Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 106
February 22, 2019
Dear Overwhelmed Heart, Relief is Coming
Sarah Beth Marr is a quiet-hearted soul on a mission to help women find the peace God offers right in the midst of busyness. A former professional ballerina, wife, and mama to three growing sons, Sarah pens words of grace, truth, and hope to point women to the only One she knows who completely satisfies hearts. Sarah’s tender, gentle words will tug your heart towards God, tip your soul towards a more life-giving, grace-laced pace, and turn your focus back to the One who is tenderly guiding your steps. Let Sarah’s writing dance into your heart and help you slow your pace, savor Scripture, savor God, and draw closer to Him. It’s a grace to welcome Sarah Beth back to the farm’s front porch again today…
How is your soul?
Our souls get crowded with worry, overloaded with the items on our to-do lists, and depleted from all that we carry.
Maybe your heart and soul feel a bit broken inside, bogged down.
Matthew 11: 28 – 30 is familiar to most of us. It’s the go-to verse when we’re weary. It’s the calming verse when we need rest.
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened,
and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you
and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble
in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Jesus modeled a pattern of retreating when He dedicated moments away from His busy life to spend time alone with the Father.
Repeatedly, we see in Scripture how Jesus spent time in solitude, silence, and prayer.
Repeatedly, we see in Scripture how Jesus spent time in solitude, silence, and prayer.
Think of all Jesus gained during those sacred, quiet moments with His Father.
As we get alone with God, we will recover our lives. Maybe our lives feel a little caddywonk, and we are ready to let God get us back on our feet. He will gladly help us in that.
We will discover that we can keep that closeness with God as we go back into our lives, walking and dancing in step with His lighter rhythms of grace. As we keep company with Him, we will learn to live more freely and simply.
He knows about all those things on your heart. He wants to meet you in those things.
He wants to care for you and tend to your heart’s deepest needs.
He wants you to know He is able to replenish your busy heart and overwhelmed soul.
Not too long ago, my youngest son broke his arm, and we were both so excited to get his cast taken off after the prescribed amount of time. Maybe we were expecting more of a normal looking arm, but when the cast came off, his fragile arm was stiff, thin, red, peeling, and weak.
With tears in his eyes, he looked at me as if to say, “This was not the plan. This is not how it was supposed to look or feel.”
And I strove to keep my own emotions in check as the doctor informed us of how very careful my son would need to be for the next several months so that he didn’t fracture his arm again.
Think of all Jesus gained during those sacred, quiet moments with His Father.
The doctor informed us that it was going to take time to build up his muscles and strength again. What my son needed for now was to retreat from activity and to rest.
And his crookedy, scaly, frail arm reminded me in that moment of what my heart really needs in my overwhelmed moments: a retreat with Jesus.
I wanted my son to know healing was coming. I wanted him to know that his arm was going to be strong and stable and well soon. I wanted to wrap my assurance all around him and let him know it was all going to turn out okay.
We headed home from the doctor’s office, and I got him situated on the couch with his arm propped up and a blanket over him. After stumbling my way through what I think were hope-filled words to encourage his heart, we turned on Wild Kratts, ate some chocolate chip waffles, and sipped on a banana smoothie. He seemed to believe me that all would be well soon.
God wants me to know my heart is going to grow stronger and steadier as I retreat with Him. And He wants you to know that your heart is going to grow stronger and steadier as you retreat with Him too.
This is where it all starts.
Simply coming to Him or retreating with Him. Simply pausing all the chaos and sitting with Him.
Daughter, He knows all that is on your plate.
He knows you cannot stop your life from moving rapidly in all its directions, throw your responsibilities to the wind, and sit in your rocking chair all day with Him. Although, doesn’t that sound divine? I’ll have some sweet tea with that!
But He wants you to know He’s always here. He’s always available. So keep coming.
Come when your heart is full and peaceful.
Come when your heart is anxious and tied up in knots.
Come in the morning. Come in the evening.
Come in the heap of laundry.
Come in the messy kitchen.
Come in the middle of the ballet studio.
Come in the outdoors or indoors.
He’s waiting.
Know you can always come to Him and you can always bring Him your mess and overwhelmed heart.
He promises rest for your weary soul. Your soul is on its way to wholeness, freedom, grace, and peace.
You have found the right place to meet Him.
Right here—with Him.
To operate well in the busyness, we need to retreat deeply.
