On the First Day of the Holiday Season

It’s the time of the year again when photos of children in costume and heavy wet autumn snow on not yet fallen leaves grace the pages of the Internet. Thanksgiving recipes begin to circulate and angry treastises on celebration dos and donts are pounded out on keyboards heard round the world. It’s the time of the year when families line their kids up around a fireplace or an Aspen tree or in a leaf pile or on grandparents day and snap the photo that will land in our mailbox in three, two, one weeks. I begin my yearly debate: should I find a photo of the two of us? Just a card with a message scrawled in it? A form letter, impersonal with the air of personality? One of those one page numbers with graphics and foil and a paperweight heft that says, “I spent money on this which is better than spending time on it.”

When I was still unmarried, every few years I would gather my gumption and send out a stack of cards to my dearest people scattered upon the earth. No photo, just a note. In our first year of marriage we sent a smiling image of us two and the tree we cut down with our own bare hacksaw. I can’t remember being so happy, or healthy, before or since. It was Thanksgiving weekend and seven friends were stuffed into our small house in Denver. A recipe for memories, some good and some bad. But it was before the second miscarriage (and the third and fourth and all the rest), before my birthday and the shooting I witnessed on it, before my car was broken into, and before the months of unemployment had rendered us weak. We had no idea the December and January and February yet to come. We sealed those envelopes and mailed them out and I still have that photo on our refrigerator.

Each year the Christmas cards come steadily in, smiling faces of families and babies and little ones growing. I am from a family of eight children and know those smiles don’t come without plenty of grimaces behind them, perhaps a hand on the back of a little one’s shirt to hold him still, a photographer making a fool of herself to get the toddler to smile, a story of teenage angst behind the purple hair, and the fight mom and dad had over the clothes she laid out for him. I am not naive to the sacrifices parents make to slip those embossed cards in the mail in preaddressed envelopes, to drive away feeling one glimmer of satisfaction until they notice the cheerios stuck on the floor of their minivan and the check engine light on and squabbling siblings in the back seat. I see you, friend, I see you, and I’m proud of you, but also, you didn’t have to.

Last year I didn’t send out cards despite the fact that I found pretty mint green ones with rose gold foil on them for three dollars a box in a post Christmas sale at HomeGoods the year before. They are still stacked in a giant Rubbermaid tote labeled: Christmas. We didn’t take photos and print them out. I didn’t scramble. On Christmas day Nate and I took a walk down the road from where we were staying back home in New York and the snow was falling and Harper was running in circles and the geese were squawking and we turned the camera around and shot a photo of our faces smiling for one perfect moment. I was happy again. The snow used to make me sad the way 95 degree days in October make me sad now, but the snow makes me happy now. “Happy Christmas!” I wrote on Instagram with that happy photo. And it was enough.

I have been thinking about how for a family with babies, those photos are indispensable. They mark the passing of time, growth, maturity, braces, hair cuts, tears, itchy sweaters, and college dreams. They are like the pen marks on the pantry door in the home in which I grew up. Gouges for the passing of time. No one really looks at the adults in those photos, the children are the stars of the show. But when you have no children, the only faces to see are his and hers and time is not always friendly to us past a certain age.

A new wrinkle here, more tired eyes than last year this time, a light gone out, a beard trimmed, or not. These minute particulars are the proof of the story we’re living behind the image you see. It’s true for families with children too, but different for families without. Different even more for the unmarried or alone. It is easier to celebrate how big Timmy has gotten or how beautiful Tilly has become. It is much harder to celebrate the passing of age once the grays have sprouted and the age spots are harder to cover. When you can’t hide your more-lumpy-than-curvy body behind the armor of your baby or the body of your six year old. When you have nothing to do with your hands but cling to one another for dear life. It’s harder to hide when it is only you two. Or you one.

When I was small my mother didn’t send photos in our Christmas cards. She would stack blank cards up on the table for weeks on end, it was a production, and she took it seriously. She penned a letter in each one and signed it in her round and happy font-like handwriting. We had the task of putting them in envelopes and sealing them and licking the stamps (this was before those fancy sticker stamps they have now). Piles and piles of green and red envelopes spilling all over our table for weeks. Every day we would take the stack of five or ten or fifteen she’d finished that day down to the mailbox at the end of our snowy driveway and stuff them in there for the mailman to take. I don’t know why she did it this way and perhaps I’ll ask her. But I remember it more clearly and better than any pressed and pushed family photo we ever took, except our last whole family photo in December of 1999, before Andrew died and before the divorce and before we all scattered around the globe.

Every family has a story, the big ones and the little ones, every person does too. I think I sometimes judge those fancy one page photo cards with the graphics on them because I don’t have children and I wish I did, not the future ones but the passed ones, the ones we’ve lost. But those families have stories too, painful ones, some more painful than mine. And those faces are aging, even the babies and the toddlers, they’re just more beautiful as they do it now. And those mamas and papas face unspeakable suffering too, even if they don’t sign it beside their names, on these cards, these proofs of life.

I don’t know if we’ll send cards this year or a photo or a letter or anything. Perhaps another image on social media, short, sweet, forgettable. Perhaps not. I wonder if perhaps sending a card—giving—is more for the benefit of the sender than the receiver. If marking the passage of time matters more to the one who living that time most intimately than to the one who thumbtacks it to their mantle for a month and then empties it into the garbage on that Thirteenth Morn.

Our first together.

Three E-books Now Available For You

Through the generosity of my Patreon supporters and with the help of my sweet friend Chandler (who has been helping me with all the minutia of Sayable), I'm super excited to offer three e-books for your perusal. Right now they're only available to Patreon supporters, so we'd love to have you join the fold over there. You can give a dollar a month, two dollars, ten dollars, fifty dollars—really, whatever Sayable is worth to you and you can afford. Every bit helps and it also helps me to know who's vested in what happens here. 

Kissing the Wave is named after the often mis-quoted Charles Spurgeon who said, “The wave of temptation may even wash you higher up upon the Rock of ages, so that you cling to it with a firmer grip than you have ever done before, and so again where sin abounds, grace will much more abound.” It is a book of essays written through the years on suffering, storms, faith, and doubt. 

Sleeping Alone is named after the first essay I ever wrote on singleness many, many years ago. It is a book of essays on singleness, dating, guys, girls, and waiting. Writing through my singleness was one of God's best tools of sanctification for me and I hope this ebook encourages you as you read. It encouraged me to write. 

Two Become One is a book of essays from my first year of marriage. A lot of folks say the first is the hardest year and some others say it's the easiest. I don't know that I could say either, but I do know it was full of lessons about leaving, cleaving, and clinging to the cross. 

If you'd like to get your hands on one or more of these, hop on over to the Patreon page and pledge as much or as little as you like. Once you do, you'll be able to access the links to the ebooks on my latest post there. And, as always, thank you for making what I do here a joy and a blessing to me. 

A Case for Marrying Later

I have read and heard and read some more of the case for marrying young, but the more I think about it, and the more I see faithful singles in their late twenties into their thirties and forties and beyond, the more I actually do believe with Paul that it is good to remain unmarried, if not forever, at least then longer. 

What I am not saying is prolonged, aimless, meandering singleness serves anyone (including, if God wills, your future marriage). What I am saying is the purposeful, intentional, poured out life of an unmarried person for the good of the church, the community, and the earth, is a very great gift and should not be squandered or squelched by the growing concerns of married people about late marriages. 

I think the reason many—in the church especially—are concerned about this trend of later marriages is because for so long the main medium and message has centered around the family instead of around faithfulness. Procreation of children, family morals, concerns about marriage issues—these have formed a boundary line of sorts around the sort of things Christians care about. This is why singles have felt alienated, marginalized, and overlooked within the church for so long: unless they both want marriage and are actively involved in the getting of it, there isn't a box for them. Which is unfortunate. No, it's something more than unfortunate. 

