The Unlearning of It All

University, long over

Degree behind me now.

I’m in the middle of my life—

School bag exchanged for plow.

My son is learning letters,

Their sounds and rules and rhymes.

Education is for kids,

But understanding comes with time.

We played ball today

Out under the oak,

And I’m laughing at the time it takes

To really grow a soul.

For mostly? I’m still rushed,

And stressed, and needing more.

What is it, my dear Lord,

That I’m really looking for?

Is there no professor

Who will tell me the truth?

That learning isn’t living.

Striving, not of You.

And Your favorite thing to teach?

The unlearning of it all.

To throw away the toiling,

And to throw the kid a ball.

Look close at his delight!

Not in the hit or miss.

But in the time we spend—

Our friendship is his bliss.

“Know this, dear one,

If you’d know anything more—

Simply not to be alone,

Is all you’re looking for.”

My book is available for sale on Amazon! If you’re new here and unsure of what all the quiet-life talk is about, just follow the Amazon link to find a description. You can also find the first chapter of my book published right here on Substack.

At some point I’m sure I will spend some time recounting the experience of writing (and self-publishing) a book. For now, I’d like to simply leave you with a copy of the Acknowledgments section. I never used to pay attention to the acknowledgments, but now I know that’s where the heart of the book was found. So without further ado…

Acknowledgments

“A big thank you to Carl Dobrowolski and his team at Goodwill Media Services for helping me turn all these words into a real book. I’m beyond grateful for your kind and patient expertise with all the nitty gritty details of publishing. 

I’m so thankful to Pastor Matt Capps for his encouragement and help when the idea of this book first began to take shape. To Pastor Daniel Baker, I owe a huge thank you for reading over the manuscript and providing his theological oversight and feedback. 

To my endorsers for being willing to take a chance on a young new writer with zero credibility, I am immensely thankful. To especially, for helping to name this “Quiet Life” story that was hiding and ready to be told. To Melissa Baker, my high school speech teacher, for not only endorsing but for providing such encouraging feedback along the way, thank you. 

To the great and talented Max Burak for his brilliant design of this book cover, my deepest thanks and appreciation. Your art is incredible and your friendship, more so.

To Lauren Baumgardner for prompting me to write again, and for being such an uplifting friend and valuable sounding board, I’m so grateful. 

To a countless number of friends and neighbors for cheering on this project, reading manuscript samples, and even sending funds to help get this book published, I’m simply overwhelmed. Thank you.

To my entire family for their enthusiastic support from the very beginning, my deepest thanks. To my sister and brother-in-law, for living this life in step with us, and consequently helping to guide and form many of the ideas in this book, I’m so thankful for you both. To my mother-in-law for being my most zealous saleswoman, and to my dear parents for their unwavering encouragement and eagerness to read each chapter as it was finished. You all mean the world to me.

To James and Noah, the little lights of my life: the joy you’ve brought to me has overflowed into the pages of this book. Being your mother is an overwhelming privilege and delight.

And of course, to my dear Jon, thank you for building and guarding the life within these pages. For your companionship, steadfast affection, and contagious love of life. You have my heart.

Finally, to my Lord, Life Himself:

All this breath is Yours.“

My sister is approximately forty weeks and three days pregnant with her fourth child. She exists in that space where walking is waddling, where sleep is a dream long gone, and where you have to physically plug your ears in public because of the people who will come at you with “Are you sure there’s not two in there?”.

I ache with her and cannot help but remember how vulnerable and fuzzy it is to be in that place. You make your way down Google’s list of early labor signs… check, check, check. Contractions start up, and you think, okay, it’s time!! Only to then taper off and play this sick joke on you, sometimes for days or even weeks at a time.

It is no wonder to me that God compares the reckoning of all creation to the labor and anticipation of a very pregnant woman. And so here, a liturgy for both.

How long, Lord Christ, am I to be like this?

I wait on you, God.

A day is as a thousand years, not just for you, dear Lord, but for me in this state!

Attend to my cries, oh God. Be near to me as I am equally desperate for and afraid of this—the end of things.

I wait on you, God.

You are, at once, above time and also present for every second of my life. You author it and you attend it.

That old cliche—“already, but not yet.”

It is the literal state of the life I carry inside of me.

Already, but not yet.

I wait on you, God.

Set my eyes on the joy of tomorrow’s morn, on the love that is to fill my cup. For my mind knows what is true. But, oh, that my heart would believe and my body would respond in peace.

I wait on you, God.

Deliver us.

I was doomscrolling to numb the longness of the day away. A gardening reel here, a parenting reel there. A how-to, a song, a random stranger’s admittance to cheating on his wife and getting kicked out of his church. Then, a silly video of a mom on her last nerve with her children—snarling at them for this and that, even though she opened the video saying “I would die for my children!”. And I don’t doubt she would. She was pointing out the irony of it all.

Maybe you’ve heard the idea before. “You’d die for your famliy, but would you live for them?” It’s a smart question.

I’m dressing my firstborn in his pjs now and giving him a second glass of milk. There are too many clothes in his drawers and I’m shoving them back into their place. Who’s in charge of keeping this house anyway? Oh.

