Ask Jennie

I got a text from a longtime, good friend that went a little something like this: “Would you write a blog post for me-I could really use your thoughts on something. What do you do in moments when you can’t stand it here? At times, I try to forget where I am, not wanting to go outside, and being angry when I have to take my kids on public transportation. It’s hard to think of how many of our friends have moved to the suburbs, yet for good reasons, we still find ourselves here. I know you’ve experienced at least some of this.”

I’ve been sitting on this question for a few weeks knowing a lot of things NOT to say or suggest, but not knowing exactly what TO offer. I knew I needed to wait until I was actually in a worn-out, struggling-to-find-hope state of mind to be able to identify how I cope. These times are becoming fewer and more far between than they used to be, which just means I can see them coming from a mile away. Jesus, meet me there.

I found myself there last week. A host of reasons led up to this state. We I completely over-scheduled ourselves a few weeks ago, the result of which was an absolutely crippling migraine for Daniel on a Saturday night while we were away visiting family in Connecticut. After praying over him for hours, massaging his temples while he moaned in pain, and helping him drink 7-up after violently throwing up, his migraine broke around 1 am (yes, doctor’s appointments have been made). Iylie cried every 30 minutes for the rest of the night for no apparent reason. At around 4 am, I came to terms with the fact that we were not going to make a much-anticipated gathering of all the neighborhood congregations that make up our church in NYC. I’m in tears just recalling it. There were high points in the week that followed, for sure. But the next Sunday, Daniel and I served in our kids ministry, and I did so willingly, but from a place of emptiness. Sprinkle in a few dashed expectations, some hurt feelings, and multiple missed signals later, and I arrived on the doorstep of hopelessness.

God’s timing is always perfect. Even the hard stuff comes at just the right time. The night before we headed out off for the weekend, I attended the opening sessions of the Hope Gathering. It’s a conference designed towards women in NYC, exploring the idea of God as our hope, how He meets us in our struggles, and enables us to offer hope to others. The speakers were incredible, spoke stories of true victory in Jesus, rescue and restoration, abundant living in spite of circumstances. They all said exactly the same thing over and over again: Hope is a Person. Jesus IS our hope, nothing less. Every strategy for dealing with this world has to be grounded in that foundational truth. Otherwise, we’re in the realm of self-help. (I seriously would have already helped myself out of this crucible if that were possible.)

Now to the “What do I do?” part. I can retrace my steps all day and pinpoint some key decisions that led to my demise. It’s the business of soul keeping to know where the path took a turn. But we also need a set of tools for when preventative measures either weren’t taken or didn’t work!

First, I respond well to a good, healthy dose of facts. Here are a few.

• Whatever is happening in my heart is not New York City’s fault. This city is just not that powerful. NYC is an easy scapegoat for me, because the city is RIGHT THERE. Always just so close up in your face all the time! You look out your window- there it is. You step outside your door-there it is. You don’t get any warmup time before engaging the city. But this city just reveals what’s already there–New York City didn’t create any of the turmoil I feel.
• Along with the above–the city is not my master. I am not a slave to this place, not the routines I maintain, and not the rigor of the city’s evaluation. The way the city measures me is not any sort of true standard that I must attain.
• It’s hard everywhere. What we’re doing–the good, holy work of mothering–is hard wherever we live. There are some things about NYC that make it a difficult place to live, but there are plenty of difficulties everywhere else.

I learned about the life of David Ring from a friend’s Facebook status where she quoted him. His video “I am Second” is powerful. His life has been difficult and traumatic from birth. He lives with cerebral palsy, lost both of his parents very young, but gave his life to Jesus as an early teenager. In his words, “One day I’m going to wake up in heaven and ask Jesus one question: why have You been so good to me?” So much about that question reveals a pure heart, and I want that. God, make me like that.

To be continued…

What is Important to God?

