Being of One Mind as Ten Thousand Minds

Last week I wrote 3000 words on what being pro-life from womb to tomb means to me and, more importantly, my story from being a one-issue voter to being a voter who tries to consider the full gamut of issues of life. That evening Nate and I watched a film called One Night in Miami and one line stuck out to me: “You will never be loved by the folks you’re trying to win over.”

You can understand that quote in many different ways, but what stuck to my gut was, “I’ve got to stop spinning my wheels trying to win over folks to seeing things from another perspective.” 

By nature we surround ourselves by confirmation bias and build echo-chambers through the social media we ingest, the news sources we believe, the churches we attend, the cities we live in, etc.. We cannot avoid drifting toward information, theology, and relationships that confirm our biases. This is human nature and to deny we do it, in any form, betrays a lack of self-awareness that will continue to cripple our country, churches, and our own character. We have to actively fight against our best and worst impulses, and intentionally choose to listen to others who disagree with us. 

Yesterday I had a consultation with someone about our land. We do not have much land, but what we have, we want to care for and cultivate. In her initial query to me about the land I said I preferred a wild look, somewhat rambling gardens, nothing too pristine or perfect. But when we spoke she said because our home is all right angles and straight lines, yet our view is very wild—the river, the woods, the wildlife—we need to figure out a way to harmonize the two. Her words were, “We need to create harmony by increasing dissonance.” And then she described her ideas for our land, all of which I loved and can’t wait to begin the long work toward it all.

Creating harmony by increasing dissonance is a common idea in any art form, whether music, painting, writing, and gardening. And it makes everything better, more compelling, full, robust, and complex. It is the pairing of the beautiful alongside the uncomfortable, the sweet alongside the sour. Think of your favorite wine or favorite candle scent, there are notes of woods and flowers and fruits and locations, all very different but somehow working together to create harmony.

Recently, I’ve been trying to understand what Paul meant in Philippians when he spoke of his joy being full when they were of “one mind.” What does it mean to be of one mind in Christ when we are tens of thousands minds and hearts and bodies and spirits, all with different experiences, stories, cultures, and understandings of Scripture? Of course there is absolute truth, but who on earth is the final arbiter of that truth and who made them the final arbiter of it? 

I return to the creeds often in the past few years, not just because we recite them every week in church, but because it reminds me of what has lasted through the centuries. I have to believe that if something has remained that long there must be some truth to it. But then heresies have lasted just as long too.

I’m not trying to communicate that all truth is relative because I don’t believe it is. I do believe that all truth is complicated though, and unless we acknowledge its dissonance (or lack of harmony), we will struggle to find where the harmony is within it. We have to admit our biases. We have to confess our prejudices and stories and histories and genealogies and theologies and every little thing that makes us us, is also subject to inspection. Not once. Not twice. But again and again and again, from faith to faith, glory to glory, until we’re face to face with Christ.

This is uncomfortable work because it means submitting to uncomfortable realities, realities that press on our freedoms and personal preferences. It means cultivating charitableness as we learn about the other side instead of only ingesting news and information from our side. It means practicing curiosity as a discipline and not as anathema. It means saying, right out loud, I am imperfect and not yet finished and I have miles to go before I understand as well as I need to. It means valuing facts as just as important as feelings because feelings are facts too. Sadness matters, grief matters, joy matters—and it’s all there for a reason. Emotions are a signpost to something God wants to show us or heal in us or reconcile with him or simply use to display his glory.

I decided against posting those 3000 words on my story of being pro-life from womb to tomb because I think, in my heart, I just wanted to win over some people who’ve written me off. But that’s not the work I’m called to do. Not ultimately. 

My work, and yours, is to be of one mind in Christ. To recognize the dissonance that exists in a world not yet healed by its King, but to live with one another in peaceable harmony—playing different notes, holding different beliefs about how he is healing our world or different expressions of his healing work in our world, but all playing the same hymn: “In Christ alone, my hope is found. He is my light, my strength, my song.”

Blessed are the Homesick

It is midwinter, or nearly so, and we got a small dusting of snow last week as if God was saying, "It is winter and I'll prove it to you." The windows have been open the last two days though and the air has that damp, mossy scent of midwinter or, in the colder climate of my home, early spring when all the snow has melted. It has been hard to be content here this year and yesterday the day began folding in on itself before it had really begun. It was still dark outside and I was late for an appointment, my keys locked in the car and my husband nearly to work with his set. He met me last night with profuse apologies for locking them in there and I'd forgiven him before it happened. It wasn't him I was so mad at, it was all of the other things that are out of my control and how helpless I feel to change any of it. I read a checklist of sorts the other day, questions to ask when you feel, as the article termed it, dead inside. I don't feel dead inside, not in the least, but I do feel numb and cold and sad and really, really tired in a way I've never felt before. One of the questions was, "How much new are you facing?" I said to Nate later that night, reading that question felt the same as when I queried on social media about good mattresses to buy because we have struggled to sleep deeply this year, and my mother-in-law quipped, "It could have something to do with the fact that in the space of one year, you've had to learn to sleep in three different time zones." It was a moment of clarity for me, and the empathy I've longed for from someone else. "Oh. Three different time zones. I am tired, and it's not a tired a good night sleep will fix."

This isn't meant to be an excuse, though I know it sounds of one. It's more just a reminder to me that I don't receive the grace God gives in the form of common things like sleep or good coffee or a good cry on the back porch or a long bath. I don't receive them without their sniggling sidekick shame.

Last night after Nate's apologies about the keys and after I told him, again, it was an honest mistake (And by honest, I don't just mean not intentional, I mean, they were locked in there because he had tried to serve me by starting the car early with one set on that one snowy day and locking the front door with the other set.), we had a fight. We don't do shouting matches and stomped feet and slamming doors, but last night was the first time in our marriage I wanted to. I felt so misunderstood and unheard and unable to explain how deeply sad and tired I am about some things—things I'd beg you to not assume, because either they're not that complex and the joke's on me, or they are, and the joke's on you. The base of our fight rested on the premise of every fight known to man since those two feuding brothers in Genesis four: unmet expectations.

It is hard to learn the difference between good hopes and bad ones, godly ones and ungodly ones, righteous longings and selfish ones. Even the most righteous hope can be tinged with self-gain and even the nastiest longing finds its roots in the hope for something good and right. We love, Saint Augustine said, in a disordered way. We either want the right thing in a wrong way or the wrong thing in the right way and we press the longing for God farther and further down, until someone asks what we want, and we can't even answer straight because we're so confused.

Nate asked me last night what would happen if I didn't get what I want (in this case, a good and right God-ordained desire) and I couldn't answer. And when I finally did, I sputtered out words about knowing the theological answer but not being able to shake the unshakeable longing in my heart for what I know is right.

I woke this morning with the words from Psalm 68:6 in my head, "He sets the lonely in families," and then I read this from Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), author of Out of Africa, or, if you prefer—as I do—Babette's Feast and more.

Nobody has seen the trekking birds take their way towards such warmer spheres as do not exist, or rivers break their course through rocks and plains to run into an ocean which is not to be found. For God does not create a longing or a hope without having a fulfilling reality ready for them. But our longing is our pledge, and blessed are the homesick, for they shall come home.

I know there is a home out there, a place where we will eventually settle and be settled, and as much as I long for it to be somewhere on earth, it may not come until the earth is new and the kingdom of God is established on it. This morning, though, I am comforted by Blixen's blessing, "Blessed are the homesick," because there is a promise of God following it: one day, we shall go home.

