My husband and I are in “the trenches.” We have a seven- four- and one-year-old – all boys. They are the light and joy of my life – for real. I actually cried tears of thankfulness for them over coffee the other morning. Also, when they’ve tramped beaches of sand into the gaps of the wood floor after running into the house for an emergency bathroom break, I’ve screeched like a Horned Owl.

The older the kids get, the more the are we doing this thing right? question jump-scares me.

Some nights I go to bed really easily, asleep basically as soon as my eyes close, because this is a good life, and I am generally carefree. Other nights the weight and glory of motherhood lays over me like a summer storm, and I am touched with the terror of an incalculable cost. The Cost – super alarmingly, just as the light goes out – asks specific questions like, “Are you yelling too much?” “Have you read enough books to the boys?” “Are you living out your faith in a way that speaks the truth of Jesus into the hearts of your children?” In the dark, I answer yes . . . no . . . I hope so. I pray fervently. And I’ve wondered, in fits of slight derangement but in a solid precedent of maternal worry, if one of two of the boys might not go to prison.

To get down to it, what I’m really asking is: how do I trust God with the lives of my kids?

I think my seven-year-old has taught me the most about trusting God. That guy talks about the classification of bugs, uses metaphors to describe life, and he recently asked me, “if you could be a raindrop for a day, would you?” Some people call him gifted, some people see him as a problem kid; to be totally honest, you might be surprised by how fine the line is between amazing and difficult. Like when he started asking us about alternate dimensions at age four. Amazing that his mind could conceive of that. Difficult to comfort the fears that plagued him at night.

Fear has been a big theme with our guy. Tears and terror in his eyes over things he can’t explain and we can’t understand. So we’ve prayed with him for peace. We’ve spoken Scripture and reason over the tired unreasonableness of his fears. Sometimes all we’ve known for sure is that though we can’t comprehend the impetus of his fears, we can understand fear and the need to be comforted.

Usually with gifted kids, there’s a deficit area. For our guy, it’s that he can’t read social situations very well. This has caused a lot of Amelia Bedelia situations. The experience has been, to my introverted, rather shy self, a ragged beating – something like the Hulk slamming Loki back and forth like a windshield wiper. (Picture, if you will, a little boy at a concert at the zoo, along with a couple hundred people sat before a stage; the music is too loud for him, so he zips on up to the stage, climbs aboard, and politely yell-asks for the volume to be turned down.)

So, I’ve been fearful. Like really afraid. When he got kicked outta kindergarten that really put the final nail in the optimism coffin – my worst fears were dancing a sprightly jig on the unburied wood. What’s gonna happen in xyz circumstance? How will he cope? Will these skills develop? Yada yada to infinity.

Que a random afternoon: sunlight in through the western windows, toys all over the floor like a Once Upon a Child playpen. My son comes to me and casually mentions that God comforted him when he was afraid. He says it in an offhand, easy-breezy way, like he’s just waved at the mailman. Then he’s jumping off the chair playing again. But not me. I’m having an epiphany that’s restructuring my brain.

God is comforting my son. God – the Great I AM – is speaking peace to my son, independent of all my worries and all my efforts. This creative, joyful God made my boy by the stitch, and He intimately cares for him. Why didn’t I trust He’d be there for him? Why was I so worried?

This doesn’t just comfort me for the uncontrollable circumstances. The what-ifs and maybe’s. It comforts me that He’s working good in my kids despite me. The ways I fail my kids don’t hinder God’s power: my less-than-optimal responses, my downright wrong ones. God is using me to bless my kids; and He’s also blessing my kids despite me.

There’s a song by Needtobreathe called Banks; the chorus goes, “I wanna hold you close but never hold you back / Just like the banks to the river / And if you ever feel like you are not enough / I’m gonna break all your mirrors / I wanna be there when the darkness closes in / To make the truth a little clearer / I wanna hold you close but never hold you back / I’ll be the banks for your river.”

Sometimes I’m my kids’ faulty mirror. A discouraging voice or an impatient one, given to frustration. I tell them by my actions things that God doesn’t tell them. I’m a faulty picture of God’s love, patience, longsuffering, grace, but He chooses to use people like me, and I’m really thankful.

Each time I’m a messed-up mirror, God’s been giving me more faith. This is one of those up-side-down God things. The faith is to one: turn myself around and do it how God says to do it without castigating myself too badly, and two: to allow my kids into my weakness. To let’em know that I am not their Savior, but that I know Who is, and that He’s everything I’ve ever needed, and everything they’ll ever need, too.

I’m gonna end on a success story, but that’s obviously not our whole story, just a part of it.

The seven-year-old sits with us in church, and this Sunday, for one song – a kinda foot-stompy, hand-clappy, deep and manly hymn – the worship leader asks all the boys ages five to eighteen to come on up stage and sing it out.

I look at my husband. He looks at me. We are deciding, in this silent conversation, whether or not to encourage our guy to join, as stages have been problematic in the past (think: zoo incident). One of the men in front of us turns around and jokingly asks if we’re sending our boy up. Cody looks at me again and decides: I can see it in the set of his face.

“Sure.”

We send him up. Our guy walks right up to the front, stands by his friends, and stands tall and straight, singing out.

He walks a bit to the side, peering over into the open piano. I stop breathing and am preparing to shove my husband past me so he can reach the stage. But instead, he just looks; he walks back to his place; he sings and sings and sings: Glory, hallelujah! What comfort this assurance gives! Glory hallelujah!

I cry, obviously. I can’t even sing I’m so choked up. But it’s okay, because he’s singing. It’s okay, because I know that my Redeemer lives.

For days, you have been retching at every lurch of the ship, sailing through storms and swelling seas, your stomach roiling. You’re unable to see beyond the nausea: the wafting stench of the bilgewater in the hold, the tilt and rise of the deck.

You remember, wryly, being ordered aloft to reef the topsails, climbing the yard for the very first time, only to empty the contents of your stomach at the top as your fingers worked at the ropes.

Your watch is almost over, your body weighted with fatigue, your fingers stiff, every bare surface of your face and neck sharp with cold. Over the gunwale, toward the east, the black sky is lightening to a gray haze that softly stretches along the waterline. The change is subtle, but your eyes fasten on the horizon. Gradually, the undulating breath of the sea emerges from its velvet night, the choppy waves dully distinguished. No true light yet – only endless, gray ocean.

At the sight, a cold dread breaks open inside of you. There is nothing upon this yawning expanse, nothing but the wood beneath your feet, hovering over impossible depths. Only sea and sea and sea.

In this half-darkness, it’s the loneliness that chills you – the strength of this cruel beauty, your frightening smallness, recalling humanity’s thin blade, this edge of eternity. You pull in a long breath through your nose. Push it out again.

The light is growing, and the first golden arms of sun reach out to you over the water. This is a lifeline, and you hold fast to it. As you watch, the day spills over the ocean like rainbowed oil.

The dread in your chest eases. With every strengthening ray you feel relief. Under the monotony of the sun, the sea does not frighten you. It is only the brief moment between times that strikes your soul. Now, the day is here. Now, you have work to do1.

-

This was life at sea in the 19^th century, one-hundred-and-ninety-odd years ago, where there were no radios or helicopters or radars to detect a vessel or save a crew in peril. Such is the experience that Richard Henry Dana, Jr. details in his classic autobiography, Two Years Before the Mast.

One common theme in the book has to do with the character of men. There are those men who rise to challenges undaunted, face dangerous circumstances with courage and speed, endure the cutting edge of injustice with dignity, and rise again and again to face another day with fortitude amidst the most challenging circumstances. And then, there are men who lack ambition, who only work to feed their vices, who prey on the weak, and seize unjust opportunities for power. In this way, the book has been an insightful picture of life in any century.

History lays men’s virtues and faults bare. It is unscrupulous of internal factors, historic struggles, or intentions. There is only what was done and what was not done. This is both the cruelty and unalloyed beauty of history; the truth is easier to discern when looking back. And yet, history reminds us that looking back is only half the thought – it is what we will do going forward that matters most.

-

There’s a trend on social media (mostly “X” and Reddit) where people mention a particular grievance and then point to how it has “radicalized” them. What they are radicalized to do is usually left up to the imagination. Instead, action, their implicit desire, is demanded of the ether.

There are so many grievances in our world. Devastating injustices that demand a voice, and – more than a voice – an action. The irony of this pseudo-radicalized movement is that it is mostly an expression of public ire, which is hardly radical. It demands action without taking any. It’s like recording a man being beaten instead of doing something – which is the very kind of thing so many people are rightly incensed against.

But even if there were to be some action taken, I’m not convinced that much of it would be just. Impassioned, yes. But what kind of measured, righteous action issues forth from a movement set on increasing the barometer of outrage and impulse, while at the same time neglecting to seek lawful avenues in which to right wrongs? We are not without lawful recourse, as American citizens. While that never promises justice, wouldn’t it be lazy not to try?

In Two Years Before the Mast, there’s an excruciating moment where two of the sailors get beaten by their captain. This was not a common occurrence aboard merchant ships, and additionally, these men had been following orders at the time; there was no call for the men to be beaten, and every man aboard the ship knew this. The captain accused one of his sailors of giving him “jaw” and the other sailor (who, seeing his shipmate strung up by the wrists, asked why he was being punished) of questioning him2. Dana takes pains to describe the reason for the lack of interference by the crew, and ultimately describes how he had to turn and look over the gunwale and into the sea, unable to bear the sight.

This instance is what propelled Dana to become a lawyer in the defense of sailors. In the case of tyrannical captains, a crew wasn’t afforded any alternate course of action besides obedience or mutiny (in which case, a man was embracing piracy, which foretold a lifelong future as a fugitive of the law). Seeing injustice firsthand, as well as the level of isolation and pure helplessness these men faced out upon the seas, Dana determined to give sailors a voice and a means of protection.

What strikes me is that Dana’s conviction to bring justice to these men also came with a specific goal for achieving it, as well as the grit and fortitude to fight for it in a legislative way. He was radically moved – in that watching his shipmates endure injustice changed his future fundamentally. He didn’t murder the captain and sail away with a crew of pirates. Instead, more rationally – dare I say, more radically – Dana went home and kept his conviction away from the heat of the moment. He studied to become a lawyer. He helped his fellow man case by case. Dana was invested in seeing justice upheld for the long haul.

-

So often, hot declarations lead to dark actions; often, when no one righteous picks up the gauntlet, someone wicked does, and there is no law to light their path.

We get a glimpse into this chaotic state via the many impassioned revolutionaries present in California, 1835. At this time, the California coast was still Mexican territory, and the laws, such as they were, were overseen by the governors-general, who lived in local Presidios, Mexico’s military forts of local governance, which were located in each of the main coastal ports3.

Of this, Dana writes, “The government of this country is an arbitrary democracy; having no common law, and no judiciary. Their only laws are made and unmade at the caprice of legislature, and are as variable as the legislature itself.”4 In this political climate, Dana describes a California weathered by constant revolutions. He writes, “[Revolutions] are got up by men who are at the foot of the ladder and in desperate circumstances [ . . .] instead of caucusing, paragraphing, libeling, feasting, promising, and lying, as with us, they take muskets and bayonets, and seizing upon the presidio and customhouse, divide the spoils, and declare a new dynasty.”5

There are many unnamed particulars here: nuances, needs, injustices; but in answer to them, fresh terrors were wrought against former terrors, perpetuating chaos and injustice in compounding measures. Dana describes a land where injustice is not routinely punished, and where vengeance is taken at a man’s discretion.

