The doors opened, and crisp air hit you as bright light shone down on the massive wooden pulpit, beautifully set against the textured cream wall, with a cross hanging at the center. After many months split between a fellowship hall and a chapel, the congregation was divided. The sanctuary had finally been occupied after four years of migraine-inducing construction nightmares, fire marshal inspection failures, no AC, and even having to hold church outside one Sunday.

Many moons ago, I wrote an article about “Sometimes the Building Never Gets Built,” alluding to this specific project and how I had come to the conclusion that we would never occupy the sanctuary and would continue to live in the in-between, a metaphor for the Christian life. However, as the sermon title read this past Sunday morning, “What We Must Remember.” Drawing from Deuteronomy 8:2-4, our pastor recounted our wilderness journey, and just as the Israelites had been in the wilderness, we are reminded of all the Lord has done. He humbled us and tested us. He let the Israelites go hungry so God could feed them. Unable to store up bread, they were allowed only to trust that he would provide. Remember, remember, remember.

And now the promised land. “A land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing.” The time has come. The curtain has dropped, the door is open, a place flowing with milk and honey. And what will happen? You will forget the Lord your God. Our pastor said, “The land of plenty is the most dangerous.”

Spurgeon speaks on this. A man of many sorrows, he was known to speak most heavily on being kept in pain and affliction. For it is better to suffer than to sin. My most beloved quote by him nails this on the head:

“I, the preacher of this hour, beg to bear my witness that the worst days I have ever had have turned out to be my best days, and when God has seemed most cruel to me, he has then been most kind. If there is anything in this world for which I would bless him more than for anything else, it is for pain and affliction. I am sure that in these things the richest, tenderest love has been manifested to me. Our Father’s wagons rumble most heavily when they are bringing us the richest freight of the bullion of his grace. Love letters from heaven are often sent in black-edged envelopes. The cloud that is black with horror is big with mercy. Fear not the storm, it brings healing in its wings, and when Jesus is with you in the vessel the tempest only hastens the ship to its desired haven.”

So our charge, amid our sanctuary being occupied, chairs set, weddings planned, and baptisms in the future, is not to forget the wilderness. Forget not the manna provided, because all in all, what matters most is that we have the word of God. And that is all we need. When we were kept out of the building and had church outside, that was the clearest way to see the gospel in action. We need no building, no AC, no childcare, no fancy lights and piano. We need the truth; we need the sacraments. All else is passing away. We are prone to come to the land of plenty and say, look at all we have done, forgetting we once had to rely on daily food, forgetting the building we stand in was once barred to us.

And I am not exempt from this forgetting. If anything, I feel it most acutely in myself: I have found that I am a generally unhappy person, not unjoyful, but unhappy. When it rains, it pours, and I can’t seem to stay away from trials; that would seem trivial to a chained-up Apostle Paul, but nevertheless I am prone to despair, to complain, and to self-pity. But when the fog lifts, the weeks when I sail on the waters of strength, I am worse off. I forget my God, and in the end I come crumbling down. And at the bottom of the pit, when I have found comfortless comforters, when I have found myself weak and condemned, and my friends cannot wipe my tears, I have nowhere else to look. I admire Spurgeon for saying he is grateful to be held down, because he knows the Lord better through it. I am not grateful yet, but I pray to be. The cloud is black with horror but deep with mercy.

So against all odds, the building is being built. This, too, is a black-edged envelope, mercy delivered in a wrapping we mistook for delay. Perhaps this time next year, after dozens of weddings take place, after hundreds of people cross the entrance, some who will never know the wilderness we have endured, none more than our pastors, may we not forget it. May we never lose the awe of having AC and a place to worship.

May we be aware of the dangers of the land of plenty.

And if we forget, may the wilderness return, not as punishment, but as mercy, so that we may know him deeper still.

A friend once asked me how long I thought I would live. An eerie question, I know, but he was a psychology major and one of those deep, thoughtful people who liked to explore the meaning of life, and I was a good subject because I was more morbid than usual college-age girls. I said I never thought I’d make it to 60, and honestly, I hope I don’t. He blew off my typical morbidity and asked, given my family, how long would I live? I explained that my great-great-grandmother lived to 104 on my father’s side, and my grandmother lived to 98 on my mother’s side. So, with those calculations, we compromised that I would at least live to 80.

He asked the question to go somewhere deeper: when we confess our struggles and want change in our lives, we expect an immediate fix, forgetting it took our lifetime to get where we are. If I was 22 at the time, I had 58 years to grow in sanctification. It’s not like resetting a bone, he said. It’s like a medication that takes your whole life.

I think about that encounter often, especially in light of the distraction-filled world we live in. Free same-day delivery, credit cards tapped on a box, autofills, DoorDash. Quick fixes. Sick? Do telehealth. Hungry? Go to the store. Bored? Go shopping. But what happens when we grow weary of quick fixes? When our soul is weighed down by things that are incurable? A diagnosis. A hole in our favorite shirt. The fall of our favorite pastor. In a world of immediate satisfaction, these things loom larger, because we are used to being soothed immediately.

When I was in Scotland this year, I walked through a cemetery filled with tombstones that had stood for decades. The earliest date I found was 1783. You could barely read the writing, and the tombstone was slanted. I imagined all the storms this graveyard had weathered, and perhaps what the people had weathered too. The sacredness of those who came before us. People no one remembers anymore. I say I will probably live to 80, and these people strived to live to 30. Survival was all they knew back then. And here I am, a greedy, selfish sinner who hopes the Lord will come back soon, or take me before 80.

Maybe we have soiled young people's minds with this expectation of instant relief. When a generation raised on same-day delivery meets a pain that cannot be same-dayed away, some of them stop believing relief is coming at all. Alan Noble, in his book On Getting Out of Bed, writes honestly about that state of suffering, a life chronically facing the enemy's tactics, being told that the meaning God has provided is not enough. But Noble names a slower version of the same despair too: you can just as easily destroy your life by inches, through alcohol, through drugs, through anything that lets you disappear a little at a time. A long-term suicide.

So, how long will you live? If the Lord tarries and you still have 10, 20, 30, or 60 years left, what does sanctification look like for you? When the children are gone, and work has disappeared, when you are left alone and cannot distract yourself, what will give you meaning? Is glorifying God and enjoying him enough for you?

Paul tells us this life is a battle, a fight: “But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses” (1 Timothy 6:11–12).

When people enter a marathon, they train. When someone is getting married, they plan. On my good days, I am not preparing for battle. I am lost in a dream-like daze; life is wonderful, and then, around the next bend, trouble comes, and I am shocked all over again, as if no one ever warned me a fight was coming.

But someone did warn me. My friend warned me, in his roundabout, psychology-major way, sitting across from a 22-year-old who thought dying young sounded like relief. And the dead in that Scottish churchyard warn me still, slanting further into the ground every year, having gotten only 30 years to do what I complain about doing in 80. They did not get free delivery or same-day anything. They got a plow, a war, maybe a fever, and whatever faith carried them through it, slowly, the only way faith is ever carried. Sanctification was never going to be a quick fix. It is the medication that takes your whole life to work, and I am only 26 years into the dose. The question was never really how long I would live. It is what God does with however long I am given.

They taught me love was something sharp,

A blade disguised in gentle art.

Their words were cages, cold and tight,

Their touch a ghost that stole my light.

I learned to tiptoe through the storms,

To make my heart a thousand forms.

To shrink, to hush, to disappear,

To swallow every scream and tear.

I carried their rage in my spine,

A crooked tree that wouldn’t climb.

I wore the wounds beneath my skin,

A map of all the ways I’d sinned.

Their voice became my inner choir,

A litany of never higher.

Of you’re too much, of don’t you dare,

Of love that vanished in the air.

Years I wandered with that weight,

A heart convinced it was too late.

Bruised and bent, afraid to rise,

A child hiding in grown disguise.

But somewhere past the darkest tide,

I felt a warmth begin inside.

A whisper soft against my scars:

Beloved, I have held you far.

It did not come in roaring sound,

But in the hush when none’s around.

In gentle waves that kissed my feet,

In quiet dawns that felt like heat.

He met me where the salt still stung,

Where grief and rage still held my tongue.

He did not flinch at all my pain,

But sat beside me in the rain.

And in that place where night had reigned,

A tender mercy, uncontained.

A voice that sang above the lies:

You are My child. I have heard your cries.

So now I walk, though not yet whole,

A tender, trembling, mending soul.

With every step, the past unwinds,

And hope grows strong between the lines.

From hands that bruised to hands that mend,

From endless night to morning’s friend.

From shattered stranger to rising free,

His love, at last, is remaking me.

I Go Down To The Shore

I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall—
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.

― Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings

A day of traveling always sends me back to the same vow: never again. It’s…

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When I was little, I was obsessed with a certain band. Atypical of normal 10-year-olds my age, fan girling over Taylor Swift, the Jonas Brothers, and Justin Bieber, I found my sanctuary in a small country band called Sugarland. The lead singer, Jennifer Nettles, felt like home to me. I don't say that lightly.

When we don't worship God, our restless hearts still go looking for somewhere to land, and mine landed on a stranger's voice coming through a CD player.

I have a photo of myself at maybe ten years old, in a Sugarland shirt, holding a poster I made. My name is in careful handwriting. A picture of Jennifer was taped to the front. “Haley, #1 Fan, Sugarland.” I have another one, a few years later, in a theater with the seats still empty behind me, holding another sign. “I love Sugarland so much. You're #1 fan right here. Haley Isbell.” I drew a heart and colored it in so hard that it looks broken. There's a third, a green poster board at some outdoor show, block letters, her picture taped on with an arrow pointing down at my own smiling face, like I needed the arrow. Like I needed to make sure she'd know, out of everyone, that it was me. I am the one. Look at me. I'm the one who loves you the most.

