I stood in the checkout line of a favorite store at The Summit in Birmingham with both arms full of the treasures I’d found. A college friend and I were on a girl’s trip for the day, and when she walked up to where I was standing in checkout, her mouth gaped open. “Wow, Laura. You are crazy,” she said, sarcasm on her tongue. The shame rose in my chest immediately, like I’d just been exposed. Because in a way, I had. I walked out of the store that day with bags full of beautiful clothes, while inside, emptiness was all I felt.

I had been financially independent for a couple of years already, running a business that supported both my needs and my shopping habits quite well. But that year, the occasional shopping trips had turned into a frequent lifestyle.

I justified my actions by the fact that I wasn’t going into debt to do it; I was simply enjoying the money I worked hard to make. That justification held until later that year, when I was humbled by the realization that my bank account had gotten so low I wouldn’t have enough to cover my tuition and living expenses.

I had traded what had lasting impact for temporary pleasure.

Even though I wouldn’t have admitted it at the time, I was a slave to shopping. This addiction had overtaken my life so slowly that I did not recognize it until I was no longer controlling it; it was controlling me.

When Good Things Become Disordered

From childhood, I have loved beauty. My eyes can identify it, even in places others see only ugliness. I know God created me this way, the same way He creates another’s mind to be able to solve complex problems.

The problem is not the love of beauty, and it isn’t the material things that can embody it. God put us in a physical world, and making things carry more than function was His idea from the garden of Eden:

“And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.” — Genesis 2:9

The problem is that the enemy of God is constantly working to distort the good things the Lord has made, tempting us to worship them rather than Him. His work is often much subtler than convincing us that something God created is evil; he takes something truly good and whispers that it can give us something God never intended it to give.

Beauty becomes identity, possessions become security, comfort becomes entitlement, enjoyment becomes excess, and desire becomes demand.

The good thing remains good, but our relationship to it becomes disordered.

That is what happened to my love of beauty. The answer was never for me to stop seeing beauty or enjoying beautiful things; it was for God to teach me how to see them rightly.

The Eye and the Heart

There is a really interesting word from Jesus in Matthew 6, and it comes right after He tells His followers not to store up treasures on earth and right before He tells them they cannot serve both God and money. Right in the middle of this teaching about treasure and possessions, Jesus says:

“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (verses 22-23)

I don’t think it is insignificant that Jesus talks about the eye here. There is something about the way we see that reveals what has captured the heart.

When our sight is healthy, we are able to receive the things God has made as gifts. We can enjoy them, appreciate their beauty, steward them well, and even let them go without asking them to become something more than they are. But when our sight becomes distorted, those same good things can begin to promise us a kind of satisfaction they were never meant to provide.

We see this distortion all the way back in the Garden of Eden, where God had already surrounded Adam and Eve with abundance and beauty. And yet, after Eve listened to the serpent rather than trusting the word of God, something changed in the way she saw the one thing God had withheld:

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise^, she took of its fruit and ate…”

The tree had not suddenly become more beautiful. What changed was the way Eve saw it.

Once she began trusting the serpent’s word over God’s, what God had said was not for her became the very thing she believed she needed. Instead of seeing the abundance surrounding her as evidence of His goodness, she began looking at the one thing withheld and wondering whether God was keeping something better from her.

Isn’t that still so often the lie beneath our own discontent? We can be surrounded by the goodness of God and yet fix our attention on the one thing we do not have.

And it makes this distortion even harder to recognize when it has become so normal in the culture around us.

Material things can occupy an enormous amount of our collective attention without any of us thinking much of it. Even ordinary conversations with friends can revolve around what we are renovating next, what we want to buy, where we want to travel, what we are saving for, or what someone else has that we would love to have. None of those conversations is necessarily wrong, but when our eyes are continually being drawn toward the next thing, we can begin living in a state of perpetual wanting without ever stopping to recognize it as discontentment.

From Desire to Covetousness

This is where covetousness begins to take root.

Jesus warns us directly in Luke 12:15:

“Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

Covetousness is more than simply wanting something we do not have. We can desire many good things without sinning. But covetousness begins when desire becomes joined to discontentment, when we start believing that what God has presently given is somehow insufficient and that possessing something else will make our lives fuller, happier, safer, or more complete.

Covetousness says, in one way or another, what God has given me is not enough.

And this is why Scripture treats it so seriously. Paul does not describe covetousness as merely an unfortunate habit or a weakness with money. In Colossians 3:5, he calls it idolatry.

At first that can sound extreme, until we begin to recognize what is actually happening beneath the desire. The possession itself has started to become more than a possession. We begin looking to it for contentment, identity, security, comfort, or even a renewed sense of life.

If I could just have that house…

If I could finally redo this room…

If I had her wardrobe…

If we could take that trip…

If I could upgrade this car, this equipment, this job…

We may never say the rest of the sentence aloud, but somewhere underneath is the hope that then something in us will finally be satisfied.

This was what had happened to my own love of beauty. What I once simply enjoyed had slowly become something I believed I needed in order to feel satisfied.

And that is why covetousness is ultimately an issue of worship. The object may look different for each of us, but the deeper question is the same: What am I looking to for the fullness of life that God says is found in Him?

Living From Freedom

Once we recognize covetousness for what it is, the next question becomes what we are supposed to do with it. Before we start talking about practical boundaries or ways to resist the temptation, though, I think we first have to understand what Scripture says is already true of those who are in Christ.

Paul writes in Romans 6:

“We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin.” — Romans 6:6–7

Paul is not saying that Christians will never again experience temptation or feel the pull of the flesh. We know from both Scripture and experience that the battle with sin remains very real. But he is saying something that should completely change the way we enter that battle: sin is no longer our master.

This is why what we believe about our identity in Christ matters so much.

If I believe that I am simply destined to remain helpless beneath the same sins until I finally reach heaven, then I will eventually learn to live with them, manage them, or excuse them.

But Scripture gives us a much greater hope than that.

In Christ, the old self that was enslaved to sin has been crucified, and we have been given new life through the Spirit of God.

This does not mean sanctification happens instantly or without our participation. It means we are no longer fighting for freedom as though Christ has not yet accomplished it; we are learning to live in the freedom He has already purchased for us.

The presence of sin still surrounds us, and the flesh still has desires that war against the Spirit, but we do not enter that battle as slaves who have no choice but to obey. We enter it as sons and daughters who belong to another Kingdom and in whom the Spirit of the living God now dwells.

And yet, even when we know this truth, there is still a temptation to fight sin in a way that depends far more on our own strength than on His. I discovered this quickly when I got married and my shopping habits were forced to change.

The Same Desire in a Different Form

When I became a new wife with a home to keep, the concept of minimalism had taken the world by storm. The decluttered homes, capsule wardrobes, and promise that life would become simpler and easier if we just had less stuff probably appealed most to those of us who already thought about our things more than we should.

It certainly captivated me.

Like most movements, there were partial truths within it. Much of the Western world does own far more than we need, and everything we own eventually requires something from us in return through storage, cleaning, maintenance, organization, etc.

There really can be freedom in letting go of things that no longer serve a purpose or add beauty to our lives, and I still remember how satisfying it felt the first time I went through our home and removed so much of what seemed unnecessary. The rooms felt lighter, everything was easier to manage, and I genuinely enjoyed the simplicity that came from owning less.

But somewhere along the way, another idea became closely tied to minimalism: if I was going to own fewer things, then the things I did own should be better.

That sounded wise enough, and in many ways it was. Buying fewer things of higher quality can be more responsible than constantly accumulating cheap things we will either have to replace or tire of quickly.

But for someone like me, whose attention was already too easily captured by material things, the shift from more to better did not necessarily mean my heart had changed.

I was no longer trying to accumulate as much as I once had, but I was still spending a great deal of time thinking about what I owned, what I wanted to own, and how what I already had could be improved. Instead of asking what else I could add, I began thinking about what could be replaced with something more beautiful, more timeless, more useful, or more perfectly suited to our home and life.

The quantity of my possessions may have decreased, but my preoccupation with them had not.

I could own fewer clothes while still thinking far too much about clothes. I could clear out a room and then immediately begin imagining the one “right” piece that should take the place of what I had removed. I could feel disciplined because I was buying less while still devoting an unhealthy amount of mental energy to researching, comparing, refining, and upgrading the things around me.

This was when I began to see that simply having less was not the same thing as being free from materialism. I had moved from wanting more to wanting better, and although that looked very different on the outside, my eyes were still fixed on the same things.

The form of the desire had become more refined, but the desire itself was still occupying far too much space in my heart and mind.

Restraint is Not the Same as Transformation

What minimalism helped me see, although not at first, was that changing the outward pattern does not necessarily change the heart underneath it.

I had become more disciplined in some ways, and many of the practical habits I learned were genuinely helpful, but discipline alone could not address why material things continued to occupy so much of my attention.

This is where I think Christians can easily confuse restraint with transformation.

Restraint can keep me from impulsively acting on the desires of the flesh, while transformation reaches deeper, changing those desires themselves as the Holy Spirit brings my heart increasingly into agreement with God’s.

Restraint can be practiced by Christians and non-Christians alike, but the kind of inward transformation Scripture describes is only possible through the power of the Holy Spirit at work within us.

When the Lord first began convicting me of this active sin in my life, my natural response was to try to get it “under control” through self-discipline.

I would take personal fasts from shopping, put certain boundaries around my purchasing habits, and do all the things we tend to do when we are trying to grow in self-control. And they would work, at least for a little while.

The problem was that although I could restrain the habit, I could not change the desire that continued to rule underneath it. As James writes, “desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin” (James 1:15).

The Lord began showing me this more clearly one day as I poured myself out to Him on my knees, painfully aware of the war taking place within me between flesh and Spirit. I began to see that this sin had become more than an isolated habit; it had developed into a stronghold, reinforced by desires and beliefs I had repeatedly allowed to shape the way I saw beauty, possessions, and even the goodness of God.

Paul writes:

“For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.” — 2 Corinthians 10:3–4

And in the very next verse, Paul describes those strongholds in terms of arguments and thoughts that set themselves against the knowledge of God.

That mattered deeply for me, because I was beginning to understand that I could not simply turn away from a purchase while continuing to believe the same lies underneath the desire. Those lies had to be confronted with truth, and they had to be brought under the authority of Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.

That day, the Lord reminded me that He had not left me powerless in this battle. He had given me what I needed to stand against the schemes of the enemy, and for perhaps the first time, I began to understand what it meant to actually take up those weapons rather than merely try harder in my own strength.

From that point forward, I began to see the grip of covetousness loosen in ways I had never experienced before.

One of the first things the Lord had said to my heart as He was disciplining me in this area was,

Let Me be the beauty you wear.

At the time, while my eyes were still unhealthy, I did not understand what He meant. Do You not want me to buy beautiful clothes, then? I wondered.

It was only later, as the Lord began freeing me from the stronghold underneath the behavior, that I remembered those words and the Holy Spirit illuminated their meaning.

He had never been asking me to stop loving beautiful things.

The issue was that I needed to be cloaked with His beauty first so that I could see all other forms as a reflection of Him, not a replacement.

In the spring of this year, I was strolling down the streets of Oxford, Mississippi. My precious husband had gifted me an overnight there completely on my own, giving me time to be refreshed in the Lord and enjoy the beauty of a quaint city just a couple of hours away.

There was one shop in particular I had been looking forward to visiting, and when I stepped inside, I was enchanted by the lovely things artfully displayed throughout the room. I browsed for a while, letting myself take in the inspiration that comes from seeing what someone has thoughtfully created, arranged, and made beautiful.

I walked out of the shop that morning with no bags full of treasures. It was not because I did not feel the freedom to purchase something, but because I also felt the freedom not to.

I’m sure I will go back to that charming shop again one day, and maybe then I will buy the dress I left behind this time. But that morning, I was perfectly satisfied to admire something beautiful without needing to make it mine.

The contrast with the girl standing in the checkout line at The Summit all those years before is not lost on me.

Then, I walked out with my arms full while something inside of me remained empty. This time, I walked out empty-handed and completely satisfied—not because I had finally learned how to deny myself everything I wanted, but because the Lord had changed what those things meant to me.

Paul describes this transformation in Ephesians:

“...put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and...be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and...put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” — Ephesians 4:22–24

I love that Paul does not simply tell us what to put off. The Christian life is not an endless exercise in depriving ourselves of everything the flesh desires while leaving an empty space behind. We put off the old self with its deceitful desires as our minds are renewed, and we put on the new self that is being formed into the likeness of Christ.

Maybe covetousness is not the place where this battle is most evident in your life, but every one of us has some place where the desires of the old self still attempt to convince us that life, satisfaction, security, or fullness can be found somewhere outside of God.

Whatever form that takes, our hope is not found in becoming strong enough to manage the flesh indefinitely. Our hope is Christ in us, through the Holy Spirit, transforming what we love and teaching us to live according to what is already true of us in Him.

And this brings me back to the words of Jesus that began changing the way I understood this struggle in the first place: the eye can become healthy again.

For me, healthy eyes did not mean learning to stop noticing beautiful things or convincing myself that it was somehow more spiritual not to enjoy them.

It meant learning to seek first the Kingdom of God until He became the One through whom I saw everything else, allowing the beautiful things around me to return to their proper place—not as sources of life, but as reflections of the One who is.

The Lord did not need to take away my love of beauty.

He needed to become the beauty I clothed myself with each day, so that everything else could once again be received as a reflection of His goodness.

Your sister in Christ,

Laura

To live within God’s design is to be blessed.

The Bible calls this way of living the fear of the Lord. Psalm 128 says, “blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in His ways.”

To fear God is to trust that His ways lead to flourishing, even when they conflict with our instincts or the values of the surrounding culture.

And few areas of modern life are more clouded by confusion than womanhood itself.

Young women today are constantly being discipled into competing visions of what it means to flourish. The world offers one picture of the “good life,” while even many Christian conversations have reduced biblical womanhood into narrow caricatures that miss the heart of God’s design entirely.

If you are a young wife and mother like me—in the early years of building a home, shaping the culture of your family, and laying foundations that will bear fruit for decades to come—you probably carry dreams in your heart that extend beyond the duties directly in front of you.

And those desires are not always wrong. If you are in Christ, allowing His Word to shape your desires, they may very well be part of what He is calling you into.

Your role as wife and mother is not your identity, but your assignment. And with every assignment, there are seasons that require more of you than others.

Those desires in your heart may be the testing ground of your willingness to wait on His time—to trust that the season you are in now is forming you for what’s to come.

The season before you is not wasted in the hands of God. The choices made here—what we prioritize, what we neglect, what we cultivate, and what we sacrifice—do not remain isolated to the present moment; they pave the way for the future.

Often, faithfulness in these years looks like tending those dreams in the margins—learning, growing, practicing, preparing—while still remaining deeply attentive to the people and responsibilities directly in front of us.

