faith

In the Jordan’s water or any other

Dennis called on Thursday to talk about Harper.

“She wants to be baptized,” he said as middle schoolers talked and yelled in the background. “She expressed interest last night during service.”

This wasn’t unexpected.

My daughter has wanted to be baptized since late 2019. We were making our way through a workbook our church gave us about preparing to be baptized when the pandemic hit. And then we watched our church community turn proudly hateful and paranoid and selfish. We watched the people who taught our children in Sunday school and sang worship songs from stage use misinformation and fear as biblical principles. We saw and heard them speak ugly words about people God had created and loved fiercely.

We never went back to that church.

It all felt so hypocritical and fake. We couldn’t stomach it, and we definitely couldn’t let our girls think this was how you followed Jesus. So we left the church Chris and I grew up at, the church we met at and served at for decades, the church where we married and raised babies.

We left.

It has been two years, and there is still grief and sadness. I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t one of the hardest things we’ve ever done. We don’t regret it. But we are still untangling a lot of the mess and hurt and bad theology we learned there.

Long story short: Harper was, in the summer of 2022, still waiting to be baptized.

So when Dennis called from the church camp that we know preaches a lot of the same messages we left our church over, I wasn’t surprised but I was suspicious.

No, we don’t want Harper to be baptized at camp this week.
Her parents would like to be present, and we can’t make it there during the week.
Yes, we can have her baptized when she comes home.

“I assume you have a home church that can do it?” Dennis asked as we wrapped up our conversation.

“Sure,” I said, because Dennis, you probably don’t want to have this conversation with me right now.

It would probably be the same conversation that would start if I came to the women’s retreat weekend on the flyer I was handed as we walked out of the gym after checking the girls in for their week of camp.

After we said goodbye, Chris and I climbed back into the car to head home. I folded the women’s retreat flyer and put it in the cupholder. As we pulled out of the parking lot, Chris said, “I almost told the lady ‘You don’t want my wife at your retreat’ when she handed that to you.”

“That’s the truth,” I said.

Dennis, the truth is much more complicated than you’ve got time for, but we could start with the rules for girls’ swimsuits at camp and why only men can be deans.

close up of a pool floaty made to look like a donut with colorful sprinkles floating in a pool.

I picked the girls up from church camp on a muggy Friday afternoon. They were tired and cranky and dirty. When we got home, Chris baptized Harper in our swimming pool. Harper wore her mermaid bikini, I took her confession of faith, and my tattooed husband submerged her in the cool, crystal clear water in our backyard.

It felt simple and extraordinary.
It felt like the perfect time and too late.
It felt like a reminder that following God doesn’t have to be fancy or within the rules of a denomination or with a crowd of people surrounding you.

A private backyard baptism felt like the most on-brand choice for this moment in our lives. We cannot stomach the pomp and circumstance of church. We cannot abide the culture of religion that has hurt so many people we love. We cannot reconcile the twists of scripture that lead to power and greed and control.

But we love Jesus and we want to follow Him and we want to live like Him. We crave the new birth that baptism offers, the washing away of the old and the renewing of the spirit. We desperately desire the easy yoke of following Christ as we try to operate in a world that keeps making more and more rules, boundaries, and caveats.

So we baptized our daughter, even as we struggle with so much doubt and confusion and mess. We baptized her, even when we’re not sure of our place in a society that forces obedience instead of joy and freedom.

We have so many questions, but Jesus isn’t one of them.

The next morning I sat on my porch swing drinking coffee. I was reading Wholehearted Faith by Rachel Held Evans and because God has never stopped showing up in these years since we left church, the next chapter I was to read was called “The Steady Work of Living Water.”

In it, Rachel writes, “My baptism reminds me that I am a Christian because Christianity gives me a name that supersedes every other name the world will try to give me. I am a Christian because my baptism has declared that I am a beloved child of God. There is no failure, no sin, no accomplishment, no success that can change that.”

“Baptism, whether in the Jordan’s water or any other, ties us to the cycle of life, through all of which runs water. It reminds us that we belong. It is, of course, much easier to write that out than to reckon with the reality of what belonging to that larger community—to that fractious assemblage of humanity, prone as it is to hurt as much as to help—really means.”

And that is the reminder I needed: we are beloved children of God and we belong. The details can be figured out later.

We’re still falling for the same tricks

Did I ever tell you about the time I accidentally got retweeted by InfoWars and featured on conspiracy theory websites?

Well, do I have a story for you.

We lived in Beech Grove, Indiana, for ten years. Beech Grove is a small, incorporated city inside Indianapolis, just south of downtown. The city was originally a company town, built around a railroad repair facility.

St. Francis Hospital was built in Beech Grove in 1914. Actor Steve McQueen was born there in 1930. My friend Jessi was born there in 1981.

It was a happening place, obviously.

Even President Harry S. Truman visited Beech Grove once.

In 2012, the hospital closed. Services were transferred to the newer, more modern hospital a few miles down the road. I remember the giant red signs they put up over the ambulance entrance ramp. It felt sad to turn away people, but the hospital was just too old.

After it closed, we used the hospital’s massive parking lot for family walks, scooter races with the girls, and backgrounds for blog photo shoots. (Still very sorry for the years I tried to be a fashion blogger; please forgive me.)

After the hospital closed, it sat vacant. There were rumors of buyers, big plans, new owners, but they always fell through.

The hospital sat empty for years.

We lived about two blocks from the hospital. You could see the towering building easily from our yard. It was—by far—the biggest thing in town. Often when describing to someone where you lived, you used the hospital as your compass.

I live just east of the hospital.

I’m about three minutes from the hospital.

Beech Grove is a small town inside of a big city.

One night in May 2016, we went to bed like normal. The girls were snuggled into their bunk beds. Our dog was burrowed into a blanket at my feet. Everything was calm.

Until it wasn’t.

Around midnight, Chris and I woke to loud helicopters circling above our house and gunfire.

It sounded like our street was under attack.

I peeked cautiously out the window and saw red lights in the sky.

Slowly, neighbors came pouring out of their houses. We hesitantly wandered to the middle of the street in our pajamas and bathrobes. We stood in small groups, a few people called 911.

By this time, most of the noise was coming from the hospital. We could see flashing lights and what looked and sounded like explosions through the windows on the top floors. Gunfire, men yelling, helicopters overhead. It was loud and disorienting and we could not stop watching.

I had my phone with me. I got on Twitter to see if anyone was talking about what was happening or if the news was reporting anything.

About five minutes later, the sounds died down. The helicopters left. It was silent again.

Everyone stood on the street, stunned and staring at each other. It felt like a dream: no one really understood what had happened, but it was exciting and a nice night to stand on the street in our sweatpants talking to our neighbors.

After a few more minutes, word began to spread: 911 operators and some neighbors had been told ahead of time. There was going to be some police or military practice at the hospital that night. Don’t be alarmed. It was just a drill.

Except we were alarmed. No one had told us. No one felt unsafe—we were just confused, just startled out of bed in the middle of the night.