A ten-year-old shouldn't need an arrow to be seen. But I made three of them, over three different years, because some part of me already understood that love that isn't chasing you back is a love you have to keep proving.

I went to every concert I could talk my mom into. I bought every CD. I would sit in my room in front of the CD player, the booklet of lyrics splayed open across my lap, memorizing every word like it was scripture, because in some quiet, aching way, it was the closest thing to scripture I had. When we got a computer, I would watch live performances on repeat until I knew the space between the notes. There was comfort in something outside myself, outside my home. I lived in a fantasy that she could save me from myself. I didn't know yet that only one kind of love reaches all the way down to where I actually was.

When I became a Christian, that feeling faded away, as it should. As I found my rest in God, the rest that used to come from loving a person who didn't even know I existed quietly stepped aside.

By sixteen, I was going alone, near enough, a photo of me in a red dress in some casino hallway, pointing at her face lit up on a poster, like I still couldn't believe I got to stand that close. And now, almost two decades later, that old ache has nearly disappeared. What's left is smaller and gentler, a feeling of freedom when I hear a song, enjoyment without the suffocating need for more of it.

The first time I actually met her, face to face, was in 2015. I had just turned 15. She'd opened her Broadway show of Chicago, and I sat outside in the frigid weather with my mom and sister, waiting on the street for the cast to come out. I remember feeling so excited that I wanted to throw up. I think now it was dread wearing the costume of excitement. Dread that after so many years of waiting, I was finally going to find out. What if she's nothing like I'd built her up to be? What if the second she walks out those doors, I become just another face in a crowd of people who all came for the same reason, a small, forgettable dot in a world that doesn't owe me anything. This random woman who happened to become famous, whom I had sought out the way the little bird in the Dr. Seuss book goes around asking everything he meets, “Are you my mother?” My fear was plain. That I would ask, and she would say no.

Eleven years later, she opened her own off-Broadway show. We didn't decide we were going until Thursday.

She's always been my all-time favorite artist, and if I'm honest, she's the one real thread my mom and I have always shared, every concert, every poster board, my mom standing right there taking a picture of me. So on a whim, I said, what if we just flew to New York for twelve hours on Saturday. Saw the show. Flew home that same night. We booked it before I could talk myself out of it.

Our flight got canceled going back home. We hadn't slept in 48 hours. And by what I can only call the Lord's providence, that delay is the only reason I got to see her not once but twice, once on the matinee and again the next night, eleven years almost to the day since I first stood shaking on a sidewalk waiting for her.

She has a captivating way about her. She's a Christian. She's sweet, unguarded in a way fame usually doesn't leave people. And there I was again. Standing on a street in New York City, waiting like I was fifteen again. When she walked out that stage door, it was unsettling how fast I could fall back into being that little girl with the poster board. She hugged me. I showed her the photo of us from eleven years before. She told me how grown up I looked and hugged me again, holding it a beat longer than a stranger has to. There's a picture from that second night, her cheek pressed against mine, my arm around her neck like I was afraid to let go too soon, afraid this was the last time the arrow would ever point at me. And then, just like that, she turned to the next person in line, and I was handed back to my own life.

On the way to the hotel, I couldn't stop thinking about how empty that feeling is. The longing to be known, next to the fact of being unknown. All those years of Sharpie and poster board, all that proving, and even now, hugged twice, I was still one face among many, a name she'd have to be reminded of again the next time. Worldly delights can be sweet. They were sweet. But they were never going to be enough to make a restless heart lie down.

I still don't fully know where I am. Somewhere between the canceled flight and the no sleep and the sheer impulsiveness of the whole trip, something in me went quiet, and I thought about how God has never once needed me to hold up a sign. He knows me by name without a poster board. Without an arrow pointing down at my face, saying, “This one, notice this one.” He knows the hairs on my head. Every sorrow, every grief I've carried, every small joy. He was there before I made the first sign, and He'll be there after I've forgotten I ever made it. He formed me. He chose me. He adopted me, on purpose, the way you don't adopt a stranger in a crowd.

That's the part that undoes me now, twenty years later. Not that a childhood hero hugged me twice in one night. But the God of everything has known my name since before I knew hers, and He never once needed me to prove I was worth turning around for.

Our hearts are restless until they find rest in Him. I'm thankful the old wineskin doesn't fit anymore. And I'm thankful, too, for the small, real, worldly joys He still lets us have along the way, even a ten-year-old girl in a ball cap, holding up a sign nobody but her would ever read, was already completely loved by a God who didn't need the arrow to find her.

The sun was just starting to set. The warm yellow strokes filled the sky, as they do in the Texas summer. The sun nestled behind the tree line, allowing a slight breeze to relieve the grass of the scorching heat. I lay on a horse named Sherman. A striking chocolate-brown former barrel-racing horse, now retired, is living out his days on my friend's farm. She sat in a chair beside me, her phone on speaker, playing “The Trauma of Holiness” by R.C. Sproul. Some light summer listening, right?

I was 19 years old. I had already been working full-time for two years as a registered behavioral technician with children with Autism. I was not a believer; had you asked me, I would have said I was a Christian, because I was Texan, and we all live in one nation under God. But this meant nothing to my restless heart. When I left home, I set out on a self-discovery journey that continuously left me empty and shallow. And I have learned the Lord loves to pluck his sheep out of the wrong pasture and put them where they belong.

It just so happened that the Lord placed me to work at a company full of Christian women. There is no one better than a lowly misplaced 19-year-old to draw Christian women together. One bought me a bible, another took me to church. They spent hours listening to my trepidations about God. My questions of scripture, my confusion of the trinity.

So there I was, lying flopped over Sherman the horse, listening to the trauma of holiness, with my friend pausing every couple of minutes to explain what Sproul had just said. When the sun finally set, the yellow strokes faded into a night sky, and the mosquitoes found their way into the black, we went inside. I can remember every detail of that evening. I go back to it often in my mind because I want to remember the kid who sat on the fireplace stoop as I sat before my friend and her husband, wrestling out loud with God’s providence, my sin clearly before my face, traumatized by a holy God. In the end, I posed a simple question, the only one that mattered, “Are you saying that this Jesus guy died for a sinner like me?” Without hesitation, she looked at me and said, “No. He died especially for you.”

In his lecture series, Sproul said, “The Holiness of God is traumatic to an unholy people.” And there I was. An unholy person traumatized by a holy God. Something shifted in me, not overnight but slowly; my feet stood on untrodden territory. Like Lucy in Narnia, trembling at the thought of Aslan the lion, “Is he-quite safe? ..” Safe?” said Mr Beaver ...” Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

That evening on the fireplace stoop was almost eight years ago now. The house is sold. My friends have moved. The horse is old. And as I reflect, my mere eight years of serving God have easily been the hardest years of my life. Why? Because of a loving Father who relentlessly pursues me. Because I have had to die to myself a thousand times over. There have been so many deaths, I don't recognize myself half the time. I look at pictures of the girl I was and can't quite reconcile her, the one who thought she knew everything, only to find out her whole life had been aimed in the wrong direction. And she found herself, time and time again, on hands and knees, crying out for a God she didn’t know if she believed in.

But that's the thing. I see the Man of Sorrows. I see eternity in the nails of his hands. I see a 19-year-old teetering on the edge of complete destruction, and the Lord breaking through, leaving the 99 to find the one. I did nothing. I was not looking for him. I didn’t even know him. But he knew me. He knitted me. He died especially for me.

There is no greater trauma than the holiness of God. And nothing more beautiful.

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I was a curious child. Aren’t all children curious? I am sure the up-and-coming generation will lose that art with their TikToks and apathy toward knowledge. I once stuck flowers up my nostrils because I wondered if they would smell better the closer they were to my brain. My answer was immediate: they don’t, and it sure hurts when your dad has to pin you down and pull them out with tweezers.

I was four years old when Google went public, and you could not fill a library with the number of rabbit trails I have fallen down since then. Google did not squash my sense of wonder; it propelled it into an endless search for answers. Isn’t that what we want? Answers? And not later, but now. But have we lost our identity in Christ in all the answers?

Much has been written about where human curiosity will venture in the age of AI, instant one-day delivery, and a dopamine rush every two seconds. And much more has been written about kids growing up with iPads, social isolation, and the inability to communicate. My curiosity is less about AI taking over, though I do fear, as a so-called “writer,” what it will do. My fears are more intangible. That, slowly, over the past twenty-ish years, as smartphones sit in our back pockets, CarPlay comes over the radio, and laptops are always within reach, this thing we have so constantly at our fingertips has dulled us to true connection. Not for the reason you think. Or maybe it is. I don’t know you.

My grandmother told me a story of when her cousins would come visit from out of state. They would send a letter before they left, but they never really knew when they would get there. They knew about how long it took, but sometimes it would be days, sometimes a week. I asked her if that ever made her feel anxious. She just simply said, “No.”

I feel more connected to someone sitting across from me than I ever do receiving a text. Because we are trapped in a loop. We don’t have the patience or the social awareness anymore to sit. We wait for the text, and if it doesn’t come, we jump to conclusions, we grow weary — all to find out their phone broke and they’d been waiting to get a new one, or it got stolen, or they were painting a picture, or, like me, they were so overwhelmed with the 952 unread messages on their phone that they dropped it and went on a run. We are too connected, so we feel shallow and numb to any real conversation.