Prior to this fall, I had only ever read the girls Bible stories out of The Jesus Storybook Bible–a fantastic resource for helping kids interpret many of the Old Testament stories as paving the path to Jesus. But this children’s Bible isn’t arranged “chapter and verse”, and of course the language is reductive, so it was time for some readings straight out of Scripture. Addie’s school curriculum this year has assigned Bible readings, and though I shouldn’t have been, I was hesitant about just diving into Genesis. I wondered if, with all of the new vocabulary words (formless, vegetation, vault…) and the necessity of stopping and restarting after defining them, she would gather any true meaning or a central message from the passage. Not to mention the specifics of the curse naturally and appropriately wound me when I think about disseminating that information to my daughter. In some ways I want to protect her innocence, but I also want the reality of a broken world to wound her soul and drive her to Jesus. So–onward we go in the spirit of Deut. 6:7-9.

You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

As a way to help Addie clarify the big picture and overarching themes, after each day’s reading, I asked her, “What is important to God?”

The first day, we read the creation story, and I asked, “What is important to God?” And she said, “Male and Female.” We had lots of good conversation about what it meant for God to declare His creation good, what it is to be made in His image, and how amazing it is that God, Who has no creator, made the earth out of nothing, humans out of dust, and the woman out of Adam’s rib. But “male and female” was her answer, and that prompted a discussion about how when God saw Adam alone and in need of a helper, He created someone altogether different. This has incredible and far-reaching implications, none of which we talked about. But I love that it set the stage for a worldview in accordance with God’s design.

The second day we read about The Fall. I almost cried to listen to Addie’s outrage at Adam blaming Eve for his consumption of the forbidden fruit! And without any prompting, when I said, “What is important to God?” she said, “Sin.” Sin is a big deal, it’s a heavy burden, and has unspeakably deep consequences. I can’t imagine living with the crushing burden of knowing my sin was responsible for broken fellowship with a God that I used to be able to see face to face, banishment from a perfect home created just for my delight, and an entire reality jolted off its intended trajectory. Because I live in the light of a forgiven debt, I never want my kids to get the idea that sin isn’t a big deal. Thank God Addie gleaned that gold nugget.

The third reading (lest you think we complete all the assigned readings on their given day!) was from Genesis 5 and 6 and covered genealogy and Noah’s flood. Addie and I waded through every name, the number of their years when they had their first son, the mention of other sons and daughters, and their age at death. Then we read God’s instructions to Noah to build an ark because of a coming flood to wipe out evil from the earth. “Addie, what is important to God.” Her response: “Children and Obedience.” Yes, yes, yes. I’m sure those men invented things, were kind and generous to their neighbors, may have risen to the top of their professions, and accomplished great feats of athleticism. And yet, their lives were delineated by God in terms of children. I don’t interpret that to mean anything other than what Addie noticed: that children are important to God.

Finally, we read in Genesis 8 of the floodwaters’ recession from the earth, Noah’s sacrifice to God as his first act upon leaving the ark, and God’s promise not to destroy the earth by flood again. I had to prompt Addie when I asked her what was important to God. My answers here were, “Sacrifice and Promise.” Something innocent (an animal) was killed and offered to God as an act of worship for His righteous act and for his mercy to Noah and his family. It wasn’t the first time that was necessary and wouldn’t be the last. The innocent for the guilty…all the way to Jesus, the righteous for the unrighteous. I hope Addie understood my explanation that every time an animal sacrifice was made, it wasn’t totally good enough to cover sin, since nothing has ever quite been perfect since the fall. But Jesus was perfectly perfect, beyond good enough to be the sacrifice for sin forever. And promise. How much that promise must have meant to Noah, and it did allay Addie’s fears that a flood could come along and just wash us away any day.

I tremble at the thought of handing down to my children a worldview that’s just simply mine and not derived from or grounded in absolute truth. It was a stunning privilege for me to read/listen to the Scriptures together, accept them for what they say, converse with Addie about them, wade through the hard parts, and see the beginnings of a great plan come together!