Leaving and Loving Your Church

This is a great post in itself, and something Nate and I have been talking a lot about recently. One of the things I loved about it, though, is there is a sentence in it that I recognized immediately. I knew it from memory, and sure enough, it was linked back to the covenant membership document from my home church in Texas.

I loved that.

When I read the words in the link above and recognized them from memory, it's because I said them often, across tables from prospective members, in the membership gatherings, and to myself when I struggled with sin, fear, anger, or loneliness. The membership covenant at The Village Church was my visible and verbal reminder of a spiritual commitment to a messy myriad of mere humans. And it is good and right to miss them, to know that they can never be replaced, to know that God doesn't promise to give us another family like them, but to know also that church membership is more than just a social engagement, a check off list, and what you're just supposed to do as a Christian.

Leaving a church family should not be like leaving Exodus for the Israelites, yet I've heard many people compare it to such. Longing for yesterday. Longing for those people. Missing them deeply and dearly. It seems in church culture sometimes we work so hard on getting people to understand covenant membership, yet when they really do understand it, but God calls them away for a season or forever, we don't have patience for the excruciating pain of separating what was joined together. It ought to be painful. If it isn't, it wasn't really understood.

We miss The Village, and not, though many think, because of Matt's preaching. We both love Matt and the whole Chandler clan, but the gift of Matt's preaching is a tiny, tiny sliver of what we miss about our family there. We miss the community. We miss the culture of confession. We miss the corporate worship. We miss the familiar liturgy of the seasons and series. We miss our elders, men of age and wisdom. We miss our mothers, women of insight and leadership. We miss our counselors. We miss our messy living situations. We miss the many folks we each walked through church discipline with. We miss those we served alongside. We miss the collective page turning. We miss bleeding, crying, binding up, teaching, learning, serving, and submitting.

Missing your church family is not like missing Exodus, it's missing the taste of the promised land to come. If we have tasted the grapes of God's future kingdom, we ought to never stop longing for its wine.

If you miss your church, for whatever reason God has called you to another place for another season, feel free to mourn with hope, but mourn with reality too. God is building His church, scattered over every nation and full of every tongue, and you got a glimpse, however short, of it. Don't ever forget that, not ever. Hold onto it with hope.

Here I Raise my Ebenezer: How this Discipline Buoyed my 2016

The gift of hindsight is a blessed one in the life of faith. A friend told me once that faith isn't faith if you can see where you're going, so the presence of Ebenezers in our lives is a proof God knew we'd need them. "Oh, look!" we can say, pointing at the thing God did back then, "We know He must be aware and present and caring for us now just as He was then." And then we breathe and walk on through the storms and circumstances of today. Hindsight vision, in the Christian faith, is always 20/20. It was with this expectation that I began a discipline in January of this year. When I began, I expected all the life-change we'd experienced in 2015—dating, engagement, marriage, moving, new church, new job, job loss, miscarriage—would begin to settle in 2016. I was wrong. 2016 brought more of the same, and much more difficult internal hardship than the external change of 2015. I look back now and see how God put this simple discipline in my path at exactly the right time and for exactly the right year. Never has there been a year of my life when what I would need most were small, simple, faithful disciplines.

In December of last year Ann Voskamp offered a free print-out of twelve verbs for the new year. Pursue, be, expect, give, and so on. You added the nouns yourself and so I did. I wrote out twelve index cards with twelve challenges on them and when the first of each month came, I prayed for wisdom about which one to choose next.

There were months this year, are still months this year, when breathing itself felt hard. Panic took ahold of my heart and mind, rendering me powerless against fear, insecurity, failure, stress, and sadness. I am no stranger to this panic and it was a close enemy of mine for years, but it has been far from me for the past six. In 2016 it came back with a vengeance and left nothing untouched. Normal, everyday acts become fearful. Faithful commitments have become difficult. Simple relationships have been terrifying. Much of that had to do with the instability of our lives the past year and a half. I have been afraid to move my feet in any direction, even planting them deeper, for fear. There's a lot people don't know and many have made assumptions about our direction, church search, the reasons we want to be planted in one home for at least two years, our desire to be out of D.C., and more. It has often felt like even voicing my fears brought more judgement and so it was just better to be quiet. These small disciplines again and again and again reminded me of the One Thing I could do today by the Spirit's help.

I don't know where you are or what kind of year you've had or want to have. I don't know how unmoored and unanchored you feel. I don't know what you're afraid of or excited about. But if you're struggling to pick up your feet, your head, your eyes, or your heart, this might be a small discipline you can do with the Spirit's help. He helped me this year. I tacked these index cards above three different sinks in three different places we lived this year and every day when everything around me was shifting and turning, I would remember and breathe and do what the card said.

If you're looking for a small, simple, easy way of pursuing stability in an uneasy world, here's Ann's post with the free printout from last year. Below are each of my cards, and how the Lord worked in my heart with the discipline on them. Feel free to read on, or stop now. I record them here mostly for my own benefit and remembrance, but also because I hope you are encouraged by my Ebenezer.

J A N U A R Y  :  Live with Less We were nearing the end of our savings account after four months of Nate's unemployment and no job on the horizon. Pinching pennies everywhere. I have always been frugal, but I had never had a mortgage or a husband to be so affected by our financial situation. Learning to live with less in every way pressed into me not simply with a budget, but learning to ask the question: do we actually need this? or have we just grown used to having it? Things like good coffee, craft beer, grass-fed meat—these were luxuries we just couldn't have. And we were okay. God was our provision, we would say to one another often in January. Not my paycheck. Not Nate's. Not our savings account. God alone.

F E B R U A R Y  :  Let go of expectations In early February, although we tried hard, the only job offer was in D.C. We bought our house in Denver planning to stay there forever. As we began to pack boxes and explain our early departure, I was mourning deeply in my heart, not only my own expectations, but others. It was during this month Nate and I began to say to one another almost daily to this day, "We can only be faithful to the Word of God, not to an outcome." We had many expectations during the month of February and I think it's safe to say not one of them happened in the way we wanted it to, but God.

M A R C H  :  Embrace Limitations March came in like a lion and went out like one too. We spent five weeks living above a stranger's garage on the edge of D.C. Everything was new and foreign and frightening for me. Nate was gone from dusk until dawn. We knew no one. Everything took longer because traffic was nuts. I was trying to learn the metro system. I was afraid of being home alone and was home alone all the time. We heard gunshots and sirens at all hours of the day and night. All of our stuff was in a storage unit in a dangerous part of town so, once again, we were living out of suitcases (less than eight months earlier, we lived out suitcases in an AirBnB for six weeks in Denver too). I felt my limitations in a way I've never felt them before and just had to learn to embrace them. God was teaching me to drop my expectations of what our life would look like, and put my hope in Him.

A P R I L  :  Believe God's faithfulness By the end of April, we had five different buyers sign a contract on our house in Denver and all five backed out with little to no reason. We were hemorrhaging money at this point and were looking down the road at foreclosure. Everywhere we looked it felt like we were being taken from, stolen from, and lied to. I look back now and know with absolute confidence no one had malicious intent, but have you ever just been in a place where you felt like that? That's what April felt like. The poet said, "April is the cruelest month," and for us it seemed true. I had to remind myself daily that God was faithful, and all that was required of me was to believe His faithfulness, even if I didn't feel it.

