it is white lights on the mantle and a lit fire, a roommate in her wool sweater and tea, quiet, calm, full and rich. For tonight I am home.

HOW to be a good INTROVERT

You don't get to be a successful introvert without having somewhat of a panicky gaze on your heart and head and all things you fairly constantly. What I mean is, if you want to know who's going to struggle with preoccupation of self more than anything, look in the mirror first, and then look to your left and right. We're everywhere—you can't hide from us. Why? Because we can't even hide from ourselves.

The benefit of this self-awareness is that if you want to know what I think about any issue, you can ask me. I will probably have a litany of thoughts on which I have ruminated and masticated until they're confiscated by some other mounting question. You want thoughts, I have thoughts.

The damage of this self-acuity is that when it comes time to put my eyes on someone or something else, I have so poorly trained my eyes in the direction they should go that I cannot hold my gaze for very long without looking away.

I can train this heart of mine to follow the tracks, but even that doesn't stop the train from derailing. The only steady things sometimes are the rails themselves.

The train has been derailing for me this year. It began with a glance away from beautiful Jesus and faithful Father, and it continued downward until my eyes have been setting somewhere south of healthy. So it's time to trust the tracks. Time to trust that training my heart will get me home and, oh friends, there is no other place I want to be than home.

The tracks for me are repentance and rest, quietness and trust—and if this post resonates with you, I would guess those are the tracks for you too. To do those things, though, it's going to mean sacrifice and I'm willing to do that.

Here are three of the ways my sacrifice might affect you:

I. If you primarily come to Sayable from Twitter, nothing will change there for you.

II. If you come from Facebook and you aren't a close friend, family, or colleague, I would recommend that you go over and Like this page. This is because I will be slowly be straightening the rails of life by keeping a close watch on what I ingest on social media—beginning by removing the amount of people on the friends list of my personal page.

III. I will also be shutting down comments on Sayable for a season. If you'd like to contact me, please do so through email, though understand it may take some time for me to respond.

I said above that I know my heart more than anything else I know, and the truth is that I love interacting with readers. I love hearing your stories. I love when you track me down, find me, and say, "Lore, your words, they have encouraged me and changed me." I love that. I love it mostly because I love knowing that the deep and agonizing work God does in me results in deep and beautiful work in you. But I'm afraid that sometimes all the words coming back at me don't bear the sort of fruit I want the beautiful work of God to bear. Please don't read into that statement or assume it to mean anything other than what I am saying: I want the work that God does in me to result in good fruit. If it does not, I want Him to prune it.

Thank you for loving me well and thank you for space. Thank you for always encouraging and thank you for challenging. I long to write for Jesus, but He lets me write it for you too, and I'm grateful for that.

TRADES

You listened to part of the transcripts this morning before someone who knows you better than you do told you to stop, before you'd end up in the closet, in a ball of tears. You've never seen New York like this. Eerily silent and dust covered. A city of the walking wounded. You stare into the eyes of strangers for five, ten, forty seconds before either of you realized that in New York City you don't do that. You avert your eyes, look away, avoid, but not this week. This week you stare. And you nod at the end, sighing in unison. You are both thinking the same thing after all: what just happened?

Every park is filled, every corner is filled, every mind is filled: what just happened?

Fences are filled with Missing Person signs and the homeless aren't the only ones laying, dazed, on park benches and curbs.

You know things are going to change you, but you don't know how much, or to what length. You don't know, for instance, while you watch planes crash into familiar buildings, that in ten years two of your baby brothers will be soldiers and men, stationed in countries torn by war. You don't know that in ten years every day you will pray for peace, mostly because peace means that they will come home in one piece.

You don't know that in the weeks to come, you will open the coffee shop every morning at 5am and you will listen to your fellow countrymen wake up to the news, giving their best war-plan strategies while they hand you their dollar-sixtyfive. You don't know these things. You don't know that freedom really does cost something, but in your wildest dreams you never imagined it would cost this.

