My husband looks at the cost estimate and slides it back across the table. “No,” he says calmly, matter-of-fact.

Our house needs new siding. The eaves have wood rot, and we’re not actually open to replacing the historic rosewood siding with plastic. We’ve explained this to the salesmen who knocked on our door. But they see the wood rot and want to help. The two younger men throw in more discounts, including giving up their own commission to make the sale.

“I could actually afford that monthly payment,” Garth says.

“And it’s 0% interest for the life of the loan,” the younger man with tan skin and dark hair points out. “It’s a really good deal.”

After they leave, Garth looks at me and jokes uncomfortably, “I feel like I just swindled someone.”

“Did we?” I say sincerely.

The day they come to put up the new siding it is barely over 30 degrees, mid-January. The entire crew is Mexican, including their foreman, who seems to be the only one fluent in English. When they start tearing the siding off the house, I run outside and find the foreman.

“I thought you were just covering the original siding. You were supposed to leave it,” I say.

“Uh… let me call the project manager,” he says.

Half an hour later, the company calls me. One of the owners explains that if they left the siding, they wouldn’t be able to wrap the windows properly. I feel in my gut he is lying. Our contract says the historic siding stays instead of stripping it to lay new insulation. But one third of our house has now been stripped of siding, and I let them.

Today, my son successfully left the store with nothing. Not without tears, but I’m still proud of both of us for getting out of there without buying anything.

He wants so much, and often people give it to him. But I’m trying to raise a kid who will grow into a man who can hear “no” without throwing a fit, who doesn’t feel entitled to take whatever he wants by any means necessary. That means he needs to hear “no” now, and for the adults in his life to stick to their no even when he gets upset or sheds some tears. We need to be resilient so that he can become resilient.

I don’t want him to grow into a man who can’t ever take no for an answer and whines, cheats, manipulates, or intimidates his way to the outcome he wanted. Honestly, that doesn’t sound like a very fulfilling way to live.

But it feels like the whole of society is working against raising my son this way. There’s a discomfort with telling him no, or even disappointing him, that I see from most adults in his life. As soon as he even hints at melting down, they want to make it better. And don’t get me wrong, I want to live in a world that is tender toward little boys, that is kind yet firm in discipline. I appreciate the overall cultural shift toward discipline that doesn’t always involve punishment, consequences that don’t involve intentional harm.

I read an article a few weeks ago by about the lack of accountability for sexual predators in Evangelical institutions, where she says,

Her questions raised here reflect mine as I raise my son.

My husband often jokes that people just want to give him things, even now, in his thirties. He’s not a cute a little boy anymore, and yet he lives with an awareness that if he is sweet and kind his life will be easy.

My opening story isn’t the only time we’ve had people bend over backwards to make things work for us. For awhile, it was easy to believe what people often tell us as they work harder than necessary on our behalf: “You seem like good people.” While yes, I do want society to reward goodness more often than it does, I don’t think people's gut feelings about us are the main driver in this treatment we experience.

I think it is more culturally ingrained than we’d like to admit.

When I told my next door neighbor about how Garth jokes that people just want to give him things, she said, “My husband says that too! No joke, we have that conversation often.”

My neighbor used to teach in China. She lived there for four years before her husband moved there before they got married. He had a teaching degree, but she had a Master’s relevant to the field. Yet, she said, when he moved there, he was immediately making nearly three times her income. “He felt like a millionaire compared to me,” she said. “It’s not even just America. White men get this treatment all over Asia.”

I don’t have research on this—I hope to do more digging one day—but I think there’s something more deeply psychological on a societal level going on here. And it makes sense: colonization took place all over the globe. There may well be something deeply ingrained in global societies conditioned to appease white men. If we’re good to them, maybe they’ll be good to us. At times, I have wondered this as a minority with poor English skills kindly gives something to my son. Is there something in them that hopes this gentle and kind white boy will grow up to respect people like them?

When I told another friend I was writing this essay, she said she was looking forward to reading it, because she and her partner talk about it a lot too. She’s with my husband’s best friend, who is Black, but she has a teenage son from a previous relationship. They talk often about how complicated it is to raise an empathetic and responsible white son in contrast with how Black families raise their sons. They can see clearly the ways his life is sometimes easier, and how much harder it is to raise him into a man who isn’t entitled. She’s the one who named for me that it often feels like the rest of society is working against them to this affect.

The consequence of raising boys who aren’t accustomed to hearing “no” is that they grow into men who can’t self-soothe when they receive no as an answer. On a societal scale, I believe this is what we’re seeing.

The solution is to get better at saying no to our sweet little white boys while they’re still in the safe containers of our comfort and love, teaching them the same resilience the rest of us have had to learn our whole lives. That no means no, and that’s ok.

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In between my appendix rupturing and the surgery to remove said appendix (yes, they wait 6-8 weeks to do surgery if your appendix ruptures, and that’s if they decide it needs to be removed), I was in a wedding. Being the Matron of Honor, the wedding was a bit all-consuming for a few weeks, and I felt a little helpless being 1) so far away (the wedding was in Florida) and 2) very low energy and in pain with a still sick appendix. I won’t go into details on this one because it would be ungracious of me, but I am still reeling and processing that experience.

And just three weeks after returning home, I had surgery to remove my problematic appendix. Here’s where I prepare you for the story ahead—it turns out, I was sicker than any of us thought.

My surgery was scheduled for 9:30 that Friday morning. It was supposed to be laparoscopic, a two hour surgery. They said if they needed to open me up for any reason, that they’d keep me through the weekend and I’d then go home on Monday. But a simple outpatient procedure is what they expected and prepared us for.

When I woke up in the post-op recovery room, a nurse came over to inform me that I would be staying in the hospital and they were getting a room ready for me. She said my husband was waiting to see me and that I could see him when I got to my room. And then I fell back to sleep for I don’t know how long. When I woke again, a nurse reassured me that it had been awhile but they were getting a room ready and I’d be up there within an hour. I don’t remember being moved to my room.

I remember Garth beside me. I remember him telling me that surgery was a lot more than they had expected. I remember asking who was with the kids and him telling me our neighbors had come over and they were eating pizza. I remember watching a video of my neighbor’s kids playing with mine in our dining room, and thanking her for helping with them. I remember Garth kissing my forehead like conveying all his love depended on it, squeezing my hand, and leaving looking worn. I didn’t put the pieces together then that he had waited all day to see me. That my surgery had been hours longer than the planned two hour procedure.

I slept.

On Saturday and Sunday Garth brought the kids by for about an hour each day. They gloried over my epic 11th floor view of downtown St Paul. Sunday morning we watched church online from my hospital room and one of our pastors came by to administer communion. I reassured the kids that I should be back home in the next two days.

That afternoon, I couldn’t keep food down. An x-ray showed an obstruction in my small intestine, my body’s reaction to surgery. They placed an NG tube to pump everything back out of my stomach (a thoroughly horrible experience that left me gagging constantly for two days). I was terribly hungry and couldn’t eat.

Tuesday night, they removed the tube and I was put on on a clear liquid diet. I had gotten to a point in hunger where I wasn’t hungry anymore, I just felt sick. Nothing appealed to me. I took tiny sips of apple juice, broth, red jello. That night, a friend dropped off dinner for my family in my hospital room so I could see the kids after school. I hadn’t seen them in two days, I thought the NG tube would be too stressful for them. The combo of my medication and the smell of their dinner vs my hunger caused me to throw up while they were still eating. The next morning, when Garth visited me, I threw up again. It all felt like a horrible set-back.

I wanted to go home. I had to keep food down in order to go home.

By Thursday night, I had finally managed to get a whole single pack of Chex cereal down over about four hours. I learned my nurse was from Egypt after my mom commented on one of her tattoos, and my PCA was named Moses. I texted my friend Katie and told her I was taking it as a sign that I would go home the next day. In the middle of the night, I asked my nurse for some crackers and slowly ate two every couple hours until I could order breakfast in the morning.

That next morning, the doctor and the surgical residents all told me if I could eat breakfast, I could go home. I ordered French toast and eggs, my first meal in over a week. I could only eat enough to amount to a deck of cards. We waited.

Katie’s husband had taken a couple days off work to send her to us for the weekend. She came up Friday, and after about four hours of waiting to be discharged, she got to bring me home. It was incredibly lucky timing as she was supposed to come a day earlier and made the call to come Friday instead—God knew exactly what was going to happen and worked it all out in the background. It was lovely to have such a dear friend staying with us while I settled in back at home.

My family was incredibly well cared for while I was in the hospital. Our church set up a meal train, and when neighbors caught wind of it they signed up to bring meals too. Some sent money, some sent prayers. We have felt loved and held during a very stressful time. The years of prayer and moving closer and showing up and staying are bearing their fruit. Community is commitment. The return on investment is worth it. God has shown us his love through this place and these people. It is good.

Last Thursday I got the news that I’m still processing. See, what happened during my surgery was that my appendix, as the surgeon himself put it, was unidentifiable. It was obliterated and full of calcifications. There was a mass near my appendix that may have at one time been attached to it that was all calcified. There were calcified adhesions on my colon, bladder, an ovary, that they had to remove. They were sending down samples to the lab throughout my surgery to check for more aggressive types of cancer, making sure they got it all just in case. Surgery was nearly five hours long, a nightmare outcome for a surgeon.

And on Thursday last week, I finally found out what that all was. Cancer. My appendix had cancer.

The nurse on the phone told me the diagnosis. She launched straight into follow-up MRI scans to check for tumors every six months, and said something about chemotherapy not being necessary at this time.

“Wait,” I said at that point, “can you tell me the diagnosis again?”

Low-grade appendiceal mucinous neoplasm. A slow-growing, non-invasive cancer that grows in the appendix. Very rare. Curable by removing the appendix.

What that means is, I am currently cancer-free. What that means is, in the years that I experienced chronic pain and fatigue, rapid weight gain and inflammation, when I kept asking doctors to find what’s wrong with me and kept being told by all markers I’m perfectly healthy, I had cancer. I was cancer tired. My pain was from cancer growing and pushing out through my appendix.

But who checks for an extremely rare and unlikely condition like that? Who would even think to?

I will always wish I had gone to the ER when I first felt pain in my lower right abdomen. Damn my pain tolerance, itself built by years of chronic pain. If I had gotten in sooner, perhaps we could have avoided the rupture and caught the cancer before the cells were exploded into my abdomen.

So, while I’m cancer free for now, we will still be monitoring for any ninja cells freewheeling in my abdomen. Thankfully, this type of cancer should be manageable as it would manifest in a new tumor that can most likely be surgically removed. It’s very treatable. I’m keeping my mind trained on that.

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If you care to pray for us, pray for this to be the end of the cancer story for me. I’m looking forward to now living with less pain and hopefully more energy than I’ve experienced in my motherhood so far. I have hope, for the first time in years, for the days ahead. We just have to get through these weeks of healing in the first stretch of summer.

I write to you today in better health than I’ve been in for who knows how long. Even with the post-surgery pain, even with the bodily limitations for the next four or five weeks. Better, for now, finally.

We are the counting the cost. We are trying to keep our attention turned toward neighbor, even as a new war is raging overseas, and this time our troops are involved.

What a year this has been.

So it’s no wonder that even though I have a list of topics to explore, research, and write about for you, I haven’t had much margin in my time or mind to dedicate to the writing work. To be fully honest, I cannot sit at home and work at my desk when there is so much need and I’m a mere six blocks away from people who can help fill some of those needs. I have been dealing with some health related deficiencies in my body, but on the days I feel well in body, I go do the work of community care.

So, for my paid subscribers, I will share with you some of my upcoming topics below. But before I share that, I have an ask for the rest of you:

If you have read The Creative Call: 31 Devotions for Christian Creatives in Any Vocation would you please write a review? If you would leave one review on any platform selling my book, I would be so thankful. But I would be most thankful if you would copy and paste that review and share it in more than one place. Amazon is, of course, one that carries a lot of weight. But I would love to see reviews for my book on Goodreads, Bookshop, and Barnes and Noble.

I know myself that I can get so in my head about exactly what to say about a book, and I am also guilty of book review avoidance (fellow authors, I’m sorry! I do not do what I want to do). But reviews help others find the books. I know this, and I ask that you please have mercy on this writer with a tiny platform who spent more than she’ll ever make from this book to self-publish. I went in with no marketing plan because I already knew my intended audience. There was method to my madness—I wanted to release this book in a way that aligned with its message, which was to make and release and relinquish control. I feel we’re yet to see what will come of that. It was a gift to write the book, and a gift to offer the book for sale, so I cringe to ask anything from you in return.