M A Y  :  Learn to garden I have not always liked to garden and have not learned to do it well, but a wise man once said, "If you work with your head, sabbath with your hands. If you work with your hands, sabbath with your head." So much of 2016 was me alone with my head and I knew I needed to just do something with my hands. We were still bleeding finances though, and even buying a small packet of seeds felt like an indulgence I couldn't justify. We did our best to clear out some overgrown gardens in the front yard and plant some little bits. I also went home to New York and brought back a plethora of raspberry plants, lilac shoots, and other things from home to put in our yard. We didn't know how long we'd be in this house, but I wanted to do my best to do the physical act of planting in hopes that it would grow some roots of another kind in my heart.

J U N E   :  Engage emotions I think I can safely say this was one of the most challenging challenges of my year. For all the writing about emotions and the soul and such that I do, I'm actually pretty terrible at engaging my own emotions. I fear being too emotional, or driven by my emotions, and so it seems easier to just ignore them altogether. Nate and I began seeing a counselor in June, though, because our first year of marriage had been so emotionally fraught with pain. In our first meeting, our counselor said after hearing us talk for a bit, "You guys are both clearly very intelligent, very smart people, but I wonder, do you feel anything?" It was like the floodgates opened in me then, and the entire month of June I cried. I'm not exaggerating. I cried every day. It didn't feel productive. It felt wrong. And yet it also helped me to feel period. I was able to start mourning some of the Really Hard Things from the year. I reminded myself daily that God wasn't surprised or ashamed of my emotions, that he made me and loved me.

J U L Y  :  Daily Repent After the emotional dam broke in June, I found July to be a month of repentance. Mostly to God, but also to Nate. It felt like every day there was another conversation about how I failed to communicate, serve, be honest, etc. He is endlessly patient with me, and always forgiving before I need to ask, but July felt like a mac truck hit me and I took him down with me. I think July was a month when I learned what a godly and faithful man God had given me. I thought I knew it before, but July it really sunk in. I was a miserable wreck.

A U G U S T  :  Give what I can with His help In August we were finally back in the black financially. We still weren't bringing in anything extra, we had sold the house, losing nearly 100k, but were able to pay off the debt we'd incurred to the penny. I knew we were able to breathe a bit financially, but I'd grown so used to not buying anything that the thought of giving anything away felt scary. God had to unclench my fingers around our resources again and teach me to give out of the grace we'd been given. He also taught me to pay attention to how our giving affects others. I think in western Christianity, we like to give anonymously, and I don't think that's always wrong, but there's blessing too in being able to rejoice with others when their need is met. This was a good lesson for me in August.

S E P T E M B E R   :  Do things outside September weather in Virginia was hot and humid, and I'd hoped to be able to do more outside in September, but with a puppy who can't abide temps over 70 degrees, my options were limited. I tried to sit on our back porch and work as much as possible, and walk Harper (drag Harper) a couple times a day. I love being outside and so this month didn't feel too different than other months. It was a good reminder to be intentional about it though.

O C T O B E R  :  Break bread with others At this point in our year, we knew that staying in D.C. wasn't going to be a long term plan for our family. Nate's commute is at minimum three hours a day, at least once a week it gets up to four hours. This seems to work for some families, but that, combined with the cost of living here and a few other reasons, made it clear to us that we couldn't stay here. We have tried to be faithful to open our home to new friends and make a place at our table for anyone. We've found it harder here than we expected, and I think a lot of that is because we and others know we're not here long term. This was a challenging card for me because I think it was the first card I really didn't want to do. I was exhausted from trying to build relationships in Denver and then leaving them, and now knowing we'd be leaving again, I felt like it just didn't matter. God used the presence of one family in particular here, though, to soften my heart. We don't see them as often as we saw friends in Dallas or Denver, but knowing they're here, and we love them, has been enough sometimes. What did happen a lot in October, though, is we had a revolving door of out of town friends and family. I changed the guest room sheets no less than eight times during October and that itself was a blessing. God knew this challenge wouldn't look like what I hoped, but it would still be a good challenge for October.

N O V E M B E R  :  Be unbusy After the busyness of October and the looming deadline of a big project for me, we called a moratorium on visitors for November. I didn't let email, phone, writing, people, or chores master me. I had two objectives, to finish my deadline and to love my husband well. I didn't listen to podcasts, read articles, read the news, read Twitter or Facebook. I didn't talk politics with anyone. I just kept my head down and worked. And at the end of the month, the world still turned just as faithfully as it has since creation. Who knew?

D E C E M B E R   :  Grow in peace We are still in December, obviously, but already I have been learning about the steadfast love of the Lord never changing. Our year has been full of transition and it has not been easy. I want nothing more right now than to be rooted, anchored, moored, and planted. My wildest dream in the world right now is to live in the same house for two years. Partially because we want to start the adoption process, but partially because I just want to be still, have community, build relationships, invest in and be invested in. But God has not unveiled His plan to us yet, and so all I can do is say, "God, You still hold tomorrow. Give me the gift of peace today." And it is enough, it really is.

Choosing Churches // Challenges for the newly married

The next challenge for the newly married is one I think affects those who have been married a lot longer too, but the newly married face it in a fresh and shocking way. It is the challenge of finding and agreeing on a local church.

When I was unmarried I chose the church I wanted to go to, even moving to the opposite side of the United States to become part of The Village Church. I had immense flexibility in the choice, theology, worship style, size, and amount of involvement I wanted in a church. I considered each those things heavily, but the choice was mine. When I met Nate, I met him through my church community, in the foyer of my church building, and we were married surrounded by our church family. Even though we were about to move to Denver for my job at a new church, our local church, the local church, was very much a factor and part of our relationship.

Imagine my shock, then, when we moved across the country again, and it was taking us seemingly forever to settle on a church. I was blindsided by how difficult all of this would be. I think it's partially because both Nate and I take God's word very seriously and soberly in regard to membership, worship, community, discipline, eldership, etc., and we don't treat any decision having to do with those components lightly, but what I didn't expect, and was most surprised by, was how much we actually clashed in these areas. There was an illusion that because we met and married in the same church, we agreed on everything therein and would forevermore. But we didn't.

One day, in the car on the way home from yet another church we were visiting in August, I wept bitterly and my sweet husband bore the brunt of my outburst. My case was this: If I was still single, even if it wasn't ideal, and even if I had to drive 45 minutes, I would have settled on a church six months earlier. I would have just gone to the good-enough one instead of searching for the one one or both of us had in mind. I wouldn't have squandered my time, I wouldn't have grown stagnate in faith or community, and I would have just sacrificed whatever it took, just to hear the word among the same brothers and sisters every week. This conversation led to some more painful conversations about why I hadn't said anything earlier. Which led to more conversations about why we both struggled to speak up on our own behalf about very much at all (which I'll write about another day this week). What this conversation revealed was there were  assumptions being made on both of our parts about what would be best for our family in regard to a local church, based on partial information from one or the other.

I wish I could say we've found victory in this area, but I think this will be an ongoing conversation for the rest of our marriage. Committing to one local church won't lift the issue at hand, which is a communication one, but it also won't solve each of our individual desires and beliefs when it comes to a local church. We both need to make sacrifices, sacrifices I in particular have never made before in regard to a church, and sacrifices he in particular will need to revise in our marriage, because they weren't present in his previous one. In the meantime, here are some things we are learning:

1. Church baggage is real

We have each gone to many different churches, which means double the history. We have had great experiences and bad ones, good ones and hard ones. If you name a denomination, though, we have a bit of experience with it, and this informs our future direction. He might have had a great experience with one denominations or theology, and I might have had a terrible one, and we have to talk about that, without assuming the other understands or empathizes with it. I know this can sound very consumeristic in a sense and I don't want in any way to communicate we are consumers of the local church, but there is a very real choice in the church we go to, and we all have very real reasons for those choices. My reasons are not the same as Nate's and instead of assuming they are, I ought to assume they are not.