We slowly made our way back to our houses and back to bed.

The next morning, I woke up, got ready for work, sent the kids to school and daycare, got on with my day.

Then I got a text message from a friend, did I know I was on the news?

That’s when my middle-of-the-night sarcastic tweet started showing up everywhere.

Local news stations used a screenshot of my tweet in their stories about the commotion. Online media quoted my tweets in their articles.

It was—as we had first heard murmuring of the night before—a training exercise for the military.

Here’s a local news station’s coverage of the events: https://www.wrtv.com/news/call-6-investigators/beech-grove-residents-awoken-by-booms-gunshots

And then the conspiracy theory people showed up.

They started responding to my tweets, sharing them, using them on their websites.

In 2016, I wasn’t yet aware of the level of government mistrust and rampant misinformation floating around the dark corners of the internet. I knew InfoWars was extreme right-wing media, but I had no idea the level of darkness and lies I was being thrust into.

What was to me (and anyone who knew me or followed me) a joke, was treated as factual, fear-based information to other people. The websites took others’ tweets and used them too.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-25/did-we-go-war-terrified-indiana-residents-woken-unannounced-military-exercise

http://themillenniumreport.com/2016/05/beech-grove-indiana-wakes-up-to-a-military-drill-unannounced/

We weren’t under attack. There was no helicopter shot down. While we were startled, no one was scared or in danger. The best way I can describe it is it felt like we were in a movie: it was surreal. We were watching something that looked violent, but we weren’t scared. We were confused yet we all stood calmly on the street in our bathrobes casually chatting. I was mostly concerned the loud noises were going to wake my sleeping children, because THEN someone was going to be in trouble.

But the conspiracy theory people were just getting warmed up. Eventually, I stopped reading the tweets or conversations on Twitter. It was entertaining and silly and kinda unbelievable, but it was also boring and I wanted to move on.

Conspiracy theory media did not want to move on.

And then a FEMA camp got rolled into the story.

A FEMA CAMP. In my small city, in the middle of Indianapolis. That no one but very smart, in-the-know right-wing extremists knew about. The screenshot in green above is a picture of the railroad repair station I mentioned in the introduction. It’s now run by Amtrak and services hundreds of trains a year. St. Francis Hospital is about a mile from the train station. Nothing happened that night at the train station, but that doesn’t matter at all to the “news” reporter sharing this story. If you’d like to watch the whole 6-minute video, here’s the link: https://newsvideo.su/video/4330931

(Notes on the video: Glenn Beck apparently “investigated” and then de-bunked this theory. The video shows where the FEMA camp supposedly is, but it’s just a video of old Amtrak cars at the back of the train’s property. We would drive by these all the time on our way to church. Also, please be delighted with how he says my name as he credits the tweet. And finally, I know people who work here—at the Amtrak station—like normal guys who go to work and fix trains. This is not a FEMA camp. It feels ridiculous to even type that.)

Here’s why I share this story:

Because misinformation and half-truths and manipulated stories are rampant on the internet. And more and more people are believing them. I’ve lost friends and family members to the cult of conspiracy theories. It’s confusing and sad to watch.

But it’s real to them. They “did the research,” figured out the clues, got caught up in the mysteries that confirmed all the stories hinted at. They fell for all the tricks. They ignored confirmation bias, credible sources, and boundaries about Christ-like behavior. And we lost them.

For a while, I was dumbfounded by this. Then I moved to shock and embarrassment. Now I’m just sad. It all makes me so sad; people took advantage of them and they fell for it and now they’re in too deep. Things are falling apart and instead of understanding that NOTHING they’ve assured us would happen actually happened, they just double down with new predictions, new theories, new stories.

And none of it makes sense. None of it is rational. It’s become a sick obsession.

I read a great article by a game designer who explains all the alternative reality and theories behind the QAnon playmakers (because it’s not just a guy and definitely not a guy in a high-level government job). The article said:

The implications in the Q prompts are one-sided and designed to cast doubt, not offer proof. Once doubt is cast, it is incredibly hard to dispel.

It’s very hard to prove something doesn’t exist. You can’t prove there are no aliens for example. Aliens scientifically could exist so you will never be able to prove that they don’t. You can’t prove someone isn’t in a cult either. No matter what they say. Doubt can not be dispelled easily. It can be grown easily, however.

Conspiracy theories thrive on doubt. I saw it firsthand when the military showed up in the middle of the night on my street to do some exercises. The real explanation made perfect sense. We weren’t in danger. It started and stopped pretty quickly which makes sense for a training activity. A lot of people (just not us!) knew about it ahead of time.

But we cannot prove without a shadow of a doubt it wasn’t military practice to prepare for the FEMA camps getting ready to move in. Don’t pay attention to the details about Amtrak and the people who work there, that it’s been years and there is no FEMA camps, that the middle of the capital of Indiana is not a reasonable location to put a FEMA camp, or that the people spreading this “news” get half the information wrong.

Ignore all of that. Let it just create a *little* doubt in your mind.

And that’s all you need to get roped in to a conspiracy theory. It’s that simple. Doubt, like the article said, can be grown easily.

Being raised in the church, I was taught to guard my heart and mind. Mostly this was in relationship to the opposite sex and pornography. It was used to talk about sex and produce shame and help control things that felt dangerous (female bodies, for example).

But I think we raised a generation that didn’t understand “guarding your mind” could mean others things too. That you don’t dabble in lies and doubt. That you don’t spend time reading half-truths and poorly constructed stories meant to create fear and division. That we don’t share and promote things that “might” be true. That we don’t gossip or manipulate reality. That we don’t want to encourage a mistrust in others—others made in God’s image just like us.

Because when we do, it dulls our senses. We get away from God’s truth and decide we know our own. We mingle half-facts and Jesus, secrets and God. And what we get is anger, self-righteousness, pride, violence, condemnation, and isolation.

We didn’t guard our hearts and our minds, and we lost God in the research.

Jesus shows us what to do with doubt. In Matthew 4, Jesus is tempted in the wilderness. Satan whispers in his ear, lies meant to make him question what He knows, make Him question his Father, make him act in ways outside of God’s will.

And Jesus rebukes Satan. He tells him to leave. He doesn’t give him room to wiggle into His heart and mind. Jesus doesn’t allow for the entertainment of such things.

But what our conspiracy theory friends said was, “Tell me more.”

And along the way, we lost our integrity. Integrity says we don’t share information we aren’t sure is true. We don’t gossip or spread lies. So if we—as Jesus followers—aren’t 100% certain something is true, we shouldn’t be sharing it with others. Having doubts about something (a common conspiracy theory intro tactic) and knowing something is true are two very different things.

We didn’t guard our hearts or minds, and we lost our integrity.

We’re called to live “peaceful and quiet lives” (1 Timothy 2:2) and instead we got into the middle of violence and destruction and division and lies.

One day on the internet, I got pulled into some conspiracy theories on accident. And when I realized what was happening, I walked away. Turned off the notifications. Stopped checking my phone. Didn’t feed the beast.