If you haven’t read my book yet, I hope you will buy it! If you don’t have the money to buy now, it’s worth calling your library and requesting that they carry it. Maybe they will! That counts :)

I can still hardly believe that I actually have a physical book out in the world. Thank you to all who have read it and shared what it’s meant to you. I comfortably (maybe even foolishly) entrust its reach to the Lord.

I have some ideas for what comes next, and I’ll share those with paid subscribers. Want in? Join us! It’s only $5 per month, but if you’d rather pay for a year up front you can save some money that way :) So far, my paid subscribers *just* cover my annual website fee, and that alone feels so like such wonderful provision to me.

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My daughter had just said she prefers nature because it’s created by God. She hopes to live in the country someday, a life I pictured for myself at her age. But my son, at age seven, already has aspirations to save NYC from sinking, to build better flood-proof infrastructure in the mountain valleys of North Carolina, and build sustainable housing for the homeless population across cities. He has a heart for people, particularly in the city, that I believe reflects God’s heart.

Of course, his heart is being shaped by being raised in the city. My family lives in St. Paul, just one mile from a handful of Minneapolis neighbors and a 10-minute drive to the Bishop Whipple building where ICE is detaining people. In our own city, right now, we continue to endure the collective trauma of a federal occupation. While the rhetoric around Minneapolis and the broader effort to remove “criminal illegals” from our state has softened, the removal of 700 agents and redirection of public attention hasn’t meaningfully changed things on the ground here.

I saw a beardy teddy bear of a man cry last week. He stood in the door frame in tears, unable to speak, putting a finger up. We looked up from our lunches and waited, asking, “What?” while others whispered, “Oh no.”

“Good tears,” he said, holding up a finger again.

We were, of course, expecting news someone else had been killed, so his reassurance brought a collective exhale as we stopped bracing. He had just taken a call from his wife. There had been a car with busted windows sitting outside their daycare for a week—an indication that the driver may have been taken by ICE, the car left behind for the family or community to deal with. A tow company has been towing these cars for free as a way to serve the community and the people who are most impacted. That morning, she met the tow truck driver to have this car picked up, and from him she learned of a mother in need. The woman’s husband had been detained last month, and she is days away from giving birth to their first child. This woman has been alone and terrified, until this day, when two strangers said the right thing at the right time. The tow driver got the two women connected, and now this woman facing a nightmare has been put in touch with a whole support team, including medical care. She will no longer face this alone. Her husband is still gone, but she is surrounded by care.

“These are things we’re doing here, and no one will tell her story. And I don’t want them to,” he said, wiping tears from his face, “because we can’t. It’s too dangerous.”1

These are the types of stories you can find anywhere throughout Minneapolis and Saint Paul, and frankly, most cities in Minnesota. What we are experiencing here is equal parts tragic and beautiful; a picture of heartbreaking brutality and inspiring generosity. I hate that we have to live like this. I love watching how our communities have pulled together—a uniquely woven tapestry of resilience and hope.

And still, I could easily miss what is happening this close to my own home. If I didn’t have friends in South and Northeast Minneapolis where the ICE presence is the thickest, if I wasn’t checking the local news stations, if I stayed offline and just went about life as usual, maybe I would miss it. Even though I can hear the frequent drone of helicopters circling my neighborhood for hours at a time. Even though the grocery stores are eerily emptier than they used to be with fewer diverse faces. Even though ICE is present all around me—only in unmarked cars so they’re harder to see. My neighbors fear leaving their houses, and the ones who must carry their passports or other papers to prove their legal status. I could genuinely disbelieve all of this is happening.

Five days later, I learn of another father taken when he went to his immigration check in. A friend of mine is now helping to support four of her neighbors with detained spouses. More kids whose moms have to choose between working and staying home to keep them safe and together. Friends from out of state send us money to donate as needed. We pass it on to help pay the legal fees for one family to get their husband and father home. He was here legally, following the rules, still not safe. Within four days of being taken, he was flown to a facility in Texas in the middle of the night.

We try to keep everyone possible from falling through the cracks. We know some still are.

I never expected to love the city. As a child, I was captivated by the skyscrapers and old tangled neighborhoods that gave way to new, a blend of antique and modern—a visual history of progress, art, and industry. But it was a place for staying a couple years during college or for establishing a career not a place to raise a family.

Garth and I both knew small town life. Our hometown is still considered a small town by locals, even though it was designated a city before we finished high school. It was the largest in our county. When we talked about our future, we always talked about small towns in the bluffs, river towns, a quaint, walkable downtown and a nice plot of land with a view. It wasn’t until we spent our final summer in Saint Paul after college graduation that we started to realize what we would miss about living here.

The city is a place with a higher population, meaning we see all the same problems as any other town but scaled up. The city is a place that attracts immigrants and the poor because it offers more resources to those populations, a place where they can come together in common recognition of their home cultures instead of merely assimilating and leaving it all behind. The city is a place where we can connect with a global population right at home. This is good news for a Christian, because living in the city means proximity to service to the poor, the sojourner, the refugee, and rehabilitation efforts for the addicted and the criminal. There is much good work to be done in the city—many places in need of the light of the gospel.

Online, I look for those who see what is happening to us. I notice the people I know who are silent about what is happening in their own state. They post about birthday celebrations and travels and life-as-usual, not even alluding to the devastation happening here. And I feel what I imagine God felt when he told Amos to say,

“I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies… Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:21-24, NRSVue).

Online, I see people quote that Satan comes to “steal, kill, and destroy,” referencing immigrants who commit crimes while ignoring the illegal, violent, unjust actions of federal officers and the inhumane conditions of detention centers. When I think of the same verse I think of what ICE is doing to the people in our cities. Isn’t it possible for the same spirit to animate both?

And still, the argument doesn’t justify the response we see in Minneapolis. Less than 15% of detainees have any criminal convictions.2

The Columbia Heights school Liam Ramos attended says they are missing more children. Four more have been returned, and they report seeing classmates who went missing months ago in detainment in Texas, their whereabouts previously unknown. When children are the collateral damage of law enforcement measures, we cannot blame the parents. These systems are doing nothing to protect the children. This is not righteous or just. God calls us to care for them. Instead, our government files to remove the five year old child and his father from the country permanently.

Earlier in Amos 5, it reads,

“Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want the day of the Lord?
It is darkness, not light, as if someone fled from a lion and was met by a bear or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall and was bitten by a snake.
Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?”

When we want to judge the acts of others while escaping judgment ourselves, what are we inviting into our communities? If we say we leave judgment to God but then concentrate the power to pour out justice into the hands of evil men who promise to keep “us” safe, how can we expect to evade the consequences of that misplaced trust?3

Right now, a federal agency is breaking laws to enforce the law, and they are doing so with impunity. We are not watching an organized, targeted operation, which our state leaders and majority of citizens have said they would welcome. Too many people still believe this is what is happening, that our cities have gone insane opposing lawful forces here to make us safer. But you can’t enforce the law by breaking the law—it produces chaos, the proof of which we are seeing.

Masked men with guns and bulletproof vests are not reflecting the image of God but living by the sword—an image of the Book of Revelation’s horsemen of conquest and war. They have clothed themselves in retribution and given over to violence. In them we see a corruption of the image of God. Our most vulnerable neighbors are the sacrifice.

We, the people who call this place home, are trying to take care of them. Only the Holy Spirit could stir up so many people to neighborly love. Only the Imago Dei in all of us could motivate hundreds of people to live so generously. We’re setting up donation centers across the cities to meet as many needs as we can. Doctors make house calls to those in hiding. We risk our own safety to drop off supplies for families who can’t leave their homes. The Lord frustrates the plans of the wicked. We have proven that our community values did indeed shape the laws that our president hates us for, and in turn, those laws shaped our vision of what community should be.

Some say Minneapolis brought this up on itself for being a sanctuary city, when God himself set six cities of refuge in Israel (Numbers 35:9-15). These were cities where those who killed someone by accident would be counted safe—a place where the laws of avenging death could not be put into effect. I live in a sanctuary city, where those who are at risk of deportation can live without fear of being arrested when their only crime is coming here without documentation. Those who have carried out violent or egregious crimes do not fall under the umbrella of protection, but those who are seeking safety as they navigate our complex immigrant legalization proceedings can lawfully remain here. The act of offering sanctuary—historically offered by the Church—is not obstinate defiance but an act of grace.

For Christians, our grace doesn’t come from laws or the human heart, but we recognize the one source of grace comes through the Holy Spirit, from the heart of God. For he commanded his people (and any command from God is also an invitation):

“What does the Lord your God require of you? Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being. Although heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the Lord your God, the earth with all that is in it, yet the Lord set his heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you, their descendants after them, out of all the peoples, as it is today. Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the Lord your God; him you shall serve; to him you shall hold fast; and by his name you shall swear. He is your praise; he is your God who has done for you these great and awesome things that your own eyes have seen.”

Deuteronomy 10:12-21, NRSVUE (emphasis mine)

We don’t simply rely on God to execute justice for the orphan, the widow, the stranger, but we join him in the work of caring for them. We provide food and clothing. We meet the moment as need—right now, that includes becoming strong advocates for those in detainment, who have reported surviving the worst conditions imaginable. It also includes donating our time, money, and resources to those afraid to leave their homes at the risk of trauma to their families.

We remember that the heritage of our faith is what he established in Israel from a people who were strangers in Egypt—this legacy that he asks us to remember, honor, and carry. For we are strangers and aliens in this world too, seeking refuge until we are brought into the fullness of the Kingdom of God. We do for others what we would want done for ourselves if we faced similar circumstances.

We, the Church, are the embodied Kingdom of God scattered as sojourners across the earth. We do this work of loving, feeding, clothing those who seek our help until the day he brings heaven and earth together (Revelation 21). In the end, the Kingdom of God is a garden that is a city—nature and people. Heaven and earth. Every tongue, tribe, nation, and creature living and worshiping in perfect harmony together.

Our kingdom is not this earthly nation, and it never was intended to be. We can respect the laws of our land and honor God’s authority over our lives. He has told us what is good. Our allegiance was never meant to be ultimately to a worldly flag, but to take up our cross and walk with Jesus.

“You’re right,” I say to my son, looking up from my oatmeal. “God created people, too. People are his creation, and he made us to be like him.”

Well, not writing, actually. And that’s why I was up all night. My topic was the one I had most hoped not to be assigned: defending the literary critique style called “reader response.”1

As an aspiring writer, I detested reader response. I didn’t want to give it any validity. I was adamant that writer intention was much more important for reader interpretation. I didn’t want whatever perspective the reader brought to my work to hold as much weight. Being a newer category of accepted critique, this genre was also most limited in its analysis, therefore the hardest and least interesting to research (at least in my opinion at the time). I stayed up all night, drinking lattes made by a hallmate, writing the introduction and deleting it again and again. By class time that morning, I showed up empty-handed, sitting in the back of the classroom for the full class hour dreading the moment he invited us to turn in our papers.

I waited until every other student left before I approached Mr. Johnson. He had a friendly demeanor and hair that reminded me of images of Mark Twain, slightly unkempt while dressed like an old-school professor. As my explanation turned to full-blown rambling about my wedding, packing up my dorm as I wasn’t returning the next semester, the stress of not being able to return the next semester due to finances, and my dislike for the topic of my paper, I began to cry. My fast-paced monologue turned to full, chest-heaving sobs.

“Ok, ok,” he said, looking me in the eye reassuringly, “you didn’t finish your paper on time. You have a lot going on. Go home, get some sleep, eat something, ok? Rest. You have four days to finish the paper and get it to me.”

I gulped down the shock and thanked him, and went back to my dorm to fully take his advice.

Since then, I’ve developed a taste for good social commentary (the likes of White Lotus, which for content reasons I cannot recommend, but I’ll admit I do enjoy its cultural critique). And social commentary has two primary vulnerabilities: one being the potential for perpetuating stereotypes in useless and unhelpful ways, and the other being the discourse it generates. As a genre, it invites and darn near relies on reader (or viewer) response.

And so, you could say I’ve changed my mind about this form of critique.

Just before Christmas, Rian Johnson gifted us all with the newest Knives Out movie: Wake Up Dead Man.2 Being mostly submersed in the online Evangelical context, it didn’t occur to me what other discourse might be happening around the film until I saw an old acquaintance from high school post that Blanc’s atheistic monologue made him feel uniquely seen.

And that’s what good art does, it gets discussion going. It offers us perspectives we may not have considered, and not for the purpose of validating the perspective but because the writer (and in the case of cinema and TV—the director and actors) has done the work of seeing from those other perspectives. If done well, it humanizes our cultural tropes instead of relying on stereotypes. Instead of telling us what to think, good art leaves us with more questions than answers.