2. Understanding of Theology and Practice change and grow

With joy and confidence I can say what I believe now about God has changed from what I believed about him fifteen years ago, ten years ago, two years ago, and so on. God has not changed, but my understanding of him has. It has been informed by my circumstances, by deeper study of his word, by teaching from others, and by experiences. This is a beautiful thing, but it can be a difficult thing in marriage if one of you has changed and the other feels blindsided by it. We left Denver feeling very disillusioned with some things and those things in particular informed Nate's desire to attend a very different kind of church when we moved, whereas I felt very afraid of any additional change at all. Until we talked about that, though, we were both operating with two different values and it caused me to feel terrified of any church and him to feel very powerless in leading our family. We had to hash through our fears and our sin, and mistrust of God's sovereignty, for us to come at finding a church with open hands. Our understanding of theology hasn't changed much in a year and a half, but our understanding of practice has, and this is what we've been blindsided by.

3. What we think we need and what we need are two different things

I was standing in the kitchen this week chopping garlic and a song came on from my playlist that threw me back to a moment of worship at my church in Texas. I knew exactly where I was standing, who was beside me, and what the Lord was teaching me in that moment of unhindered worship. It was a painful time in life for me and I felt so humbled by the Holy Spirit that He would gift me with an experience like that, just when I needed it. The last time I felt that was when I went back to Texas a year ago this month and wept through the entire service. It was profound in a way I cannot explain to others and happens rarely enough that I remember it when it does. I love my church family there, and I love my church there. I have felt the lack of her more deeply this year than I've felt the lack of anything else in my life. I am constantly tempted to believe that I need to be with her again to ever feel whole in church again.

If I'm not careful, I can begin to believe I need certain aspects of a local church, preferring my self and my own needs, over my husband's, or over the local church herself. I need a particular kind of worship. I need a pastor of a certain age. I need a homegroup with a certain type of person. I need a church of a certain size. I need. I need. I need. But what if God doesn't give?

If I believe that God gives us exactly what we need when we need it, and no more or less, then I can trust that what we have today is exactly what we need. God isn't skimpy with his gifts. What I also have to realize, though, is within marriage, Nate and I have different needs, but God is meeting them in the same way. This can be a real challenge in marriage when it feels like in every scenario someone is the clear winner and someone the loser (I'll talk more about that another day this week), but when I stop thinking of my needs needing to trump his needs, I'm able to see how God might be meeting both of our needs, or the needs of others—even in a local church that didn't check any of the boxes we both desired when we moved here.

I promise you it doesn't feel as glorious as that moment several years ago in the sanctuary of my church, tears streaming down my face, the rushing desire in me to give all to Him, but it is the result of that moment. Worship says, "I place all my needs at Your feet, because you're better than all the things I think I need," and then it gets up and actually does it.

. . . .

Finding a new local church as a newly married couple can be fuel for some very real fires, especially since you're probably doing it without the safety of a church community around you. I used to be able to recommend ways of doing it, but think if there's anything this year has taught me, it's that there's no prescription for this. It's hard. And that hardness can actually lead to really good things in your marriage if you'll let it. Communicate. Repent. Confess. Attempt.

And, be like my husband, who several times this year saw how the weekly searching for a church was actually hurting me more than helping me, and encouraged us to be at peace staying home for a day. It is not a good ongoing pattern, but I think Jesus was okay with hiding sometimes, with running away from the crowds. I think he's okay with it and understands it, and it might be his good gift to a marriage that needs to remember that he alone is the source.

Pastors, Keep Your Door Open

If you don't know who Jen Hatmaker is, or Glennon Melton or Elizabeth Gilbert, or any of the women who seem to inform many of my sisters in Christ these days, you ought to know who they are if only because they are informing many of our sisters in Christ these days. Whether you agree with their recent decisions is between you and the Holy Spirit, but this article from Christianity Today makes a strong case for the problem of outsourcing women's ministries to the books and blogs and conference line-ups. If you're a pastor and you don't think the women in your church are sitting at the feet of these teachers, or if your perceptions about the women in your church come from what a few say they are listening or not listening to, I'd beg you to read this article with a sober and humble heart. Hannah Anderson's words at the end are particularly poignant, “If you don’t want women breaking down the doors,” she said, “simply open them for them.”

Nate and I listened to a podcast recently from Malcom Gladwell. I can't agree with all of his conclusions, but one of his points in this episode was when a group of people make one big concession, or does "one big good deed" as he called it, they are more likely to follow it with a refusal to do more. If you want more context, you can listen here.

It's easy for men in particular to believe they have opened the doors to women in their church, particularly in complementarian churches, if they have opened the door to one or two who are particularly gifted once or twice. The proof seems to be in the pudding if there is one or two scenarios in which a male pastor can point at and say, "The deed is done. I listened. My door was open to her." The problem is the circumstances haven't really changed at all. The involvement of women is not a concession, or shouldn't be, and complementarians of all people should understand and embrace that. We are, after all, those who espouse, "Equality and Distinctiveness." We should be celebrating the differences and giving equal "air-time" to women in the church. When we don't, or when we outsource our women's events to national conferences or local gatherings led by piped in speakers, we should not be surprised when women find their gurus among internet sensations and New York Times bestsellers, or, consequently, when they find their theology informed more by those leaders than they find it in one sermon once a week—especially if they're a young mom who ends up missing most of the sermon because of young children. It's easier to be led by Facebook links and pretty Instagram posts during nap time than it is to be led by a sermon on Sunday morning. Hannah Anderson, Jen Wilkin, and more have written extensively on how to employ and empower women in your congregation, and here's a long interview I did last year with a pastor in New York City on the subject.

Practically, if you're scratching your head thinking you've done enough to open the doors to women in your congregation, here are some ways you can open them more:

1. Many young women put off seminary because they don't have the funds, they do desire marriage, and they do not want to bring debt into marriage. This is a real hinderance for them, and one many men cannot understand. If your church is in a place where they can help fund a woman's seminary education, this is an excellent way to not only invest in women, but also to provide an open door for her to return (or do distance learning) to serve your local congregation. If your local church is not in a place financially do to this, I recommend making it a priority next year.

2. Providing other education opportunities for women in your church is an excellent way to make sure women are being cared for, not just preached at. Offer to fund a CCEF course for a few counseling minded women and then, this is important, utilize the women who have shown themselves faithful in the practice of counseling, particularly in church discipline and other care cases. I've seen too many women go through certifications and call themselves "counselors" who end up giving unwise, unproven, and unbiblical counsel, or whose lives do not match up with what they're counseling. A certification doesn't mean a certainty. Vet your counselors, male and female.

3. Hire a woman who is clear thinking and able to hold her own at a table full of strong men. Don't expect her to be the women's minister, expect her to speak on behalf of women though, and listen to her. Don't mansplain things to her. I hate using that word, but it is a thing and it is common even in good, solid, faithful local churches.

4. Don't thumb your nose at women passionate about "women's ministry." It's gotten a bad rap because of lame crafts and silly table games, but if you have a woman who passionately desires to teach and is able to teach, or able to find teachers in your local congregation, see what she is able to do and help her as much as you're staffed to do.

5. Instead of sending women in your church to a big national conference every year, hold a smaller local one at your church. Bring in a trusted local teacher or utilize one from your congregation. Allocate funds to this. Don't skimp.