“But Mom” he says, “if I go to sleep I’ll have scary dreams.”

“Aw, no sweetie. No scary dreams tonight. And, hey, if you do have a scary dream, you just laugh and tell that silly dream to go away. Jesus is with you and no dream can hurt you, okay?”

But once the door’s closed I’m leaning up against it and breathing slowly, asking God to please not let those damn scary dreams into this house. Forgive me—but today I feel stripped of everything. Not in a hopeless way, just… stripped. And I’m of the mind that the scary dreams of a child are not of God and are therefore demonic, so let me call the demons damned.

If you’ve been following along you know I’m getting ready to publish a book that I’ve only ever described as a book for joy—a simple recounting of the ordinary gifts of an ordinary life. And gee, I hope you guys love it. I sure have loved writing it. But I think I’m realizing one of the reasons I’ve written it is because life can also be grueling and I’ve needed to sit down and recount God’s goodness as a way of survival.

It’s funny that life is something to be survived, isn’t it? What you’d think we’d be aiming to survive is death, but in fact we know death is actually the release. In death we are with God. In death we are freed from the bondage of being without Him.

But until we are dead we are plagued with living.

Plagued with asking God to save our sons from scary dreams. Plagued with aching bodies and short tempers and lust. And if we’re not plagued with worry for our children then we’re plagued with infertility or lonliness or both.

Earlier in the day I watered the garden with my youngest. The hose doesn’t reach far enough so I carried a few buckets of water down to the tomatoes and back up again. I was wearing my nice jeans because I wasn’t actually planning on doing this right then. I didn’t have a hairtie and I was starting to sweat and my toddler stepped in chicken poop. Whoever told you that gardening is just a trend is lying to you. There’s nothing trendy about it. Humans haven’t been doing this for ages because it’s trendy. Mostly, they’ve been doing it so they won’t starve. And for some of us, we do it because we need to be reminded that good things can grow slowly. Sometimes, at least.

I don’t really know why I’m telling you all this. I wish I had a wise and witty antidote to the truth that living is harder than dying, but I don’t—it just is. And I think that part of what we need is to not be afraid of saying it.

Living is harder than dying.

It’s right there in Ecclesiastes. “The dead are happier than the living.”

So, why? Why doesn’t God just end this whole thing and whisk us up to the eternal table?

I don’t know, really.

Maybe it has something to do with what the angels can’t understand. They can’t fathom the way we’re just walking around down here—blind and dumb as we are and still lifting our hands to God. They can’t fathom the way we can lose everything and then scream and then laugh and then say “well, bless the Lord!”

We can’t even see Him, but here we are saying how living is harder than dying because living is a daily death to death. Here we are, against all odds, writing books and singing songs and telling stories about the abounding goodness of God though we’ve never even heard His voice. Why?

Because we have tasted His goodness and now He is in us, so even when we forget Him, He cannot forget us.

My oldest wakes with the morning and hops into my bed with laughter on his breath. It seems to me that demons must hate the morning—it with its light and hope and chocolate-chip-pancakes. Maybe this is the land of the living or maybe it’s the land of the dying or maybe it’s the land of constant resurrection. Whatever it is, it reeks of God’s ability to keep us and hold us though we are wasting away.

I am stripped, but His is the power and the glory and the will to make me new.

Pass the pancakes, would you?

I grew up in Pennsylvania,

Near old Valley Forge.

Years I watched her landscape

Through the window of dad’s Ford.

Autumn was idyllic.

We’d drive and drive and drive,

The maples and the herons—

They could evangelize.

One Summer on a hill,

We crested then stopped dead.

A golden, ancient stag stood there,

His crown atop his head.

Decembers were angelic—

Cold and warm at once.

The world was fast asleep

And happy in her death.

She was a glorious teacher,

Her with her rhythmic breath—

Half the year for growing,

Half the year for rest.

She sung Ecclesiastes

Sweetly in my ear.

Too young then to understand,

But now I hear her clear.

“I know that life seems fragile,

But year on year on year,

You’ll see that Spring will always have

The final, faithful Word.”

Art by Roland Lee and Howard Roberts

While April is certainly a great time for planting a variety of crops and flowers, if you live in a fairly moderate climate, there are many things that can be planted all the way from March to October. In fact, I’ve only just begun planting, and while that used to make me feel like a failure, I’ve realized I’ve got plenty of time still to take part in the pleasures of planting and tending (and eating!!).

Typically my posts are more reflective or inspirational, but today’s piece will be a simple how-to. I’ve made my case for living with the land in a chapter of my book that’s set to be published in this next month or so! But hopefully you’ll find here a helpful, low-stress guide to becoming a real live gardener.

How To Be A Gardener

Start with soil.

Does the thought of tilling the soil or having to mix in compost every single year overwhelm you? Me too. We all know how important good soil is for a prosperous garden, but the idea of having to basically start from scratch each season is exhausting to me, and enough of a repellent to keep me from planting a single seed. I’m going to give you a simpler way! Now, if you want to garden this year and your soil is not that dark, rich, moist perfection (this is perhaps the only time the word moist and perfection go together, eh?), you may need to amend your soil this first time with some compost. But the process I’m going to tell you about here will prevent you from ever needing to till or fertilize again after that.