I know I don't know much about marriage yet, but I do know a thing or two about being single far longer than I originally hoped. What I found in the prolonging of my singleness was not less fruitfulness, but more as time went on. I found a curious and surprising freedom of flexibility. I found I was able to love the Lord and others with fewer distractions. I found I was able to give of my finances quickly without question. I could travel easily, serve easily, and spend long periods of time in thinking, processing, and praying. What I am not saying is the often quoted line that "singles have more time and finances than married people." What I am saying is I had the same 24 hours in my day then as I do now and the same tight budget then as I do now, but I was able to spend those hours undistracted by the things marriage has called me to now. 

Some of the most faithful Christians I know today are unmarried. They are using their gifts to show a different side of what faithfulness might look like when one doesn't have children, a spouse, a mortgage, or some other constraints. They are making a case for late marriages not simply because of the kind of marriage they might have by delaying it (hopefully more mature, grounded, wise, and sanctified than if they'd come into marriage at 20 or 22), but by being extraordinarily faithful in their singleness.

To all my readers who are unmarried, thank you for being faithful and I pray you grow only more so. The Church needs to see your example of faithfulness. The Church needs to learn marriage isn't the most sanctifying agent, but age, maturity, and submission to God are, and no one is exempt from those three things. The Church needs your hands, your minds, your insights, your passion, your longing, your gifts, not because we are needy and greedy, but because for too long we have not valued what you bring to the Christian life. 

You stand in the company of Martin Luther, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, C.S. Lewis, Amy Carmichael, Joni Eareckson Tada, Mother Theresa, William Wilberforce, Florence Young, Gladys Aylward, Lottie Moon, Corrie Ten Boom, my sweet friend Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, the Apostle Paul, and Jesus—men and women who married late or never married at all, and of whom the world is not worthy in many ways. Faithful men and women who gave their most fruitful years not to bearing children or pleasing wives, but to the bettering of the Church and world. These are giants in my mind and they make the case for marrying late all on their own.

Marriage is a gift and it is not wrong or sinful to long for it—it is a gift I wouldn't trade today for anything, but those years of singleness were a gift too, not just to me, but to others I hope. If you have not married young, there will be sacrifices and it is good and right to mourn over those unmet desires, but then, friends, stand up in the company of those men and women above. Your undistracted, unhindered, anxiety-free faithfulness can be a gift without compare. You have not been wasted and God has not wasted you.

Marry late or not at all—God will not waste you. 

The Hidden Grief of Singleness

I caught myself staring at my husband the other day. Gray is creeping into his full head of hair, small wrinkles forming at the corners of his eyes, a tiny patch of white in his beard. There is a dignity in aging for men, I think to myself, as I think ahead to my next cut and color, dabbing vitamin E oil onto the darkening age spots of my face. Men grow more attractive the older they get and I think women do too, but the world is telling us our bloom came and went, it is time to droop and drop and become the ground from which the next crop will come. 

The name Eve means "the mother of all living," but it does not mean "always mothering all that is living." There is not a woman among us who does not feel the age of fertility closing, the gap between fully alive and to dust we shall return ending. Most of us have a monthly reminder of one more opportunity lost. We are all coming to the last chapter of motherhood, whether we bear children or not. 

My oldest friend is visiting me soon. There is no one in the world who knows me as well, as deep, as long, and as wholly as she does. How could anyone? She held me through fitful nights after my brother was killed. I have listened to her for years mourn things she cannot control. She was equal parts older sister to my youngest siblings and I to hers. There is no scent in the world as familiar to me as hers.

I always assumed she would marry first. She is cute, vivacious, tiny, adventurous, nurturing, full of life, bringing joy wherever she goes. She gives of herself in every possible manner, always pouring out, never lacking in love to give. I have learned more about motherhood from her than anyone in my life. And yet, she is not married, and I am and this pains me. I physically ache for her in this sometimes. I don’t know anyone made to mother more than her.

. . .

It occurs to me more and more recently that the barrenness of singleness is a silent pain. In our singleness we feel the lack of a partner often and others' suppose it is our deepest ache. It can be tempting to see it as the only barrier between today and joy. Yet there is another, sometimes more difficult, pain unmarried women face and this is the pain of barrenness. Some find ways around this ache, adopting or fostering children. But for most unmarried women that monthly reminder of aging reminds them again and again that time is running out. Men can prolong marriage as long as they like, but women know there is a deadline and it is half of a man's life-span. Men wonder why, sometimes, some women are anxious to be united? It is no mystery to me: we are dealing with only half the time and must move doubly fast if we are to become mothers of what is living. 

The older I grow, and the more familiar I grow with my own body's failure to make and hold a child, the more I talk to my unmarried friends, the more I hear it is not the lack of a partner that pains or has pained us all most, it is the lack of motherhood. 

There is a very real ache for children that cannot be replaced by mentoring, discipleship, practicing hospitality. Nothing can be substituted for hearing the words "Mama" or "Daddy" from the lips of a child. Yet, I think, we cannot look at the substance of our being mothers as only within the gift of children. Nurturing others is not some consolation prize for the barren, it is the call for every Christian. Our problem is not that we are being withheld from, it is that we view the gift of nurturing too narrowly. We think it is only—and best—done with children we bear, but that is not the call to the New Testament family. In the Old Testament the family of God was nuclear and extended, but limited to one lineage. In the New Testament, the family of God is corporate and available to all, mothers and fathers and sons and daughters and brothers and sisters—this is the language of the New Testament Christian. We are all family now. 

Eve was created to be Adam’s helper, but she was named to be a mother. She was called to a man, but called mother. Her very identity, the way she specifically imaged God, was to conceive, birth, mother, nurture, grow, care for, and gather her offspring to herself. We may feel called to marriage (even if we have not been given the gift of it yet), but our identity, our substance, who we are is not some future event: it is now. Mother. Now. 

If you are unmarried today and the secret pain of barrenness haunts you, I want to encourage you to face that pain. It is a very real and legitimate ache. You were made to ache for this. A friend of mine talked recently about how the pain of singleness/barrenness doesn't haunt her, but sometimes it hits her and I loved that. I think God wants all of us, regardless of our season in life, to be hit by true, real, and good longings, but not be haunted by them. This friend went on to talk about a situation in which I've found myself too: buying a baby gift for a friend and going out to her car in tears. 

The Bible gives us permission to weep deeply over the life we hoped we would have, and to not feel ashamed of that hope or disappointment. It is okay to grieve those losses and feel that pain. Go out to your car armed with tiny onesies you just bought for your friend, the scent of powder and sweet baby things still on you, and weep, cry hard aching sobs. You were made to mother. You are built for it. And it is not happening for you right now. And that is sad. Deeply sad. And that is okay. Really okay. 

. . .

I'll pick up my friend today, my oldest and dearest friend, and for the next ten days we will do all the things we love to do together, make, create, laugh, cry, be, dream, cook, talk, or not. She will nurture me and I will hopefully nurture her. It is our identity to do so. We are daughters of the post-fall Eve, bodies broken, dreams unrealized, fears alive, but we are also the daughters of pre-fall Eve, imaging God, tending to life, nurturing growth, mothers of what is living. 

Marriage is as One Long Conversation

The old philosopher said, "Marriage is as one long conversation. When marrying you should ask yourself this question: do you believe you are going to enjoy talking with this woman into your old age? Everything else in a marriage is transitory, but most of the time you're together will be devoted to conversation.” The old philosopher was right, but as with all bits of rightness, it ought to be understood in its place. 

I have always known marriage was not an easy conversation. I am of Scotch-Irish descent; men in my family love their beer and asserting opinions, and as for the women, there's a demure outside but on the inside it's all fire and spit. Most conversations were spent seeing who could talk the loudest the longest without throwing the first punch—even if the punch was merely metaphorical.

When I began to grow outside the incubator of family alone, I saw the long conversation of marriage through a different lens. These marriages were built on the scaffolding of details: who is supposed to be where and when and how, who needs to be picked up, what's for dinner, what should we do about this child or that one. There was an ordinariness to the conversations of marriage, unaccompanied by emotive, defensive jabs at the other. It seemed simplistic. I know now it's because I was not in the middle of those marriages as I was in the middle of the marriages in my family, and when we are in the middle of something all our own, we see all its inconsistencies and broken-places.