There will come a day when the children who once needed our constant presence grow more independent, when the home we spent years building becomes steadier beneath our feet, and when the very gifts we cultivated through hidden years are able to flourish more fully.

But if that season comes, it will not be because your years at home held you back. It will often be because those years formed something within you first.

Because these years matter so deeply, we must be careful what vision of the good life is shaping us—whether it is based in Truth or lies.

Being a wife and mother is a great privilege, a gift. Embedded within every gift the Lord entrusts to us is also a responsibility: to steward it faithfully until His return.

The difficulty is that God’s design often appears less desirable than the alternatives being offered to us.

This week, I was reminded of that while shopping with my son.

The Gifts We Would Not Choose

I took my three-year-old to the store to pick out a toy as a reward for officially graduating to “big boy pants” at night after a week of no bed-wetting. He and his big brother walked through the aisles side by side, examining the shelves layered with toys of all kinds, until his eyes landed on the toy. A huge, plastic police car, with numerous buttons that made the lights flash, sirens blare and wheels move.

“This one!” he exclaimed, reaching for the car he had to wrap both arms around to carry. “Are you sure?” I gently asked. “There might be other toys you’d enjoy more—” my words were suddenly cut off by the little boy tossing the car into our cart. “This is what I want, mama! I’m sure!”

He walked out of the store elated about his new toy, but I knew the excitement would be short-lived. The flashy ones always are. But this was his choice, not mine. If it were up to me, I would have chosen the toy that seemed less exciting on the surface—the one that was well-built, open-ended for imagination, and able to grow with him over time. The kind of toy that challenges a child, not merely amuses him.

These are the kinds of gifts we choose for our children because we know they are the ones that will serve them well for years to come. But they are often not what they would choose for themselves.

And so it is with the gifts our heavenly Father gives to us.

Many of us are drawn toward lives that promise immediate fulfillment, recognition, or freedom from sacrifice. But God often gives His daughters gifts that require sacrifice in the present, yet yield a far deeper reward in time.

The life He calls us to may not always appear glamorous on the surface. But over time, we discover that His design was not meant merely to entertain us for a moment, but to shape us into women capable of love, wisdom, fruitfulness, and endurance in all of life’s assignments.

A Helper, Not a Competitor

The first truth revealed in Scripture for the role of a woman is that of a helper (Genesis 2:18). Proverbs 31 expands on what that role looks like practically.

From the beginning of the chapter, we are given a picture of a precious wife—one whom her husband trusts deeply because she has committed herself to seeking his good alongside her own.

Later on in the chapter, you see the fruit of making this her priority:

“Her husband is known in the gates
when he sits among the elders of the land.”

Consider what this verse is saying. The wisdom, diligence, and faithfulness of a wife do not remain isolated to herself; they strengthen the entire household.

Her husband is respected in part because the life they have built together bears good fruit. His work flourishes. Their home is stable. Their children are nurtured. The order and wisdom of the household become visible to the community around them.

The beauty of God’s design is that when we help our husband flourish in his role, we will flourish in ours.

More often, the world appeals to us to put our desires first and compete with our husband’s role. We are told that if we do not invest in ourselves in these years, we will miss our opportunity to prosper later. The temptation for many of us is to spend these years primarily building ourselves—our reputations, our success, our sense of accomplishment—fearing that if we do not seize every opportunity now, we will somehow fall behind.

And yet Scripture continually calls us to trust that a life poured out in love and faithfulness is never wasted.

Listen to what God’s word says about the woman who chooses to live according to His design instead, laying down her life in these years to build her husband, children and home:

“Her children rise up and call her blessed;
her husband also, and he praises her . . .

Give her of the fruit of her hands,
and let her works praise her in the gates.”

Do not miss this, sisters. There is always reward in obedience to the Word of the Lord. Yes, the fullness of that reward will be realized in eternity. But even now, we are often given glimpses of its fruit.

Think about some of the most godly women you know—women who have spent years faithfully serving their families, often setting aside certain ambitions or comforts for a season out of love and obedience to Christ.

Over time, the fruit of that faithfulness often begins to appear around them: deep relationships with their children, strong and fruitful households, marriages marked by trust and endurance, and lives that bless entire communities. And not because their lives were easy or free from suffering, but because faithful love, over many years, tends to bear beautiful fruit.

The Center of Her Industry

At this point, some women may hear all of this language about sacrifice, service, and laying down one’s life and assume that God’s vision for womanhood is small, restrictive, or devoid of meaningful work outside the walls of the home.

But when we actually look carefully at Proverbs 31, we find something surprisingly different. The virtuous woman described there is remarkably industrious.

She plants vineyards. She purchases fields. She makes goods and sells them. She considers opportunities wisely and works diligently with her hands. This is not a passive woman— she is productive, capable, disciplined, and economically fruitful.

And yet, what makes her life beautiful is not merely that she works, but that her work is rightly ordered.

Her home remains the center of her industry.

The issue, then, is not whether a woman is productive, gifted, or economically fruitful. Proverbs 31 clearly presents a woman who is all of those things.

The question is whether she remains attentive to the work God has actually given her to do.

Because Scripture repeatedly warns women against both idleness and neglect—a temptation addressed not only in Proverbs, but also in 1 Timothy 5 and Titus 2.

The reality is, we can commit these sins whether we are stay-at-home moms or working within and outside the home. A woman may remain physically present in her home and still neglect it, just as another may labor diligently both within and beyond it while remaining deeply attentive to the people entrusted to her care.

Scripture warns us that idleness often becomes fertile ground for comparison, gossip, entitlement, and discontentment. When these things begin taking root in us, it is worth asking whether our attention has drifted from the work God has actually placed before us.

A godly woman does not drift through her days. She learns to redeem the time (Ephesians 5), giving herself diligently to the work God has placed before her.

Different Homes, Same Faithfulness

For my mom, who mothered twelve children and homeschooled all of us, her financial contribution was one of resourcefulness. My dad had a steady job that supported our family’s needs, and she stewarded his provision by being thrifty, making meals from scratch, mending our clothes, etc.

My mother-in-law mothered two children who went to school from kindergarten up, so her contribution to the home looked different. From the time her children were in school, she began helping my father-in-law in his business. She kept the books for their farm and got her license to help with their real estate business.

Do you see how two women can walk very different paths and still live faithfully within God’s design?

Their lives did not look identical, yet both remained attentive to the people and responsibilities God had entrusted to them. The needs of their household were not obstacles to their flourishing, but part of the very work God had called them into.

Neither woman was idle with the season she had been given. One expressed her diligence through resourcefulness within the home; the other through supporting and building alongside her husband’s work. But both understood the same deeper truth: their home remained the center of their industry.

And perhaps this is what so much of the modern conversation around womanhood misses.

The question is not simply whether a woman works inside or outside the home, contributes financially or serves in quieter ways. The deeper question is what vision of flourishing is shaping her life.

The world tells women to build themselves first. Scripture calls us to lay our lives down in love—to trust that the God who designed us knows where true fruitfulness is found.

And though His gifts may not always appear glamorous at first, over time their reward begins to reveal itself. Slowly, through years of faithfulness, the fruit ripens.

The world offers women many visions of the good life. But the fear of the Lord teaches us to trust that God’s design is better than what initially dazzles us.

To live within God’s design is to be blessed.

I watched as it tossed and turned—seemingly resistant—as the home that would change everything slowly wrapped around its body. And then, finally, the tiny creature’s body lay still, surrendered. Receiving the mystery of metamorphosis.

Do you know what some of the synonyms are for metamorphosis? Transformation. Rebirth. Transfiguration.

Nature is always telling the Greater Story, isn’t it? Everywhere we look, in every season, there are hints of our Creator and the redemption that await His children through the world He created around us.

Do we have eyes to see? Do we have ears to hear? Are our hearts ready to receive?

“Surrender, my child” He whispers. “Let my Spirit wrap around you and transform you in the unseen places.”

But, there is another whisper that battles the first—a voice so familiar that you have begun to believe it is your own. The more “reasonable” voice. The one, if you are honest, you have often trusted more. And here it resurfaces again, saying, “you’ll never be more than the ugly creature you are now.”

Oh, what a trick! The greatest trick in the enemy’s playbook of tricks: to capture a creature being made new, while not yet fully surrendered to the One at work within, and convince him there is no such thing as wings.

Victory over sin? That’s future only. Peace that passes all understanding? Maybe when circumstances align. Fullness of joy? Only in heaven.

The lies have become so reasonable to the world we know that they almost seem true. And the more we believe them to be true, the more our reality matches up with the lie—becoming our truth.

But it is not The Truth.

The Truth, child of God, is that the Lord did not give you wings for you to continue crawling on the ground. He wants you to soar! To rise above every earthly chain! To experience joy unspeakable in the wind of His presence!!

But He expects your participation—the way of obedience always lies here.

Make no mistake, He has given us the power to be transformed. But we can only access that power through surrender. He has given us the ability to be made like Him, but only through laying down our old selves.

We have the wings. The question is—are we flying?

It Was Never About the Gift

It felt like it at the time. Like a question about whether something I had always dismissed could actually be real. But underneath the surface, something deeper was being uncovered—something far more costly than changing my mind.

It was about surrender.

About whether I would trust God beyond what I could understand.

“When one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed…”

I did not know it then, but that conversation in the car was not an isolated moment. It was the beginning of the veil being lifted—the beginning of a life I could not yet see.

Christian and I had been engaged for three beautiful months when we arrived at his aunt and uncle’s Indiana house to receive marriage counseling in the summer of 2017. He was twenty-three and I was twenty, both freshly graduated from college and eager to take on the world as one.

Laughter filled the air of my 2008 Honda Accord as we drove back from a date, talking through everything we had been learning. But as the lightness faded into more serious waters, something unexpected rose to the surface.

“You really believe that still happens?” I blurted out in a fiery tone. “What would be the purpose of that spiritual gift anyhow? It sounds like nonsense!”

“I know it still happens” Christian responded in his usual cool and collected manner. “And there are people whom you trust who have it. Just ask them.”

My fiance’ had no reason to lie to me, and the people he named having the spiritual gift of tongues are those whom I trusted. They didn’t at all embody the charismatic stereotypes I associated with such things; these were believers who lived quiet lives, full of conviction, and they radiated joy.

As much as my defensiveness battled within me because of the Christian tradition I came from, I could not dismiss the question before me. Either this is true—which would mean dismantling the framework I had built around the charismatic gifts of the Spirit—or the man I was about to marry and the people close to him were living in deception.

I knew the latter could not be true. I had seen too much. I could not shake the stirring within me, even as I wrestled with unbelief.

I had chosen to follow Jesus about a decade before, but I was beginning to realize how much of my life with Him had been shaped by what I understood.

So I was left with facing a pressing and terrifying truth.

Pressing, because I knew I was brushing up against something my soul had longed for but did not know was possible. And terrifying, because it would cost me every tidy box I had built around who God is and how He works.

Deep down, I knew this was not really about tongues. It was about whether the stories I had grown up hearing were confined to Scripture—or still unfolding today.

The veil was being lifted from my eyes. And everything was about to change.

Death to Self

I sat at the edge of the bed on my knees, shaking.

“God, no. I can’t. You know how much I love him, and he will undoubtedly leave if he knows.”

Christian and I were now in the final three months of our engagement, the walk down the aisle so close we could smell the pine trees that surrounded the place we’d say our vows.

“He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy.” The Proverb stood before me like a door, inviting me into the same terrifying truth that I’d encountered before.

The Voice rose quietly within.

“Walk in the light, my daughter. Surrender.”

I picked up my phone and called Christian.

Walking in the light was painful. It burned my eyes accustomed to the shadows. It exposed my naked shame that I’d tried to keep covered. And there was nowhere left to hide.

My fears were confirmed too. Christian broke off our engagement, and all the dreams I had of our life together came crumbling down—the consequences of my sin ever before me.

But kneeling there in my brokenness, I felt the presence of Jesus run through me like a river in the wilderness—His mercy pouring out. I would not be going on alone.

In the weeks to follow, my sin was laid bare before my parents, my soon-to-be in-laws, and trusted friends and family. But I’d never felt more free. There is no greater burden than that of a child of God carrying sin that is meant to be nailed to the cross—and i’d carried it for years.

But oh, the life that was waiting on the other side!

God’s mercy presented itself in many forms—but unmistakably so in the counseling I received from a woman who’s gifting is in helping people find freedom in Christ. She did that for me. She listened to my story and spoke truth into it—grieving with me over the broken parts, and praying with me as the Holy Spirit revealed strongholds that needed to be torn down, piece by piece.

I was absolutely raw, but never more real. The chains were falling off. I was being made alive in Christ in truth.

God’s grace did not allow me to walk down the aisle unchanged. He made me the pure bride Jesus had already paid for.

And by His mercy, I walked toward a man who knew me fully—and loved me still.

We stood before each other, tears in our eyes, as these words were sung over us:

“You are a Savior
And You take brokenness aside
And make it beautiful.”

Learning to Be Held

The first year of my marriage was that of falling deeply in love with the man who chose me, despite my brokenness, and the One who was making me whole.

When my heart became open to the Spirit of God moving within, I deeply longed for His Word. What was once a checklist, a thing I must do, became a natural outpouring of the Love bubbling up inside of me.

The Words penned thousands of years ago through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in fellow saints came alive to me. I felt as John McCarthy, the faithful missionary, when he said “I seem to have got to the edge only, but of a sea which is boundless; to have sipped only, but of that which fully satisfies.”

The Holy Spirit was the River of Life (John 7:38), and His Word were the boundary lines that guided its channels.

I had never been an early-riser. But that year, the dawn became Light reaching out to me in the quiet places. Jesus covered me with the wings of His presence each morning, teaching me what it is to let Him be my refuge, guiding me with each wobbly step as I learned to walk again.

No longer was my relationship to Him a roller coaster that went up and down with the mood of the day as it had been. It became a steady force—guided not by feeling, but by allowing the Holy Spirit access to every part of me.

Intimacy Through Suffering

In the Spring of 2019, two years into marriage, the Lord opened my womb and put within it a beautiful son.

During the nine months of carrying him, I took many walks across the farm—holding my belly full of new life. The future was as a garden before me, with promise of beauty more wonderful than I could know.

But just as the Lord holds the seeds, so He chooses the soil. And the soil He was preparing for me was the most fruitful kind—the kind that is watered through tears.

We would birth a beautiful son. And we would bury him.

We would watch his tiny casket be lowered into the cold, dark earth, the shovels of dirt sprinkled over it. We would feel a heavy brokenness—life trampled by death.

This is not the kind of soil we want to produce a garden. And it was not the kind of soil we were formed into in the original Garden. But in this earth still marred by sin and brokenness, it is the most fertile ground when put into the hands of our Maker.