The key to an easy garden is topping your soil with wood chips. Not dyed mulch, mind you, but wood chips. Soil that is exposed to the air and sun will quickly become compacted, dried out, dead soil that will need to be fertilized over and over again. The purpose of the wood chips is simple—they protect the soil from being compacted, keep the soil cool and moist, and, over time, slowly break down into the most beautiful black, rich dirt. You probably have a few questions.

• Where does one get said wood chips? The easiest thing to do is to call your local tree companies or download an app called Chip Drop and sign up to have a load of chips delivered to your front door. It’s free!

• How thick should the layer of chips be? If you want to garden this year, cover your amended soil with 2-3inches of wood chips. (Note: the wood chips don’t have to be fresh. In fact, the longer they’ve been sitting, the more rich in nitrogen your soil will be).

If this is starting to sound like a lot to you, don’t panic. Your first year doing this will be the most work, and though I hope to really simplify gardening for you today, there will be some work involved! If you want to ease into gardening and avoid needing to amend the soil with compost, this is what I would do: after you’ve figured out where you’d like to put your garden (don’t forget to choose a sunny spot), put a layer of 5-6inches of chips down and let it sit until next season. The following spring, you will have beautiful soil that is ready to be planted!

Whether you plant this year or next, simply lay a fresh layer of chips on top of your garden each Spring to keep it happy. No tilling, no mixing or purchasing compost necessary. Covered dirt is happy dirt.

Don’t plant what you won’t eat.

This sounds silly to say, but don’t plant what you won’t eat! Don’t feel that you suddenly need to grow every possible vegetable you might use even once in a year. Grow a few of your favorite things.

Garlic!

Onions!

Potatoes, gold and sweet alike!

All classics. And what’s great about crops like these, is that they can be cured and stored in a cool, dry place all year long. No freezing, canning, or fermenting necessary.

A quick glance at your own climate zone and a Google search will give you an easy list of the seeds and transplants that can go in the ground this very week.

Plant perennials.

When I think of perennials (plants that come back every year), I usually think of certain flowers like Daffodils or Irises or Black-eyed Susans. But there are lots of produce items that are perennial, too. Asparagus, artichokes, most herbs, and even peppers will grow back year after year if you give them enough mulch over the winter!

And don’t forget the fruit trees and bushes. Blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, figs, peaches, apples, and muscadines, oh my!!

If you only added one perennial plant per year, you’d have your own nursery by the time your babies reach the 6th grade.

Don’t underestimate the kitchen counter.

Perhaps you’re intrigued but not yet ready to start your outdoor garden. I get it. Don’t underestimate what you can grow right there next to your sink! It’s easy and enjoyable. Do you like making margarita pizza? Keep some basil on the counter. Did you know that green onions will grow back again and again if you just keep the bottom 3-4 inches of them in a cup of water by a window? Your fried rice will thank you.

One of my favorite kitchen counter foods to grow is broccoli sprouts. They’re trending online right now and I’m here to affirm they really are a fun and nutritious option. Simply buy some broccoli seeds online (start with a 1lb bag to see if you like them, then you can buy them in bulk!). Get yourself some sprouting jars (they’re just big mason jars that have filters for lids) so you can easily rinse the sprouts just twice a day until they’re ready. In 4-5 days, you’ll turn a quarter cup of seeds into a jar full of sprouts that are actually way more nutrient dense than a mature broccoli plant. Put ‘em on your breakfast hash, your burgers, or eat them as their own salad with a simple tahini dressing. Magnifique!

The idea that your gardening gloves are only needed from April to July is a sad one. The garden is never closed, and is happy to welcome you whenever you decide to befriend her.

Oh, that you and I might have some carrots in the ground this December, sweetening with every passing day, and bringing us back outside to remember there is life even in the dead of winter.

*All photos by Camille Pissarro

The sun comes higher, longer.

The air, a kinder friend.

The trees begin to whisper,

“His wrath doth have an end”.

-

The children skip like lambs

Through brush that’s new and bright.

The world is softer now,

With winter out of sight.

-

New Years’ Resolutions

Are better made in spring.

When learning how to live,

Feels like remembering.

Thanks for reading! Subscribe at your own risk.

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“All the persons in Scripture are people, actual people, people with names and families and stories. The story of God is lived in homes and fields and villages.” —Eugene Peterson

You wouldn’t believe the amount of noise old wooden floorboards can make. Especially early in the morning, when a toddler and an infant are in those last few precious (but easily disturbed) hours of sleep. After getting my youngest back to sleep, I tiptoed across the living room and then through the hallway, careful to step only in the places that would not wake the entire household. My husband will tell you, I usually have feelings of anger toward these unrelentingly noisy pieces of oak, but this time I was just smiling. I slipped back into bed, pulled a soft quilt to my chest and thought, I can’t believe the three boys asleep in this little house belong to me.

