Envy is fueled by a raging God-complex.

When I taught High School earlier this year, I would drive through a neighborhood that was filled with my dream homes.

Beds of hydrangeas, roots wriggling in good, rich soil. One floor colonial homes, cobblestone driveways, parked with not ostentatious, but reliable vehicles.

And I remember being asked maybe two years ago what I wanted out of life. Aside from wanting to remain at peace with God and live in a sound body and mind, I recall responding that I desired to live where I can buy the Kerrygold butter without thinking I should opt for the cheaper.

And that I want to have a one story home much like the ones I drove past daily this last semester, and have a reliable car like a Volvo XC90 in my cobblestone or curved driveway.

I felt no envy at the time sharing those aspirations because I felt like as a student, I believe in my Master’s program at the time, that that future was only an unfurling finger and a graduate degree away.

When I entered college I was promised that no matter what, if I got my degree and did well enough, the world would be my oyster and I could have my pick of the crop concerning employment and my $80,000 dreams could take off with scarcely any time in the way.

So then, driving through my field of dreams at a point where what I wanted felt removed or distant from my grasp, I was confronted. It was one morning in particular when I drove through those concaving trees and blissful bricks, that I felt something wicked stirring in my chest. Wicked might seem like a strong word at first, but when I considered the issue of envy, I understood that was the correct lexical choice.

I was filled with envy. And by the grace of God, I stopped very quickly and asked myself what my issue was. If I could really sit at 6:30 in the morning and be jealous of complete strangers.

I surrendered that jealousy to the Lord quickly and decided to swap for gratefulness. I want to be the kind of person who sees people enjoying themselves and what God has allowed and given and feel joyful about it instead of wallowing in self-pity.

So, I continued to drive and say out loud “I am happy for you all. These homes are so beautiful. God has blessed you and He is so good to all of us.” And that “to all of us,” was a salve on my heart.

Because here’s the anatomy of jealousy, or at least just what it does. There are two main components, the God-complex that drives the entirety of it and then the effects of said God-complex.

I believe I was in ministry school when I heard Elyssa Figueroa say that jealousy is like looking at God and saying, “What about me?”

There’s a difference between a broken heart asking God this when you genuinely feel forgotten, and what I’m talking about is a spirit of accusation behind that question.

Like when you’ve prayed for something for the longest time and felt God was radio silent, just to watch someone at your church get what you travailed for and to feel yourself be overcome and consumed by envy.

Something speaking on your shoulder or in your heart to God, “But what about me? It should have been me.”

Should it have? Right now? Ever?

I believe that much of our gripes with God come from thinking far too much of ourselves. In our own little quiet rebellions, we believe that we know more than God.

We will say that we don’t, but then why are we envious? Is what God has allowed or given one person out of line because we don’t have it?

Sometimes I feel like I genuinely need to lock my phone and touch grass because of how quickly I can go down a spiral of lurking around on social media and letting jealousy whisper to me about things I’m not even entirely sure I want or find interesting.

It’s like the older I get, the more I find things I am either supposed to want or have and this informs something in me, often provoked to jealousy. The works of the flesh are so easy.

It’s not hard to accuse God of not giving you something you felt you should have had. It’s not hard to backbite and tell someone else that you were more deserving.

To try and vindicate yourself against God, the only Person in the universe Who truly perfectly has your best interest in mind.

In this, I also recognize envy as an act of futility. Since envy is a work of the flesh, by nature, it bears no good fruit in our lives.

And what is not fruitful is pretty safe to call a waste of time. Think about the last time you were jealous.

What did it do for you? Did it make you more joyful, kinder, celebratory with others? Or did it rot your bones from the inside, host you a self-pity party, and make you miserable.

Though we know these things, we still refuse to take the path of least resistance.

We let the envy stunt our gratefulness, as if we can only be grateful to a God made in our own image, genie to our own desires.

We have an issue with waiting and if not with waiting, then sometimes anger and frustration that are all-consuming because God might never give us what we asked for.

We would not open our mouths to admit that we want to be God or that we think we could be, but what do our actions testify?

And within this God-complex, we also cause division—and God despises division. What happens in relationships and friendships when envy slips in? They often break. Sometimes mended, sometimes not.

The fractures come from several sides. One, the person who envies the other might treat them differently or badly because of what is in their heart. They feel frustration or anger around the person because they feel they should have what they have.

When that person starts to feel that difference, they may break away or feel negatively towards that person. One party may opt out of the relationship first or together.

Sometimes, they don’t opt out at all and just fester emotions of hurt and anger that they hide under a mask.

But this could have all been avoided if envy were never allowed to take root. We will be held accountable for these things. God wants to help us. So much so that He gave us Holy Spirit.

We don’t have to succumb to envy or let it run rampant in our hearts and tear about, causing strife and division.

When the feeling creeps up, God is not condemning us for feeling it, but instead places His arms around us, and lifts our heads to look at Him and His goodness unto us.

To remind us that we are not forgotten and that jealousy is pointless in light of His goodness and kindness and mercy. To refuse and repent of that God-complex, thinking we know more and what’s better for us than our Father.

He invites us to hand over the envy, and trade it for gratefulness and peace instead. It is possible, no matter how impossible it feels.

With love,

Rebecca

So this is what it is.

I’m set to turn twenty six in a little more than a week, and I have thoughts about my life. I have more questions than answers. More hope, more dreams, and an increasing number of concerns. And this is how that goes, aging. Or at least so I’m told. The older you get, the less you know. The hurrier you go, the behinder you get.

I’m finding these sentiments to be true.

Standing at the sink, I hear a good and hard cough. Looking up, I see my dog and she has eaten her food too quickly. Just so excited to eat, so excited to fatten, to the point of losing air. Seeing she’s survived and cleared her throat of sustenance, I turn to butter a piece of toast. Load it with butter. Looking for the fatness, the richness unsparingly, I remember I have done this too.

There was a point when I moved into my house that I would leave the door unlocked for reasons I cannot currently recall. Something about an errand being so short, that it couldn’t possibly matter. That was very trusting of me, I thought to myself driving home from grocery shopping this morning.

I had a strange desire to walk around my neighborhood and try door handles, just to see if anyone else was trusting. More than that, I wanted to stick around inside for a little and be a fly on the wall. Wanted to see if they could show me how to live a life well.

At nearly twenty-six, I’m not sure I know how to live, or maybe that I do and I’m just not doing it. I haven’t decided which one is worse. I thought recently, how I’d be very annoyed to die right now. This was telling.

In my mind are fragments of ways I’d like to live, that I don’t exercise enough discipline to execute. I want to read more in a day. Write more. Move more. Get involved in a charity or serve. Actually record my podcast. Go on side quests. Travel. Do things for doing things sake. And I live in the container filled with “wants and needs,” but never giving them a runway.

I think I am also done tirelessly forming opinions. Being almost twenty six, means I am also almost thirty. Which also means that I am almost forty, fifty, even. Which also means that I am always, always closer to the day God beckons my soul from my body.

As someone who is one day closer to that, I am realizing day by day the frivolity of needing to have an opinion about everything. “I don’t know,” or “I haven’t thought about that enough yet to have an opinion” can do a wonderful service. In a week or so, maybe you’ll ask me what I’ll think and I will shrug my shoulders.

Also, I’m tired of being a parrot. I was explaining some concept recently ands realized I explained it with the exact opinion and almost the same cadence as the TikTok from which I got it. I did not like that. There are more thorough ways to learn and explain, surely.