But suffering is always an invitation into deeper intimacy with Jesus. And it is here that He whispers, “I, myself, will restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.” (1 Peter 5:10).

Redemption is coming.

What we placed in the ground that day was not the end of the story.

Every tear-watered grief, every ache we carry, every moment that feels swallowed by darkness—He presses it into the soil with purpose. Though it disappears from our sight, it is not lost. It is becoming something beautiful.

Death is not the final word, but the beginning of something eternal.

What we would never choose… He uses to grow what we could never produce on our own.

And one day, we will stand in a garden again. One far more glorious—where every seed sown in tears has risen, where nothing is missing, where death itself has been undone.

And there, we will see that even this was not wasted.

Life Hidden in God

This is the freedom of life in the Spirit.

Not a life without suffering, but a life where nothing is wasted.

I think back often to that conversation in the car—the certainty in my voice, the neat boxes I had built around who God is and how He works. I thought I was protecting truth. I did not yet realize I was resisting the very life He was inviting me into.

Because the life of the Kingdom is not entered through understanding.

It is entered like a child.

And children do not begin with mastery—they begin with trust.

That is what He has been teaching me all along.

And years later, that same invitation came again.

At the end of last year, the Lord asked me to step into something far outside my comfort—something I could not rely on my own strength or competency to carry. It was a place that required complete dependence on Him. And in that same season, a desire began to grow in me that I had never pursued before.

The very thing I had once questioned.

The very thing I had resisted.

The gift of tongues.

The desire came quietly, and I knew it was from Him.

Just days before stepping into what He had asked of me, fear came rushing in. The enemy filled my mind with doubt, reminding me of my inadequacy, pressing in on every weakness. The mentor who had once helped me walk in the light now lived just across the road, and I asked her to come pray with me.

After she prayed, I told her about the desire. She prayed again. Nothing happened immediately. But later that evening, in the hidden quiet of our bedroom, the Spirit met me.

And as the language came—unfamiliar to me—I wrestled in my mind. Is this real, Lord? Am I just making this up? Because it felt like learning to speak all over again.

And gently, He stilled me: Do not doubt the gift I have given you. So I continued. Not because I understood—but because I trusted. And His presence was unmistakable.

After awhile, Christian walked into the room. I had not told him anything, not even the desire that had grown within me. But as soon as he looked at me, he said, “You received the gift of tongues, didn’t you?”

And in that moment, the Lord confirmed what He had done. And I began to see more clearly what He has been opening my heart to since that moment as a twenty-year-old who had all the answers.

This was never about a gift.

It was about trust.

He was asking me, again, to surrender my need to understand… and simply receive.

And I am witnessing Him stirring this same work in others—people from backgrounds like mine, who would have once questioned, once resisted, once explained it away.

I also know that for some, the hesitation is not born from disbelief, but from disappointment—from things seen or experienced that did not reflect the heart of God. I do not dismiss that. We are called to discern rightly (1 John 4:1), because the presence of what is false does not negate what is true—it makes discernment necessary.

When we finally lay down our insistence on understanding everything, we become open to receive what we never could have manufactured.

This is when the life of the Spirit begins to unfold in ways we could not have imagined.

Your sister in Christ,

Laura

Planting had recently wrapped up. During planting season, you can feel the bustle in our small ag town. Every farmer is doing what they can to sow well in order to reap well come harvest.

And you can feel the relief when the seed is in the ground.

I saw that relief in my husband as the cool, summer breeze whipped through our hair and we held tightly to our children. As his large arm—tanned from being in the sun all day— reached around us.

“Take the deepest breath you’ve ever taken,” Christian said after parking beside our favorite pond. We call it Bird Island because of the strip of land that appears each irrigation season when the water becomes shallow. Blue herons, great white egrets, and humble killdeer return year after year, as if they too are sharing in the peace of completed work.

I take a long, deep breath. Exhale.

“That is why I came home to the farm,” he said, watching a family of ducks swim across the pond in the distance. “To experience the exhale.”

Those moments are what makes the life worth it.

I did not grow up on a farm. I am one generation removed from agriculture, my experience tucked neatly into seasonal visits to my grandparents’ cattle farm two hours away.

But even then, I felt what it was to be immersed in creation in a way only a farm can offer. Even then, it felt like something sacred.

There are pictures I cannot shake—my papaw picking sweet corn for supper, the white plastic-wrapped hay bales we jumped across as kids that looked like giant marshmallows, the early mornings feeding cows as the sun broke over the pasture.

A farm holds memories, and it has held me—as a girl barely acquainted, and now as a farmer’s wife who knows the life as her own.

And now I introduce it to others who are generationally removed like I was, knowing it can offer them what it did me:

Deeply rooted beauty.

As I have lived on our farm, studied the rhythms of agriculture from the seat of a wife married into a family of farmers seven generations deep, and raised our children in it, I can say this with certainty:

That kind of beauty comes at a cost.

I will never over-romanticize farming and pretend it is easy. We often call it a job of faith because so much is outside of your control—weather, markets, global forces far beyond your reach.

But nobody chooses to be a farmer because it is easy.

You choose it because of the beauty it offers—to you, to your children, and to your children’s children. Because the world beyond knows no roots, no boundary lines, no planting and harvest—and you know you could not live without them.

This is why we choose and continue choosing the farm.

There are a million other ways to make a living, but no other keeps you this connected to creation. And we know, deep down, we cannot live without that connection.

When I moved here over eight years ago as a young wife, I could not have known how much this place would nourish me.

The vast prairie that reminds you how small you are. The sky that seems to go on forever. The quiet that lets you hear birdsong, the crunch of leaves beneath your feet, the wind moving through cornstalks.

When Christian’s grandfather moved his family from Indiana to Mississippi in the 1960s to start a new life, he took a great risk. I can only imagine the hours he spent on his knees, praying he had not brought his family across the country for nothing while working land that demanded everything from him.

And now, over fifty years later, here we are—the third generation to live in what his faithfulness built.

We live in the house he and Grandma Grace built. It is not a grand house. It was never meant to be. The farm is the emphasis, and they built their home so that you cannot miss it—with windows intentionally placed to catch every sunrise and sunset.

Grandma Grace only lived in this home for a handful of months before cancer took her. She never met the grandchildren and great-grandchildren now filling its rooms. But when I sit in the corner of the living room each morning and watch the sun rise, I think of her. Her fingerprints are still here.

Our home will always be the Grace House, just as this land carries the fingerprints of Grandpa, who planted roots in Mississippi with nothing but faith and determination.

And that is what keeps us going on the hardest days. To know we are living in what others built. And to know we are responsible for what comes next.

We do not have to cling to the land, or the house, or even the occupation.

Farming is not the identity—it is the invitation to receive, to steward, and to give away again.

Beauty is not a luxury in agriculture. It is what makes the life sustainable. It steadies you when the margins are thin, the weather turns, and the outcome is uncertain. It calls you back after a long day, anchors your children to something real, and reminds you why the work matters.

Without it, the farm becomes only risk, only labor, only loss—and fewer and fewer would choose to stay. But with it, the land becomes more than a livelihood. It becomes a sanctuary—something worth receiving, worth tending, and worth passing on.

And in the end, it is the exhale that keeps us here.

And I can feel the difference between who I thought I would become and who the Lord has actually formed.

When I stepped into my twenties, I carried bright ambition in my hands—visions of how I would shape the next decade, much of it grand, much of it impressive.

The Lord, in His mercy, gave me something truer.

I became a wife.

I labored and brought four children into the world—and I labored and let one go into the arms of Jesus.

I kept tending the business I began as a girl and joined my life to Christian’s as we built new things side by side.

I held fast to old friendships, opened my hands to new ones, and let some go.

It has been a decade of abundance.

A decade of ache.

A decade that has stretched me thin and filled me to the brim.

And now, standing at the edge of another year, I can feel the shift in my posture.

I am not less ambitious, but the direction of my desire has changed.

I no longer hunger to be impressive. I hunger for depth.

The richest years of this decade were not the brightest ones. They were the years the Lord led me through shadowed valleys—where the work was hidden, where no one applauded, where I came undone and He met me there.

It is in those unseen places that He does His most beautiful work. When I yield to Him fully—when I stop guarding the tender places of my heart—living water begins to rise. It does not strive. It flows.

Sometimes it runs into places wider and more wondrous than I could have arranged.

And sometimes it pools quietly in the sink full of dishes, in the small hands reaching for mine, in the ordinary obedience of a Tuesday afternoon.

But it is living water all the same.

If this decade has taught me anything, it is that my plans are always inferior to the story He is writing. His mercies are so much deeper than my ambition.

And what I don’t want is a life that looks full and feels empty.

I want to be formed more than I am seen.

Rooted more than I am recognized.

Faithful more than I am impressive.

The kind of life where the water runs deep.

I have noticed a shift lately in interior design: the return of rooms.

After decades of open-concept living — kitchens bleeding into dining spaces, living rooms dissolving into one long expanse — people are craving walls again. Doors. Defined spaces that ask to be entered rather than drifted through.

To be clear, this is not an argument for one layout over another. Homes are lived in differently, and families shape spaces as much as spaces shape families. We even opened up our own 1960s ranch, and for this season of raising young children, it fits us well.

But alongside the design shift is something deeper — a longing for homes that feel storied. Layered. Rooted in something older than the last renovation cycle.

And that is what catches my attention.

There is something comforting about the thought of a room with corners. A space that has held the same table for years. A wall that has witnessed conversations, arguments, celebrations — and kept them all.

But here is the irony: many of the same people longing for history want it installed in a matter of months.

We want the feeling of tradition without the years required to form it. We want depth — but we want it quickly.

And that longing is not really about paint colors or floor plans.

It reveals something about us.

The Pull of What’s Next

If we are honest, we can see it in more than our homes.

We are drawn toward what is new, often without realizing it — the next destination, the next purchase, the next show, the next project, even the next version of ourselves.

Reinvention carries a certain optimism. Movement can feel like progress. And over time, remaining in the same place — geographically, relationally, vocationally — can begin to feel less like faithfulness and more like stagnation.

Even where we live has become part of that rhythm. Fewer people remain in the same home or city for long. Opportunities arise, doors open, circumstances shift. Many of those moves are good and even necessary.

And yet, somewhere along the way, movement itself has come to symbolize growth.

Staying rarely receives that same admiration.

It requires living with what is already in front of us — the people who are difficult but unavoidable, the work that stretches us in ordinary ways, the homes and churches that need patient care rather than dramatic overhaul, the children who do not fit tidy expectations.

None of that looks impressive. Much of it feels repetitive.

But depth is usually formed there — not in reinvention, but in sustained presence over time.

I am not immune to the pull toward something new.

Still, I am learning that what feels slow is often what shapes us most.

What the Longing Reveals

From the beginning of time, the temptation has been the same: that something better waits just beyond what God has given you.

Sometimes it feels as small as a single bite. Sometimes it feels as large as a move, a reinvention, a different version of life.

But it is always the same whisper — that fulfillment lies somewhere else.

And it has always been a lie.

As long as we believe it, we remain near the surface, unrooted and unsettled, convinced that depth is waiting for us in the next chapter rather than here.

In his book, The Familiar Stranger, Tyler Staton identifies this draw toward novelty today:

"What if our greatest obstacle is the one the culture and the church jointly celebrate—wanderlust? We are a future-oriented society addicted to the next and the new. . . We try to form character by running from one set of circumstances to another. But Jesus says character is shaped when we abide, remain, stay.”

We keep trying to form depth through movement, when depth is most often formed through remaining.

The Beauty and the Blind Spot of Staying

My husband is the third generation to steward the farm where we live. His parents have been up the road for nearly thirty years. His grandparents lived in the house we now call home for decades before us.

I married into a family deeply rooted in place. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

But remaining has its own tensions.

We have built friendships only to say goodbye as they began to flourish. I have hugged siblings and friends as they moved away to begin again somewhere else.

Even long-standing relationships can feel fragile in a culture accustomed to movement.

Rootedness does not make us superior. Nor is movement always wanderlust.

But constant transience reshapes how we form community.

And staying reshapes us too.

Living near extended family can be one of life’s greatest gifts. It can also tempt us toward complacency — toward keeping our world small.

Family can become the foundation from which we love others well, or the boundary that quietly keeps everyone else out.

In the small town where we now live — and the one where I was raised — that pattern is common. Tight-knit families. Deep history. Strong roots. And sometimes, unintentional walls.

But both Christian and I were shown a better way.

Our parents kept us grounded in home and connected to one another, yet they refused to let family become a fortress. They opened the doors outward. They exposed us to people whose stories were nothing like ours — people who needed our presence as much as we needed theirs.

I will never forget the summer of 2005.

Hurricane Katrina had torn across the South, leaving devastation in its wake. Roofs ripped off. Entire communities displaced. Families scattering to wherever they could find shelter.

Our own home had suffered damage. We were without power for weeks. The air hung heavy and still in the Mississippi heat.

And yet, even in the middle of our own inconvenience, my parents welcomed a single mother and her two daughters from the Gulf Coast to live with us.

Their rhythms were different from ours. Their experiences unfamiliar. Their grief heavy.

I remember watching the strain it placed on my mom — caring for her own children while extending hospitality to others, holding sorrow that was not originally her own.

It was inconvenient, stretching, and it required sacrifice.

But it also opened my eyes.

That experience and many others taught me that rootedness can pave the way to interdependence.

Family was never meant to be a bubble we retreat into, but a base from which we extend strength outward.

But staying, by itself, is not the virtue.

Roots can grow deep and still refuse to bear fruit. Familiarity can slowly harden into comfort. And comfort, left unchecked, can disguise itself as faithfulness while silently insulating us from the needs around us.

Remaining becomes formative only when it is marked by intention — by hospitality that stretches us, by perseverance that costs us something, by love that moves outward rather than folding inward.

Without that posture, staying is not depth.

It is simply stillness.

And in that way, rootedness and transiency are not as different as they appear.

Both can be driven by the same instinct: self-preservation.

One withdraws inward and calls it stability.
The other moves outward and calls it growth.

Neither, on its own, produces depth.

When Movement Becomes Distance

If stagnant rootedness is one danger, restless movement is another.

It can elevate chosen community while loosening inherited ties.

Since 2020 especially, family estrangement has been normalized as self-protection. Personal peace has become a governing value.

Sometimes boundaries are necessary. Critical even. But when peace is pursued at the expense of perseverance, something essential thins. We become practiced at distance rather than devotion.

Whether or not you are close with your extended family, relationships with those who were a part of your childhood — the good, the bad, and the ugly — are rarely simple.

Family relationships are often the most refining precisely because we did not choose them.

God did.

That includes the difficult ones — the ones we have little in common with, the ones we struggle to understand, the ones who press against our preferences and expose our impatience.

Within family, there is little room for facades. History resurfaces. Patterns repeat. Old wounds linger. And walking away carries weight.