These boys don’t sleep forever, though. The sound of their steps on these floors is my alarm. My husband, Jon, fetches them from their beds and lets me hang on to the last few moments of sleep. The start of the day is foggy for me. Coffee would likely help, but I have yet to find my taste for it (with one exception: a black coffee pairs excellently with a slice of Prinzregententorte from our local German bakery). Somewhere between 7 and 8am, Jon has gone to work and the boys have been fed and will start to play (or fight). “A Quiet Life” is not literally quiet, mind you.

Every day, I move in and out of the rooms that make up this 1,000-square-foot home. This little space holds almost the entirety of my work. Much of the work is mundane. Anyone who has had to keep a house and feed a few mouths for more than a week knows the dishes are unending and the laundry waits for no one. Even so, and even in such a small space, my work is much more than these things. And what’s more, my life is much more than my work.

Growing up, being a homemaker was not really on my radar. Sure, maybe I’d have a family one day, but I had planned to do something “big” with my life, like start a non-profit, or run a big church ministry, or leave everything and everyone to bring the Gospel across the ocean to a heathen people. It’s sad, I know, but if you had told me then that I was just going to be a wife and mom, I might have been disappointed. As it turns out, however, I have not been called across the sea. I’ve been called to be the wife of a blue-collar man and a mother to two little boys (who do sometimes fall under the heathen category, I will admit). Being a stay-at-home mom is not exactly a revered title in our culture. But you know, this 1,000 square feet of rental house? This is holy ground, and I find I am often undone at the joy in my life and the grace of God to call me to such a profession.

I’ll be honest and tell you, when Jon and I first got married, I wasn’t much of a homemaker. In fact, maybe I’ve grown a little, but I’m still not. There are aspects of the work that I love and that come naturally to me. I love nurturing my boys, I love to make a space feel cozy, and I love the face my husband makes when he walks through the door to the smell of a roast that’s been simmering all day. But it’s those mundane bits: the managing and the foresight and the remembering to clean that spot behind the couch. Those require more discipline and attention, and those things do not come easily to me. Nonetheless, and thanks to my husband’s patience and steady encouragement, I belong to this work and this work belongs to me.

It was not long before I realized that homemaking is so much more than cooking and cleaning (although there is a good bit to say on the importance of a tidy dwelling place and the art of keeping bellies full. Those things in and of themselves are worthy of recognition and can necessitate a surprising amount of creativity). But the vocation of homemaking is unfairly judged solely on these kinds of tasks. The reality is that I spend a lot of time on things completely unrelated to housekeeping. My sons don’t just need me to feed them and bathe them and clean up their Matchbox cars for the thousandth time. They need me to dance with them. They need me to show them the splendor of a homemade margherita pizza and the excitement of a journey with our friend C. S. Lewis to a land called Narnia. They need me, at the end of February, to show them the tiny buds on the peach trees that declare the end of winter and announce the coming of a scrumptious harvest. And most of all?

They need me, after I’ve become overly irritable at some silly inconvenience, to come and take their faces in my hands and see the brokenness in me when I say “I’m sorry, sweetie. Mommy was wrong. Will you forgive me?” They need repentance modeled for them, day after day after undocumented day.

It’s quite a job description, isn’t it?

When I was in high school, I attended a Christian academy outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was a small school, averaging about 200 students from kindergarten to twelfth grade. There were some great teachers there, many whom I often still think of and remember fondly. But this was where I was first taught how and what to think about ministry and what makes a Christian’s life meaningful. Multiple times a year, the school would invite guest speakers to teach us about Christian ministry. At the end of every session, the speaker or the principal would walk to the front of the room and ask everyone to bow their heads and close their eyes. They’d then ask for a show of hands. “How many of you are ready to dedicate your lives to full-time Christian ministry?” I remember the day I made the decision for myself.

You love Jesus, Anna. Of course you should do this.

So I raised my hand with a few others and instantly felt an overwhelming sense of purpose (and, knowing myself, probably a nice little dose of self-importance). Afterward, we talked with our teachers about our big decisions, prayed together, and even wrote the date and commitments down on little 3 x 5 cards. In my mind at the time, the height of a passionate Christian’s life was to serve in vocational ministry. I had a calling, and a meaningful one at that.

This same thinking followed me to university, too. I attended a small Christian college in South Carolina and obtained a bachelor’s degree in International Studies. When I chose the major, I figured I could either use my degree for going into the mission field, or I could end up in the business world with a leg up because of my international knowledge. That was my stated goal in life: missionary, or very successful, go-getter, international businesswoman who made lots of money and funded all the ministry things. I write this, and I want to laugh and cry all at the same time. I thought so much of myself and so little of those around me who had simple, run-of-the-mill jobs. All I could think of were those many times someone had asked me as a child, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The idea of it sounded so thrilling. Or they’d say, “You’re going to do great things for God!” and I ate it up.

Someone once put this idea into words for me. The American idea of work, they said, has subtly shifted over the last century; from jobs, to careers, to callings. From necessity, to status, to meaning. I was immediately uncomfortable when presented with this, because it was precisely my way of thinking, only mine was stamped with “Christian edition”.