I’m also done trying to be “disgustingly educated.” For me, it made me pretentious. I gaslit myself into thinking much of my curiosity was stemmed in honesty.

In some ways it was and is, but when I catch myself forcing my mind to meld with an ideology or concept just because I THINK I should know about it and that it might make me seem a little lot smarter soon, I realized this too is a worthless pursuit in my days.

I plan to continue being into what I’m into because I’m into it. The opposite of this is something I thought was juvenile or teenage. But I realized the desire to appear as something doesn’t leave. But the ability to deny it is to be apprehended.

Did I mention that I am also very into fat this year? And I think that will continue. I hope that will continue. Buying french butter with sea salt chunks from Whole Foods almost makes me tremble with delight. Choosing bacon over turkey bacon sometimes, and drinking whole milk, because why not.

For someone who wants such a rich and buttery life, I figured my nutrition might match it. Aging for me looks like skipping a Diet Coke sometimes and reaching full grasp for my husband’s cane sugared Mexican Coke. Give me the real stuff.

I suppose that what I want out of twenty-six is to feel like a real person, all of the time. I think that worry has been a great hinderance this year. In all of her forms. Jesus has confronted that in me. Told me that I am to be worry free. To cast my cares on Him because He cares for me. That I can be fearless because I’m perfected in His love.

Rolling around in this truth means that I can wake up, feet hitting shuffling across the rug and feeling the textures of life rustling beneath my feet. To take the little control that I am given and exercise it. So help me God.

This longing for life is what most of my days are marked by, and I believe I owe myself some changes.

To the wants and needs, and biting into them with real teeth.

With love,

Rebecca

It’s so easy to find sadness, sorrow, and melodrama to be more interesting than happiness and joy.

What is the mystery of joy? Is it as easily accessible as the mysteries of sadness?

Do we think that joy or happiness is less interesting because people are so forthcoming about why they are happy or why they are joyful, and there is an exclusivity to being let into someone’s melodrama?

Although, in a literary sense, when I consider the landscape today, I don’t know how true that is, because I feel sadness has sold a lot. It is marketable and profitable. Maybe that’s just because again, there feels like a mystery to it. Because to express your sadness and discontent is a vulnerable thing.

It is similar to when it’s late at night, and you scroll through someone’s page on social media. You see their highlight reels and a gallery of their best and brightest moments. Staring at it, you think, okay, your joy is on display for all to see. And it’s very explicitly clear why you’re happy.

Or standing at an event with all of your friends and family, beaming with joy, and you know, like second-nature, doubtless that the depth of this happiness is rooted in the community you stand with, and the value you place on it.

But regarding sadness…sometimes a lot of work is required, much digging to figure out why you’re even sad and how to remedy that.

It’s worth asking how often people visit therapists to discover why they’re happy. I feel as though we are more keen to invest in discovering the roots of sorrow and the fruits of sorrow. It feels like a problem to be solved, in a way that joy is not.

It almost feels as if there’s some kind of economy for sadness and the melodramatic, and that it’s worth more because of the exclusivity in discovering answers, or what’s more, how forthcoming one might be about the answers they have discovered.

And then there’s this payoff of relatability, because most people are developed in their suffering, and most people want to find someone who can relate, because more than anything, we want to know that we haven’t come into this world to be scathed on our own, but that there is this communal aspect of suffering.

So when I think about these things, it’s really no wonder to me at all why, sometimes, when I write or create, I feel the best art I’ve created is because I dove into this exploration of sadness. Like I’ve hit a gold mine. Doesn’t make it true, but the concept lingers.

And so we look to the sad movies after the breakup, the book about rejection and loss, and grief when we are either scared of them and trying to understand them, or have already experienced it and are either still trying to further understand it, or just find that relatable aspect to feel less alone in the world.

Moreover, I also have “flood subjects”, as Emily Dickinson called them—things that I think about all the time because I feel as though the more I can understand something, the better I can shield myself from it.

That maybe if I am a field expert, something will not impact me, or that, in the worst-case event that it does, I am perfectly logically prepared to deal with the emotional devastation of a thing. So, the day after I close the book about the thing that I hope never happens to me, I live in the illusion that that is my defense.

Perhaps this is why sadness sells as well as it does. Maybe between the relatability and the communal aspect of not wanting to be alone in suffering, we are also just students of the things that we don’t actually want to feel or experience because we think that our knowledge base will be our best line of defense.

We make a move that says: if we can understand our deepest sorrows and fears, they will not overcome us, because something you don't understand can feel like it has power over you. We might obsess over the things we can't understand, but we still don't like them. That’s the theory anyway.

I don’t know how to explain to myself that my sorrow is not more interesting than my joy. I am not sure if it is the truth, or if I lack the maturity it takes to find joy more intriguing.

Maybe I just believe that suffering is more interesting, and my suffering being more interesting to me does not mean that interesting is better. So perhaps it’s okay to come to a conclusion at this point in my life that I am more interested in my suffering in a lot of ways.

My relationship with suffering and my understanding of it or preoccupation with it is dynamic, and has different movements and forms throughout the years. Something I have learned, though, is that I don’t have to cling to my suffering, like a life jacket, or make close friends with my sadness.

I believe the point is to be able to distance myself from a thing and be intrigued by it without having to develop myself in it or let it consume me, rather.

Maybe it’s just a season of my life that I find the lows more interesting, and I will be more enthralled by joy because the person I am today finds joy to be theoretically more apprehensible than my sadness.

It feels like the darkest days that I have are more fleeting than the joyful ones, and it can feel as though I have to jump on every ounce of somber to experience some kind of depth when really there is still depth in joy—fullness of joy.

It feels sad to think that my art is better based on the deepest, darkest parts that I can dig into myself with. But actually, in a way, it doesn’t feel that sad because I am also met with the redemption of those moments.

I feel the Lord just bookends these moments of obsession with the saddest and the darkest with His redeeming quality.

I can’t help but see His fingerprints and his redemptive nature on everything. In this way, it almost feels safe for me to harp on sorrow and sadness and worry because I know that the savior is not far and that his arm is not short and that he is willing to save.

The lines then only become blurred when I cannot tell whether I am observing sorrow or being consumed by it. But sorrow is not to be explored at the mercy of it, but walking alongside the one Who is the Man of sorrow.

With love,

Rebecca

Talk about our shortcomings

God told me

And I did

Not

God warned me

And I

Tried

My best to stifle His voice

Erratically

At first

Fearfully

The next

With ease

Like a fish in water

The last

And ask each other

Why is it

We do this thing

Scoot your chair

Closer in

The circle

Say

“Here is what it is”

We have lost our

Reverence

Holy awe

Replaced with

An illusion

Of knowledge

Adam

Thought

Eve

Thought

They

Thought they knew something

And it put us

In this circle

Let us break the cycle

Redeem this circle

To tell of our shortcomings

But how everyday

By His grace

We listened more

God told me

And I did

God warned me

And I

Listened

And when I lost my

Reverence

Awe

Wonder

How the Risen Son of David

Restored it

Now

When I fall prostrate

See Him

Rightly

At the end of all things

With feet of bronze

Eyes of fire

Hair like wool

When I cry

“HOLY, HOLY, HOLY”

With the saints

And

Elders

And

Living creatures

It will not feel

Unfamiliar

But

The continuation of

A song

Of

Awe

Wonder

And reverence

I began in the mortal

An eternal history

With Christ

With love,

Rebecca

The faster that you can understand the worst parts of yourself, indeed, exist, the better.