As I stepped into adulthood and was able to see my skewed perspective of childhood and adolescence both, I began to see marriage was a long conversation, but the tone of voice could change it from a pleasant one to a violent one. Armed with this newfound knowledge of tone, intention, nuance, and even love, I began to assume all the long conversations of marriage could be blissful. A constant sharing of ideas and delights and hurts and confusions, a true partnership. Whenever I thought of being married it was the long conversation I looked forward to most. 

Marriage has been that for me and Nate. The cusp of our friendship was on deep conversation, leading to dates full of long, easy talks, quiet pauses, intentional listening, and slow responses. This was the long conversation of marriage I wanted, I could see that clearly from our first date. 

The long conversations become subject to the tyranny of the urgent, though, as most things can. A few weeks ago there were twelve decisions that needed to be made and seven of them required quick conversations but the other five required depth, time, focus, and charity. We were short on all of that, though, and so if the conversations were going to be had, they were going to be had on the surface, quickly, while we multi-tasked, and were short with one another. As with most conversations built on bedrocks like that, we needed to repent later to one another. 

The urgent doesn't let up, though, does it? There is always someone who needs an answer or thinks they need an answer, or wants one. There is always something that must be signed up for or paid or responded to or agreed upon. There is always something left unfinished, unsaid, unsealed. I have learned to say to others, "I want to talk to Nate about that first," but the when of talking sometimes comes slowly or is mingled among the other conversations, never finished.

Nate and I practice (and by practice, I mean we are very unproficient at this and must practice) the discipline of saying "No," to ourselves, our minds, our friends, and the tyranny of the urgent. If, in saying no, we find ourselves disappointed or others disappointed by our lack of a quick answer—this is the discipline of the practice. This is the sacrifice, the hurt, the pain. This is where we admit to ourselves and to others that we are not God, as much as we sometimes think we would like to be. 

I think about Jesus in John 16. He says to his disciples and friends, "I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you." I think about how often we fill conversation simply because we do not want to feel the lack of the incarnate Christ and we do not want to wait for the Holy Spirit to do what only he can do. We are uncomfortable with the long silences, afraid the Spirit will not do what He does: move. 

Yesterday morning, in the early hours of our day of rest, Nate mentioned some conversations we've left unfinished this week, answers others expect. And then he said this: I want to pray about these things, ask the Holy Spirit to give us wisdom, humility, and a direction, even more than we simply talk about them. And then, for the rest of the day, we didn't talk about things we could not solve on that day. We left space for the Spirit to enter in, give peace or withhold it. 

Marriage is one long conversation, but it is not, primarily, a conversation between two, but three. If we find the conversation to be focused on just two, it may go the brawling way of my family, or it may go the stoic way of my checklisting friends. But, I think, if we move ourselves away from one another for a moment, stop talking and begin listening, not primarily to one another but to the Holy Spirit, we may find that conversation more robust, full, and gentle than we could have imagined before. We may leave more things unfinished, more things unsaid, more events unattended, and more lists unchecked, but I do not think we will leave less full. 

If you're married today, what might it look like to still the conversation—even about the rudimentary things or the things that seem pressing and necessary—and begin to recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit in this longest conversation of your life? 

If you're not married today, what might it look like to trust the Spirit is still at work in all the seeming silences of your life? In the lonely places where you long for conversation, how can you exercise listening to the Helper, learning from him, and obeying him as he perhaps prepares you for the long conversation of earthly marriage and definitely prepares you for the long conversation of eternity? 

Distracted Devotion: The Divided Attentions of Marriage

A month ago I messaged our pastor after his first sermon in a series of three on marriage and said, "Really great sermon. Will there be one on the value and need of singleness?" He replied quickly it was in the line-up and yesterday it was delivered. It was the sermon I had wished to hear in my years of singleness at The Village and it was a sermon I was grateful my counterparts were hearing (both married and un-married). Matt read me the draft before he preached it, deferring to the challenges I gave him, and I know from several others he did the same with them. One of the reasons I love being back here is because we have a pastor who listens to his people and doesn't need to be the final arbiter on anything. The result, for this sermon and any other, really, was it was staunchly Biblical, full of encouragement, and humble in delivery. 

I wanted to walk away full of renewed hope for my unmarried sisters and brothers, and hope for my married friends too, that we would all walk forward energized, excited, and truly commissioned for work together. But only a few minutes into the sermon, Matt read from I Corinthians 7:32-35, and I felt sick inside. I know this Scripture. I know it backwards and forwards. I committed my life to knowing it and living it and embodying it in my singleness. I was anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please him in body and spirit. I was determined to be undistracted by the things of this world. Determined to serve the Church and my church fully. Determined to be wholly committed to this gift of singleness. I had good days and bad ones, but I can honestly say as I faced my groom on our wedding day, I had tried to be obedient and faithful and had no regrets. 

But since marriage? Friend. It has been two years of piling regrets, piling shame, and piling guilt. I have not known how to receive this gift of marriage as a gift. I have not known how to draw my eyes in from my previous breadth of ministry to the current depth of it. To "care for the concerns of my home," seems to be the antithesis of all I spent my life on before. To "be anxious about the things of this world," seems to be the opposite of the call I tried to fill. To "please a husband," seems to shout of everything I tried not to do in my singleness—craft myself into a man-pleasing woman. 

I have known this tearing of my ontological self to be happening, but I have tried and tried to somehow make both true. I have tried to make the aim to be anxious about the Lord and the world, how to please the Lord and please my husband, and the tearing feels so incomplete still.

I have said before that marriage is not the most sanctifying thing and that for some singleness may be their most sanctifying thing. I have also said the sanctification that happens in marriage is different than the kind that happens in singleness, and this verse in I Corinthians, so often my aim in my singleness, describes the different better than I could. I used to judge married folks for being so worldly minded, more concerned about their homes and husbands and kid's schedules than the Wide World Out There. But yesterday in church, I felt the pit of conviction grow large in my innards. It isn't disobedience to be concerned with the things of this world. It's different, but not disobedience. 

Maybe some of you long married folks are shaking your heads at me, rolling your eyes, and maybe you unmarried folks are desperate for the trade, but as for me, I'm wondering how long oh Lord? How long, I asked Nate in the car on the way home yesterday, will this process be painful for me? It has truly felt like I'm being ripped apart inside as I learn to turn my gaze inward, focus on pleasing my husband and working in our home, seeking to honor the Lord in a different context.

How long will it hurt? How long will it feel like a loss? I asked Nate. 

I don't think he answered, not directly at least, he rarely does. My husband is a question asker to my questions, leading me to the water of life and washing me in it. It will hurt as long as we live in this world and call ourselves Jesus-followers, I think. Since creation we've been turning our gaze from what is best and setting it on the things of this world. It's not all wrong, though, and I saw that yesterday in I Corinthians 7. 

My favorite poem, one I've quoted here so often I hope you all know it as well as I do now, is called Love Calls Us to the Things of this World, and it is about laundry, billowing, blowing, and clear dances done in the sight of heaven. I weep every time I read it because it reminds me of how much work it is to love, truly love. The real substance of love is not only the being, but the doing. The being loved is dependent on the other, but the doing of love is on me, with the Spirit's help. And right now, as long as I am married, God, who is love, has called me to the things of this world, how I may please my husband. It is a different call, and one I am not quite comfortable in, and may never be, but it is my call. And it is good. 

I think perhaps we all have grass is greener moments. I know there were plenty of times in my singleness when I wanted the breadth of my life to be shrinked to a singular depth—to a man, and thought it would be better than what I had. And I know there are some who wish to be free of the constraints of marriage and children (and laundry if we're honest). And maybe there are some of you who are so comfortably settled in this day and gift in which you live that you never dream of the other. I don't know where you are today, but I do know it is the gift you've been given for today. As our dear old Elisabeth said, "God still holds tomorrow." 

How Do I Know if I'm Settling in My Search for Spouse?