But the real problem, at least with me, is that we don’t often move toward people — drawing out what is important, laughing until tears run down our cheeks, not worried about the Find My Friends app or checking emails. And when we do? When we sit with people in the hardships, when we laugh so hard our ribs hurt the next day? It moves us toward connection. Phones are a means to get there, but they are not the end. That’s why the Inklings, the literary club of Lewis and Tolkien, met at a pub. Lewis said,

“My happiest hours are spent with three or four old friends in old clothes tramping together and putting up in small pubs—or else sitting up till the small hours in someone’s college rooms talking nonsense, poetry, theology, metaphysics over beer, tea, and pipes. There’s no sound I like better than adult male laughter” (The Narnian).

It’s not that we are missing a deep connection. It’s that we don’t care half the time, we are self-centered. We think pleasantries, small talk, and texts here and there are enough. And sometimes they are, sometimes a text can brighten a day. But those things should move us toward deeper friendship. As our Savior was “deeply moved” by others, shouldn’t we?

“Whenever you are fed up with life, start writing: ink is the great cure for all human ills, as I have found out long ago.” — C.S. Lewis

People ask me sometimes when I started writing, or how. I usually laugh and say I don’t know, it feels like forever. But when I sit with the question longer, I do know. It was college.

I was a Biblical Studies major, so I wrote constantly: exegetical papers, reflections on systematic theology, a worldview paper on Inception, and a paper on how it wrestled with the Christian faith. But it was my literature electives that pulled at me, and for two reasons. The first was my literature professor, who had a way of holding a room. I was drawn to every word she said, moved by the stories, by the analysis, by the strange satisfaction of writing ten pages on Shakespeare. The second was Anne Bradstreet.

I was a sophomore taking my first literature class. I had been a poor student in high school, doing the bare minimum to get by, but something in college, becoming a Christian in earnest, had awakened in me. In the first weeks of that class, we read Bradstreet’s “Verses upon the Burning of our House, July 10th, 1666.” I was struck that her house had burned to the ground and that she could still write, in essence, what Job said: the Lord has given, and the Lord has taken away.

Farewell, my pelf, farewell, my store. The world no longer let me love, My hope and treasure lies above. — Anne Bradstreet, Verses upon the Burning of our House, July 10th, 1666

But what really struck me was a different poem, “The Author to Her Book.” Bradstreet wrote it after her poems were published without her consent, and the rawness of that, the shame, the exposure, resonated with me before I understood why. It made me feel tied to her across three centuries. I am someone terrified of vulnerability, and here was vulnerability put directly into words. I had kept journals for years, and the thought of anyone reading them made me more ashamed. I once told a friend that if I died, she should burn them, so no one would ever know the real me. Bradstreet’s poem said exactly that.

Thou ill-form’d offspring of my feeble brain, Who after birth didst by my side remain, Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true, Who thee abroad, expos’d to publick view, Made thee in raggs, halting to th’ press to trudge, Where errors were not lessened (all may judg). At thy return my blushing was not small, My rambling brat (in print) should mother call, I cast thee by as one unfit for light, Thy Visage was so irksome in my sight; Yet being mine own, at length affection would Thy blemishes amend, if so I could: I wash’d thy face, but more defects I saw, And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw. I stretched thy joynts to make thee even feet, Yet still thou run’st more hobling then is meet; In better dress to trim thee was my mind, But nought save home-spun Cloth, i’ th’ house I find. In this array ‘mongst Vulgars mayst thou roam. In Criticks hands, beware thou dost not come; And take thy way where yet thou art not known, If for thy Father askt, say, thou hadst none: And for thy Mother, she alas is poor, Which caus’d her thus to send thee out of door. — Anne Bradstreet, The Author of Her Book

I write because it cleanses something in me. I don’t know another way to wash my mind of its sorrows or to remind myself of God's faithfulness through the seasons I’ve despaired. And I do despair, though even typing that sentence, I feel the old fear of putting it down where it will be real. That’s the trouble with paper, it makes a thing exist. The turmoil, the sin, the guilt, the shame: things I wouldn’t admit to another soul, I have to admit here, because I have to get them out of this shell. New wine needs a new wineskin. I have to unclench my jaw and let the words settle somewhere outside my own throat.

I have to write because there are too many words filling me up, begging for a way out. I can’t sleep some nights because they bounce and flutter, not just in my mind but somewhere lower, in my chest. When I was young, my parents had a hornet’s nest outside the house, and my stepdad poured gasoline into a jar and held it up to the nest — and in an instant, every hornet dropped dead into the glass. That’s what writing is, for me. The words have to fall like that. They can’t go on living inside me. I only want the true ones to stay: the pure, the lovely, the righteous, not the lies, not the self-destructive undertow I carry with me. I never want most of what I write to be read by anyone. And yet.

“The Author to Her Book,” Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain. My writing, most of it, is exactly that: a weak child, born of a frail brain, sent out the door before it was ready, because that was the only way it would ever leave the house at all.

So this is why I write. Not because the words are polished, or because I’ve made peace with anyone reading them, but because the alternative is letting them live in me unspoken, and I have already tried that, and it does not work. Bradstreet washed her poem’s face and only found more flaws, and sent it out anyway, home-spun and hobbling. I do the same. I write to get the hornets out of the room before they sting something worse than paper. I write because ink, as Lewis said, is the cure, not because it fixes anything, but because it moves the sorrow from where it festers to where I can finally look at it, and hand it to God, and let Him do what I can’t: take the raw, ill-formed thing, and make it new. And because I pray, someone out there feels the same way. Because once upon a time, I was a desperate Christian looking for a writing that felt the same as me, that yearned and longed for companionship. And maybe, just maybe, I can be that for someone and praise God he has put my words to his glory.

Polycarp is part of the Apostolic Fathers of our Christian faith, alongside Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch. Following the apostles, Polycarp was discipled by John, and his letter to the Philippians shows a man of God who pursued godliness and encouraged the Christian generation coming up.

At the time of his life, the Roman Empire blazed a trail against the Christian church, not because of religion, as the Romans were a zealous religious people, but because they refused to believe that Christ had greater authority than the emperor of Rome.

The Roman Empire still believed that Caesar was lord and required that incense be offered at his statue. A magistrate of the empire offered to spare Polycarp's life if he would place a burning incense at the foot of Caesar's statue, thereby symbolizing his acceptance of Caesar as emperor rather than Christ.

Polycarp, a leader of the church in Smyrna, faithfully taught the gospel of Jesus Christ, stood in the face of persecution, and refused to deny his Savior.

Before the magistrate, he was tempted and ridiculed, and two doors came before him, between denying Christ to live and facing death while clinging to Christ. But in his eyes, the first door never existed. The account of the martyrdom of Polycarp goes as follows,

“the magistrate persisted and said, “Swear the oath, and I will release you; revile Christ,” Polycarp replied, “For eighty-six years I have been his servant,” and he has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my King who saved me?”

When it came time to decide how Polycarp should die, the conclusion was to burn him alive. Polycarp turned to his fellow Christians and said, “It is necessary I be burned alive.” The account of those witnessing his death observed what they deem a miracle: when they went to set him on fire, the fire surrounded Polycarp, but instead of burning, it was like “gold and silver being refined in a furnace.” His body was unconsumed by the fire. And lest the magister look foolish, an executioner stabbed Polycarp with a knife.

Polycarp was among many martyred, but he is remembered for his unwavering devotion to Christ.

“He proved to be not only a distinguished teacher, but also an outstanding martyr, whose martyrdom all desire to imitate, since it was in accord with the pattern of the gospel of Christ.”

Polcarp's life represents a man of vigor who knows his Savior. Chad Van Dixhoorn, when outlining the apostolic fathers, says that Ignatius writes as a man who will soon meet Jesus, and Polycarp writes as a man who already has.

In our modern world, we no longer face the dramatic task of offering incense at an emperor's statue or having executioners decide our faith's fate. Instead, we are subtly encouraged to deny Christ through everyday influences. Internally, we're tempted to trust ourselves, our governments, or even our pastors can live on pedestals. Approaching the two doors, we see that Satan's methods have evolved; he's distorted our lives, sowing doubts and fostering self-reliance. Though we don’t encounter empires demanding denial of Christ today, subtle voices press us to do so. Sometimes, I believe martyrdom might be simpler because it lacks hidden motives, deception, and manipulation.

Whether young or old, when death comes in various ways, will we be able to say, “I have served Christ for this many years, and he has done me no harm; I will not be against him”?

“Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world” (1 Peter 5:8-9).

The battle is here, and has been here. Be on the lookout, be sober-minded, be a man of vigor who already knows the Savior, and be able to say, “It is necessary I be burned alive.”

I am a naturally born pessimist. Much to my own demise.

It shows up when ads for Father’s Day come around. My tendency is to think holidays like this are made up for marketing purposes, and the scam of walking through card aisles feels like the deconstruction of society. The ads on TV, the haunting realization that the warm fuzzy feelings are crafted, manipulated, and sold back to us. For lack of a better word, I think Father’s Day is dumb. And Mother’s Day. And anything else the consumer marketing team sitting in a 50-story building dreams up to make you feel as guilty as possible while spending the most money on cheap plastic.

Have I made you a pessimist yet?

Perhaps my pessimism actually stems out of grief and rage that is not socially appropriate.

I know no one has a perfect earthly father, but some are pretty great.

I sit at weddings as the father-daughter dance is filled with loving affection and laughter, and I wonder if my dad would even come to my wedding, let alone dance with me. He may come, but I know he would not dance.

I sit at restaurants and watch fathers and daughters laugh over dinner, embracing before they part ways. I walk through my neighborhood and watch a father hold his daughter’s hand while showing her the ducks in the pond.

And my heart aches.

My hand is empty.

Maybe your father has passed away. Maybe it feels like your father is gone even though he is still here. Maybe the relationship is rocky and all too lonely. Maybe you are mourning the moments that showed you what could have been. But divorce and sin and moving away shatters all that young hearts once held dear.