On one hand, I do think there was a genuine desire in me to serve Jesus, and I simply thought that vocational ministry was the best way to do that. But I also think that Thompson’s assessment is right on. Ours is a culture enamored with the idea of vocation and individual calling. 

Now, hear me when I say, we need vocational ministers. This book is not an argument for getting people to quit their church jobs. But I wonder if perhaps our culture’s obsession with titles and vocation has convinced us that being a missionary 8,000 miles away is a more spiritual endeavor than taking the Gospel to our own children, neighbors, and grocery clerks every day for 60 undecorated years. Fact is, if you’re a Christian (missionary or mailman) we’re all called to make disciples of Jesus Christ.

When we pull our Bibles off our shelves and read the stories for ourselves, we find it to be overwhelmingly true: the extraordinary gospel life was given, especially so, for ordinary people. We see it all over the Old Testament–God’s choice to work in and through farmers, shepherd boys, and even lowly and dirty prostitutes. In the New Testament, Jesus shows us this himself, directly after the passing of his thirtieth birthday. He goes to find his first few followers, not at the temple with the formally educated Bible scholars, but at the fishing docks. I love that. I love that before his three years of ministry, he was a carpenter with his dad. And before that, he was simply a boy in an average home, in the small, insignificant town of Nazareth. (Insignificant in the eyes of mankind at that time. Not insignificant when it comes to the fulfillment of 700-year-old prophecies, of course.) Jesus and his disciples all had different vocations. And even while they were on mission for those three years, their lives revolved around the home. The home is the center of ministry for all of us. Why? It’s where we spend most of our time. It’s where we do things and it’s where things happen to us. It’s where we eat and sleep and love and are loved.

Have you ever walked into someone else’s house and immediately felt like family? You can almost feel your walls come down as you step through the front door. No show, no expectations, no strings attached. Just some vulnerability shared over a steaming bowl of chicken tortilla soup. Where did we ever start believing we have to step out our door to find our ministry and the work of Jesus? Isn’t he right here, in this place where we dine and rest and grant forgiveness over and over again after a harsh word spoken?

In our home after dinner, the boys will wrestle while I clean up, and bedtime follows shortly after. Then, teeth brushing (usually), then pjs. One final wrestling match. I put our youngest down first, and then pop over to my oldest’s room where he and his dad are finishing a book. We lay him in bed and sing a song. The lullaby goes like this:

I love you today,

I love you tomorrow.

I love you as deep as the sea.

I love you in joy,

I love you in sorrow.

You can always come home to me.

We say goodnight and hit the light and shut the door. Most of the time I miss it and move to the next thing, but occasionally I’ll just stand in the hallway and breathe it in again: It is no small thing to spend your life being someone’s place to come home to.

When I remember that moment in high-school, with my 3x5 card and my resolve to live for Jesus, I compare it with the diapers and grocery lists and children’s books in my hand. My ministry and life are simultaneously smaller and larger than fifteen-year-old me imagined. My role as a mother is a glorious one, yes, but this joy welling up in me is more than that. The individual skills I bring to the table are important, but not more important than the table itself–the people I belong to, with whom I gather daily, and with whom I learn how to give and receive the love of God. Together, we learn to follow His ways, hear His voice, and delight in the gifts He loves to give us.

The following is a recounting of those gifts.

Thanks for reading this excerpt from my upcoming book! Subscribe if you’d like to stay up to date.

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ELEVEN PM. I hit save on the document, shut my laptop, and left it on my nightstand. Chapter two, finished. I was tired but relieved, and I felt good about how the chapter closed out. At least, I thought I felt good, but then apparently I was due for another imposter-syndrome fever. You know the one.

Will anyone even want to read this? Who do I think I am, trying to write a book?

I took my contacts out and turned my lamp off. I did war with my thoughts for a bit, and then finally, I surrendered to my sleepiness.

I’ll feel better about it in the morning, I thought.

7:57AM - the kids were eating breakfast. I indeed woke with some hopefulness and decided to send the chapter to my parents. “Here’s chapter two! Of course it will be edited a ton, but it’s a start.” Insert sweating, nervous smile emoji. They have been encouraging me to do this from the beginning, and had told me how much they enjoyed the first chapter, so I figured I could count on them for a little pep talk after this next one. A few hours went by, and—for something totally unrelated—my husband said he needed to call my mom to ask her a question. He dialed and put the phone on speaker while we were playing with the boys in the living room.

She answered and I instantly heard the emotion in her voice. She had been crying. “Sorry!” she laughed, “We just finished reading Anna’s next chapter”.

I was overwhelmed. They were crying?

My parents are not big readers. They don’t call themselves ‘creatives’.

But twenty-six hundred words of an un-edited rough draft brought my mom to tears. And in that moment, I understood: art doesn’t have to go viral to be valuable. In fact, perhaps the most impactful art we will ever produce is the art we make for the ones who changed our diapers.