6. Ask women what they're reading or who they're listening to and then do your homework. Don't dismiss them after a few minutes. These speakers/authors are saying something that is grabbing the attention of hundreds of thousands of women across the country. What is it? What void are they speaking to? What gospel are they preaching? Now ask a few trusted women for some alternative authors, speakers, bloggers. Don't utilize them as your women's ministry, but read those women, quote them in your sermons, encourage women to read them or reach out to them. I cannot remember the last time I heard a man quote a woman in his sermon. Be the kind of man who does. There are plenty of women worth quoting.

One of the women I have learned the most from was a strong, somewhat abrasive woman, but her words were powerful, her testimony was true, and her life was witness. Elisabeth Elliot said this of Amy Carmichael,

“If she had been born a hundred years later, she would very likely have been encouraged to be angry, told she had a right to express her anger and her sorrow and her bewilderment and her rage, and generally to disintegrate. These were not the expectations of her friends and family. Nothing could have been further from her expectations of herself. Instead, she threw herself into serving others.” 

You have women who are being told by every voice around them to be themselves, to be angry, to express themselves, but throwing themselves into serving others is the antidote for this. I promise it is. When a woman serves others, she loses herself and finds a better One to worship, to long for, to look at, and to love. Open your doors to the women longing to serve, pastors, and don't make them fit into little molds of children's ministry or administration. These things are needed, but they are not the whole, or even a fraction, of what women are gifted to do.

Leaving and Cleaving to the Local Church

I never thought I'd be the girl without a family, the willingly orphaned. We left Texas in tears, reading our congratulatory wedding cards on the drive to Colorado through weeping and intermittent sobbing. By we, I mean me. I love my church family in Texas, never have I left a place looking behind me as I did there; pioneering is in my blood, forging ahead, new, change, adventure. By the time we came to the end of our time in Denver, our first year of marriage was forged in the fire of unemployment, miscarriages, violence, financial loss, and a church leadership crisis. There was no one reason that pressed us out, but the compilation all the reasons made it easier to leave. We looked eastward and hoped for home.

. . .

When I first signed the membership covenant at my church in Texas six years ago, I did it with a confident flourish. My life had been changed there, my understanding of God rocked, settled, firmed, and set to rest. I would have signed my name in blood if it were an option. This was how committed I was to seeing my family thrive there. Years of struggle, walking through imperfect discipline with imperfect people, rubbing up against imperfect leadership and failure to do things the way I envisioned didn't change my commitment though. Every year, when the time to renew came, I signed the document with joy and confidence. This was my family and family will always fail you, but you don't back away, you press in. I was the church membership girl, her biggest evangelist.

When we arrived in Denver I asked about signing something, a promise, a covenant to this new body, but I was co-opted in, it seems, by virtue of being employed there. It never felt right with me, but nothing in my life felt right then, everything was new and different and I didn't know which things were wrong and which were just new. When the email came from my Texas family a few months after we left, telling members it was time to renew, it broke my heart to archive it knowing I was saying "No" to them and still didn't feel like I was saying "Yes" to anything else yet.

Augustine said, "Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Him," but sometimes that rest comes through commitment to a people and a place, and sometimes it takes a long time to get there.

. . .

Before I got married I would encourage my single friends to not view the church as some sort of social gathering or authority setting, but instead to view it as family, through and through. I believed strongly then (and still believe it for my friends) that if God had marriage for me, then it would come through the family of my church. This was an unpopular view, but I held to it without wavering.

Then, one day, in the foyer of my family's home, with our family milling around us, I met him. It was without incident, without much notice, without care. I noted his beard. He noted my recent travel overseas. We shared a few words of conversation not knowing that less than six months later we'd be sharing everything with one another. I didn't know it, but there, on the threshold of my family's home, I crossed the threshold of my married home.

. . .

We have been in D.C. now for seven months. We live in a neighboring city twenty miles as the crow flies from Capitol Hill. But for the same reason I swore I would never live here, it takes Nate a generous average of three hours a day in travel to go to and from work in the city each day. That travel time is the same reason it has taken us nearly seven months to settle on a church home, and it was not the church home we envisioned when we moved here.

We moved here broken, hurting, limping. We felt the weight of failure in every direction: our ability to hold a job, keep a job, love the church, carry a baby, feel safe, pay our mortgage, and more. No illusion of comfort was kept. We felt the fracture down to our core in a way neither of us had ever felt before. Some thought we were pining for what one pastor called, "Our hot ex-girlfriend" of a church, the thriving family we had in Texas, but the thought of comparing my family to a hot ex-girlfriend, a once and done, a flavor of the week is abhorrent to me. She was my family—still is my family, if we believe there is something spiritual about the church covenant (and I do). But that actually wasn't even what we longed for at all.

We wanted a quiet place, a family that had been pastored for 30 years by the same man who didn't use social media and who didn't care about who you knew; a place that was elder-led by an equality of elders. A still and small place, a local place, a place where we could mourn and not be judged, a place where we could weep in the back row and not be rushed to counseling or medication or quick fixes, a place where we could just say, "Hey, we're broken right now and just want a family." But we couldn't find that place and the searching grew wearisome, week after week our search taking us farther from our local village. Finally we heard about a church that would be planted in the fall and we came to know the pastor and his family. We decided that if what we wanted wasn't possible, maybe God could use us in their lives and them in ours as long as he had us here, while we made plans to relocate to a smaller city. Their friendship is a sweet one, and a needed one. He is pastoral and gentle and vulnerable and fun. She is strong and wise and kind and a friend. We love and are loved by their children. It was not the family we envisioned, but it was the family God set us in for the time we're here. The church is a month old this week.

. . .

I was telling a friend the other day that in all my years of singleness I never once felt my lack of a husband the way I have felt my lack of a church family this year. I wish I could somehow communicate this to my yet unmarried friends—the longing for a nuclear family is not wrong, and there is something beautiful and dear and illustrative of God's family in a nuclear family, but your church family is—I promise you this—a more lasting and better family than the one you envision or the one you have.

I thought I understood this before, but I have really come to understand it this year. I love my husband and would not trade him for anything on earth, he is a gift to me brought in God's time and God's way. But I ache for my church family in a way I never ached for a husband before I knew God would bring me Nate. God does not promise earthly marriage to us, but He does promise family to us, and the Church itself is God's promise of marriage and a family. It is the promise that Christ is coming again to bring His bride home. It is the promise that He is making all things new. It is the promise that on earth we are spotted and blemished and imperfect and terrible at so many things, but He is washing us with the water of the Word and He is coming to perfect us with His presence.

Friends, there are a thousand difficult things about finding a local church, compounded when you're married and you need to agree on those things with your spouse, but as imperfect as she is, and incomplete as she feels, she is God's design for covenant on earth. She is the opportunity to practice what God has made perfect in the new kingdom and new earth. I am still struggling with this reality in ways I haven't in years. Last night Nate and I talked long while the candles burned low, about the ins and outs of church membership and church membership here and there and what God has taught us and is still teaching us and it was good, but hard, but good.

Something that is true of marriage that is also true of life in the Bride of Christ on earth: disagreement about next steps or future living or big decisions don't have to mean division, they just mean you talk a little more, listen a little more, ask more questions, pray more, seek understanding more than you seek to be understood. The church is like any other family in that way: work, but oh what a good work.

Something Rotten in the Local Church

In the midst of conflict within the local church the first thing we need to understand is that we are never promised a clean, unspotted, unblemished church (Ephesians 5:27). The bible repeatedly makes the case that the local church on earth will be broken and blemished until Christ presents us clean and spotless.