You stumble through a shell-shocked city, one wrapped in yellow caution tape. You try to make sense of what just happened.

You don't know that everyone you know knows someone who knew someone and you find out years later that you knew someone too. You regret losing touch.

You love history because when you hear about what has happened, it helps make sense of what is happening. But when what is happening is happening in real time, in your life, around you, there is no sense to be made of it.

You just stare at strangers a little longer. You both nod. Maybe you reach out and touch their arm.

What should have made us afraid, for a few weeks there, made us brave.

(pinterest)

You're proud to be an American. You are. You pray for peace. You hate conflict. You hate that your baby brothers wield guns and wear uniforms. But you love your country. You loved it dusty and shell-shocked, and you love it bankrupt and tired. You loved it confused and bewildered, and you love it arrogant and corrupt.

But you love heaven more and you long for it. So you pray only this, but every day: even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly.

Come quickly. 

(Originally posted on the ten-year anniversary of September 11.)

but His joy comes in the mourning

I’m tired. There, that’s out there.

I’m exhausted. No, I don’t have a little baby waking me up at all times of the night, or four kids to corral into fine formations, or a family to provide for or a company to lead. But I am just one person and being just one for 30 years can be tiring too. I’ve been getting up while it’s still dark most mornings and for this night owl, that’s enough to spin me into the oblivion of tiredness.

I sat across from a friend on Wednesday and we talked about what it means to enter into one another’s sorrow. How it means that we don’t just feel pity or empathy or a burden, but that we actually enter into it. We feel it. We know it. We know it as acutely as our own sorrow.

This goes for joy too. But somehow joy peddles us forward, while sorrow only seems to hold us down.

There are so many, many sorrows in me today. I can’t even give number to them and so few of them are my own that even if you ask, I won’t tell you anything is wrong, they are not my sorrows to tell.

My pastor back home told me once to do my homework in class: pray for a friend while I’m with them, counsel them right there, and that doing this would alleviate some of the burden someone with a gift of mercy is going to carry.

It was some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten and I rarely let an opportunity go by without praying for someone.

But sometimes mourning with those who mourn means that we ache with their unanswered prayers. Sometimes it means we wake up aching and go to bed aching. Sometimes it means we keep careful watch on our phone for updates and careful watch on the messages we send out, keeping watch over souls that have been entrusted to us.

I’ve been depressed before, no secret there. And this season feels acutely like those seasons before: I want to sleep, I forget to eat, smiling feels like too much work, work feels like too much work. But last night as I slid between my sheets and put my head on my pillow, closed my eyes and felt the tears brim to the surface, fall over my cheeks, I felt the Holy Spirit say to me, “There is nothing light about mourning, but there will be light in the morning and morning is coming.”

I woke up late this morning and for the first time this week the sun streamed in my window, a sliver of light across my comforter.

RUNNING [away] WALKING

Last night we talked about being small and running away. Finding tall pine trees in our native north and shimmying our way up to the nearest branch, then climbing, climbing, climbing until we were at the top of our tower of Babel, touching God and letting Him touch us. And then we'd climb down, forgive our strict parents their brief irrationality, and go home.

Late last night as I drove home I thought about not stopping, just driving, finding the lowest branch and clawing my way out of here. Away from the metroplex, the bubble, the place where I am known and where I do not feel known.

Instead, I called a friend and left a message.

"Call me," I said. That's all.

I unhatched my plan without hesitation, with or without her, but she agreed and so we threw swimsuits, tshirts, and spare change into our bags and we left Dallas at 11:32pm.

Rolled the windows down and left.

We found a hotel a few hours later, convinced the kind gentleman at the front desk to let us go swimming and then we slept hard and hardly.

We woke at 7am and the city was still. I couldn't help but feel like this was what people have meant for the past two years when they have said that I will love Austin, that Austin will feel like home. We read and journaled at a coffee shop, strung a hammock between two trees, talked, talked, sat, and just enjoyed one another and the Lord. And then we drove home.