This is familiar to us, if not in the way our government operates, in the way many people stir vigilante-revolutionists to atrocities. The way many who claim to be radical are praising violent means of retributive justice. Yet we, the church, know this is not real justice.

As a writer, I believe there is a kind of action in calling out injustice as it is observed. I believe this especially of those online who are grieved by the injustices they see. But beyond this, I wonder what it would take for the people who are so quick to make public remarks to take even one small, courageous step in the direction of actionable justice. I ask this of myself, too. What am I willing to do, and how might my gifts enable me to tangibly serve those around me? In answering this question, we find out, case by case, how we can turn from passive emotions to love-bound action.

-

Radicalized people online are often quick to assert the need to rise up against injustice by “mutinying” the ship – a full-on call to defy leadership and brute-force something new. Much of this is pot-stirring; and the low-level chaos simmering in the pot is often ready to boil over into action.

However, as Christians, there are right times to defy leadership. We see this when obedience to God becomes a violation of the law. This is why missionaries don’t feel guilty sneaking Bibles into closed countries, sharing the Gospel under intolerant regimes. It’s why (whether you agree with it or not) many people continued going to church during Covid shutdowns, insisting against “giving up meeting together” (Hebrews 10:25). It takes strong moral fortitude as well as keen discernment to know when and how to break the law in the service of both God and man. It is not an impulsive action fanned by emotional impulse. It’s calculated to the risk and the reward, and ultimately, for the love of God and man.

On the return voyage home, Dana writes about becoming ill aboard ship. His face became swollen over the course of a few days, ultimately doubling in size so that he could hardly open his mouth. He could not eat the sailor’s food of salt beef and hard bread – literally unable to open his mouth wide enough and to chew against the intense pain, which was so great that he could not even sleep.

One of the crew members applied to the captain for rice to be given to Dana. The captain replied, “No! damn you! Tell him to eat salt junk and hard bread like the rest of them.”6 Receiving this order, the steward proceeded to smuggle rice into the galley, with orders for the cook not to let “the ‘old man’ see it.”7 This steward Dana calls, “a man as well as a sailor,”8 and though we live nearly two-hundred years hence, we know what he means. The good man knew that starving a sick man was unjust, and at the cost of his post, rejected the order of his superior in favor of a higher Authority.

This, I hope all Christians will be prepared to do – not in gleeful anticipation of upsetting the balance of powers that be, but as an act of selfless sacrifice. This is what it means that our beliefs will cost us something dear. We are called to be peaceful, as much as may be, but never passive.

-

Amidst all the things a person might find themselves radicalized against – whether it be technology, medicinal practices, unjust politicians, the wicked among us – the Christian is called to reject both acerbic passivity and unjust violence. Instead, like Dana, our aim upon seeing injustices should be to go beyond mere talk, seeking out action that lives separately from our emotional highs. Like the steward of Dana’s ship, we should be willing to risk serious consequences to pursue justice for others.

It is humbling to view our current political troubles through the lens of history. The injustices that plague us now, and the outrage and rush people feel to run to turbulent actions, are tales as old as time. Knowing this in no way diminishes today’s injustices, but it does help us see a rational way forward. For the believer in Christ, it is a reminder to hold fast to the way a Christian should conduct himself in all circumstances.

It feels time for an introduction (of sorts) to the new folks. Many of you have come since my article on Witchcraft. Glad to have ya! You should be warned that I have never before and may never again write on the subject. But I do love a good essay and plan to write them more often. My thoughts lately have circled around what makes people claim the title “radicalized” (as in, “Little House on the Prairie radicalized me”). People are saying it both tongue-in-cheek and sincerely and it points to the loss of certain virtues/values in our society. And, maybe more interestingly, it shows what we desire and how we aim to get it. Tangentially, and possibly incredibly loosely, connected to that, I’ve been reading a 17^th century book on seafaring. I have thoughts. Might write on that.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about the concept of control. As a parent, as a child, as a wife, as a church-goer – control, or the lack of it, always plays such a heavy role. So much of our surrender to God looks like a surrender of the perception or grasping for control in all areas of life. We don’t arrive. We revisit, reacquaint, and readjust as we can. There’s a lot of hope here. A lot of resting in the love God has for us. My mind always goes to the Psalm about God covering us with His feathers. What a lovely thought. Safe, loved people do not need to grasp for control.

Many of my pieces here have been personal reflections on life and faith. I still do not know how to synthesize this less generally. When people in real life ask me what I write, I usually say some halting notion about “life and God and stuff” (very eloquent). But the truth is I don’t like narrowing my focus. I have always disliked the idea of a brand, and to my own mind, I don’t have one. How is that for an elevator pitch?! My college professors tremble.

I like to talk about grief, or maybe sorrow more broadly; I love referencing Heaven; I have a dark sense of humor (I’ve been told) and should never use sarcasm as I am extremely deadpan (I have also been told. Numerous times. I persist.). I write about my children sparingly, but with reverence. I think about being a mother very deeply, but I rarely write about this; I am a young mother, and I feel like a young mother, full of second-guesses and trial-and-erroring. I have thoughts but rarely find them worth sharing. Everyone usually feels very inundated in this area. I never want my writing to be a burden, if I can help it. Occasionally, I write about being a wife to my genius, eccentric Toy Inventor Husband. I find these pieces tend to be favorites. Along with the essays.

That all feels like a muddy mess of an explanation, which is how I think I know I did it right. Wouldn’t want to be too clear, now would we. (That is sarcasm.)

If you are new and want to say hello, I’d love it. Most of what makes me love Substack so much is the community. Say hi, tell me what you’d like to read, heck – let me know what I write about and maybe I can update my bio to be slightly more illuminating.

Back to the apple cider,

Mary

Soon after Cody and I got married, I was working a shift at Boot Country. My manager and I were chatting behind the front counter, and I was mentioning something about Cody and me – using all the possessive plurals: we, us, our.

She paused and looked at me. “I like that – you always say we.” An older coworker chimed in, forearms on the counter, “People say I and mine now.” My manager nodded, “Yeah we’s old-fashioned. I like it.”

The morning of our wedding day, I was sick to my stomach with nerves. The whole morning, when I showered, while I got my hair fixed, as my best friend did my makeup, I was really quiet. My bridesmaids were side-eyeing each other, trying to decide if I needed a joke or a hug. Someone brought Servatii sandwiches to the church, and I nibbled at one briefly but had to stop before I threw up. In an extremely out-of-character request, I asked my soon-to-be mother-in-law to get me a drink; she kindly snuck mimosas into the Baptist church.

I have never taken change easily. And this was one of the biggies when it comes to change. I knew what we were doing was a permanent change, and it scared all heck out of me.

My dad walked me to the foyer and I held onto his arm, knowing, for a certainty, that I was about to pass out. I had that floating feeling inside, like my stomach was set adrift (which is, for the uninitiated, the precursor to the black spots and the loss of hearing and the lack of consciousness). The doors opened, and a song that I can’t remember started to play. I didn’t hear it anyway. All I saw was Cody. Standing on the stage, tall, handsome, and waiting for me. My nerves evaporated. In the time it took my eyes to find Cody’s, everything became fine. I was safe. This was good. Peace like a river.

All through the service, I smiled at him, holding his hands and steadying his own nerves, which I could sense. He, it turned out, was nervous because his brother had asked him, .2 seconds before I walked in, where the rings were. Cody did not know the answer to this question – as they were in my dressing room, where the photographers had placed them after using them for pictures. My sister-in-law surreptitiously handed her own rings to the closest groomsman where they got passed down the line.

As Cody and I had our first dance, we realized that we’d forgotten to truncate the song. We had chosen a four-minute rendition of “This is My Father’s World.” Four. Minutes. That is five eternities and at least one purgatory to dance in front of an audience – for any person, let alone a Baptist. Cody mumbled out the side of his mouth, “when are they gonna turn it off?” And we chuckled under our breath and smiled and walk-danced in little circles until the blessed end.

During that song, the pastor turned to my mom and said, “They’re gonna make it.”

We had a bit of a honeymoon phase after that. About three days to be precise. After that, we apparently determined to have our arguments out right in the beginning - and got to work saying every honest thought that popped into our heads sans filter. We began to call our Saturdays “Sanctification Days.”

True story, my husband once hopped out of a moving car to remove himself from an argument with me. I was driving (slowly) when he flung open the door and launched himself out like Evel Knievel; I was so blistering mad I didn’t even pull over to shut the door until I was around the corner and out of sight. We had been on our way to Bible study, of all places. We got there late after reconvening at our apartment and starting out again. (No one attempted emergency evacuation that time.) I have no memory at all of the Bible study. I probably wasn’t listening much. Instead I was having a rare brush with common sense, which kept my trap from attempting to share any wisdom with anybody on anything Biblical. Without it I might have been struck down like Saphira, and they’d have had to bury me in the back.

In our premarital counseling, the couple advising us mentioned that people tend to have an easier or a harder first ten years. Either it’s easier first and harder later, or harder at first and easier later.

I don’t think this is a science or anything, but for us it’s been true that the first years were hard and the following year have been fruitful of that hard labor. We are still unflinchingly honest, but we have softened our words, so that we’re more a haven of trusted honesty than a slap in the face. We are still passionate, but we have better walls around our anger, saving it more often for the evils of the world rather than misfiring it at each other.

So often early on I felt the shame of our hard time. People would ask us with knowing eyes how marriage was going, wordlessly suggesting that they knew we were having a riotous time. It was painful to feel the dissonance between that perception and our struggle.

Much of our struggle has been couched in camaraderie, allowing us to laugh at our own ridiculousness. We have laughed a lot (in case my citation of the speed exit from a moving vehicle didn’t make that super clear). And now, on this side of so much hard work, the truer romance is blooming.

What I want so deeply is for my husband to see me - and then to love me for what I am and despite what I am. He wants this from me, too. I have borne with my husband and he has borne with me - and together we bear rare fruit: a cultivated contentment, a deep romance, a practical love.

Practical doesn’t scream sexy, I know; no one ever had to blush and look away when a husband grabbed a box of Q-tips for his wife at Kroger. But practical is where the real romance is. Show me love without practicality, and I’ll show you love by practicality. A love that sees needs and fulfills them; a love that bandages wounds, internally and externally; a love that strengthens its patience like a muscle, and listens long into the night.

The heart-poundy stuff only lasts for so long; this is what we want on the other side of it.

Just the other day, Cody grinned over at me and told me that he likes me, really likes me. Hanging with me, chatting with me, rubbing shoulders. Just being together. He really likes us. And I thought, that’s it. Everything I’ve ever wanted and hoped for. That’s romance.

What is it that has many women in the church championing these books with as much fervency as the rest? These books have a unique way of quietly silencing the alarm of our consciences and subtly altering our beliefs over time. Because of this, many women are facing a crisis of discernment. The following piece provides a starting point for considering how romantasies work within our beliefs and bodies.