It is such a burden to see all of the hypocrites in the world, and forget that I am one. It’s such a burden to see all of the backbiting and the envy and act as if I’ve transcended, never partook.

I am no one’s judge, but God is my own.

It is sobering and freeing to sit down on the counter with a straight face in the quietness of my kitchen alone next to a glass of crisp Chardonnay in an open bag of barbecue chips, understanding that I really am no better than my neighbor. Not in a way that I tell myself just to pretend I believe it, but to actually believe it.

Because now I’m poor in spirit. Blessed are they. Now I see my need of God, the worst parts of myself get lit up, illuminated in front of me on a Thursday evening, and all I can do is cry, “Have mercy on me. Oh Christ.”

It feels like a gift to be sober about what I carry and who I can be and how I’m always one step away from being the worst person in the world perhaps one bad day away one mistake away one rejection away one argument away from lighting up the fullness of my flesh, and activating the worst version of myself.

And to understand that’s not something I can’t take accountability for and it’s also a gift to realize these things without feeling condemned.

I believe that Jesus is after the sobriety and awareness of our heart to realize the condition that we are in and can always be in to abide to approach the mercy seat on a daily basis and say here’s another thing that I’ve noticed about myself today, and I don’t want to be that woman. Transform me.

This is the daily work of the Holy Ghost, and for that, I am grateful. I hadn’t realized how prideful I had gotten. I was listening to Olivia Stern’s new song “The Well.” She sings about the woman at the well in John 4, who’s talking to Jesus. The chorus says “Oh, He wants me. I can’t believe He wants me. What are the odds the real son of God tells me He wants me?”

It was like a blend of offense and shock and gratefulness and sobriety all at once. Yes, it should come as a shock that the Perfect Son of God chose me. Why is this jarring?

I realized, thinking about the offense and the shock that some part of me thought perhaps I might have been deserving or that I’m doing better than I think I am...that I am better than I think I am.

That maybe God has even on my worst days has seen a version of me that’s better than. Better than someone else’s version, and I would never admit that out loud until it was exposed in my heart.

So now I sit very aware of my condition, but equally aware of the blood of Christ, and that means transformation is available to me, and that He does want me. That it’s a blessing that I don’t have to self-reflect and realize the worst things about myself, and be hopeless.

Rather, I can see the worst things in myself and look at a savior who has never condemned me for it and is willing to save me from myself every single day of my life.

With love,

Rebecca

With my knees pulled under myself, I had settled into the elbow of the couch watching a sermon from Anthony Mitchell at 2819 Church. In the way he does, he clapped his hands together expressly, b-lining up and down the platform, explaining how Jesus affirmed singleness, and what’s more, the seriousness of marriage and how Jesus explained the new rules about divorce to his disciples.

What I heard next has given me pause since.

In Matthew 19, “whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.” The disciples responded, “If such is the case of the man with his wife, it is better not to marry.”

I thought, if I am understanding what I’ve read correctly, these men who follow Jesus, love Him, and are willing to die for Him, cannot grapple with the seriousness of covenant. Mitchell explained that back in that zeitgeist, men were divorcing their wives for all kinds of things, even burning the meal.

What reason did they want for divorce? To leave for said burnt meal? The standard Christ set was to stick it out ‘til death with one another and to only be divorced due to sexual immorality, lest they become adulterers. What’s at the heart of wanting to split for the little things?

I considered this, and also the written fact that David is remembered as a man after God’s own heart, even after it was evident how troubling his views on women were, and furthermore, his actions with them and whoever got in his way. Yes, his repentance matters, but that does not encourage me to turn a blind eye from the fact that it happened.

I think that we as humans are a production of both nature and nurture. This is excellent and terrible. Because in the same way that we can learn to behave well, we can also learn to behave badly.

It is no secret or novel consideration that we live in a world where from culture to culture, boys and men have been socialized and taught that they are in a place set higher than a woman. This influences workplace cultures, pay gaps, the domestic sphere, and of course, dating culture.

And how we are socialized, of course, informs our beliefs. But we have to choose what we want to do with them.

So men, in these cases, need to decide if they want to take the good lessons on masculinity and seek justice, love mercy, and treat both women and men with equal respect, or if they want to lay hold of the mindset that they are the superior sex and pervert the role God has given to them.

Moreover, the body of Christ, the big-C-Church, needs to pay keen attention to how we play a role in the fostering of both burgeoning men and women. Some of us do this well and some of us do not.

It is critical to not present secular gender roles and slap the Bible on it. Christ-like masculinity and Christ-like femininity are their own things, and should not end up being taught as, “women, stay sweet, keep the home, make yourself small,” and “men, be domineering, make the money, what you say goes no matter what.” The Bible teaches gender roles based on love, because Christ Himself is love.

The leadership of the husband was never supposed to be weaponized, and the submissiveness of the wife was never meant to be used as a means to hinder what God has placed in His daughters.

We know that in the same way there are believing men who pervert their leadership in the home and also are unkind and belittling to women, there are very wonderful men who walk in godliness, strength, and love. Obviously, the same goes for the female sex as well, but please, for the sake of this post, leave room for nuance.

I am addressing women concerning men in this piece not because the truth is not applicable to men concerning women, but simply because I have seen more women end up in crushing marriages because they married a man solely for his belief in Christ, than I have seen men suffering for it. Both realities matter, but I have chosen my audience for this moment.

With the aforementioned reality, alongside hearing anecdotes and living in them as well, I came to this realization:

A saved man does not necessitate a good husband.

It’s a truth that I wish I knew at nineteen. I remember thinking all it took was a man who could speak in tongues, prophesy, hold some kind of ministry office, anything that showed he cared about God at all.

I would pray earnestly for such a man, and I have no recollection of ever just praying for a man who bore good fruit and lived with integrity and the fear of the Lord.

Christ died to save sinners and to take us all on a transformation into Christlikeness. And with this comes a sanctification that’s a process. There are some beliefs that people grow out of as they walk with Christ, but there are some that never grow out of, likely due to a lack of surrender and sufficient stubbornness.

Back to this socialization/nurturing bit. Because of this reality, dear woman, when dating, please look very closely when you are on these dates and read your text messages with clear eyes.

A man can be saved to the uttermost and not respect you. A man can be blood-bought and not yet know how to treat you the way Christ intends. You have the tools of the Word to test his character, to know him by his fruit, and to pray for God to illuminate any blind spots you may have (because the boy is cute and sweet, yes?).

Ask intentional questions that are practical. Don’t get caught up in a swirl about wondering if he feels like your husband. Get caught up with asking and listening to what his thoughts are about women, what their place is in the world, how he treats the ones in his life — how he treats you. Just because he can pray in tongues does not mean he will love you well in English.

With love,
Rebecca

I have been married for a little under two months now, and it is much calmer than I imagined. Calm, in the sense that I am sure and stable and loving and loved with no influence of volatility. I married a sure, stable, calm, and loving man, and this, of course, has contributed greatly to that fact.

I did not realize the obvious—that how I dated before I was in a relationship with my now husband would inform how I perceived my expectations for how I would experience marriage.

For example, I was a woman who, since her teens, was always talking to someone online, and seldom to anyone who was ever good to me. No plans to meet up, but trifling, just to feel wanted. In fact, I am almost certain that there are fewer people I am aware of in the world who have dated with the kind of futility that I did.