As Father’s Day approaches, lay your pessimism aside for a moment.

There is a perfect Father in heaven.

One who expects nothing from you except that you come. One who draws near to the brokenhearted. One who sent His Son to be rejected, humiliated, abandoned, and crucified so that you might be called His child.

An earthly father could never match the perfect Father’s love.

But knowing this does not erase grief on this side of heaven.

This coming Father’s Day, fathers and families will sit together in church. Others will carry burdens their fellow congregants cannot see. Some will sing hymns with tears in their eyes. Some will wonder why everyone else seems to have something they do not.

But Christ understands.

He not only sees you; He sits with you.

The ache may remain. The empty chair may still be empty. The father you long for may never become the man you hoped he would be.

But a day is coming when every wound caused by sin will be healed. A day when every tear shed over fathers lost, absent, or broken will be wiped away by the Father who never leaves.

And perhaps that is why Father’s Day matters after all.

Not because we celebrate perfect earthly fathers.

But because every good father is only a shadow, and every grief points us to the day when we will finally know our Father face to face.

And there’s no hallmark card you can buy with that fact.

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On a Saturday morning in my one-bedroom apartment, four friends gathered. All 50+, joined together by Christ and by book club. Before me sat more wisdom and life experience than I have in my pinky, and I long to be like them. Because they show forth Christ in every breath, every misstep, every laugh. These are the people I call when I need prayers, when I need advice, when I need someone to laugh at my foolishness. They are the ones who call me out in love and point me back to Christ.

I have always gravitated toward people older than me. Call it what you may, but I know I have gained much richness and deeper friendship from those older than I am. Which is why a recent piece from Janie B. Cheaney struck me.

Cheaney, a commentator for the World News Group, documented how, post-COVID, the older generation is quietly exiting the church. She writes, “Even worse, they may feel that the whole church has grown away from them. All the focus is on attracting young families and building relevant teen ministries so the kids don’t drift away once they’re on their own. Seniors can feel out of place: mere pew-warmers and check-writers while the energy of the pastoral team is directed elsewhere.”

I understand this. Not from my own church, necessarily, but from watching the world do the same thing, slowly, quietly, growing away from the older generation. I felt it just this week.

I went to a doctor’s appointment with the same doctor I have seen since I was 10 years old. The same desk, even the same receptionist greeting me. Laughing at the woes of being kicked off my parents’ insurance this year, small talk while they checked me in. But today was different. Today I walked up to the desk, and they told me to check in at the kiosk. A big iPad at the front of the room. I filled out my information and sat in the waiting room, feeling sad for all we have lost. What about the personal connection? What about the people who don’t know how to use a kiosk, or who simply need that small moment of being seen?

The older saints in my church are the ones I notice behind the scenes. The coffee set up, the children taught, the prayers you never hear but God hears. They work quietly and are part of the church's foundation. Yes, it is important to reach the young people, the youth group, the young adults, the children, but the seniors are vital.

While I don’t yet notice their absence at my church, I feel the warning in Cheaney’s words.

“The old bring wisdom from experience; the young provide energy. The widow knows God’s faithfulness to a degree the new mother is just beginning to learn; the little children bring joy and purpose to her life with every birthday party invitation.”

The exit is quiet precisely because no one stops to ask them to stay.

So to the older saints: we need you. I need you. The church needs you. The Lord has put you here, in a time such as this. The exit is tempting, but there are hearts that are longing for someone like you.

We learn very early that life is graded.

Report cards become GPAs. GPAs become diplomas. Diplomas become annual reviews, promotions, salaries, and retirement accounts. Somewhere along the way, we learn that worth is measured, success is earned, and life is a race run beside everyone else.

Somewhere along the way, I brought the same report card into Christianity.

Though we would never call it a works-based faith, we certainly know how to add works to our faith. Haven’t you memorized the entire bible? You don’t pray for three hours every morning? You don’t serve at church at all? The christian check list stacks up in our mind, leaving us inadequate and sometimes hopeless. 

But not for me. It was a challenge that not only could I spread myself thin for the sake of service, but also be deemed “such a mature Christian for such a young age.”

A perfect remedy for a restless heart is often the church because there’s much to do, and you can do it quietly under the veil of humility without saying I believe this will provide security. I was working under that vale, swimming my way to shore. Not only because I did not trust that God could provide, but because I thought I could do it better.  I swam until my lungs burned, convinced the shore was just beyond the next wave. I thought I was swimming toward safety. I thought I was swimming toward God. I thought I was swimming toward maturity.

But the shore kept moving. But it turns out it was not the shore at all. It was an island I had fought to get to, only to be alone, worn out, and the flood was coming. 

When you stand at the shore of the ocean, you can see the storm brewing in the distance. Unlike the city, where the building hides the clouds until they are right over you. The ocean has a way of making you small and insignificant. The dark clouds billow, the waves in the distance rise and thrash, and as it moves closer. The birds flock and form their peculiar shapes and fly off to a safe distance. The floods lift up their roaring, the thunders strike. The lighting ripples across the sky. There is no protection in the storm. Only wonder and trembling.

The Breaking Point: The Floods Have Lifted Up

There are things the body remembers that the mind refuses. I can only get close to this part from a distance, so I’ll call her she- a fever dream of myself.

The swimming stopped working. The motion stopped working. The shapeshifting stopped working. The performance stopped working.

She lay there, still. Frozen in time, like when ice moves speedily and then slows on the ground, and it crackles against the space it is intruding. It was July in Texas. One hundred degrees outside, but she did not know for certain because she had not been outside. The blinds were drawn, and she hadn’t eaten anything in more than a day. The coffee she'd made that morning sat cold beside the couch. The granola bar was unopened on the counter. She felt nothing. As if her blood froze too, unable to move from the woven rug under her. She knew she should get up; she should distract herself. But she was frozen, paralyzed, by what?

She could hear kids screaming at the pool below her apartment. She could see her plants hanging from her ceiling, begging to see the sun, but it hurt her so much; the sun did. It reminded her of warmth and light that she did not want, she didn’t think she deserved. She could go to work, she could call a friend, or she could read the books that sat on her shelves, mocking her for all the knowledge she had that couldn’t stand up to the test before her. She could even watch a movie or drink a cup of coffee. She could drink a bottle of wine, anything. But nothing came.

She told her legs to move, and they stayed still. Should. Should. Should. She pulls the pillow to her face and wishes she could cry, but she can’t. She can’t do anything. You must understand that she was not someone who typically did nothing, and that is why this was so shocking to her. Well, it would have been, if she could feel any sort of emotion, but instead, she just stares at the ceiling fan, trying to stop the blade in time to watch it spin. She used to do this as a kid. It was a trick when she couldn’t sleep: to slow down the fan in her mind. You pick out a blade and follow it around until hopefully you fall asleep. But it wasn’t working. She wished she could sleep for weeks, for years. She wished the fan would come off the ceiling and impale her, but still, nothing happened. She lay, frozen in time, while the blades spun and the world outside carried on.

I found myself on the precipice of a different narrative than I had imagined, one that spiraled into a hell I had yet to confront or navigate. That's the thing about the Dead Sea. Nothing can survive there. Density may create buoyancy, but it kills life. What had kept me afloat was slowly killing me. 

The floods had lifted up their roaring. But I had forgotten the next verse. “Mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, the Lord on high is mighty.” (Psalm 93:4)

The storm was real, and the flood was real, but it was never the loudest thing in the story.

For a long time, I thought suffering would look like a storm.

I imagined crashing waves, desperate prayers, and dramatic battles against sin and sorrow. I thought if darkness ever came for me, I would at least have the dignity of fighting it. Instead, it came as stillness. The flood had already done its work by then.

The waves had lifted up their voice. The winds had howled. The waters had risen and carried away everything I trusted to keep me afloat. The checklist. The striving. The illusion that if I could just do enough, be enough, serve enough, then perhaps I would finally find rest.

And then the water receded. What remained was silence.

The kind of silence that settles over a landscape after a hurricane has passed through. Broken things scattered where they landed. Debris washed up on the shore. A strange quiet that feels almost holy until you realize it is grief.

The children still laughed at the pool below my apartment. The ceiling fan still spun overhead. The sun still rose each morning and stretched across the floorboards. But I remained still. The flood had taken more than my strength. It had taken my motion. I was not drowning anymore; I was drifting. And somehow that felt worse.

There is a peculiar terror in discovering that the things which once drove you no longer work. The fear no longer motivates. The guilt no longer motivates. The praise no longer motivates. The striving no longer motivates. You are left staring at the wreckage, unsure whether what has been stripped away is killing you or saving you.

Perhaps both, and that is the thing about floods: they reveal what was never anchored in the first place. The waves God sent had finally carried me to the end of myself. And there, among the wreckage, Christ’s words met me with a gentleness I did not know how to receive.

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Not perform. Not achieve. Not prove.

Come.

I wish I could tell you I came immediately. I wish I could tell you the sea became calm and the clouds disappeared from the horizon.

But storms have a way of returning. The floods still lift up their voice. And some days they sound unbearably loud. Far out on the horizon, beyond the waves and beyond my ability to control them, stands the same God who spoke over the waters in the beginning. The same God who sat enthroned over the flood. The same God who says the sea may come this far and no farther.

There are mornings when I wake up and can hear the distant thunder. Days when I find myself reaching for my old life jacket of performance, desperation, paralyzing sadness, preparing once again to swim toward a shore God never asked me to reach.

So, I stand at the shoreline and listen. The waves lift their voice. But they are not the only voice.

And for now, that is enough.