But some of us went in on purpose. We kept asking for more and more and more and then we couldn’t stop. Addiction in its truest form, cloaked in the name of Jesus. We heard the whispers of doubt and instead of rebuking and turning away, we opened our hearts and minds for the sowing of deceit and deception.

And now some of us are so sick we can’t find our way out of it. The devil doesn’t need new tricks—we’re still falling for all his old ones.

others are in on the secret now

Across from our house is a cemetery.

My desk faces the window and sometimes, while I’m working, I watch grave diggers prepare the ground for a burial. I see families slowly work their way up the long drive. I observe people gather under a blue tent to say goodbye to someone they love.

Today I watched another funeral.

There were about fifteen people present: funeral home employees, a minister, and the family. The size of the procession leads me to believe the person who died was older.

There were only two people in attendance not wearing masks, the minister and the man who rode with him. Everyone else—family and friends saying goodbye, workers from the mortuary—was wearing masks.

I watched the minister walk around hugging people. He knelt down to get in the face of an elderly woman sitting graveside.

It reminded me of what my friend Shannon said on the internet last week: the American church is not under attack, it is being examined.

And what’s showing up under examination is ugly and fake and flimsy. What’s showing up is pride and self centeredness, superiority and ignorance.

Things of the church are falling apart, because they weren’t built well to begin with. That’s not God’s fault. That’s not the fault of someone who would rather you say “Happy Holidays” than “Merry Christmas.”

It’s our fault.

We read the Bible, said we wanted to follow Jesus, then created our own rules and work-arounds. We believed the lie that America is a Christian nation without trying to be very Christian-y. We thought the name and Sunday morning attendance and the Bible verse framed on the wall covered us.

But when the world began to notice our words and actions didn’t often line up, we got angry. We were quick to say how dare you. We made excuses and twisted scripture and said God has already numbered our days so who needs a mask?

Imagine driving drunk. We know the consequences of driving intoxicated. It could hurt us and others. It could kill people.

But instead of choosing to not drive drunk, we say God’s in control and we get behind the wheel anyway. Because—of course—God has numbered our days. Then when horrible things happen, we just call it God’s will. God’s plan. God knew, obviously. He knew before we were even born.

Knowing something and planning something are two very different things. God doesn’t plan death. He literally sent His son to conquer death. He sent His son so the grave was not the final answer.

But we can still get to death quicker by our actions. And we can take others with us if we desire. Free will is still ours for the taking.

If I decide to drive drunk, it’s not God’s fault or plan when people die. He gave us the choice. He lets us choose, always. We always, always have a choice. We have a choice of obedience or death. We have a choice of others before ourselves or me first always.

St. Teresa of Kolkata said, “When a poor person dies of hunger, it has happened not because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed.”

We’re not giving our neighbors what they need right now. On so many levels.

I don’t care if you believe COVID-19 came from the Democrats to win the election. I don’t care if you think China did this on purpose. I don’t care if you think it’s only as serious as the common flu.

Putting others before ourselves is our calling as Christians. Sacrifice and kindness to others is the way of Jesus. We don’t get to call ourselves Christians and then pick and choose what parts of Jesus’ message we want to follow.

Picking up His cross acknowledged His ways are better than ours. And His ways always elevate our neighbor above ourselves.

Right now, our neighbors are watching us. Imagine the damage we’re doing to people who know we follow Jesus. That we say their health doesn’t matter. That we say they’re worth the risk for our pride.

I’d want none of that Jesus you’re selling me. Not one bit.

Can you imagine being a minister in the middle of a pandemic, showing up to serve people who have lost someone, and not caring enough about those people to wear a mask?

Words don’t matter here. It doesn’t matter what you claim, it doesn’t matter what hope you try to share as you stand behind the casket of our loved one. It doesn’t matter who you say you follow or what label you give yourself. If your words (I follow Jesus!) and your actions (Your health and safety don’t matter enough for me to be inconvenienced!) don’t match up, it’s not your actions that are lying, it’s your words.

I want none of that Jesus you’re selling me. Not one bit.

And neither do all the people watching you.

Shannon is right, the American church is being examined. And what’s being uncovered is sin and death.

And look at us: instead of repentance, instead of asking for forgiveness, instead of caring for our neighbors, we’re doubling down. We’re hiding more, screaming louder, making more excuses, demanding more from people.

God didn’t make COVID-19 happen. God didn’t create it or plan it. But He is calling us to show the world how well we show up in crisis. And I think—for a lot of us—He’s not surprised with our actions because He knew what was in our hearts the whole time. He’s just letting others in on the secret now too.

This is what a broken heart feels like.

I was excited for worship. Two hours of praise and prayer on a Friday night felt special and out-of-the-norm.

Chris was on stage, the girls were with friends, and I was going to have two hours to celebrate and give thanks. I listened to a little Kesha on the way to church, so full of energy I couldn’t sit still. If you notice, I’m skipping right over the irony of listening to Kesha on the way to church. Moving on.

I sat down with friends from our small group, the lights lowered, and the service began.

And then something broke open inside of me.

At first, I was confused. I was just here to give some thanks, to bring praise and worship to a God who has done some unbelievably kind and generous and faithful things for our family the past six months.

But instead I just got really sad.

The song played and I sang, but I couldn’t stop the tears. What’s going on here?

A few songs in, I was grateful for the loud music and dark room, because I was not just teary-eyed but crying. I couldn’t sing anymore. I was concentrating too hard on keeping something inside that desperately wanted to come out.

I stood there listening to the people around me singing. My chest hurt. I could feel the pressure, the discomfort.

This is what a broken heart feels like, I heard in my head.

This is what a broken heart feels like.

And for the first time in a very long time, I didn’t try to rationalize it away. I didn’t argue with what my head was telling me. I didn’t try to justify any action or feeling or avoidance.

I just listened.

And what I heard, what I felt, what I knew was that my heart was broken.

You’ve been walking around with a broken heart. Pay attention. I heard it clearly and tenderly from the God I was trying to worship.

This is what a broken heart feels like.

It was like suddenly my head and my heart both knew it–not just my heart which I had been ignoring–and I felt all the sadness, all the loneliness, all the pain that went with a broken heart. A broken heart I didn’t know I had.

This is what a broken heart feels like?

I’m not sure what took me so long. Why it took me a few years to admit what happened broke my heart. I associate a broken heart with romantic love, with my husband, or with my love for my kids.

But now? With this? This broke my heart too?

“Are you okay?” my friend whispered in between songs.

“Yeah,” I said, too stunned and unsure to say anything else.

“I’m a mess,” she said with a little laugh as she wiped tears from her face.

Me too, I thought, but I don’t even have the words yet to explain how messy.

The rest of the two-hour service was sitting with my broken heart. If it’s broken, is this what loneliness feels like? If it’s broken, is this why my brain keeps attacking it? If it’s broken, is this what that quiet hum is? The one that wakes me in the middle of the night?

God, I’m so tired of carrying this broken heart.
I didn’t know that’s what it was.