What I mean by that is, I would dalliance with almost anyone that the Hinge algorithm slid my way. It does not take much more than a lack of self-respect, disobedience, and lack of trust in God, two dashes of hopelessness, and boredom ad nauseam to end up in such a situation, or such a situationship.

In any sense, I understand (hindsight being 20/20 to no one’s surprise), why God dealt with me so certainly about my need to stay off the apps. Reader, I never dated much in person. In fact, my husband was my first real boyfriend.

But before that, what happened was, I would get online and open myself up to self-inflicted suffering when God had warned me over and over and over to just be, and wait until He moved or asked me to move in the direction He would say.

But I had something to prove. I needed to prove to myself that I was worth something in the eyes of a man, and despite having the head knowledge that a man finding you physically attractive is a part of a futile quest and would never be enough to cultivate a meaningful relationship, let alone marriage, I had to self-soothe for what felt like my sanity.

All instead of leaning on Christ. All instead of taking Him at His word.

The fruit of such dalliances was a tattered heart, embittered, furthered in hopelessness and faithlessness for what, who God could and was willing to bring to me.

In my understanding, all that would end up being available to me was a man with a good salary, a self-professing faith in Christ with mostly questionable fruit, and forms of micro-cheating that I would turn my head to.

Because many men I meddled with gave me the impression that they were too pious for a full-blown affair, but who I still discerned had wandering eyes and a wandering heart that would manifest in “lesser” forms. I believed in what I thought was inevitable.

So, I prepared myself consciously and subconsciously for such a life. Add a little callous to the heart, never be too trusting, and gird up your loins for a volatile life in smaller forms—the hidden infidelities in the heart that make small appearances in the flesh, the gaslighting, the pride, the arrogance, the ego.

Offenses that many would brush off as “He’s a man,” and then stand, watching the lack of accountability further inflate him. Prepare to become smaller. Maybe because of my plate, and maybe because his suppression will try to kill, smother my spirit. Watch my personality take on another form totally unlike myself, and say, “Well, it’s just because I’m married now.”

But, when I lie in bed at night in the stillness of our walls as our belly laughs bellow from that stillness and fills the room, dense, thickly laden with joy, then listening to it settle into a quiet restfulness with my head nuzzled in between my husband’s arm and ribs, where I long to enter, I realize there is no volatility.

That the violence I braced for is only found in the violence of the love he has for me, reminding me of Christ’s own, to rip through fears, insecurities, worries, stresses, and loneliness. Violent towards what seeks to harm my soul, never violent towards me.

And the result of this is a quiet and calm marriage. A very quiet and calm marriage that confronts me. It confronts my past disobediences, my lack of trust in God’s willingness and ability, my days of futility and fragments of foolishness that I tried to fuse into a mosaic and then call that thing “good.”

A day or so ago, I realized that I hadn’t posted a photo of myself in hopes of a man’s validation (other than my husband’s) in such a long time that I can’t even place the moment. And while it frustrates me in a sense that I couldn’t or did not (I have not figured it out yet), will myself out of the search for male validation, I am grateful for retirement.

It is a certain kind of refreshment to stand in front of someone in your rawest state and have them declare you as beautiful, good, right, and wanted, both verbally and nonverbally—from the eyes and mouth. I was so used to the violence I’d have to inflict upon myself to receive validation, and the violence it felt like, receiving it.

Abrasive, in the sense of the conditions. Pose this way, do this make-up look, tease your hair this way, contort your body this way, yes, now you are beautiful, now you are nearly good. “You’ve gotten smaller,” said one of the men, as if I was supposed to be pleased by his noticing. I was pleased at his noticing.

But the violence disappeared. It became quiet, calm, as I rested in the fact that there’s nothing I have added or subtracted from my frame that has made my husband give me the affirmation I desire.

This felt both pleasantly and peculiarly jarring to me, as I juxtaposed my current life to the one I prepared for—one of performance.

I expected I’d have to be the best cook, the most sensual and turned on version of myself, never have a down day—until came the tranquility.

When I’ve cooked the steak a little too close to well done, when he likes it medium rare, or gained five or so pounds, or my hair is in serious need of attention, or whatever else I thought would be expected of me at some point in this thing called marriage, J has proved that I can simply exist.

And I think that’s exactly what Christ intended for me. I think it would have moved His heart to sadness to watch me live a life of performance. Performing wifehood, womanhood, and perhaps motherhood, when He Himself has never called me to a life of performance.

The heart of Christ is genuine, and He is willing and able to give the sweet, rich gift of someone who loves us in all of our raw and naked splendor.

My husband was no reward, that I needed to perform for. But a gift to complement and compliment my being. It is for this that I am grateful.

To the beautiful, the naked, and the tranquil.

With love,

Rebecca

The futility of most things is found in its relationship to time. Futility cannot exist outside of time, as infinity, whether in bliss or torture, is perfected in either way. Perfection does not allow for inefficiencies. I believe the definition of futility in its fullest and truest sense is a mismanagement of the life and time God has given to each of us.

As finite beings, even though we have infinite souls, our flesh being finite has an impact on our soul’s desires — yearning for the futility of the finite when it needs to fight against the grain to desire the infinite, eternal things that are actually good.

We are moving towards infinity no matter what we do. But the question is what wages we gain on the journey. We are all moving along a time continuum, figuring out how we need to conduct ourselves, how to achieve our desires, discover what our desires are, and what impacts those things. And more times than not, we opt for futility.

I think about the lyric in “All is for Your Glory,” where Steffany Gretzinger sings, “For You alone will be exalted in that day, and worthless goals will be exposed as idols that we’ve made.” We see the yearning for futility across the globe.

Abandoning communion with God or even walking away from Him altogether to build a career or make a name for ourselves, as if He hasn’t already called us by name. Striving to make a business venture work, or spending all of your time to build it in hopes of collecting a wage, King Solomon reconciled that you could very well die and leave it to someone else anyway.

In the gossip we partake in to destroy another person to make ourselves feel better for a few minutes. In the affair, looking for fleeting pleasure and newness instead of cultivating what’s already there and eternally valuable. See also that futility is felt in both the short and the long term, both now and later.

What you think happens at the end of life informs your way of living — in futility or non-futility. Hence, branches of existentialism, nihilism, and absurdism. Hope plays a notable role in this. We see life by counting up. We say what our age is in regard to hoping there is another year.

Both hope and hopelessness are powerful in their own ways and can drive a soul to fruitfulness or futility. If nothing waits at the end, why steward what you have now? This is why what you believe about eternity is not a theological cope, or something loose and abstract, but practical. It shapes every decision made along the time continuum, every wage collected, and every desire we pursue or abandon.

Philosophers such as Camus focus on the short term, as in this life. What he misses is eternity. I think if he had believed in it and not seen belief in religion as escapism, but rather as the informing framework and guide for eternal fruitfulness, gaining a true belief in Christ and eternity might have challenged his view of absurdism.

He might have grasped onto the hope of how life in Christ removes the hopelessness of a futile life and catapulted him straight into a meaningful, eternal life that starts with making choices that actively fight against futility on the earth, and reap reward in an eternally non-futile life.

No longer living to the fullest because futility is a threat, but because it no longer remains one.

In Romans 8, Paul explains how humanity was subjected to futility, but also says that we look forward in hope toward Christ. Also in the futility conversation is King Solomon, and he and Paul have an interesting discussion between the Old and New Testaments.