Friendships, on the other hand, allow for choice. We can gather around us those who agree with us, share our interests, mirror our stage of life. And if things grow tense or inconvenient, there is often an easier exit.

That freedom is not wrong. It is a gift. But it can also allow us to curate lives that shield us from the very friction that shapes us.

Depth rarely forms in spaces where nothing is required of us.

It forms when we remain present through conflict, when we bear one another’s burdens over time, when we stay long enough to see God soften what once felt immovable — in them and in us.

This kind of formation unfolds slowly. It requires time and perseverance, and few things shape us more deeply than staying present through seasons we would rather avoid.

The Courage to Remain

Perhaps the return of rooms is more than a design shift.

Perhaps it’s a confession.

We are weary of wide, undefined lives. We long for walls that hold history—spaces that have been inhabited long enough to matter.

Deep down, we desire to belong to something greater than ourselves. That desire is God-given.

But walls are not built in a weekend. Neither is character. Or community.

The life we are longing for cannot be hurried into existence.

It is formed slowly—through repetition, through friction, through the quiet decision to remain when leaving would be easier.

And remaining, by itself, is not the virtue. Staying only shapes us when it is marked by intention—when we resist the pull toward self-preservation and allow ourselves to be stretched by the people and responsibilities in front of us.

Depth will cost us novelty. It will cost us convenience. It may even cost us the comforting illusion that something better is waiting just beyond what we have been given.

But the reward is something trends can never manufacture: a life thick with history, relationships that have weathered seasons instead of being replaced by them, and a faith that has been formed not through escape, but through endurance.

Perhaps the most radical thing we can do in a culture addicted to the next and the new is simply to remain.

Not as retreat or stagnation, but as deliberate, outward-facing faithfulness.

To stay where He has placed us long enough to be shaped — and long enough to shape others in return.

With love,

Laura

I blame my mom for the habit. She was always refreshing spaces in our home by repurposing what she already had. Somewhere along the way, I developed a love for doing the same.

But on this January afternoon, what began as a few small tweaks in our living room quickly snowballed into a complete overhaul of the furniture placement.

And no, I did not consult my husband. I snapped a photo of the new arrangement and sent him a text that read, “thank me or forgive me.” Eesh.

When Christian got home that evening, I greeted him with a smile tinged with insecurity and quickly ushered him toward the living room.

“Before you say anything, let me explain why this works better…” I blurted out as he stood there in silence.

He listened patiently as I launched into a lengthy monologue outlining precisely why he should agree with my decision. And then I stopped talking (thank goodness).

“Honey,” he said gently, “I really loved the way it was before. We chose that arrangement intentionally while renovating. We bought this furniture to make it work. I just wish you had talked to me first.”

My heart dropped.

I went to get ready for bed feeling defeated, rehearsing all the ways he was being close-minded to something new. But as soon as my pride softened, I knew he was right.

There was nothing wrong with the arrangement we had chosen together. And I could have saved myself a great deal of time and effort if I had simply brought him into the process from the start.

The next morning, I moved everything back to its original place. Peace restored.

Why am I sharing this rather embarrassing glimpse into my month? Because surface-level moments often carry deeper lessons, if we are willing to listen. And this was no exception.

The following week, Christian and I found ourselves driving along the California coastline. No children in the backseat—just the two of us, wind whipping through the car and waves crashing against the shore below towering cliffs.

We were there for a farm conference, but our schedule left room to explore, and we did.

We walked rugged shorelines, savoring the quiet of a landscape so different from home. We ate incredible food, admired breathtaking works of art, and learned about filmmaking throughout modern history. We stood at the bow of a boat, staring out over the vast blue ocean, Christian’s arms wrapped around me to keep me warm. I cried as dolphin families—hundreds of them—swam and leapt freely around us.

After a full holiday season and mounting responsibilities waiting back home, this time away felt like a gift. But greater than the experiences themselves was the reconnection it offered us.

In this season of raising small children, where uninterrupted conversation is rare, it is easy to forget how to simply sit in one another’s presence.

Time away like this resets our marriage. What remains buried beneath the noise of everyday life has space to rise when we are alone.

I believe this is one reason we stay so busy as a culture. We are afraid of the quiet. What if, when everything slows down, there is nothing there?

What we forget is that light cannot enter what remains shut. At some point, we must stop hiding and allow it in.

That moment came for me on our drive from Laguna Beach the first evening of the trip.

I had been wrestling with a decision I had prayed over for months—one that seemed met with silence from God. As I finally spoke it aloud to Christian, tears followed. Confusion and frustration surfaced as I struggled to understand what the Lord was asking of me.

Why won’t You make this clear? I prayed. People are waiting. I need direction.

Christian, wrestling through his own thoughts, entered the conversation. One thing led to another—as it often does when emotions and jet lag collide—and suddenly we were back in our rearranged living room.

“Laura,” he said, “you decide what you want to do and then ask for my approval. You don’t invite me into the process from the beginning.”

As his words landed, another voice became unmistakable—the voice of the Holy Spirit, speaking quietly but clearly within me.

This is what you do with Me.

Tears came again. Not from confusion this time, but conviction.

I felt it instantly. My grip loosened. My resistance softened. I stopped striving to control the outcome.

Then clarity rushed in—not all at once, but like waves reaching dry land.

“When God gives a vision and darkness follows, wait. God will make you in accordance with the vision He has given you if you will wait His time. Never try to help God fulfill His word.”

The words I’d read from Oswald Chambers’ lingered in my mind.

Waiting has never been my strength.

I am a feeler-doer. Passion ignites, momentum follows, and reflection comes later—if at all. The living room bears witness.

But the issue is not my wiring. The solution is not suppressing emotion or becoming passive. It is learning to resist the urge to move before God speaks.

When I chose to follow Jesus, I surrendered the right to self-direction. That decision was made once, but it is lived out daily. Much like my marriage vows, it requires continual choosing—opening my heart again and again, allowing the relationship to deepen into true oneness.

“Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.”

My heart, renewed by Christ, longs for communion. My flesh still craves autonomy. My way.

And yet, here is the beauty I return to again and again:

My life is no longer my own. The One who was, and is, and is to come lives within me.

“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?” (1 Corinthians 6:19)

This means my thoughts, my will, my emotions—nothing is off-limits to Him.

Not only does God plant visions that align with His will, but He also supplies the power to carry them out—by His Spirit, in His time.

Do you see it?

Our uniqueness is not the obstacle. Our resistance is.

God has always been the vision-giver. Every true, good, and beautiful idea originates with Him. And every vision He gives is an invitation into deeper partnership.

Abraham. Joseph. Moses. Samuel. David. Mary. Paul.

Still, like so many before us, we often take the vision and run ahead, attempting to accomplish it in our own strength instead of walking with Him from the start.

We begin moving—perhaps even in the right direction. The path is clear. Our steps feel light.

Then comes the hesitation. The fork. The dimming. Weariness sets in.

Doubt follows. Was this really from God, or did I imagine it?

And rather than returning to our Guide, we choose our own way.

What began in obedience slowly unravels.

If only we had waited. If only we had trusted His timing.

Yet here is our hope: just as we did not author the vision, we cannot undo God’s faithfulness. No misstep places us beyond His reach. It is never too late to step back and make room for His presence again.

Our insistence on control reveals not confidence, but fear—that God may not answer us at all.

After returning home, bags unpacked and routines restored, I found myself standing in our living room once more.

It still needs refreshing, I thought.

I shifted small items—moving pieces between the mantel, the coffee table, the dining room, the piano in the corner. Nothing settled.

Then my eyes caught the empty vases scattered throughout the room.

I had planned to fill them once everything else was in place. But suddenly the thought struck me: nothing else works until you start there.

So I laid everything aside and stepped outside, gathering winter branches from the yard.

I brought them in, arranged them carefully, and stepped back.

Only then did the rest of the room fall into place.

Just like that, everything felt right again.

Every ordinary moment carries a deeper invitation if we are willing to listen.

God works through our personalities—our passions, our tendencies, our weaknesses—not to shame us, but to sanctify us. To draw us back into awareness of His presence.

He speaks through decisions and through daily rhythms. Through spouses and through living rooms.

The question is not whether He is speaking.

It is whether we are listening.

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This is an article released in 2020 after losing our first son and becoming pregnant with our second.

I am releasing these writings from those early days in the valley on this platform as we honor our son’s sixth year in glory at the end of October.

My prayer is that they can bring light into another’s dark night of the soul.

We are nearly 36 weeks pregnant with our second baby boy. This time last year, we were unknowingly spending our final hours with our first.

I didn’t know if I would write this final chapter of our pregnancy with Caleb.

The month of October has been filled with waves of emotion—mostly reserved for my private prayers and quiet journaling with Jesus.

Until yesterday, I assumed they would remain that way.

. . . Then I received a card in the mail.

It was a birthday card for Levi from my brother and sister-in-law.

When I first looked over the beautifully painted cotton fields and the Psalm beneath, God whispered to my heart that there was more for me to write here.

First, let me take you back to October of last year, when we were 38 weeks pregnant with Levi.

I pulled out my camera for the last time and walked out to the cotton fields behind our house, capturing those final moments while Levi’s heart still beat in my belly.

Christian and I spent the hour that followed walking and praying over Levi and his birth.

We asked the Lord to bless him and to give us the grace we would need as parents in the days ahead.

Looking back, I can see that many things we did while pregnant with Levi were by providence.

We wrote letters to him during each trimester. Only Jesus knew those nine months would be all we had—and that those letters would later be read at his funeral.

We documented so much of him in my belly—photos we treasure deeply, as they are all we have of him while he was still alive.

The cotton fields where we stood to capture those final days with Levi were harvested just days after he was born.

All too soon, like his life, the ground stood bare once again.

Tomorrow will mark one year since we said goodbye—until we meet him again in glory.

This year has been a walk through the valley, a time when our own ground has felt stripped bare.

But when God blessed us with another precious life, we chose to document each trimester in the same cotton field where we spent our final hours praying with Levi.

Because when we look into our rainbow baby’s eyes in just a few weeks, we never want to forget in this new season of light what God so graciously taught us in the dark.

I used to be afraid of the valley. I would desperately try to control the outcome of my life to avoid that low and barren place.

But Levi’s life has taught me that it is in the valley that the Lord plants His seeds.

It is in the valley that we see the depths of His love for us.

It is in the valley that we truly learn His “peace that surpasses all understanding” (Philippians 4:7).

It is in the valley that we experience how powerfully He sustains (Psalm 55:22).

And only when we walk through the valley can we behold the beautiful harvest waiting on the other side—the seeds sown in tears that bring forth new, abundant life in Christ.

As we celebrate Levi’s first birthday tomorrow, we know there will still be tears.

But interwoven with sorrow is the sweetness of redemption—a quiet joy that hums beneath the ache.

Because our God does not waste a single seed.

“Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy.” — Psalm 126:5

A joyful harvest awaits.

This is an article released in 2020 after losing our first son and becoming pregnant with our second.

I am releasing these writings from those early days in the valley on this platform as we honor our son’s sixth year in glory at the end of October.

My prayer is that they can bring light into another’s dark night of the soul.

I took the final sip of my morning coffee as the sunrise began leaking through the curtains into the living room.

The candle faithfully lit each morning still flickered as the gentle rhythm of chimes sang with the wind outside – Levi’s song.

Hanging beneath the chimes are the words we sang at his funeral:

“Your grace is sufficient for me; Your strength is made perfect when I am weak.

All that I cling to, I lay at Your feet.

Your grace is sufficient for me.”

I closed my journal filled with prayers and pondered those words in my heart, reflecting on all the ways He has sustained us since that day.

A little kick jolted my attention toward the blessing inside of me.

Looking down with a smile I whispered into the light, “good morning, my sweet boy.”

While the first trimester with our rainbow baby was a battle between fear and surrender of another son to Jesus, the second trimester overflows with grace.

Finding out we are pregnant with another boy is a precious gift.

But if I’m being honest, when we became open to another pregnancy, the thought that it could be another boy had us questioning if we could handle it emotionally.

And yet, each time I prayed Holy Spirit reminded me that the Lord knows exactly what we need.

Oh, how He knew.

We began discussing name possibilities not long after finding out we were pregnant.

It’s always been a decision we desire to approach with prayer and intention because we believe that names are significant to the Lord and they hold a sacred part of our identity.

We already had a girl name chosen, but it was difficult to think through boy names again.

The week before our ultrasound appointment to find out the gender, we sat down for dinner and discussed names again.

“We are getting really close and we still haven’t chosen a name if it’s a boy” I said to Christian across the table. “Is there one that has stood out to you?”

Christian proceeded to share the name Caleb, expressing that it has stayed forefront of his mind.

Caleb was never a name we previously considered. But when Christian began sharing the biblical story and what the name means, my eyes immediately welled up with tears.

I knew Holy Spirit was speaking directly to my heart: Caleb is who is in my belly.

Caleb means “devoted to God,” and the story surrounding Caleb in the Bible is exactly what Christian and I have consistently prayed over him – that he would be purely devoted to Christ, even in the midst of adversity, and even if he is the only one doing so.

Days later, we got the confirmation that we are, indeed, expecting another baby boy.

Levi’s little brother and our redeeming gift from God.

We were grateful to have a time of honoring Levi’s identity before he was born by hosting a “gender reveal” gathering, and so we held to the tradition with Caleb.

This is a time that Christian and I are able to share our child’s name along with the meaning behind it, then spend time in prayer and celebration over a new life.

Jesus continued demonstrating His redeeming grace in the weeks following, including the day Levi’s headstone was placed over his grave.

I was dreading the day and the grief I must face all over again.

Christian was working when I got the call that it was about to be installed, so I headed to the cemetery alone.

Worship music played softly as I drove, tears streaming down my face and the familiar heaviness filling my heart.

“God, give me strength” I whispered under my breath.

When I pulled into the cemetery, two men were unloading the stone.

I let my fingers feel the words engraved:

“Born into Heaven

Levi Christian Good

October 31, 2019

Psalm 55:22”

The younger of the two asked, “is this a relative of yours?”

I looked over at him with a smile then proudly responded, “he is my son.”

The gentleman slowly looked away as if reflecting on his own sorrow, then softly responded.

“I lost my son too. Just two hours after he was born.”

Silently I thanked God for His timing, knowing He orchestrated this moment.

I don’t know if this man knew Jesus, but I got to talk about Him and the peace He’s given us through our mutually painful circumstances.

Once again, God allows Levi’s life to be used for His glory.

I drove to the cemetery with a heavy heart, but I left with renewed hope.

Not only did God provide an encounter with a man who had experienced the same loss as us, but in His beautiful timing, Levi’s headstone came with his little brother growing inside of me.

This is God’s sufficient grace.

Psalm 55:22 is the verse that was displayed on the hospital wall when we found out Levi’s heart was no longer beating.