It feels silly to say it to God. It feels silly to say it to you. I was walking around with a broken heart, talking to people, acting a certain way, believing some lies because I didn’t know my heart was broken.

The realization felt like a cracking open, like a long, deep breath I didn’t know I wasn’t taking before.

Instead of hurting more, like I assumed, it felt like I was finally able to relax. I wasn’t aware I was running from my broken heart, but once I stopped and paid attention to it, it felt like sweet relief.

They say the truth shall set you free. I didn’t even realize I was ignoring it. But when I finally looked it square in the eyes, it didn’t hurt, it didn’t kill me, it was safety and freedom and relief.

It made sense. This is what a broken heart feels like.

Now when it asks for attention, I can be gentle with it.
I can say hi.
Acknowledge the hurt.
Say it’s okay to be here.
A broken heart means it mattered.
It is okay that it mattered.
It’s not weakness to say you loved.
Sad is okay.

It’s been a few weeks since I noticed my broken heart. I’d been carrying it around for a few years, not sure what it was. I didn’t recognize a broken heart so I didn’t know how to care for it.

I know now.

And it feels a little less broken than it did that night in the pew surrounded by people singing.

If my friend was here right now and she asked me if I was okay, here’s what I would whisper:

I am definitely not okay. I lost something important. Something I always carried along with me, something I didn’t realize could leave. I think I’ve been walking with a limp ever since. I didn’t even notice the limp. I just got used to the pain, just thought this is what life is now.

I have a broken heart, and I’m going to start paying attention to it.

And my friend would probably agree. Because she’s a mess too, she’s just a little better at saying it out loud.

I bless God every chance I get;
my lungs expand with his praise.

I live and breathe God;
if things aren’t going well, hear this and be happy:

Join me in spreading the news;
together let’s get the word out.

God met me more than halfway,
he freed me from my anxious fears.

Look at him; give him your warmest smile.
Never hide your feelings from him.

When I was desperate, I called out,
and God got me out of a tight spot.

God’s angel sets up a circle
of protection around us while we pray.

Open your mouth and taste, open your eyes and see—
how good God is.
Blessed are you who run to him.

Worship God if you want the best;
worship opens doors to all his goodness.

Young lions on the prowl get hungry,
but God-seekers are full of God.

Come, children, listen closely;
I’ll give you a lesson in God worship.

Who out there has a lust for life?
Can’t wait each day to come upon beauty?

Guard your tongue from profanity,
and no more lying through your teeth.

Turn your back on sin; do something good.
Embrace peace—don’t let it get away!

God keeps an eye on his friends,
his ears pick up every moan and groan.

God won’t put up with rebels;
he’ll cull them from the pack.

Is anyone crying for help? God is listening,
ready to rescue you.

If your heart is broken, you’ll find God right there;
if you’re kicked in the gut, he’ll help you catch your breath.

Disciples so often get into trouble;
still, God is there every time.

He’s your bodyguard, shielding every bone;
not even a finger gets broken.

The wicked commit slow suicide;
they waste their lives hating the good.

God pays for each slave’s freedom;
no one who runs to him loses out.
-Psalm 34, The Message version

I forgive you.

What’s fun about my brain is I can get obsessive thoughts pretty quickly if I don’t pay attention. My over-active brain likes to find a thought, a wound, a situation and get busy destroying it. I don’t enjoy this part of my brain. I don’t encourage it. It just happens.

I forgive you.

I don’t start off the day mad. Well, let’s be honest. Sometimes I do. I wake up with a clenched jaw. I have to remind myself to unclench as I’m waking up. I don’t know what my brain was handling as I slept, but often I can feel the effects of it in my jaw and neck, in my shoulders and forehead.

I forgive you.

I take deep breaths and lower my shoulders. I don’t want to assume the posture of fight all the time. I don’t want that for my life, I don’t want that for my family, I don’t want it for my body. But it assumes the position every single morning of my life.

So I begin my day by unclenching and breathing.

I forgive you.

But my brain starts again: remember that conversation you didn’t get to finish? Remember that person who hurt you and never apologized? Remember that lie someone told about you to make themselves look better? You should worry about that right now.

I forgive you.

I spend a lot of time thinking about my thoughts. Please read that stupid sentence again. It’s true. I don’t know how else to tell you. I spend a lot of time thinking about my thoughts.

I forgive you.

There are perks to thinking about your thoughts a lot. I get to write reflectively and people read it. I get to learn from something I thought or did or believed that wasn’t right. I get to see outside of myself often. I am self-aware. I am quick at self-correction. These are good things, things that have brought health and healing to my life.

I forgive you.

But there are downfalls too. If my brain doesn’t get the resolution it wants, it can’t stop running circles around it. It can’t stop bringing it back. My brain doesn’t file it away for later, it screams for attention and energy. This is exhausting for my brain which, in turn, makes it exhausting for me.

I forgive you.

I think about a way to share all your secrets. Destroy you. Show everyone what you’ve been hiding, what you hid, how dangerous you are. Make the lies you’ve built your life around crumble. How you made me the bad guy. My brain really likes justice. I know too much, that’s why you worked so hard to control the narrative. You who has so many secrets, scared of someone who has very little of them.

I forgive you.

Maybe I like to read so much because my brain gets a break from other thoughts for a while. You can’t read a book–really read and absorb a book–without quieting other parts of yourself. I love words. Maybe I love other people’s words because they make mine stop for a while.

I forgive you.

I love resolution. My brain needs an ending. Last fall my sister accused me of always needing to get the last word. I turned that label over for a long time. Do I need the last word? Do I have to say one more thing every single time?

I forgive you.

It’s not the last word that I love. It’s the resolution. I can’t stop the conversation, the argument, the misunderstanding until it’s fixed. I don’t want the last word, I want the resolution. If your words end up being last, as long as we’re reached a conclusion, I don’t need more words. I need resolution.

I forgive you.

It’s not pride. It’s not believing I know all the right answers. It’s the lack of ending. If we don’t figure out how to move forward from this, we don’t get to move forward. I love to move forward. Because the opposite of moving forward is staying stuck and that feels like death. It feels like being trapped and dying.

I forgive you.

I have a lifetime of silence instead of resolution. I have a playbook full of resentment and secrets and manipulation. I had to unlearn my lessons of ignoring and pretending. My brain doesn’t know how to live in the tension of other people choosing not to anymore.

I forgive you.

I’ve started whispering to my thoughts:
I forgive you.
I forgive you.
I forgive you.

It has begun a relaxing of my shoulders and fists. I get to decide the cycle my brain gets trapped in. I want it to run the route of forgiveness not resolution. I like a tidy ending, but that is not always an option.

I forgive you.

I am training my brain to forgive whether my bones want to or not. I repeat it as a mantra, a prayer, a promise. I don’t want to carry your wounds with me forever. I don’t want to live in the scars of broken people trying to break others. I understand most of what has happened to me isn’t even about me.

