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Read more about the article Manna for the Moment

Manna for the Moment

  It's safe to say we're all worn a little thin these days. As Bilbo Baggins said, "Like butter scraped over too much bread." Sometimes it's just because we're looking down the road and we see all that's ahead. We're at the beginning of diagnosis. Getting our kids to college feels daunting. We wonder how we'll keep our heads above water with all the work we have to do. Sometimes life comes at us hard. We're reminded of our frailty, of how little we can actually control in our lives, or in the world. I felt that way a few weeks ago, burdened by the weight of a situation in my life. I realized the anxiety I felt was because I wanted the grace, not just for this moment, but for all the moments. Looking ahead, I wanted all the grace for all that might happen in this area of my life. And God said, "I only give you manna for this moment." What Is Manna? Manna, the bread the Israelites were given as they wandered in the desert. The bread that literally made them say, "what is it?" I mean I'm not a foodie, but the thought of that same old same old every day for years sounds blech. And yet it sustained. It was enough. From the hands of a God who knew what they needed, it was just right. But it was daily provision. Not "store up for tomorrow" or "store up for when you really need it" provision. Manna for the moment. So when that anxiety tried to creep back in, I went to God to remind myself that I don't need now what I will need then. I only need Him to give me what I need for where I am right now. And a few hours later, still-manna for this moment. I thought of it again a week later when I stared ahead with anticipation to a new project I started at work. It was to start on a Thursday. I worried about it on Monday, and God said, "Are you doing this today?" "No." "So I will give you manna for today. And when we get to Thursday, I will be there too. I will give you the grace you need when we get there." Manna for Each Moment It's such an invitation into trust that not only will God be there but His grace will be too. It doesn't run out. His storehouses don't empty. We don't have to store up out of fear that we will lack later. Perfect provision for the place where we are. But gosh, it's hard, this moment-by-moment dependence. It keeps us close to our need, aware of our lack. But it's also this amazing opportunity to turn our eyes off our weakness and onto His strength, His sufficiency. Whatever circumstance we're in today, God will give us the grace we need. Not for what comes tomorrow. Just for what we see today. Because then tomorrow we…

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Read more about the article Looking Back, Going Forward

Looking Back, Going Forward

  I know it's tempting to light a match to the dumpster of 2020 and walk away. It's been rough. But let's not be hasty. Because in between the pandemic and the racial tension and the election and the Tiger King, there was good. Scripture tells us to give thanks in all circumstances. Not necessarily FOR all circumstances, but IN all circumstances. In the midst of trials, we always have reasons to be grateful, because God never stops doing good to us. And I've found that when I practice gratitude IN my circumstances, it's not such a leap to also thank Him FOR the challenges as well. He is in it all. So as we look back, as always, we mourn and we rejoice. We give ourselves the necessary space to grieve the losses, so we can make room in our hearts to celebrate the goodness. To that end, I offer another year-end review for you (click on the graphic below to download). I hope this helps you look back and mine for the good while you also honor what you have lost. And yes, hopefully, it will all help us look forward to 2021 and trust that better things are on the way.

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Read more about the article Training Our Eyes to See the Good
Photo by Andrew Ly on Unsplash