As you retreat with Jesus, He will enable you to get back to dancing in step with His rhythms of grace.
Retreating with Jesus is where your soul finds wellness.
Sarah Beth Marr is the author of Dreaming with God and danced professionally for more than fifteen years as a ballerina. She now encourages women in the dance of life and faith through her writing, speaking at MOPS International groups and women’s events, and teaching the Word. How many of us find ourselves constantly busy and, deep down, constantly soul-weary? By striving to keep up our busy pace, we can easily miss out on a deeper connection with God. So many of us are overwhelmed and underfed. But there is hope.
In Whispers and Wildflowers: 30 Days to Slow Your Pace, Savor Scripture and Draw Closer to God, this inspiring and practical book, Sarah Beth helps women develop a regular practice of withdrawing from busyness to realign and refresh their hearts, minds, and souls.
[ Our humble thanks to Baker for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
February 20, 2019
No Matter How Small; Imagining a New Human Dignity Movement
Daniel Darling is a friend of mine who invited me to speak last year at a gathering in Washington, D.C. entitled, Evangelicals for Life. The purpose of this gathering is to encourage Christians to care about the most vulnerable among us, from the unborn to the undocumented. That’s why I was eager to endorse Daniel’s new book, The Dignity Revolution, where he imagines what a movement that spoke up for all kinds of vulnerable people would look like. It’s a grace to welcome Daniel to the farm’s front porch today…
It was a weekday morning and we packed our four kids into the minivan and rambled down Route 40 toward that venerable Nashville landmark The Grand Ole Opry.
We weren’t there to see one of our favorite country music artists, but a live production of Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who.
To be honest, while the rest of the family was excited, I admit that if my wife hadn’t politely asked (ordered) me to take a day off work, I wouldn’t have made this entertainment choice.
“A person’s a person, no matter how small.”
So as we settled into our comfortable chairs at the Opry, I pre-pared myself to be bored. I thoroughly enjoy theater, but I had low expectations for a production designed to amuse children and, by extension, weary adults.
I consoled myself with a fully-charged iPhone, invented for these kinds of situations. My plan was to dim the brightness, read a few online articles I’d bookmarked on my browser, and re-emerge after the play.
I never looked at my iPhone.
I was enraptured by the performance. I’d read the book a few times as a kid and a few more as a parent, but it wasn’t until I saw Dr. Seuss’s vivid morality tale on stage, under the lights, that its powerful, repeated message grabbed my heart:
“A person’s a person, no matter how small.”
Esther HavensWhen I heard this phrase, I sat straight up. It was so simple, so obvious, and so compelling.“Yes,” I thought, “every person really is a… person, no matter what their usefulness to society, no matter how seemingly insignificant they are, no matter what their stature.”
A person’s a person. What a thought for our strange and confused age.
He saw humanity in people he had once considered subhuman.
Curious, I researched (later, of course, with my iPhone firmly in my pocket) the origins of Horton Hears a Who.
I discovered that Theodore Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, wrote this children’s book after he took a tour of Japan in 1953.
It was an eye-opening journey for the author. During World War II, Geisel had used his creative gifts to rally America to the Allied cause. His pro-America cartoons were a fixture in newspapers and magazines across the country. Geisel was a steadfast supporter of President Franklin Roosevelt and the fight for freedom against the fascism of Germany, Japan, and Italy.
But Geisel’s work went beyond patriotism.
In his cartoons, he presented Japanese people as less than human. His illustrations helped stoke an ugly anti-Japanese sentiment in the US, at a time when Japanese-Americans were ordered to evacuate their homes and were interned in camps.
Geisel’s work was tinder for the fires of racial resentment. But when the artist visited Japan and met survivors of the devastating atomic bombs that rained down on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, on many tens of thousands of Japanese people, something changed inside him.
It’s always easier to see the blindspots of another culture, and another political position, and another’s heart, than it is our own.
He saw humanity in people he had once considered subhuman.
And so, when he returned to America, Geisel apologized in the clearest way he knew how. He wrote a children’s book: Horton Hears a Who.
Though he was raised Lutheran, there isn’t much in Geisel’s life to indicate genuine faith in Christ. The ethic he presented in Horton, however, borrows from the beautiful Christian idea that every single human life has dignity.
This was what Geisel had come to realize, too late for him to un-draw his cartoons but not too late for him to write this signature line in his book: a person’s a person, no matter how small.