Therefore, when we encounter brokenness in the local church our response is not to run the other direction, complain, or grow angry at the institution. If we are Christians, then we believe the bible, and the bible says we are imperfect. The crux for the Christian is how we respond, then, to the imperfect church family of which we are a part.

As humans we can be tempted to respond in a few different ways to conflict within the local church. Philippians 4:1-9 has a clear pathway for how Christians walk through conflict.

"I entreat Euodia and I entreat Syntyche to agree in the Lord. Yes, I ask you also, true companion, help these women, who have labored side by side with me in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life.

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you."

1. We can be tempted to speculate: Philippians 4 begins with Paul naming two individuals in the church at Philippi who were disagreeing in the Lord. We are not told what the nature of their conflict was. We are not told who brought it first to anyone's attention. We are told very little, in fact, of the details of the situation. Paul thought it important to not name the specifics of the situation. God ordained that godly men would lead the church as elders and that the body would submit to them as under-shepherds knowing they know specifics of things we might never know. This is a good and safe place for the Christian.

In verse 7 Paul says, "And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Paul is saying there's a peace that passes all kinds of speculation. It's a peace the world cannot give. It's a peace that even knowledge cannot give. No matter how hard we grasp for the details of a situation, they cannot give the peace that only God can give. When we are tempted to speculate here, let's entrust our questions to God and ask for a peace that passes the limited answers we're given.

2. We can be tempted to judge: Paul begins this chapter with the conflict, but he quickly follows it up with the truth that these women have "labored side by side with [him] in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of the fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life." What we know is there are some faithful women who have encountered the brokenness of life on earth as humans. But it doesn't change the fact that these women labored hard alongside the other early Christians.

When the temptation comes to judge, remember the faithfulness that Paul commends. Is there any perfect leader or Christian? No. But commend the faithfulness of all. Flee from the temptation to judge the process, people, or church. Commend faithfulness.

3. We can be tempted to be divisive: Paul says in verse 4, "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God." Paul is saying in the midst of this time be reasonable, don't be anxious, make your requests known to God. Do it with thanksgiving. Exercise gratefulness for what the Lord has done and is doing. Fight anxiety with the truth of the word. Be so full of the Holy Spirit in this time that it is "known to everyone."

Instead of being divisive, trying to cause division, discord, creating "teams," or pitting people against one another, rejoice in the Lord always. And again, because it's so important, rejoice. Fight the temptation to cause division in God's church.

4. We can be tempted to gossip or listen to gossip: Paul says in verses 8, "Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." Paul is saying in response to this situation where there are unknowns, conflict, and a lack of understanding, do this instead. Think about the things that are true, just, pure, lovely, commendable, etc..

Paul isn't saying to trick ourselves into being and feeling great. He is saying, though, to lift our eyes up to what is eternally and foundationally true, God Himself, the most true, most commendable, most lovely of everything. Do not be tempted to sit in a pit of gossip with other speculators, panning for the nuggets of curiosity. Climb out of that pit, trust those he's put in place to lead your local church, and flee from gossip.

Maybe you're in the middle of conflict right now. Or maybe you're not in the middle of it, but your ears are juicy for the details of it. I hope and pray this passage encourages and challenges you as it has for me. Let's all aspire to live quieter lives, trusting God to build His church wholly.

Please Keep This Between Us

Please don't tell anyone else this, but I wanted to process something with you. If you could just keep it between you and me? I assume you know I wouldn't want it to get around, I want to make sure people really understand my side of things and that can only happen if I communicate about it directly. You understand right? I just tried to emotionally manipulate you. Did you fall for it?

There's a chair in the corner of my office at the church were I work. It's a shade of gold I can't quite name and its fabric is velour of sorts. Every week someone cries on that chair. Not a week has gone by that someone has not cried on that chair. Sometimes I'm the one crying on it. Often the person sitting there asks me to just keep this conversation between them and me, and every single time I have to say, "I'm sorry, I can't promise that."

There are some who are contractually obligated to keep secrets—lawyers, counselors, mobsters—but within the local church, "Just between you and me," is bedfellows with its sister, Gossip. They seem at odds, but they are actually two sides of the same coin.

Gossip wants to control the narrative by embellishing it, the other wants to control the narrative by being the only one to talk about it. Gossip wants to make the story interesting, the other wants to make the story one-sided. Neither reflect the words and meditations of a heart pleasing to God.

Friends, sometimes we show discretion in what we share to protect someone's heart, but if our aim is to craft a narrative or limit the narrative to our side only, we're lying, and God calls lying is a sin.

Here are three truths when we're tempted to hide within the narrative we've crafted:

1. God owns and knows the whole truth and we cannot hide from him.

Whenever I've been tempted to tell someone to keep something between us, I have to ask myself the question: "Whose narrative are you trying to present?" Sometimes there are a lot of moving pieces and we're not ready to make announcements public yet. But most of the time when I've used those words, I was trying to control the order in which people heard something, or I was trying to make sure my perspective was valued as sort of a secret treasure I entrusted to someone to hold.

The problem is, though, these things are too heavy for mere humans to hold. We weren't made to hold the weight of secrets. One of the first things humanity did was try to hide from God—but we can't hide from God! Whatever things we're doing to protect ourselves are as laughable as standing behind fig leaves in front of the Almighty Creator of those fig leaves. Controlling a story, crafting the perfect narrative, and trying to make people see things from our perspective are empty efforts.

God sees you, He knows your heart, He knows what you're protecting, and He knows why. Walk in truth and wholeness with your brothers and sisters, and Him. He can handle the whole mess of it all.

2. God orchestrates a better story than we can tell or keep from telling.

Without exception, every single time someone has said to me, "Please don't tell anyone this," the unveiling of their fears or concerns has been part of the working toward healing, redemption, and reconciliation in the body. So many of us are blindly walking around ignorant of our issues, complacent in our efforts, or unaware of problems. We need the iron sharpening of one another in the body of Christ. Here's why: the end of our story (which is really the beginning) is a better one than we can imagine in our moment of pain.

When we're blinded by the presence of pain, uncertainty, or misunderstanding, we can't imagine a good ending to the story. We just need to vent, to process, to express ourselves. But God is writing a better story and He's orchestrating all the smallest players to be a part of it.

If you must talk about something, talk about it with the intention of holistic healing, and talk first and only with the people involved in a godly solution—not with those jumping on a party bus heading straight for Division Canyon.

3. God has put His children in a body with different perspectives, different histories, and different gifts.

When we ask someone to keep something "just between us," we're asking them to stand on a desert island with us. We're asking them to alienate themselves from their covering and their counsel and join in solidarity with us away from something else. Friends, this is a sin. God always comes forward to us. He always initiates. He always invites in. He moves toward us in reconciliation—and his design for us is to do the same.

God puts us in the body of Christ to express those aspects of Himself to one another. He puts His cards on the table, all of them. There is nothing hidden with Him and in Him we live and move and have our being. He is the whole story—and He puts us along side one another in community to work out the expressions of Him on earth.

Don't live in a factionalistic society. We have an enemy, and our brothers and sisters in Christ aren't him.

. . .

My parents always used to say to my brothers and me, "There are three sides to every story, yours, his, and the truth," and the adage still stands. Your perspective is valid, but it is not the whole story. Trust God with the whole story, yours, theirs, and all of ours.