Wake Up Dead Man has done for American Christian culture what Greta Gerwig’s Barbie did for the feminism vs patriarchy divide and what Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton did for American history: it generated discussion. Each of these hold up a mirror to society and ask, “what do you see?”

The discourse is the point.

In Wake Up Dead Man Rian Johnson does it by leaving us with the question, “Did Rev. Jud do the right thing?” I am trying desperately not to share any spoilers. The movie ends intentionally in a moral gray area. The audience is left feeling either a sense of vindication or conflicted—from a story resolution standpoint I loved the ending—from a realistic standpoint, the moral ambiguity left me feeling uncomfortable with his decision.

In my final two weeks on Instagram, I watched and read a number of responses from pastors who loved the movie. They felt the critique of the hypocrisies our churches face here in America were fair. They expressed admiration for how a self-proclaimed atheist could so beautifully depict the true faith in Christian service and grace. I agree with them.

This movie does a lot of wrestling with themes of justice and mercy in a way that is so necessary, and Johnson does it honorably and beautifully.

Greta Gerwig does it by asking, “what is the opposite of patriarchy? What does feminism offer?” She deftly reveals what patriarchy has done in our society, blown up on the big screen. After all, in the Barbie world, Barbie is the woman who can do it all. Ken exists for Barbie. What would a Barbie world look like in real life? Is true feminism only about elevating women?

Lin Manuel Miranda does it in Hamilton by asking, “who tells your story?” On stage, we see historical figures depicted by men and women of different skin colors. The point isn’t to erase whiteness but to show a picture of who else is represented and impacted by our history. They, too—the oppressed, the silenced, the marginalized—tell the story. And what does it look like when they do?

In July of 2020, after Hamilton was released on Disney+, LMM responded to a tweet saying, “All the criticisms are valid. The sheer tonnage of complexities & failings of these people I couldn’t get. Or wrestled with but cut. I took 6 years and fit as much as I could in a 2.5 hour musical. Did my best. It’s all fair game.”3

When I first expressed my admiration for the musical online, a mentor of mine reached out to warn me that it’s not real history. “I know that it’s a fictionalized account, it is a musical, after all,” I replied. When she asked me why I liked it, I told her, “Because it’s art. And Lin Manuel Miranda created good art with this. That doesn’t mean you have to like it. I do.”

In spite of their own motivations or views, these creatives all accept that viewers have a point of view. But they’re not necessarily trying to change it. In the end, these pieces each offer entertainment more than they try to change minds. But each was created with the understanding that it would both chafe and shape the social discourse.

In my years sharing stories on Instagram, I often referred to these types of discussions as “banging out the wheat.” I find it helpful to picture us side-by-side on the historical threshing floor, banging the chaff from the wheat, talking as we go, separating the good kernels from what can be discarded.

For me, I appreciate how these movies meet audiences at the threshing floor that is cultural discourse and invite us into it as well.

So, if you’ve seen these movies, tell me: what do you see?

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If you’re exploring how to use your own creative voice navigating these tensions between the sacred and the secular, my book The Creative Call: 31 Devotions for Christian Creatives in Any Vocation is for you. That’s 31 days of contemplating how to make art that is good, true, and beautiful by affirming your identity as called and beloved. You can buy it here, here, or here (that last link is for Bookshop, which donates to local book stores using a portion of your purchase, and is my preference if you’re buying my book).

At the bus stop Monday morning, we had a new kid. He stood off to the side in a sweatshirt and ski cap and no coat. He kept muttering nervously to himself, so I finally asked him what school he goes to. He was starting school at my kids’ school, it was his first day. He kept his distance as we talked, but he was willing to give us a lot of information about himself. As the kids got on the bus, I said goodbye to each of them, as I always do. When I included him by name, his head jerked in my direction giving away that it was unexpected. He followed the kids to the back, sitting just a couple seats ahead of them.

Taking off my boots back home, I reflected on my noticing that to these kids, I seem old. We never thought of our friends’ parents as young or seeming young growing up, and I guess we weren’t aware of them not thinking of themselves as old (how many women did you know who were 29 several years in a row?). Us 30-somethings in today’s culture buck harder against the middle-aged stereotype than previous generations seemed to—I mean, to be fair, it turns out 30 isn’t really all that old. Who knew?!

But on this morning, I felt my anti-age facade crack a little. With 90’s nostalgia trending, maybe it isn’t just the fashion and decor that we’re collectively after. That morning, I felt like the stereotypical 90’s mom of our most beloved TV shows. There’s something comforting about the sturdy love of a 90’s sitcom mom.

And I know, there’s more to it than even that. There’s the dream of middle-class stability, good jobs, a pre-9/11 world that simply no longer exists. The nostalgia for aesthetic, I suspect, has much more to do with what we had then—the things we feel now we can’t get back.

Maybe, instead of getting wrapped up in how I can be cool or trendy or maintain my youth, I can redouble my efforts to create the safe and open-door household of our childhood TV screens. To be a place of acceptance and cozy, just-enough abundance, but also of discipline, accountability, and communal connection (because there is no safety without accountability). Maybe, because we’re now in Advent, waiting with Mary for the arrival of our heavenly King, I’m also thinking of something more in my mothering.

I’m getting the idea it’s probably not normal for a quick encounter with the school’s new kid to spin off into this kind of existential rumination, but thus is the life of a writer.

Anyhow, winter is firmly upon us. The 10-day forecast has nary a high above 25 degrees, and it seems, for now, the snow is here to stay.

We’re in that part of the year where the days get darker and shorter, with longer nights than daylight.

It’s time to buck-up, buttercup, and give yourself space to feel everything. Winter is dark, cold, lonely, dangerous, even. But we are tenacious, hopeful, and capable of surviving. My hope is that we can manage beyond survival. As a once winter-hater turned winter lover, I want to help you endure through the winter solstice and beyond (because winter lasts long after the days start to lengthen once again). We’re going for less of an aesthetic and more of cultivating a feeling—one of warmth, coziness, what the Scandinavians call hygge (hoo-guh).

I’ve written a winter guide just for you. Sacred Solitude: A Guide for the Rest of Winter is a short, free download to help you embrace what winter has to offer, and hopefully even come to love it. I’m not asking you to love winter for winter’s sake, but maybe, just maybe, you can come to appreciate the rhythms of living in a place with four vibrant and distinct seasons and the ways they grow our tolerance for the natural “seasons” of life.

Come, have a seat with me. Pour yourself a warm drink, slide into some house slippers, and get cozy under a plush blanket.

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I teamed up again this year with my friend Bethany Whitworth at New Bangs Design! She has procured a buy guide based on recommendations in my winter guide to make it easier for you to find what you might need. And just in time to get it on your Christmas wishlist!

The link above will take you to my website. While you’re there, check out my new book! The Creative Call: 31 Devotions for Christian Creatives in Any Vocation is the perfect gift for the creative types in your life (or yourself!). And it just so happens the first month of the year, directly after Christmas, is a full 31 days *wink*. Click the scrolling text on my website to purchase, or search the title at your favorite online bookseller!

One last note: Thank you for being here. My paid subscriptions are meager, but they literally cover my website domain each year. If you want to help me keep going while I continue to do this work with no pay, please consider a paid subscription or buy my book. You truly have no idea what a difference it makes for this writer’s psyche.

Have a very merry Christmas and the happiest New Year, Beloved.

Over here, we’re team wait. But I’ve found ways scratch that itch to get Christmas started. And so, I won’t tell you not to decorate for Christmas early, but I’ll tell you why I’m waiting, and what I’m doing instead.

I am a firm believer in living out the seasons. Not that there’s anything wrong with pulling out decor you love well before it’s seasonally appropriate—it’s just that, for example, winter is so long. I don’t need to make it feel longer to my brain. Decorating early for Christmas makes the entire season feel longer, even if it does add joy, wonder, and delight to have it up.

But my husband is also adamantly against putting up Christmas decorations for Thanksgiving, so I’ve had to learn to deal with that.

Here’s my hack: blend the seasons. You know how sometimes it snows in October here in MN, but then it melts and we might not get snow that sticks until Christmas or later? Well, a few years ago I started putting up the twinkle lights with the traditional “harvest” decor for Thanksgiving. Once we hit Daylight Saving Time, it’s dark at 5pm anyway, so adding extra elements of light is, in fact, seasonally appropriate. Most years, I win out on getting the Christmas tree up before Thanksgiving too, arguing that evergreen trees are always seasonally appropriate. Garth allows for putting the lights on the tree, but no Christmas ornaments until after Black Friday. This is our compromise.

But there are so many options. Pre-Thanksgiving you can still bring out all the cinnamon-infused scented candles. Strings of cranberries (or any round, red berries) and dried oranges are still fair game and look beautiful with hay, wheat, or pampas grass. Anything that sparkles or glitters is fair play, because we all need more warmth and light. Especially now.

Last year, kind of by accident, we put up decorations slowly over the course of December. It was the first year in our new house, and we were still finding a home for things that were packed away in the spare attic bedroom. Finding everything was a bit of a process. But I felt a congruence with the waiting of Advent to go slow, preparing over time, awaiting the coming of joy. So I’m doing that intentionally this year.

As we bring out Christmas decorations, we also put out our “winter” decor (mostly consisting of art with snowy scenes). These stay up as the Christmas decor is taken down for the season. This way, putting up and taking down decorations isn’t a full day affair. Rather, we treat it as a transitory task that happens over time.

Seasonal decor isn’t just pretty or festive—it acts as visual cues to help our bodies and our brains get on the same page. I have made a practice of decorating with this in mind over the years, which helps me not only celebrate the holidays of each season as they come, but also to wait and anticipate the next before jumping forward. Learn to savor with me, my friends.

Maybe you’re reading this thinking, “You’re putting too much thought into all of this, Bre, just let me live how I want!” And that is completely fine, too. We have autonomy, all of us.

If you want more of my advice on how to survive (and even love!) winter in its cold, long glory, my free winter guide Sacred Solitude: A Coziness Guide for the Rest of Winter will be available soon. Make sure you’re subscribed so you get the link when it’s ready!

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I wrote a book! The Creative Call: 31 Devotions for Christian Creatives in Any Vocation is out now. While I was getting ready to launch my own little baby into the world, some other books came out that I’ve been excited to tell you about.

1. published her first book of poetry, Under the Saman Tree with the new publishing press at . Immigrants have been some of favorite US poets through the years, and Rosa’s voice is on the list. There is something extra vulnerable and tender about their words that feels important and special (I think because they are).

2. The Myth of Good Christian Parenting came out the same day as my devotional! Many of my Evangelical friends raised under the influence James Dobson and Tedd Tripp have anticipated this book. I’ve listened to a few podcast interviews with the authors, and while it’s heartbreaking that a generation of parents were led to parent in ways that may have broken bonds with their children long-term, it is very good news that there are better, more faithful ways to parent.

3. Counterweights: An Essential Practice for Holding Hope in a Heavy World by isn’t out yet, but I’ve loved every one of her books, and I am so looking forward to reading this one. She has been sharing her practice of noticing counterweights—the good, true, and beautiful things of life that counterbalance the stressors in… well, you know, just look around. This book doesn’t come out until March, BUT it is available for preorder now (click the title for the link!).

With you in the waiting, beloveds. Take care.

Six years ago, before the pandemic shut the world down, before I even had kids in school, I was preparing to launch a website. Not just a website—a ministry. What started as a desire to write a mental health devotional for Christians quickly became a vision for a non-profit ministry to change the discussion around mental health in the church.

During the lead-up, I posted the following on my private Facebook page:

God answered that prayer, but not in the way I would have anticipated.

Six months later, I stepped down from the thing I had worked toward over two precious years of early motherhood. I grieved the lost work, I grieved the friendship that it cost, and I grieved the loneliness in that season while everyone was forced into isolation. And then, I threw myself into homeschooling and cultivating creative community.

Now, I’m reaching for the fruit of those seasons of planting, pollarding, waiting, and cultivating. My book is coming out on the exact day that initial website launched, October 14th. I’m finally publishing my devotional.

To be transparent, when I first received my publication date, I almost told them to change it. I froze and had to will myself not to shut down. I had a migraine and fatigue for four days after, because the way that ministry and friendship ended caused me a good amount of trauma. But dear friends encouraged me to see it as redemption. This full-circle moment is a reminder of the refrain repeated to me often as I started the work of devotional writing: “blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!” (Luke 1:45, NIV).

I had given up on applying those words to my own circumstances, but perhaps God really meant them for me in this case.

I have been living out and writing about slow, quiet work from the beginning. I wasn’t looking for big and flashy, even while I submitted myself to the possibility of a large platform and lifelong public ministry. My gracious Lord took that pressure off my shoulders and put me on a path of peace. I haven’t written a best-seller here, and I haven’t worked toward that in any way. I simply wrote this book for you if you know yourself to need it.