IT’S PROBABLE THAT someone else has said this before, but I think that artists are optimists. We have hope enough about society that we keep trying to throw beauty at it and see what sticks. It’s a wonderful ambition, but it can be lonely, and there’s so much doubt about if what we’re doing really brings any value. I suspect this is for multiple reasons. One being—and I am far from the first to say this—social media and online content can only go so far. We are aching for true connection. Thankfully, there are organizations like by Christianity Today, that are taking some very exciting steps to help Christian artists get connected with each other in their actual, local cities. I’ve joined the new Inkwell Locals group myself and am already very impressed at the content they’ve released. Here’s a small recap of their announcement if you haven’t seen it yet.

Inkwell is calling us to make art local again, and I am so exited to see all of the different ways people take their initiative and run.

But what if one of the best ways to be a local, is just to be a family?

A couple of days ago, I announced on the Substack app that I have begun writing a book. As you can imagine, I am feeling all the feelings that I assume one typically feels when they decide to publish their first book: excitement, terror, imposter syndrome, the need to devour a whole pan of brownies, and so on… Nonetheless, I wanted to tell you all a bit more about it!

The Gift of a Quiet Life: A Memoir for Ordinary Saints is a book about letting go of the western, individualistic ideas about what make life truly good—more specifically, about what makes the Christian’s life truly good. I aim, through my own ordinary stories as a wife and mother, to argue that we find meaning and joy in so much more than simply our personal achievements and vocations. Those of you who have been reading my little articles for the last few months will not be surprised at the topic of my book. You’ll find that the book will cover much of what I’ve already talked about online when it comes to kinship and ministry and home. All of this, but with a lot more detail, a little more polish, and hopefully the same amount of raw and real that I always want to come through in my work.

All that being said, there have been quite a few of you who have resonated with this topic; the 1 Thessalonians, “aim to lead a quiet life” stuff. I feel I should tell you all (my few but wonderful readers) that I am leaning in to this! I am putting my heart and soul into this book. Now, the chances of this book reaching a great many people are highly unlikely, which is fitting, because this is a book about the gift of a quiet, hidden life. It is my prayer that whoever does happen across this collection of stories will find themselves both in awe of God’s good gifts to us, and relieved of the task to chase after things which He has not called us to. So, know this - if I am not posting as often as I once have, it is because I’m saving it for this book which I hope for you to soon hold in your actual hands. You can touch it and smell it and spill your coffee on it!

Alright, that’s enough on the book updates for now - on to the topic at hand.

Both of my parents are who you would call “first generation Christians.” They will be the first to tell you that they come from pretty difficult backgrounds, and my sister and I are extremely thankful that they fought to raise us in a totally different environment than they were raised in. They both had very drastic encounters with Jesus that completely changed the trajectories of their lives. Like the Apostle Paul, they can tell you almost the exact moment that life changed for them.

But when you grow up in church, coming to know Jesus as savior is not always so dramatic.

Sure, there are a lot of people who remember distinctly saying a salvation prayer when they were 4, 5, or 6 years old. That was me. I remember three distinct times, actually. Once in Sunday school, once at summer camp, and another time in the car with my mom. I do remember pretty clearly understanding the Gospel each of those times, but I couldn’t tell you which time was “real”. I just remember really not wanting to go to hell when I die.

Growing up in church is a lot of things. It’s wonderful. It’s communal. It’s rich and meaningful. But at the very same time, it’s weird. I once had a pastor explain this really well. It’s weird to grow up in church, because when you commit to follow Jesus as a little kid, you—rightfully so—expect to spiritually mature as you age. But the weird thing about aging in church, is that even as your spirit matures, your flesh does too. You’re just growing, growing, growing along… upping your shoe size and thinking you’re a good kid and then WHACK! Suddenly you’re face to face with a new temptation like lust and you find out how not-spiritual you are. It’s just, kinda weird! Not to mention, your brain doesn’t fully develop until you’re 25, so there are difficult questions about life that you’ve yet to face and think through how the Bible addresses those.

It’s hard for me to “nail down” when I began to really follow Jesus. Growing up, I was fluent in the Christianese language. I answered the questions wisely in youth group, sang solos on Sunday morning and won a couple of Christian Leadership Awards in school. But most of it feels empty when I look back on it now. My time in college was where I began to truly repent of my sin, look to Jesus for mercy, and—by the grace of God—change my ways.

So when someone asks me “when did you get saved?” The answer feels complicated.

I know there are people out there who think you need to know the exact date you “got saved”, but I’m not entirely sure this is solid theology.

When we look at Jesus with His first few disciples, we don’t see Him sitting down with them and convincing them to convert on the spot before He brings them into His ministry. We see Him becoming their teacher and their friend, and we watch as they slowly move from unbelief to belief. I wonder if any of the first Twelve could’ve given an answer to that question “when did you get saved?” Maybe some of them knew the answer. Or maybe some of them, like some of us, couldn’t tell you when it happened. All they knew—all I know, is that I used to be dead and now I’m alive. I used to be motionless at the bottom of the sea, and now I find myself running along the shore, basking in the bright open air.

I don’t know when. I don’t know how. But Jesus saved me - drew me to Himself even though all I ever wanted was the praise of man and the pleasure of sin.