For a lot of years I thought I was going to have to settle for a husband. I was never the girl getting asked out dozens of times and having to perfect my "I think Jesus is calling me to be single...for now" refusals. I dated occasionally, lots of first dates, usually with men I knew fairly well already, but nothing ever really seemed to fit. I began to think maybe my expectations were wild, maybe my requirements were too extreme, maybe I was waiting for some guy who didn't exist. 

I don't know when it happened, somewhere in my 33rd year, but I began to believe being single was actually better than all the mid-life marriages I was surrounded by. Many of my friends were getting divorced or on the brink of divorce or just sort of "meh" about their spouses. I heard more about how hard marriage was than about how good it was. I watched couple after couple face circumstances they didn't expect and end up in the arms of another or just passively facing life together as roommates. I knew that wasn't what I wanted, but I also knew I was getting older and the pickin's seemed slim. The question, for me, became not "Should I settle?" but "What is settling?" That's a hard question to answer for any unmarried person because it doesn't really have a solid answer. You have nothing to compare what not settling looks like because, well, for obvious reasons, that person isn't on your radar. There were plenty of guys I admired for their work and theology ethic, and for their love for the local church and their families. But either they were married to someone else or they hadn't noticed me in any fashion. It was easier to answer the first question (Should I settle?) than to answer the second: What is settling?

It turned out that I didn't need to ask the question or find the answer, because at the proper time and not one minute sooner, Nate and I began to have conversations.

Friends, there was no spark. There was no voice from heaven saying, "This is the one." There was no giddy butterfly in my stomach fluttering up into my heart. There was no chorus of angels announcing my wait had come to an end. There was none of that. There was not one bit of assurance that this guy would be anything other than a guy with whom I had a series of cool conversations about pacifism. The question of settling didn't come into the equation, it didn't have a chance to, because in the space we'd embarked on, I began to think of him as my friend.

Without doubts, without questions, without "What ifs?" Nate was simply my friend. I won't deny there was the hope of something more, but there wasn't space for it to breathe, not much. Not really at all. He was so completely clear with me from the very beginning that it was friendship, and not until he picked up his phone and called me to ask me on a date, could I assume it was anything more. And once it was something more, he continued to use his voice to ask me on more dates, ask me how I felt about continuing to date, and then ask me to marry him. And since then, there have been thousands of more asks from him to me. 

He was not the first to ask me on a date, but he was the first for whom there was a complete absence of doubt for me. People ask: "When did you know he was the one?" I never knew he was the one (I don't even know if there is a such thing as one.). What I knew was day to day to day to day, I was going to walk forward as long as I had faith as it led me to the altar. And then, only then, would he become my one, the question of doubts and fears and what ifs and expectations always taking a backseat to the vows we said standing in front of our friends, family, pastors, and elders. 

We have a really beautiful marriage. It's not perfect. It's not without disagreements or failures or misunderstandings. But it's a really beautiful marriage built on a singular point: faith. Not faith in one another to never fail us, but faith in God that we came together without doubts, with the confidence of our church family and elders, with the joy of our families, with the cheers of our friends. There was faith that we weren't settling. 

God, in his goodness, gave me a husband beyond any of my wildest hopes and dreams, with specificity and precision, with attentiveness to my needs and my wants. God crafted a husband for me as specifically as he crafted me himself. I have not one single doubt that my beloved is mine and I am his, and I never have had one doubt. 

I wanted to say this because since we've been married, I've encountered so many couples for whom doubt was a big part of their dating and engagement. A feeling they couldn't flee from, an uncertainty they couldn't get past, a sense they couldn't shake, a feeling of settling. Or there were doubts of others: concerns of immaturity, fears of unequal yoking, desires to protect from what seemed not good. And yet, they got married just the same, and every day since then their marriage has suffered for it.

These marriages began on what they could see and feel (looks, money, chemistry, security, appearance of godliness), and not on what they could not (faith from God and in God, hope from God and in God, love from God and in God). They made a pragmatic decision to marry for whatever reasons, and now their marriages have suffered for it. It might have seemed to them and others that they were not settling as they said their vows to one another based on appearances, but deep in their hearts they were settling for less than "perfect peace" (Isa. 26:3). 

Listen to me: if you are married or will be married, there will come hard times when money will be scarce, looks will falter, houses will be lost, jobs will be gone, churches will be difficult, and children will be a source of ache: what sustains you in those times is that strong and certain faith in the God who drew you to one another. If you married your spouse, or they married you, without a certain faith and an absence of doubt, ask God today to give you the gift of faith that this is your beloved and ask him to give your spouse the same gift of faith. God wants to give you that gift! He's longing to give it to you. 

If you are unmarried, trust God. You will know you are not settling because there will be not only an absence of doubt in you, but an absence of doubt in them, and an absence of doubt in your community.  If you do not have community, then do not get married. I mean this. Wait. To get married without a strong, loving community who will speak truth to you even if it's painful, is to invite trauma into your marriage before you've even started. If you feel the presence of doubt, the question of whether you're settling, might that be the Holy Spirit, protecting you from future angst and trauma? Marriage is so full and so fun and so wonderful. I want that for you, but you have to want it for you and you have to believe it can exist for you. God wants to give good gifts to his children! Believe that he wants to give you bread and fish instead of a stone and serpent. 

Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?  If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! Matthew 7:9-11

The enemy is crouching at your door, waiting to devour you. He's waiting to devour your singleness, your future marriage, or your present marriage. Do not give him a foothold by moving forward without faith. Trust the Lord: it would be better to remain single than to be in a marriage headed for divorce as soon as the vows have been said. 

*I also recognize that there may be some couples who thought they had this absence of doubt in themselves and their community and moved forward, only to find themselves in a train wreck of a relationship today. I ache for you and pray God would show himself to be enough for you in the wake of disappointment, failure, and sin. He is enough. Put your faith in HIM and not in a fixed, healed, or whole marriage as you would see it. I'm praying for your marriages today. 

A Different Kind of Dominance in Marriage

Have you ever injured your dominant hand? Maybe as simple as a paper cut, maybe a broken arm or stitches or a sprain. I've done it a time or two and had to use my other arm which feels like some sort of cruel joke. I wonder sometimes why God gave us dominant hands. Wouldn't it have made more sense to make both hands just as useful all the time? In my wisdom I think so. But then there are times when I have to use my subservient (but certainly not submissive) hand and think to myself, Lord, I'm so grateful I don't always have to do this because it's hard, but it makes me so grateful for that one useful hand. Learning how to be married is a bit like that. Not the lovely parts of marriage, the friendship, the laughter, the good, deep, and cleansing renewing conversations, the dreaming, the sex, the shared goals and visions. Those are so lovely and I wish every bit of them on everyone I know. I mean the parts I don't know how to do, the being a wife, the being a home-maker, the working from home wife, the being alone or having to do so many things by myself I never envisioned were a part of marriage. It feels like using my left hand when my right hand is all I've ever used.

Last night, after staying late into the evening in the District for some work things, Nate was taking the last train home and, as commonly happens, his train was stopped and they recommended finding alternate forms of transportation. I had just settled into bed with some apples and peanut butter, Manor House, and my pup when his text came asking me to drive and pick him up. I threw on my slippers and a hoodie, glanced at my phone which only had 5% left on it, hoped our car charger would work (it hasn't been), and set out for a 45 minute trek through unfamiliar roads to a train station I'd never been to.

About halfway there, though, my phone died. I pulled the car over, breathed really deeply, knew I was about to cry since I had no earthly idea where I was, it was dark, my phone was dead, and I knew somewhere in this big bad world my husband was waiting for me. Common sense took over soon enough and I just kept driving until I found a convenience store to ask directions. I finally got to the train station and found my dear man waiting for me and we began the trek back home—this time with his GPS on.

I felt one handed on the drive there, unprepared for the night, without a navigation system, dressed only in my pajamas, dependent on strangers (drunk ones) to give me directions, on which they couldn't agree and nearly got into a fight about because, as it turned out, they were giving me directions to two different train stations.