These Extraordinary Pains and the Ordinary Days

G.K. Chesterton said, “The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children," but we don't much like that do we? It's been a weekend where I've been laying low for multiple reasons, the principle of which is I miscarried again and the secondary of which is I slipped on black ice and have a swollen scraped knee to prove it. I was meant to be at my brother from another mother's wedding this weekend in New York, but canceled my flight at the last moment because the church family here had a week for the books. It's really been seven months for the books—my books at least—but this was the culmination of it, and when your job is to shepherd, you don't abdicate when the storms howl around the flock.

Nate still can't find full-time work.

I came home from the member meeting at church yesterday and fell into bed and cried the sort of tears we reserve for death of a loved one or agony of the deepest kind. The sort where you hyperventilate and your husband can't fix anything so he just lies beside you and rubs small circles into your back. I mostly cried but said words too, words I probably didn't mean and some words I probably did.

Half our friends say the first year of marriage is the hardest, but we think marriage is a breeze, it's all the other things that are the hardest.

He read the Chesterton quote aloud to me a few weeks ago and we've come around and around to it, in these horrible ordinary days. Both of us have believed the lie that if you work hard things will go well for you, if you honor those around you, you will be honored, if you pursue your passions, you will do your passions. We are unafraid of hard work, honoring those ahead of us, and the pursuit of passions. But what we have found is vanity of vanities, it's all vanities. These things themselves are not useless pastimes, but they certainly aren't the guarantee of extraordinary lives. My pastor in Texas said once, "You can't put God in your debt," and also we can't put life in our debt either.

Circumstances are not what we planned, nothing about this year has been what we hoped for or thought we'd gain. Here we have been small and faithful people with secreted hopes for greatness. But that is not the Kingdom is it? The backwards upside down kingdom.

Tonight we lit candles and ate pizza from a box, and joked about how this might be our last meal and when we should put the house on the market. I have emailed a realtor on the east coast and Nate has put in months of 60 hour weeks applying and interviewing. There is nothing glamorous in these ordinary days. They are beautiful because they are life, but they are painful, disastrous even, and not at all what we thought they would be.

Earlier this year in the three month whirlwind, where everything good was happening and as quickly as it possibly could, I remember saying to the Lord, "It is so good to feel your love so tangibly these days, but I hope I remember it when everything good isn't happening." I think a lot about Job these days. I have walked through many painful months and years before, but never saw myself as kin to him, but now I do. The difference is I trust God in these pains, and though he slay me, still I will trust him. And it makes all the difference.

For the ordinary people in the painful ordinary days, trusting Him—and not our plan—is the extraordinary difference.

Eight Life-Changing Things Someone Taught Me

There have been seven or eight lessons I have learned over the course of my life that have altered my thinking in profound ways. They have become markers of what Paul calls, “Glory to glory.” They marked a step forward, not in closer or better union with Christ, but in closer and better understanding of him. Today I thought of sharing them briefly with you. A love for the local church: This was pressed deep into me before I even understood the theology of the church. My pastor in New York wooed me to a love for the local, to what God was doing right here in front of me. To the people with whom I walked and lived and fought and fought for. We cannot say we love Christ and not love what he loves best. He loves the Church best. He gave His life for her. I learned to live and die for the Church.

To not rob others of their suffering: This came from a friend during a season of deep pain and sadness in my life. He could have relieved it, I suppose, but said instead to another friend that he would not rob me of my sufferings. It took me a very, very long time to understand what that meant, and it took more suffering and more observation of suffering to understand. But here is what it taught me: God doesn’t waste anything, not suffering, not difficulty, not pain. He is working and willing and waiting and faithfully attending to his children in the midst of it. There are no “meantimes” in the Kingdom of God.

To be a “There you are!” person, instead of a “Here I am,” person: My pastor in New York also taught me there was real value in showing true interest in another person and their life. To not stand on the sidelines waiting to be approached by others with a “Here I am, come find me,” attitude. OR to enter a room and be the life and center of the party with the exclamation, “Here I am!” But instead to enter a room and find others first. To be the first to ask questions about their lives and the last to talk about yourself. This lesson, for a shy, wallflower like me, was life-changing. God pursues us like that!

God is not surprised by my doubts, my questions, my fears, or life: My pastor in Texas taught me this and it was one of the lessons that has been the foundation of my faith for five years. I spent years and years doubting my life, my choices, my faith, my repentance. All of this because I somehow believed I was in charge of it all and God was shaking his head in disappointment at me. If, though, God is in charge of everything, that means he isn’t surprised by anything—and he isn’t waiting me to mess up some cosmic plan. He’s shepherding, giving, guiding, loving, hearing, and faithful every step of the way.

This gift is for this day: Elizabeth Elliot taught me this. She hammered into my little head that not only was today a gift, but whatever I had today was a gift, and whatever I didn’t have today was also a gift. “God still holds tomorrow,” she said. This lesson reminded me time and time again over the years that today held enough disappointment and treasure as it was. There was no use longing for tomorrow and ignoring what God wanted to teach me today.

Love Jesus and People more than things: I will never forget sitting in the living room of some friends back in New York and hearing the father talk of how if his kids squabbled over a toy or some plaything, they would immediately rid their home of the item. They would not sell it because they wouldn’t attach worth to some thing which had caused conflict. He wanted to teach his kids to love Jesus and People more than things. Shortly after that I began to get rid of almost everything I owned and began to discipline myself to not worship the idol of sentimentality or wistfulness. I wanted everything I had been stewarded to reek of the fragrance of God’s own. If it didn’t, I got rid of it.

Expectations are resentments waiting to happen: This from another pastor in my church in Texas. I heard it at a time when all my faith and trust in God was shattered because I had put all my expectations in certain things instead of in Him alone. I wanted expressions of His goodness, not simply his goodness. I wanted gifts of lavish attention, without his simple affection. When I began to see the discrepancy, it became immediately clear where my doubt in him was coming from. I resented him, plain and simple. When I began to simply hope in His character and not at all in his gifts, everything changed for me. Nothing about life itself changed, but everything about the way I saw him changed.

This are just a few of the small things that have changed me throughout life. If you’ve known me for any length of time, you’ve probably heard me talk about one or all of them. I hope even more, though, that you’ve seen me live them. It would be a waste if all we did with theology was talk about it. These men and women, though their faithfulness, taught me in small ways huge lessons. This is the last lesson I have learned: To be faithful to God, not an outcome.

I doubt very much most of these people would know their small acts of faithfulness would have life-changing effects on me. But they did. My prayer today is two-fold: that you would find those benchmark moments in your life today, and that you would go back and thank the people who taught you those lessons. And second, that you would know you are being watched and studied by others in their walk. What we say and model and teach matters—and what a good gift that is from God!

The Non-Coffee-Date and Trusting God, Not Man.

It's a joke now, lovingly called the "Non-coffee-date," which syntactically makes no sense but we know what it means. Whenever we tell people our story (three months from first date to wedding date) their incredulity is visible: "But did you even know each other before?" Yes, of course we did. But we knew each other in contexts in which dating one another for various reasons wasn't happening. We had overlapping friend groups that eventually morphed into one. He was well known by men I trusted, I was well known by men he trusted. I cheered for him when he'd taken a friend out on a few dates. We had no reason to do anything but cheer one another on in our individual pursuits.

But then: the non-coffee-date in which we did drink coffee and it was not a date.

We spent two hours in our community's coffee shop, in full view of any frequent church staff customer and no fewer than 30 of our closest friends walking in and out the door. The purpose of the meeting was to continue a conversation we'd been having about pacifism (Sexy, I know.). I'd fought with one of my friends the night before because she wanted me to clarify with him whether this was a date, but I felt this deep confidence in me that God was my Father and he cared for me. I knew Nate was a good man and I had confidence that if it was a date, or he wanted a date, he would ask me, using his mouth, and words straight from the English language. It was just coffee.