“You must be born again.”

Some labours are short. Some are long. But God is the author of life, and we are born again because He chose us in Him, before the foundation of the world. You don’t need to have the date and time of your salvation written down in the back of your Bible. You don’t need to know the moment your heart was made new.

You just need to know Who it belongs to.

All that being said, I haven’t really been in the mood for writing lately. Things have just been heavy! It’s alright, though. For a little while I sort of switched from writing mode to reading mode, and it’s been nice. A season for everything.

Hey, speaking of seasons, it’s October!

Just typing the word October makes my nervous system chill out. Autumn air just straight-up tastes better, doesn’t it? I love everything about fall. Well, that’s not true. We have officially entered the season of speeding past certain homes and neighborhoods so my toddler doesn’t have nightmares from catching a glimpse of someone’s “festive” Halloween display. Listen, I’m not against Halloween… I’m all for a good game of dress-up and a bowl of Reeses’ Peanut Butter Cups (no other candy will be required, thank you). But things have just gotten out of hand here in the year 2025, my friends. Do we really need to put 12 foot zombies and sawn-off limbs and a circle of witches in our front yards? Do we really??

I digress.

Back to October. I am always just caught off guard, in the best kind of way, when the weather changes. Doesn’t matter which season is next; the change begins and my body seems to instinctively say “ahh, yes.” Okay, but let’s be clear. That’s it - that’s all the change I can admit to liking. Otherwise, I’d just prefer that things stay the same. And for a while sometimes, things do stay the same. We exist in our nice little rhythm, and everything feels controlled and peaceful and right.

Much to my dismay, however, our family is officially not in that place right now. Almost everything in our life is up in the air. Big changes are happening - some are exciting, some are sad or scary, and some are all of the above. Most of it is a little too personal for this public blog (wait, am I allowed to call this a blog?? Will the Substack police come after me?), but I’ll just say - gee, I really do not like change.

Not even our animals are staying the same! If you’ve been following the chicken and duck saga, this next one’s for you: turns out Ginger and Petunia are indeed both males. This was discovered after finding, 1) duck has not started laying eggs and, 2) Ginger has started cock-a-doodle-do-ing every day, like a proper rooster. Well, proper might not be the right word. He’s definitely got some internal clock issues. He’s been crowing twice a day—not at dawn—but at exactly 10am and 1pm. I guess I should be happy that he’s the mid-morning snack alarm and not the rise-and-shine alarm.

All misfit bird issues aside, I have found myself grieving over our stepping away from this current season of life.

Autumn is in the air, but so is change, and my spirit is warring inside of me a bit.

On one hand, fall has always had a very calming effect on me. On the other hand, well - I’ve already told you - everything’s shifting, and I just feel restless.

You know, one of the funny things about change is that you forget how many times you’ve been here before: on the precipice of saying goodbye to old rhythms and friends, and being completely unsure of how the next part of your life will unfold. But it seems this is built into the fabric of life. Change has become a familiar companion, though not always a desired one. He sneaks up on me, this companion… he steps beside me in stride and I gasp “oh! I forgot it was time for us to meet again. I’m not ready.”

I’m never ready.

But here we are, stepping into October, and this unwelcome friend is walking at my side. The leaves are turning. there’s a pumpkin at the base of our porch. There is less light these days - less vitamin D available, and more melatonin. I’m sleepier. I feel my smallness.

Change begs me to worry. He shouts in my ear about everything that’s uncertain. But there’s someone else walking with us.

On my other side, the Maker.

He breathes one breath, and autumn covers the land. He calls to the trees - “be quiet. be still” He’s telling them and He’s telling me. In season and out, He walks with me. But somehow I miss Him, and then I find Him all over again in the corner of my eye. I gasp, “Oh! You’re right here.”

You’re always right here.

I re-hearse the words in my mind, over and over again like a psychopath.

They missed it. They just flat out missed what I was trying to say. And now, they think I’m stupid. Or worse, they think I’m wrong.

What about this makes me so frustrated? Is it that I’m competitive? Do I just have to be right? I have—after some not very long or difficult meditating—come to the conclusion that I simply want to be admired. And I want to be admired for good reason - I want to be seen as wise and witty and competent. I wanna have my stuff together.

The other day, though, one of those timely Spurgeon quotes popped up on Instagram and hit me square in the nose.

“If any man thinks ill of you, do not be angry with him, for you are worse than he thinks you to be.”

Smh.

Yeah, alright Charles.

Even in my flesh, I can concede to that. We’re all sinners, right? But still, in this cursed state, I often attempt to forget the embarrassing conversation and look forward to the next moment that I will be seen as smart and funny and innovative. I revel in telling the stories just-so, crafting a perfect argument, or even and especially appearing to be vulnerable when I am in fact just wanting to be praised for my humble vulnerability.

Let us take a moment to laugh at the absurdity.

But even this - even after seamlessly (or so I think) executing my points, or causing everyone to laugh at my quick wit, I am empty. I leave the moment with a heavy awareness of how sadly desperate I am to be seen as special or important.

But then I come back to the Story.