Saga and Indecision

Sometimes I have lofty thoughts, and they consume me in deep and wonderful ways. And other times, I am bogged down in things that I feel shouldn’t really matter, but in trying to minimize their importance to me, end up having the opposite effect. But sometimes, the two–the trivial and the deep–work together to reveal beauty lurking below the surface, redeeming the trivial. So behold: a story about the trivial which taught me something true and beautiful.

My Kitchen Table

When we ended a particularly difficult year living on East 74th St., we “inherited” a kitchen table from that apartment. I never liked it and grew to hate it for the many unpleasant memories of its origin as well as its physical shortcomings. We’ve spent these last few years thinking that each one would be our last in NYC, so at the beginning of our new lease, Daniel, knowing my hatred of that table said, “Let’s just live with it–we’ll only have it a year anyway.” We have seen our possessions come and go many times in our New York years, so we are not attached to our things, and pretty easily forget to even have preferences on home style. So the table came with us to our new apartment, and I eventually forgot I hated it. But soon, another move was upon us, and my desire to not move that kitchen table again was rekindled. So I gave it away. Our need for a new table coincided perfectly with some friends’ move to CA and liquidation of their home furnishings. We snatched up many of their things including their dining table. I don’t recall if I liked it initially or not; there were many overwhelming things happening in our lives then, and the least of our concerns was that table. It was dark and round, and had a few scratches which I planned to sand out at some point. I bought 4 chairs to go with it, and we set up house in our 5th apartment in so many years.

After a few months of dining on this particular table, I decided to refinish the top and began sanding. But after a few minutes into the job, I discovered that the table was not solid wood as I had thought, but wood veneer. The sanding was not revealing a beautiful wood grain to refinish, no potential worthy showcase for all my efforts. So I quit. I called the half-sanded look “rustic” and forgot about it. And we continued to use this rustic ugly kitchen table for the rest of that year.

But a couple months or so later, when Iyleah began to use the highchair and Emmy moved to a booster seat, I realized that we were quite crammed around that kitchen table. And I remembered that it was also hideous after its brief time under my sandpaper. So I thought to look on Craigslist for a new table, one around which we would all fit with room for a few extras. I found one just down the street, so one Saturday, we went and bought it, and Daniel carried it home for me. I liked it for all of 5 minutes, then I realized that it just wasn’t my style and really wasn’t big enough for the space either. Breathing not a word of my lack of love for this new table, I sold our other one and decided to just be content with a table that was at least big enough for us, if not my favorite look ever.

The situation was still incomplete though because I needed to get a couple more chairs. But in the back of my mind, I wasn’t sure I liked my chairs, so I didn’t want to purchase more just like them. I was getting ready to just order 2 more of them, when something amazing happened: one of my chairs broke! Since they only came in sets of 2, I would have ended up with 5 chairs, and I do not have room for a random, extra chair. So I listed my 3 remaining chairs on craigslist, and off they went.

This, I recognized, was the perfect opportunity for me to start over completely and get rid of the table I had come to despise. I told Daniel I was sorry I couldn’t stand that table, and that I should have considered it more critically, but it had to go. He of course said, “It’s ok, get what you want.” (He would have had every reason to be more than slightly frustrated considering just a few months prior I had ordered an entertainment console, and when it arrived, it was quite awful, and I really tried to like it, but was just unable to do so, so I sent it back and ordered a new one…a fairly expensive ordeal.) Enjoying the thrill of the hunt as well as the idea of giving new life to a used kitchen table, I found a beautiful farmhouse table again on Craigslist, bought it, and had it delivered to our apartment.

By this time, we were in “company season” which is Fall in New York City. My mom and sister and her baby were in town, Daniel’s parents were coming a few weeks later, and most of my family was coming back to spend Christmas with us, so I bought a cheap set of chairs and a bench just to delay the decision. The chairs were rickety and flimsy, on the verge of complete collapse from the moment we assembled them. We used them for 9 months while they gave us splinters, and slid all over the floor, and dumped our kids off if the girls didn’t balance their weight on them just right. But at $25 a chair, they were money well spent, and at the end of that 9 months, we had powerful motivation to find new ones. I spent weeks looking for the perfect chairs…a popular metal design I first saw all over Paris a few years ago. And my beautiful chairs arrived 3 days before we left for our summer in Oklahoma. Now that we are home, we are enjoying them so much. I LOVE them, love the whole look.