This feels like marriage sometimes, I thought this morning. I feel woefully unprepared, without a navigation system, and at the mercy of feuding strangers on the Best Ways to Do Everything. Of course I'm not woefully unprepared and I do have a navigation system, but it's not always as neat and organized as the books, or Bible, make it out to be. It often feels like I knew how to do singleness very, very well, but now I have to use this other, unused part of my brain, heart, skills, everything, and learn from the ground up. Marriage isn't more sanctifying, it's just different sanctifying.

My friend Haley and I got married a year apart and we've been able to talk through some of these challenges, joys, sorrows, together, along with some other aspects of life. We've started a little blog together called Tables and Miles: Friendship, Food, and Finances from Far Away. The premise is just that we'll write a letter to one another once a week on it, talking about those elements in a way that interests us, and might interest you. If it does, here's the link. We just using the free Wix platform because who has money to spend on hobbies?

My friend Hannah Anderson wrote a great post on writing that I thought worth sharing, for readers and writers.

Lexy Sauve wrote an excellent piece on new years and cleaning routines and our hearts. I cannot recommend it enough.

Along the lines of Hannah's article, someone shared this and I found it convicting and interesting.

The Rabbit Room writers shared their favorite music of 2016 here and I made a playlist on Spotify (though, please, for goodness sake, buy some of these albums and support their art. The amount of work I do as a writer and don't get paid for makes me realize how little our world puts actual value on art, and I want to do better about giving toward faithful artists.).

I hope you enjoy your weekend. Perhaps think about some ways you've been called to use your less than dominant hand in life these days, and what the Lord might be teaching you through it.

Two Becoming One: Challenges for newly married

I've already written on this one pretty extensively, but I want to delve a bit more in the practicality of it today. A short recap though: marriage is not 1+1=1, as we're led to believe. It's messier math than we'd like, more like (1-1)+(1-1)=1. We empty ourselves, pouring our lives out for one another, and only through sacrificial love and overarching servant-heartedness, are we able to become one with our spouse. It is not so glorious—or sexual—as I envisioned before marriage, when I thought becoming one was some sort of allusion to consummation. It is, but it's a whole lot more of becoming a whole lot less. The good news is that, hopefully, someday the one flesh unit you've become is a solid and impenetrable one. We're not there yet, but we're learning, day by day. Yesterday I wrote about schedules and how our schedule is to serve the other's schedule, but on a deeper, heart level, what does that mean? It means entering into conflict without entering into competition. My friend Haley Kirkpatrick (35, married two years, one beautiful baby), said this,

"Marriage is not a competition. I know some books out there talk about competing in a healthy way—outdoing your spouse in kindness, thoughtfulness, respect, and love—but for a competitive person like myself, this is not helpful and just leads to a desire to compete when we're in the worse, poorer, and sickness parts of marriage. I am not in competition with my husband about who is more tired, who is more stressed, whose back hurts and therefore needs a back rub more. It is easy to compete. It is harder to stop, listen, and love even when I feel tired, stressed, and unable to stand up straight. But it is loving deep and big and selflessly in the worse, poorer, and sickness that makes love so damn good in the better, richer, and healthy parts of marriage, and it is what sustains your love the next time life is worse, poorer, and sick."

Haley and I are very different people in many ways. One of which is that Haley is a more competitive person than I am. She pushes herself against herself and against others to be the best she can be at everything she does, including being a wife. I am not wired like that, in fact, I'm wired the opposite way. I am still competitive, but she externalizes her competition, I internalize it, so much so that it eats me alive, from the inside out. We both are struggling with the same root issue: we want to be the best, even better than our husbands in some ways. I'm saying this because I think there are people who are clearly competitive people and for them, the difficulty in marriage is vocal, heated, and visible. But for others, the competition is sneaky, sly, and quiet. Instead of a game of words, it's a game of wills—who can go the longest without bringing up something? Who can stay quiet about something the longest? Who can bear the weight of the other the longest?

I came into marriage with very real fears that every conflict would be loud, heated, and harsh, because this was the example I had growing up. Nate came into marriage determined to not repeat his sins from before, conflict was nonexistent until it was impossible to ignore, he never spoke up about anything, and was passive in his leadership. I feared conflict and he feared the lack of it. God, in His sovereignty though, has given us plenty of it in the first 17 months of our marriage. I remarked to him the other day that what we've walked through in the past year is more than what most people married for fifteen years walk through. It's like God is playing catch-up with our marriage, bringing us to the place most of our peers are in. (That's a joke. Kind of.)

How do two whole people, with whole opinions and histories and beliefs and visions, dissipate and become one whole unit?

To be honest, I have no idea. Really. No idea. I think it's a mystery. But here are two things I have to remember often:

Conflict is good

I've realized that most of the bad conflict or lack of it, that we've experienced is mostly in the way the words are said, not in the words themselves. It is good and right to say, "I don't like this," or "I prefer this," or "I've had a really hard day." But it is not good or right to say those things in order to wound, to assert rights, or to compete with one another. I have not learned this well, but it actually serves my husband when I say, "I do have a preference and this is what it is," otherwise he's flying blind. In a new marriage this can be really scary because it's all heart eye emojis and inside jokes until it isn't. As soon as you say you have a preference, and especially if you know his preference is different, you've entered conflict. But heart eye emojis and inside jokes cannot a marriage grow. We need good, healthy, measured conflict. Nate and I have made some Really Big, Really Hard, Really Deep mistakes this year because we didn't know how to speak the language of conflict good, so instead, we just kept quiet. Learning the language of conflict is one of the best things we can do in a new marriage. We do that two ways: watching those who do it well and doing it ourselves.

Con means against, but also with

I've been learning that the more I am against Nate in something, and by against, I mean our two opinions pressed up against one another, the more of me gets shaved off. This is what the Bible calls "iron sharpening iron." By allowing the againstness of conflict chip off the parts of me that keep us from being one flesh, I become less and less of my former unmarried self. Don't let anyone tell you, newly married person, that the process isn't painful. It is just as painful as becoming the healthy, whole, vibrant person you were before you got married. Just as painful. Sanctification in marriage isn't harder than singleness, but it is different, mainly in that you're starting over in a lot of ways.

I envision it like this and maybe this will help you: We are two whole little wooden figurines before marriage and then we come together and the process of conflict shaves off pieces of us, which fall to the ground. We have always thought of ourselves as whole as the figurines, so it doesn't occur to us to look at the shavings below and think of them as any consequence, but what is actually happening is at the end of this process, the shavings below are imperceptible from one another. They—with all their pieces of conflict, hurt, joy, preference, and desire—are the new unit, the little wooden figurines are no more. That's the process of sanctification in marriage, the two becoming one. The analogy breaks down of course, but while it works, it works. And it helps me to not look at those scraps on the floor as wasted.

I think of John Piper's words,

"Not only is all your affliction momentary, not only is all your affliction light in comparison to eternity and the glory there. But all of it is totally meaningful. Every millisecond of your pain, from the fallen nature or fallen man, every millisecond of your misery in the path of obedience is producing a peculiar glory you will get because of that.

I don’t care if it was cancer or criticism. I don’t care if it was slander or sickness. It wasn’t meaningless. It’s doing something! It’s not meaningless. Of course you can’t see what it’s doing. Don’t look to what is seen.

When your mom dies, when your kid dies, when you’ve got cancer at 40, when a car careens into the sidewalk and takes her out, don’t say, “That’s meaningless!” It’s not. It’s working for you an eternal weight of glory.

Therefore, therefore, do not lose heart. But take these truths and day by day focus on them. Preach them to yourself every morning. Get alone with God and preach his word into your mind until your heart sings with confidence that you are new and cared for."

. . .

I hope that encourages us today, newly married sisters, as we look at the scraps of life falling below us. He's doing something with them. All this conflict is working in us a better marriage, a more whole one. Even if our marriages are without a lot of conflict and are peaceful havens, the world is coming at us a thousand miles a second, and the enemy crouches at our door waiting to rule over us. In the infancy of this union, friend, let's be sisters who are gentle with our words, faithful with our words, and honest with our words. Our husbands will thank us and it will be a sweet fragrance to our God.