How Romantasies Override the Alarm of Our Consciences

The great 17^th-century scientist and philosopher Blaise Pascal paints a withering view of the theatre, a prevailing medium for story at the time, in his book Pensées. It’s a bit lengthy, but it has insightful implications for romantasies and is worth the read:

“All great amusements are a danger to the Christian life; but among all those which the world has invented there is none more to be feared than the theatre. It is a representation of the passions so natural and so delicate that it excites them and gives birth to them in our hearts, and, above all, to that of love, principally when it is represented as very chaste and virtuous. For the more innocent it appears to innocent souls, the more they are likely to be touched by it. Its violence leases our self-love, which immediately forms a desire to produce the same effects which are seen so well represented; and, at the same time, we make ourselves a conscience founded on the propriety of the feelings which we see there, by which the fear of pure souls is removed, since they imagine that it cannot hurt their purity to love with a love which seems to them so reasonable.”

Though “chaste and virtuous” might seem like rather tongue-in-cheek descriptors of the torrid bedroom scenes in romantasies, unpacking the way these stories work on our hearts makes this less certain.

The power of empathy

While the characters, the settings, and the plots inside romantasies are mere simulations of real life, the feelings they produce in us are genuine. They cultivate hope, anticipation, desire – and all of that lives in us, breathing beyond the paper and blurring into the lines of our realities. This access to our inner self is not neutral; it is a creative force, both fostering and destroying feelings and beliefs, according to its particular message. One of the key soldiers in this force is the employment of empathy.

The intimate empathy that books foster in us has a unique ability to soften our current convictions. It doesn’t do this didactically, but with the slow, patient, layered story. We feel for the star-crossed lovers who desperately want to be together. We know (in fact, are led to believe through minute sensory descriptions of gaze, touch and longing) that they will sleep together in a torrid bedroom scene, but we still root for their success in this goal because we feel their passions in ourselves. Describing this to a friend, we might roll our eyes over the obvious error in the characters, but our internal feelings are prone to veer from logic.

What Pascal is getting at is the perceived reasonableness and purity of the love we’re presented. Though the books depict worldly romances, women look more broadly at the attributes of the characters and see their own desires: the man who will fiercely protect them, love them, desire them. It’s the “touch her and die” and “fated mates” tropes. These themes press down on an exposed nerve in women while simultaneously relieving the burden of an impossible desire by achieving it artificially.

The capacity for this empathy to change us – both in our beliefs and actions – is great. Consider the nature of changes we can easily discern within ourselves, and the changes which are harder to pinpoint.

Following the release of Fifty Shaded of Grey, the sale of BDSM products doubled and tripled at some adult stores.1 Cosmopolitan noted a 400% increase in sex toy purchases overall, noting specifically that one product even topped an Amazon best seller list.2

Forsaking the tangential pathway about the rights and wrongs of various sex toys, the numbers are clear: women not only read Fifty Shades by the droves, but it also impacted them to such a degree that they went out and made actual changes to their lives because of it. They wanted their real, in-person romances to resemble something they saw in the book.

The change here is clear: women were persuaded to become more sexually adventurous, opting to try the same methods the book characters employed. The women received a roadmap and they followed it.

But many ideological changes are more subtle shifts of belief. If the goal of the literature we’re reading is the celebration of sin, then in what ways is it catechizing us as Christians?3

Knowing the answer to this requires being awake to what a book wants to teach, so that we can discern whether or not we want to accept the teaching. Is the book sympathetic to same-sex attraction? Does it champion women domineering men? Suggest the ends justify the means? Look for the subliminal messaging in what is championed and what is mocked, what the crowd says and how the protagonist contravenes. The answers to these questions follow closely.

How Erotic Literature Trains our Desires

A study on female sexuality4 “found that the males were more responsive than the females to 29 of 33 categories of stimuli that were potentially erotic. One of the three classes of sexual stimuli to which females were as responsive as males was the reading of erotic literary material.” In other words, and which I think is a surprise to no one, literature is a potent means of women’s sexual stimulation. This puts me starkly in mind of the light switch versus iron analogy from the 90’s. Erotic literature is a conduit for the slow-burn romance women delight in. That we work this way is a matter of creation. What we allow to stimulate this response is a matter of choice. This matters deeply, because erotic literature is not just a conduit for desire, but a means of shaping it as well, since any actions eliciting a sexual reaction train our desires.

Though not all romantasies are porn (as defined by a description of explicitly detailed sexual encounters), many fit the description. The difference between visual porn and erotic literature is medium, not content – explicit images exchanged for titillating descriptors. Harvard Health Publishing substantiates this, explaining, “Erotica is not the same as pornography. Whereas pornography is primarily visual and not very creative, erotica can be more evocative and verbal and allow you to participate mentally and emotionally.”5 It’s not a stretch, then, to include scientific data on the effects of porn on the body. What do the stats on porn say, and how might they relate to explicit romantasies?

Research is clear that “When there is a repetitive release of dopamine over time, the reward center of the brain becomes altered, leaving a person needing more stimulus to achieve the same result. As the brain gets used to the constant highs and lows associated with regular porn use, it starts to create new patterns that drive a person to continue watching porn.”6 It would be hard to deny women’s growing appetite for romantasies, with physical bookstores (like this one in Nashville) devoted to the genre popping up in an age when the likes of Books-A-Million flatline. If the reason for this insatiable desire is dopamine (it would be challenging to deny that factor), and if that dopamine is being repetitively released as women read, then women are being convulsively driven to keep consuming. Addicted, might be the better word.

Sexually explicit books, like visual porn, create pornographic habitats for routine excitement. They draw women back again for more, just as men are drawn back to the screen. Though the medium is different, the means and the method are nothing new. Similar to Pavlov’s experiment, in which “a conditioned stimulus [ . . . ] triggers a conditioned response”7 the content of the books trains women’s sexual desires.

As Christians, we want our sexual desire to fit the mold of God’s intended creation. Our satisfaction is meant to be found within covenantal marriage – which, meaningfully, is the beautiful metaphor we’re given to illustrate Christ’s union with the Church.8

The Issue of Discernment

I’d like to present the case for better discernment as the solution to an unscrupulous freedom where romantasies are concerned.

While Christians shouldn’t be reading porn, there is a vast spectrum of content that is less obviously wrong, but which still may not benefit the believer. This is where we hone our discernment against the friction of what we know is true and what we want to be true; what feels good and what is good; what is wise and what is convenient. This isn’t always particularly easy or pleasant, and we won’t do it perfectly every time, but helping us interpret His laws discerningly is the Holy Spirit, if we are willing to listen.

Rejecting Fence Laws in Favor of Discernment

It is incredibly tempting to write in terms of absolutes (the all’s and the nothings and the fence laws).9 This is what I grew up around, and it instilled in me a great sense of fear. Not a holy fear but a very earthly one, it had me looking for approval in other people as my meter for how I may or may not have been living in obedience to God, according to extraneous rules.

The safest bet here is to immerse ourselves in Scripture. In Hebrews 5, the author describes mature Christians as “those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (Hebrews 5:14). Discernment, like all things under the umbrella of sanctification, is a lifelong pursuit; it’s our daily life that provides the training ground we need. To accurately judge things (in this case books) as either good or evil, we have to be well-versed in what God calls good. Further nuancing this, as the famous Spurgeon quote is purported to go, discernment is also “knowing the difference between right and almost right.”

What if our books are actively encouraging thoughts against God’s order? Romans 12:2 says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” And, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23).

What kind of thoughts are we even trying to cultivate? “Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8). While these words have to be applied well in order to have discernment, they put to shame a lot of top-selling books. Let these words inform your decisions on what to read and what to shelve.

While absolutes feel safe, they don’t make us holier, and they often rob us of the chance to grow our discernment. Cultivating this discernment will serve us all our lives, in every area of life.

In the past few years, I’ve gained a peek at the pervasive influence of smut in the church, and it concerns me. Some of the books are outright porn. Others are filled with physical descriptions that push the boundary between closed-door and open-door scenes, and while they might seem innocuous, they alter our thinking over time. My encouragement, if rejecting these books feels prudish, is Paul’s reminder to the Thessalonians, that “God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness” (1 Thessalonians 4:7). We’re called to subject our entertainment to scrutiny, to see whether or not it is worthy of forming us.

There are ways to rationalize our consumption of less-than-holy entertainment, but instead, lean into the discomfort. As we lean in, we should ask why it feels discomforting, and then examine its fruit in our lives. Commit to searching out your entertainment and require better things of it than smut. Remember that we are formed by the things our minds linger on, and linger on the things of Christ.

First, it has to be said that discussing Witchcraft in America may be very off your radar. It’s a slightly touchy topic to write about, because delving into the spiritual roots of paganism, and therefore its demonic propensities, tends to feel “woo-woo” to many (validity aside). These discussions often take place in the realm of anecdotal stories, which are scorned without vetting the reliability of a person’s character (wisely), but so many valid proofs of the supernatural are going to be personal observations. In this piece, I’ll try to fairly equally merge personal observations with outside resources1.

To some degree, I can’t explain why I feel so compelled to write about this, except that I’ve seen Witchcraft being marketed with growing frequency towards children, and in this my anger was kindled.

A couple of years ago, while browsing at a local mall, I came across a boutique; its target demographic was probably girls between twelve and eighteen years old, though maybe more towards the younger end of that spectrum. There were plush knickknacks and sparkly signs and pens, and, lying on a table in a fun box, Tarot cards. They were “cute” in the sense that they looked like everything else in the store.

This concerned me. There are multiple places in my city to buy occult merchandise (I know at least one other, having accidentally stumbled once into an occult bookstore), so the appearance of Tarot cards wasn’t uniquely striking. It was the audience that was more concerning. These weren’t for adults, they were for kids. And they were being marketed as innocent playtime fun.

Where is Witchcraft Being Marketed and to Whom?

Statistically, the largest demographics delving into Witchcraft are females, kids, and LGBT members.

Researching this, I quickly found #Witchtok – the corner of Ticktok clocking billions of views2, used to share spells and initiate new would-be witches, and, in general, proliferate knowledge of paganism. If not directly correlating to a growing number of actual Witches, it expresses a profound interest.

With Romantasy books topping charts in TEEN and YA categories, and shows like Wednesday (with its own Ouija board at Walmart) being binged on Netflix, it’s undeniable that our interest in the magical is in demand3.

In response, businesses are providing a market for such overwhelming interest. An NBC Think piece addresses this, saying that “major retailers like Walmart and Amazon sell the witchcraft symbol of the pentacle, pendulum divining tools and dried herbs for spells and rituals. The use of Tarot cards proliferates in lux magazines.”4

As parents, it’s wise to be aware that even trusted retail stores are stocking up on occult merchandise. In my experience, though, it’s the smaller stores that often have more niche, expressly demonic items and services. My husband and I love to thrift, and I’ve seen multiple stalls at the flea mart devoted to either diviners or Witchcraft/the occult. These stores can seem innocuous at a glance5, because the prevailing merchandise is candles and incense. Usually, only a small amount of further observation will tell you if the store is occult or not.