At the end of it, he cleared his coffee cup and I cleared mine and he left. "Did he ask you out at the end?" a friend asked. Nope, I said. And then I went home.

Several weeks went by without communication and then a big decision was made by me to move to Denver. The night I came home from my interview trip to Denver, Nate called (on the phone, using words he said with his mouth) and said, "I'd like to take you to dinner. I'd like it to be a date."

And you know the rest of the story.

I'm telling you this, not just my single girl friends, but my married girl friends too, because so often we grasp for control, clarification, communication. We want to know all the moving parts, all the possibilities. We want to plan for every contingency and every system failure. We want faith that is not blind, we want to see every crack and crevice of the future.

But that's not, as a friend of mine said once, real faith. Faith isn't faith if it can see where it's going. Even that statement fails a bit because if you're a child of God you do know where this is all going, even if you can't see it.

Single girls, don't manipulate and scheme the single guys in your lives. Trust God that when a man sees and knows and trusts God with you, he will do the right thing. It might mean a non-coffee-date or two (if he makes it seven or ten, it's not bad to ask for clarification, just don't demand he call it something it's not—that's bad for you and bad for him.), but trust God with the outcome. Be faithful, obedient, gospel yourself, and then trust God.

Married girls, trusting your husband isn't the goal. It's a means for some things, but not the goal. The goal is to trust God and the overflow of trusting God is trusting your husband. If you feel he has broken your trust, look to God. If you feel he has never given you reason to trust him, look to God. If you just want him to do something, trust God.

All my readers, if you are a child of God, don't play chess with today. Don't wake up and scheme how you'll defeat the enemies of your life. Christ already has. He has defeated depression. Discouragement. Confusion. Fear. Worry. Discontent. Sadness. Loneliness. Christ declared His intentions for you before the foundation of the earth. He called you His. Therefore you are secure, chosen, holy, set-apart, a royal priesthood, saints, sons, and daughters. There is no question. Walk today as if there was no question.

He has also made a plan for work that doesn't fulfill you, a husband or wife who doesn't complete you, a local church that doesn't seem to see you, friends who don't seem to care enough about you, and every other disappointment you feel. His plan is Himself.  If He gives you nothing you desire today, it is not because He wants you to lack, but because He wants to give you Himself. Trust Him.

“There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!” — Abraham Kuyper

Good Shepherds and the Good Shepherd

This past spring my pastor said to me, “The sheep never stop needing a shepherd.” In context he was saying, “I kept waiting for a time when the sheep wouldn’t need me so badly, for a time when they’d grow up and mature, but the truth is as long as God has me here, I’m their shepherd and am called to them.” This morning we read Psalm 23 and John 10 and last night in a meeting we talked about what faithful and good shepherding looks like and how we fail at it so often. A good sermon does not a good shepherd make. A good spreadsheet does not a good shepherd make. And a good event planner does not a good shepherd make.

To know what makes a good shepherd, we look to the Good Shepherd, Christ.

A good shepherd leaves the flock to find the one (John 10:16) Good shepherding means at times the majority of the flock may feel left alone, but if they know their shepherd, they trust he will return. They know the business of their shepherd, which is to care for each sheep—even the wayward ones. The good shepherd always returns and teaches his flock to rejoice at the homecoming of the lost.

A good shepherd uses his rod and staff (Ps 23:3) Good shepherding means faithful disciplining, but it also means knowing discipline is ultimately a comfort. The ultimate aim of discipline is not alienation, but cultivation for the sake of health. The good shepherd corrals his sheep toward the flock because it is the safest place for them.

A good shepherd lays down his life (John 10:11) A good shepherd does not count his life as something to be grasped or held or protected. He does not protect his personality, his comforts, his time, or his energy. He lays himself across the threshold of the gate and lays down his life.

A good shepherd knows his Father and his Father knows him (John 10:14) A good shepherd is like Enoch, walking with God. His food is to do the will of the Father. He knows the father more than he knows good theologians or good literature. He is known by the Father, laying bare his life and heart before the one who shepherds the shepherd.

A good shepherd has authority (John 10:18) A good shepherd does not demand authority or grasp for it. He simply has it because it has been given to him. He does not cajole or fear when authority seems far from him, he knows who his Father is and the task he has been given.

A good shepherd knows where the still waters and green pastures are and leads his sheep there (Ps 23:1) A good shepherd has adventured out to faraway lands to seek out still waters and green pastures. He has looked under rocks, in dark places, climbed hills, and been sunk in valleys. He seeks and find the stillest waters and greenest pastures for the good of his flock. He does not lead his sheep to mediocre places.

I look through this list and see the myriad of ways I fail at shepherding anyone, even my own heart, and I remember Isaiah’s words in chapter 30:

In returning and rest you shall be saved, in quietness and trust shall be your strength.

If you feel less like a shepherd and more like a lost sheep these days, leading other sheep in wandering ways, return. Rest. Quiet. Trust. Christ is the Good Shepherd and in His goodness He is leading you to good places.

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.

Processed with VSCOcam with f2 preset

Prenuptial Agreements and Leaving Texas

We woke in the 2am hour to catch our early flight home from Denver. We are bleary-eyed and bloodshot and learning as we prepare to leave this place, we will leave tired. Finishing well is a common idea in Christianity, but not oft practiced well. Every day I see more I've dropped, more people I've failed, more relationships I know I cannot give my bests or second bests to as my time here ends. This is a humbling time.

I've been reading Eugene Peterson's The Contemplative Pastor. It's not my first time through and yet it's wrought with more meaning this time. Eugene is at his pastoral best as he teaches people to minister well—which means, sadly, some things do not end well. People are gifts but they are not presents. We cannot wrap them up with paper and bows and call them finished, not ever. This is a humbling realization for anyone in the work of people.

Faithfulness to the word of God and not an outcome is the mantra coursing through my being the past few months. I am an idealist and outcome is my operative word. I want to see a path and take it until a clearer path emerges. I do not fear the unknown, I fear the known. God's word is the clearest directive we have and yet I trip myself up on good ideas, three points, and a clear plan. It is the wrestle of my soul these days as I watch the sand slip through the hourglass and my time in Dallas-Fort Worth ending.

I just didn't expect to leave in media res. I didn't expect the unknown would be leaving here, not necessary forging to Denver. And I didn't expect to be so sad. So, so sad.

How do you be faithful when you know you're leaving? It feels like a spiritual prenuptial agreement. I've married myself to this place and these people and this church and leaving her feels like tearing myself in two.

One of the elders at the church where I will covenant next said to me yesterday: "It would be a problem if you weren't sad." And I know he's right. I just hadn't counted on being so sad about leaving Texas.

This isn't about much, I suppose, just some thoughts on a perfect overcast spring morning in Texas. I'm supposed to be writing a paper for school; I'm sitting in the coffeeshop I've sat in nearly every day for two years; I'm across the table from a man who loves and serves the Lord more than he loves and serves me, which is more than I thought possible; down the road from the local church who has discipled me in the richness of the gospel for five years; I'm known and loved here, and, which is more, I know and I love here. No matter how many balls I drop or relationships I inevitably fail—those things don't change. God did not bring me here to leave me here, but neither did he bring me here to leave me unchanged by here.

The sad, unfinishedness of this season is good, I think. It would be arrogant to think my exit would be without either, as though my presence here would demand a simple extraction plan. My heart has found a home here and it took far longer than I wanted or expected, but I'm grateful for the gift of it as I make my way to a new home.