As a communications professional at a seminary, I work daily in word play. I spend my days editing professors’ work, drafting social media posts, emails, and programs, and crafting just the right sentences to convey a particular message. 

Words have always fascinated me, especially in novels, because they immerse you in the story and the characters. You come to understand the inner workings of a character’s mind and heart. It’s one thing for someone to say something you relate to, but it’s another to step into the shoes of a character, where those words truly come alive.

A Letter I Didn’t Know I Needed 

Many years ago, I asked a mentor for his “must-read book list,” and at the top was a book I had never heard of: Marilynne Robinson’s “Gilead.” I went in without any context, freshly out of college and eager to dive into a novel after spending many years studying theology and writing exegetical essays. 

I was unprepared for the lasting impact this book would have on me.

When I first read it, I was 23 and did not often consider death, suffering, loneliness, and dread. But when woven into a story like “Gilead,” those themes slowed me down, allowing me to meditate. While the book itself is only 247 pages and feels physically light, its content is far from it. I found myself thinking about the characters and dwelling on the truths they portrayed long after the last page. 

It felt like Ames was my grandfather, leaving me the wisdom he had gained on earth while I listened intently. 

Years later, after annual re-readings, Ames’ words have sunk deep into me: What is a quiet life? Am I noticing the beauty around me? 

I keep coming back to this observation: “I’m grateful for all those dark years … a long, bitter prayer that was answered finally.” I read “Gilead” before I went into a long season of suffering. This dark season changed me into a contemplative person, and I have come to say with Ames: it was indeed a long, bitter prayer, and on the other side, I am grateful for the dark times, because the light is made so much clearer against a night sky.

A Dying Man’s Letter

The story is set in the 1950s in the small town of Gilead, Iowa. John Ames is an elderly pastor writing a letter to his young son. As his time is running out due to a heart condition, he tells his son his life story. He tells stories of his growing up, his battle with anger, resentment, and loneliness, his joy in friendship, the freedom of forgiveness, and his love for his son. He also shares about the loss of his first wife and child and meeting his son’s mother.

The uniqueness of this book lies in its epistolary structure: It is a letter, without chapters. 

In this final testament, he lays out his life, reflecting on truths and the gospel to which he has devoted himself. The book is not overtly Christian; the themes are present but conveyed through the quiet, ordinary faithfulness of daily life, less systematic and more practical.

Ames often mentions his friend, Boughton, a Presbyterian minister. The pivotal moment in the narrative occurs when Boughton’s son, Jack, returns to Gilead after years of estrangement from both his father and the community. His homecoming sets the stage for conflict, as Jack, named after Ames, carries the weight of a troubled past. 

Throughout his college years, Jack strayed from his namesake and fathered a child out of wedlock. This event marks a turning point not only in Jack’s life but also in Ames’s perception of him; from that moment on, Jack is seen as a source of disappointment and distress. 

In this portion of the book, readers glimpse a side of Boughton that contrasts with the somber, saintly persona; here, he is depicted as a stubborn old man grappling with deep-seated emotions. However, as the story unfolds, reconciliation and forgiveness emerge as Ames extends God’s blessing to Jack. He tells his son that though his son may hear no other good things about Jack, there is indeed good in Jack after all.

Radiance in Obscurity

In his letter, Ames asks an important question: If you were facing death, what would you want to tell your son? We all know that we are mortal, but rarely do we give serious consideration to the truth that “we are dust” (Psalm 103:14). Ames explores ideas like love, regret, and the legacies we create.

Robinson exquisitely weaves the ordinary means of grace into Ames’ life. His small acts of daily obedience give voice to those of us who live relatively boring lives. The mundaneness of life can quickly catch up to us: wake up, drink coffee, go to work, come home, eat dinner, go to bed, and do it all again tomorrow. How often do we think, “What is the point of all of this?” 

This book speaks to all stages of life. It propels the young into the future, prompting them to contemplate a faithful life. “Gilead” is also a sober reminder that we are all dying. It urges the old to meditate on their own lives and testimonies, dying well in the faith, and glimpsing heaven behind light and momentary afflictions. If you have not yet suffered deeply, you will someday. Gilead offers the quiet witness of a faithful servant, and in that witness, the lonely and afflicted may find surprising consolation.

Those who have suffered will find that “Gilead” gives voice to the deep aches of life on this side of the veil. In a world that screams its injustice and grasps for likes and views, “Gilead” shows that the Christian life is most radiant not in spectacle but in obscurity. Mundane faithfulness, swallowed resentment, costly forgiveness — these become tools of a lifetime of sanctification and the unlikely stage of God’s glory.

Read it Slowly

“Gilead” can feel slow and even melancholic at first. If you come to it expecting a traditional plot, you may feel a little disoriented in the opening pages. “Gilead” unfolds the way memory does — quietly, wanderingly, circling back repeatedly to moments that seemed small at the time but later reveal themselves to be full of meaning. Learning how to read this book is part of the experience.

“Gilead” asks you to sit still long enough to listen to an older saint reflect on his life before God. It asks you to slow down, pay attention, and let ordinary things carry their full weight. If you resist that pace and try to rush through it, you will miss what makes the novel so extraordinary.

In many ways, the book is less a story and more a long pastoral letter. Ames is writing to his young son, knowing he will not live long enough to watch him grow up. What follows is a series of reflections on memory, grace, regret, and the quiet beauty of a faithful life. 

The book rewards patience the way good sermons do; its meaning deepens the longer you live with it. As Ames himself writes to his son, “I told you that you might have a very different life from mine, and from the life you’ve had with me, and that would be a wonderful thing; there are many ways to live a good life.”

In 1932, an infant girl was born who would soon become a 20th-century poetry pioneer. Known for her deeply moving, personal, and gut-wrenching poems, short stories, and most well-known by her book The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath would blaze a trail of beauty and success, and, unfortunately, to her demise. Sylvia had begun writing early on, and while working as a waitress, using writing as her side gig, she submitted 45 short stories to the magazine Seventeen before they finally published one. The next year, she won a fiction contest, and for a short blip in June of 1953, she was happy1. Those around her described her as obsessed with beauty; it was her entire identity, more so than her identity as an author.

Her demise came shortly after when she moved back home, and modern-day psychiatrists would call it a nervous breakdown. An attempt at suicide and spiraling in body and mind, she was found in a crawl space beneath her house. This would mark the beginning of the end. She went back to college and finished after this breakdown, summa cum laude. She went on to write The Bell Jar, which depicted a young college girl’s breakdown into utter despair. Unironically parallel to her own life. “I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo2.”

The Bell Jar, published posthumously, became an instant success in 1971, selling more than three million copies. Unfortunately, Plath never got to see its fame. She took her own life in February 1963. Her last poem, “Edge,” was written on February 5th — six days before her death. In it, she wrote of a woman who is “perfected,” whose bare feet seem to be saying: We have come so far, it is over. It reads, in its brevity, like an epitaph she wrote for herself3.

In a beautiful tragedy, someone who, by all accounts, had the dream, had two children, a vocation, money, fame, and an intellect that could have been a great feat in the twentieth century, collapsed. And she came to it, in her own words, without God. Of God, she once wrote that if it was his will, then he is a “very stupid, arbitrary, bloodthirsty4” on god, one she did not like, believe in, or respect.

What strikes me is not that she was bitter toward God, but that she was wounded toward him. The language reads more like a cry than a dismissal. That, if anything, makes the tragedy sharper.

So what sets apart the difference between a Sylvia Plath and a Charles Spurgeon, who was also beset with years of torment of the mind, a depression so deep his wife Susannah would often find him curled up under his desk in tears? It is easy. The Lord. Only the Lord could sustain a mind bent to the depths. Because sometimes, there are minds whose disposition is bent toward the depths. Whatever you call it, melancholy, mental illness, depression, or inherited generational trauma, it is all the same.

“The mind can descend far lower than the body, for it, there are bottomless pits. The flesh can bear only a certain number of wounds and no more, but the soul can bleed in ten thousand ways, and die over and over again each hour.” (Spurgeon, Exposition on Psalm 88)

If you have never experienced this, the soul dying over and over, the mind stuck in the pits of hell, I want to tread carefully here. I have not had grief of a child, a parent, a terminal illness. But I can say with Spurgeon, and with something of a shared language, that the spiral in the way minds can descend is a grave of dry bones I wish upon no one. And sometimes this is the thorn in the flesh.

“I am the subject of depressions of spirit so fearful that I hope none of you ever get to such extremes of wretchedness as I go to.” (Charles Spurgeon)

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So what kept Spurgeon from Plath’s destiny, from lying on the kitchen floor, turning on the gas stove, and succumbing to despair? This can only be the work of a God who redeems. Between the trauma of Surrey Hall and the false fire alarms that killed people in Spurgeon’s presence, his physical ailments, and at times not knowing what he wept for, Spurgeon is one of the greatest examples of battling depression with the King of Kings on your side. Does it make it go away? No, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes our minds continue to fail us, spiral us, send us to make our bed in hell. But what does Spurgeon do? He reminds us that if we do make our bed in hell, He will be there (Psalm 139:8).

“I often feel very grateful to God that I have undergone fearful depression. I know the borders of despair and the horrible brink of that gulf of darkness into which my feet have almost gone.” (Charles Spurgeon)

Christians who wear a mask of happiness on this side of the veil have winced at this quote, out of ignorance, or simply a different disposition. Some are not as prone to the depths, and that is a mercy. But we are wrong to deny that sometimes joy is harder than sorrow. The mind hijacks and can rip apart any joy there is. That is the truth for some of us fighting the good fight.

We can admire the personal ferocity of Plath while mourning a life lost without Christ. We can take examples from the fathers of the faith — Job, David, William Cowper, and Charles Spurgeon. We are not without hope, but we are also not without pain. And the line between life and death becomes blurred. But we have a God who has put on strength as his belt (Psalm 93), a God who said these dry bones can live (Ezekiel 37).