I’m so happy for pieces that fit our needs and are pleasing to my eye, but when I look at the combination, I see more than just furniture. First, I see an incredibly good husband who doesn’t feel any need to make me live with my mistakes just to teach me a lesson. He just loves me, even the parts of me that really aren’t very put-together. I also see a table that I consider a worthy pedestal for the endless mounds of food I make to nourish the precious people who gather around it. I see a version of “perfection” that is only so because I lived through the former iterations. By that I mean, I don’t think these pieces would look so good or be so comforting to me unless I had gone through the uncomfortable stages beforehand. After all, it’s just a table and chairs. But that tempered view of perfection reminds me that “work in progress” is a valuable state of being. And I see myself and all of us in that.

Back to Business

My summer travels are over, so I’m feeling All The Things, and relying on my well-tested, tried-and-true coping strategies to help me deal. My usual theme upon returning to New York for another year is “people and projects” so I try to jump head first back into relationships, service, church, neighboring AND some sort of project. Last year it was “admit that this is your home, and find things to hang on the walls” so now that’s done. And this year it’s “Do the Whole30 diet” and “start formal schooling with Addie”.

I’ve been meaning to do this Whole30 diet for awhile. I love my pastries too much to give them up forever, but lately we have been treating ourselves a bit too well. It’s time for a reset. So since I’ve given up dairy, grains, sugar for 30 days, and this is only day 2, and I’m super struggling, it seems like a good time to get back into blogging if for no reason but the distraction from my hunger. Which I keep reminding myself, is the actual point. But, I love to cook and was achieving only boredom and unwanted pounds with my old recipes and habits. So the idea of learning new ways to cook satisfying food is exciting to me. Yesterday, I combined two recipes and made a skillet beef thatI served on a bed of romaine. I thought it was delicious, but part of me wonders if I was just so hungry and so ready to eat the thing I had planned and prepared that it wouldn’t have mattered what it tasted like! So here’s my recipe, and if you try it and like it, tell me!

Spicy Thai Beef

• Ingredients: Flank steak, canola oil, red Thai curry paste, coconut milk, steakhouse seasoning, sea salt, black pepper, sliced white onion, minced garlic.
• Garnish: scallions, cilantro, almonds
• Directions: Chop flank steak into small pieces. Marinate a few hours in mixture of 1 cup coconut milk, 4 oz curry paste, 2 T canola oil, and a few shakes/grinds of steakhouse seasoning, sea salt, black pepper. Put the whole thing in a skillet and brown the meat for a few minutes. Then throw the sliced onions and continue cooking until the beef is mostly done, but still pink in the middle. Then throw the onion slices in there and let it all cook up. Let the beef rest for 10 minutes, then serve it up on some crunchy lettuce or rice, if this isn’t part of a no-starch diet. Garnish with chopped scallions, cilantro, and almonds

I have been weighing and researching options for Addie’s kindergarten year for a few months. Part of me wanted a set curriculum, but the much larger, “free spirit” part of me wants only a little bit of structure. After all, let’s be real: the reason I am not sending her to traditional school at this point has more to do with my deep aversion to scheduled drop-offs, pick-ups, the whole school calendar thing, reading logs, permission slips, etc…than an actual philosophy of education. To elevate our decision a bit above sheer laziness–homeschooling is a really good fit for our family.

My pastor’s wife, a seasoned homeschool mom, pointed me to AmblesideOnline as a good resource for parents leaning towards a classical education a la Charlotte Mason but not ready to commit to the whole thing. And that’s exactly where I am.  Ambleside provides a booklist and a schedule, a detailed version or basic version of that schedule, curriculum recommendations for every subject, and plenty of forums and discussion boards to be referenced or ignored! I love it. I’m combining their Year 0 and Year 1, which catches Addie up on some things to which I’ve forgotten to expose her (Winnie-the-Pooh!) and gives Emmy some ability to be involved also. In Addie’s words yesterday, after expressing her dread of school in typical dramatic fashion, “It wasn’t actually so bad.”