Open to Spirituality

A few years before the boutique, I met a Witch in Chicago who agreed to talk with a friend and me about God. Talking about the Bible, about Christ, was in no way offensive to her. She was incredibly open, almost surprisingly so, probably given our preconceived notion of what a Witch might think about Christianity. Despite this seemingly encouraging beginning, my friend and I found that her openness was a large part of her problem. She was open to all. She modeled in herself the bumper-sticker charge to “coexist” that our society so loves. I think she thought Christianity, or dissected parts of it, might be advantageous to adapt into her personal manifesto.6

Without any further evidence, I was piqued by signposts pointing toward a society open to Witchcraft. Or maybe simply by an open society. An unguarded one ready to service whatever spirit might see fit to find a home in it, so to speak (maybe even with seven accompanying spirits, stronger than the former). This openness seems to be in service of filling personal needs. The needs are true and genuine; the means are a deception of the devil, meant to twist the truth that God has put forth for us:

I need security, so I will fill that void with spells and potions. God’s answer for us is fulfilled in Himself: “[God] only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken,” Psalm 62:6.

I need hope, so I will try to fill that void with personal power. God says, “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD GOD is an everlasting rock” Isaiah 26:3-4.

I need love, so I will love myself. “Beloved, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God’s love was revealed among us: God sent His one and only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. And love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:7-10).

Over and over in my research, I’ve come across Witchcraft as a piecemeal system of beliefs, something that people integrate into their other beliefs and religions.

Author of Think piece “Why Paganism and Witchcraft are Making a Comeback,” Antonio Pagliarulo puts it this way:

I myself grew up with Italian folk magic passed down from generations of practitioners who melded pagan customs with Roman Catholicism. This kind of syncretism is not uncommon in witchcraft today.

In petitioning the archangel Michael for protection, for example, I will recite a prayer but also make offerings of wine, bay leaves and cloves. In addition to venerating Catholic saints, I light candles to the goddess Diana at every full moon and place small bundles of rosmarino, or rosemary, on my altar to honor the dead. This blending of faiths has been a seamless process for me and other folk magic practitioners despite what traditional religious authorities might say.

As parents, it’s important to reject this lie head-on by showing our children that God is both totally sufficient for our needs and also jealous for our love. He will not be content with being one of a line of gods we serve. He has to be the only one.

If Truth is Relative – Then Anything Can be True

Back in 2002, Barna conducted two surveys – one to adults and one to teens – on the issue of relative versus absolute truth. “By a 3-to-1 margin (64% vs. 22%) adults said truth is always relative to the person and their situation. The perspective was even more lopsided among teenagers, 83% of whom said moral truth depends on the circumstances, and only 6% of whom said moral truth is absolute.”7

With such a resounding rejection of absolute truth, from both adults and teens (who are now, twenty-odd years later, adults themselves), it is unsurprising to find people mixing and matching religions and beliefs to suit their own purposes. Think, then, under this faulty understanding, how the draw of magic must propel people. If we live in a world that is essentially meaningless – as any world must be without concrete truth – then what might some magic do towards giving people some control over an otherwise bleak and nihilistic existence?

Why is Witchcraft Growing?

All the possible and probable reasons behind the “why” would be hard to encapsulate, but I’ll offer two that I see rising to the surface, both that we’ve already touched on. The desire for control, coupled with an openness to generalized “spirituality,” is a potent combination given our cultural affinity for claiming godship over our own bodies, being inclusive, and maintaining control over uncontrollable aspects of life. It’s the god-complex, molded to our specific brand of modernity.

Desire for Control

Control came up too many times to source while researching Witchcraft. Maybe even every time. From love potions to luck spells to hexes, Witchcraft is desired for its believed ability to control.8 What defines magic except a supernatural ability to control something or someone?

Pagliarulo writes, “The proliferation of witchcraft reflects two timeless and universal urges: the need to draw meaning from chaos, and the desire to control the circumstances around us. With the dire catastrophes brought on by climate change, wars and the loss of rights, it’s not surprising that witchcraft appeals to those seeking to mend what’s broken in ourselves and the wider world.”

So much of parenting is about letting go of our perceived control and trusting God as we walk in obedience to Him. Nothing about this is easy! In fact, this is in no way relegated to parenting. Trusting God well is a lifelong pursuit that encompasses every area of life. As parents, we want our children to see us living out this model of trust. And, we’ll need to talk about it, too. Is it hard to trust God with the lives and development of our kids? Yes, so often. We can invite our kids into our prayers for more trust. We should also teach them that placing our trust anywhere else is a recipe for failure.

The Inclusivity of Witchcraft

It’s easy to see why an openness to spirituality would be palatable to many Americans. Exclusion has been redefined as hatred, making openness [to anything] its benevolent solution. If the spirituality being considered is already of a culturally-defined “inclusive” nature, so much the better. To this end:

In 2024, Teen Vogue suggested that one “draw of witchcraft is how inclusive it can be. ‘One of the other aspects that makes Paganism, particularly Wicca…so popular is their openness to non-normative forms of sexuality, non-normative forms of gender in ways that mainstream progressive forms of religion are still kind of struggling with,’ Burlein [a professor of Paganism at Hofstra University] said.”9

This is easily backed up with a Pew stat, which found that over half “of LGBT adults (54%) say they consult astrology or a horoscope at least annually.”10 In the same article, it is estimated that “30% of Americans consult astrology, tarot cards or fortune tellers.”

Our culture’s definition of “inclusive” is the springboard for many evils, only one of which is Witchcraft. Being culturally inclusive broadly necessitates an acceptance of sin: culture says, we accept you no matter what you want your body to be for, what you want to house within your body, what you might want to do with the body of another. Within Witchcraft, this means allowing your body to be a vessel for a spirit that is not of God (the source of “power”) and being a conduit for that spirit (the action of that “power”).

It’s inclusive because you can be anybody or believe anything to take part in it. It’s not discriminatory. As Christians, we reject any narrative that calls sin freedom, recognizing this as a perversion of God’s true freedom from sin.11 Calling out this distinction is a benevolent instruction for our kids. While the world calls us hateful, we can be confidant that while it hates us, it hated God first.12 Speaking the truth in love is love, no matter how it’s branded in any age.

None of the principles in this piece are unique to Witchcraft, but they are inherent in it. As our culture opens its arms to the occult and embraces dark spirituality, Christians are a light on a hill as we stand firm in Christ. Instructing our kids against the evils of the occult looks much like it always does: remaining rooted in Scripture and continuing in ordinary faithfulness to God. To do this effectively, it’s definitely worth being vigilant and keeping our eyes open to the occult’s influence in our physical realities. The occult’s narrowing focus on children is our signpost to the fact that they want to groom our kids. As in all things, our mission as parents is to keep our eyes open, pray steadfastly, and teach our children in love.

“They laugh about the
Midwestern goodbye –
the farewell at the couch
and the foyer
and the door
where we stand around and talk
until we have to say
goodbye
again.

You came for Thanksgiving
and stood by my couch
asking –
have we met before?
which was one of our first
goodbye’s.
You don’t know my name
or your sons’
or your sister’s
but some nights you play a
mean game of dominos
around the card table
with the ones who make you feel safe.

We will talk in the foyer
for as long as we can.

We will say
goodbye
and then keep on
keeping company.”

As an aside, I sometimes forget the old pieces I’ve had published, and I rarely share them across different mediums. I’ve had a few poems and one piece of prose published with Fathom, and I’ll link them here for those interested.

Bethesda (poem)

Success Is Not Found in Making My Bed Each Morning (poem; hilariously, I decided after this was accepted that I didn’t like this piece. Not the content, I just didn’t think it was a great poem. Hah! But that’s the writing life.)

Cracks (prose; a personally significant piece about the upheaval in my life after someone close to me changed their views on the Bible. I used the word “deconstruction” back then, but I wish I wouldn’t have in retrospect, as that word went on to become a bit of a catch-all, often justifying unbiblical principles. Today, I would just call it sanctification. These thoughts swirled maddeningly in my head for years before I could write them - incapturable as they were in my Spiritual crisis. Writing this was a great relief.)

As a kid, every mistake I ever committed was a capital S sin in my mind. I searched for things I might have done wrong, like I was my own personal searchlight sweeping the interior of my soul. I’m not exactly sure what caused this. Maybe an overemphasis on Hell over God’s love. Maybe my own propensity towards fear. But sin became an indistinct line that blurrily crossed over into including accidents. Things like inadvertently dusting pencil shavings onto the floor after the teacher had told people not to. And if I didn’t apologize just right, I got sick with guilt and believed with everything in me that I wasn’t forgiven. Especially not by God - and He’s the only one that mattered.

I dreaded the day God would switch on the overhead during Judgement Day. The fear gripped my soul the way a girl grabs her friend’s arm at a Hell House. It was like this for a long time, and it reached its zenith in high school.

When I think of high school, and even of my man-eating guilt, I invariably think of Mrs. Lewis.

Mrs. Lewis was the ninth and tenth grade English teacher at the private Christian school I attended. She was one of those teeny tiny bodies that mysteriously houses a giant personality. Her bleached blond hair arched over her forehead in a sweeping curl, the way a peaked meringue holds its form. She had large, expressive blue eyes and delicate hands which rose and fell with the airy nature of tissue paper. She was one of my favorite teachers I ever had.

When she taught us about WW11, she brought out a skeletal hand that she kept in her refrigerator, which she claimed was from a real Holocaust victim. I am not kidding. She said it came from the war and that she kept it in a little box in her fridge. She’d flip it around in her hand as casually as if she were holding a cigarette while she taught. Sometimes she’d use it to scratch her head. Among the students, there was a low-level concerned excitement about the purported genuineness of this bold claim juxtaposed against the very authentic looking skeletal hand. Probably not . . . but maybe . . . ?

While no one ever called Mrs. Lewis a liar, the woman was a born storyteller. She didn’t need a dramatic story either. She was the drama. On the stage she would have been a star, but in Middletown, Ohio she was a gripping diversion from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. She told us all kinds of stories about old students (like the girl who never used contractions, and spoke very slow and proper, like Eliza Doolittle when she first learns to talk good); and she told us about her family, especially her nephew Cooper (whose name she always pronounced as “Qyoo-per”). Just a whiff of a memory, and a casual, “tell us more about . . . ” from one of the boys, and she’d be off on a story in all its colorful detail. Which every student knew and extorted at her liberal generosity.

She taught her students to memorize poems. The first one she always taught the freshmen was Silver, by Walter de la Mare. She pantomimed every line. Not even huffing high school boys could shame this woman. It was always the same. “Slowly, silently, now the moon” – she’d tuck her arms in front of her chest and fold over her hands like a rabbit, hiking her legs up in exaggerated tiptoes around the front of the room - “Walks the night in her silver shoon; / this way, and that,” – she’d glance around furtively with frightened blue eyes – “she peers, and sees” – a slender arm would reach up and curve like the crooked bough of a tree – “Silver fruit upon silver trees.”

She told us we’d never forget this poem for as long as we lived. It was her gift to us. Something beautiful to hold onto. This felt funny to most of her students, as she knew it would. We’d laugh and side-smile at each other. Then, every once in a while, an old student would come to visit her during class, and she’d smile and raise her eyebrows. Inviting all of us into the conversation, she’d ask the suspecting visitor: “And you can still recite Silver, can’t you? After all this time. Go on. Oh please.” A pause. “You’re embarrassed. I won’t look.” She’d turn her back to them, as if there wasn’t a class full of teenagers sitting there staring. And that old student would stand there are quote every darn word.