And it is the verse we engraved on his headstone.

As we approach the third trimester with another miracle, we can proclaim from personal testimony that these words are true.

He has sustained us through loss, and He continues to sustain us through life after loss.

The weeks ahead could fill us with fear — for they were all we had left with Levi.

While we expect it to come, we refuse to let fear be our final resting place.

Instead, we proclaim with restored hearts:

“All that I cling to, I lay at Your feet. Your grace is sufficient for me.”

This is an article released in 2020 after losing our first son and becoming pregnant with our second.

I am releasing these writings from those early days in the valley on this platform as we honor our son’s sixth year in glory at the end of October.

My prayer is that they can bring light into another’s dark night of the soul.

The second line was so faint we scarcely dared to hope. But after taking a second, and then a third test, we knew it was true.

We are pregnant.

“How are you feeling about being here again?” I asked Christian as we walked past tiny rows of corn beginning to sprout.

“A mix of emotions,” he responded. “The same well that has drawn intense pain also holds immense hope, and that makes it difficult to face.”

These were some of the first and most raw emotions that came when we found out about our rainbow baby — they were not the last.

Let’s go back to the months leading up to this new season of hope, because I want to give you a glimpse into how God was working in our hearts.

The quiet places where the Lord does His refining is always the precursor to the breakthroughs we experience on the other side.

I remember the afternoon vividly.

I stood in our living room, staring out into our fields where crops usually grow by this time, and I began to cry.

I kept pleading with God to allow life to grow again around me, believing it could give me hope again.

But as I looked over the brown, lifeless ground, I found myself questioning if He was listening.

It felt as though the most mundane things as crops growing — which we could expect year after year — were taken from us.

The rain didn’t stop for months; the fields remained unplanted.

Then COVID came.

Slowly and reluctantly, I realized this unusual world that we’d found ourselves in wasn’t going away anytime soon

God gave me the book of Job in that season of early March 2020.

I found myself grieving along with him and questioning with him, too.

Why was God allowing the enemy to attack him this way?

And why did He allow it to go on for so long?

At last, the final chapters came – God answers.

When He spoke, everything seemed to tremble at His voice.

I trembled as I read: “Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge? . . . Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?” (38:2,4)

Suddenly, my questions that mirrored Job’s were put into perspective when reading the words of Almighty God.

Who am I to question the Author of the universe, who possesses all knowledge and wisdom of eternity?

I resonated with Job. I was put in my rightful place, and mournfully expressing:

“I am unworthy – how can I reply to You? (40:4) . . . Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know (42:3b) . . . My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore, I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” (42:5-6)

This I learned and was greatly convicted:

Clarity about God always leads to humility before Him.

The months leading up to the conception of this new little one was, indeed, humbling.

Looking back now, I realize how much I was trying to take control back into my own hands after a long season of God teaching me surrender.

And yet, because He is a merciful, compassionate Father, He didn’t allow me enter into motherhood again without surrender being my final resting place.

Even if it meant a season that looked lifeless and harsh on the outside.

God was teaching me that hope is about trusting His perfect plan, not about seeing mine come to fruition.

Our first time back into our OBGYN’S office being pregnant again came with anticipation and anxiety.

We expected to hear a heartbeat that day, but instead, we only saw a growing uterus.

Our doctor assured us everything was as it should be so early on, but our disappointment remained.

Two weeks went by before our next appointment, during which I experienced some of the greatest spiritual warfare of my life.

The enemy threw every fear and doubt possible into my mind until it sank into my heart.

By the end of those two weeks, I was exhausted from fighting.

After watching the inner turmoil unfold, Christian finally confronted me in love.

“Laura,” he gently said as we walked along a grassy trail on the farm. “If we do not learn to combat these fears now, they will not disappear upon hearing a heartbeat. And they won’t go away after we have a healthy baby in our arms.

They will eventually take root until they have robbed us of our hope, turning us into anxious, controlling parents who distrust the sovereignty of God and never experience the peace of surrender.”

I knew he was right.

The day before our second appointment I sat on the couch with my Bible in my lap, pouring over every verse I could find on fear.

I prayed as I read, asking Holy Spirit to write them on my heart as a sword to combat the lies.

That evening, I received a call from Christian.

“Go look outside right now!” he exclaimed.

I ran out the front door and was stopped in my tracks at the sight.

One of the most beautiful, vibrant rainbows I had ever seen spread across the sky and landed right into our nursery!

I felt the Lord immediately whisper to my heart: “I remember you, My child.”

I have nothing to fear.

The following day, we heard the most beautiful sound in the world:

The heartbeat of new life.

Christian squeezed my hand, glancing over with a knowing look.

God had given us new hope.

Hope is the word I would use for this new season; redeeming is another.

The first trimester did not come without challenges, and what I have shared are just pieces.

What I want to impart to anyone who reads this is not the details of our earthly suffering, but the depth of how God works through it.

This has and continues to be our journey with Jesus.

This is our story – we are the farmers.

We watched the storm continue with no end in sight,

mourning what our eyes conceived as lost.

We longed for purpose in a season that felt lifeless.

We, too, questioned God’s mercy in our agony.

But in the midst of waiting, we got to witness God’s plan unfold before us

in His time.

We have looked back on our own “fields that lay bare” and have come to grasp what would have drowned had we not abided in His way.

So, here’s to growing another life.

And as we do, letting the Lord grow within us trust, surrender and submission to

His way to the harvest.

This is an article released in 2020 — five months after losing our firstborn son, Levi.

I am releasing these writings from those early days in the valley on this platform as we honor our son’s sixth year in glory at the end of October.

My prayer is that they can bring light into another’s dark night of the soul.

I looked over at the faint glow of my clock resting beside the bed. 2:00 a.m.

How am I still awake?

I slide my hands over my belly that still bares marks of him. Sometimes I can almost still feel his little kicks inside of me, and I let my fingers imagine them again for a moment.

October 29^th was an ordinary Tuesday evening. Christian and I shared big bowls of Blue Bell ice cream and sweet conversation about what was going to be. I held my belly as I always did, dreaming about the day I would hold him. We were just four short days away from our son’s due date. Four days from what we knew would change our lives forever.

What we didn’t know that Tuesday evening is how different God’s story for us would be than the one we envisioned.

That night I went to bed with contractions that continued until wee hours of the morning. By 3 a.m., Christian insisted we go to the hospital. We excitedly got dressed as I pushed through the contractions, smiling in-between, because this was it. We were finally going to meet our sweet Levi.

It was pouring rain outside, but it only fueled the adrenaline rushing through us; it felt like a movie, and we were about to experience our happy ending.

Christian reached over the console, laid his hand on my belly, and said with anticipating eyes, “it’s happening, Laura. Can you really believe it’s happening? You are going to make the best mom. I love you.”

When we pulled into the hospital, a woman sat me in a wheelchair and pushed me into a delivery room. Two nurses appeared moments later with a heart monitor. They placed it on my belly as my doctor had done countless times before.

I looked over at Christian sitting in a chair across the room with a knowing smile. Only a little while now.

The nurses continued to slide the monitor over me for several minutes without hearing a heartbeat, and that’s when I knew something was wrong. I looked over at Christian again, but this time with concern. He tried to assure me that everything was okay, as any loving husband would do, but he couldn’t have known it wasn’t.

After what felt like an eternity of searching, the nurses finally had an ultrasound machine brought into the room. The woman who operated the ultrasound could not tell us anything. It felt like torture. We looked at each other, both silently asking the same question: “what is going on?”

When she walked out of the room, I said to Christian, “something is wrong and I’m so scared.” He took my hand in his and gently tried to reassure me again, but I could see the truth in his eyes. He knew it too.

Finally, the doctor quietly came in with a sober expression that immediately confirmed our fears. Softly, he began, “I am so sorry to have to tell you this, but we cannot find a heartbeat. I’m going to give you both time and then we are going to talk about where to go from here.”

The doctor walked out of the room, and when the door closed behind him, so did our world.

In a moment, everything that we thought would be came crashing into the reality of what is. This baby boy that I had carried for nine months was no longer with us, and I could hardly breathe.

Christian walked over to me, limply laying in the hospital bed with remains of cold gel on my abdomen from trying to find a heartbeat. We embraced tighter than ever before, then cried intensely in each other’s arms.

Grief came knocking as it always does — promptly, but uninvited. It crashed over us like cruel, merciless waves, unaware of the lives they were drowning.

When the doctor came back into the room he was gentle and compassionate. He explained to us what he knew: Levi had grown full term. He doesn’t understand what happened, but he is hoping when he’s is delivered there will be answers. He recommended starting an induction process since I was not dilated enough to get him here as soon as possible. We tried to nod in understanding of his words, but we couldn’t wrap our heads around them.

Suddenly, the contractions were no longer an exciting challenge of what was to be, but a harsh reminder of our current reality.

The hours following felt much like a nightmare. Christian called our parents, and in-between sobbing breaths, told them their grandson was gone. He sent out messages to our close friends and family begging for prayer.

I will not sugarcoat this time. It was the hardest, most painful moments of our entire life and it felt as though everything was broken. We did not think we would be able to go on. Our entire world felt shattered.

But this is when Jesus steps in, as He always does.

Only in our brokenness can we witness His healing.

Something happened in our hospital room that was rather unexplainable in our present circumstances; something that those of us who witnessed can never leave unchanged. Holy Spirit happened.

A calm, inconceivable peace covered the room. Joy and sorrow that were once assumed enemies quickly became close companions — for sorrow gives joy its validity and its ability to be trustworthy.

Family began trickling in and praying over us. We prayed with them. We felt God’s presence like never before.

We knew He hurt with us, but in a different way. He hurts for what we cannot see yet, while we hurt for all we can see now. For God, too, gave up his only son; only He gave Him willingly — to save us. And this son, Jesus, who experienced every kind of suffering that we do, still had to ask God the question: “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42).

For many of us in our questioning, it may be expressed this way: “Is there any way that I can experience Your purpose without the pain?”

The induction process began. As the Pitocin filled my body and mountains began climbing across a contraction monitor, we began praising.

We played worship music and let the words of Hope overtake the disappointment. We read Psalms aloud and replaced fear with Truth.

Before you think for a moment that we were so “strong” to have that kind of response in the face of this, know that it was only by the power of the Holy Spirit and the grace of Christ in that moment. Our strength did not exist. It drowned with the waves of grief.

The only strength left was God’s, and we witnessed its power that day.

Early Thursday morning, the doctor broke my water and the delivery of our son began. Suddenly, I felt afraid again — so incapable.

I requested to see my mom and she quietly came in with a smile on her face. She put her comforting, reassuring hands on me and whispered, “you are going to get through this because God will give you the strength. We are all praying for you outside that door.”

I felt a new determination when Christian came back into the room.

I may be exhausted emotionally, mentally, and physically, but God is not. He is ready to carry me in this, and I am only moments away from seeing my son.

Christian held my hand, kissed my forehead, and said, “are you ready for this?” to which I replied with a new sense of purpose, “yes.”

By God’s grace, our boy came quickly.

On October 31^st, 2019, Levi Christian Good was born in body, though his spirit was already in heaven. All 8 pounds and 4 precious ounces of him.

When we saw him for the first time we cried tears of joy and sorrow equally.

All of those kicks and hiccups and fist bumps in my belly were finally given a face, and he was absolutely beautiful.

We felt all of the emotions we imagine other parents experience when seeing their child for the first time — overwhelming pride, joy, and a keen awareness of the miracle we held in our arms. Only those feelings were joined by immense sorrow.

Our family came in to meet their grandson and nephew, surrounding us with support. One by one, they hugged us and looked at him, expressing what is too deep for words. They felt it too.

The most painful moment of that day was letting Levi go. We knew when the time was right, but it did not make it any easier to face. I cried bitterly as I held my son for the last time on this side of heaven.

The postpartum room that I was transferred to was so quiet. A silence that held the longing and the heartbreak for the cries of a baby we would never hear.

And that is when it began: the letting go of dreams.

Taking him on a walk in the stroller, putting him in his crib at night, riding in the tractor with dad, reading bedtime stories, teaching him how to ride a bike, watching him make friends, dancing with him at his wedding, together loving on his wife, witnessing him grow.

Every vision that we had over the past nine months floated away into the silence that now filled the room, ruthlessly empty of the life we had hoped for.

And then came the funeral arrangements, which no young parent ever expects to make. But there we were — pondering questions of where to bury him, our vision for his service — all of it.

God’s grace presented itself in many forms over those days, one being our family and funeral directors stepping in to make the process simple for us. Truly, we can never thank them enough.

When we left the hospital the following day and stepped into our vehicle where an empty car seat and full diaper bag lay, we wept. When we reached our road lined with fields stretching across our farm, knowing we would never get to show them to Levi, we cried again.

We let the pain come, and every reminder of the story we envisioned for our lives was laid at the feet of Jesus, followed by a desperate attempt to accept the story He had for us.

We were blessed with family and friends who brought meals, cards, and support of every form to encourage us. If I didn’t know the impact such support made before, I know now. God used our community in ways they will never know to comfort us in that time.

All at once, it was time for the funeral. It was a powerful day. We prayed for Holy Spirit to be present, and He was. We lifted our hands in praise as we sang “It Is Well with My Soul” and “Your Grace Is Sufficient for Me.”

With every soul in that church, we proclaimed together: and if not, He is still good.

The days, weeks, and months that followed were incredibly hard.

We knew there was no way around this valley, only through it.

And we are still walking through it. If there is one thing we have learned about grief in the light Hope is that there are moments of questioning, followed by moments of trusting, and healing comes when we embrace them both.

As Charles Spurgeon put it:

“I have learned to kiss the waves that throw me against the Rock of ages.”

We never did get answers about why Levi died so soon; science and medicine couldn’t make sense of it.

But we did receive an answer from God that fills us with peace:

“Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” — Psalm 139:16

Our days are numbered, according to God’s purpose.

Though Levi’s tiny feet never touched the ground, the Lord had a greater purpose for his short days — an eternal one. We are witnesses to it every single day.

The Lord used Levi’s life to change us and our perspective — to see God for the compassionate, merciful, loving Father He is. Not in spite of suffering, but because of it.

Few things reveal our desperate need of Jesus as suffering.

Few things teach us how to love our neighbors as suffering.

And few things serve as a more vivid reminder that this is not our home as suffering.

I want to leave you with a poem that Holy Spirit put words to in the early days of this year that truly encapsulate what we have learned through our son’s life.

My hope is that wherever you are today — whether living in blissful normalcy or in the agonies of grief — you will see God in it.

For He’s there if you will notice, working out an eternal purpose for our good. And He is patiently waiting for you to open your hands in surrender so that He can close them again with His promises.

He cares for you.

“I Trust Him Anyway”

Oh, what a merciful Savior!

Who gives and takes away.