The easy temptation for us is to look back at Theodore Geisel’s time and assume we’d behave differently.
We know (don’t we?) not to dehumanize a whole group of people.
We like to write ourselves into history as the heroes, and assure ourselves that we have learned from past mistakes.
But let’s not do that too fast.
It’s always easier to see the blindspots of another culture, and another political position, and another’s heart, than it is our own.
About what might our grandchildren wonder how we could ever have thought as we do, or lived as we do, or kept quiet as we do?
The truth is that we live in a world of terrible, daily assaults on humans, from war to famine to sexual assault to poverty, from the earliest stages of life to the last.
And we’re tempted, like people in every era but perhaps more so today, to let our tribal affiliations and cultural prejudices blind us to real human tragedy or, worse, be complicit in the marginalizing of people groups.
What’s more, advances in technology are challenging our assumptions about what it means to be human.
We need a fresh approach to engaging with the world.
I’d like to suggest that this can be found in a recovery of the robust Christian doctrine of human dignity.
Every human being—no matter who they are, no matter where they are, no matter what they have done or have had done to them—possesses dignity, because every human being is created in the image of God?
Genesis, the book of beginnings, contains in its first chapter a profound definition of what it means be human. Moses, the human author of the opening book of the Bible, contrasts the origins of animal and plant life with the origins of humanity.
He uses exalted language to describe God’s crafting of human existence. The rest of creation is spoken into existence by the word of God, but human life is sculpted by the hands of God from the dust of the ground. Into humans was breathed the breath of life (2 v 7).
And, most importantly, humans are, as Moses mentions twice in the creation account, created “in the image of God” (Genesis 1:26-27).
Imagine, for a moment, if God’s people began to lead a new, quiet revolution whose foundation was a simple premise:
Every human being—no matter who they are, no matter where they are, no matter what they have done or have had done to them—possesses dignity, because every human being is created in the image of God?
To be fully captured by the Bible’s rich vision of human dignity will provoke us to act in different ways.
Some will feel the call to run for office… others will roll up their sleeves and join the good work of nonprofit ministry… and others might simply find little ways to incorporate this vision of human dignity into their everyday lives and change their community one word, one action, one person at a time.
Each one of us can be, and are called to be, part of this movement—a human dignity revolution that our societies need, and that we—you—are uniquely placed as Christians to join.
Because a person’s a person, no matter how small.
Daniel Darling is the vice-president of communications for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. He’s contributing editor to CT Pastors and a columnist for Homelife. His work regularly appears at The Gospel Coalition, In Touch, and other publications. Daniel is the author of several books including his latest, The Dignity Revolution: Reclaiming God’s Rich Vision for Humanity.
In The Dignity Revoltion, Daniel explains just what it means to be “created in the image of God” and how this powerful truth could reshape the way we think about ourselves and our world and could disrupt our politics.
Each one of us can be, and are called to be, part of this new movement a human dignity revolution that our societies need, and that we you are uniquely placed as Christians to be join.
February 18, 2019
How to pray for your children
This! I could not be more excited about this new wonder for little kids and big kids and all the kids in us! I can’t turn these pages without choking up the happiest, with worship, with kinda heart-bursting joy! It’s an honor to welcome Matthew Paul Turner to the farm’s porch today. His wife Jessica is one of my dearest friends; we’ve journeyed together through life, sharing struggles and triumphs of parenting and life. And Matthew has heart for the marginalized and whether it is with his work with World Vision or serving people in his community, he loves people deeply. Few children’s book writers manage to capture the message of Scripture as beautifully as Matthew. For the past four years I have invited him to the farm’s front porch. His books are story time favorites in our home and have moved me to tears. Today, he’s sharing his heart for praying for our kids in honor of his gorgeous new book When I Pray for You. Shiloh and I have read it again and again over the past week. It will bless your story times tremendously. Today is the last day to preorder it and then get his standout When God Made Light free! (fill out this form for your gift). I am so grateful for his words here today. It’s a grace to welcome Matthew to the farm’s front porch today…
guest post by Matthew Paul Turner
From the moment I saw you, I started to pray.
My wife, Jessica, had been in labor for more than a day, an experience that began with preeclampsia and an induction, then many long hours without much progress.
Watching Jessica fight through the pains of childbirth was much harder than I thought it’d be. Like most fathers, I felt pretty helpless.