Sleep, Schedules, and Sleep Schedules: Challenges for the newly married

When we were going through our pre-marital counseling, one of the questions we asked one another was, "Are you an early riser or a late one?" I typically rose around 7, so my answer was quick: "Oh, I'm an early riser. I love mornings!" It was true, I would walk up to a usually quiet house—some of the girls might be at work already, some might still be asleep—make my coffee, and sit down in the Ikat armchair and read the Bible and write. Mornings felt sacred. Nate also answered, "Early riser." Perfect. A match made in heaven. Certain bliss would be our good fortune. Heart eye emoji.

What I came to learn in marriage, though, is that "Early" to him is "Middle of the Night" to humanity everywhere. He needs about six hours of sleep and usually gets up somewhere between the four o'clock and five o'clock hour. Some mornings he is breakfasted, coffeed, showered, dressed, bibled, podcasted, and sometimes run before I get out of bed at 6:30 am. We are also both very light sleepers and wake one another up several times a night. We also have a puppy who for the past eight months has kept us up several times a night. When Nate wakes up, he is up, at 'em, ready to talk, listen, commentate, and go. He chooses to go to work two hours before most of his co-workers because he is crazy. I, on the other hand, would just like a little peace and quiet, a cup of coffee, and no one to talk to me for like twenty minutes after rising. Our puppy, unfortunately, is more like Nate than me, and wants to play fetch while it is still dark outside.

What I'm saying is: when I was single I had a schedule that worked well for me. I liked my schedule. I liked my quiet, slow mornings. I liked sleeping eight hours. I liked waking up without an alarm, without a husband rolling out of bed, very literally squeaking across the floorboards, and fumbling around in the dark. Without a puppy breathing in my face at 5am. I also liked staying up late, writing in the still darkness of a house, to the light of a candle. I liked processing the day late into the night. But we made a decision to go to bed at the same time, and I think it was a good decision, even if Nate falls asleep the second his head hits the pillow and I'm awake for an hour or more, laying in the dark.

I'm not the only one making sacrifices though. Nate ran Division 1 track and field for the University of Texas. He is fast. He says, like Eric Liddell, when he runs he feels God's glory. Since we got married, though, and especially now that he is gone so many hours a day, he doesn't have time to run like he used to and would like to. By the time he gets home after 12 hours away, his wife is anxious to see him, and there's only a few hours before his head will hit the pillow like a rock. Marriage had to change our priorities. Sleep for me, running for him.

These are small examples, and the truth is, they're kind of petty examples. There are much larger things happening in the melding of two people schedules, primarily the discipline of not growing weary in well-doing. There is a kind of selflessness at play when our schedule preferences meet with one another and clash, a constant and minute opportunity to resent instead of serve. And those opportunities mount day by day by day, particularly if you think you will never get the thing you want. I have had to remind myself of two truths regularly in our new marriage:

1. My schedule is to serve his schedule

The bible says the wife is to be concerned with how she may please her husband, and I take that to mean, very seriously, my primary occupation is to make sure he can go about his day feeling loved, fed, nourished, rested, and released to lead our family. That means my schedule submits to his schedule. My schedule bends to his schedule. We eat when he comes home. We go to sleep when he is tired. We wake when he wakes. I stop my paying work when he comes home on the train, and begin my at home work. And sometimes my paying work plays second fiddle to my at home work. I had to turn down a great contract recently because I knew I couldn't serve my husband and this contract in this season. I knew if I took the contract, my flesh would want to please the contract more than it pleased my husband. My schedule is to lay my life down for him.

2. His schedule is to serve my schedule

Before your feminism gets its panties in a twist, his schedule is to serve mine too. He is working to provide for our family, to keep a roof over our heads, food on our table, and to pay for that pesky puppy who wakes me up every morning. He has submitted his life to leading and caring for our family, instead of out running, reading theology all day, and traveling the world. He washes the dishes every single night after I cook. He tiptoes across the squeaking floorboards, doing his best to miss the really loud ones. He showers in our guest bathroom so it's not as loud. If I'm up when he leaves, he makes sure there's coffee in the French Press. He always gets up with the puppy in the middle of the night. Always. When he has a day off, he always asks me what I would like to do with the day, instead of putting his preferences ahead of mine. His schedule is to lay his life down for mine.

. . .

There's an interdependence in marriage that I didn't have when I was single—as much as I tried to craft my life in such a way that there were daily opportunities to lay it down. In marriage you go to sleep with that person every night, and the worst thing you can do is go to sleep with a running list of all the ways you sacrificed for him and all the ways he didn't for you. I want to take every opportunity to cheer my husband on, encourage him when he is down, make space for things he loves, and please him—not in order that he might do the same, but because God has said a wife is a good thing, and I want to be a good thing for my husband.

If you're newly married and this clash of wills rears its ugly head primarily around your schedules, first, maybe you need some sleep, but second, what would it look like for you to lay your life down this week for his? To craft your life around what the cares of your household are? To prefer his needs above yours? I am praying for us, newly married sisters, that we would be wives who say, "I'm not my own flesh anymore," knowing it is God who gets the glory of a relinquished will and schedule.

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.

Making New Friends, Keeping Old Ones // Challenges for the newly married

This is part of a series I'm doing this week on challenges for the newly married

Before I got married, I'd get questions from my single sisters often that went something like this, "My friend recently got married and now it seems like she has no time for me! What do I do?" My answer was always along the lines of, "If you value the friendship, and I hope you do, recognize the massive life change she is undergoing, and be patient. There will come a time, sooner than she thinks, that she realizes this wonderful, amazing man she's knit herself to for life, doesn't fill every need when it comes to relationships. She needs female friendship, and she will want it again soon, and hopefully if your friendship before marriage was the sort that there was an equal give and take, she will want it with you soon." I know it feels a bit like rainy-day friendship, but true friendship will weather that torrential storm. I hope my friends have the same grace for me.

There are, I think, two main challenges for the newly married when it comes to friendships:

1. Keeping your own friends

This has been a real challenge for us. Partially affected by our two moves, but also because our individual friends were our own. We each have long histories with them. Now, in marriage, there are twice the amount of relationships to maintain and only one unit of us. We simply cannot maintain the double relational energy it takes to maintain all the friendships there are between the two of us—particularly because both of us have lived all over world and we met one another in our mid-late-thirties—that's a lot of friendships all over the place to try to maintain well. It's impossible for mere humans, and so we have had to step back from some friendships. It feels horrible to be the person on the other side of that equation, and I have been there dozens of times myself. It isn't meant to be mean, it is simply the limitations of our human-ness pressing up against the expectations of others. I cannot have long and rambling phone calls or text messages at 11pm anymore. I don't book tickets to a wedding halfway across the country anymore. I don't spend weeks away from home on road-trips anymore. Disappointing others will happen because I am saying "Yes" to my husband and home and "No" to many other things and people, and Nate is doing the same.

There are a few friends where our friendship has changed, but our friendship is maintained. The number is simply smaller than it ever has been before, and in some ways, some of those friendships have grown or diminished even since marriage. Things change. People change. Friendships change. It doesn't change the value of what was had before though, and if you're still single or newly married, I'd encourage you to not grow bitter or feel ashamed of this reality. Sometimes some friendships are only for a season.

2. Making new friends together

Before marriage I had this idea that married friendship looked a lot like two guy best friends and two girl best friends hanging out for all hours of the night. They had all sorts of inside jokes and there was a comfortable familiarity among all of them together that was the glue holding their friendship together. The truth is more like this: two or three of the four have great chemistry, and the other(s) is left feeling on the outside of something that seems very much like they should be inside it.