I forgive you.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean I want more from you. It doesn’t mean I want a relationship, another conversation, a way back. Forgiveness doesn’t mean you were right, and I was wrong. Forgiveness isn’t an invitation to start again.

I forgive you.

It’s just a releasing. A loosening of my jaw, because I don’t want to live in the world carrying you anymore.

I forgive you.
I forgive you.
I forgive you.

It becomes easier, the forgiving. I need it just as much as everyone else. I want it greedily so I’m sharing it freely. It’s not natural. It’s not automatic. It’s a practice, a choice, an action.

I forgive you.

I am retraining my brain to let go. To worry less about the resolution and more about the letting go. It is going against every single cell in my body. We all want revenge and “I told you so” and conclusions.

I forgive you.

The nice part about thinking about your thoughts all the time is I can quickly see an obsessive pattern starting.

I forgive you.
I forgive you.
I forgive you.

I correct the thought. I stop it. I forgive it. I forgive the person. I forgive the situation. I forgive the lie. I forgive the event. I forgive the time. I forgive myself. I forgive my brain.

I forgive you.

When we say we follow Jesus, it means stepping in His footprints. It means going to the same places He went. And He always started with forgiveness. The women at the well. Zacchaeus. Peter before he denied Him. The very people who killed him.

I forgive you.
I forgive you.
I forgive you.

If I don’t start there too, I’m missing something. I’m only following Jesus in name not action. Belief changes us. It changes our hearts, our words, our thoughts, our interactions. It becomes less about justifying and more about forgiving in spite of.

I forgive you.

Jesus forgave Peter before he betrayed Him. He forgave the woman at the well even without a promise to never, ever sin again. He forgave the very people who were taunting and stabbing and spitting on him.

I forgive you.

I don’t forgive because it didn’t hurt. I don’t forgive because I want you to do it again. I don’t forgive because I got the resolution.

I forgive because it’s too heavy to carry this anymore. I forgive because I need it too. I forgive because my body needs rest. I forgive because I am called to. I forgive because it’s dying to self. I forgive because I know enough about self to realize I can’t always be trusted, don’t always make the best choices.

I forgive you.

That’s it. No resolution. No want for more. No tidy ending. We don’t move forward. We go separately from here. Me, without the heaviness. You, without the power to do it again.

I forgive you.
I forgive you.
I forgive myself.

No, not like that.

I am a big supporter of not letting your right hand know what your left hand is doing.

I don’t think it looks good to share how great you are when you go downtown and pay attention to homeless people for an hour then post it to social media. I don’t think you look anything but self-righteous telling others about the meal you served or the gift you gave or the way you were able to show off your privilege or power to make someone else thankful you exist.

With that in mind, I’m only telling you the first part of this story so the second part makes sense. I don’t want or need you to think I’m generous or kind, because I am really not.

I am not generous or kind.

We have more money than we need right now. As a result, we got to do a lot of exciting, sneaky things for people we know and don’t know over the holidays. We have been on the receiving end of this type of generosity before; we know the anxiety and stress December can bring. This year was different. We had extra.

Some years you’re on the needy list.
Some years you’re on the “let’s meet some needs” list.

This year we were on the latter.

The thrill of getting to be able to share with others was, by far, the best part of Christmas.

Last week, the girls and I were talking about some of the things we were able to do as we drove to see the new Little Women movie. I was trying to remind them that we have the money to see more movies now, but our extra money isn’t just used to do more stuff and buy more things. I was reminding them (again) that the more we have, the more we have to share. I was saying this for the millionth time and wondering if they ever really heard me.

After the movie, we were sitting at a stoplight leaving the mall. A man was on the corner with his beat-up sign begging for money. I didn’t have any cash, and anyway, I had just preached a really good sermon to my kids about being generous so I didn’t have the energy left to dig around for some loose change.

I was looking at my phone as I waited for the light to change. As it turned green, I hear Harper’s window roll down and see her chubby little hand hold out a Target gift card to the man.

He looks at me.
I look at him.
I look at Harper.
She shrugs.
We drive off.

Harper, that was a $30 gift card from Grandma. Did you know that? I said, slightly panicked.

She started crying.

I didn’t know it was that much, she said through tears. I thought it was $10.

It’s okay! It’s okay! Don’t cry! I said as we pulled into our next stop.

She climbed into my lap and wedged herself between the steering wheel and me. I held her as she sobbed and sobbed.

I want it back, she said when she was able to catch her breath.

That’s not how it works, I explained to her.

She knew exactly how much was on the card. I know she read the $30 note on the envelope before handing it over. She knew what she was doing.

She knew exactly what she was doing.

And she was absolutely fine doing it until I reacted the way I did. Then she got embarrassed and wanted it back. I saw her looking at her sister out of the corner of her eye as she cried. She was worried about what her sister thought about her choice, if Ellie thought she was silly for doing what she did.

I had spent time that afternoon encouraging my kids to be generous and then when one of them does what I ask, I make her doubt her generosity.

Here’s what I was thinking as we drove away from the stoplight: She just gave someone over half her Christmas money. Oh, no. She didn’t need to do that. She doesn’t have that much money to begin with. She’s eight! $30 is a lot of money. Heck, I’m 38 and $30 is a lot of money. She should have asked me. I could have found some change. Thirty dollars! That’s a lot of money! Why did she do that??

What my eight year old was thinking as she pulled her brand new $30 gift card out of her very empty wallet: That man says he needs money. I have some money. Let me give him what I have.

I have so much to learn.

8 good-for-your-soul books

My reading tends to fall into seasons. Not so much the calendar seasons, but certain weather calls for certain books.

In the summer, I need fiction. Chick lit, murder mysteries, good storytelling–things that make me stay up late and can hold my attention for hours at the pool. I do not need to be challenged or grow from the books I read in the summer, they are for entertainment purposes only.

Maybe it’s because I will forever be conditioned to think of the end of summer and fall as a time for learning, but right now, I’m all about growing and healing and thinking. My current to-read stack is Love Over Fear by Dan White Jr., Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson (a re-read for me), Addiction and Grace by Gerald G. May, MD, Everything Belongs by Richard Rohr, When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron (a book I’ve skimmed but never read all the way through), and Not Quite Healed by Cecil Murphey and Gary Roe. I’ve got some fiction sprinkled in for book clubs and I’m listening to some non-fiction audiobooks, but I’m ready to buckle down and learn as the weather (hopefully) cools off.

Do you have seasons for reading?

I don’t have a rhythm for encouraging books, but I know when I need them. After I read a heavy book or when things in real life feel extra challenging, I can search out books that will soothe my soul and quiet my heart. Maybe you need that right now?

These books are ones I run to when I need hope, freedom, and lightness:

Embracing Weakness: The Unlikely Secret to Changing the World
By Shannon K. Evans
I like this one because it’s short and helpful. I don’t know if it’s just the Enneagram Eight in me, but I need the reminders that weakness isn’t an ugly word. There is a lot of beauty that can actually come from the weak pieces of us, and Evans reminds us that there is power in our weakness if we are followers of Jesus.