Some of the devotionals this book contains are adapted from my original online ministry. They are no longer available to read anywhere else, and it has been my joy to refresh them and prepare to share them. Others were written for my creative arts ministry at the request of our former Deacon (and now I am the Deacon of that very church ministry!). But the idea to compile them all in one place and publish them is credited to The Way Back to Ourselves community led by .

It was at our first retreat, a year and a half ago, that I suggested I publish a collection of my devotionals that meet the intersection of Christian creativity and mental health and received an empathetic “yes, please do it!”

And so, friends and faithful readers, I present to you my debut book, The Creative Call: 31 Devotions for Christian Creatives in Any Vocation, published with the help of Palmetto Press. They did an exceptional job making this book a reality, and I really would recommend them for anyone considering self-publishing. It felt like the right route for this book, and I’m grateful to have worked with them.

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You can pre-order my book by clicking this link here. If you do pre-order it, I would love to have you on my launch team! Reach out to me by commenting on this post, responding via e-mail, or contacting me on Instagram. All I’m asking from you is an honest review once you’ve read it (this helps it reach other people organically), that you share the book on social media/with friends, and that you share a piece of art (through whatever medium you use) inspired by this devotional. I really, really want to see your art, so make sure to tag me.

Now, beloveds, please celebrate with me!!

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In the course of the year since last September, we experienced the loss of a best friend’s brother, a coworker who was secretly battling cancer, our neighbor’s husband, a friend’s grandma who was like a bonus grandma to me after mine died, one of Garth’s grandmas, a high school teacher who had meant a lot to me, the sudden loss of a writer acquaintance’s husband (whose funeral happened to be 10 minutes away from where I live), and Faith’s mom, whom I still have saved in my phone as “Reverend Mother.”

And then, last Wednesday, the week before my own kids started school, there was a school shooting at Annunciation Catholic school just 6 miles from my house. While we weren’t close enough to be involved in any immediate way, we feel the lament of our community—especially as we know people who are closer to families who are mourning and navigating grief and trauma in the aftermath.

So I’ve been thinking a lot lately on matters of mortality and grief. And the truth is, I don’t have anything profoundly philosophical to say.

I have a lot of feelings, but the truth is, I’ve been on the periphery of others’ grief repeatedly for a year. I attended every funeral that I could, because, “it is better to go to a house of mourning than a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart” (Eccl. 7:2, NIV).

I can’t imagine I’m wrong to say most of us would rather go to the house of feasting. We want shared joy, fun, laughter, good food and drinks; mirth. Mourning sucks and sometimes grief really fucking hurts. And funerals remind us that we will continue experience death over and over again as long as we live. And then it will come for us.

But the living should take this to heart. We can’t know our future, aside from knowing there will be good times and bad, the joys of life and the sorrow of loss. We take each as they come.

And sometimes we attend 7 out of 8 funerals in a year—not only to mourn but also to remember, this, too, is life. From someone who attended 7 funerals this past year, funerals can teach you a lot about how you might want to live.

If you read this far, thank you, and you deserve to know that my book, The Creative Call: 31 devotions for Christian creatives in any vocation, is coming out in October!

I will be sharing details for preorders and my book launch team as soon as I have them. Click fast if you see another newsletter from me this month! And reply to this email (if you’re reading it in your inbox), or email bstrowriter@gmail.com to let me know if you’re interested in joining my launch team!

May September be gentle with you, Beloved.

“He is our King Cyrus,” she says, claiming he will free God’s chosen people before calling Kamala Harris a witch. Yes, she really called her a witch.

The crowd, who have been enraptured listening to her, erupts into cheers and applause.

I show it to my husband. “People really believe this?” I ask.

“Cyrus,” he says with a grunt, handing the phone back to me. I’m newly skeptical of every church that preached on the Book of Daniel last year.

There is no way I could have anticipated the current talk of end times prophecy in the media when I started writing this back in March. It has taken me a long time to finish this essay, as you can tell since it is now July (this was partly due to the complicated historical and theological nature of this essay and partly to my working hard to finish writing my book before the kids were home from school for summer break—which I did!). But with the US bombing Iran in God’s name for the “protection and support of Israel,” well, perhaps this is even more timely now.

What I hope to demonstrate is that we can’t make a one-to-one analogy between the Bible and our nation’s story. I want to show the risk we take trying to manufacture prophetic fulfillment by taking matters into our own hands.

For Israel, when a new king was anointed, it meant they were to be the next king. Similar to our elections, it did not mean that person’s rule began immediately, but that they would be the successor at a later date.1

Upon being anointed king, Jehu, the commanding general, raced to King Joram in Jezreel, where he was recovering from a battle wound. When he got there, he impaled the king, making himself the reigning ruler of Israel. He also killed Ahaziah, the king of Judah, who was with Joram. Then he fled to Jezreel and called for the blood of Queen Jezebel, and her eunuchs quickly pushed her out the window of her bedroom. He went inside to eat, and upon leaving, found her body had been eaten by wild dogs, just as prophesied.

Jehu was filled with zeal for producing the results of prophecy, something he believed his anointing gave him a mandate from God to do (especially as the servant Elisha sent to anoint him reminded him of this prophecy).2 After witnessing what was left of Jezebel, Jehu felt even more convicted of this mandate to fulfill prophecy. He next went on to kill all the remaining family line of Jezebel, then lined up the serving priests and oversaw their executions as well.

And it seemed, to him at least, that this all pleased the Lord. Jehu’s family line ruled for four generations, all the way up to their captivity in Babylon by king Nebuchadnezzar. But while he wiped out all the idol worshipers, he did not take down the idols of his fathers.3

Jehu, in all his bloodthirsty zeal, did not restore Israel to faithfulness to God alone.

One would think this would be the reason God would punish Israel, but in Hosea 1:4 God says, “I will soon punish the house of Jehu for the massacre at Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of Israel.”

It’s not the idolatry God says he will punish, but the bloodshed (although, as you’ll see in my first footnote, there is some dispute over this). As I completed my deep dives into the different facets of this story, I was reminded of Jacob and Esau. Jacob was to be the inheritor of God’s covenant with Israel, yet God casts judgement on Jacob and his mother for how they go about getting him that blessing. It appears God meant for this to happen in his own time, but they got Jacob’s blessing through lies, trickery, and stealing. Even though God’s promise remains with Jacob, his life is negatively impacted by his decision to get his inheritance through dishonest means rather than trusting the Lord.

We don’t know what the outcome of either story would look like if it went exactly as God had planned, because the people involved, while believing in God’s promises, took charge of their outcomes and ultimately dishonored God. The ends don’t always justify the means when we sin in his name. Yet God in his goodness also gives us stories of his faithfulness to act.

The significance of King Cyrus isn’t that he converted to the Jewish faith or even worshiped their God, but that despite being a pagan king, he freed Jews held captive and enslaved by previous kings. There is no doubt, based on God’s own prophetic words, that he was used by God for the predetermined time at which he would free Israel from their exile.4 Yet, the credit doesn’t go to Cyrus’s faithfulness but to God’s power to change the minds of a nation’s leaders for the benefit of his people if he wills it.

Do you think, if Israel had the choice, they would have elected Cyrus king? And would they have been considered to be acting faithfully if they had?

I’m not saying every Christian vote for Trump was based on this belief that he was “our King Cyrus.” However, it has become custom during American presidential elections for Christian groups to pontificate on who the most “faithful” choice would be. But a unique feature of Evangelical support for Donald Trump has been the overt prophetic words given about him being selected by God to lead our country “back to God.”

Now, does it matter if he isn’t himself a man of faith? As much as his supporters try to make it sound like he is to justify backing him, the testimony we see in King Cyrus suggests it doesn’t matter. God can use whomever he pleases to guide us back to him—this is true. And I believe that no matter who is in office—whether they’re unjust, idolaters, or faithful—God is always revealing his faithfulness to his own moral standards, even when we’re not.

However, since the parallel was drawn by Republican supporters to encourage Christian votes for Trump, let me make another distinction:

When King Cyrus set captive Israel free, he returned everything that had been stolen from their temple to them. Every valuable possession that belonged to Israel was returned.5 Beyond that, he allotted some of his own nation’s money to the restoration and reestablishing of Israel’s temple—a place of worship he would respect but never benefit from rebuilding. This all came at a cost to him and to his kingdom, yet he did it.

The most appropriate word we have for that today is reparations. The likes of which we have not seen nearly any government enact, something we haven’t ever gotten enough Christian support behind to make happen to right wrongs in our own country.

The closing statements of 2 Chronicles and the opening of Ezra say the Lord, “stirred up the spirit of Cyrus…” Their freedom was an act of the Lord through Cyrus, so we know God is able to bring about his word in his time without us forcing it.

Daniel, in captivity, repeatedly interprets the king’s prophetic dreams, winning over both King Nebuchadnezzar and King Darius.

Yet, Daniel’s faithfulness never came with an expectation of any reward. In fact, he often faced certain death for defying or challenging the king. He remained faithful to God, and each time the king saw the power of God displayed through him, Daniel was rewarded. Still, Daniel maintained his allegiance and loyalty not to the king or to his own nation but to God alone.

Though Daniel was alive when Cyrus liberated Israel, he remained in his governing station. He had achieved what most Jews had not during their captivity—not only a role in the government, but living like a free man. He accomplished these not through leading a political uprising nor by hiding his faith, but by living as though his God was the true and living God, letting God’s power be demonstrated through him regardless of the outcome for himself, even when it meant risking his life.

He did what the prophet Jeremiah prophesied: he sought the good of all the people in the land the Lord had brought him to. He was educated in Babylon, learned their language, and lived peacefully with the king and those around him. And he was living proof of a God who was present, powerful, and who desired flourishing for all people—an example that lead kings’ hearts to acknowledge God.

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Looking back on all these stories together, I can’t help but think of how often I heard Christians say they were voting for Trump because they believed it was what God wanted. I, too, discerned that Trump may well be president again—not that it was a good thing.

Taken as a whole, when prophecies are given in Scripture, it’s usually as a warning. The vast majority of prophecies are set up as if/then statements. IF God’s people continue on their path of faithless infidelity, then ruin will befall them. The proof is all over the Books of the Law and the Prophets if you read them. God cares about his people living out of humbleness, justice, and mercy that leads to flourishing for all people. When the fruit of greed, oppression, and injustice begin to take over, he prunes back the gripping vine of the world to restore what is good.

Sometimes I imagine what it would have looked like for all Christians to resist voting for a man who overtly uses God’s name in vain. With all the talk of the spirit of the anti-Christ in that sector, I would have thought a wealthy political guy with fame-seeking prophets and other deep-pocketed Christians—who is happy to use the Lord’s name in vain—would have been a burning red flag.

Instead, we have for a president a man who reflects back to America the culture we have created. There is no hiding anymore—this is what we are. And without the support of 80% of white people who identify themselves as Evangelicals, he wouldn’t have won. When I think of how we could have avoided this, I look at the church.

I can’t help but feel convinced that just because a prophet may have been right in saying, “Trump will be the next president,” it doesn’t mean voting for him was an act of faithfulness unto the Lord. The story of Daniel and Paul’s wisdom in his letters to the early church testify that prophecy needs interpretation. But the American Church wasn’t listening when various people (Black Christians, First Peoples, women, victims of abuse, scientists, others in the margins and those in power speaking up on their behalf) spoke against Trump. It’s time we take a real hard look at what we’re seeing and get honest about the part we’ve played.

While we wait for all of God’s creation to be made new—for suffering to be fully healed, for the rule of evil to come to an end, for heaven and earth to be joined seamlessly again—we must, ourselves, remain faithful. More like Daniel than Jehu.

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“It’s going to be okay,” they reassured me, “you’re not the only parent here solo this weekend.”

“I know,” I said, taking a deep breath.

Between the stress of yet another illness in the yawning stretch of winter and making a day-of decision to leave Garth behind and take the kids alone on a weekend church retreat, I was a bundle of nerves. I didn’t know how to articulate that it felt like half of me was left at home.

I’m a whole person. I am capable of operating like a regular human. But somewhere in 14 years of marriage the line between don’t want to and can’t faded, and that weekend without my co-parent and best friend felt like the left side of my own body was missing.

I started dating Garth when I was 17, and that was 17 years ago. I’ve been with the same man for half my lifetime. From this point on, we’ve been together for longer than we spent apart.

I never wanted to be the woman who didn’t know who she was without her husband, and yet, that’s what I’ve become. But I can’t say it’s a bad thing. Not for me, at least. I’m past the point of feeling like a failure for being defined by my marriage or dependent on a man, even as I strive to advocate for women’s rights to not do that.