The thorn in the saints afflicted with this will make them better apt for the saints who cross their paths. Instead of having no words to say, we can say with a heavy heart and an unfailing faith that we understand and that there is a day coming with no sorrows. A great High Priest knows more about being forsaken and sorrowful unto death than any of us. The clouds are dark, the waters deep, but we are not without hope. We are not like Plath on a descent into destruction.

But there is not always an easy answer. Be wary of saying that depression is a lack of faith, cured by reading your Bible. But fear not, there is an answer. An answer that the world, fame, and success cannot provide. A cross. With eternity seen through the holes of His hands.

Originally Published at MereOrthodoxy.com on May 20, 2026.

Open the door. Set my bag down. Turn on light number one. Turn on the library light. Walk upstairs. Walk back down. Open the computer to check emails. Look at the to-do list. Look at the calendar. Wonder how it is already May.

Bank statements are due soon. Graduation is coming.

Did I ask the professors to be there early? Yes, I did. How am I going to get the flowers and the cake both at 4 and be ready for the walkthrough? I need a clone. Did I submit that invoice? We need the water filter changed. Did the cleaners vacuum? I need to call them.

The to-do list piles against me, and just before the lump in my throat surfaces, I am paused in motion. By an all too familiar sound. It is Thursday morning. The preaching lab is being taught in the classroom overhead. The walls of this building are extremely thin, which can sometimes be a blessing. During these times, when future church leaders are giving a sermon for their class, they always begin with a hymn. As the powerful, deep, male voices sing “Holy, Holy, Holy,” I pause and listen with hope, recalling why I am here and the work I believe in. Despite its routine and sometimes overwhelming nature, like any job, I remember this morning: this is the future of the church, and Holy is the Lord God Almighty.

A Long Investment

When addressing a group of donors last fall, Sinclair Ferguson, a visiting professor, posed the question: “Why seminary?” His answer was simple: your grandchildren need biblically sound pastors. A seminary propels us into the future of the church. By investing in seminary education, we ensure a vibrant and grounded church for generations to come.

Of course, many people have asked why we need pastors to have a seminary degree? Paul didn’t go to seminary. While true, the counterargument is that you don’t need a seminary degree when your letters are inherently inspired and breathed out by God. Paul no doubt emphasized teaching the word and learning. One might even argue that he started the first seminary (Acts 19:9).

20 Years from Now

I come from the underbelly of the seminary. I am the face behind the moving parts: the fall schedule flyer posted, the snacks in the breakroom, the classroom set up, the invoices submitted, the meals for faculty meetings, the peanut M&M’s always at my desk. I am the person who meets the first child of our seminary students.

At times, my work can feel insignificant. But when voices echo through the paper-thin walls, I see the infants I care for at church right now in 20 or 30 years, with a church and a faithful pastor who learned in seminary. These pastors won’t just know Hebrew and Greek; they will sit under teachers who have been walking far longer in ministry than they have, having lunch with esteemed professors, inquiring about what it really means to shepherd a church. Because pastors have a bigger calling, not only to faithfully and biblically stand as ministers of the gospel of Jesus, but also to live out the truth: how to love people, how to comfort the broken, and care for the sick. Sit with those who weep, rejoice with those who rejoice.

My senior pastor, who also serves as a professor at the seminary where I work, preached on Isaiah 42 a couple of months ago. As it happens with some sermons, it has clung to me. In reference to the bruised reed and the faintly burning wick, he said:

“I suppose it’s one of the reasons why one of the best ways you can see about a pastor’s instincts is whether he knows how to be gentle with people, a leader who can see what a bruised reed is, what a faintly burning wick is, and say, no, we are not going to snuff it out, no, we are not going to break it, because it is nearly there. Because that’s what Jesus does. So if you are in here today and broken, or nearly broken, know that Christ can take care of you.”

Strip down the institution and the branding, lose the formality and regulations, and you will see a modern-day shepherd making disciples, who go and make more disciples. Our prayer is that they leave here not only knowing God more but also loving him more, walking as Christ walked, serving, and not looking to be served. And in 20 years, when a bruised reed comes to them, they will not snuff it out. They will sit with them and remind them of the same basics of the gospel they learned in a classroom, in the scripture, many moons ago, and perhaps they will remember that lady who gave them peanut M&Ms, who felt lucky to meet the future pastors of our generation.

My dad always reminded me that when you graduate high school, life seems to pass by in the blink of an eye. As a 16-year-old eager to leave home and start my own adventures, I often shrugged off his advice, focusing instead on learning to drive my trusty 1999 Saturn S-Series Standard. "Push the brake and the clutch and shift—yes, all at once," he'd say, but I’d just stall out. So, he’d sigh and say, "Here, let me show you." While munching on an apple, he’d shift gears smoothly, keeping the car steady, and say things like “you don’t really want to grow up, being an adult is not all it’s cracked up to be.”

But I was 16 and time was moving so slowly.

And nowhere did time move slower than P.E.

The sheer psychological warfare of hearing that sentence still haunts me. One beep could ruin your entire afternoon. We wore our long P.E. shorts, each one personalized with our initials, lining the gym walls. Back then, trendy athletes flaunted pre-wrap hairbands, bright and cheerful, even if they weren’t the most reliable. In middle school, it wasn’t about being practical; it was about fitting in. We moved from running to sit-ups and push-ups, then to stretching. Remember trying to touch your left foot with crossed hands, while a classmate held a ruler, as you leaned forward, aiming to reach it without tearing a hamstring? There were no second chances; you either nailed it or didn’t. After class, just like any other student, you’d put on your school clothes, fix your hair, and head off to 4th period.

I didn't own a phone back then, and for those lucky enough to have a BlackBerry or flip phone, using it was officially forbidden. If caught, it was taken to the office, and your parents had to pay a fine to get it back. That made it less tempting, because A. your parents paying a fine was more embarrassing than owning a forbidden device, and B. there was no internet on your phone and all your friends were in the cafeteria at lunch, and if you were sick, the school would just call home.

There are many things I don't miss about school, but as I get older, I often daydream about the structured schedule, prepared food, teachers giving instructions, and having minimal responsibilities, except maybe for science homework, like building an ear model with felt and construction paper, which I actually enjoyed more than most days.

Of course, I also miss doodles, oh, the doodles! I wish I still had my notebooks from back then, because I was quite the talented doodler. I often got in trouble for doodling instead of taking notes. The “cool S” was my signature, and I loved making it look even cooler by adding extra lines and experimenting with different styles. When I learned I had to create 3D shapes in math, I was fully absorbed, and you couldn't tear me away from a piece of paper and a sharpened #2 pencil. The boxes and pyramids lined my margins.

And the cafeteria, a grand, daunting, smelly place to be. And if we got too rowdy, the lunch aids would make us sit in ten minutes of silence, during which we would sit there silently eating our lunch and make faces at each other to make the other one laugh. If you did, our time of silence would be extended, and someone would always say, “Guys, stop it. Just be quiet.” Everyone had the same lunch, and seating was undiscussed. Groups of friends who had typically been friends since elementary school still sat together. When you shift from elementary to middle school, the change is so jarring that you need something familiar.

There was something satisfying about tearing off an eraser from a #2 pencil and the sound your teeth made on it. Disgusting? Sure, but what else were we supposed to do? We didn’t have fidget spinners. We had pencils and teeth, and we did what we could. I even used to tear off the corners of spiral notebook paper and make it into a triangle like a football and flick them across the table. Why? No idea.

After school pick up, lines would commence precisely at 3:30. If you lived behind the school, like I did, you were lucky. My three friends and I, who lived in the neighborhood, would load up and walk past the tennis courts and into our neighborhood. On the way, we tried to trip each other and watched the boys bike home, laughing when they passed. We would run to someone's house to call someone's mom and tell them we were hanging out at whoever’s house and were told to be home by dinner. And we were.

One day I blinked, and all of that faded out as fast as it came in. Like trying to fall asleep back into a dream and you can’t.

Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow. — Psalm 144:4

My dad was right. I blinked. And now I find myself watching kids at restaurants sitting across from each other, phones face-up on the table, thumbs moving, mouths closed. No one is making faces to break the silence. No one is doodling in the margins. No one is walking home past the tennis courts trying to trip their friends. They are together and completely alone, and somehow that is normal now.

We didn’t have much. A number two pencil and a neon green flip phone, we weren’t allowed to touch. Prewrap that never stayed on. A walk home that no one documented. But we had each other in the most unmediated, unselfconscious way, present because there was nothing else to be.

The psalmist knew what my dad knew. What none of us know until we’re standing on the other side of it. Our days are a breath, a passing shadow, and we spend so much of that shadow staring at a screen, performing our lives instead of living them. The children in that cafeteria, silent over their lunch, making faces at each other across the table, weren’t wasting time. They were the time.

I think about my dad eating that apple in the driver’s seat, calm while I stalled out, impatient in a way I deserved. He knew something I didn’t. Not just about driving a standard. About how fast the ordinary disappears, and how you never think to hold onto it until it’s already gone, and now I’m the one in the driver’s seat, wondering when that happened, and wishing someone had told me to look up.

Now I’m also the adult saying things that would’ve caused sixteen-year-old me to burst into flames on purpose:
“Enjoy it while it lasts.”
“You’ll miss this someday.”
“Life goes fast.”

I used to think adults were dramatic. Now I understand they were simply exhausted and full of ibuprofen.

Somewhere along the way I became the kind of person who gets excited when I leave Target with “only a few things.” I stand at the stove thawing ground beef like a 60s housewife. I make noises when I sit down. I have a favorite tea towel. I accidentally said “we have food at home” to myself last week.