Solomon was right that under the sun, everything expires. Wisdom, pleasure, legacy, labor, it’s all a vapor, as he says. Futility in this finite realm is the default condition of a life lived within time—again, it is a time issue. So, the only way out is to look toward and live within Someone eternal, outside of time.

That is what life in Christ actually is. To walk in the freedom from the curse of futility. To choose well, and for it to all mean something in the end.

I disagree with Camus’s notion that this belief is escapism, a cope, or a means for moral improvement, but rather the hope of humanity to live outside of the curse of futility in the fruitfulness of God.

With love,

Rebecca

“And I understand why she did that. I mean, that’s exactly what I would have done.”

If you’ve said anything remotely similar to that, we stand in the same place. It’s an incredibly human thing to do, to compare. We compare ourselves to others in different ways, whether it’s our bodies, our careers, or our love lives.

But there is a kind of comparison where we launch an attempt to take on divinity, cloak ourselves in God-ness. And that is using ourselves as a litmus test. This isn’t an issue of envy, the usual root of comparison. No, instead it is the use of comparison where we are the criteria, we set the bar, the authority of what’s okay and what is not.

And it seems harmless. I’ve used this framework for thinking, even when trying to provide grace for another person. But this still doesn’t address the hidden heart posture of using ourselves as a litmus test.

In fact, the only portion of Scripture (at least that I’ve ever read) that allows us to use ourselves as bar-setters is in regard to how we love others. Matthew 22:39 tells us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

What Jesus is doing here is actually graciously exposing our hearts. He knows how much humans love themselves, and He calls that right to the forefront and instructs us to have that kind of love for others. Because if we had the power, what would we not do for ourselves?

That is a relentless and unbridled kind of love, to do anything for yourself if you could. Which, in turn, brings us to the question of whether we are willing to love others with that kind of love.

Maybe we don’t have to understand at all why someone did what they did. Maybe it’s not our business. Can we be a part of a conversation where someone’s choices and actions are brought up, and not jump to using ourselves as the voice of authority, even in well-meaning moments?

I think Paul’s charge in 1 Thessalonians 4:11 to make an effort to live a quiet life and to mind our own business is freeing. In so many ways, we insert ourselves in attempts for divinity that burden our souls and leave us tired without even understanding why.

Because at the end of the day, it is your judgment or word that has never cleared a soul for entry to heaven, nor even given them wages for their good or wrong doing. Our judgment simply does not matter. What we are gifted to do is what actually gives life to our souls, because God has lavished His grace on us to be able to do them.

It’s work like forgiveness, business-minding, mercy-giving, that helps bring our souls to rest. We will actually be able to function when we do these things. In Christ, these are in our design.

Whether I understand why something was done or not, whether I would have done it or not, really doesn’t make a difference. At its best, this line of thought is a faux-self-soothing balm, and at its worst, an attempt to play God.

With love,

Rebecca

I stand in the kitchen doing dishes, partially mindful, partially absentmindedly, and I am speaking to my husband. Something about shopping in bulk at Costco for meat and stopping in at Aldi.

As I dry off a ceramic white plate with royal blue trim, I stare blankly in silence as I realize there is no response. He tells me later that he replied, and I work on deciding whether I believe him or not. I choose to believe him.

But in the moment, standing over the counter, a seething and dull ache entered my belly, and it is at this point that I want to do something very dramatic.

Walk upstairs and change quickly, exit briskly through the front door while he and the dog lie on the couch. Disappear for a bit, make my absence felt, say, see how you all do without me for the day.

And then I realize, it is all too much—and I am left reeling with my feelings and trying to understand why I felt this with such intensity, where those thoughts came from.

My husband and I adopted a dog a couple of days ago. She’s a three-year-old pitty mix with a doll of a grin and soft eyes. She’s got that greyish look, the “blue” coat, and she’s docile, with a dash of sass.

Since her arrival, she has clung to her father. She likes me, she loves him. I have reconciled this. And by reconcile, I mean scour Reddit threads trying to discover when she will love me. And then I wonder if that’s on me, which contributes to the spiral I am about to invite you back into.

In no way do I think being a dog parent is remotely close to offering the same experience as that of being a human parent, but I have chosen not to ignore the feelings that have arisen in me since Miss L got here, and how those feelings have confronted my fears about motherhood…and myself.

I make myself a cup of peppermint tea and go upstairs to our bedroom alone. I hear the dog and J rustling up the steps, and when they open the door, they find me drafting this piece.

J settles in bed, and Miss L on the floor. With my laptop, fittingly on my lap, he studies my face and asks me if I’m okay. I bumble around with my words for a bit, fighting an internal battle, where what’s on the line is if I launch a conversation into my remembered terror about motherhood and ultimately tell him I’m trying to write a piece.

“A piece about what?”

“What just happened.”

“Okay, well, tell me about what just happened.”

And so it began.

I start to unpack how feeling ignored by the sink was what I felt like, a minor blip in our usual communication, but for whatever reason, the feeling this time contained a lifetime of sorrow within it.

Like, it was foreboding and harrowing, telling me that that’s what motherhood would be for me. A new life with child, built on thankless labor and a lack of communication. And even though the landscape of that nightmare didn’t match J’s character or actions, the feeling was so intense I gave up on resisting it.

Feelings have a way of having a much stronger grip on a heart than reality. Simulation-like, pulling you into worlds you have yet to exist.

One of my favorite authors is Elena Ferrante. In her novel, “The Lost Daughter,” Leda, the main character who abandons her two daughters to pursue her career and some form of self-actualization in the only way she could understand it, says about herself, “I’m an unnatural mother.”

The line has stayed in my body since the first time reading it, and I relate to Leda in many ways. Although I don’t see myself abandoning my children, so help me God, I am concerned about the overwhelming feeling of self-loss that might overcome me. Not to say that it is inevitable, but that I do not know how to prevent it from entering, should it crouch at my door. And what’s more, I have a deeply-seated unwillingness to self-abandon, and wonder from the outside: If I am a mother, who else am I allowed to be?

I tell J that I feel like I would be an unnatural mother because there is little about traditional motherhood that excites me. I realized, standing at the kitchen sink, that what scared me most was a departure from self to self-abandonment, thanklessly for years. I am a selfish woman, and I know this. I told him that perhaps this feeling is informative, good for provoking me to desire servantheartedness all the more.

We go back and forth in his consolation for a little, and then I wept and heaved as I remembered the dog.

Sweet Miss L is sick. Kennel cough. She sits by my legs and sneezes on my flesh, small dots of snot meet skin. Walking around the house, coughing and sounding like she’s fighting for breath, and I, as much as I felt sadness, I felt annoyance. I thought, who is annoyed by a sick dog? If you’re like this for a dog, what kind of mother will you be? Annoyed at your sick child? You’re not nurturing enough for this, you’re not motherly enough—you’ll be an unnatural mother.

I continued weeping into J’s chest. I compared myself to women I have known and know, who were born maternal. They are eager to make the sandwiches and wipe the noses, nurture during the ouchies on the playground, sacrifice the hours, and be mothers.

I on the other hand, worry that I’m behind. I worry that something in my heart has been stunted and that my baby, should God give me one, would have this intrinsic knowing that all of the things she needs me to do are hard for me, just because I’m selfish and tired before the work has even begun. Worried that she’ll know how quietly, I feel that the most useful I’ll be to her is when she’s a teenager with questions and seeking advice, but that I lack the practicalities of necessary mothering.

I went home for Father’s day, and in doing so, found time to tell my own Mom about these feelings. She, unmoved in the slightest told me that when it is my time, that everything will kick in. That my toddler will say, “Thank you, Mommy,” and that I will be happy to serve my child.