And there you have it. We’re on Day 2 of crazy diet and hippie home education. And it’s not actually so bad. How’s that for a resounding endorsement, you guys?!

Emmy turned two on Tuesday. Every day of her little life has been exhausting for me, both in the “no sleep” sense, and in the “why doesn’t she ever stop moving” sense. She wears me out and takes me to the very end of myself and what I formerly thought were my vast reservoirs of patience. And just when I think I can’t handle her climbing up and sliding down my legs one more time, she’ll dash into her room, reappear with her blankie and say, “Go to bed now.” And just like that, I get a few minutes or maybe hours to regroup before we’re at it again. And while she’s resting I remind myself that we begged God for Emmy. What a gift she is.

We asked Emmy for days what she wanted for her birthday and she said, “Doughnuts with sprinkles. No fire on it.” So I guess we were not supposed to put candles on her doughnuts and light them? We played and talked all day about birthday parties and toys and presents all day, but I wasn’t sure she understood. But she must have figured it out because she ate her entire dinner standing up in her high chair saying, “I get my birthday presents now.”

Before the go-ahead.

Happy with a dolly highchair and some play food. 🙂

Summertime

“Summer really is over, you were right!” Those were the words Addie sobbed to me, complete with big tears, as we stepped outside this morning for a quick library run and met with an undeniably chilly breeze. I told her, “I feel the exact same way, girl.” Summer is the best. Every other season is ranked by its closeness to summer. Fall is the farthest, so it is the worst. Winter is tied for worst. And Spring is okay, glorious in fact, because it bleeds into summer so seamlessly. I prize summer for its capacity to offer rest and retreat, for its memory-making potential, for the nostalgia of family rituals, and for the way the hope of summer holds me together every other season. I was made for summer. This summer was a tremendous gift to me from many sources: my husband who knows what I need and goes to great effort and personal sacrifice to make it happen; my parents who housed, fed, and entertained my children and me for over 5 weeks while I took every opportunity to lounge by the pool; and my Heavenly Father who met me in those quiet moments breathing deeply beside a still pool, Bible app open on my iPad. So when I look back on the summer, though I want to cry that it’s over, (OK fine, there has been some of that) mainly I am so grateful for what a wonderful summer it was! Here are the highlights in picture form!

Still waters.

Pool full of kiddos!

The happiest I’ve ever seen Emmy!

My favorite summer supper.

tractor rides with Granddaddy

5 cousins out for cupcakes.

Baby’s first swim!

sweating at the beautiful Dallas Arboretum.

With the happy couple.

Breakfast with Ellie at Kitchen 324.

Poolside naptime

Iylie meeting Grandma Kenworthy for the first time.

Seeing Patrick and Amber Dawn get married.

A delicious brunch with the Kenworthys in Dallas.

Hope

My return to New York City a couple weeks ago, almost assuredly marked the beginning, or at least an intensifying, of a devastating season of my life. A year ago, I was part of a group email from one of our church leaders asking us to come alongside a couple in our church whose little girl was fighting cancer. They needed fellowship and community but between Janie’s chemo schedules, sick weeks, low blood counts, hospital visits, and emotional exhaustion, they barely had the capacity to show up at church on occasional Sunday mornings, much less join a lifegroup and keep a social calendar. I was at the end of my pregnancy with Emmy and feeling great, we had cared for this little girl in kids’ ministry lots of times, and Addie knew her a little. So began a season of loving them and having my heart intertwined with theirs. And hope…deferred again and again and again.

It is the end. There is no more medical treatment-that ended 3 weeks ago. As far as we know, the cancerous fluid in Janie’s chest cavity continues to grow, making every breath a labor and harder than the last. She is not in pain thanks to steady doses of morphine, but she is restless, slightly delirious, and weak. There is no reason for hope any more. But, God.