Once a week at that school, we had Chapel in the big auditorium. The whole high school. There was a thick-piled, forest green carpet over the entire place – under the pews, up the stairs, on the stage, all of it. As shocking as it was that nobody wanted teenagers smacking sticky tac between their gums, that was the rule. No gum in Chapel.

Back then, I was a serial chewer. I could go through a pack at a speed that would make tobacco smokers proud. Then again, I think we all could. If you didn’t have a pack of gum to share with a desperate kid pleading halitosis, what were you even doing?

One chapel, after I’d taken my seat on the pew and placed my standard-issue KJV on my plaid-skirted lap, something struck me. Something sweet, and watermelon flavored. I’d forgotten to spit out my gum.

I could have groaned, except I think I’d stopped breathing. Immediately, in the pit of my gut, my innards churned with a horrible, guilty feeling – a feeling so terrible it lands somewhere between IBS and heartburn. The only cure I knew for it was confession.

There was some small part of me that knew this was crazy. Bat-crap crazy. That no girl with two brain cells to clap together should be upset about a piece of sugared who-knows-what between her teeth. An accident’s an accident. That she doesn’t have the right – human, constitutional, or otherwise – to be upset at such a thing. But there was a louder part of me that sounded like an angry voice from the pulpit claiming that small mistakes like this paved the way to Hell – that if I didn’t say sorry for it, out loud and to somebody, all my internal sorry-ing didn’t count, and it went unforgiven. And I believed that voice.

Right off, that sweet watermelon flavor turned sour. I froze, a telltale heartbeat in my throat. I stopped chewing because that was a dead giveaway, and briefly, frantically, considered where I might spit it out. Between option A) a Bible and option B) a plaid skirt, the option was obvious: C) swallow it. After a considerable internal debate whereupon I remembered someone somewhere saying once that gum lasted forever in your stomach, down it went. However bad it was that gum might outlast my mortal body, the IBS/heartburn guilt was worse.

Chapel ended. I’m not sure if the altar call gave way to my usual anguished dilemma of saved/not saved because even after the gum was gone, the guilt was not. Nope, that guilt was still churning. My mind was busy telling the guilt to stuff it, but it was also terrified that this might actually be the Holy Spirit and not me, and so it circled back to the abominable cure of confession.

That’s how I ended up standing in Mrs. Lewis’ room, tearfully confessing chewing gum in Chapel. Yes, tearfully. As a teenager with the legal ability to drive a two-ton vehicle, I was crying over Extra.

Mrs. Lewis stood there quietly while I word-vomited a tortured explanation about how I chewed gum in chapel. She didn’t even shame me by asking what in the heck I was going on about. She just stood there and listened. In her wisdom, (and in her eyesight, as the girl before her was a sobbing, leaky-nosed mess) she could see that the girl before her was currently traversing a level of Dante’s Inferno frequented by gum-chewers, and she uttered not a word. And that listening gave me dignity.

After I was done, she gathered herself, paused, and then looked deep in my eyes like she was about to share a secret with me.

“You know what I’m going to do? We’re just going to let this be.” She nodded sagely. Like this was totally rational. She told me I’d struggled enough already and that would be that. If I’d have been a more outgoing person, I’d have told her that was meiosis.

Then she said, just as earnestly, “Don’t you ever change, Mary.”

Even back then, I wasn’t insane enough to believe that I really shouldn’t change. Maybe I had some things pretty mixed up. Maybe my faith in Jesus wasn’t quite secure yet. I’d just had an apoplexy over chewing gum. A better ending thought might have been, “Now surrender that driver’s license.” But that Mrs. Lewis gave me something beautiful to hold onto. And to this day, I remember every word.

We had a small, metal-frame swing set back in the early aughts; one of those delightfully light sets that would pull out of the earth if you got really swinging, the poles jumping up on alternating sides – front, back, front, back - as you pumped your legs full throttle, each merciless drive back into the earth shaking your sternum. You’d pump your legs again and again. Nothing in your sights other than the laces of your shoes meeting the clouds. Again, again. It was both relaxing and charging. Something would surge in your chest. Adventure. The future. You weren’t sure what. You just kept pumping.

It made you feel like flying.

“I believe,” I said out loud, but low, perched on top of the metal swing set frame. This was a test. Miracles happened – I didn’t doubt that a bit. But miracles to me, if I asked for something, that was the test.

I stood up, careful to balance, wondering vaguely if any neighbors would catch me flinging myself off the swing set like a loon. The day was hot and beautiful. A light breeze blew, full of summer, and the sky was blue, with clouds fresh as sheets on the line. I stretched my arms straight out like I was preparing for the world to hug me. I jumped, trying to sweep any doubts clean out of my mind. For a fraction of a second, as I lifted upward, I thought, this is it. I’m going to fly. And then the ground hit the soles of my feet. Oomph. The force made me expel a heavy exhale, like I was blowing out a candle on a reverse wish.

I prayed the same way over a robin’s egg, which I sat in the garage under a desk lamp that had burned my finger when I touched it once. Let it live, God. Let it live. My mother tried to assuage my glistening hope, but I was full of faith and fire. The next morning, I rushed out into the cold garage and looked underneath the hot lamp, the tiny egg under its beam of light. There was a small crack, a little hole, where the orange tip of a beak just broke through the crust of the egg before it grew cold and died. I was gutted. A little disillusioned, too, though I pushed this feeling back as something unchristian. I wanted to believe. I knew God was able. But this baby bird was dead.

It bothered me, but I told myself it didn’t, because that would be doubt. Inside, I was trying not to be tormented; I wasn’t sure whether I lacked faith or I was getting this whole prayer thing wrong somehow. It felt like trying to crack the code on a locker for the first time. I had the code, but wasn’t sure how to use it.

My childhood is full of these kinds of prayers. I’m unsure if this is ironic or expected for a Baptist, when so little focus is placed on modern miracles. Not that miracles were never mentioned. I heard about George Müller, and I knew that there were Muslims receiving dreams of a man with holes in His hands. I’d even heard about a missionary families’ home surrounded by angry locals gathered to kill them; when the people never moved in, the family eventually ventured to ask them why, and the people said there were shining men with swords all around the house.

Even before I’d read about Gideon and his fleece, I was a six-year-old girl praying to God for a pizza outside our little apartment building; when I walked to the concrete ledge walling in the communal dumpsters, there on the wall was a tiny, plastic, Barbie-sized supreme pizza. I think I loved it as much as the Israelites loved manna the day they first received it. It was more than the pizza. That was just a whim. It was that I felt heard and seen, and I desperately wanted to talk with God and have Him talk back.

When I think about it from that perspective – wanting to commune with God – events sharpen into focus. Memories, miracles, even, that felt strange to me as a child, but not as earthshaking as they might have from a grownup perspective. Children are often so close to God and haven’t developed the skepticism that pervades adulthood.

I still don’t know what it really means when Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” Maybe it’s as simple as what it says.

We tend to want a science to miracles. A reliable and repeatable method of knocking on God’s door and drawing forth an answer. What we get is divine mystery. A talking donkey, a prophet dying from sickness. Oil that wouldn’t run dry, prison bars that opened. Martyrs.

Does this feel satisfying? Maybe if we could see the Milky Way every night, full of signs and wonders, displaying our infinitesimal smallness by the subtle descent of a waning sun – maybe then we would find this satisfying. Even peaceful. Maybe as we looked up, we would see the reaches of God’s wisdom, which is higher, deeper, wider than we can understand. Maybe we would imagine being caught up in the clouds with Jesus, actually flying – steps made firm in the face of our Lord upon tumultuous currents of air, a Peter in the sky - and breathing in sea water from the heady spray of Cumulus clouds.

Many have pointed people to the paragon of truth in the wake of our horror. We need truth, unquestioningly. Bold, full-color truth. But too many are falling short of specificity. Too many are espousing goodness and virtue and truth without giving any particulars as to what is good or virtuous or true. This, I believe, is a great pitfall. And it will take courage to remedy.

We must be specific because many people have wrapped lies in a golden veneer of “love,” which they offer to us at gunpoint on the altar of “truth.” What are these lies? There are, of course, that men can be women, women can be men, and really, anybody can be anything so long as they say it with confidence; that it’s kind to use people’s preferred pronouns because lying to people is better than confronting them with the truth; that it’s inhumane for parents to correct their confused children, and the ones that do ought to have them taken away; that sex means nothing more than a kiss on the cheek; that it has no consequences; that, when it does, abortion is healthcare; that unwanted babies are not babies at all and so can be murdered as easily as going out for Botox; that this will not leave lifelong scars on the men and women involved; that punishing criminals is cruel (they were oppressed); that it’s unjust to put high bail on poor criminals, and that trusting they will arrive without further incident at their trials is a good faith initiative.

That was an exhausting sentence, but a meager list. I’d love to see a comprehensive list of the lies we’re daily told. It would be volumes long.

Often, at least in our day and age, ambiguous truth is as bad as lying. Everybody thinks it applies to them. “Cling to truth!” There is a trans activist who thinks this is meant for her beliefs. “We must hold fast to virtue!” The one donating his spare cash to Planned Parenthood nods his head. Wicked people have co-opted Biblical language to adhere to their beliefs. Language of justice that does not refer to that which is just. Language of love, which looks like tolerance instead of truth. If this feels outlandish, remember that there are wicked people who cannot even relax into sleep until they’ve done something cruel (Proverbs 4:16). The shorthand for longer explanations is not a gift given to us in this time; we have to spell it all out for love of our neighbor.

This is costly. We have known this, and September tenth reinforced it horrifyingly. It’s easier, certainly safer, to cling to vaguely spiritual language. But it is far better for the unbelieving if we tell them the unwatered truth. In the light of the truth, there is the chance for repentance. It is belief in Jesus (the Way, the Truth, and the Life) that leads to repentance. And what then? What is true of the one who is forgiven much? That one is given the capacity to love much in return (Luke 7:47).

Be brave and tell the truth. Be detailed, though people will hate you. Others will come to trust in Jesus, and this is worth it all.

I remember being a kid and getting out of our dew-dripped car in the drop off line at school. Mom would be at the wheel, wishing my brother and me a good day; we’d be scrambling to haul our backpacks out of the car, and I would often wish I could stay in the car and go back home. I was terribly shy. The thought of being home all day with a book was like looking at a castle in a fairytale.

I remind myself often that I am living the dream. My dream. That there are little people all over our house, swinging swords, building robots, scouring the yard for worms or bush berries, occasionally jumping off the dresser, squabbling over Magnatiles, stomping like elephants, laughing uncontrollably – and that this is it. The dream.

I never imagined how often the vacuum would need running or the clothes would need washing or the bathroom would need cleaning, but, back then, I also never knew what it was to be clung to by my own child, the sweetness of their scent, the symphonic joy the soft brush of their cheeks against my lips would bring.