After 33 hours, our midwife announced that it was time to deliver a baby, I was feeling all the emotions—excitement, anxiety, fear, uncertainty.
Jessica’s best friend, Angie, was in the delivery room with us for most of those moments.
There was a moment or two while Jessica was pushing that I looked at Angie with worry on my face. She grabbed my hand and whispered, “Everything’s okay. I promise.”
I prayed a lot of prayers while witnessing Jessica fight to bring our first baby into the world.
As someone who was raised in the church, I cannot remember a time in my life when prayer wasn’t an important, tangible, and earnest part of my life.
Even during seasons of doubt, when I’ve struggled with my faith, I always prayed.
And though I’d spent a lot of time praying in the moments leading up to seeing our baby boy for the first time, I had no idea how much my life, my faith, and my understanding of prayer was about to be turned upside down.
And then it happened. The midwife announced, “we have a baby!”
And then I watched as she pulled our son from Jessica’s womb. Seeing Elias for the first time changed everything. At least, that’s how it felt. As soon as I heard the first squeals of my 8-pound baby boy, tears welled up in my eyes as I whispered to God, “thank you.”
Big prayers and small ones I have sent God’s way
My thoughts about prayer had certainly evolved and changed many times throughout my life. But nothing has affected my prayer life more than what I watched happened on July 12, 2008—the day I watched Elias, my firstborn—come into the world.
I’d always heard that becoming a parent would affect how I engage God, but it wasn’t until the day I became a daddy that I began to understand just how deeply the experience of parenthood would alter how I pray, how often I pray, and perhaps most importantly, for whom my prayers would be said.
And that’s one promise to myself I’ve kept. Every single day (or nearly), since that early Saturday morning during the summer of 2008, I’ve spoken audible prayers to God on my son’s behalf.
I prayed that Elias would be strong. I prayed that he would feel safe. And I prayed for God’s help as I strived to be a good parent.
‘Cause when I pray for you, God knows this is true.
Every word I whispered was a prayer for me, too.
As Elias has grown up, so have the prayers I say. When he started school, I prayed that he’d be a kind friend. I prayed that he’d be a light among his peers.
And I kept praying that I would be a good parent, showcasing kindness and light in how I interacted with him.
One thing I’ve also realized is that many of the prayers I say for Elias haven’t been made up of words. Sometimes they’re sighs or pats on the head or deep, intentional breaths or momentary thoughts—split-second hopes or dreams that my soul feels yet doesn’t need to express with words.
I pray when you’re smiling and when you feel sad.
I pray when you’re sick, embarrassed, or mad.
And because I believe in the power and mystery of prayer, sometimes what I talk to God about centers on whatever is happening that day—Elias’s school event or his soccer game or an unplanned but necessary trip to the dentist.
These prayers also convey to my son that God cares about the details of his life, that God sees him and is with him and is involved in what’s happening to him in the here and now.
And isn’t that how prayer changes us—by encouraging us to see and experience and become vulnerable to the ways in which God interacts and showcases love toward us?
I pray you love well, that the light in you swells…
Elias will be 11-years old in a few months, a blink or two away from being a teenager, and just a few more blinks away from experiencing high school, his first prom experience, his first heartbreak.
With each change of season in Elias’s life, the prayers that I pray will change too. And rather than my prayers being said while he’s wrapped inside my embrace, they’ll likely to be said from afar, all the while hoping he’ll be praying similar prayers on his own behalf.
That’s one of the emotional realities I hoped to capture in When I Pray for You, the hope-filled sentiment of a parent praying for their beloved, while also realizing the reality that as their kids grow, so do the prayers we say over them.
At the moment you realize it’s time to explore;
I’ll pray God gives you wings and,
like an eagle you’ll soar.
I have three children now—Elias, Adeline, and Ezra—and each of their arrivals and stories have inspired new prayers, new hopes, new dreams, new sighs to be expressed over each of their lives.
I don’t believe I’ll ever stop praying for them.
Partly because I believe in prayer, but mostly because my hope is that each of them live their lives in such a way that, to God, how they love, how they give, how they dream will be prayers.
‘Cause when I pray for you,
I pray all that you do
brings love and brings light,
and helps the world shine like new.