We all learn early on in life that not everyone has to be friends with everyone. There is a natural sort of chemistry to friendship, an attractiveness not based on physicality, but on camaraderie. Similar ways of joking or similar interests, alike histories or worldviews. These sort of things are present in every close friendship, and I've experienced them with both men and women alike. These are the sort of friendships where you can not see one another for a year and pick right back up where you left off. But when you have four people in the equation now, it becomes more complicated. Now you have four personalities at play, and all four are non-negotiable parts of this new relationship. It becomes very, very difficult to retain friendships in which your friend and your spouse, or you and their spouse, don't have that chemistry. It becomes a chore to spend time with them instead of a joy—and that is very difficult on a marriage. There's nothing inherently wrong with any one person here, or wrong with any one friendship, it is just not as natural as it once was, or not as natural as you'd like it to be in new friendships.

We have not learned this well together in our marriage, our closest friends are still the ones we had before marriage, and we have struggled to make new friends together. Part of that is, again, the two moves, but I think it's common in marriage and has only been exacerbated by the moves. I simply keep reminding myself that right now I am learning deep friendship with my husband—an opportunity we didn't have before marriage. But someday, we will have to learn to make friends together with other couples, and unless God blesses us with perfect chemistry with all parties, it will involve sacrifice on someone's part.

. . .

I thought it would be good to share a personal story of how someone is wrestling through this in the present. Below is a story from a friend of mine, Liana Hull, who got married a year ago. She is in her early twenties and I got the chance to sit across from her and hear more of her heart and story last month.

When my husband and I started dating, a friend of mine became bitter and jealous, ruining much of dating and being engaged for us. I let that jealousy and bitterness steal my joy and the situation became a constant source of worry on my part. After a few months of marriage and recovering from an emotionally tumultuous engagement season, I came to realize that I needed to just let her go. And it broke my heart. Losing such a close friend because of jealousy that I could not appease really, really broke me. A deep sadness took over my heart and mind and I struggled. For a few months, every day was hard. Choosing to feel joy in this season of life has been really difficult. Becoming verbal about my happiness has been surprisingly difficult in marriage as well, because I don't want to alienate further.

I would also add that having every relationship in my life change post-marriage (which is good and right), plus a deep insecurity that everything I do would cause someone to be jealous is lethal combination. It paralyzed me emotionally and I become very isolated. One of my pastors encouraged me to just pray "Lord, work in my life and work in [my friend's]" every time I thought of her and it helped me get my mind/heart beyond my own fears and paranoias about relationships in my life. Simple, genuine, regular prayers (I probably prayed that 15+ times in a day for a month or two) really changed the way I thought about our friendship, and all relationships in my life.

. . .

The challenge for the newly married of making new friends and keeping the old ones is a real one. Don't feel guilty for being unable to maintain all your old friendships or for struggling in making new friendships together. The other day I was close to tears with Nate saying how much I miss our friends and how I'm afraid we'll never be settled enough to have close community like that again, and he comforted me with the truth that we are being faithful and having open hands, and it can look different than it looked before and not be any less good. God actually doesn't promise any of us friendship in this world, but He does promise to put the lonely in families.

My prayer for us newly married sisters, is that instead of growing hard to the possibility, we would be made soft in the probability, that we would have hope like an anchor in the reality that Christ calls us His friends, even if no one else does.

A Smattering of Thoughts, Thinks, and Links

I hope your Thanksgiving was lovely and full, if not of food, then of love. And if not love, then food, which is a kind of love too. Before I got married I thought often married people had a built in presence of love, a constant reminder that they were loved and known and kept. But living life forward is meant to teach us about what has passed under us, not about what comes in front of us, or as the philosopher said, "Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards." I wish I hadn't thought that holidays were harder for me as an unmarried person than they would be as a married person. The truth is both have beauties and both have challenges. In many ways my holidays or birthdays or other celebrations were richer and fuller when I was single, and that's partially because we are far from those we love and are loved by most. But in other ways it is because we are in the infancy of our marriage, growing and bending and breaking in new traditions. I love everything to do with celebrating others, giving gifts, and making every holiday special and unique, but the husband God gave me cares more about the every day of our lives, rhythms and routines of life, discipline, the predictable motions of the week and weekend. I crave New! and Special! He clings to solid and faithful. For us, holidays and special days have actually been hard to learn how to do well, how to serve one another in, and how to not feel hurt when things don't go as hoped. They are actually just as painful as the feeling of aloneness I had in singleness, not more or less. And I wonder if this is the case for more of my married sisters, particularly the newly married ones.

I've had a few conversations with some of my newly married sisters (within the past two years) in recent months and been surprised that though we may be all over the place in terms of age, work, location, etc., we have some very similar struggles. My heart has grown burdened for this demographic and I've wanted to talk about it more on Sayable, but feared losing readers who are further ahead in the journey of marriage and think it is over-reactive, or those readers who long for marriage and for whom reading one more post on the struggles of those who have what they want would be painful. But the more I've thought and prayed about it, the more I've decided I think it's important, so next week I'll be writing on a few things that affect us in our newly married-ness. I hope you are encouraged, whatever season of life you're in.

Here are some things I read this past week and wanted to share:

Neither a Republican nor a Democrat. Words from Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in D.C. on the Sunday after the election to his church, made of both Republicans and Democrats.

The Challenge in Praying with your Spouse. Nate and I have found we love to pray for and with one another, and yet rarely do it together. This article challenged me to do it more.

Friday Night Meatballs. The seasons of life where a weekly dinner has been a part it, have been some of the best times of community in my life. I got to know Nate during one of those weekly dinners. A total win in my book.

Ten Spurgeon Quotes for Wounded Christians. It is a comfort to me a thousand times over that this giant in faith struggled so deeply with the same besetting wrestle I have.

Why Read a Poem at a Time Like This. More of us should make the reading of poetry a part of our everyday, especially at times when the news from every angle threatens to push us over the edge. Poetry grounds us and reminds us.

One of my favorite things to do when I was small was to page through photo albums and ask my parents about the photos in it. One of the sad things about this new digital age we live in, is we're less likely to print photos for keepsake books. Chatbooks is a great way to do this. Whenever we get a new one in, Nate (who isn't on social media) sits down with it and pages through each photo and caption, reading, laughing, and remembering. Your kids will probably do the same. These cost the same as a roll of film cost back in the day, and you get to curate each book to your liking. A total win in my book.

Really, Truly, Deeply? Really?

I read a quote from two of my favorite people the other day: "In a gospel-centered marriage, we can be really, truly, deeply known and at the same time really, truly, deeply loved." I've learned more about the gospel from one of those people than anyone in my life so I'm reticent to push back on this idea, but it wouldn't be the first time I've given him a hard time, so here's my careful pushback to this common idea in the church. 1. Even within marriage you will never be wholly known by one another. 2. Outside of marriage you are still known and loved.

Within earthly marriage, which is a beautiful picture of the gospel, we are still clinging to these earthly tents. We can never be truly known inside any human relationship and indeed we are not meant to be. There is beautiful ahava, a give, a love within marriage. A selflessness, a caring, a joy, for sure. But there is not the elusive juxtaposition of being fully known/fully loved. This only exists within life in Christ. When we say this what we communicate to married people is they're missing something if they don't feel truly known by the other person. And we communicate to unmarried people they can never be really known outside of marriage.

The church should be the place that gently lifts the heads of two people in a less than perfect marriage (which is all of us) and sets their eyes on Christ as the one who knows and loves them fully now, so they can be set free to love and know one another as fully partially as they're able here on earth.

The church should be the place that gently lifts the heads of unmarried people and shows them how men like Paul and Jesus and women like Lydia and Mary were fully known and loved by their Father, but fully misunderstood by the men and women around them—and yet they still pressed forward in love doing amazing acts of church planting, bearing the Son of God, miracles, and writing more than half of the New Testament.

Neither married people, nor unmarried people will ever feel as really, truly, and deeply known as the ache in our hearts tells us we ought to feel. It is so easy to paint the picture within the Church that marriage can be the nirvana of earthly existence—but friends, if marriages quells all the longing inside of you for something more, than your marriage is not actually gospel-centered, but earthly-centered. Marriage should smack of a holy discontent and a fervent desire to be fully known and fully loved by Christ alone, who then empowers us to walk by the spirit in how we love and know others incompletely.