One bad pillow can now send my neck into a humanitarian crisis.

I blinked and went from chewing pencil erasers in math class to googling “best magnesium supplement” at 10:43 p.m. like a woman standing at the edge of total destruction begging for REM sleep.

Life is a vapor.

Originally written in January of 2024

I have attended 10 weddings, and of those, I have been a bridesmaid in 6. Five bridesmaid dresses hang in my closet that I begrudgingly purchased, knowing I would never wear them again. Every wedding gets harder.

Truthfully, I am not even the biggest fan of the big white weddings. They cost too much for one day, and if I were planning my wedding today, I think I would want a small church wedding at two in the afternoon, finger foods and punch in the fellowship hall, and to be headed toward some wonderful honeymoon by four o’clock. Married. Simple.

But I have yet to plan a wedding.

I was on a walk this week when, from a distance, I saw a young mother pushing a stroller while holding the hand of a toddler beside her. As they walked, the mother bit into a strawberry, fed the other half to the toddler, and smiled down at the baby in the stroller. Something in me ached at the sight. Not so much that should be me, but more of a quiet grief mixed with wonder. Oh, what kindnesses have been given to her. What kindnesses I would love to give one day.

I am twenty-four years old as I write this. I have been twenty-four for eighteen days. The older I get, the more vividly I carry this image of holding a baby in my mind. In the image, I am sitting in a hospital bed holding a white-blanketed, red-faced newborn while tears stream down my face. No one else is there. It is just me and this tiny, innocent miracle. A weak little hand wraps around my finger, and I lower my head toward theirs.

Then the image disappears, and I am met with the stark reality that this may never happen. I may never hold a child made from my own flesh and bones. I dare not dwell there too long, or sorrow overtakes me. God has promised his people many things in this life, but marriage and children are not among them. I know what people say: It will happen. You just need patience. But that is a promise no one can make.

And perhaps it would be the Lord’s kindness to me if I never married or bore children. Perhaps it would be for my good. How sweet that I am not currently laboring for children of my own, and how freeing that can be in loving the church’s children more fully.

It is hard to be in your twenties. It is hard to be in your twenties and single. It is hard to be in your twenties, single, and Christian. And, at times, it feels especially hard to be in your twenties, single, and Reformed. I have backed myself into a narrow box. There have always been boys, just never the right one.

When parents jokingly look at their children and say, “They’re going to be a heartbreaker one day,” I suppose I have been. Well-intentioned men have come knocking at my door, and I simply have not opened it. Maybe it is fear. Maybe wisdom. Maybe providence. Maybe it is simply not meant to be. I do not say that with bitterness or dramatic defeat. I say it with a restrained sort of peace.

I am deeply loved. Sometimes, so deeply loved that I hardly know what to do with it. I have no right to call myself abandoned. Yet loneliness still finds its way in.

If the Lord were to say to me right now, “Haley, you will never marry. You will never have children,” what then? What does one do with that grief? How does the heart settle itself there, especially when churches are filled with nurseries, anniversaries, wedding showers, and family photographs?

There seems to be more room in the church for an unmarried man than for an unmarried woman. Men can remain bachelors and still somehow appear complete, while women are often quietly viewed as unfinished. Not maliciously. Not even intentionally. But it lingers beneath conversations and assumptions alike. Especially when you are young. As though your chief purpose is simply to wait for a husband to arrive so your real life can begin.

But my comfort is this: I am not my own.

I belong to Christ. The Holy Spirit is my comforter, and he is able to give peace where no earthly thing can. Marriage will not carry into the new heavens and new earth, but fellowship with Christ and his people will. That will deepen forever.

A life of singleness carries its own griefs. So does a life of marriage and children. Neither is Eden restored. Neither is ultimate fulfillment. Still, I would love it. I would love to be married. I would love to raise five homeschooled Presbyterian children who recite Scripture around the dinner table. I would love sleepless nights rocking a newborn, long drives with moody teenagers, and one day sitting at the wedding of a child I once held in my arms.

Perhaps that is not my Father’s will for me. At least not right now. And perhaps it never will be. But my life is not suspended until a ring rests on my hand or a child rests on my hip. My life is here, now, hidden with Christ, useful to his kingdom, capable of deep joy and deep sorrow all at once.

There are evenings when the ache still rises unexpectedly. A stroller on a walking trail. A baby asleep on a church member’s shoulder. Another bridal shower invitation in the mail. And sometimes I still allow myself to imagine it: a dining room table crowded with children reciting Scripture, a husband beside me, the ordinary holiness of a family built slowly over decades. I do not think those desires are sinful. They are deeply human ones.

But desires make poor gods. And even good gifts become cruel masters when they begin to define whether a life is meaningful or barren. Christ has already given me a full inheritance in himself. Not a lesser life. Not a waiting room exists until “real life” begins. A full one.

“And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:17, ESV).

One day, every wedding will fade into the greater wedding feast. Every earthly marriage will bow before the eternal union between Christ and his bride. The longings we carried here will either be fulfilled rightly or gently swallowed up in glory. And on that day, no saint will stand lesser for having never married. No woman will be pitied for never bearing children. We will all be called what we have always been in Christ: beloved.

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18, ESV).

So until then, I will keep showing up to weddings. I will keep buying bridesmaid dresses I will probably never wear again. I will keep holding my friends’ babies in church nurseries and serving in ordinary ways and fighting to believe that a quiet life is not a wasted one. And whether the Lord gives marriage or withholds it, children or emptier rooms, he will still be good to me. He will still be enough.

Once there was a young cub born into a world of survival. However, the worst outcome was fragmentation within its family. Much can be overcome in a scary world with the protection of parents. But one day, a rip came through his parents, and he was left to fight for his life on his own, deluded by the arms of a mother, he set out on a trail unfamiliar and unnatural. Where every step felt wrong, and every corner of the plains felt terrifying. There was no one to teach him to be a predator, nor how to protect himself as prey. Though the parents tried separately, it was no match compared to his friends, who learned from both in the same dynamic. He felt lonely most of the time with no one to turn to. But he could never admit his loneliness because his dad told him he needed to be brave, so he remained brave, but inside he longed to be a cub, to run free and not have to be protective of himself, but instead be protected. He spent his days worried and made sure to get the best rabbit he could find for dinner to impress his dad and keep his mom happy so she wouldn’t be sad. He lived in this world until he was much older. He mistook his home for terror and thought the world was safer. He was wrong, and as he grew up, the world proved just as scary, leaving him with nowhere to turn. He would curl into a cave between a rock and brush to stay small and stay in the dark, and when the world would sleep, he would quietly cry into his tail to make sure no one knew he was weak. He did not know he was being watched, and not by a predator, but by something else. Something kinder. Someone who had actually been there the whole time, someone who knitted him in his mother's womb, was there at the shattering of his only home, and the same one who drew near to him now, though he was far and he couldn’t see him, he knew someone was there, and for the first time, he didn’t feel alone. He felt safe, which was foreign to him, and he felt uncomfortable in the comfort. So he tried to run, but his legs got tired and weak. He tried to return home, but his dad was nowhere to be found, and his mom had other things to tend to and was too busy for him. He retired to his cave and felt that all-too-familiar sorrow. As he slept, he dreamed of a large lion standing over him. At first, he thought the lion was there to attack him, and he thought he should give in, but instead the lion protected him and told him it was okay to rest, to lie down. And when he woke, he had a new strength.

A strength he did not conjure up for himself, but instead was inside of him. Grown like a wildflower, and he felt strong. He kept going back to the lion in the dream, and though he could not see him, he knew he was real. He no longer felt alone, and brought all his sorrows and anger to the lion, and the Lion took it into his paw and crushed it. He did not fear the world nor where he came from anymore, because in every moment he saw that same image- the Lion standing over him protecting him. And so he lived his life according to the one who brought comfort, and crushed his grief with his strong paws. One night, when he was very old and very sick, he dreamed of the Lion again. He was standing as a fierce warrior over the land where the cubs, children, and grandchildren ran, and the Lion said, “Though your mother and father forsake you, I will take you in.” And when the cub woke, he finally saw his savior face to face.

She nestled her soft, golden curls against my shoulder, a vibrant four-year-old soon to be five, completely absorbed in our shared moment. As I read “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” the magical world of Narnia unfolded with each word, but my mind wandered, searching for a memory—any memory—of being read to as a child. Yet, nothing surfaced, leaving me with an echoing void. For many, reading to a child may seem like a simple, everyday act, but in this moment, I felt its profound sweetness, something that stirred a deep yearning within me, mingling joy with a touch of grief for the experiences I hadn’t had.

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Suddenly, her bright eyes turned toward me, filled with innocent curiosity as she asked, “How big is the house with the wardrobe?” Her question pulled me right back to the present, and I gazed at my niece, who, though not my blood, felt like a cherished part of my life. A swell of love surged within me, both tender and overwhelming. I paused my reading, sensing the special bond between us, and she looked up at me, her little face radiating eager anticipation as she asked for the “Guess How Much I Love You” book.

“Then he lay down close by and whispered with a smile,

‘I love you right up to the moon AND BACK.’”

Holding her tiny hand, its warmth so comforting, I gently asked, “Do you know who else loves you?” Her eyes widened as she exclaimed, “You?” In that moment, her innocence struck me deeply. Unlike the kids at church who recited the gospel with practiced familiarity, she was unmarked by prior knowledge, eager and wide-eyed, ready to absorb this essential truth about love.