And I pray for their sake it is so. And I am overwhelmed by the inner work it feels I need to do ahead of time. Or maybe an earnest prayer is needed to transform me to prepare for such a calling, to steward a life.

And then f my peace wasn’t robbed by the concept of not wanting to change the diapers and give the baths, it was taken by the remembrance of my character.

I can be a grade under a severe woman at times. But then I wonder if that is my personal indictment against myself. J tells me I am encouraging, supporting, a good teacher.

I agree, but I am not the most patient woman in the world, or the most understanding. In essence, in more ways than one, I just don’t feel “maternal.” I feel like I could be a decent mentor to a younger woman, already formed, but worry I’m not “soft” enough for the formative years.

And those are exactly that—the formative years.

But Mom says, “God knows what your baby will need from you and your husband. Don’t get down on your traits. You might need to be more stern where J is more loose. God will mold you and you will be who God needs you to be for your child.”

And should that baby come, I am confident in this. After the spirals, the fears, the consuming worry, I do believe in providence. He is able to make me who I ought to be.

With love,

Rebecca

And a Tender Heart In a Pear Tree

When walking in an orchard with a worn and hardened heart,

Should you pass a pear tree

Grab one, clench, squeeze, examine

Even consider, a jam,

A pear once hardened, softened, and spread

Whilst feet tread on grass,

You might look across the way

See a mother chasing her son,

They hide and bob around the clothesline

Linen clipped, laughter deep, sky lucid

Behind you, see the deer and her fawn, curled beneath the tree

Their bodies rise and fall in unison, at a tempo of peace

Even the bees dance to the rhythm of tenderness in the sky

Adagio, ease, no rush in their wings

As you take it all in, the moments of tenderness may feel jarring at first,

But, if like the pear, you pluck them and keep them,

Eating of the seeds

They will sprout

A tree of tenderness, taking permanent residence

As it grows, grows, grows.

With love,

Rebecca

For as long as I can remember, I’ve never enjoyed a flat character. Even as a child, I would nestle deep into the corner of the couch, reading Canterwood Crest and The Clique, trying to rack up AR reading points, and focusing on the characters who weren’t the nicest, or who were overlooked, misunderstood, but particularly profound.

2D characters bored me, but certain archetypes intrigued me because of how they were written; they felt multi-dimensional, and far, far from flat, gifted with complexity.

Authors who wrote the characters that piqued my interest always gave an offering of interior life. Background stories and internal thoughts that only the reader got to see—interior insecurities, tumultuous relationships and family lives, withering hopes and dreams, all exclusive, all for me.

The quiet girl with a wildly alive inner life that no one got to see but me. The jock who everyone thought had a brick for a brain, but was brilliant beyond comprehension. The struggling writer, crippled by a riddling inferiority complex abandoning her manuscript for the umpteenth time.

I say all of this to say, I think I’ve always just wanted to know someone.

Swinging from genre to genre, now, in my twenties, I am a literary fiction reader. I was drawn to literary fiction, not because I thought it would make me a better lover, but actually because I was in so many terrible situations romantically that it felt like I’d found a relatable source for self-soothing and rage-inducing, even seeking justification.

Pages that lick wounds. Perfect wallowing material. Not literary fiction at large, but all that I would put my fingertips on to select at my local book shop.

I remember it was one evening in particular, I was livid about some man or the other and walked into the bookshop down the street. When the kind male sales associate asked me what I was searching for, I stared at him flatly and said something along the lines of "a book with female rage.”

He shrugged pleasantly and walked me over to where “The Woman Destroyed” by Simone de Beauvoir was, but I had already read that one.

Anyway, not my proudest moment, and he definitely didn’t deserve my ice. But again, I chose lit fic as my genre of choice because much of what I craved was a brooding, jaded, and complex main character. Bonus points if she somehow knows everything and nothing at all.

And that kind of complication mattered to me awfully. Elena Ferrante writes the troubled woman like no one else, and naturally, I dove into her pages. I’d sit stiffly on concrete at my local book club, a short plastic cup filled with a dry white, reading her Days of Abandonment, inviting it eagerly to add oak to my fire. And did it ever.

I’d continue swiping through Good Reads to find “books like ____” just to keep the party going. Before I knew it, I had no range in reading left. All I knew were complex, tired, disenchanted women.

But then I started dating J.

This isn’t going down the line of “I met a good man, and now I have no interest in these books,” though. Literary fiction is still my favorite genre, and though I am no longer troubled in love, I still feast on the density of the bite of a multifaceted female protagonist.

Being with J has not changed what I read, but it has changed my perspective about what I read.

When I read the books I do now, my framework no longer works to inform or inspire anger and bitterness, but instead inspires grace and room for humanity.

If you read lit fic, you know everyone—everyone is a mess. And that’s why we love it! To be human is to err, and to be human is to also desire relatability in all of said error.

Lit fic puts on display rumpled relationships and muddled personhoods, and I will say…it’s taught me more about accepting humanity in relationships than any Christian influencer or pastor.

See, I for years, have consumed a steady diet of “Fast and pray so Mr. Perfect will arrive. He will be your greatest blessing and joy, and if you don’t fast and pray enough, you will get a bad man and reap what you have sown.”

When in reality, all I’ve been is a mess met with a great man by the grace of God, no 40-day fast required because God is a good Dad and gave me a gift and not a reward.

What I’m saying is, there’s not a lot of room for humanity in many of these conversations on Christian dating and marriage, and if there is, there’s almost too much room (queue all the reels from last year about forcing yourself to stay in a marriage riddled with infidelity).

So, I had a strange time settling into the humanness of being in love. I had to sit down and ask myself why my expectations for my partner were the way they were, and when I did, I realized that I had been conditioned to think my man is God.

I wouldn’t verbally admit that I thought that, but the kind of emotional volatility I had over the smallest things early in my relationship were key indicators that I placed too much weight on my very wonderful and very human fiancé.

Reading literary fiction with a Biblical lens and framework, though? That has made me a much better partner. I’d read of these complex relationships and characters, and for the first time, understand why the protagonist stayed. And even more so, it confronted me with the question of how much I’d be willing to offer grace for in the bigger things.

So many little things that are nonissues in the long run would be normalized in the pages, often not even addressed, and it made me wonder why something like leaving the toilet seat up should drive me up a wall. My favorite protagonists loved their neighbor/partner better than I did.

The characters in my book might not understand my Biblical framework, yet their actions are easy for me to identify in the Scriptures. To be slow to anger, to hold my tongue, to walk in love, to give grace.

These plots and people taught me how to leave room for humanity. It’s that phrase I use even in my head now when I feel tempted to pick a fight about something small and far from noteworthy.

To hold my tongue instead of making an issue out of something I can control myself about. To recognize my own humanity. And to realize that there’s a whole lot of love I’ve received, and a whole lot of love to give.

With love,
Rebecca

It is four minutes after twelve in the afternoon, and all I’ve done is drink half of my coffee and read a few poems. I am always watching someone do the thing and seldom ever doing it.

Living my life inside of my body, watching someone else live theirs outwardly. And telling you this, oddly, I feel like the most public and outward, yet inwardly living, girl alive.

I cannot say that I know how to live. At least “know” in the sense of doing. A textured, tangible knowing. Book smarts to street smarts. Knowing as more than a verb but a state of being.