Training Our Eyes to See the Good

  Have you ever played a game driving where you look for a certain color car? Like you say, "Let's count all the blue cars." (this may or may not be something only parents trying to entertain young children can relate to). When you start looking, suddenly they're all you see. Try it. Choose a color, and look for it around you. You notice it where you didn't realize it was before. It's everywhere, right? I've realized gratitude works the same way. The Practice of Gratitude As we come upon Thanksgiving, I wonder if we are struggling to find things to be grateful for. It's been a wild year. It would be so easy to focus on the negative, on what we lack, on what we've missed. And gratitude is something we often do when we feel like it, or when it's expected. Like after the giving of a gift, or when someone lends a helping hand. (Are people giving gifts right now? Anybody helping someone else in person?) It's not something we always think to do. But I'm also learning that gratitude is something we have to practice. It has to become a liturgy in our lives, something that flows out of us like breath. And when we do, when we start looking for the good in our lives, we start to see it. We're training our eyes to see God at work. It's not that He hasn't been there all along. We just weren't seeing it. This fall our pastor led us through the book of Ruth. There's a point in the story where the author says, "she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz." It got us talking about this phrase, "It so happened." We say it sometimes. But really, does anything just so happen?  Those "it so happened" moments are God. We need to train our eyes to recognize that fact. Training Our Eyes to See the Good So when we make a habit of saying "thank you, Jesus," about the good gifts in our lives, we begin to see that He is at work all around us. We recognize that those "it so happened" moments didn't just so happen. God never stops doing good to us. For me, it helps to start at a granular level. I have breath in my lungs today. There's a roof over my head. I have clothes on my back and food in my belly. Every one of those things is a gift of grace I did not earn or deserve. When we start there, we see good everywhere. We see it in a timely text from a friend, a blessedly cooler day here in central Florida (it's November for Pete's sake!), in satisfying work. It's our kid getting through another day of online classes, a moment of feeling normal in the middle of a pandemic, seeing a familiar face on a call. There's so much we take for granted every day, so many ways…

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Read more about the article Living with a Slow Drain

Living with a Slow Drain

  In so many of my conversations with others, I heard phrases like, "I don't understand why I'm so tired," or "I'm not usually this impatient," or "Why does this seem so much harder?" I have a simple answer: we're not living at full. By that, I mean that there is a slow and constant drain that keeps us from living at a full tank every day. When we lived overseas, we became aware of this dynamic. We likened it to our lives as a bucket of water, the water as our life energy. The challenges of living cross-culturally were not poking huge holes in our buckets that drained us. Then why were we so tired? Because the challenges, while often small, still made holes. They were just little pinprick holes. From those holes, life drained. One pinprick, OK. A few, no big deal. But we had a thousand pinpricks, and that adds up. Living with the on-going challenges of the pandemic is like a thousand pinprick holes in the bucket of our lives. Constantly adjusting to a different way of living is exhausting. No, it's not as big as in the beginning when we were stuck at home. But think of the mental and emotional energy that a series of small events in one day can take: What Drains Us Remembering to bring a mask with you everywhere. Awkward social greetings because you don't know if your friend is OK with physical touch. The isolation of working from home. Being surrounded by family while you're trying to work. The kids need you for their calls. You forgot to mute yourself. Or you forgot to unmute yourself. Hours of trying to read people over zoom. Zoom butt (my husband complains of this daily) You just got exposed to someone with the virus. Watching people argue on social media. You are the one arguing on social media. We don't see eye to eye about the pandemic. We don't see eye to eye about politics. It's unclear where either of us stands on the pandemic or politics so now it's awkward to have a conversation. Another event date that should have happened passes by. And all that on top of normal life events that would be a challenge even without a pandemic. Every day there are a thousand little things that drain us. A thousand ways life is different, not the way we knew, not the way we hope. We could pretend it's fine. Just look on the bright side. Console ourselves with, "Well, it's better than it was." But those thoughts don't fill holes. So what do we do about the drain? We need more filling. So much has drained us this year, and few of us have taken the time we need to refill. It's hard to find the time, honestly, between zoom calls and online learning and navigating new social situations. We can't control the situation we live in, but we can be kind to ourselves by recognizing that…

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Read more about the article Cancel Culture and the Gospel