I cannot grasp His purpose

But I trust Him anyway.

His will, who can know it?

Only eternity comprehends.

Our hearts on earth are broken

Wounds only He can mend.

A life so short and fleeting

I dare not waste the time.

So while my heart is beating

I’ll let His glory shine.

Oh, what a merciful Savior!

Who gives and takes away.

I cannot grasp His purpose

But I choose to trust Him anyway.

We didn’t expect to be moved to tears multiple times as we watched the memorial of a man we’d never met, but there we were: laying in bed on a Sunday afternoon with my laptop open, watching a memorial that will go down as one of the most impactful spiritual moments of our time.

The Holy Spirit’s presence was palpable, even in a room thousands of miles away from the service honoring the life of Charlie Kirk. We felt Him every time the gospel was shared (which happened continuously), every time the name of Jesus was proclaimed (more times than I can count), and during the beautiful songs of worship that filled that room and our laptop speakers.

And we felt the Holy Spirit acutely in the words that came out of Erika Kirk’s mouth to her husband’s killer, just eleven days after his death:

“I forgive you.”

All of this happened with the president of the United States and his entire cabinet as witnesses, along with the thousands of others in attendance and the millions of us watching online.

Was this the biggest stage for the gospel in history? Perhaps.

It was powerful. And it represented the revival that Charlie’s death has sparked across the world. A revival that cannot and should not be understated.

“God didn’t have to let us witness this moment.” Christian said as we sat in the living room, processing the memorial after putting our children to bed. “He is sovereign. He’s bringing His eternal plan to fruition, no matter what we see. But He gave us a great gift today; one that is lighting a fire in Christians to fight the good fight — to press on in our faith, no matter the cost.”

He’s right. By God’s grace, we are witnesses.

By historical evidence, it seems that the Lord gives each generation the opportunity to witness an outpouring of His Spirit through revival. The last one experienced by generations before us was the Jesus movement of the 70’s — just over fifty years ago.

And now, we are witnessing the Jesus movement of our generation unfold before our very eyes.

Over the past two weeks, we have watched unbelievers seek Truth and go to church for the first time. The gospel being talked about on platforms we never could have imagined. People purchasing their first Bible and others picking up the dusty one on their shelf. Everyone feeling the shift in our nation after we all watched a man be persecuted to the point of death for sharing Truth to the world.

But I think the thing that has surprised me the most as a witness to revival is the varying responses by those already following Jesus.

You would assume that every Christian would be elated to see Christ proclaimed like never before across their social media pages and in the news. One would think there would be nothing but fanning the flame by those who have spent years praying for the fire to come.

But this is not the case.

While many Christians are feeling emboldened, there are others who are feeling suspicious. And I can’t help but think this is the tale as old as time.

When the Spirit moves, there is power. And where there is power, there is fear.

I believe the heart of most Christians who are standing hesitantly in the background of this moment is a genuine desire for Truth to reign. For God not to be mocked by performance, by those seizing a moment for their own self-interest, or ever-changing trends that are gone as soon as the algorithm changes.

Dear Christian, if that is you, please know God cannot be mocked (Galatians 6:7). There will be those who are adding to the proclamations from selfish ambition, and their fruit will show. But it is not up to us to control the responses of people — unbelievers and believers alike — to the move of the Spirit. Every time the church has done this, it ends in a separation of Spirit and Truth. And The Bible says these cannot be separated for true worship to take place (John 4:24).

Some of the most pivotal spiritual movements in history included those already in the fold who resisted them out of fear or discomfort that came out in the form of cynicism.

But our mission in a moment like this is not to judge the outcome, but to join the outpour of the Holy Spirit. His Spirit dwells in us, and we are commanded not to quench Him (1 Thessalonians 5:19).

And remember the words of Paul in Philippians:

“What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.”

We don’t have to be afraid of God being misrepresented, of people being allured into the church by the moment rather than sincere faith, of a flame dying as quickly as it starts. We don’t have to be afraid because we are not in control — God is.

And no matter how you thought a revival would break out, it is undeniable that it is here. We either rejoice and join in, or critique while sitting idly by.

But please hear me when I say that the move of God is not a trend. What may fade in the headlines of news outlets and social media reels will not fade on the mark of eternity.

We should be champions of our faith when it’s loud and when it’s quiet, but champions all the same.

This is our moment. This is the gift God has given our generation.

How will we steward it?

With love,

Laura

In the weeks prior, my brother became severely ill with what we would soon discover to be a rare disease called Lemierre Syndrome. My family went from holiday festivities to hospital visits in the blink of an eye.

This was the beginning of a long, difficult journey for my brother, and my mom spent most days over the next month being with him at the hospital.

One evening, after hugging his neck beside the hospital bed, I came back to my family home and stood in the living room. The house was painfully quiet — which was not typical for the place that fourteen people once occupied. And even though it was into December now, no Christmas decorations were hung.

My mom, the one who faithfully brought the holiday magic into our home year after year, was now caring for another son that she didn’t know would have another

And our home felt it.

I didn’t know how to help. Some of my sisters are nurses and would give mom breaks by staying with my brother for a night or two at a time to help care for him. Other siblings cared for their own growing families.

All I could do was stare into a house empty of life.

So, I did the only thing I could…

I pulled the old popcorn tins that held all the family Christmas trimmings and spread them across the living room floor. I hung the garland over the stair rail, the stockings on the fireplace, and fluffed the branches of the faux Christmas tree.

Then, a couple of hours later, I put the final ornament on the tree.

I turned the Christmas lights on at home as my mom sat in the glow of hospital lights, and somehow, at fourteen, I knew that mattered.

It was a month full of disappointment and trials, but the beauty represented in the glow of a thousand tiny lights spoke of the hope we still held in our hearts.

You see, beauty holds up a kind of light in the darkness because it is a shadow of Truth.

And the truth we held onto in those difficult December weeks is the same truth that covered us when my brother and mom finally came home — that God’s mercy is never-failing, His grace all-sufficient, His love never-ending.

These days, as a mom myself and a keeper of our home, I still go back to that place all those years ago when I feel helpless and don’t know what else to do.

I remember the power of cultivating beauty — of the hope it holds and the Person it points to. And I ask the Lord to take my tiny offerings each day and use it for His glory, somehow, some way.

He’s never failed me yet.

I wrote about how God has shaped my understanding of order and the practical ways I’m bringing it into our days in this article.

What I want to share now is how He’s shaping my view of beauty and how I’m infusing it into this season.

Like the article on order, I hope this list will provide inspiration for bringing beauty into your home — whether it represents a faint glimmer of hope in a dark valley you are walking through, or it illuminates a season already full of joy.

Beauty always meets us where we are, speaking to the empty places in our hearts and filling them with life.

1. From fresh to dried blooms

During the spring and summer months, I am regularly bringing in wildflowers that grow along the lanes of our farm and sprawling branches from trees surrounding our house.

The vases filling the corners of our home are always on a rotation of living beauty from nature that echo the season.

Summer is a season where everything outdoors needs to be nurtured: weeds pulled, grass mowed, food planted and tended.

It’s a season full of abundance and adventure, and our homes tell the story.

But as this busy and beautiful season comes to an end, I’m ready to embrace the cooler months ahead with open arms and the slower pace that they provide.

I am moving from fresh flowers to mostly dried blooms, from needing to tend to things in the outdoor spaces every week to having space open up to nurture more indoors.

And this is what I love about living with the seasons.

Just when I’m longing for a different pace, nature comes with the refreshment I need. That is — the Lord providing through His creation the grace I need — season by season, year after year.

Thank you, Jesus!

2. Candles setting the tone

Candles have always been in the backdrop of dinner conversations, my quiet morning hours alone with Jesus before the house begins to stir, and setting the atmosphere for hospitality.

The simple act of lighting a candle transforms the most ordinary scenes into moments of beauty, so you will find them in every gathering place and reading corner of our home.

But never have I been more convinced of their power to set the tone of a room than the days we’re living now with our children.

Every morning, I light a candle at the table after the kids are settled in with their breakfast, and every evening candles are lit as we sit down for dinner as a family.

When that little flame rises, we rise with it — our kids privy to the cue that table manners are to be minded and people at the table treated with honor and respect.

We have a long way to go in all three departments, but the candle is setting the tone for the front and bookends of our day as a family.

Our kids know that mealtimes in our home are sacred, and there’s something about the glow of candlelight that help child and adult alike remember this truth.

3. Returning to sunrise prayer walks

Early on in our marriage, I began a practice that became a lifeline of grace: sunrise walks.

Before having children, I would often put headphones in and listen to music or a podcast, but after we lost our firstborn son, the Lord reshaped that time to be one of communion with Him in prayer — of quieting the noise of the world and attuning my heart to His still small voice.

When I think of the seeds He planted along those familiar dew-soaked paths each day across our farm, I think of Psalm 126:5-6:

Those who sow in tears
shall reap with shouts of joy!
He who goes out weeping,
bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,
bringing his sheaves with him.

Many, many tears were sown into the soil I walked with Jesus that year until joy began sprouting up row by row into a field full of His harvest within my heart.

After our second son became big enough to want to join the conversation on those morning walks, this rhythm slowly slipped away into others that fit the season.

But about a month ago, I felt the Lord nudging me to claim it again.

Our baby daughter is now sleeping in her own room, the boys in theirs, and there’s an hour between when I wake and when my husband leaves for work that I saw space to slip out the door with the sun for half an hour and still have time to pour over the pages of Scripture when I return.

And I feel that lifeline of grace again each time the morning breeze kisses my face — I sense His Spirit breathing God’s new mercies into me like He’s done so many times before.

4. Coffee + time with the Lord in bed on Saturday morning

During harvest season, most Saturday mornings Christian is out of the door by 7 a.m. just like every other day of the week. So something I’ve found to bring beauty into the weekend during a very heavy solo-parenting time has been providing space to linger in the restful atmosphere of our bedroom.

I let myself sleep longer, then get the kids’ breakfast going. Then I’ll turn on a show for them and make my way back to our bed where I’ll enjoy my coffee and time alone with the Lord (and Millie, of course;) in the quiet of our room.

I’ve come to look forward to this time so much during this season.

Having coffee in bed is like staying in your very own bed and breakfast, evoking all the warmth and rest that it accompanies. :)

5. Updating our annual photo album each month

Finally, an area of beauty that I had long desired to be apart of our family life, but for years could not seem to incorporate it into a rhythm that stuck: preserving our memories in annual photo albums.

I will admit, because I have been a photographer by trade for the last thirteen years and create albums for clients, doing them in my personal time felt like more work.

And yet, I could think of few things that mattered more to me than this.

So, over many years and hundreds of photos later, I finally bit the bullet and started small.

Ultimately, I want to have albums from every year of our family’s existence (a lofty goal), but I knew I had to start with addressing the current year and work backwards (much more reasonable) — and, most importantly, create a sustainable rhythm to make it happen.

So now, at the beginning of every month, I create the spreads for the previous month in that year’s album. I cannot tell you the joy it brings reflecting back on every month in photo form and the way it reminds me of the rich beauty God has provided to our family during this season.

Last year, I finished our first annual album! And just like so many other things, once I saw the finished work and what a treasure it is, I am incredibly motivated to keep going.

Here’s to filling shelves with them as the years tick by. :)

The thing I love about order and beauty is that they work in partnership, not competition, with one another (why I am doing this continuation article!).

How we bring both into our homes shifts season to season.

Give me another six months, and some of the things in both articles will, indeed, change. That’s part of what makes life vibrant!

So if you don’t know what else to do today, cultivate beauty. It matters.

With love,

Laura

Just the Sunday before, I shared a conversation with some women at church where enjoying the sunset every day was mentioned.

“I don’t remember the last time I saw a sunset” remarked one of them. “Because of all the trees, we rarely see them.”

It reminded me of the extraordinary blessing we have living on the open prairie, where watching the sun rise and set each day is our normal experience.

And i’ll never tire of them.

We finished up week two of corn harvest on the farm. The days are long, the work is hard, and the time together as a family is minimal during this season.

But just when the exhaustion comes to a peak and we are tempted to complain, an experience comes to remind us why we’re here in the first place.

Saturday evening was one of those experiences.

As I’m wrapping up dinner with the kids and putting the final dishes in the sink, I look out the window to the combine roaring by in the field behind our house.

The boys rush to the back door with faces smashed against the glass for the best view, I throw Millie in a carrier, and we all dash outside to behold the incredible scene unfolding in our backyard.

We watched as the tall corn rows turned to short stalks behind the combine as it made its way through rows as far as the eye can see. White egrets hovered over the golden ground to feast on leftover kernels, corn husks flew through the August blue sky, and barefoot little boys ran along the edge of the field to get as close as they could to harvest.

This is why we do it.

The long hours, the hard work, the temporary sacrifice on family time all come into perspective when we see the kind of childhood they are experiencing.

The kind of childhood that formed my husband.

The kind of life that’s now forming me.

The way it shapes our understanding of how God built into the foundation of nature seasons of hard work, but also seasons of beautiful rest.

And how it reminds us that anything worthwhile requires some level of sacrifice, but the joy of harvest far outweighs the long days it takes to get there.

So here’s to the sunrises and sunsets that we never have to miss,

the beautiful days we will one day miss,

and the adventure of building this beautiful life together.

With love,

Laura

Over the last few weeks, we made many transitions at once in our family. I began potty training our nearly 3-year-old and moving him to the “big boy room” with his older brother, AND starting our 6-month-old on solid food and moving her to the nursery.

As expected, it rocked our home in the beginning.

Our toddler didn’t want to be a big boy, so he told me so as I sat him on the potty one more agonizing time. And the novelty of getting to share a room with brother disrupted actually sleeping for awhile.

I knew all of this would happen, and yet, it didn’t make me less susceptible to the completely drained and ready-to-throw-in-the-towel moment in the bedroom after a long day of going through it as a mom.

But then one day, it got better.

One week I was ready to move everyone back to their old sleeping arrangements and let the boy wear diapers until he’s an adult, and the next I began to see the transition turn into our new normal.

I stepped into our kitchen one morning, looked at the monitor, and witnessed a moment that will live on in my heart: Caleb, our oldest, opening his eyes to his brother across from him. When their eyes met, his face lit up into the sweetest sleepy-eyed smile I’ve ever seen. The friendship they are forming behind within those walls is sacred, I thought.

And I came back to a truth echoed throughout my motherhood: it is always worth the temporary discomfort to get to the lasting joy.

Also, this is part of the reality of having children close in age. On one hand, you will have stages overlapping each other and it can be a lot at once; but on the other hand, you get through them quickly and you don’t lose your parental muscle that comes by going through the stages.

Let’s just say we haven’t lost our muscle since we began having kids. ;)

Savoring the wardrobe I already have

A few months ago, I felt the Lord leading me to fast from adding anything new to my wardrobe for the foreseeable future — a personal shopping fast.