My three boys aren’t out of the house yet for school, and it’s hard to imagine ever having margin again. My writing desk is in our bedroom dormer, and it sits under the muted light of drawn curtains, inviting and elusive as I haul heaps of laundry past it, trying not to trip down the stairs. My oldest helps me unload groceries from the van now, my middle places the clothes he’s handed into the dryer, and my youngest blows the slobberiest bubbles after nursing, cooing with smiling, contented eyes, which helps in all things greatly.

If you ask a child if his mother is old, he will probably screw up his face and think well of course. He is not surprised by his mother’s wrinkles and soft belly. So, he would probably be surprised, if he could understand it, that those very things are actually a little shocking for his mother. Sometimes, I feel my upper arms and think those feel like my mother’s. Soft and faintly looser than they used to be. Sometimes, when I kiss my mother’s cheek, I think that feels like my Grandma’s. Velveteen in its wrinkled softness. I have crow’s feet and smile lines and am going prematurely gray, so that whatever bloom I used to have feels far away, and I begin to have peripheral musings about that “new body” God promises. So much of that is vanity. Natural and Ecclesiastical, but still, vanity. And I know more surely that the earth and all that is in it is passing away.

I was once given a prophesy of sorts by a young woman in a park, about the ways in which the Lord would use my “gift.” It fit so completely and so strangely into the very things I had been praying about that I accepted it without question. God sometimes gives us answers that we cannot question and that will seem silly when we try to explain them to others, but this is okay. He was only speaking to you, after all. I often feel too old for that dream of mine, which the young woman said would spread far and wide like dandelion seeds. But the dream does not require youth, and the Lord has done mighty things in the span of our liminal days, and with paltry pickings, too. He does not require much, or indeed anything, to accomplish His will. The Word went forth and was.

We are blades of grass with eternal souls, my friends. Being didactic is not the fashion, but as Christians we have the freeing burden of telling the truth in love: do not despise these fleeting days; give them to God as a joyful sacrifice, giving and giving and giving – and so, receive

I haven’t written much about my husband in this space, and I’m sorry for that, as he’s my much more interesting counterpart. Firstly, the man is a proud West Virginian. Once, when my uncle teased him about being a “hipster” for wearing all the flannels he does, Cody corrected him that he is not a hipster, but a West Virginian. My husband’s mind is always moving, like the second hand on a clock. He is often sketching at something with a pen and a scrap. He is a toy inventor, professionally. He is intensely hopeful. He is stubborn. He says I am more stubborn, but here we can never agree. He has a way of being just who he is with everybody. I don’t know a Cody at work and a Cody at church and a Cody at home. I only know Cody.

The other day he told me about a virus that causes bee's wings to fall off. He then went on to make plans for government officials: incentives for citizens to work as part-time farmers, beekeepers, any agriculturally rejuvenating effort. This led him to a new topic. "So, the jumping worms." He paused, "have you heard of the jumping worms?" I shook my head. There, sitting on our Ikea couch, he launched into the full thing - crop rotations, seed-eating worms, preventative measures. We circled back to the bees. "I'd rather live in a world full of bees than a world full of mites," he ended triumphantly. I agreed, stupidly, ignorant of all things mites and bees. The night before he taught me about nuclear fusion, the source of tritium and deuterium and the costs associated with both.

You know those posts that say, “marry a man who…” where they mention things like “my husband does the dishes every night, wakes me with a coffee and a massage, only speaks in library tones, and never lets me open the car door?” Yeah. Well I think those things are great. I’m happy for those people. I would love the whole thing, but I just can’t get behind that qualifier: “marry a man who…”. My husband is a bit of a wild bird. He has never done those things. Well maybe the car door. But the point is – and you know the point – you can’t prescribe these kinds of things. What you can do is love for and love despite. Learn to honor that person like your own face in the mirror. This is hard stuff. We know this, especially, because we make mental lists about the hard stuff. Things like: #1,452 doesn’t clean sink out after shaving or #297 is too goofy with kids at bedtime. Then this person leaves the state on a business trip and you know as you trudge upstairs alone that you have never known a better person. You pray fevered prayers about their safety. You watch some Netflix alone, but it’s less sweet because they aren’t downstairs waiting for you. That subtler list, the one with all those good characteristics, comes to mind in rare form, all caps. Things like: #78 lets you drive even though you take corners like a NASCAR driver or #27 bakes a honeyed salmon that makes your knees weak.

Just for kicks and giggles, let’s go back to that “marry a man who” stuff. Let’s really immerse ourselves in it. Really get it going. You can play, too. I’ll go first. Marry a man who invents toys. Marry a man who knows everything, like Encyclopedia Brown. Marry a man that is so blasted stubborn, maybe even as stubborn as you, that you ebb away at each other’s hard corners, and you start to be shaped a little smoother. Marry the goofy one, who’ll stuff a whole piece of pizza in his mouth just to make you laugh, and you’ll think, “who is this nut?” Marry that guy.

Now it’s your turn. Go on, and be specific - tell us who we should marry. Maybe you’ve been married for fifty years or maybe you’re a fledgling; maybe you have a friend that you love like a sister or a brother. Whoever they are, I bet you know the secret to loving them. I bet, even, that if they have the audacity not to wake you each morning with a Michelin Star omelet, you’ll suffer to keep them around.

This is an old piece that I’ve refurbished. If it sounds familiar, then you are a very faithful reader and have read pieces of it before.

My Grandmother’s voice has a smooth-cornered Appalachian drawl. It is like a quilt, or a country apron, like stovetop oatmeal and clotheslines and burn piles. It makes you remember things you thought you had forgotten. Not all the way, but the ghost of the remembered things washes past you like a Spring breeze, and it is pleasing. The way of her voice is so much a part of her that I never noticed the sound or the dialect growing up. The shortened endings and slight twang only felt like the way a Grandmother should talk.

She once told me a story from when she was young and her car broke down. The thing had died on the road, and she’d told the mechanics how she’d pooshed the car. The men kept prodding her, asking what now? You did what? - wanting opportunity to hear her accent a little more, and get in a laugh. I don’t know it, but I imagine her exasperated head shake, and a slight sign of her humor in the way she huffed and straightened her shoulders.

Her accent comes from the hills of West Virginia, where her daddy was a coal miner and her momma never learned to drive. Grandma studied to become a nurse, and she said it was hard work, but that she knew she wouldn’t ask to return home. She had to work hard and mine strength from hidden resources.

After graduating, she worked in and around the land she was raised, some of which meant traveling, sometimes a hundred miles a day. Think if I’d have broken down, she wondered while telling me, shaking her head. Alone on all that deep, back-country road, with nothing but calling birds and humming wind. At the end of such a day, she’d have to sterilize and sharpen her needles by hand after giving immunizations.

This deep, quiet land was a place of practical knowledge, hard work and hardship. A place of quiet entrenchment, like an old churchyard where the headstones are covered in mosses, the touch of current life pressing against past life in a way so natural it is hard to express. Practically, this meant that newer ideas took a while to trickle back to it, which are flowing rivers for more metropolitan areas, but a creeping creek for them.

Grandma remembered people getting sick. Tuberculosis spreading through families the way one leaf falls fast after another in the autumn, whole trees left bare after one firm gust. It was hard, sometimes impossible work getting the people to receive treatment. One woman received a court order to be committed after she spread the sickness to her little girl and still declined treatment – an elder nurse’s desperate hope of saving the rest of the family. Grandma said it was like beating her head against a wall.

Maybe the ingrained skepticism there, born from generational resilience, was just as catching. She remembers once being called in to a school. The girls had been taking one of their classmates into the bathroom and forcibly running her under the shower. Grandma wouldn’t say, but the girl must have just started to be a woman, and didn’t know how. The effects of which stained her, like she was an anomaly. It should have been handled different, Grandma said firmly. Her job was to call on the girl’s family and help things out if she could. But as she was going into the hollow to visit, there was the girl’s dad, having seen her at a distance, waiting with a shotgun. What those girls did was wrong, he called over. I know, she called back. And that was it. She wanted to talk, he didn’t, and she had to walk away. Wasn’t nothing I could do.

The pair of them, the girl and her father, sit in my mind like two characters in an unfinished story. I want to know more, but I know only what Grandma knows. We catch them at the height of a conflict, caught in a web of grief, and we do not know the resolution. The one, not knowing and unable to know, suffering the cruel attempts of school girls to cleanse her into a knowledge that no one but a nurse would talk about. The other, fathering with his fists up, fending off visible and invisible threats, quenching both true and false care in an inability to distinguish the difference. Both of them quiet wells of water dug in generations past. And who would draw it out?

It would be easy to blame the father. A sentinel of steel warding off help when it came. But this is too easy.

There was nothing my Grandma could do, and if that girl is still living, she is in her sixties, wearing the hard lesson of the past like a scar. Whether large or small, we do not know. Sometimes in life there is nothing to do. Not as apathy but as evidence of a higher power not belonging to us. This is often true. Oftener than we like. But if we would, we could find comfort in this, like a bird signing in the morning, presumptive of her breakfast in the humility of the meek.

There is in ourselves no power to dredge up and fix the world. For we are not the Light, but we bear witness to it.

I have heard these stories in my Grandma’s unhurried cadence, and though you don’t know it, I will tell you that it rises and falls with the easy rhythm of a rocker. She still pooshes her legs to pump her chair in a gentle rhythm, still carries something of her past into the joy of our present. Even when there is nothing she can do, there is something, and she prays for her family by name every day.

My grandparents owned a little cabin in the hills of Kentucky back when I was young. It had two bedrooms big enough to hold beds and a living room big enough for a couch and two chairs, a corner of which had kitchen cabinets and a table by the air conditioning unit. I remember feeling the awe of new places that children feel, because we almost never went there. The thrill about a new door being unlocked – and an insatiable need to know what every cabinet might contain, if the bathroom mirror opened, or what the crawlspace latch hid. The smell when the heavy wooden shed door opened, the thick must rushing out freed, as Grandpa cautioned watch out for snakes now, and my spine shivered.

There were woods, woods everywhere, more than anything else, woods. It didn’t take anything to have an adventure; having an adventure was waking up, eyes open, crickets still chirping, birds calling, the air conditioner humming – Grandma clinking in the kitchen over the oatmeal on the stove. Excitement in my empty belly. As a kid you just knew: today was special.

I have almost no memories of what we did there, specifically. Mostly feelings. A combined sense of peace and quiet adventure. I know my Great Uncle had a grandson, and that he and my brother and I ran around the rolling green lawn, and one time he had a little motorized car, and that was cool.

Sometimes we visited a local gorge and hiked around. It was there, I think, that my younger brother missed a step and fell down in a poof, dusty dirt clouding out and up like a mushroom; when he popped back up, face fully powdered in brown except for two glowing white eyes big as saucers, we all burst into hysterical laughter.

One time we brought old family friends to the cabin, the kind you call aunt and uncle even when they aren’t. These vacations are almost more special than any, because you bring a friend into a wild place and experience it together, and you bring it home as a memory to share, like a secret.