I have always known how to live on paper, though. On some spring afternoon or another, a number of moons ago, I asked God to teach me how to live. And to do so in a rabbinic sense.

One where I have to do the thing. Where He doesn’t just give me a multiple choice test on an 8.5x11 sheet of crisp white paper and ask me to repeat to Him how to live. He’s a very good teacher in this way. Real-world application, no packets.

Sometimes, as a teacher, I feel bad for handing out as many packets as I do. Wish I could gather my hens and go show them the real-world applications I’m always waving my hands around at the front of the classroom about. I sometimes worry they will not get it until they do.

But then, I’m no different. I complete my packets and know the real-life applications, and then I don’t go and live my very real life, not nearly to the fullest.

God, I wish I knew how to live.

I like very real people. I want more people in my life who know how to live and know what matters.

The kind who know the value of an open home, where I can always text them “you’re welcome any time!” And they know that I mean it, and then they come over on any certain Thursday and our big laughs fill the eggshell white spaces, and I make an extra serving for dinner. Where we share a moment where they, too, know that this red that glides down our throats into open bellies is a moment of communing.

Say, maybe we’ll take communion. Remember Him together. Pull apart the knots of a loaf and nod, “mm” soberly as we are grateful for this very real, eternal life we have in Elohim, Christ our Lord.

I’m happy to be writing this piece because it signals to me that maybe, just maybe, sometimes I do know how to live and not just watch someone else live.

Life is not meant to be voyeuristic. I think saying life isn’t meant to be a “spectator sport” relieves too much responsibility and experience. Because no, we are not just watching each other live in the ways we hunger for, but instead take that succulent desire and squander it by living through someone else, or at least giving into the delusion that you can.

All you get is the life of your own, and when I lie on my back in the dim of the evening scrolling and finding my voyeurs, I question what an even more beautiful life I could have right now had I spent more time living my own.

With love,

Rebecca

It was 10:07 
Before it was 10:24
What I mean by that is
I looked when it was 10:07 
At that little 
Charcoal digital alarm clock
Under the television 
On the stand
And before I could fully blink,
It was 10:24

I’ve never been much of a perfectionist
I preferred getting a 97 or 98 over 100 on my school exams
because it felt more 
human
to me
To be human is to err
I never made sure my hair or makeup 
was flawless before leaving the house, 
And I could never commit to a workout
or a diet regimen enough to reach perfection
Asymptotically

I like 10:24
It seems like a reasonable time
It seems
Human
10:00 felt like a simulation
10:07 was the warmup
10:24 was the birth

I started planning dates around my house,
Our house
At 10:33, I ask J 
Do you wanna eat pizza in the backyard?
Or have a picnic in the living room?
Say, make this house a home?

And with J,
I feel very, undeniably human
Nudges toward humanity as we listen to Michael Jackson’s
“Human Nature” in the movie theatre
And with J, 
I realize the value of a very long mortal life
When I never had before
And with J,
I feel the frailty of it,
And stand naked and vulnerable
At the thought of a life without him

And yet, this is good
Because I am reminded
I am reminded
I am reminded
That with fingertips unfurling
Towards eternity
This is the last time
I will ever be imperfect

With love,

Rebecca

As if maturing in Christ means becoming a bundle of atoms tightly packed with shame, while standing in the church lobby, telling a young woman, “Haha, you’re a mess!” through piercing eyes as she opens up.

The unashamed person comes to the church telling things as they are, calling things what they are, unafraid to name what their desires, struggles, and questions are, all to meet groups of people who act as though they are far removed from such honesty, struggles, desires, questions, and doubts.

There are ways to have conversations with people about these things without encouraging their lack of belief or desire that need to be purified. Understanding does not mean acceptance and championing. It just means that you’re showing you have a listening ear and a compassionate heart to walk with them through their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Letting Christ work through you, for them…being the hands and feet of Jesus.

Maybe we just need to ask Jesus what it looks like to show up for fellow believers in these moments without telling them to stay where they are. I think the issue is that most of us have never prayed that prayer, so we, in our own strength, decide to interact and deal with people the way we think is best, or see fit. All the while, Christ has had the blueprint. We just never stopped by the shop.

So, as they stand in a circle, our good friend opens up about something they want and how, even though they know it’s either wrong or in due season, the other participants offer snide looks and speak from a place of what I call remiss forgetfulness.

Ultimately, they shame this person in ways that can sometimes be chalked up to nothing more than evangelical mental gymnastics, leaving the person reeling and wondering if they can be honest at all—and so the cycle continues.

I remember what it was like being who I was without Christ, and I recall what it was like when I first began to abide in Him. I remember what it was like to have little to no “God-thoughts.” And these days, I can easily recall what it’s like to wrestle while knowing Him.

Because of this, I get a very tender and frustrated heart when I see the vulnerability, transparency, and unashamed honesty trampled upon by other believers because they have forgotten or have chosen to ignore remembering what it’s like. And I roll my eyes sometimes when the church complains about the lack of vulnerability, if they’re not fostering a conducive environment for it.

Don’t you dare forget your testimony or what it’s like to struggle as a believer because you’re in a more stable season. You help no one but your own ego. If we are called to “remember Him” all the time, I reckon we should also remember how far He has carried us, in thanks. And we are yet still being sanctified.

I worry for us believers. Why would we become so far removed from how the Lord has worked in our lives that we condemn those who are dealing with the very things that we dealt with?

Do we not understand that people are in different stages of their walk, washed by the same Blood of Jesus, and in need of us treating them the same way that Christ would? If the Man Who never sinned is merciful and kind in these conversations, where do we stand in them?

The greatest level of authenticity should not only be found in the new believer. Not while the older brothers forget everything. But rather, the older brother should grow in authenticity and vulnerability to help the younger brother.

Why should we grow up in Christ and then join a Pharisaic club where we handle our brothers and sisters in Christ in a way that seeks to cripple the freedom and peace purchased for them?

If you think you are growing into maturity while partnering with the adversary…well, there’s no such thing.

Remember. Remember Him. Remember where we were. Remember where we are now. And remember to conduct ourselves in a way that fosters the freedom, the kindness found in the spilled Blood of Christ for us.

With love,

Rebecca

I would lay prostrate before You in the there.

Hear the windswept white dunes whisper Your worthiness

I am seeking

I am longing

To see Your face

I can see the Sun, the Son

in two ways

Kiss the Son

Or neglect Him

Is the warmth on my back, that wraps around my creaking creaking spine, Your face?

Or is it the scalding servant of Your will that chastens?

I am here because of promise

That when I seek You, I

Will

Find You

To show up with my whole heart

This is what You deserve, this is what You accept

So, I will lay prostrate before You in the desert

And find You in the windswept white dunes

As they whisper Your worthiness

With love,

Rebecca

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I’m tired of using the long-suffering and kindness of God as a lens to romanticize my rebellion.

I learned that there are some habits I stopped for my fiancé and not for God, and I was deeply disturbed to find out I wasn’t stuck in a “sin cycle”—I just didn’t care enough.

So much so, I’m not sure I believe in sin cycles, at least in the sense of not being able to overcome them. Like it’s its own entity that transcends what grace is—the power of God. The grace of God is sufficient, which means the power of God is sufficient.

2 Corinthians 12:9 is not to be interpreted as meaning that grace means we can continue sinning because God is kind and loves us. Paul explicitly preaches against that in Romans 6:1, saying, “Shall we persist in sin that grace may abound? Of course not!” The power of God is what empowers us to refuse sin when it encroaches at our doors.