Matthew Paul Turner has done it again. Like his other children’s books, When I Pray for You is full of encouragement, profound truth and hope. It is a book you’ll want to read again and again. Please preorder When I Pray for You today (it releases tomorrow) and then click this link to have Matthew’s beautiful book When God Made Light sent your way for free! Two books full of truth and hope for the price of one.
When I Pray for You celebrates the dreams, hopes, and longings parents pray over their children, and shares with the little ones how much care and concern a loved one feels for them.
[ Our humble thanks to Waterbrook for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
February 16, 2019
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [02.16.19]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you right here:
Ginny Sheller
Ginny Sheller
Ginny Sheller
just — too beautiful not to share
the wonder of it all…never let it get old
this one’s for the book lovers…anyone else wanna go here?
this right here? kinda amazed!
stunning photography…which would you choose? Incredible Shortlisted Photos from the 2019 Sony World Photography Awards
never, ever lose hope
cheering wildly for this school bus driver who is also a pastor:
this veteran is celebrating 100 years: and others are joining in
encouragement for every mom: Choosing Servant Motherhood: Why I am Embracing this Ministry
what an idea! maybe good for us big kids too!?
Josefin Sigfalk
Josefin Sigfalk
Josefin Sigfalk
love what she’s done here:
I Find Honest Beauty Everywhere And Try To Capture It In Non-Staged Portraits
“No poses, no extra make-up, no masks, just people. There is so much beauty in this world and simply overlooking it has become far too easy.”
anyone else wanna do this?! let’s spread love & cheer everywhere this weekend
…take two minutes & turn up the volume as we go visit a mid-winter snowscape in the Rocky Mountains
good words here: Waiting When God Seems Silent
“People assume you have to be hearing to dance and follow music” But this professional dancer, who is profoundly deaf, is subverting those expectations…
thank you, Lord… Bible survives devastating home fire, bringing firefighter to tears: ‘It was a miracle’
against all odds
kinda undone: in the end – it all comes down to faith and family
According to a recent study, nearly half of Americans now say they sometimes or always feel alone, and one in five says they rarely or never feel close to anyone.
“…we need vitamins, we need vegetables, we need clean air – and we need connection”
Post of the week from these parts here:
So. … we kinda are giving up being happily married — and this is what’s happened. Maybe you need right about now too?
Dear Us: Why We Can Give Up on a “Happy Marriage”: 3 Secrets to Grow Something Far Better
The Lord that created the universe is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Unwavering, unchanging…
bethany.seibel / Instagram
livingrealmag / Instagram
How do you live a genuinely abundant life?
In sixty vulnerably stories, the tender invitation of The Way of Abundance moves you through your unspoken broken — into the abundant life.
Pick up your own Way to Abundance & start your journey to the abundant life
what a blind son taught his mother about vision
on repeat this week: Who You Say I Am
You’re infinitely messier than you dared admit
& you are infinitely more loved than you ever dared dream
“Do you think anyone can drive a wedge between you & Christ’s love for you? No way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred — absolutely NOTHING can get between you & God’s love because of the way that Jesus has embraced you.” Ro. 8:31MSG
No matter what Hallmark is selling today, Jesus wraps you close: *You are infinitely more loved than you ever dared dream.* No. Matter. What.
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
February 14, 2019
Dear Us: Why We Can Give Up on a “Happy Marriage”: 3 Secrets to Grow Something Far Better
Dear Us:
So — where along the line did we give up on trying to have a happy marriage?
I guess it was when you and I looked long into each other’s eyes and realized:
Marriage isn’t about staying happy — marriage is about staying growing.
So maybe — tossing that whole sham of always-happiness was good riddance?
Happiness-centered marriages implode — because that shifting centre won’t hold.
But I’d written down what my therapist said and we keep talking about it over the early caffeine:
Any ecosystem that remains always the same, never changes — is stagnant. Is dying. If a relationship isn’t changing, growing — it’s dying.
The bottom line is: Pursuing an unchangeable state of happiness will lead you to a stagnant state of despair.
There’s no such thing as unchanging happiness — happiness comes and goes like passing weather fronts — and the only thing that is unchanging is change itself.
Health means always growing — which means always changing. And nothing changes — unless what is — is broken out of.
Healthy relationships have a healthy relationship with breaking and changing, with dyings and risings — with the status quo shell breakings — and steadily new emergings.
You and I, we can trace the break lines — and I can still feel the pain stitched together with thanks:
The suffering of a breaking seed — is what grows growth.