Cancel Culture and the Gospel

  These days, as I said in my last post, I avoid social media most of the time. It's just not good for my soul. Every once in a while though I will jump on Twitter and see what's trending. All too often, I see a hashtag that includes the word, "cancel." We like to cancel people these days. More often than not, it's a comment or an action from that person that offends in some way. Sometimes it's justified-we need to call out wrong behavior. But more often than not, it seems, it's something that person simply didn't think through well enough before it happened; if they had, they might have refrained. Worse yet, maybe it happened years ago. Decades ago, even. Back when their brains weren't fully developed, or before they carried the cultural gravitas they have now. Back when they were unknown, or before they changed their mind on an issue (yes, we can change our minds and our behavior). Certainly, before everyone's every movement could be documented and displayed for the world to see. But too late! It doesn't matter when or why, it's in the world now, and enough to make a blanket judgment about you. You are voted off the island, eliminated from the crowd, erased from existence. And not only you, but anyone associated with you. I'm all for holding people accountable for their words and actions. There's a growing recognition that much of what happens in our society has been and continues to be damaging to many. That must change. On certain issues, we cannot remain silent or we add to the problem. But this idea that we will cancel someone because of one moment-this I cannot reconcile with the gospel. Cancel Culture in the Bible Cancel culture paints the world in black and white. You are good or bad, weighed on a scale. You tip out of favor with one wrong move, and there's no coming back from it. The gavel has come down and you are irreversibly in the "bad" category. The good/bad split doesn't account for the reality that we are complex people, capable of great blessing and harm, each of us. It doesn't account for redemption. It doesn't recognize the gospel. I think of Zaccheus. There's a man we would cancel today. He betrayed his own people in his job as a tax collector. The woman caught in adultery? Canceled. Peter denying Jesus three times? Canceled. When we don't have the lens of the gospel, it makes sense that we would cancel. We create our own moral code, a tenuous assumption of goodness until we prove otherwise. The world waits with its scarlet C, ready to judge. The Gospel of Grace But the gospel says there is redemption. There is hope for those who fail. Grace for the fallen. New life after the wrong-doing. It says our goodness isn't measured on a scale, that forgiveness is possible, and change can happen. The gospel says there is no one…

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Read more about the article Changing the Liturgy of Our Lives

Changing the Liturgy of Our Lives

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  It finally hit me, around the end of May, that the amount of time I was spending on social media and the news was destructive to my soul. To be fair, there was a lot to know about it. But as I said in my previous post, maybe it's not all for me to know. Or at least, not all for me to carry. And carry it I was. But consuming those sources was habitual. I checked my notifications each morning. Over breakfast, I read the news. Hopped onto Facebook a couple of times each day to see what was new. Pulled up Twitter to catch what was trending. Until I didn't. Until I decided that I could, and should, change the liturgy of my life. Liturgy seems like an antiquated thing. I think of gregorian chants and mindless rote recitations. But liturgy, I've learned, simply means the habits we embrace, the order of how we live. I grew up in a church with a pretty clear liturgy. I didn't realize how much I missed it until recently, as I'm in a program of spiritual formation that meets for quarterly retreats. During the retreats, we practice praying the hours-in the morning, before lunch, before dinner, and before bedtime. The question isn't, "Do I have a liturgy?" but "What kind of person is my liturgy shaping me to be?" It's important that we examine from time to time the habits, the order of our days, and ask, "Is this shaping my soul the way I desire? The way God desires?" We are often unconscious of the liturgy of our days. What Is the Liturgy of Our Days? Throughout my walk with God, I've taken up the popular habits of Bible reading, prayer, fellowship. I see the value of these to incline my soul toward God and others. What's more challenging for me, and I imagine most of us, is seeing the value of the ordinary, "non-spiritual" (seemingly) habits I have. I never thought much about how what I read or listen to shapes me as much as my study of scripture. If I had enough of the latter, I thought, it wouldn't matter. It's easy to separate our lives into the spiritual and the secular, but I'm learning that all of life is an opportunity to pray, to experience the presence of God. I start my day with devotional time, but what about the rest of my day? If we desire to be attentive to the presence of God, do we order our days in such a way that we make space to hear from Him? Or are we filling our minds with noise, internet arguments, the anxiety of the world? Not only do we rob God of space He could have in our lives, we rob ourselves of peace. Seeking a more peaceful liturgy to our lives seems critical right now. We cannot control the chaos of the world, but we can choose how much we allow it to…

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Read more about the article Why Self-Care (Sometimes) Fails Us