Down in the woods, we found a box turtle. The only thing more exciting than finding a turtle shell is finding a real, live turtle, its green-streaked head stretching out with red eyes. My uncle brought it to the cabin and it crawled under the couch, where we kids flung ourselves on the ground, faces pressed against the carpet, arms lifting the cornflower blue couch skirt. Our parents chuckled and chatted, saying things like now don’t scare him, which we took to mean getting closer just a smidgen slower. I remember my friend Caleb got to take the turtle home, and I was so jealous.

Memories, maybe especially childhood memories, are worth writing down, whether or not you claim to be a writer. There’s nothing better for being gracious to your own children than remembering two key things: how much the Creator has forgiven you – and with so much tender love – and that you were once a child yourself, ants in your pants and too many words on your tongue. Maybe if we can remember tripping into poison ivy or thumping bathroom drawers closed in a bathroom that wasn’t ours, then we can smile at the wild creatures bursting in from outside and tracking dirt into our kitchens.

I saw an ad, recently, blasting
breastfeeding for the humpbacks it makes
out of mothers.
I laughed out loud
at the wearying efforts of marketers
shilling a product over a
woman’s own production
for no other reason than making a buck.

Anyway, the soft slope of a mother’s neck
is such a small curvature after the
building and the breaking that’s already
taken place. Such a small
proof
of the nurturing hours spent in
languid labor, scooped around
the restless babe that only rests
for his mother,
held at the heartbeat.
None of this is for convenience;
it is for love.

The bathroom was an almost gut-job, down to the floor studs. Renovating an old home always comes with a Mary-Poppins bag of surprises and goodies. For instance, we found that there is a hefty square pad of concrete laid under the toilet, making it a real, veritable throne in our home. And that some of the walls in our home were not constructed of 2x4s but 2x3s and that of those boards, a well-intentioned person (I feel sure) then piecemealed sister-joists and replacement sections from ghastly boards that look like splintered sections of a shipwreck.

We have been given many reasons to believe that when we begin a new project in our home, we must tear down pretty fully and start anew.

The project was supposed to take two weeks tops. My husband used the majority of Thanksgiving break to jump in and excavate before laying a new foundation and tiling. He is doing everything for the first time and he is doing it excellently, though there has been a vast explosion of creative and colorful language bursting from that small room like fireworks on the fourth. Learning new skills on the job is not for the faint of heart.

Honestly, my husband’s ability to dive into new projects always astounds me. I say that as someone who is afraid to hang a curtain rod. I am a perfectionist, and he is too, but he is somehow self-assured enough to believe in his own capacity to learn and then engage and darn him if he isn’t always right. A stupendous gifting, that.

For my part, the project has provided ample opportunity for third-trimester calisthenics. Things like the bend-down-and-pick-up-that-tool or the get-off-the-couch-for-the-umpteenth-time, or even the nigh impossible stand-at-length-and-talk-out-the-issues. These are Very Hard things at thirty-seven weeks pregnant, but unfortunately not all that helpful when the one-man renovator is exhausted. The baby’s room has doubled as the tool room, and there is a film of tile dust over the walls as well a dusting of porcelain shards over the carpet. We are comforted that the new carpet is set to be installed Wednesday, so all will be accomplished by then (come hell or high water), and we shall all—in the innocence of bare-footed feet—be able to walk freely in that room once more. Amen.

Here I must pause. In my writing, I have often loved to tie up my pieces with pretty bows and sacrosanct epitaphs and pious metaphors, which can be lovely and have their place, but more often than not I end up hating them despicably. Those pieces have a dim likeness to my life, but they are too perfect to be honest. They are more aspirational than I am most days or else make me look farther down the path than I am. Without resorting to a tell-all diary style, which would demean my actual life into an HBO special and would rob me of the good while stealing the practical nature of growth from the bad, I am striving for an honest account in what I do share. This is a great challenge for writers: to uplift, share, give, without compromising integrity or glorifying sin. To be honest because candor is where real “aha” moments strike another— “along the nerve of one’s own most intimate sensitivity.”1 When reading, we can often instinctually discern the truth from the lies (or the almost-truths) because the real truth looks like our own thoughts and wears a recognizable face.

Life is mostly too great to measure down to neat, conscripted endings. Here, the bathroom isn’t a metaphor. Or the pot, which is still in my basement. We go to bed past time every night trying to tie up this project, and we remember in fits and spurts that our baby is coming to meet us, and soon. We are sharp with each other, we try to overlook offenses, and I have a strong feeling when I look at my husband that we are both extensions of one another. That he is part of me, and I am part of him. This is the best I can understand of becoming one flesh. I look at his face like it is my own in the mirror. I feel a great sense of place and safety with him, even when I’m angry. We don’t try to impress each other; we can see through one another’s tired bouts of hyperbole and dramatics; we are brutally honest and then have to circle back with forgotten mercy and grace.

People joke that renovations are marriage-builders, and I won’t argue with anyone who says it. It’s not all bad, though. It deepens our comradery and togetherness as much as it sometimes jolts our bond taut, like an errant cart behind a horse. We laugh over stupid stuff, we still dream like school kids, we chat about other projects when we tire of this one. I love him. He loves me. And one day, possibly, this bathroom will be finished and our boy’s room will be cleaned and we’ll be crazy enough to start everything over again in the kitchen or the bedroom. We are, after all, great hooligans who will not even be scared off by chamber pots. What kind of sense can you drive into people like that?

Open on my computer is a Word doc. for a piece about our culture’s snark, our desire for affluence, and our general dismissal of humility and the quiet tameness of learning. But you know what I really want? Just a quiet evening away from the online hullabaloo thinking about something lovely.

So instead, I will tell you about Uncle Joe.

Uncle Joe has two visible top teeth, eyes that make quick friends with everybody, and a kindly disposition that can only be described as undeserved. He is always bundled to the nth degree: sweatshirt, beanie, pulled-up hood, fingerless gloves—until the only thing you can rightly see is a St. Nicholas form with a red, round, bespectacled face peering at you over his frames.

This jolly man works at our local McDonalds. He is always stationed in what we used to call “the hole” back when I worked at the franchise, taking drive-thru orders and tendering payment. This means that when you roll up to the drive-thru speaker, with that grim feeling that McDonalds sometimes inspires, you are prepared for an interaction that will in no way stain your permanent memory. In reality, you are about to meet Uncle Joe.

“Hello! This is Uncle Joe at your service, ready to take your order whenever you’re ready!”

What follows is an entirely nice exchange that made me turn wide-eyed to my husband the first time it happened. He was goofy, he heard everything I said (a technological miracle?!) and was clearly bent on enjoying himself and making everyone’s day.

At our most recent exchange, he read over my order at the window before asking, not turning to me, “And would you like buffalo sauce in your chocolate shake?” He then craned his head to study me over his glasses. “See how I said that while looking over here, like that was a normal option?” His eyes were laughing at his joke.

The time before that, he broke out in an Irish accent with a ready-to-go Gaelic saying about the fickleness of weather and the gods. My husband, delighted, ended the conversation with, “slán go fóill!” to which Uncle Joe’s face burst out in luminous sunrays: “We’ll talk!”

Uncle Joe is doing our part of town a world of good. We had just about thrown in the towel with this particular McDonalds after being repeatedly talked to rudely by the former staff. People (and not just us, judging by the neighborhood chat site) were over it. And then came Uncle Joe. Even if a business, the best kind of business, wanted to pull an Uncle Joe out of a hat, they would have to be the David Copperfield of consumer relations.

No, it couldn’t be done. Uncle Joes are too special to create or to summon. His happy conversation hearkens to humanity’s desire for simple kindness. It jolts us out of our mundane stupor like the first hint of Spring on the wind, sharp and attention-grabbing and soothing. Familiar, in the way a motherly or fatherly figure far from home inspires a tender breed of home-sickness. We long and yet are filled.

I do believe Christ calls us up and beyond ourselves with his Spirit, intricately, minutely making us more into his likeness. Often, at least for me, this likeness seems to vacillate by the day and my disposition, but I have to remember that it is a long-form, permanent growth we are seeking, not a shocking, 24-hr makeover (though wouldn’t that be nice?). Despite the long and the slow of it, I think Christ-followers are every now and again substantially shocked by God’s work in us. We are, by a miracle, able to hold more for another person, to offer of ourselves more deeply, to be happy and cheerful when we had expected to feel grumpy or tired. In these moments, we comprehend that it really is better to give than receive—shocked, like the widow and her son, that the oil is not gone! The flour is not used up! There is more, praise God.

I don’t know what hopes Uncle Joe makes his home in, but I do know that what he is doing is remarkable and points to something even better. What he does is remarkable because it is ordinary, even lowly—a willingness to give something to others that most won’t attempt or be able to sustain: faithful kindness, genuine service. What it points to is the home we are waiting for with bated breath.

So, befitting the very bundled and tirelessly cheery man cracking jokes in McDonalds, a hearty sláinte mhaith to that good sir, and also to the everyday servants following Christ. This kindness is one of the best sorts of surprises in the whole wide world.

Motherhood is not more intellectual than most jobs, but it isn’t less. In fact, the fog that women often feel is more related to overstimulation (or lack of sleep) than it is to a lack of things to think about.

What Makes Intellect Useful? The Ways in Which it Creates Physical Solutions.

In a magazine article for Comment entitled “Motherhood and the Intellectual Life,” Laura Fabrycky, whose personal thesis is “motherhood is intellectually demanding work,” paraphrases an American author and philosopher to illustrate this idea of the dual nature of intellectual work. She writes, “Matthew Crawford, after having reached the heights of academia and then leaving to work as a mechanic, makes an almost identical argument to my own thesis in Shop Class as Soulcraft. Crawford’s point is that skilled manual labour is intellectually demanding, arguably more so than so-called knowledge work, precisely because it is embodied labour. Abstracted labour, lifted out of the realm of gears, wires, and plugs, often looks down on bodily labour, while at the same time risks growing “de-skilled” in its growing dependency on it.”

What Crawford writes is the pulse of one of America’s growing problems. We are outsourcing our manual labor overseas while keeping corporate jobs at home. We’re losing the ability to do the work ourselves, having elevated thinking jobs over doing jobs. Yet, manual labor jobs are not devoid of thought. It is the farmer who knows how to feed us, the electrician who knows how to keep our houses lit, the miners of natural resources who physically give us oil and coal and uranium to do with what we must. I am always amazed at my husband—with his natural curiosity, his history of shop classes and metal work—and the way he can conceptualize ideas and them bring them into existence. Every day he goes to work, he brainstorms how to make toys (as well as what makes a good toy, what the market wants, what are new trends or ideas that buck the status quo) and then, with the aid of physics, geometry, and steady hands, he literally makes those toys. Sometimes he brings them home for our kids to test out.

Read this except from Mike Rowe’s open letter to Mitt Romney back in 2012:

“Even as unemployment remains sky high, a whole category of vital occupations has fallen out of favor, and companies struggle to find workers with the necessary skills. The causes seem clear. We have embraced a ridiculously narrow view of education. Any kind of training or study that does not come with a four-year degree is now deemed “alternative.” Many viable careers once aspired to are now seen as “vocational consolation prizes,” and many of the jobs this current administration has tried to “create” over the last four years are the same jobs that parents and teachers actively discourage kids from pursuing. (I always thought there something ill-fated about the promise of three million “shovel ready jobs” made to a society that no longer encourages people to pick up a shovel.)”