“But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.” I Cor. 1:27

Please pray for Janie today. Until she is in the arms of Jesus, we have hope. Hope that Jesus will make it stop.

Like the cursed fig tree in Mark 11. Jesus, if you say the cancer is dead, then it is!

Like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the book of Daniel. Jesus, you can rescue Janie from this fire. Be the Fourth Man! Let your presence be felt, and do not let her be consumed.

Like Jairus’s little daughter in Mark 5. Jesus, speak an “Arise,” over her!

Our hearts are broken, and the knowledge that the world itself is broken, that sickness is and will be part of this cursed life until Jesus returns, is only compelling us to rage against it in submission only to the sovereignty of God and not to the way the world is. We beg God to intervene. Son of David, have mercy.

Joel 2:13 “for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in love, and He relents from sending calamity.”

Jesus, please relent.

Books

Something snapped a few weeks ago, and I am leaning into an insatiable desire to read everything I can get my hands on. I think the “something” has to do with feeling a strange combination of deep empathy, complete helplessness, and desperate need for answers for so many in my life right now. Additionally, Emelyn has been sleeping a little bit better lately, so I have a bit more energy to take stock of my needs. And I need to read and write. I need it like I need sleep, or I don’t sleep. It’s how God made me, but it’s the first thing to go when I am weary. I’ve tried to combat the ease of letting it go by eliminating anything else I truly enjoy, just not as deeply as reading and writing. In the past, when naptime came, I would collapse on my bed and watch an episode of a favorite show, but it costs me more than it provides. It provides an instant escape and, at first, feels like relaxing, but when it’s over, I realize it’s not what I really wanted. What I wanted more was to create, to draw near to God, and come away new.

So I’m reading. A friend, Rebekah Lyons, recently released her book Freefall to Fly, a breathtaking journey to a life of meaning about her descent into anxiety and depression upon their family’s move to New York City. I wept and reread sections of it over and over as I identified with so much about what it’s like to relocate here. It’s a beautiful story about how God rescued her and has caused me to think more deeply about what amounts to a life of meaning. It’s different for all of us, but there is something that is central: to know our Father, know the gifts and callings He has placed on us, and pour them out for the sake of others. I am thinking through this and finding a true joy in going about specific actions from a knowledge of my callings, rather than acting in a way I feel like I should without much of a reason why.

This led me to another book called Bread and Wine, a love letter to life around the table. Our years in New York will always conjure up one overarching image in our minds: sitting around Emily and Jarrett’s table. Week after week, the same routine, the same faces, the same topics even. I sometimes enter without my bearings, without hope, and without much of a desire to talk, and leave having been drawn in and out and up. And as our dear Emily has joined our household, we have experienced a “life around the table” that is significant and restorative. Since cooking is one of my loves, I love so many of the ideas and stories Shauna Niequist uses in this book. I love the idea that cooking is about much, much more than the simple task of getting the necessary nutrients to the bodies in our charge. She uses one quote in particular, that when I read it, everything in me shouts, “Yes!” and I feel what has to be inspiration…inspiration and comfort that cooking is not my silly little hobby of no real importance. It’s the thing I do night after night because food equals love to me, and if I cook for you, probably I love you. 🙂

Food and cooking are among the richest subjects in the world. Every day of our lives, they preoccupy, delight, and refresh us. Food is not just some fuel we need to get us going toward higher things. Cooking is not a drudgery we put up with in order to get the fuel delivered. Rather, each is a heart’s astonishment. Both stop us dead in our tracks with wonder. Even more, they sit us down evening after evening, and in the company that forms around our dinner tables, they actually create our humanity.

Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb

On towards parenting…because parents need to be reading books about how to be good parents. Currently I’m working my way through Give them Grace by Elyse Fitzpatrick and her daughter Jessica Thompson and Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp. I don’t have much to report on them yet except that in the area of correcting Addie’s behavior, Daniel and I have fallen into pronouncing Addie as “good” when she makes the right choice. Truly, only Jesus can pronounce over her that she is “good.” She is not good and is not capable of being good because she is just like you and me: sinful and yet unregenerate. We teach our children the law, but it does not make them good. We teach Addie right and wrong so she will be crushed by it and see her need for a Savior. I’m in mourning over this, but we can always give her the encouragement that God is more powerful than her sin and strong enough to make her want to do the right thing. From Give them Grace:

If we persist in seeking to build our children’s self-esteem by praising them, we make them into our own image, boys and girls who idolize the benediction, adults who are enslaved to the opinions of others, and parents who pass on the lie to the next generation – even though it hasn’t worked to make them good either. Like us, our children crave the blessed benediction: “You are good!”…But only Jesus Christ and those clothed in his goodness deserve to hear it. And if we really embrace this truth, our parenting will be transformed from wishful deception to powerful grace. It will make our parenting Christian. Our children aren’t innately good, and we shouldn’t tell them that they are. But they are loved and if they truly believe that, His love will transform them.

And finally and foremost, I’ve read Ephesians this week with a couple close friends as we wait and hope for a pregnancy that is always right around the next corner. It has been over three years of desperate prayers for a baby, and after all the options have been exhausted, I can’t describe the feeling of sadness that hangs over us. Still, there is comfort and hope in what we know is true: that God is good and faithful, that He is never exhausted, and there is always a next step with Him.

Lent

This is my first time in true Lenten observance, and it has been so sweet. Our church follows the liturgical calendar, and after nearly five years, I have come to very much enjoy the way my inner life has oriented itself around these seasons. Lent has always rubbed me the wrong way, but I felt pressed this year to go all in, observe it, and see what God had for me through submission to this season. My past reasons for not participating in Lent add up to little more than laziness and arrogance disguised as a desire to not participate in religious works to earn God’s favor. But in the present, here are three basic reasons among many why I feel called to Lent.

1. As a show of respect for church tradition. Church traditions are important just way family traditions are: they are binding and identifying forces, and while they shouldn’t be elevated to equal with the Word of God, they are worthwhile.

2. To use the cyclical nature of the liturgical calendar to constantly keep our eyes on the major points of our faith: creation, fall, redemption, restoration. There’s an ultimate expectancy in the Christian faith towards the return of Jesus, and a daily expectancy as we live in one season and look toward the next. The expectant nature of Lent, in particular, is a good reminder of our ultimate expectancy.

3. To identify with Jesus in suffering so that the celebration of Easter is more meaningful. I’m used to trying to think about Easter in the weeks previous, but in reality, sitting in my chair on Easter Sunday trying to drink in the glory of the Resurrection for an hour the entire year. This just isn’t good enough.

I’m working through a daily reading called Journey to the Cross, and I just think it’s excellent. Here’s the link if you care to join in.

Click to access Journey-to-the-Cross.pdf

Roommate

I am in heaven a little bit. One of my best friends from college is staying with us for this month while she has a short-term opera job and looks for more of the same. We always had plans to live together at school, but it never worked out. But life has many twists and turns we don’t know to expect, and while in many ways, this is a painful time for Emily, I’m so grateful to be a part of it. This time is the fulfillment of a long-time dream of mine! 

It feels like sisterhood in this little New York apartment, and I know how to do sisterhood. It’s a very familiar role for me. Hair products all over the place, music on all the time, loud conversations, and quiet moments of understanding…one of us at the sink, another at the stove, late-night stories and laughing so hard I can’t breathe. I miss my Nason sisters every minute of every day, and having Emily here has helped fill up that parched part of my heart.

It’s sisterhood, but also Emily is such a bonding element for Daniel and me. We all met each other at the same time, and Emily, a deeply romantic at heart, spotted the Daniel-Jennie attraction very early. She knows us, was there when the story unfolded, cried with me when I didn’t understand myself, was in on the proposal plans with Anna, photographed our engagement, and sang at the wedding. Seeing her shows us each other again.

Since returning to New York last August after my annual summer flight from this place, I have struggled to fully be here. But God has given me a series of “home” moments that have literally sustained me this year. And Emily’s presence is the next in a line of them. God is good.