We do not serve a cosmic Sky Daddy compliant with our repetitive sin and disrespect to His spotless and Holy Son’s sacrifice, stroking his beard nicely and pensively, going “Mmm, don’t worry, I understand!” Not to say God is in Heaven hating us, but He is non-sin-affirming.

God grieves our sin, Holy Spirit grieves our sin. In my darkest moments, I hadn’t even felt the anger of God burning on my back, but a hurting heart grieved for me and by me.

An incorrect view of sin has led many of us to romanticize our sin. As if the greatest part of our love story is that, daily, God is just letting our rebellion slide.

But the greatest part of our love story is that Christ died and resurrected so that we can become like Him. To move from milk to meat (1 Corinthians 3:2 + Hebrews 5:13-14). To grow. To.move.on. Glory to glory and strength to strength (2 Corinthians 3:18 + Psalm 84:7). A continuum of Christ’s likeness.

Yes, it ebbs and flows, but when I sit down and think about behaviors I thought I could never be free from and then simply gave them up without much effort when I got in a relationship, I realized I didn’t have a strength issue but a desire issue.

Concerning strength, sometimes I forget that resisting sin is supposed to have some kind of tension. I’d stop short and complain to God, “But it’s just so hard to give up,” when I needed to keep going and use the strength provided to me in Christ.

All of our desires have not been sorted out or sanctified, so wrestling is natural. But wrestling requires some work on our end; the physics formula for work requires both energy and force. Resisting sin is not passive.

We are told to flee from sexual sin, and then Paul says that there is no sin that man has wrestled with unto bloodshed (Hebrews 12:4). We are to take off the old man and throw off the things that hinder us in our race (Ephesians 4:22 + Hebrews 12:1). Jesus even tells us that there is no temptation that is uncommon to man that He would not provide a way of escape for (1 Corinthians 10:13).

The thing is, though…we have to take the way of escape. See how none of the listed are passive? And let me not be remiss, we do not overcome sin in ourselves, but we are empowered by the grace of God, and the Word of God says that we are dead to sin and alive to God (Romans 6:11). That sin has no power over the believer.Who is lord over the believer? Is it Jesus Christ or is it sin?

I didn’t desire, respect, or love God enough to do what He asked me to do, but I would do it for my kind mortal of a man. And in many ways, I still don’t. The realization I had was absolutely jarring, but I asked the Lord to reveal my heart to me, and I’m grateful He did so.

This realization is pushing me to the feet of Jesus in repentance. Godly sorrow produces that (2 Corinthians 7:10). So, I’m asking God for the fear of God and to desire Him. If you see yourself in this piece, will you join me?

With love,

Rebecca

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

―C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses

With God as the Genesis and creator of all things, humans have desired newness from the beginning. We are infinite beings created by a God Who has no end, so we will always desire more, newness. Desiring the more, the new is not sinful, but the perversion of that desire fulfilled is. Humans want to see new, feel new, and do the new.

When we want a change of scenery and to let loose, we drink, we do drugs, and take psychedelics. Feel the newness of being desired and appreciated through infidelity—in need of a new “spark. A hookup with a new person, have to teach a “new” climax, only to turn over and feel a pit of sameness in the stomach. Cheap thrills, counterfeits of the glory of God. All the while, the human soul is groaning to see Christ and see Him rightly.

Our issue is that we don’t think Christ to be new enough or interesting enough, and I think that a revival or renaissance is significantly a part of our responsibility. Yes, Christ is the High Priest of our Hearts and keeps the flame burning and is the One Who can and desires to give us the desire and eyes to see Him rightly, but we must do our part.

We must partner with Him in becoming wonderstruck because Jesus Christ honors our free will. He will not force us into intimacy. He also desires to be found. Many a time in the Holy Scriptures does He tell us to seek Him and find Him, and that He tells His secrets to His confidants.

There’s wonder, beauty, awe, in those secrets and in the revelation of His personhood. I wonder if that’s even why He says in the Revelation of Jesus Christ that anyone who reads the book is blessed. There’s a blessing in the revelation of Christ. There’s an answer, solution, fulfillment of our hunger for newness, and His Name is Jesus. May we sit in holy awe of the wounded One we behold.

With love,

Rebecca

I’ve never been much of a Mary. I see myself in the troubled woman, the anxious woman, the woman “concerned with many things,” when the Greater Portion is in front of me. I’m prone to romanticizing these aspects of myself in the name of being a “deep feeler,” a woman with “depth.” I don’t know when I decided that suffering or rumination made me a more thoughtful person than boundless joy and unbridled gratitude.

Sometimes I like a pity party as much as the next girl. Why not feel sorry for myself? Why not rehash the hurt again and again? I’ll do it until I’m sick. But I only like my pity party when I am the host.

But right when it feels like I’ll actually lose control of the guests—fear and anxiety and worry and overwhelm, I’ll call it off and call my Brother to pick me up from the party. It’s cancelled! I shout as Jesus picks me up off my tired legs and carries my heart through the door. Then on the ride home, I will beg for healing.

I never needed to beg for my portion. What heir begs for their inheritance? Jesus Christ, Lover of my soul, Lover of the woman rendered inconsolable. Patient, still eager to pick her up from the party and be the Comforter.

I watched a video the other day about a girl who backslid and then realized when she read her Bible that the Lord says that the Lord is her strength. It hit her then that her strength never came from within, and that running from the Lord would be futile for her, because she would be running away from her strength.

That is the kind of knowledge that stays in the body. I don’t want to run away from my source of strength, but it’s so easy to. Something I desire at times, even.

I think I take the consoling nature of Christ for granted. I believe I’d cling to His healing balm if I knew I didn’t have boldness and access to it. If there was a limited supply. If it was contingent on my “goodness.”

But I am a spoiled child. And so, I choose to hide. I choose the pity party. I choose not to commune. Because I can. Because sadness and unnecessary suffering are available to me, and for fleeting moments, licking my wound feels more satisfying than receiving that good, true balm.

My favorite poem is “Calling Things What They Are” by Ada Limón. Just the other day, I read it to my Fiancé on FaceTime with my arms flailing about in the small corner of my MacBook as I gushed about the movement of the poem.

How there’s this funnel-shape, and we start with this wide concept of Limón calling out the birds at her feeder by name, and how she never used to really care what their names were.

But the funnel skinnies in towards the bottom, right at the volta, or that pivot where she begins to flesh out how the only thing she was “interested in was love,” but realized that it was not love that she was interested in at all, but actually her “own suffering.” She writes, “I thought that suffering kept things interesting.” And I think about that line often these days.

I, too, desire to call things as they are as well. I want to find the good parts as interesting as the bad parts. I want to be easily consoled. I want to never have to cancel a pity party, because the invites never went out in the first place. No decorations purchased, no feast catered. No thank you all so much for coming!

I might venture to call these desires progress. Do you think that’s presumptuous? In any sense, what I will rejoice in today is that even while I still wrestle with picking up that glossy black fountain pen and cream stationary, Christ waits patiently for me, desiring always to make me whole.

With love,

Rebecca

First, I inherited my Father’s shamelessness
Then, I inherited my Father’s shamelessness
So, I inherited my Fathers’ shamelessness,
The good kind

The kind that has made me
Unabashed in freedom
Nobody puts baby in a corner

Liberty is my inheritance
Free bird
Blood bought
Wings dripping

Sing, dear sparrow of
How His love has made you
Airborne

With love,

Rebecca