My mantra at 17 through age 21 was, “I’m a strong, independent woman!” I prided myself on figuring things out and making my own plans, being fine with showing up places alone. I was young enough to want more time to not be defined by marriage, and in love enough to commit to a union with one man for the rest of my life. But then years of isolation, financial scarcity, severe mental health challenges, and sleep deprivation stripped me of my self-sufficiency. I found myself horrifyingly insufficient, and eventually I had to learn to accept the truth of it.

The moment I knew I wasn’t afraid to marry him was also a foreshadowing of all that marriage would be: while we were engaged, I underwent a surgical biopsy for a lump in my breast. It turned out to be benign, but in the weeks leading up to the surgery, we braced ourselves. Three months from our wedding day, nineteen year old Garth came with me and sat in the waiting room while I was put under anesthesia. It’s occurring to me as I write this that I’ve never asked how many hours he sat there alone and waiting. A few days later, when I needed help washing my hair because I couldn’t raise my right arm over my head, he came and leaned over the edge of the bathtub at my parents’ house, washing my hair for me. I sat on a footstool shirtless and bandaged, wrapped in a towel, resting the back of my head on the edge of the tub while he carefully sudsed me up and rinsed out the shampoo and conditioner. I apologized for needing him, and he scoffed gently, drying my hair with a towel and helping me up.

Married or not, we need other people. God said in the very beginning that “it is not good for man to be alone” and that hasn’t changed. We are not expected to be all-sufficient. In fact, our neediness reminds us that we aren’t.

That same weekend while I was away and my husband was taking himself to urgent care, our neighbor’s husband died. We attended his memorial and learned that he was an Eagle Scout, fluent in Spanish, a writer, and enjoyed literature; he would have made the perfect match for us as a neighbor. We are grieved by the loss of time with this man we didn’t get to know, but even moreso for his widow.

His memorial was also a testament to the life and community they had built together. She is not alone in her grief, just as she was not alone in caring for her husband in his last year and half of life after a stroke. We saw, once again, that marriage is not simply the most important relationship of your life, sacred as it is. Married or not—and especially because marriage is finite—we need a whole community in order to thrive. They’re the ones who show up to help you transfer from your wheelchair to your bed after you’ve been debilitated. They’re the ones who bring meals, mow the lawn, and walk the dog when you’re working harder than ever with the tasks of meeting your income needs and caretaking. They’re the ones who show up to clean out the many devices no longer needed in your household, the ones who step up and put together a memorial so you don’t have to make all the decisions, the ones who come over or invite you out long after the casket is closed to ensure you are not alone this world.

This is why, when the opportunity presented itself last summer, we moved into the neighborhood close to our church. It’s why we let the kids’ friends come home with them straight off the bus, why we ask again what that neighbor’s name is and exchange phone numbers. It’s why we take trips and open our home to out-of-town friends to make sure we continue living life together with those who have already been there for the long haul.

We’ve taken a long time to learn all this. In college and the earliest years of parenthood, we knew we “needed” community, but we knew nothing of interdependence. We had families who would show up as they could. Having a close family is a good and desirable thing (I would even say ideal), but as much as we love them, we should want for them what we need ourselves: a strong presence of communal care around them. People who help them, and us, remember that we’re all only human in the many ways that manifests, lest we forget.

At last month’s retreat, friends from church stepped up to help care for my kids and made sure I got to enjoy my time there, too. Each of my kids made a friend to stick with for the weekend, and as an equalizer, everyone kept an eye out for everyone else’s kids.

While the smell of fireplace smoke and my inability to build a quick starter fire, the view of the wintery lake at golden hour, and the clear night sky as I walked the kids back to our room for the night were moments I was keenly aware of Garth’s absence, I made a point of letting myself experience it all just for me.

I am still a whole person on my own—worthy of good experiences and community and care.

My therapist, enthusiastic about the security of my marriage, has suggested that I write a marriage book. I told her that I don’t know if I’ll ever do that (for so many reasons), but I could sum up my advice like this:

Garth is my best friend. That’s why we’re married and why our marriage is easy and good. It’s not hard for us to love each other. We delight in one another. We strive to outdo each other with the ways we care for the other.

We are two whole, individual people who, from now on, will have spent more of life with each other than apart. Our lives have been redefined by our marriage—there’s no escaping that. For over half my life, he has been the other half to my whole life. None of what we have today exists without the two of us walking this life together. And that is all good and holy, but it is still not enough—even if we want it to be.

In the end, it’s the people we’ve met along the way whose lives have intertwined with ours that will not only help keep this marriage strong but care for one of us when the other is gone.

“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”

Galatians 6:9

In the days after the last presidential election, a handful of girlfriends checked in on me, and each asked the same question, “Does it feel personal?”

At first I didn’t know how to answer that question. I thought, "personal? How? Nothing’s going to happen to me.” By the fourth time I was asked this question, I realized what they were really asking—

“Do you feel like no one’s listening to you?”

And the answer to that question was a gut-wrenching, “yes.”

I had just spent four years sharing resources for people to learn more on their own (because I am not an expert but I can point you to them), and the election was a wake-up call that the people who weren’t already there weren’t willing to get there.

Those who follow me from Instagram might remember from that week that I almost gave up completely. It really had me ready to leave Instagram and give up writing entirely. I have this tiny platform, no real job, and who even listens to me anyway? Does what I do actually matter? It felt, in that moment, that it didn’t.

But then the messages came pouring in. People—mainly fellow Evangelical women—expressed their support for me and thanked me for my perspective over the years. shared one of my stories where I had tagged her to her stories, and on the day I said I was considering leaving I kept getting new followers (who were immediately in my dms saying my work was a breath of fresh air to them). They said it mattered to them. It was personal. Eventually, I remembered I wasn’t on Instagram to build my platform anyway but to stay in touch with some of my communities, and to connect people with causes that matter to them as needed, and I stayed. The experience was sobering.

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In 2016, as a deconstructing conservative afraid of her own leaning toward liberalism, I sat out the election. I firmly believed that our votes didn’t matter, everything was rigged in favor of how the powers that be want it to go—and on top of that, I saw any participation in the election system as bowing to an idol. As sincerely as I held that belief then, I don’t hold it any longer.

So, stay with me on what I’m about to share.

How Did We Get Here?

If you’re reading my work, I assume you’re also reading about the historical background of American evangelism’s role in our government. That’s a big part of “how did we get here” that I’m not going to get into today. If you want to know more, you can read the wealth of books and articles by Evangelical leaders and like Russell Moore, Karen Swallow Prior, Jemar Tisby, Skye Jethani, David French, Essau McCaulley, Beth Allison Barr, Kristin Kobes Du Mez, and more.

But how did we get a second Donald Trump presidency after, you know, we thought we had learned our lesson the first time? Well, no matter where you land on the political spectrum, you’re not going to like it. I come with receipts.

In 2022, several news outlets reported on how Democrats were funding Republican campaigns during the mid-term elections. The campaigns in question? The most far-right Republicans running for office in states Democrats wanted to win. Their tactic: elevate the most radical voices of political extremists, because it will be easier to win those offices.123

And they were right. It worked. In 7 out of 13 of those races, Democrats won.

It should be obvious why this tactic is completely unethical and damaging to democracy, but in case it isn’t: instead of running against sane Republicans with integrity in a fair race, the Democratic party decided to use millions of dollars to stack the deck with Trump loyalists, effectively taking our options for good representatives away.

From Open Secrets:

“I think it’s very dangerous and potentially very risky to elevate people who are hostile to democracy,” Democratic political strategist Howard Wolfson told the Washington Post. “Either this is a crisis moment or it isn’t. And if it is — which it is — you don’t play cute in a crisis.”

Even if candidates [Democrats funded] do not go on to win their general election, there is an additional concern that by helping them secure a victory in their respective primaries, Democrats have helped to legitimize and normalize their political platforms, which otherwise would have been viewed as fringe.

I’m not saying that the Democrats who won those districts were not good representatives. I’m not even saying they are the ones who lack integrity, because I won’t assume they all knew about or had control over this decision. Campaigns involve a lot of people. I am the Democratic party could have backed Republicans with integrity and good faith, but that would have required they would rather lose to a worthy candidate than win. Instead, we ended up with a bunch of extremists rising to undo prominence in the next two years, and ultimately they used that push in visibility and funding to win more seats and get Trump back in the White House.

In the end, the Democratic party was impaled on their own sword. The consequences reach far beyond the US.

Many liberal media sources reported about this tactic when it was successful in 2022. Fewer published articles on it in 2024, although Democrats did try it again. Why publicize failure?

And on the conservative end, I couldn’t find articles on this. Why tell the truth when it makes your side look bad?

Don’t Forget We’re on the Same Team

I know it probably feels like we really don’t have options when it comes to voting after all. But I don’t agree. We can vote for the more qualified candidate for the job, even if we don’t agree with all their policy positions. To do one even better, we can be informed enough citizens—not obsessing over the news or outcomes, but just enough to help us maintain a grasp on reality so that we can face it.

When Garth and I were first married, during conflicts we started reminding each other that we’re on the same team. This perspective kept us focused on resolving the problem that was causing our conflict rather than fighting each other.

Dear America, we’re on the same team. If we continue working for mutual destruction, we all lose.

I don’t know how to truly remedy the problems we face, but I do know that we need to give up the us-vs-them mindset. Turn off the voices that are playing into that way of thinking. Stop giving them space in your mind. Give the platform to people who are willing to work together with people who aren’t already like them.

And I know it’s hard, but we need to be willing to engage these topics with the people in our lives. The implications of disengaging are too costly. It’s not just about us and our comfort. But we can make sure we’re going about it in ways that foster mutual understanding, care, and unity. I believe in us.

After the last election, I felt so immediately exhausted and discouraged. I knew Black and Brown writers and friends were as well, and that I was only feeling a fraction of what they were feeling because I only paid a fraction of the cost they do and will pay. These five years of learning to be more outspoken have shown me beyond a shadow of a doubt what our society is like for them. As a white, privileged woman, I have experienced firsthand just for speaking up what they experience regularly.

I think that’s what is hardest of all with this gig. The gaslighting of those in power—over centuries—is still the dominant narrative that so many want to continue to believe, even when the truth is right in front of them. Still, I believe in tenderness toward those people, because I have had to be tender with the younger version of myself for the years of struggling with cognitive dissonance. I know it’s real, and it’s hard, and it feels so threatening to come up against.

And living with the cognitive dissonance is easier than standing with those who don’t always agree with you, who can’t protect you—putting your safety or comfort on the line for the sake of others. But easier doesn’t make it right.

I’ll leave you with this quote from Martin Luther King, Jr., which he wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail,

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White citizens’ “Councilor” or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action” who paternistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

Our lukewarm acceptance isn’t enough to foster belonging. Yes, we have laws in place now meant to protect the civil rights of those who are not white able-bodied men. But we’re currently watching an executive-level effort to roll back so many protections for all of those people. That isn’t a projection, it is literally what is happening. And it’s happening because many Americans have maintained the same posture and attitudes Civil Rights leaders were facing in the 60’s and even earlier.

We haven’t made it as far as we think. And it’s time we stop and consider the reality of that. We can no longer cheer “our side” winning by any means necessary when Americans with ethics and integrity lose. When the people working for our mutual good lose, we all do.

I wasn’t sure how I would navigate my days with the kids home during Christmas break, and it turned out I did no writing. No, my kids started break with a bang and woke up at 4 am, then 3 am the next day, then 4 am for the rest of the week of Christmas. The second week of break was consumed with setting some strong boundaries around our mornings and enforcing them. I was just as exhausted as when they were little, and it left me feeling discouraged.

Then, this past weekend, they were supposed to head to my parents’ so Garth and I could spend a couple days alone for our anniversary, and my dad caught a cold so we kept the kids home. That meant instead of spending my Friday alone, prepping my work for this next week, I was scrambling to find ways to fill our time so we weren’t sitting around at home totally bummed out and taking it out on each other. By Sunday, I felt all too ready for them to go back to school (something I never imagined I would say!). Turns out we all thrive when I have my time alone to work during the day. The kids are excellent students in school, my fourth grader is ascending to a swath of leadership roles already, and we’re all appreciating our time together more as well. Sending them to school has been more of a blessing to us than I would have dreamed.

Download My Winter Guide

Now that the sparkle of the holiday season is over, it’s time for us to get through the rest of winter. The rest of winter.

If I suggest stick season can (and should) be restful, does that help you relax your shoulders and release your jaw? It does for me.