It’s been a beautiful journey thus far, and I’ll probably do an article in the future of the experience. Right now, however, I’m letting Him lead my heart and attention in the quiet places.

But I did want to share one of the practices I implemented as part of the fast to help me savor the pieces in my wardrobe I already own.

Daily outfit photos.

Seems like a simple (almost silly) thing, but it has been such a fun way to document the ways I’m enjoying the beautiful garments already in my closet, and helping me remember what I actually love and wear the most.

Above and below are this week’s outfits from around home, running errands, and church!

That’s all for now!

With love,

Laura

It’s the early 2000’s. My sister and I stand in our shag-carpeted bedroom with butter yellow walls, surrounded by dolls, clothes and play food strewn about the room.

“We’re going to play a game” my sister began. My face lit up immediately. “Every time you pick up your things in our room, you get a ‘point’. But if one of us finds something not picked up by the other, the person who owns the item gets points taken away. Whoever has the most points at the end of this week wins.”

This sounded like fun — really, anything did when it was suggested by my sister two years above me; she was the companion of my childhood. Never mind that she made up the whole game as a creative tool to combat (or train?) her messy little sister.

When I was a girl, I chronically hoarded things of little value, left messes I had no intention of cleaning up, and procrastinated on what needed to to be done. I was impulsive and unkempt.

I was not born with a natural inclination towards orderliness; I was a typical creative soul who resisted anything that dared to stifle the wild and rapid flow within me.

It wasn’t until I started a business as a teenager that I learned it was actually the lack of order that stifled my creativity.

Our soul needs order

Learning the value of order in life was my first lesson in becoming an adult.

I may have been born with a particular disposition that includes certain personality traits, strengths and weaknesses; but becoming mature meant allowing those natural parts of myself to blossom into something that is a gift to the world, while being willing to learn from others what doesn’t come naturally to me.

Slowly but surely order became something I learned to nurture until, one day, it began nurturing me.

And along the way I learned that not only are order and beauty kindred spirits, but creativity itself flows most gracefully within limits.

Now I can hardly recognize the little girl who needed clever games to keep her room tidy, although the procrastination tendencies still wage war on the grown woman from time-to-time. ;)

I have come to believe that while there are things that are natural to our personalities, anything can be nurtured overtime (my next revelation on this note is when I learned to be an early riser, but we’ll save that for another time!)

Order is the steady rhythm behind a beautiful song; the form that poetry must abide; the edge of the ocean the waves cannot pass.

The foundational command God gave mankind in the beginning of creation is to bring order to the world! In Genesis 1, God commanded Adam to “fill the earth and subdue it” (verse 28).

The God of the universe is a God of order, and He created mankind to be an ordered people.

Practical ways I’m ordering my days

So I want to share a handful of ways I am bringing order to our home in this season of raising little ones, in case they can provide inspiration to yours.

I will start with this simple routine because it has brought me so much joy in the last six or so months:

1. Preparing our morning smoothie before cleaning up the kitchen every evening

We love smoothies. They are one of the easiest ways to start the day with a blast of nutrients for the whole family, and we joke (but are kind of serious) that we didn’t get sick during flu season this past fall/winter because we consumed so many of our orange-ginger-and-greens packed smoothie recipe during that time.

However, preparing a smoothie can be tedious when you are also a mom trying to get breakfast on the table quickly for hungry toddlers.

When my husband suggested doing the prep-work the evening before, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t been doing it all along.

I now throw all of the ingredients in the blender, then put it in the refrigerator to add ice and blend the next morning. It is seriously like waking up to a gift every morning!

A random note you may find helpful: I put the ingredients we regularly use in smoothies in one drawer beneath where our blender is stationed, and then keep all the freezer ingredients together in one section of the freezer drawer.

Make your kitchen work for you, friends!

2. Keeping the freezer stocked with easy + nutritious breakfast items

Keeping with morning time (because how we start the day matters, but with little ones, it seems to matter a lot), I have to share what I’ve been doing for years now that keeps breakfast time incredibly simple.

I want to ease into my mornings, so having quick breakfast items on hand in this very hands-on season of our family makes that possible.

Every week, I rotate between making whole wheat bread, muffins, and granola.

When I make bread, I use the same recipe; I always keep sandwich bread and rolls in stock, then alternate between making cinnamon swirl bread and cinnamon rolls.

For muffins, I rotate between recipes, and triple or quadruple batch them. I usually end up with enough to last a couple of weeks.

I started regularly making granola this year and love having it in stock. It is so easy to make, and it works as cereal, topping for a yogurt parfait (our favorite), or a healthy snack.

During the week we almost always have a smoothie, a bakery/bread item, and some form of protein — usually a greek yogurt parfait or eggs — all of which comes together in a matter of minutes.

3. Getting the kids dressed and their beds made before breakfast

And the last morning rhythm that makes mornings with little ones flow smoothly for me during the week: getting the kids dressed and rooms tidy before ever entering the kitchen.

Somewhere along the way, I found that if we went to breakfast in pajamas and left beds unmade, it felt like a mountain to climb to do those simple tasks afterward.

But right after they wake, they are motivated to get ready for the day. Then, when breakfast is done, they can immediately go play while I clean-up the kitchen, and everyone is happier for it!

This was a lesson in how the order of a routine makes all the difference in its success.

It really is the little things!

4. Laying out tomorrow’s clothes when taking off today’s

Speaking of getting dressed… I also feel 100% better if I do not go to breakfast in pajamas (that is, during the week. Weekends are for breakfast in pajamas ;).

A motto I live by when it comes to getting dressed:

Dress not for how you feel, but for how you want to feel.

I have a pretty good idea of what the next day will look like when I am getting ready for bed, so I can pick out an outfit accordingly.

If i’m working in the yard, I want to feel breezy. If i’m baking, I want to feel lovely. If I’m cleaning, I want to feel comfortable. If i’m running errands, I want to feel chic.

You get the picture.

I have made it a rule to quickly pick out the next day’s outfit and lay it out before I take a shower; then, I will slip it on as soon as my alarm goes off in the morning. If I am wearing makeup that day, it will be put on sometime after breakfast is cleaned up.

But getting dressed is the first — and biggest — step.

5. Daily tidy-up before nap time and bedtime

Unlike my younger self, this now mom of three does not thrive in clutter — and I certainly do not have an older sister to clean up after me; neither does my husband.

So when we had our oldest, I taught him from the time he was old enough to understand that everything in our home has a place.

What I didn’t want to do all day was micromanage the clutter, or be constantly cleaning up after my children.

Everyone needs space to play, create, imagine, make messes — even as adults; but we also need space to rest in beautiful order.

Our family’s rhythm to achieving both is having two “tidy-ups” a day: one before nap-time, and one before the kids go to bed. And yes! Our kids clean up their own toys. While we have no problem helping them, we are not spending time after they are in bed cleaning up their messes.

It’s amazing to me how quickly kids catch on, and then grow to love the order too.

6. Laundry done by Thursday

I am not one of those people that hates laundry, but I do not want to be doing it on the weekend.

And, if it’s done during the week, we always have the clothes we need for the weekend activities!

I’ve found a rhythm that works well for this season:

Monday - Wash + fold linens (towels, sheets, etc.)

Tuesday - Wash + dry me and Christian’s clothes

Wednesday - Fold + put away me and Christian’s clothes / Wash + dry kids clothes

Thursday - Fold + put away kids clothes

Friday-Sunday - Relish a clear and clean laundry room!

3. Quarterly, Monthly, and Weekly planning system

Again, I am not a “planner” by nature; I am a creative. I would flit from thing to thing, letting it take me wherever the wind goes if I had no reigns.

But I am a wife, mother, keeper of our home, and for many years, a business owner.

At some point or another, the reigns had to come if I were to go in any intentional direction.

A little over five years ago I discovered Cultivate What Matters — a company with shared values, who makes these beautiful goal planners that don’t just align a to-do list, but help identify the greater vision for your life and what goals and habits align with that vision.

For much of my adult life, I have made annual goals. But in the season I’m in now where the majority of my focus is in our home, and where things change so rapidly season-to-season with our kids’ ages, I transitioned to setting quarterly goals.

I genuinely look forward to looking at three months at a time with fresh eyes, and spending time in prayer and reflection over where to put my focus during that season; it transforms my days.

But something the CWM planners taught me to do is not only set big-picture goals, but have a time every month and week that I’m breaking those goals down into actionable steps.

So this is how my process looks right now — always beginning with asking the Lord where He would have me put my attention:

Quarterly - Writing out big-picture vision and goals for the season.

Monthly - Reviewing quarterly goals and choosing what gets my attention that month.

Weekly - I have a “weekly review” on every Friday afternoon where I look at our calendar and that month’s focus, then make a (loose) plan for the upcoming week accordingly.

This system works beautifully for me. I’ve been doing some version of it for so long now that I rarely neglect making it a priority; this regular rhythm of reflection and renewal makes all the difference in me living on purpose from day-to-day.

And the longer I do this, the less I make goals that either a. make zero sense for my season, or b. do not truly align with where I know God has called me.

I’ve come to believe that people who hate making goals have probably never made ones that actually align with what matters to them, or do not know how to break them down into something actionable for their daily lives.

But gosh, we all need them!

Without a direction, we will be reactionary people. Having goals doesn’t mean there is no room to pivot — that is life — but it does help you regularly take captive how you are spending your time and resources; and I would argue this is essential to living well.

So i’m no longer unkempt (most of the time, at least).

But now, instead of chasing a million things at once and getting nowhere, I can move towards a few meaningful things at a time that align with where I truly want to go.

And as a mom of three young children, with days and arms fuller than they’ve ever been, my creativity is flowing more wildly than it ever has; not because it has no boundaries, but precisely because it does.

With love,

Laura

No matter how many times I experience bringing a child into the world, it never loses its magnitude; in the hours that follow, I feel like I can fly, even as my body is depleted.

In birth, a mysterious event takes place:

As a mother surrenders to her contractions, new life follows.

As her body empties, another one emerges.

In the hours that follow, the parents are completely enamored by this eternal soul before them.

Time slows. The world becomes small. Everything that matters is clear.

Then they go back to the life they left when the labor began, attempt to merge this new life into the old one until, slowly but surely. . .

Time speeds back up. The world becomes enormous. And everything that matters is fuzzy again.

They loved those hours after birth, but what led them there is forgotten:

an emptying of self.

The pain of birth is that it requires all of you.

The beauty of it is that you get the fullness of life in return.

The problem comes when we return to life as we knew it and fall prey to the lie that we no longer need to surrender, or that we can continue on as though nothing has changed when everything has.

Christian and I found ourselves here five months ago when we crossed the threshold with arms full of new life again, stepping out of the miraculous experience of birth and back into the familiar mundane of daily life.

Those first weeks the miraculous spills over into the mundane. The exhilaration we felt holding our daughter for the first time lingered on as we watched her brothers hold her; and there is no greater joy than knowing the footprint of our home was filling with the footprints of children.

But as the weeks tick by, the newness wears off, and the community meal train ends. . .

Life begins filling back up with all its demands, and our eyes lose sight of what is important.

And this is when most parents begin looking for relief.

A Longing for Relief

Within the first couple of weeks of our daughter’s birth, I found myself in a dangerous cycle I’d been in many times before with a newborn: meaningless scrolling.

The frequent nursing sessions during that stage thrust me into forced stillness — and I am not good at being still.

Instead of seeing these regular pauses in my day as an invitation to find refreshment in Jesus during a time I needed it most, I mindlessly turned to my phone for distraction instead.

Webster’s dictionary defines distraction as “a thing that prevents someone from giving full attention to something else.”

Or someone else.

It fills me with sadness when I think about how much joy the Lord had for me in those moments I squandered on something that drained me in the end.

However, I am grateful He woke me up quickly, not allowing the cycle to go on for long; God used Sarah Clarkson’s beautiful book, Reclaiming Quiet, to get my attention.

Sarah reflects with honesty in a way I can relate:

"I began to wonder if at times my smart phone had become my replacement for the Holy Spirit, the ever-present comforter I turned to in times of fear.”

The irony is that our phones present themselves as comfort, but increase our fear. They look like an escape, but become a prison. They promise relief, but only increase discomfort.

But the real problem isn’t an object, or the virtual world it leads us into; it’s the Person it leads us away from.

And the more we turn to our phones over God when we want a little relief, the harder it becomes to choose Him when we need so much more.

Consider this powerful truth from John Eldridge in his book, Experience Jesus. Really:

“The sin of Esau at its core is choosing relief over God. . .

It’s not that we don’t seek relief; it’s where we seek it. . . If you do not choose to turn your back on the world, you will find your intimacy with Jesus slipping away.”

The Deception of Comfort

Many months ago, I was studying a book with two of my sisters.

There was a question raised in one of the chapters that we all answered:

“What word would you describe your relationship with God right now?”

My response? “Comfortable.”

Comfortable. The word pricked my heart; it revealed my relationship with Jesus in a way that I hadn’t acknowledged.

It was comfortable. I loved God with all my heart and wanted to know Him; I poured over His word as often as I could, and sought Him in prayer throughout the day.

My relationship with Him was growing, but was it deepening?

I was getting to know more of God, but was I making myself fully known by Him?

The Holy Spirit revealed something in my heart that day, and it opened a door that I had subconsciously kept locked.

I was still holding back in my devotion to Jesus. I wasn't loving Him with everything that I am: mind, heart, body, and spirit.

I had not fully surrendered myself to true intimacy with Him that uproots any intimacy with the world.

And the root of my fear? The real reason why I hadn’t let Jesus into that door of my heart? I was afraid of it — true, vulnerable intimacy.

Somewhere deep within I still believed that fully surrendering myself to oneness with Christ cost too much; and at the core of this belief is the lie that He won’t be enough to satisfy.

A lie that the enemy has resurfaced in my life again and again.

But it is just that: a lie. Once it is acknowledged, and I ask the Holy Spirit to break any ties with its power over me, I am then free to experience a satisfaction like no other:

Intimacy with Jesus.

I love how Timothy D. Willard expresses oneness with God in his book, The Beauty Chasers:

“The price of intimacy looks like a constant emptying; like pouring water from a bucket that never runs out. Intimacy’s invitation asks for confession but in turn gives grace; it desires repentance while granting mercy.”

Remaining comfortable in any relationship feels like the safe choice at the time, but anyone who has done this in a marriage or friendship knows that comfort is what slowly erodes intimacy.

We must move past comfort if we are to grow at all in relationship.

We Were Made for More

When David says these words in Psalm 42:1, he is expressing a longing for the Lord that only one who is truly intimate with Him can experience:

“As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.”

I think most believers are experiencing a mere glimmer of this kind of oneness with Jesus. I have to believe this to be the case when it is so rare to hear Christians describe the lived experience of relationship with Jesus at all, outside of what we do for Him, or what we know about Him.