The Next Right Thing podcast
Okay, this is a podcast, but there’s a book too so I’m not cheating. I haven’t read the book (it’s on my Christmas list, if you’ve started shopping already…), but the podcast which inspired the book is so good I’m recommending it without reading it. Emily P. Freeman is thoughtful and wise. She doesn’t give you answers, but invites you into the questions so you can, on your own, find the way. There’s almost a therapy-level quiet and safety in her podcasts. Her voice is soothing and her stories always jar something in my heart. If you’re not buying any books this year and the library doesn’t have any of the ones I’m suggesting, just subscribe to this podcast for free and start exploring the archives (a new episode comes out most Mondays). I hope this will be encouraging for your heart.

If you are buying books right now, get this one and let me know how it feels: The Next Right Thing: A Simple, Soulful Practice for Making Decisions by Emily P. Freeman)

Everybody Always: Becoming Love in a World Full of Setbacks and Unhappy People
By Bob Goff
Goff is a pleasure to read. His view of this world and life is so joy-filled that you can’t help but want what he has. (He has Jesus, but also an extra spark of something I can’t put my finger on.) I read Bob Goff when I want to remember what open arms can do. Not just because it’s fun, but because it points people to Jesus. His stories are unbelievable and exciting and push me outside my comfort zone in the nicest way possible.

Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace
By Anne Lamott
Often God doesn’t change my circumstances when I ask, He changes my heart. A lot of these books do that for me, but especially Small Victories by Anne Lamott. Beside her ability to craft a good sentence and a great story, I enjoy her reminders about how much grace is all around us if we just pay attention.

Let Me Feed You: Everyday Recipes Offering the Comfort of Home
By Rosie Daykin
Sometimes my heart needs quieted in the kitchen. Let Me Feed You is full of recipes that feel comfortable. I don’t like fussy recipes, things that require me to buy things I’ll never use again. I like cookbooks full of ingredients I normally have and with food my family will actually eat. Pretty pictures do not mean a successful dinner. But this one does it all: gorgeous photos and food the Graham girls devour. I like to borrow cookbooks from the library to try a few recipes before spending the money on them. This one passed the library test and I can’t wait to give it a home on my kitchen shelf. Sometimes what your soul needs is a messy kitchen with something warm in the oven and this book is perfect for that.

Simple Living for a Frantic World
By Brooke MCAlary
When things feel too loud in the world, I walk around my house and make a pile of things to donate to Goodwill. I can’t control the chaotic things outside my front door, but I can make sure my home doesn’t reflect it. I know this isn’t what everyone does, but when I feel extra twisty inside, I turn that energy outward to making my home more cozy. Simple Living for a Frantic World is about that task, about making our lives less full so we don’t get consumed by the world’s pace and energy. This book talks about schedules, boundaries, home, and creating a life we don’t want to escape from. I know what to do to make this happen, but I still enjoy hearing other people’s stories of real life balancing.

Cozy Minimalist Home: More Style, Less Stuff
By Myquillyn Smith
One way I balance the world’s pace is by making home a soft place to land. We’re not home as much as I would like in the fall, but when we do stumble through the back door, you better believe it feels cozy. Cozy Minimalist Home isn’t about stripping the house bare, but quieting rooms so they feel like rest when you’re in them. I grabbed this book as soon as it was released and spent the next two weeks walking around my house taking things off of walls, shelves, and surfaces. Less stuff out meant less stuff to manage. Then I let it sit to see if I missed what I had taken away. Spoiler: I didn’t. And my rooms felt like they could breathe, like there was more space to live. If you’re in a season that feels full and overwhelming, this book will help you quiet your home so you can regain some balance.

Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Living
By Shauna Niequist
Do you have a book you return to when you don’t know what to read? Or when you need a reset? Cold Tangerines is that for me. I’ve read this book countless times in the 10+ years I’ve had it. For me, it opened my eyes to a style of writing and storytelling I didn’t know people were allowed to do. I bought this at a bookstore on a college campus in Louisville, Kentucky right after Chris and I were married. I devoured it. It became a way for me to center myself, remind myself why words matter, and how good words can connect us to others. This is probably not Niequist’s best writing. It is her first published collection of essays and she’s grown and evolved a lot since then, but I still love this book more than the others because of who I was when I discovered it. (Also, if I let you borrow this, please kindly return it. I miss it.)

Do you have a favorite good-for-your-soul book? Do you have seasons for reading different genres? Tell me all your book thoughts please.

*DISCLOSURE: affiliate links used.

a letter about sex and virginity and forgiveness and redemption

I’m writing letters this week: to people who will never read them, to my younger self, to you. Because we all have things we wish we could say to someone.

I keep trying to narrow down this audience: my daughters? myself at 18? young girls learning how to navigate romantic relationships? my old youth group kids?

There are so many people I want to talk to that I don’t know where to focus, so I’ll start with a story and maybe you can find your place in it:

I met Scott a couple months shy of my 18th birthday. He was a few years older, in college, had freedoms I wasn’t yet familiar with as a high school senior.

We fell in love hard and fast. I’m not sure if it was his personality of all-or-nothing or mine, but that young, eager, everything-is-a-rush, lust for life and each other? We were that multiplied by 100.

Even now I smile at how fun and exciting it was. I wrote at the beginning of this week about how much I love young love, how much I love love, and I’m still a big fan here at the end of the week.

Scott and I were–of course–going to be together forever.

So I lost my virginity to him after about six months of dating. We had been pushing some limits and boundaries and when you do that enough, the next leap isn’t too far.

I grew up in church. I’d attended more than a few church camps where I pledged to save myself for my wedding night. I was friends with all the girls who got purity rings from their dads. I never got one. Maybe that’s why, one cold January afternoon in my boyfriend’s bedroom, I made the choice to not wait any longer.

(It wasn’t really the ring, just in case you didn’t get the sarcasm. Also, those rings are weird, let’s stop doing that.)

Anyway, it happened.

And because it happened and I had grown up loving Jesus and reading a Bible that told me this wasn’t good, I did lots of rationalizing: We’re going to get married eventually so it’s fine. We really love each other. No one else could possibly feel or understand what we feel. This is what real love does. We’re committed to each other. He’s my future husband so it’s not that big of a deal.

The sad reality was I was doing something a lot of my Christian friends were doing. We just weren’t talking about it. We were being sneaky about the sex and then showing up at church on Sunday giving a really good show about how holy and God-honoring our relationships were.

I’m sure you’re familiar with that story in some way.

Here’s the part I want my daughters to know, the part I wish I could have told my friends at the time, the thing I wish I had understood about God’s love and grace and forgiveness and punishment:

You can stop.

You haven’t ruined God’s plan for your life, you haven’t ruined future relationships and your future marriage and your whole being because you are no longer a virgin.

You and your vagina are not that powerful.

Our culture worships virginity. Our culture likes us to think that we lose value and importance once it is gone. We have been led to believe that everything hinges on what’s in between our legs and if we mess that up, we mess everything up.

But God doesn’t believe that.