What makes this relative to motherhood? The stigma that moms have a less desirable job than if they were climbing the corporate ladder. The problem mothers face is one of understanding what intellect is and how it works best. Stay-at-home moms are not ivory-tower intellectuals. They’re on-the-ground, hands-to-the-wheel thinkers employing their intellect by raising small humans. And it’s awesome (albeit hard) work. This quote from Kathleen Norris sums it up nicely: “Our daily tasks, whether we perceive them as drudgery or essential, life-supporting work, do not define who we are as women or as human beings. But they have a considerable spiritual import, and their significance for Christian theology, the way they come together in the fabric of faith, is not often appreciated.”

A Loss of Worth: When We Devalue Manual Labor, We Have to Find Worth in Unembodied Spaces

Americans often value intellect for intellect’s sake—because of the affluence it affords us socially. The podcast philosopher, the lawyer, the college professor, etc. readily come imbued with cultural significance. These are pegged as important jobs, while blue-collar jobs don’t immediately give Americans that clout. (Although it depends on the circles a person runs it, that is the general truth).

Because of this, I wonder if one of Americans’ greatest internal parasites is the fact that we worry so deeply about making our mark on the world. (Go with me for a second and then we’ll bring our focus back around.) Making our mark on the world, we rationalize, will make our lives “worth it.” Anything that detracts from this goal is to be eschewed (unless it just brings you great personal happiness, in which case—shine on, you bright star, you!). Corporate jobs superficially fit this bill because of the pedestal we’ve placed it on.

This problem is deeper than a jobs issue; it’s an identity crisis that only the soul satisfaction of following Christ can heal. For this piece, we’ll just focus on the fact that people do not find manual labor jobs something that would make life “worth it,” as evidenced by the fact that the majority of Americans seek degree-barriered jobs.

How do we see this playing out? In a 2024 Vogue article titled “Why Don’t We Talk About the Joys of Motherhood Anymore?” Faye Keegan quotes Eleanor Halls, host of the Straight Up podcast saying, “As someone who is still on the fence about having children, I feel like I’m overwhelmed by negative stories.” In a similar statement, she quotes another podcast host, Michelle Andrews: “’I keep being swamped with content that is telling me it will be terrible for my mental health, terrible for my body, terrible for my marriage. And I want a baby, I really do,’ she said, ‘[but] I don’t want to sacrifice my happiness that I have now for a promise of, ‘Well, it’ll be worth it.’ None of you can actually tell me why.’”

Why motherhood is “worth it” would be an entirely different post (and there are lots of beautiful articles articulating the aching beauty of motherhood). Here, this concern makes sense to include because 1) a historically low amount of Americans are choosing motherhood, 2) the number of children American families are choosing to have is low (especially compared to eighty years ago), and 3) because of the association of mothers having to check their brains (and identities) at the door.

Buck the Trend and Embrace Embodied Intellect

Sometimes simple, physical acts are the most profound type of intellect. I was watching YouTube shorts the other day and came across one of a doctor describing his sorrow after losing his mother. The host asks him what helped him most, and the doctor’s reply is so simple. He says what helped his grief the most was putting on his shoes and going to the dog park. That physical act did the most good for his mind and soul. He says it was even better than traditional therapy (and he wasn’t knocking that).

This is the type of intellect that ought to be praised in America. Intellect that fires through the neurons in our brain before sending signals to our hands and producing physical good. As mothers, being home with our kids is not a barrier to our intellect. In fact, motherhood is intellectual directly because we are home, physically working with our kids, teaching them right from wrong, showing them how to be kind and generous adults. If we leave our intellect behind, then we are doing a severe disservice to our own households as well as to the next generation. So, buck the trend. Seek tangible good over unembodied intellect. If we want to be people living out quiet lives for God—then this is the stuff that makes life worth it.

Convenient to this post is the reigning acknowledgment that there is no harder moment to parent than when you can hardly drag yourself across a room. Yet, parent you must. Or at least survive.

A few days ago, before the weather forecast predicted the deadly storm of impending illness, I was sitting at the Local Post (a little bar that used to be a postal office, sitting conveniently halfway between my friend and me and – the most important thing! – open well past the kids’ bedtimes) talking about motherhood. We talked about the stressors, the endless questions, the habits we form, and the way re-forming our patterns is much harder for us parents than it is for our kids (for whom our new patterns are their only reference). What strikes me about all our conversations about motherhood is the nuance.

It would be too simple for us to only say that parenting is tiring. It is tiring. But it is also invigorating, an antonym for tiring, because our kids bring us joy and excitement and creativity and love. It would be too simple to say that parenting is joyful. It is joyful. But it’s also sad, as we come to grips with our sins and failures, as we watch our kids take on our struggles, as we get too little rest or disappoint our visions of glorified parenting.

And even in those things, there are further nuances. For example, it is a kind of joy to come to grips with our sins and failures if it draws us closer to Christ, if our neediness becomes a catalyst for deeper trust and reliance on him. Not a happy joy, necessarily, especially in the moment (“Hurray! My life feels like it’s falling apart!” – said no one ever), but a joy that leads to peace.

There are certainly writers who are taking nuanced stances on motherhood, and I am grateful for them. (A few writers I love who touch on motherhood are , , and .) These writers are a gift in a time when there are, unfortunately, a lot of pieces that often relegate motherhood to over-simplified, overly one-sided viewpoints. There are the blaming pieces: “Motherhood is Not Hard – You’re the Problem.” Those leave us in the trenches feeling especially warm and squishy inside. Just add a cup of hot cocoa and you’ve got yourself a Hallmark movie! Then there are the “Motherhood Sucks: 10 Reasons to Ditch the Female Suppression that is Child-Rearing” articles. Those don’t even come close to accurately describing the pains of raising kids, and they have nothing to do with encapsulating the beauty and gift of motherhood (which is real and wonderful).

Motherhood is often relegated to a brain-numbing experience. To be truthful, I do have a lot of brain-drain right now. Not super surprising since my oldest is six and my youngest is due in March. It is hard to be asked the same question eleventy-hundred times. Eventually, even I am barely convinced that it’s unreasonable for a donut to be eaten ten minutes before dinner. But even here, amidst the brain-drain, there is thrust upon mothers a depth of practical intellect that is nothing less than daunting. Motherhood has forced me to reckon with the practical nature of deep, spiritual truths. What does it mean to hope in resurrection through Christ? Our beliefs on this “what” have complicated webs of practical application, which turn up, not least of all, in motherhood. This is where beliefs about self-sacrifice, time relegation, habits/patterns, and more turn certain otherwise drudgeries into technicolor joys (on our best days). I pray that many of our small, daily ways of walking with God will thrill our kids with the fulfilling lives they can find in Christ. Ultimately, I pray they will have open eyes, and that they will be led to eternal life, which we will all enjoy together in the light of Christ’s shining face.

All of life is full of nuance, and motherhood is no exception. It’s hard! It’s beautiful! Depending on the day and our feelings about it, we’re wont to label it as one or the other. I am early enough on in the process, but I do hold the belief that the good and the beautiful outweigh the hard and the sad, most of the time. That we women were made for this, and that if we are given the gift of it, we should chase the sun in favor of the shadows. The shadows, as we know, will find us on their own.

Dear Lord,

I’ve been thinking about how it’s okay for the New Year to just kinda slip in – no balloons or fireworks or music. When the clock hand crossed over, Cody and I just paused and talked to you, and that seemed good to us. There’s nothing wrong with a little fan fair, of course. It can hype us up or pull us along or sink into our souls like a warm wine. But this year was good to be quiet.

You know, more than anyone, that I am a great resolver but a mediocre doer. After the year we’ve had, I’m not trying to overpromise anything. To have had, in the process of a year, a hundred disappointments of varying sizes is like being strung behind a dirtbike as it gutters over those undulating hills. We’re still working through the vitals right now, checking our pulses, nursing our blackeyes, yanking on our tourniquets. Will we make it? Eh, yeah, we’re this far aren’t we?

It’s worth saying: when our kindergartener got kicked out of that private school we’d put so much stock in, that that was the last hill, dear Lord. Here at the bottom, there’s a resigned rest and a weird euphoria after the adrenalin crash. A hush, as the dust settles. The homeschool books are on the shelf in the makeshift basement classroom; the horrendously early alarm is perpetually snoozed (amen). All we have to do is make one last trek into the school and try to keep our heads up.

Here, Lord, I remind myself that you made our boy’s mind, as much as his body and his soul. Here I say, with wonder, that he works differently than many and that probably, to some extent, we all do. This makes me homesick. Longing for that Revelation passage where you wipe gently at our tears and banish sadness and pain and even death to . . . death.

I tell our boy about you all the time, and you know what he says to me, with those intensely serious brown eyes, almost wholly pupil: “I love God, Mommy.” And our boy is nothing if not honest. I know he loves you, even though I don’t know it the way you do and never will. The way he goes on about your face being the only sun we’ll need after you make the world again. The way he tells me in joyous earnest, “Today was a lovely day! Wasn’t it, Mom?” and I say “Yes, it was.” The way he jumps with excitement when he helps us around the house and raves, “I love helping out!” Even the way he ran up during chapel time to pray, when that wasn’t allowed, because he just loves to talk to you and he hasn’t correctly read a social situation a day in his life, bless him. There are things to be worked through, but let those things stay, Lord.

He is a baby little believer toddling around with a goofy smile, expectant of your approval. Lord, I hope we are explaining things well, and that we are parenting well. I am leery of legalism, since I have struggled so hard against it, and I am fearful of lawlessness. But in our son’s childish exuberance for you, I see another way.

People all around have and will continue to talk about secreting their security away in you. As should be. This is one of those sneaky lessons (and I am beginning to think that they all are) where you have to teach us what we don’t know yet after we are really sure that this time, Lord, we have learned the lesson a-truly. This is one of your severe mercies, and you are near to the broken-hearted amidst the multitude of them.

It is here in this broken-bodied euphoria that we begin to trust you. To see that you stay after the wreckage. More, that you understand and are wise, and are past needing explanations or excuses or carefully crafted arguments. You just know and there’s no getting around it. You know more than us, so what’s to argue? When people look down on us after the last of our best is long past used, you are here. Still. Always.

I started the book Humble and Lowly by Dane Ortlund and couldn’t get far because it had me crying so fast. “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.1” Just that word: rest – undoes me. To rest in the heart and the soul, to find that green pasture in the relentless grey, that gentle stream in the pressing drought . . . Lord, this is the greatest thing. To be with you, led by the Wise Shepherd, to taste and see—

Lord, I wish I could just resolve to that: to rest. Actively, hungrily – searching you out and yet sated. Rested. This takes the fear, which in turn takes the anger. Is this the holy place where that peace that passes understanding resides? This, the harbor from the storm, the cleft in the crag? I think so.

I won’t make some grand resolution about this, Lord. I have before and might again, but am emptied and humbled now. This is the long road, the winding way, the epic journey. But in lieu of that, a prayer: give us rest, Lord. We won’t resolve it, we’ll pray for it. Make us obedient to your call. When the sheep hear you, they come, so let us come. And when we come, let us find the sure comfort of your presence, and the benefits only you can give.

Amen.