Why Self-Care (Sometimes) Fails Us

  I've had days where I'm worn out, and all I want is a hot bath and a TV show. Or I want to just recline on the couch, probably eating chocolate. You know, self-care. Some days maybe it's a long walk or a good book. Some retail therapy or a day at the beach. All good, all good. Except if you're like me sometimes you come back from those experiences and you feel just the same as you did before-stressed, worn out, distracted, as Bilbo Baggins famously said, "like butter spread across too much bread." Why? When "self-care" doesn't cut it I've realized lately that much of what we call self-care doesn't get to the heart of the issue. It's an escape, a distraction, a temporary balm. I get away physically but I carry the weight with me. It doesn't address the deep lies and idols that have probably been the culprit in my detour from a place of health. So what it is that we need to do instead? I know I need to begin with being more mindful. When I am, I'm less likely to get to the place where I need to get away from it all, where I am just spent. We need to be mindful of how we got here in the first place. What's been missing in my life that has worn me down so much? Chances are it's not a lack of baths or chocolate (for sure not a lack of chocolate on my part). How did we get here? Is it that we haven't been spending enough time in the spaces and relationships that are life-giving? Have we wandered away from foundational truths that nourish our souls? Or is it something more practical-have we simply let other people or our own egos plan our schedules to excess? Have we kept an unsustainable pace? We need to be mindful of the accusations of the enemy that assault us. Mindful of our negative self-talk. Or simply mindful of the noise that shuts out the chance for us to hear God's voice speaking life. We need to be honest about where sin or foolishness had led us to live in a way that is unwise, that drains us. Where we have chosen the path of least resistance rather than the healthiest one. Maybe the way we can care for ourselves the most today is the thing that takes the most courage. True Self-Care It might be drawing a stronger boundary with the person who takes too much from us. As hard as it that might be, it is good for both parties. Maybe it's sitting in the reality of how something is impacting us, and speaking necessary truth to it. That's hard work, and it takes time, but that's how we win the battle for our souls. It could be a time of confession of where we have lived beyond our limits. That's humbling to admit, as is scaling back, but it gives our…

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Read more about the article Hearts That Carry Too Much

Hearts That Carry Too Much

  Prompted by a newsletter request, I prayed one morning for missionary kids around the world experiencing COVID with their families. Knowing just a few situations in other countries, and how varied they are, I paused in my prayer as I realized that if I knew all those situations, I would be overwhelmed. This current reality is overwhelming enough as it is. It's more than our hearts are used to carrying. More than our hearts should carry. And yet we are. There are more issues crying for our attention than we normally have in a much longer span of time. The intensity of the issues we're facing is daunting. They're literally life and death. I don't have to look far to read strong arguments telling me what I should believe about all of them, and that I should act on all of them. I look for a balance between knowing what is happening but not knowing so much that it disrupts me in unhealthy ways. While I want to care well for the people around me and be engaged in important issues,  some days it feels like too much for my heart to carry. So what do we do? Remember who loves us (and them) What I remembered that morning as I prayed for missionary kids is that God knows every situation. He is not overwhelmed. He is love itself, poured out for all of us. There is no limit to His compassion or mercy. That compassion covers us as we navigate this difficult season, and it covers all that we cannot reach. We are not alone in caring for the world; He cares far more than we ever could. A verse that has been my encouragement during this time is 1 Peter 5:7 from The Message, "Live carefree; He is most careful with you." He is careful with us, and with all the hurting people in the world. We can trust Him with all of it. Ask what is ours to carry John Eldredge says our souls were made to carry villages; right now it feels like we are being asked to carry the world. While God desires for us to love our neighbors well, He knows we are finite in our capacity to care for everyone practically. Scripture commands us to carry one another's burdens, not be buried by them. Instead, we carry them to the cross. So what is ours? That's between us and God. We need to ask Him to show us what our hearts should carry. He puts different passions on different peoples' hearts. Sometimes in our zeal, we communicate about our own passion in a way that implies others must care about it to the same degree; again, we need to ask God. What is ours? That which is, we carry wholeheartedly. Benevolently detach from the rest John Eldredge also talks about "benevolent detachment"- the practice of letting go and giving things to Jesus. Caring, but not carrying. As we do, the weight falls…

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Read more about the article The Blessing of a Weathered Soul