In the same vein, singleness should meet that holy discontent in the middle and know with full assurance that waiting for marriage to feel known and loved is foolish. Start now. First, Christ does it with more ardor than any spouse ever will. Second, the relationships you have in your life right now can be some of the richest you will ever know if you will submit yourself to being known and loved in them. It's an act of submission, to be sure, letting your weaknesses be seen, challenged, and pressed into, but Christ has set a good example for you in His submission to His Father on the cross.

Friend, you may be in the happiest marriage known to man or the hardest, you may be joyfully single for life or you may be limping through every day in your wait, but you are fully known and fully loved now. Go now, and love and know as truly as you're able—albeit imperfectly—knowing the gospel is no respecter of marital status even as it displays the perfect union of Christ and His bride.

Four Ways Unmarried Women can Encourage Their Married Sisters

Before I got married and was asked to write on singleness every other day, one of the questions I'd be asked often was, "How can married women encourage their unmarried sisters." I thought a lot about this question because I think it's a good one, but also because it can be easy to forget some pains of singleness once the vows are said. In order for us to truly mourn with those who mourn and rejoice with those who rejoice, it takes a great amount of empathy—entering into the sadness, fears, and joys of our sisters and brothers in Christ. What is unfortunate, though, is that the question is rarely flipped the other way around. "How can unmarried women encourage their married sisters?" I think this is perhaps due to an incorrect view that those who are unmarried are somehow lesser than and therefore need greater amounts of encouragement than those who are married. This simply isn't true. What is true is that an unmarried person has distinct and perfect gifts designed by God for their season, and a married person has distinct and perfect gifts designed by God for theirs. No one is less than, or has less than—though it's hard to believe that as an unmarried person who longs for what your sisters and brothers have through their spouses.

I know even as I write this there are those who are saying, "Well, of course you can say that, you're married. I'll bet it didn't feel like a gift when you were single!" To which I'd reply, actually, it did, and not just in hindsight. Yes, I felt the lack, and yes I mourned the reality that I might never have children or a husband, but it didn't make my unmarried life any less rich than my married life is today. If you're still disbelieving me, I encourage you to tend to the affections of your heart; if having a spouse is the pinnacle of joy for you, then your heart has settled for idolatry.

In hindsight, though, there is still one regret of my singleness: I wish I had encouraged, or known how to encourage, my married friends better. I prayed for them, loved them, tried to be specific about helping them and encouraging them when I knew how to, but I wish I had not looked at their lives and seen a form of completion that somehow (in my mind) negated my words and presence in their lives. There was a perception that the season they were in did not need my particular brand of encouragement as a single. I was wrong. Just as I needed their prayers, encouragement, vulnerability, and friendship, they needed mine.

Here are four ways the unmarried can encourage the married:

1. Fight the lie that says to you their lives are complete in a way yours is not.

This lie is not only damaging to you, it is damaging to them. Marriage does not complete a person, but when you believe it does, you remove the opportunity for them to be vulnerable about the ways marriage presses on them in difficult ways. If your answer to their struggles in marriage is always, "Well, at least you have a husband," the lie that can play on their minds and hearts is, "They're right. I have a husband. I shouldn't be struggling with this gnawing feeling of incompleteness." Now you're both believing lies. The truth is you are both complete and whole in Christ, nothing more, nothing less. The truth is also that you are both wholly incomplete in Christ, awaiting your final consummation with Christ. This is a beautiful truth if we can truly wrap our minds and hearts around it. Complete and not complete, but both in Christ, not in marital status.

I have really struggled with this in marriage because many of my still unmarried friends so long for marriage that they assume I can't possibly understand the struggle anymore, or I feel guilty talking about difficulties in this season of my life as though I'm not allowed to still struggle. God is doing a work on me in this area and I'm trying to be faithful to holding marriage up as a source of joy (though not the pinnacle of joy) while also being honest about the very real angsts within it.

2. Ask them probing questions about their marriage.

There has been an idea that one's marriage is somehow off limits for discussion. Perhaps you grew up in a broken home and any conflict meant divorce was around the corner, or perhaps you've heard men and women alike complaining about their marriages, or gossiping about their spouses. I've experienced both. There can be a paralyzing fear that if we talk about struggles we are having or our husbands are having with anyone, that we are slandering them or exposing our marriage.

The best thing for sin is to be exposed to the light, for the Holy Spirit to minister and heal, and for reconciliation to come. But often times as unmarried people, you can feel inept at asking those probing questions without seeming like you're digging for salacious details. I'll never forget being in a group of friends with one recently married and one of the other girls asking our newly married friend all kinds of details about marriage, sex, routines, etc.. I was embarrassed, but mostly because my newly married friend was embarrassed. But years later when that marriage had dissolved, I wished I'd asked more questions along the way. I wished I'd helped to be a minister of reconciliation instead of a bystander who thought I couldn't ask probing questions. You may not have all the answers (and in fact, none of us do), but hearing honest words about the difficulties within marriage can help dissolve the Hollywood version we all have in our heads—and God may use you to help heal brokenness along the way.

Here are a few questions that would be helpful for you and her: What does leadership and submission look like in your marriage? How does it make you feel? What is the hardest thing about being a wife? What are you afraid of in your marriage? What brings you joy in it? In what ways was what you were taught in the church right about sex in marriage? In what ways was it wrong? How can I pray for you and your husband today?

3. Pray with them about their needs and desires.

Something happens when I pray. I don't mean God always answers my prayers. I mean something happens in me when I pray. My heart is softened and becomes more understanding to the plight of another. I can talk for hours about a particular angst or fear or whatever I or someone else is struggling with, but the moment I say, "Father," and follow it with an earnest prayer, my heart changes. I don't mean this in a mystical way, I just think it's the Holy Spirit in me communing with the Son who intercedes on behalf of me to our Father in heaven.

When you bring your own longings, fears, and angsts to the fervor behind a prayer for someone else, something settles within you. You are able to understand and sympathize with a friend—in whatever season of life they're in—matching your longings ache for ache.

One of my good friends has a baby right now and a tiny apartment she longs to be out of. I am renting a home but ache for a baby. We are able to have what the other longs for (in a way), but pray for the other as though we both long for the same thing because we understand what we ultimately long for is God. Pray with your married sisters—even if you think they should just be happy with what they have because it's what you want.

4. Rejoice with them when their dreams are fulfilled.

I've told this story a hundred times before but for the past six years I had three friends who all struggled with infertility. They each mourned differently and struggled in unique ways, but we prayed and cried for one another in the lack of what we desired: a baby for them, a husband for me. Within a year, we saw all of those prayers answered for each of us in various ways. I'm not saying this is a guarantee for everyone, but it was a sweet picture of God's attentiveness toward each of us and because we had been faithful to love and encourage one another in our particular season, we were able to rejoice with a fullness we wouldn't have had before.

It is much harder to look with jealous longing at a friend who has what you want when you've truly entered into her mourning when she didn't have it. The safeguard against jealousy is not coveting all the more what our neighbors have, but rejoicing with them when they get it. This is a blessed safeguard and an opportunity more of us should take. Rejoice, as fully as you're able, when God answers the prayers you've both been praying for them.

This has also been a struggle for me in marriage because most of my closest friends are still unmarried. I have struggled to rejoice around them because I fear my happiness will lead to their sadness. God is teaching me to model joy for earthly gifts while at the same time keeping Christ as my constant joy at the center.

. . .

In many ways these are things we all need to do with all of our friends, but many of us do them more easily with those who are in the same season as us. It is easier to pray for a husband with a friend who longs for one too. It's easier to understand infertility when you're walking through it too. It's easier to counsel difficult seasons in marriage when you've walked through them too. But crossing outside of those boundary lines can bring, I might argue, a better more lasting blessing.

I know it's hard to fight the lie that your married friend has everything you want and doesn't need your encouragement, but I beg you to fight through it, set your truest affections on Christ, trust He supplies every need according to His riches, and assume the position of being the answer to your friend's need. Your joy will be greater, I promise.