But this is never how we were intended to live as followers of Christ.

Romans 8:11 says “the Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you.”

We were made to walk by the Spirit who lives in us, and only in doing so can we experience His presence and the “fullness of joy” as described in Psalm 16:11.

But we have become such functional materialist in so many of our western churches, claiming to live by Truth but forsaking Spirit, that we are like wanderers who have lost their way home.

Christians are often warriors for the Bible (and we should be), and yet we are losing the battle in the very thing it points us to — what Jesus sacrificed His life to give:

Restored relationship with God.

Francis Chan, in his book, Forgotten God, pinpoints this place we find ourselves:

"If I were Satan and my ultimate goal was to thwart God's kingdom and purposes, one of my main strategies would be to get churchgoers to ignore the Holy Spirit. The degree to which this has happened (and I would argue that it is a prolific disease in the body of Christ) is directly connected to the dissatisfaction most of us feel with and in the church. We understand something very important is missing. . .

Many of us don't need more knowledge about the Spirit from a cerebral vantage point -- what we need is experiential knowledge of His presence.”

What tore at the death of Jesus Christ? The veil that separated us from His presence.

God made a way through Jesus to have unrestricted fellowship with Him in any place, at any time.

“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:18)

We became His temple.

And this means that we can “approach the throne of grace with confidence” and “receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (Hebrews 4:16)

Even before Adam and Eve separated themselves (and the rest of mankind) from God’s presence in the garden through sin, He had a plan for restoring it again.

Jesus wants relationship with us; He gave His life for it.

To think a Christian’s relationship with God would be less intimate, joy-filled, and experiential as the relationships we have with each other when He is the only one who lives in us is completely contrary to the Truth revealed in Scripture.

We were made to live continually in His presence.

“If we only knew”

“There is no sweeter manner of living in the world than continuous communion with God. Only those who have experienced it can understand. . .

If we only knew how much we need God’s grace, we would never lose touch with Him.”

— Brother Lawrence: The Practice of the Presence of God

If we only knew.

Emptying is where we must start — pouring ourselves out completely and totally at the foot of the cross.

Then, a miracle happens: a new life is born.

God in His incomprehensible mercy and grace fills us back up with the fullness of Himself.

But as we step over the threshold into a new life with Jesus, we cannot forget that there is still a war happening outside; an enemy that is constantly trying to fill our world with distraction to keep us from awareness of Him and communion with Him.

The weapons of the enemy look more like something to ease the pain than deepen it; but deepen it, he will.

The kingdom of darkness empties us, but leaves us desolate.

The kingdom of Light empties us so that we can be restored.

The question is always: which kingdom is holding our attention?

Are we willing to accept short-lived relief that merely distracts us from our pain? Or, will we surrender to the long-term restoration that invites Jesus into it?

The choice is ours.

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” — Matthew 7:7

“We are content with too little” brother Lawrence said, and I agree.

We are too easily pleased by the pleasures of this world that we are are missing the greatest pleasure of all: the presence of Jesus.

For this reason, I am currently memorizing the sixteenth chapter of Psalms.

I am so easily distracted by things that keep my attention away from Him that I need a constant reminder of this truth:

“In your presence there is fullness of joy;

at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

May we live continually in Him.

With love,

Laura

LETTING GO

I sat across from them in the living room, watching the scene unfold: Christian firmly holding our son in his lap while his small body sat tense with anger and his hands curled tightly into fists.

The evening started great, but one small disappointment in our son’s world left him spiraling into anger and discontentment. He lost all self-control when he realized there was no more of the thing he had finished, and it resulted in him being miserably unable to appreciate the other good things right in front of him.

“Son, the strongest thing you can do right now is let go” my husband said as he gently placed his hands over our little boy’s and brought them closer to his chest.

“Whatever you are holding onto is what’s making you weak.”

His words have rung in my mind as I’ve reflected on what I wish to communicate in this final, and essential, part of the Make Home with Your Season series.

Just as we must let go of the clothing that no longer serves us and surrender expectations we have around what home can look like in our season, so it is with cultivating our hearts.

We must begin with letting go.

NEW THRILLS ALL THE TIME

In C.S. Lewis’s book, Mere Christianity, there is a section where he discusses Christian marriage. He contrasts the idea of “being in love” (what some would call falling in love) with the commitment of marriage. In the first, there are intense feelings of passion and excitement. In the second, there is deep unity and strength.

The problem is that so many couples walk into marriage “being in love” and walk out as soon as those feelings fade away; what is heartbreaking about this reality is that they are exiting the relationship at the very prelude to deeper love and passion.

"In this department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not last. . . If you go through with it, the dying away of the first thrill will be compensated for by a quieter and more lasting kind of interest. . .

Let the thrill go—let it die away—go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow—and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time."

C.S. Lewis put words to something we have all wrestled with at various points of life.

No matter how much we try to cling to an experience, feeling, or even period of time… It slips through our fingers.

Fall must give way to winter.

Babies do not keep.

Things inevitably fade or break.

The most beautiful experiences eventually come to an end.

Our ability to cultivate hearts that fully embrace, find joy, and grow into the season God has placed us swings on the hinges of surrendering what has already passed; but on the other side of the door? New thrills all the time.

I am experiencing this right now as I begin to surrender a business that has been a big part of my life for many years (more on this another time).

I knew it was time to let it go for the “quieter interest” of being an available mother at home to our growing family, and a supportive wife/partner to Christian in his/our business ventures; however, it wasn’t until we officially closed the doors to the business that the Lord began to open new doors I couldn’t have imagined walking through before.

It didn’t happen all at once. The Lord is gentle in His leading and timing.

But I continue to be amazed at the margin I feel (even as my hands and days have gotten more full), the inspiration that has flooded in, and the ways in which I long for the presence of Jesus to cover me more than ever before.

This new world I find myself in began with letting the old thrills of the season passed die away.

Surrendering what God was leading me away from paved the way to receive the beautiful gifts — the new thrills — He had waiting for me on the other side.

SEARCH FOR THE LIGHT

“What stage of your family has been your favorite?” I asked the older mom who was just a few years away from being an empty-nester sitting next to me.

Her eyes twinkled as she reflected on her motherhood journey thus far, then she looked at me with a smile.

“Honestly, I loved them all. Each stage has its unique challenges and incredible gifts. When I no longer had babies, I didn’t look back wishing I had babies again. I relished that season, but I was also grateful to be in the next one.”

I was refreshed and inspired by her response. It wasn’t the typical “things just get harder from here” or “you’re going to miss this” kind of answer you hear from parents in her stage of life.

This was a mom who finds beauty right where she is.

And this is the kind of mom I long to be.

I am in the sunrise of motherhood right now. The break of dawn into the anticipation and newness of becoming a mother has passed, and now the magical light of young children mark my days.

If I’ve learned anything in the short time I’ve been a mom it is that there is light and darkness in every season, but we get to choose where our mind and heart dwell.

In one of my favorite passages in the Bible, John 14, Jesus says something that often captures my attention:

“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.”

“Let not.” These words tell us something important. Throughout Scripture, it is made clear that darkness of any kind does not have ultimate power to rule over us; we only let it if we choose.

And the choice to “let not our hearts be troubled” is only possible in believing God is working in and through us.

When I struggle to dwell in the light, I say these these words of David from Psalm 116 to my heart (sometimes out loud!):

“Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.”

As a loving Father, God does not force His children to give anything to Him (give in the sense of surrender — for we know all that we have is already His).

I love these words by Hannah Whitall Smith in her profound book, The Christian’s Secret to a Happy Life:

“Just as the potter, however skillful, cannot make a beautiful vessel out of a lump of clay that is never put into his hands, so neither can God make out of me a vessel unto His honor unless I put myself into His hands.”

Oh, the joy we miss when our hands are curled tightly into fists.

For if we would only put it all into His hands, He would rule over it and rescue us indeed; and only in this place is light found.

GROW TO NEW DEPTHS

Life with Jesus is the most beautiful, thrilling, and incredible adventure I’ve ever been on, and no earthly relationship or experience can compare. It overwhelms my heart with joy to know that it only gets better as we draw closer to eternity.

But like all grand adventures, there will be discomfort and trials along the way; and in the Christian’s adventure, Jesus guarantees it:

“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

This reality needn’t scare us, but cause us to remain closer to our Guide — the Holy Spirit living in us.

If there is one truth I want to leave you with as I close this article and series, it is this:

In every season, there is a cosmic war happening in the background:

Our enemy who seeks to “kill, steal, and destroy” (John 10:10).

These days, his primary tools seem to be distraction and chaos.

And our Savior, who came that we may “have life and have it abundantly.”

Abundant life is found in union with Jesus, and this union is the only pathway to moving beyond distraction and into deeper relationship with Him; out of chaos and into His peace.

Do not look at the season you are in and place growing your relationship with the Lord as optional. It is foundational. The stakes are much too high.

You will not survive the battle for your heart unless you put Him above all.

Life is not lived in length, but depth. Deepen your life with Christ and you will find more joy than you could ever know waiting for you in every season.

With love,

Laura

“Mama, let’s light a candle. That would make breakfast so pretty.”

I smiled and nodded at my then three-year-old boy, lit the candle sitting atop our kitchen island, then bent down to give his forehead a kiss while thinking to myself: he is becoming a student of beauty in our home.

In our modern western society that views the little years of child-rearing as something to survive rather than delight in, and children in general as a hindrance to our dreams and desires rather than a purification of them, it is no surprise that the homes of young families are often marked by chaos more than beauty.

It is also no wonder so many parents are desperate to have their children out of the house as much as possible during the week, while feeling frazzled by the the end of a weekend when the whole family is under one roof again for a long stretch of time.

Right now, I have two boys, ages four and two, and a nearly three-month-old girl. I am no stranger to the extra messes that come with my current season of raising littles, or the bliss of a clean, quiet home when they are out of it for a period of time.

But early on in motherhood I knew I would starve myself and my family of the nourishment we need to thrive if I did not create a culture of order and beauty within our home, no matter the stage we found ourselves.

In Edith Schaffer’s book, The Art of Homemaking, she wrote these profound words:

"You should feel 'at home' here, because you have made it home with something of yourself. It seems to me, that whether it is recognized or not, there is a growing frustration which increases in harmfulness as time goes on, when people are always daydreaming of the kind of place in which they would like to live, yet never making the place where they do live into anything artistically satisfying to them."

After reading her words years ago, I made a commitment: I could not wait for my children to grow up to create a home we delight in. How I go about that will be unique to this season from the next, but that is what makes home vibrant.

I never wanted the atmosphere of our home to be static, but rather living into the beauty of the season God placed us.

I have found a few truths helpful in living this out as the keeper of our home, and my desire in sharing these now is the hope that they can encourage you to make your dwelling “a place that is artistically satisfying to you” with the resources available to you now.

1. Embrace the art of your season.

A couple of months ago, we had a small house fire that forced us into a mini remodel to the kid’s rooms. While choosing paint colors and details that would go into bringing these spaces back to life, I thought about how much joy I find in creating rooms for my children.

There is a spirit of playfulness, curiosity, and boldness that comes out of me when dreaming up a vision for their rooms that wasn’t present when creating spaces for just Christian and me.

I think part of this is because I know I am creating places that will change as they do, and that provides freedom from imperfection. There isn’t the weight of permanence that we often feel (even though we shouldn’t) when creating the “adult” spaces of our homes.

But the other part is knowing the reality of how rapidly they are changing, which generates an urgency in me to create spaces that inspire who they are now and who they are becoming.

I don’t have time to think for years about what kind of atmosphere I want to create for them. I just need to get creating, then allow the rooms to evolve with my children.

Our home is in its whimsical, playful season. We color outside of the lines and don’t take ourselves too seriously. We are in the learning-to-walk, wonder-filled, finding—our-God-given-passions stage.

The “art” of our home will one day be more developed and matured as we develop and mature. But the canvas of our lives now is no less rich in color and beauty.

2. Get rid of what’s in the way.

It is common for parents in our season of raising littles to think you have to live with clutter, overstimulating and oversaturated toys/baby gear all over the house, as well as constant noise until they’re grown. This is not true.

We get to set the tone of our homes, not our children — or even our parents who (lovingly) give to our children.

Being number eleven in a family of twelve, I had the privilege of watching many sisters and brothers become parents before I did. I was able to see the reality of how little you really need, and how having too much often resulted in just having more, less important things to manage — or a disordered and chaotic home.

I didn’t want either.

We have a rule in our home: if you bring something in, something must go out. This applies to toys, our wardrobes, home decor, all the stuff in our lives (it also applies to the responsibilities we take on as well, but that’s another topic for another day).

God created us as finite beings. The more we resist this truth, the greater our frustration. Contentment is found in embracing our limitations.

We can also teach our children when to be still and when to be quiet. While this is a concept that seems foreign in our modern age of child-centered homes, these are valuable (and biblical) skills that grow deep character in our children. We have not arrived in this department at all, but we are starting to see tiny buds of fruit bearing from the seeds we are planting by God’s grace and strength, and we know it is worth the extra intention such training requires.

Respect and consideration for others can reign in our homes if we take the precious time to disciple our children in this way.

3. Find joy in the process.

I did photography work for the HGTV show, Home Town, for a number of years. It was truly a collaboration of passion points for me: my love for photography and my love for home. But being behind-the-scenes of a reality TV show centered around home renovations was eye-opening.

I think one of the reasons we love these types of shows is because we get to watch the process from beginning to end and see beautiful results. The grand reveal. But what I know about these shows is that the reveal is actually only the beginning of the homemaking process for the people living there.

They are able to get the bones of (certain rooms) in their home renovated, and a real-life Pinterest board of how to style it. But at the end of the reveal, all of the furniture (except the few pieces gifted by a company or made for the show) and styling pieces will be taken away unless they purchase all of it, which few people can afford. So after the cameras are gone and everything is taken down for the show’s purposes, the homeowners must begin the real journey of slowly making it theirs.

This is the true reality for most of us. Christian and I do not have the budget to completely furnish and decorate every room of our home all at once. But even if we did, I wouldn’t want to because the most meaningful and storied homes are those built over time with great intention and care.

I love the quote from interior designer Leanne Ford:

“I don’t want perfect. I want special.”

Isn’t that what we’re after? I don’t want our home to look like it came right out of a section in Target or a page of a Pottery Barn magazine. That means nothing to me or the people who live here.

I want a home filled with hanging copper pots from my grandmother who is now with Jesus. Pools of wax on every candlestick because they are used every day. Cookbooks with splatters on them from making real meals for my family. The lamp I found for $5 at a flea market while shopping with my children that still makes me smile. Vases in every corner, ready to be filled with the branches and flowers of the season. Photographs of memories buried deep in our hearts.

A living home is what I’m after. And anything alive is always changing.

With love,

Laura