The Blessing of a Weathered Soul

  We have a weathered wooden board in our bathroom that we repurposed as a towel rack. It is deeply weathered from wind, rain, and probably sand (I don't remember where I found it). There are layers of paint or maybe stain that have worn off to varying degrees. It has cracks in it. There's discoloration on the edges I can't identify. I love that board. Who knows what hands it has passed through or how it came to look the way it does. I love it because when I look at it, it tells me a story. It's beautiful. And you could never, ever, make another one exactly like it. Our souls are that board. Beautiful, unique, telling a story unlike any other. Meant to be a blessing just the way we are. Worn and useful for the Maker's hands. But gosh the world tells us we should be anything but, doesn't it? It pushes us to be bigger and better, to go higher and faster. It says, "Be put together, spiritually sound, never struggle, do it right." This country was founded on a pursuit of happiness that leaves no space for suffering or failure. It's a game of "avoid the heartache and you win." You don't get beautiful that way. The Blessing of a Weathered Soul The apostle Paul knew that. He wrote, "Not only so but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope." I think of our kids. When they encounter challenges, I want to rescue them. Instead, I try to remember that this weathering is necessary for their souls. He's doing something beautiful in them through it. I think of the painful seasons God has brought me through. I hold the lessons I learned from them like treasures. They are the marks on my soul that bear witness to His work, His faithfulness, and His goodness, shaping me into my true self. I think of our world right now, and what we're going through. And yes, it's awful and I wish it weren't true, but I know that once we're through this, there will be good that comes. As we weather the storms, God doesn't stand far away. He is right here, next to us, in the middle of it all. He has compassion on us, but He knows how it shapes us too. We aren't called to an unscathed life. So we patiently endure. We trust that nothing is wasted. He uses everything to beautify us, to reclaim us as His. May we surrender to the process of weathering.   Related posts: The Illusion of Having It All Together God's Long Term Growth Project  Why God Won't Just Make It Easier

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Read more about the article When We Don’t Get Closure

When We Don’t Get Closure

  In February, we finished off our last high school soccer season. We knew each game might be our last, so we tried to take it all in. We took lots of pictures. My parents came. The girls got sweatshirts made to commemorate it. While it was sad to end, we had closure. Closure is important. We teach our ministry staff, when they come back from overseas assignments, to build a RAFT (Reconciliation, Affirmation, Farewell, and Think Destination). In other words, we take a good look around and see what needs healing, celebration, and grief. Then we look ahead with hope to what is coming next. That aspect of Farewells-saying goodbye well to a season, both to people and places, and allowing ourselves to grieve well, is essential. When we know something is going to end, we pay attention. We notice what we've taken for granted. The ordinary suddenly becomes precious and noteworthy. When we are cut off from saying goodbye well, it is difficult to fully engage with hope in the next one. It's so devastating and unnatural when we are denied the opportunity for good closure. This season we're in is full of cut off endings. When We Don't Get Closure When our daughter went to school the Thursday before spring break, we didn't know it was her last day. We had no idea she wouldn't wear her school uniform or drive carpool again. If we had, we would have done it (and the days leading up to it) differently. This spring we all missed so many events, but maybe the most difficult are the lasts that we won't be able to get back. The things we can't reschedule. Watching the last club soccer season. Celebrating the end of a year-long program. Enjoying the last days of work before retirement. A friend moved away and you didn't get to say goodbye. You had to leave your host country and you don't know when (or if) you'll go back. I've wondered why this feels so wrong, this cut-off grief. I wonder if it's because we ache for shalom-the way that things are meant to be. The peace God intended. We bend toward justice and righteousness. It is good to desire what is right, and this just feels wrong. When we work toward healthy closure, it's like a satisfying ending to a book. We are shalom people. We celebrate goodness. Ending in a place of restoration and peace is in our wiring. It's so jarring when we are kept from that. So What Do We Do? I've contemplated what to do about this abrupt grief we feel. We begin by acknowledging the weight of it. It's another part of living in the reality I talked about in my last post. It doesn't feel right because it isn't. Like stopping a race before the finish line, or quitting a book halfway through a chapter, it's unnatural not to finish well. It's been helpful for me to recognize this. It's a particular…

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