An opportunity blossomed before me, one I wish I had known in my own childhood. Lying beside this precious girl, I could share the story of a God whose love for her is deeper than anything she could imagine. I explained how God loved her so immensely that He came down to save her. When I asked if she knew what sin was, she shook her head, a flicker of confusion crossing her face. Recalling a friend’s simple yet vivid explanation from children’s worship, I said, “It’s like a dirty mirror that cannot be fixed, even by Papa, who can mend so many things. This mirror, however, is beyond repair. So, God came to us to clean away the dirt and to show you just how much He loves you.”

I held her delicate hand in mine and prayed softly, my heart pouring out in hopes that she could feel the warmth of those words. She turned over, instinctively wrapping her small arm around mine, her gentle breathing soothing us both into a peaceful silence. I pressed a soft kiss to her forehead, feeling an intricate mix of redemption and sorrow well up within me. This was a chance I longed for as a child, a moment I never got.

Instead of being left to navigate the uncertainties and hardships on my own, I now had the joy of holding her close, reading stories that whisk us away to different worlds, and guiding her in prayer. I prayed earnestly that she would come to know God, a loving presence she could turn to at any time, the ultimate connection that never disconnects. She was lovingly created by Him, and the thought of her feeling abandoned or unloved weighed heavily on my heart. She deserved to know the fullness of love in every way possible.

As I curled on my side, cradling her for a moment longer, I could sense a new path beginning to unfold within me. This journey was shifting away from my own desires and toward a selfless love that mirrored God’s compassion. I envisioned the freedom that comes from stepping outside oneself, allowing those tears, shed for a life I might have lived differently, to flow without shame. One day, I knew all that sorrow would fade, the unturned pages of forgotten books, the hugs never shared, the gentle words left unspoken. But for now, in this beautiful moment, a tiny child rested peacefully in my arms, and I felt more connected to him and alive in His love than ever before.

She read the letter by candlelight and made her decision before she finished it. Her husband had the prophecy that he would be king, but she had already concluded he lacked what it would take to seize it. “Too full o’ the milk of human kindness,” she says of him, alone in her chamber. So she would be the one to act. She called on the spirits to unsex her, to fill her with cruelty, to stop up the passages of remorse. She wanted to want this cleanly, without the interference of conscience. She wanted control over the outcome, over her husband, over fate itself.

When Macbeth wavered, and he did waver, his conscience louder than hers, she did not reason with him. She reached for something sharper. The way only women can. She questioned his manhood. “When you durst do it, then you were a man,” she tells him. And then, to make sure he understood what she was willing to do that he was not, she says she would have taken her own nursing child and dashed its brains out had she sworn to do so as he had sworn to her. It is one of the most chilling things any character in Shakespeare speaks aloud: a mother invoking the most tender human bond imaginable and offering to destroy it to prove a point about courage. She was not going to let feeling get in the way. She had already decided that feeling was the enemy of getting what she wanted.

Lady Macbeth is Shakespeare’s most devastating portrait of a woman who reaches for what she believes she deserves and cannot stop reaching. She engineers the murder of King Duncan with cold precision, steadying her husband’s nerve when his falters, returning the daggers herself when he cannot. She is the one who says “a little water clears us of this deed” — as if she could simply wash the thing away and move forward into the life she had arranged.

For a while, it seems to work. Macbeth is crowned king. She is the queen. She got what she planned for.

But something had already begun to break. Shakespeare tracks it in small moments; she is excluded from Macbeth’s next murder, kept out of his confidence, losing the grip she once had on everything. The control she exercised so precisely was always slipping. And then in Act Five, we find her sleepwalking through the dark castle, rubbing her hands together in the night, trying to clean something that will not come clean. “Out, damned spot. Out, I say.” The water that was supposed to clear them of it does not work. It never worked. The guilt she tried to will away has taken up residence in her body, in her sleep, in the parts of herself she could not govern.

She dies offstage. A suicide, the other characters suspect. The woman who opened the play by calling on darkness to fill her ends up unable to bear the dark at all, afraid to sleep without a light beside her.

“Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you” (Genesis 3:16).

Unfortunately, Lady Macbeth cuts to the heart of the curse put on Eve in the fall. The word desire in Hebrew is the same word used in Genesis 4:7, “And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, and you must rule over it.”

Understandably, scholars have taken this to mean that, in simple terms, a woman's desire is control. And if we are honest with ourselves, it is true.

Women have a unique gift of chatter; we talk about everything, we sometimes even know too much for our own good and think our input matters greatly, and don’t get me wrong, it does, but we can also use it to get our way. We are master manipulators; we set the tone for interaction. We know that with a silent, arms-crossed scenario, we can get the attention we want. We know with heavy deliberation and contemplation, we have the answers if only the others would listen to us.

Once at a women's meeting, the speaker said, “The women set the tone of the household.” Not because we are in charge, but we are because we think we are in charge, and everyone falls in line because it is better to have peace than enmity. This is the curse in action.

We see this in modern-day debates at the upcoming general assembly, with women seeking the title of deaconesses. Why? Because our desire is not to serve, it is recognition of our service. It boils down to control.

I will speak for myself to be less controversial, but I urge women reading this to do some inner seeking (oh look, I'm trying to control your thinking).

When a problem arises, I am a first responder; I can think of 10 ways to fix it in 10 seconds, and I always have to restrain myself. I work with all men, which is often a sigh of relief because they are brutally honest, but I never have to guess what they are thinking. Meanwhile, I can mask truth with coercion and passive aggressiveness. Often, it is just the quiet certainty that if everyone would listen to me, things would go better. The belief that I understand the situation more fully than the people around me. The subtle rearranging of outcomes from the inside.

Lady Macbeth did not pick up a dagger. She managed her husband until he did.

The tragedy is not that she wanted something. It’s that she could not stop wanting to be the one who made it happen. The control she reached for so precisely was always slipping, and the reaching itself was what undid her. By the end, she is washing hands that will not come clean, haunted by a guilt her will had not been strong enough to suppress, afraid of the dark she had once called down on herself.

Out, damned spot.

She thought she could want this cleanly. She thought that if she just removed feeling from the equation, she could have what she desired without consequence. But the thing about the curse is that it does not deliver what it promises. The grasping does not satisfy. The control does not hold. And what we tried so hard to scrub away, the remorse, the conscience, the God-given sense that something has gone wrong, turns out to be more stubborn than we are.

The gospel is not an affirmation of that desire. It is the only thing that heals it.

I am too young to be addressing this question, but I have sat in enough church meetings, women’s Bible studies, and conference rooms to know that women do an enormous amount of the actual work. The meals after funerals. The cards that get sent. The children’s ministry that runs on the labor of women who show up every single Sunday, set out small chairs, and know every child’s name. The counseling that happens in parking lots after services, quietly, without anyone convening a meeting about it. The work is real. The contribution is real. No serious person is disputing that.

But there is a difference between I want this work to matter and I want to be the one who is seen mattering. And the curse, if we take Genesis 3:16 seriously, does not produce the first desire. It produces the second. The grasping is not for the service itself; it is for the authority that comes with the title. The seat at the table. The being-listened-to that a formal role confers.

Lady Macbeth had already concluded that the prophecy would not fulfill itself without her intervention. She could not trust the outcome to anyone else, not fate, not her husband, not the natural unfolding of things. She had to be the one to make it happen. And she got what she wanted. The throne. The queen’s crown. Her name is attached to the outcome.

It did not satisfy. It was never going to satisfy. The thing she reached for was not actually the thing she needed, and the act of reaching itself destroyed her.

That is the shape of the curse. Not that the desire is for something entirely wrong, Macbeth was supposed to be king, after all. But it cannot be received as a gift. It has to be seized, controlled, and arranged from the inside. And so the woman who wanted her husband to flourish and her household to rise ends up engineering a murder, holding a crown that sits on a foundation of guilt she cannot wash off, sleepwalking through a castle she got but cannot rest in.

The church is not immune to this. We are not immune to this.

We see this in smaller rooms than Shakespeare’s castle. We see it in the woman who manages her husband so carefully that he stops bringing his real thoughts home to her, because he has learned it is easier not to. We see it in the woman who sets the tone of every gathering, who knows she sets the tone, who has learned to read a room and adjust it, and who is quietly exhausted by it, and cannot figure out why she can never quite rest. We see it in the church conversation about titles and roles, where the desire for recognition of service has quietly become something different from the service itself. Where what is being sought is not the work, the work is already happening, has always been happening, but the authority. The formal acknowledgment. The seat at the table that signals: she matters here.

And I understand it. I feel the pull of it myself. There is something in me that wants to be taken seriously in the rooms where decisions are made. Something that translates to I want to serve into I want my serving to be seen and named and official. And I have learned to be suspicious of that translation, because the distance between the two is exactly the distance the curse travels.

The Shorter Catechism asks: What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy him forever. Not to be recognized. Not to hold the title. Not to finally be the one in the room whose input shapes the outcome. The chief end is not something a formal role can give you, and it is not something the absence of one can take from you.

Lady Macbeth thought that if she could arrange the right outcome, she would have what she needed. She got the outcome. She did not get what she needed. She got a throne and a husband who stopped trusting her and a guilt she could not sleep through and an ending that Shakespeare does not even show us, only reports — offstage, in the dark, alone.

The control did not hold.

It never does.

The gospel is not a better strategy for getting what the curse wants. It is the announcement that what the curse wants was never the thing. That the restlessness underneath the reaching — the thing that makes a woman arrange and manage and maneuver and manipulate, sometimes without even knowing she is doing it — is not a hunger that any title or throne or acknowledged authority can feed. It is a hunger for God himself. And he has already given himself. Which means the thing we are killing ourselves reaching for is the one thing we were never in danger of losing.

That is not a word that makes the institutional questions go away. But it is the word that changes who we are when we walk into the room.