I’m ready to put away my Christmas decorations and leave up just the winter decor, the extra plush throw blankets, the extra mugs. Join me? Pull on an extra pair of socks, a warm sweater, and your favorite oversized throw, get cozy with a warm cuppa, and read my winter guide.

From a former winter-hater to winter-reveler, I’ve written up my secrets to help me get through this isolating season while coping with seasonal affective disorder (SAD). It took a shocking amount of work to get this out into the world, but I wanted to make sure this was free and accessible to anyone who needs it

Download winter guide

As a bonus, my friend Bethany Whitworth at New Bangs Design offered to partner with me to create a shopping list for you. I jumped at the opportunity to collaborate. She has curated a shopping list of winter drinks, books, and decor to help you find what you need for this season. These are all suggestions, but our hope is that it jogs your creative thinking to help you shop.

If you have any upcoming home design projects on your calendar, please reach out to Bethany for a design consultation. She has a great eye and is also keen to keep budget in mind. I’m always blown away by how well she listens and executes someone’s vision that suits their unique tastes. Trust her with your home projects and know you’re in good hands. Head to her Instagram page “New Bangs Design” to connect with her.

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My Word of the Year

Last year, my word of the year was “nurture.” I thought keeping that word on the forefront of my mind would help me nurture my family, myself, and my community. But it turned out to be a reminder of how I am nurtured, what nurtures me, and what doesn’t serve me, my family, or my community so that I could let go. We ended up moving. We ended up leaning in harder to show up for people when life got hard. Really, it just felt like a year of saying yes to more of what’s good for us.

The word kind of followed me too. In June, I got to attend the Cultivate retreat with The Way Back to Ourselves. Then in July our family camp theme was also Cultivate. It was a year of looking around at the Lord’s goodness, which was a reminder we needed through our grief-filled fall.

The things we cultivate also nurture us. It’s worth the time, energy, and effort. The yeses and the nos. The rest and the efforts.

This year, my word is harmony. TBD how that’s significant this year. I have my mind on creation, balance, concordance, cooperation, peace. I don’t use my word for the year as a goal to obtain so much as a meditation to return to. We’ll see what I learn from it by year end.

Normally I also have a Bible passage for the year, but none have felt quite right yet. Any suggestions?

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Thanks for being here, Beloved. And don’t forget to go get your free downloads!

free downloads

But I have some GOOD news that’s getting out into my real life circles, so I feel it’s time to share it here: I am officially writing my first book!

It’s a devotional for Christian creatives that I’ve been writing in one sense or another for the past six years. Of course, I didn’t know at the time what I was writing for, I only knew devotional writing, for some reason, was a skill I needed to start working on. And so I did.

Stay tuned for a release date and more details as it all crystallizes!

I am also preparing my cozy winter guide, Sacred Solitude, for you to hunker down with post-solstice. Yes, I’m being a stickler for following the seasonal rhythm. Go enjoy the warmth and cheer of Christmastime. Then we can get through the rest of winter.

As a bonus, this year I have a friend writing a companion to Sacred Solitude. It will be a buy guide, for those of you who like having recommendations and links directly to them. Bethany is an interior designer, so I’m really excited to offer you her skill set to help you find practical and creative solutions to staying sane through the most isolating part of the year.

That’s all for now, unless you’re a paid subscriber. I have a short essay below for those of you who have supported my work financially this year. I only put up the paywall a couple times a year, but it only seems fair as a thank you. I’m so grateful even three people would see pouring $5 per month of their money into my work as a worthy expense. And you, though small in number, are worthy of my effortful words even though few will read them.

Take care, Beloveds.

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“That’s a nice idea,” I said. “I think they’ll like that. I bet they haven’t tried those before either.”

“Sharing is the most important thing, right?” He said thoughtfully.

My knee-jerk response was almost to say, “well, not really.” But I stopped myself and thought about it a moment.

“You know, I think so,” I said. “When God made Adam and Eve, they didn’t have to think about sharing. That’s something sin broke in the Fall.”

The rest of our conversation was about how God made us good, and that we can still trust God to give us enough. That our desires are sometimes not for the right things, but that most of the time we still know what is right and we can choose it.

This is a sharp deviation from the theology of man I remember learning. I had been taught that the heart is deceitful, therefore we don’t know the difference between good and evil. But Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which means we gained the knowledge of both and therefore the ability to choose.

God’s expectation is still for us to do good. But since sin does get in the way, for the times we fail, there is also forgiveness.

Today, I write this without knowing the results of this week’s election. You may even be reading this while votes are still being counted. There is no breath of relief or black cloud on the horizon, there is only the tension of waiting to see what transpires next.1

The past two weeks, I took to Instagram to do what I was trying to talk myself out of doing for the past several months: talk in no uncertain terms about the election.

Being that people voting for Trump were often arguing on the basis of morals, I couldn’t just sit and watch people sharing the idea that voting for someone with well-known and glaring character defects is in any way based on morals. We don’t elect someone who consistently circumvents the law to the highest position of leadership in our country on the basis of preserving our country’s morality. It’s an oxymoron.

On the basis of policy? Sure. On the basis of self-preservation, if you believe this person can make your life better? Yes. I’m not saying a vote for Trump is immoral, only that any argument that voting for him is based on morality is an invalid argument.

Here’s the thing: If you’re a white Christian, you may be culturally and socially vulnerable in some ways in our growing secular culture, but you are not vulnerable like those in countries without the religious freedoms we have under the law here. You are not vulnerable like the refugee. You are not vulnerable like the indigenous person. You are not vulnerable like the person seeking healthcare for gender dysphoria. You are not vulnerable like a pregnant Black woman in a state with a high mortality rate.

No, if you are a white Christian, you will never face any of those vulnerabilities. It can be hard to relate.

A lot of the time when I hear people say they’re voting for Trump it’s about protecting themselves, their family, and their way of life. But as Christians, we’re called to care for more than our neighbors who live and vote a lot like we do. We’re called even to love our actual or perceived enemies. This is not a mere suggestion.2

I know that if we were ever facing persecution—from which, thankfully, we are still afforded legal protection under our constitution—we would want our neighbors to speak out, vote, and collaborate for our protection. How do we do unto others as we would have them do to us? Are you convinced your vote this round did that?

There’s a reason so many people think that being a Republican goes hand-in-hand with Christianity, and it’s not because the Republican party is better at emulating the gospel. That’s not to say Democrats are more faithful—however, a vote for the Democrat candidate is not less based in morality than a vote for a Republican, but that’s not what most American evangelicals have been conditioned to believe.

Our Context

For elections in the US, I don’t only wish we had two better options, I wish we had more options. A minimum of 5 would be nice. But in this two party system, we either choose between the two top contenders or we leave it up to everyone else to decide. Even in our current context, I don’t try to convince anyone that a vote for anyone other than Harris is a vote for Trump. I do, however, try to help them see that if we end up with a Harris victory if they don’t vote for Trump, that’s better than them voting for someone who thinks he is not only established by God if he wins but thinks he is above the law of our land, the Constitution.

It’s not that Trump is pure evil. It’s not even that he appeals to the Christian vote in predictable ways. It’s that he, though made in the Imago Dei, openly diminishes that characteristic in others. It’s in how he knows exactly how to follow the evangelical Republican playbook to gain votes, and how that’s revealed the American church’s political idolatry. Someone like him never should have been popular among Christians. It is a convicting reflection of what we’ve passed off as acceptable and good. Our repentance is necessary.345

Divided We Fall

There’s a popular sentiment that gets quoted during these times, “we belong to each other.”

The full quote is from Mother Theresa, and it goes like this, “If we have no peace, we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”

We’re not going to get it right every time. Sometimes, someone might seem like a good choice and fail. But, as Sharon McMahon says, “We cannot work for our mutual destruction.” To label a whole half of our country inhuman, evil, the enemy is to call for their defeat. We cannot work for the common good if our goal is to destroy half our population, either figuratively or literally.

When my husband and I have a disagreement, we say, “we’re on the same team.”

America, we’re on the same team.

I know it doesn’t feel like it. We have to work for the good of one another, regardless of political party. The politicians we elect have to be willing to work together for the good of our nation as a whole.

As an independent voter, I am not affiliated with any party. Remaining registered as an independent keeps me centered on what was always true: that I don’t owe allegiance to any party. I can vote for whoever I think best represents my values regardless of their affiliation or mine.

The downside of not having party affiliation is that I am exempt from voting in primaries. The duty registered Republicans and Democrats have is to ensure their party nominates a qualified candidate by showing up to these events—something that I took for granted in the past. And then, after your candidate wins, your duty is then to hold that candidate accountable for how well they represent the people while in office.

We need to be especially willing to speak out when our party gets things wrong.

Our diversity is good. Our mutuality in our diversity is good. Our discourse in disagreement is good. We actually need both sides, because when we share our perspectives we can round out blind spots, balance needs, and make better decisions. As a nation, our strength is and always has been in our ability to work together.

As Christians, our strength is and always has been our unity in submitting our whole lives to God. We remember that the common good is the Christian principle our nation was founded on. If we are aligning ourselves with powers that overtly threaten to oppress, jail, deport, or harm a whole group of people, we cannot say that we are honoring God with that decision.

When God outlined his laws and expectations for his chosen nation Israel, he also set up a system for cleansing themselves of sin. He told them his expectations, but he also made allowances for them to fall short. This was a foreshadowing of the sacrifice he would later make for all people for all time.

If God can make concessions for humanity, we can join him in that work, too. We live in the shadow of the cross. We live in the victory of Christ’s resurrection. We do not need to fight for control or put in place a government to cleanse the land.

We do need to find a way forward with arms linked together, a posture of listening to one another, caring for the most vulnerable, and trusting God to protect us when we have put others first. Doing so doesn’t diminish our fears but confronts them.

I am wholly convinced that we will get through together by the power of the Holy Spirit. I believe this for Christians because it’s what Jesus prayed in John 17. His word will not return to him empty.

Don’t think about what that will entail for others so that you can love them. What will it require of you? Go and do it, Beloved.

Things That Are More Important Than My Vote

As I walked home from voting today, I felt a sense of duty and honor. I did it, I made my voice heard. I did my best with the options available to love my neighbors, both immediate and nationally.

My attention quickly turned to something I read on one local candidate’s website: We live in the largest and most diverse county in Minnesota. Coming from a small town and seeing the differences in my political identity from then to now, I’m aware how where we live shapes our politics. I’m learning to be ok with that, thus all the things I shared above.

With that said, here’s my incomplete list of things that are more important than my vote:

• Being a safe and welcoming presence in my neighborhood so we can build mutual trust.

• Participating in church ministries both for the good of my church and also the good of my city.

• Calling my parents (sorry, Mom and Dad, I need to work on this).

• Texting that friend I’ve been thinking about to tell her, planning a phone call, or setting a date to actually meet up in person.

• Actively participating in my kids’ lives to help them through their development, in their spiritual life, and to maintain a good relationship with them as they grow.

• Showing up for friends, my kids’ school, and church families when they’re in need.

• Delighting in my people as I believe God delights in them and me.

• Staying engaged in my community, attending meetings when I need to know more about something that affects them and not just me, and writing letters, petitioning, and advocating as necessary.

• Writing the books I have been developing, which will hopefully outlive me.

• To look my husband in the eye, to look my children in the eye, to look the person across my table in the eye.

• To love and love and love and love.

What’s on your list?

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There is so much going on in the world, sometimes talking about other things feels disingenuous. At the same time, I haven’t had the energy to put toward breaking down the discourse as I’ve done in the past, mostly because I’ve hardly been able to pay enough attention. This summer of transition (a move, my kids starting school, a friend dying, a bout of COVID) left me feeling like a spinning top wobbling to a clumsy stop. And now I’m in this new home with new rhythms, and I’m confronted by the realization that I don’t really know myself in this context.

I’ve come back to my old meditation that I must root down before I grow out. And growth isn’t about the reach, anyway, but about the fruit.

My question for myself, or maybe you, or maybe God is: do we even know when we’re in a fruitful season? I feel like I’ve been waiting forever, but maybe I’m looking at it wrong.

Maybe it’s more about staying on the vine and what results within us than what we produce.

Many of my dreams lately have taken place in grocery stores or malls—places with so many options and decisions to make. In one I was looking for dairy free whipped cream for my dairy intolerant family and couldn’t find any. In another, I bought two boxes of Christmas themed cereal out of season and a cartful of other items my kids had selected, to find after checkout I had bags filled with only treats and candy. In other dreams, I’ve discovered that my house itself was inside a mall. What does it mean?