I understand why it’s important to wait for marriage. Not because it’s your ticket to a wonderful, happy marriage. Not because your chastity earns you a free pass to relational bliss once you say I do. Not because God flips the sex switch once you have a ring on your finger and everything becomes glorious and romantic and enjoyable and easy. But because He wants our obedience.

We wait because He tells us His ways are best.
We wait because He knows what He created our hearts to do.
We wait because He wants to keep us from unnecessary pain.
We wait because He knows things we don’t know, things we might never know.

We wait because He asked. That’s it.

Sometimes people with good intentions tell us bad things. You are not saving yourself because God will pay you back later with sexual fulfillment and a stress-free marriage. We’ve allowed the Prosperity Gospel (if I do this, I will earn this material or dream thing later) into our bedrooms, and we’ve been told saving our virginity will unleash blessings later.

Again: You and your vagina are not that powerful. I appreciate the sentiment, but seriously, calm down.

God is not keeping score and only giving us good things when we do good things. He gives us good things because He’s a good Father. Then we respond to those good things with obedience. But we don’t have to earn His goodness with virginity. We can’t earn any of this, that’s the point. (Burn Ephesians 2:8-9 into your memory for when your brain wants to argue about this.)

I’ve been reading the Bible for years. I have yet to come across the part where it says my sex is more powerful than my God.

I have also been married for years. I know marriage is hard. Marriage is hard because two sinful, selfish people are trying to do life together. Marriage is not hard because I had sex with someone before marriage. Marriage is hard because MARRIAGE IS HARD.

(Could I have added a layer of unnecessary hard based on my choice twenty years ago? Maybe. But I’m not completely convinced.)

Here’s where we can mess things up though: if we allow people to tell us that we can’t come back from a mistake, that we can’t be forgiven, that we have to marry the person we had sex with outside of marriage.

I’m writing this on the internet so you know it’s true: YOU DO NOT HAVE TO PAY PENANCE FOR YOUR MISTAKE BY MARRYING THIS PERSON. Where did this lesson come from? A misguided youth minister? A 90’s purity culture book? Our grandmas?

I’m worried about all the girls who started having sex before marriage, got too wrapped up in the guilt and shame of it, and decided the only way to reconcile the situation is to marry the person. Like a marriage certificate pays for the sin.

Jesus paid for that sin on the cross. You don’t have to sacrifice the rest of your life to a person you otherwise wouldn’t marry because of the pressure to absolve yourself.

I can hear the uproar about this right now. I’m well acquainted with the people who think you should absolutely marry the guy since you had sex with him. But as Christians, we either agree that Jesus paid for all our sins on the cross and forgiveness is an equal opportunity employer or His death was in vain because it doesn’t cover all of us.

We don’t get to split hairs if someone is asking for forgiveness of something you don’t think they should have done in the first place. Stay in your lane, Carol. And your lane would be your own sin, not someone else’s.

Maybe that’s why Christian divorce rates are just as high as non-Christians. We make mistakes before we’re married and somewhere along the line, we’ve picked up the idea that the only way to make it right is to marry the person and then we’re stuck in a marriage we probably wouldn’t have agreed to otherwise.

We disobeyed and instead of stopping the disobedience, asking for forgiveness, and changing our actions, we just double down with the bad choices to…what? Make ourselves feel better? Earn our way back into God’s good graces?

I can’t tell you the number of conversations I’ve had with woman who have said they just wish someone had told them they didn’t have to marry the guy they lost their virginity to. Yes, they wish they had made a different choice when it came to sex (that’s the first step in making this whole essay null and void), but they did. Then they took their guilt and shame and kept the relationship going as a way to pay for their sins.

Ladies, we don’t have to do that.
Jesus was the Sacrificial Lamb for this very reason. Not just for some of the sins–the ones that don’t have to do with sex–but all of them. You don’t have to punish yourself with continuing a relationship, entering into a marriage, or even having kids with someone because you made a bad choice and you don’t know how to recover from it.

I’m not sure how I avoided this trap with Scott. Maybe because I was the Christian in the relationship and he wasn’t, so the pressure to absolve our sins was only coming from me. (Side note: that unequally yoked thing is legit, but we’ll save that lesson for another time.) Maybe it is because I’m an Enneagram Eight who doesn’t feel shame or guilt even when I should (see: I used “vagina” with no reservation in a blog post about Jesus.).

I’ve run into Scott a few times in the past year. We live near each other and shop at the same stores. He’s married with a few kids. We chat for a few minutes in the aisle of Home Depot or Wal-Mart as our kids fidget around us. We talk about work or family stuff, there is no awkwardness or embarrassment when we run into each other. We wrap up our conversation after a few minutes, and we move on with our days.

When I was growing up, I was led to believe I’d carry the weight of that sin, the weight of my choice to have sex before I was married forever. That it would haunt all future relationships, that I would bring Scott to bed with me wherever I was for the rest of my life.

It seems crazy to tell you I was taught that, that I was taught that God couldn’t forgive my sin or redeem my choice.

Somewhere things got off-track when we started teaching girls about their bodies and choices. We want our kids to know grace and compassion and forgiveness, but when it comes to their bodies, those are powerful and sinful and you might not be able to recover from the choices you make with them. I was taught to feel such shame for being a girl and told how dangerous my body was for myself and others.

Yes, there are consequences for sex before marriage. You can learn about those in health class or from the pregnant girl sitting next to you at McDonald’s. There are many, many reasons it’s best to not have sex outside of marriage, both from a worldly point of view and a Biblical one. But the extra level of shame and guilt we’ve assigned this choice while also trying to make girls understand grace and forgiveness confuses more than helps.

A bad choice doesn’t mean a bad life.
A bad choice doesn’t mean endless punishment and shame.
God’s forgiveness of sin is the same no matter what.
God is more powerful than our mistakes and weaknesses, He can redeem us and our bad choices and our lives without exception.

I understand enough about writing on the internet that this will be misunderstood by some people. That probably means this letter and story wasn’t for you, but just in case it was and you just need a little more help, let me repeat:

Sex inside of marriage is best because it’s what God tells us.
Sex outside of marriage doesn’t sentence you to a life of punishment and shame.
The world (and in some ways, the church) worships virginity in an unhealthy, un-Godly way.
You can stop having sex outside of marriage. Just because you started doesn’t mean you have to continue.
You do not have to marry the person who took your virginity as a way to pay for your sin. That’s not your job.

Scott and I dated on and off for five years. Our relationship probably carried on longer than it should have because I was operating under the lie that I had to make it work because of my choice to have sex with him. We were not good for each other. He was made for someone else and so was I. Also, he had twins later and dodging that bullet just feels good.

I learned a lot from trying to have a sexual relationship outside of marriage. I took what I learned (ironically, things God had written in the Bible…who knew?) with me to future relationships. I took those lessons into a new relationship a few years later with Chris Graham whom I’d eventually marry.

We had sex for the first time on our wedding night.
And spoiler alert: I didn’t ruin anything. It was pretty awesome. Thanks God.