Genesis pulls me in close with the truth that’s been there since the very beginning. It was the first lie ever told to humankind: “Eat, for then you will be like God.” Oh, how we want to be like God. We want to be wise and all-knowing, and then praised for our wisdom and all-knowingness. We want others to be in awe of us. So we eat the fruit.

And so, the Great Story unfolds. We separate ourselves from God, and He promises to plant a Seed that will sprout and crush the head of the ex-angel liar who led us astray. Thousands of years later (the God of the universe never seems to be in a rush, does He?), a Savior baby is born to reclaim what was His. To remake us, and return us back to our Edenic state.

Wait, what was our Edenic state? What was the original plan?

There are some who say that the fall of man was a “fortunate fall.” That we needed to mess up so that we could watch how beautifully and how lovingly God would save us. I am not educated enough to address this. Perhaps no one really is. I can see where the argument comes from. The redemption story is the most beautiful story ever told. But it’s hard to go down the road of “God intended for us to mess up so He could save us.” Regardless, what we do know for sure is that we were not created to be like God - that is, like Him in the way that we should long be gazed at and admired. But if we weren’t created to be seen like God, what were we created for? We know we were created in His good image, and then given the command to be His hands and feet on this earth. To bring order and rule and justice over all creation.

Ecclesiastes is said to be the one philosophical book of the Bible. Solomon relents at how vain all of life is. “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!”

It’s a delightful book.

After Solomon processes through everything that is meaningless, He tells us what the whole purpose of life truly is. Chapter 3 verse 14 says,

“God works so that people will be in awe of Him.” Simple as that.

We were not made to impress the world. We were made to be impressed upon by the world and its Creator. To have Him constantly take our breath away - both in the way the evergreen trees catch the last of the evening sun, and upon realizing, He’s right there next to us, watching it all with delight, nudging us in the ribs with His elbow and whispering, “did you catch that pair of eagles flying over head?”

We were not made to be seen, but to see. This is not to say we were not made to be seen at all, because we are. We are to be seen seen and known, like Andy Squyres says it, “by a precious few.” We were made in the image of God. A God Who is, by His very nature, communal; three Persons in One. We were made to see God and to belong to God and to each other, the way that He belongs to Himself and to us. (See John 17)

So when the old curse rises up in us, and wants to be praised for our importance or our beauty, we end up walking away empty. Because the One Who made us did not make us for that. And, who are we kidding, keeping up that facade is exhausting. So take your straight jacket off. Let your hair down. Let misunderstanding be the outcome of the conversation. Put your feet up next to that friend you disagree with, crack open a Sanpellegrino and set your eyes on something beautiful. A sunset or a campfire perhaps.

You are worse than you think you are.

What a relief.

I remembered Job 38 and opened it up and it overwhelmed me.

“Who shut in the sea with doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness its blanket, when I determined its boundaries and put its bars and doors in place, when I declared: ‘You may come this far, but no farther; your proud waves stop here’.”

I grew up in church, but lately the Bible and its poetry feel brand new to me. The fact that such a beautiful and brilliant book could ever become so mundane and commonplace is proof to me that the devil must be working so tirelessly to deceive us. He rages in anger like this tumultuous sea.

But then I walk out to see sun’s morning ascent and the peace of it all floods over me again.

The Lord takes no concern over the attacks of the devil on His chosen ones. For He knows, we need not wield the Sword of His Word with religious vigor and might. We need only to pull it from its sheath, gaze at its beauty, and find ourselves falling in love all over again.

And without our notice, in the blink of an eye, the battle has been declared over and won.

What glory.

Pass the crab-cakes, please.

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To the trees

“A birthday blessing

If you please?”

Whisper, whisper

They reply

“This little truth

Will change your life.”

Whisper, whisper

“Because of Love -

The life you have?

It is enough.”

Clothed us

Fed us

Raised us.

Wiped our tears, our cuts, our spilled-soup stains.

They held our hands

Our fears

Our hopes

Through years.

Will our homes fit them now?

Better yet,

Will our hearts ever make room?

I know you’re busy,

And tired

Barely time to read the kids a bedtime story.

Hey,

You know who’s good at telling stories?

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He had the fire going strong. It was September and I remember the sky was clear and there was a perfect chill in the air.

I don’t remember what we talked about but I remember it was just an ordinary evening.

The neighbor moseyed over—the one who’s missing a hand, who always wears a button down shirt and cargo pants. If I’m completely honest, he’s not the guy you’d think very much of in passing. But he sure has grown on us, and he has the most fantastic dry sense of humor. Always comes out to see what new animal we’ve brought home and proceeds to ask why this new animal is so afraid of him. Always brings a thoughtful Christmas gift and has—on more than one occasion—run as fast as he could to come give help or to ask for it. He also mowed our lawn for months before we got a lawnmower and insisted on only charging us for the gas. “My grandfather loved the people who used to live in your house” he said, “it’s what he’d want me to do.”

On this particular evening, he pulled up a chair and said “saw the fire and thought I’d join ya’ll.”

It was then I realized I’m living my best Wendell Berry life.

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