My heaven will be a still one. A quiet one. The sort of place I can fly fish or enjoy Debussy (who I hope will be there). My heaven will be a place free of distractions, where the groaning of creation has stopped and we have come to a grand rest. It is still.

I am learning more than ever that I cannot run the race.

Everywhere around me people are running the race. The prettiest. The godliest. The best. The most. The biggest. The fullest. The busiest. And I find even the mention of running the race exhausts me. I toe the start line and already feel the defeat. I can not run it.

I crave stillness. I crave quiet. I crave even the groaning of creation over the groaning of concrete roads and the suburban sprawl. I want to shimmy up my tree, find a solid brand on which to stand and I want to touch God.

We're on our way home, less than 13 hours later, and I tell her that all I really want in life is to be like Enoch. Enoch who walked with God and was no more.

"Your heart, Lo," she says. "He loves that about you."

And I suppose He might love that about me. I suppose He might. The bible doesn't say that Enoch died, it just says He was no more, that God took him. I can't help but think that God in His goodness, just took Enoch home with him, plucked him from the race of life, and brought him home where he belonged.

I wouldn't mind being like Enoch.

[In any case, all of you were right, Austin did feel like home to me. Thank you.] 

A PLACE TO COME HOME

I’m at my best friend’s house in upstate New York. I have traveled the world over and I do not know of a more picturesque place than the largest part of New York state. This is perhaps because I am a mountains girl and am most at home hemmed in by these hills. But I think, too, it has something to do with the air here, clear and pine-scented air. I breathed it deep as my little car crested and descended hills, windows open, and eyes open too.

This month off has been, in one word, full.

I mean that in the sense that my best friend’s belly is full of a new life right now. She is bent over a new garden near me, her new husband attentive and capable. She is full of life and we spent four hours this morning talking to one another without pause. She is perhaps the only person in the world with whom I can talk without pause. We are full of questions for one another, full of tears at the things which are deeply in us, full of joy for the other’s joy, and this is what I mean by full.

I spent a week at a cabin by myself in Tyler, Texas, ensconced in a cabin underneath the towering pines of east Texas. I drove hours through the bottom Appalachians through pouring rain and big dreams, to arrive at one of my favorite mountains, a small valley that houses two homes, a family, and some animals, near Chattanooga, Tennessee. I drove 16 hours north (through more pouring rain) to land with the people who make me laugh more, cry more, live more than any people I know, in Potsdam, New York. And now I am here, with my full friend, her living room full of my old things—chairs and art I couldn’t take with me to Texas—her husband full of love for her (and me!), and their lives full of service and love. I am full.

The past few weeks I have accumulated over 50,000 words that will speak of lifelessness and fullness and the ways we hinge ourselves on both, and this week I feel the words slow, the creativity ebb, my cup full.

If there is one thing I know to be true about God these days it is that my heart overflows with a good theme.

The psalmist says "My cup overflows" and I have never know this to be true. 

I have never known the fullness of His character or the depth of His goodness or the life of His love—my cup was half-full or half-empty and I thought this was the way we limped our way toward heaven.

And that may to be true in ways—Jacob wrestled with God, won, and still walked with a limp the whole of his life.

But sometimes I think God delights to give us months or days or minutes in which we know the fullness. He delights to give us glimpses of His wholeness, even in our void. He beckons us toward His joy, even in our sadness. And I think He does it because without these small glimpses at His greatness we would hide, fully in ourselves, fully void of hope. 

I am full, overflowing.

This was written about a week ago, as my month off was inching closer to its end. I am home now, but my laptop died the last day of my sabbatical, so I am awaiting for its successor's arrival before I jump back online with any consistency! 


But thank you, thank you, thank you, for welcoming my guest writers, for extending me grace in my absence, for not deleting me from your feed readers or email lists in my absence. Thank you most of all for being a home of sorts, a place to come home to.