I think my subconscious is sorting out how I feel in my waking life. What am I here for? What do I even want? And the pressing reality that I can’t get out of making a decision even as I can’t find what I’m looking for.1

I stood in my daughter’s doorway this morning contemplating which toys, if any, we should sell or donate. For one, I’d love to be rid of the toddler play grill and all the plastic food and cookware that goes with it. Then I noticed how many dolls she has (none of which I’m keen on getting rid of, for the record). It struck me how little time we have left with some of these toys, even the newest ones, and wondered how sentimental she’ll be about each one as she grows older.

She’ll be 10 in less that half a year—we’ve already raised her over halfway to adulthood. Childhood is fleeting. I’ve never been emotional about her getting older because learning to be her mom was so challenging and overwhelming that every milestone has felt like “we survived!” but now that we’ve come this far I’m wishing for some of that time back.

When my daughter was just under two years old, I went to a family member’s anniversary party. An older man there, after learning I was a stay-at-home-mom, asked if I wanted to do more than be “just” a mom. At the time, I didn’t want to be a sahm, it was the best decision we could make with the timing unless my husband quit grad school. But it came at the sacrifice of my career, of which I was acutely aware. And obviously, his words stuck with me.

Now that my kids are in school after a decade of being home with them, I feel like I’m getting to know who I am again. And by that I mean in the slow unfolding way you get to know a new friend.

I miss the way things were. I’ve long said I wouldn’t relive the baby years again because I was so unwell, but these last four years of homeschooling my kids and watching them become big kids? I would do those again, even knowing it ultimately wouldn’t be sustainable for us.

Truth be told, in my early years of sleep deprivation and chronic fatigue, I was barely functioning. When I regained some capacity, I thought just keeping up on housework would set an example for my kids and they would follow suit. Monkey-see, monkey-do. But as I felt myself propelling toward burnout last year and meeting resistance from my kids multiple times each day, I realized what I was actually doing was over-functioning in my home. The kids weren’t contributing not only because they were kids but because mom will do it if I don’t. And if Mom won’t, Dad will.

We realized toward the spring of last year that in order to implement change, the kids and I would need a little more distance from each other. I would have loved to afford a three-day homeschool help model, but we couldn’t do it. Public school is accessible and available, and incidentally an option I want to advocate strongly for, and so we made the decision to send them. And they love school. They ride the bus, which has helped them make friends in our neighborhood. We’re getting along better more often. I’m more consistently patient with them. When Garth and I had COVID for a week, we didn’t have the kids here to take care of while sick for a chunk of the day for the first time since we became parents.

I miss the way things were, but I’m seeing that this thing I did not want can be good, too.

My sister-in-law texted me yesterday saying, “I want to start today over. I want to try again.”

I replied, “But God doesn’t allow it. We can only move forward and trust him.”

That’s the hard part, right? The moving forward and the trust. Yet it’s all we have.

I am feeling muted lately in so many ways, and I’m allowing myself to exist in that space. I’ve let submission deadlines pass and I’ve taken naps when I could be working on various projects. But I’ve needed to renew my sense of safety, and I have the time to slow down and tune in to myself, which is a privilege I hope not to waste. I’m letting new parts of me wake up slowly.

A handful of mom friends encouraged me to take my time figuring life out on this side. I’m thankful for their permission. I really did think I would be full steam ahead on setting goals, creating a schedule I could stick to, and ending every day with a sense of pride in what I’ve got done. After all, I have all these hours now without the kids. But, to my surprise, everyone with gentler expectations were right. It took God bringing my life to a halt for me to heed their advice, but I’m moving forward with more self-compassion.

The world will likely never tell you it’s ok to rest (even rest is often framed in the potential for productivity). Mary Oliver said joy is not meant to be a crumb.2 And Jesus himself said come to him and rest—told us to pray only for our daily bread.3

It feels like a luxury, lavish, unfair favoritism to get to live slowly.4 After a spinning top season, I’m realizing it’s a gift to get to stop spinning. Life isn’t about achieving or impressing but simply existing as we are, in the context we find ourselves. More like fruit clinging to the vine awaiting harvest. Not fearing or fighting the rain or the wind but simply being where and what we are, knowing we will be sustained (even when we’re holding on for dear life, but especially when we’re secure enough to let go).

We can give each other permission—and ourselves—because we have God’s permission, and his is all that really matters, Beloved.

My kids started school this week. This morning my whole heart bounded onto the bus and rode away. I knew I would miss them, and I do. It will probably be better for me going about my day missing them than wishing I could live up to my own expectations of myself as a mother.

I’ve never had any critique of parents who send their kids to school, but I do have plenty to critique about the American education system, which I won’t expound on here. I am so thankful for public schools and teachers and the access we have to an education as a society. I wasn’t struggling to educate my kids well, I was struggling with being everything for my kids and the pressure that put on our relationship. We were doing a fine job home educating, but we lost our joy. My nervous system needs time to recover, so this is me using the village that God has given me.

I am grateful for the time I had with them home and for the resources provided by our community through public school. I am hopeful for the year ahead for all of us. I am sad to let my vision of home educating my kids go.

But I’m not worried about them. Sending them to a good school with dedicated teachers and other kids their age is not worse for them than staying home constantly at odds with a depleted mother.

And for other parents giving up their ideals to send their kids out into the world, I’m convinced God knows how this feels. He sent Jesus to Earth. God entrusted his son to this world so he could save it, so I know I can trust God with my kids in this world. I’m not buying in to any idea that Christian parents need to homeschool. We’ve always held our plans and preferences with an open hand, so here’s us living into that value.

God’s not disappointed in us. We can trust him with our choices.

I’ve been away for awhile, and it has shown me how introverted I am—and how much I had adapted to extroverted thinking to share things online. I’ve needed this time to just live my life. Just live. It has been good to give myself more time, and I’m brainstorming how to honor this about myself moving forward as I navigate writing life. Perhaps having the mental space of a house to myself for hours a day will help with that.

Reviewing my last two newsletters about our big, glorious move and the fact that we had two whole vacations this summer (partially paid for by parents), I’m also thinking about how easily these online spaces can be highlight reels. Which, we all know is the reality yet can still find ourselves feeling like our lives aren’t interesting or good.

It goes like this: one month you're fully immersed in the good story of your life—buying and selling houses nearly seamlessly, getting planted more firmly in your community. The very next, your friend is miscarrying, then another is struggling to find a job that's fulfilling and provides for them, and your car needs thousands of dollars in repairs, as does your new house. You try to hold the tension of control and destiny in your hands. Two of your childhood friends lose parents in one week, and you feel sorry for the goodness you're experiencing while also fearful of what could be lurking around the next corner. There's the sweet and the bitter, and the proportions for once feel tilted in your favor, and you're just beginning to learn to accept it. There's the house, but then there's the bills. But you don't worry because you have enough. There's enough to cover what is needed for now, even with the vacation, even enough to cover an unplanned rental car. You try not to feel guilty for the good. You try to stop waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

But then, you find out your dad has cancer. 

My dad has cancer. 

My dad has chronic cancer and this will be his story for the rest of his life, which could still be many more years. Time suddenly feels too fast and too slow, and I no longer want to know how this story ends. 

The world could come to a catastrophic ending tomorrow and I couldn't care. I'd accept it. It would be better.

Yet life moves on. My parents learn to adapt to this new normal, we continue making this house our own, and this morning I put my kids on a bus. The only constant of life is change. With each turn of the tide, we can fight it and try to force our own way, or we can accept it and rest into it.

As Kate Bowler famously says, “Life is so beautiful. Life is so hard.”

And this is what makes up a life: There is always something to celebrate, always something to grieve. Always waiting, always the passing of time. Always anxiety, always hope.

And the Lord who made all things and redeems all things and works all things together for good is always with us in it all.

The day my parents shared the news of Dad’s cancer we were gathered for “Christmas in July” in an Airbnb in Utah (also, it was August, but we kept calling it Christmas in July anyway). We were staying in Zion, which is a desert, and it rained all day as we exchanged gifts. There was a travel advisory due to flooding from so much rain, much like a winter scene from Christmas in Minnesota, so it all felt fairly appropriate.

At the end of the day, just as we finished up a fish fry, my dad took his Australian shepherd outside between drizzles. He came back inside to announce there was a rainbow outside the front door.

“Not just a rainbow,” he said, “a double rainbow.”

I have an essay tucked away somewhere about how God has used rainbows to show his presence for me in the past, I’ll share it if I find it. In our last house, the east facing leaded glass gave us rainbows all across the living room throughout the morning on sunny days. I’ve been lamenting losing that feature in this house, and I haven’t seen a rainbow hanging in the sky for years.

But that day, with news of Dad’s cancer fresh in our minds, on the evening before we left that place, not only a rainbow but a double rainbow spanning across the mountains. My heart is full with the metaphorical possibilities.

Mostly, remembering God’s promises to remain faithful. And resting my hope there.

Each year, Garth and I choose a Bible verse to meditate on to mark not only the beginning of a new year but also our wedding anniversary. This year, we chose Proverbs 3:24:

We make no plans or assumptions for what the verse will mean. We only choose what feels like words we might need, and let ourselves notice them in the context of how our lives unfold that year.

And now, the rest of the story.1

The following Monday, Bill’s real estate agent/friend came to our house. We felt sure that he’d laugh in our faces and call us crazy, but instead he took a look around and said, “This house would sell no problem, I think this could work.” We sat down at the dining room table and talked for about half an hour about how if things didn’t work out, we could take our house off the market even after signing a purchase agreement. We weren’t going to be left homeless.

“Mind if we put a coming soon sign outside today?” he asked.

We signed a pile of paperwork—a purchase agreement for the new house, sales contracts and legal disclosures for the old one—and when we he left that night, there was a sign in our yard announcing that it was for sale. Our kids were at my in-laws’ church camp for the week, so we kept it quiet until we could tell them we were selling our house.

The agent set us up with the seller’s inspector, and I showed up that Thursday morning and popped in at my friend Christine’s for coffee. Then I walked across the yard next door for the inspection. I wondered, “Could this be my new life?” On my way to the front door I noticed peony bushes in the front yard, and I could have cried. I had planted some at our house and they nearly died in the drought, but they managed to survive, though they had yet to produce a flower for me. And here were three peony bushes with fluffy pink flower puffs waving to me from the front landscaping.

The inspection went well with no major red flags for a house we had agreed to buy “as-is.” It would undoubtedly be a bit of a project, but nothing that had us running the other way.

Back at home, I was spending my week prepping and painting the front porch. The wood had been rotting and the paint flaking since our first year there, and we had finally found someone who could fix it. So we scheduled construction on our front steps and got the rest of our spindle porch ready with a fresh coat of paint. Unfortunately, rain kept setting us back on this project.

My mom came and packed up the kids’ winter clothes and some toys to store at her house until our move. When Garth got home each night he’d pack a few boxes. I also made a mistake that resulted in us needing to start painting our entire kitchen the night before our first showing (I couldn’t find the paint for the kitchen to touch up a couple small spots—it was in the basement, but I was blind to it from stress and exhaustion—I did, of course, find it two days before we moved out, after finishing painting the whole entire kitchen). We were a freak show.

After four days on the market and six showings, we didn’t have any offers. Our agent decided to lower the asking price by $9k, which was basically the minimum amount we needed to make this all work. The day after we got professional photos posted online, I shared the link to our house on Facebook, asking friends to share it. I was spending a rainy day inside painting the kitchen while the kids watched way too much TV when I got a message from an old friend. More than an old friend, he had been best friends with my high school ex-boyfriend.

He wrote, “I’ve been looking for a house in the area and yours looks perfect. I really like the pictures.” He called his agent and booked a showing for the next day. I thought, there’s no way my ex-boyfriend’s friend is going to help us sell this house.

We were down to one more day before the house we wanted to buy hit the market. It was listed as “coming soon” and already had five showings lined up for its first day live. We needed an offer. A good one.

My friend’s agent had told our agent that they were writing an offer. So when another agent called to say they were getting together an offer, our agent said, “Well, just so you know, they have a high school friend who is interested and he’s also getting an offer ready. Tell them to make sure it’s good.”

Later, our friend’s agent called to say since he has a Veteran loan (which makes buying an old house massively difficult for everyone involved), he changed his mind. But the other family didn’t know that. Our agent called and said, “I probably shouldn’t say anything yet, but you should be getting an offer tonight. A good one. I’m really excited.”

By 9pm, we had an offer for our initial asking price plus all closing costs. They also asked to close within a month (you may remember our purchase agreement required closing within 60 days). Everything we needed.

More than we asked or dared to imagine.

Friday morning, the house we were buying went live on the MLS as “contingent.” All showings were cancelled.

The following Tuesday was our buyers’ inspection. That night, while putting the kids to bed, we discovered the toilet was leaking into the kitchen ceiling. Just after scheduling a plumber and water leak mitigation team, our agent contacted us to let us know the buyer inspection found a crack in the sewage line for our house. They still wanted to buy it, but they wanted $5,000 in closing costs to pay for the repair.