God thinks about you.

God thinks about you, Ellie said as we hiked through the woods.

She was talking to her dad; I was up ahead with Harper and one of our dogs.

God thinks about you so you’re important so the end, she said with the confidence and finality of a ten year old.

I turned back to look at Chris. Who is this child, my face said. How did she get to be ours?

Her words echoed in my mind all weekend and have come back in whispered reminders almost every day since.

God thinks about you.

I don’t know if I just needed the reminder or the words lined up just the right way, but “God thinks about you” has changed my posture.

Tonight I’m going to a showing for a friend. A friend who died too soon, who left her kids too soon, who fought really hard the past fifteen years to survive things too hard for her young body.

God thinks about you.
God thinks about you as you mourn and grieve and ask why.

June and July were hard on Chris and I. I don’t know where to start or how to begin a decades-long story about how growing up in a house full of secrets and shame changes every single fiber of your being. I don’t know what stories are ready for public consumption and which ones aren’t. But we struggled through this summer, more and more old wounds coming up and demanding attention.

The truth is the longer Chris is clear-headed, the more broken parts are exposed. The more he views his childhood through the lens of his own children’s experiences, the harder and more painful it becomes. You know the saying, “You don’t know what you don’t know”? Seeing what a safe, healthy childhood looks like shines a light on all the things he didn’t get from his parents. The more he tries to heal, the harder it is to stomach what he and his siblings were made to endure.

I keep thinking it will get easier soon.
I’m not sure when that will be.
God thinks about you.

I’ve sat with friends recently who’ve shared hard realities and struggles about children and spouses. About sin that keeps hunting down new victims and families so trapped by addiction it would break your heart to hear.

God thinks about you.
When nothing makes sense and you cannot see a way out of the pain or hurt or mess, God thinks about you.

I don’t know if that brings you comfort like it does me, but I hope it does.

On Wednesday our small group sat around our family room bellies full of chocolate zucchini bread and fresh salsa from the garden. We talked about kids in cages and unwanted babies and what the Bible says about the way we treat people. We wrestled with our witness and our memories, the way we have been and the way we’re trying to be now.

God thinks about you.
When the news overwhelms and everything seems so dark, He thinks about you.

I don’t know if Ellie picked up this truth at Sunday school or church camp or in a book she read. I don’t know if she heard it in a song or in a devotion.

I take no credit for her wisdom, because a lot of the time, she teaches me as opposed to the other way around.

God thinks about you.
God thinks about you.

As you walk into the meeting you are dreading; as you make the move into the new city or house. God thinks about you as you laugh and dance, ask for help and hurt. God thinks about you when things don’t go as planned and things go better than planned.

God thinks about you.

Remembering that truth changes my attitude, my spirit, my goals. It alters where I go and how I behave, when I speak up and when I am quiet.

“God thinks about you” warms my belly, makes my feet feel solid beneath me, and keeps my shoulders light.

Not because everything becomes easy and carefree, but because I am not alone, I am remembered, I am cared for.

God thinks about you.

I don’t know if that sentence shifts something in your soul the way it does mine. Maybe you already knew. Maybe you remember that every day already. Somehow I missed it. Somehow I forgot that God is with me. How did I lose focus of this part?

God thinks about you.
Right now, last night, tomorrow.
God thinks about you.

O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.
You hem me in–behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake, I am still with you.
-Psalm 139: 1-18, NIV version

I don’t know what you’re dealing with right now; what you’re walking into today or what you’ll have to survive this weekend. It might be hard or wonderful, destructive or joyful, but remember always: God thinks about you.

What we’re taking with us.

It went away the same way it came: with our families and our cars and our sweat.

Yesterday marked the end of our current Front Room Studio location. We signed a lease and were handed the keys a little over one year ago. We had big plans for creativity, learning, growing, and gathering.

We did almost everything we envisioned, except for the part where we stayed longer than a year. We didn’t see that coming last year. We didn’t see it coming in January.

But here we are.

I don’t want to spend my time writing out a list of the reasons it was time to go, but a pretty disappointing landlord and obedience would top the list.

In March, Jessi and I were both gone from the office for a few weeks because of spring break. She was in Florida, and I was at home trying to manage the kids and finish a kitchen remodel. I took the two week we were away from the office to pray. I needed to know how to keep the office open, generate the revenue we needed to, and find the space to do it all.

I needed ideas, inspiration, and answers.

What I got instead was a pretty clear response that it was time to go.

But I can make this work, God. I know how to hustle. I have ideas. I have people and workshops and meetings lined up and connections.

I can make this sustainable.

And in a million little ways, He told me no.
No more.
Stop.
You’re good at making things work, but this isn’t what I’m calling you to do right now.

I didn’t accept this for a while. I had lunch with trusted friends, talked to my mom, prayed more.

Everything in my nature wants to rebel from what I’m told to do. I did it when I was a toddler, I do it now. Everyone *knows* what they should do, maturity is actually doing it.

For me, I’ll do it, but I want to do it my own way.

This has, on many, many occasions, backfired on me. But I have yet to learn.

For months, Jessi and I had been going back and forth about what to do when the lease came up for renewal. We both wanted the same things, but were also concerned about the same issues.

Basically, we had made no decision.

So in April from the top of the St. Louis Arch, I texted Jessi I thought we should talk about leaving the space. Texting from 630 feet up in the air felt like bad timing, but some other things were happening too, and it couldn’t wait.

I’m on board, and it’s for the best, Jessi replied. But it’s bittersweet.

Yes, that. One word for the road: bittersweet.

So we spent the last few months doing all the things we had dreamed about but hadn’t done yet. More workshops and gatherings. Doing a live show for the podcast, holding meetings with creatives and dreamers. Suddenly with a deadline, things became clearer.

As Chris climbed the ladder and took down lights yesterday, I stood in the empty space and said thank you. The walls at 33 E. Main Street held lots of emotions for us. They held tears, laughter, pain, forgiveness, excitement, friendship, hard conversations, growth, and death.

Jessi and I are not the same people we were when we walked into this space last June, full of dreams and design ideas. We lost some things here. We gained a lot more.

I didn’t expect the best thing to come from our office to be the conversations we had there. Who knew what Jessi and I really needed was a safe place to land when home and families and friends felt too shaky.

For me, the last part of letting our studio go was pride. Pride that I did something that felt incomplete. My therapist would say this is my perfectionism peeking through. I would say it’s just that we could have made it work. We could have kept going. We could have stayed.

But it would have, probably, ended badly. Ended messy. Ended with emotions other than bittersweet smiles and tears.

And so we left with fondness and hopefulness and obedience and our friendship.

The Front Room Studio lives on. It lives on in the place we’ll continue to record The Not Terrible Podcast wherever that is. The Front Room Studio lives on in the book club that’s moving to the local library, the Bible study moving to a nearby coffee shop, and the workshops we’ll still put on, just in other locations

We had to leave the space, but we’re not leaving all the things it gave us, which if I’m being really honest, is each other.

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