For the rest of the week we felt a sense of foreboding with the whole situation. Our kitchen was covered in plastic with four industrial (heat) fans and a dehumidifier, our main bathroom was partially torn up, and our insurance denied the claim for the whole thing.

The house that had felt like a haven started feeling like it was spitting us out. And the piling up expenses had us feeling this whole plan was about to fall through.

It was under these circumstances, with three weeks till close, that I left my family for the weekend for the Cultivate Retreat with The Way Back to Ourselves2 (a trip I had booked before the house saga began). After a harrowing journey to get there, I got to spend a weekend feeling what it’s like to be in a safe and encouraging community. While I was feeling a strong sense of trepidation about celebrating all the invitations into community, I felt God’s call to “enter the garden.” That place where we go to walk with God and enjoy peace, to take in beauty, to rest, and to put our hands to the work of tending—cultivating.

We moved into our first house just as the world was shutting down due to COVID-19. The weekend we moved in I had an unexpected and confounding falling out with my business and writing partner, and I ended up having to let that part of my life and identity go in the weeks that followed. In the midst of all that loss, grief, and uncertainty, without the ability to be around a community who could bear witness to it, I felt held by our home. Garth was home for those first 9 weeks, paid, because chiropractic care wasn’t something he could offer remotely. We got lucky that option was available to us. We were able to make our house a cozy nest to hunker down and wait to host our people once life opened up again.

I the place I rested for days at a time after we did begin gathering again. It’s the place I recovered from panic attacks that I had each time I went out to spend time with new friends. It’s the place I learned to love and not fear neighbors who are different from me in all kinds of ways—and the place I learned to investigate my biases and discomfort. It was the place where my dream died, and where I began to dream again. It’s the place we lived the longest our whole adult lives, and the place we watched (from relative safety) the whole world fall apart.

While I was at the writing retreat, friends from church showed up with meals for my family so they could survive without a kitchen for the weekend. My parents sent money that Garth ended up not needing to use. I returned with a renewed sense that I am actually valued and beloved. Getting the time with other writers who were as excited to be in my presence as I was to be in theirs while my family was receiving care from our home community felt both unreal and grounding. A part of me was healed by it. And I was able to notice ways I already had healed.

With two weeks to go, our agent got us in touch with his friend who could patch the ceiling in our kitchen. That same week, construction on our porch repairs were also finished. I spent those final weeks painting the kitchen ceiling and the front steps to the porch, just in time for the new owners to enjoy.

You saw that my byline mentioned “white male privilege.” While we have no doubts God brought this all together because of the unplanned, unexpected, too-good-to-be-trueness of this whole thing, we were also caught up in the good graces of a group of well-connected, retirement aged, middle-class white men. Being ourselves a white married couple with (undeniably cute) kids, everyone involved really wanted to help us once they met us. I could give all the credit to God and our being palpably good people, but I know better. I will credit God and the professed faith of the men involved that we weren’t taken advantage of in this situation, but at the end of the day, we fit a social image that they liked and felt comfortable with, and therefore they wanted to help us.

I know that if any of the boxes we check weren’t true of us, this all would have been so much harder and may very well not have worked out.

In those last two weeks before closing, Garth got a call from our mortgage company saying that their appraisal of our house wasn’t as high as the seller’s appraisal. The problem was that our lender would not pay out a loan for any amount higher than their own appraisal.

Once again, we worked out our budget and decided if it came to it, we could pay up the $7,000 difference. Alternately, the sellers could agree to drop their asking price, but we felt that was a long shot.

“Will God do this one last thing for us?” I asked Garth.

If they dropped their asking price, it would mean a lower down payment and a couple hundred dollars saved per month on our mortgage.

Finally, the day before we pre-signed for the sale of our home, the sellers and our lender came to an agreement. We would split the closing costs that the sellers had planned to pay. And they would lower their asking price.

God did the thing.

We are now in the house where we plan to stay for the next 20 years. I’m writing this from my new little office that is also our music studio (surrounded still by stacks of unpacked boxes).

Of course, we know things happen. We can plan on staying for 20 years and life can fall apart in ways we’d never see coming. But we also know we can make it through hard things. We have before. I’m learning to relish enjoying the good parts of life so I don’t regret missing out on the opportunity when the hard times come.

One of the verses we chose to have read at our wedding was Proverbs 16:9:

This verse has guided how we approach our lives. We get to make our plans, but we don’t grasp tightly, we don’t force, we don’t push for our own way even when we plead with God to let the cup pass. And by allowing God’s leading, our hands have been open to receive what comfort, goodness, and blessing God has for us in each season. We’ve learned to take responsibility for our own part and our foibles, and to trust God with the unfolding of it all.

When we moved in last weekend, we didn’t need to rent a moving truck. Friends from church showed up with their cars and trucks, loaded our things, and drove to our new house and helped move us in. Already, we’ve walked to church, gone to a farmer’s market, and enjoyed free ice cream/Italian ice at a community night that we walked to with friends, sat up late in the ER with a neighbor, and had them babysit the kids last minute when another friend needed help. We’ve met half the neighbors on our block, most of whom are people who have been here for decades. And one family with kids my kids’ ages who homeschool.

If I had it my way (and what I believe to be God’s way), no one would be without the kind of community and connections that shows up to help, believes in them, carries burdens, roots down together with time.

We didn’t find a reprieve out on the edge of the city with wooded trails and lake. And it’s not a garden. We’ve moved further up and further into the city. A place to stay.

Key note: we were not planning on moving (yet). So this is the story all about how our lives got flip-turned upside-down.

A few months ago, I had this sense of being pulled into some invisible force I couldn’t see. I tried to explain to Garth the image I had in my mind of some current that turns in on itself. I couldn’t find the name for it.

Around this time, a post online found its way into my algorithm that was about rip tides. I live nowhere near any oceans and no plans to be near one soon, so this post was irrelevant to me. Except for the image and the explanation of a rip tide: a current that pulls in on itself and can pull anything in it back into the ocean. If you try to swim against it, even the strongest swimmer will exhaust themselves and could end up 100 feet from where they want to be. Rip tides can easily drown you. 

“So what do you do?” I thought and read on.

You don’t fight it. If you get caught in a rip tide, you tread water and call for help, wait for rescue. Or you can swim across it and then, once you reach the crest at the edge, back to shore. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I knew I had to stop fighting the invisible force exhausting me in my own life and start asking for help.

The last week in April, I filled out applications for the nearest school to us and cried my eyes out.

All my prayers for homeschool community and friends who understand that life for my kids and myself had gone unanswered. My kids had started talking about how they never want to have kids because they don’t want to be tired all the time. I started feeling like it was unfair to them to spend their days with an exhausted mom. I was trusting God with the version of “the village” our society offers by putting my kids in school. I was accepting that I needed a break to heal my nervous system—something I can’t manage while home five days a week carrying the load of caretaking full-time. Garth and I agreed we would just give it one year, because we had plans to start looking for a house where we’d have enough room to finally adopt as we’ve been planning. We didn’t want them to start schools and then change districts a year later.

I had a lot of talks with God about what I wanted and needed. I started with enough bedrooms for all of us, enough room to adopt. We’ve always liked the neighborhood near our church, but we couldn’t afford it and it’s not in our radius for Garth’s commute, so to make up for living farther away from our people I wanted to offer a place of retreat. I wanted to live near hiking trails or a lake. I wanted a finishable attic space or a finished basement, and a sunroom or enclosed porch that could be functional in most seasons. I wasn’t looking for a large house, just a flexible enough space for us to endure years with teenagers. And my biggest ask was for neighbors who would want to know us–for a community of neighbor friends.

I grew up with families nearby with kids close to my sisters and me in age. There was always someone to play with, always an adult keeping an eye out. I’ve wanted this for my family now.

A week after enrolling my kids in school, our friends from church told us their next door neighbor was getting ready to sell his house and asked us if we wanted to buy it. These friends live roughly four blocks from church and are part of our community group. “It’s big,” they kept saying.

We said yes without even thinking about it. Yes, if we can see the house and like it. Yes, if we can afford it.

A big part of me thought there’s no way this will work out. It’s too good. We’re not ready to move. God would have to make it happen, because I’m not forcing it. It would be easier to not even try. But I’m trying to live with open hands, so I opened my hands to this good plan, even though it seemed like an impossibility.

In the midst of our unknowing, we went ahead and toured our local school. Because, after all, we didn’t know what was coming. We had to prepare for two possible futures. It’s a lovely, small school four blocks away with small class sizes and an ideal curriculum and pace. But alas, you know where this is going.

The very next day, we went to see the house. College-aged boys had been renting it for the year, and the owner, let’s call him Bill, was embarrassed by the unclean state of the house. Lucky for him, we could see past the sparsely decorated debris, and we could see its potential. Four bedrooms, two bathrooms, flex space in the basement and attic. An enclosed front porch and back porch. The kids even met three girls their ages across the alley. (And they’re homeschooled, Lord, have mercy.) Everything we wanted and needed, minus the lake. But I can sacrifice proximity to nature for the community of my childhood dreams.

Bill told us if we decided to buy the house he wanted a pre-qualification letter, and he said he wouldn’t take any contingencies. We asked Bill to send us his asking price so we could let him know.

But we had one big contingency: We’d need to sell our house. 

That Sunday, during an after-church picnic, we got a text from Bill with the appraisal for his house. It was too much. We texted our friends and told them, “It won’t be us,” and spent the rest of the day feeling devastated.

But of course, you know this isn’t the end of the story. The next day, Garth’s pre-approval came back, and we learned that we would be able to get financing for the house. We spent hours that night crunching numbers to make sure we could really budget for it, and we were amazed to learn that we could. We were back in the game.

Bill wanted our offer by Tuesday: meaning the very next day. At this point, our friends were texting worried that he would accept a higher offer from a rental management company if it went to market. Their neighbor on the other side of the house in question (who had only met the kids briefly) shared their anxiety. They emailed Bill’s ex-wife to ask if she would please persuade him to consider our offer. They wanted us to get the house.

She responded that she had no idea we were interested in buying the house and sent her email address, asking them to have us send her our offer separately. Awkward!

The next day, we sent our offer to both of them. Garth and I laid down in bed after hitting send and he told me, “This feels like it’s not going to work out.”

I said, “If they take it, it’s good for us. If they don’t, it’s good for us.”

He put his hands under his head and nodded.

Within an hour, Bill texted us and asked if his friend/real estate agent could call us. Garth looked at me and said, “What, so he can tell us we’re dumb and this isn’t going to work out?”

We sat frozen on the edge of our bed waiting for the call.

“Hi Garth,” he said over the speakerphone, “Bill was texting me about your offer and asking a bunch of questions and I just told him, I don’t know, this would be easier if I could talk to them.”

He explained that he was retiring from real estate but still loved it, and that his daughter was taking over the business. He asked about pre-qualification and whether we were under contract with anyone to sell our house.

“No,” I said, “We’ve had someone out to give us a sale estimate, but we’re not under contract. We’re not putting our house on the market without knowing for sure we’re moving first.”

“Well here’s what I’m wondering,” he said, “if I could help you sell your house, this would all be a lot easier and then I can make it go smoothly. I’m out of town, but my daughter could come on Thursday to take a look and let me know if she thinks this is going to work. Would you guys be ok with that?”

We told him to set it up. When we got off the phone, we looked at each other in disbelief.

“Does that mean they liked our offer?” I said.

“I think this might work,” Garth said.

Want to know what happens next (you know, the part where it all starts coming together)? Keep your eye out for my next newsletter! Coming soon!

I am so excited to write out the story and tell you, but for now, I don't have any time to write. Even when I do, my mind is too busy and mushy to organize and write coherent thoughts. It’s all still in process anyway, so what’s the point? Our inner circle is getting the play-by-play, and I can hardly keep up with making sure they all stay in the loop (if that’s one of you, I’m so sorry!). I’m juggling more than I can hold right now.

My mind keeps going back to all the times of watching the details come together for us in the past—our wedding, nearly all of our moves, Garth’s job that he has now. God is working out all the details without any finagling on our part, as he does. Our hands are simply open.

So, I have a good story coming soon, I promise. I wasn't planning a long writing hiatus, but here we are. 

Life is completely nuts. We're celebrating. We’re waiting and preparing for all the possibilities.

In the meantime, would you pray? We need some things to come together that are out of our control. We recognize this, and we wait to see how it all goes. Pray for the details to work out and for our hearts to be ready for what’s next. Thank you.

Talk to you soon, Beloveds. How can I pray for you?