Favourite Resource for Home Goods: Grace Crafted Home
Favourite Resource for Home Goods: Grace Crafted Home
Favourite Resource for Home Goods: Grace Crafted HomeCrushing suffering can break open a seed of growth… And marriage is a field — and we are here to be yielded ground, broken open — until this field yields.
Haven’t we known the pain and the truth of just that? Crushing suffering breaks open a seed of growth.
The two become one not to become settled, but to become stronger — to persevere and suffer and grow a new life together.
I have found you and we can testify: Marriage isn’t a playground.
Marriage is a field — where the hard places are broken up by suffering, and the dry places are softened by a rain of tears, and what dies falls into the shattered, surrendered earth — and there is patient nourishing and cultivating and praying in the long waiting — until the field yields.
Marriage is a field — and we are here to be yielded ground broken open — until this field yields.
So this is what we’ve done, in our giving up being happily married — to be honestly growing-in-grace in our marriage:
1. Cupping Each Other. Daily.
Drink a warm cup & cup each other — no logistical shallows allowed —— only share the deep end of fears & dreams & pain & hopes. Drink a cup together & cup each other in the deep end of bare vulnerability.
You know, we could have gotten bogged down in all the life-logistics — the kids and the bills and the car-pooling that can drown — we could have very well let the pace of things dupe us into staying in the shallows.
But there’s this rhythm that you’ve stumbled into, that we’ve found that lets us keep finding each other, keep holding each other, keep letting go to let their be growth.
You find a steaming cup of warm — and you come find me — bring me my own cup — and it’s our rhythm:
Drink a cup of warm together and cup each other — no logistical shallows allowed —— only the deep end of fears and dreams and pain and hopes. “What are you afraid of? What are you hoping for? Where are you hurting? How are you dreaming?”
Drink and cup each other in the deep end of bare vulnerability. At least once a day — an early morning or late night cupping.
You drinking me in — my heartbreaks, my hopes, my disappointments and my dreams — has quenched my thirst to be known, for a deeper intimacy.
Favourite Resource for Home Goods: Grace Crafted Home2. Connection Cues. Constantly.
Attend to every Connection Cue wholeheartedly — or you end up with a broken heart. The rich relationships are the ones that pay attention. If you want relational healthiness, practice attentiveness.
And how long had I missed it?
You telling me about mileage on the pickup, or about what came in the mail, or what the weather looks on the radar, — isn’t something for me to shrug or dismiss — it’s a beckoning, an invitation, a Connection Cue.
Me asking if these jeans fit right, or what to think of the thesis of this book, or when works for the next doctor’s appointments for the kids — isn’t something for you throw me a passing glance and an apathetic nod — it’s a call to come closer, a Connection Cue.
In every conversation, every line — is a Connection Cue. A cue to come closer, a cue to attend, a cue to bond deeper, to attach more intimately.
I wish I had known sooner — and we are learning:
Attend to every Connection Cue wholeheartedly — or you end up with a broken heart.
The rich relationships are the ones that pay attention.
If you want relational healthiness, practice attentiveness.
You are the story I want to read again every night, the story I never tire of hearing again and again, and you have loved me, day after faithful day, line after line, back to hope, and ours is the story that I never want to end.
3. Care-full. Always.
Being care-full with another’s heart — is believing they have a soft heart — and not a hard heart of stone. Soft hearts — break. Soft hearts require that we be care-full. Being care-full with each other — is how we care for each other.
You know what you’ve done? What we are doing? In a world full of cares — we are care-full with each other.
I see how you do it in a thousand everyday ways, how we are growing: Full of care for each other’s needs, full of care for each other’s challenges, full of care for each other’s hardest and most fragile places. We are care-full with our asks — and each other’s asks. We are care-full with our words, care-full with our support, care-full with our presence.
The way you have covered my brokenness with tenderness, the way you have known my rawest shames, and have bound them up, instead of lauding them over me. A thousand times you could have said things that destroyed me — but you’ve chosen to be care-full with me, grow me, heal me, strengthen me, because you: only speak words that make souls stronger.
(And things you have said in hard moments that have haunted me? We have revisited and kept revisiting— until that ghost has finally given up the ghost.)
Care-full relationships know hearts are actually fragile — and relationship can painfully break.
Being care-full with another’s heart — is believing they have a soft heart — and not a hard heart of stone. Soft hearts — break. Soft hearts require that we be care-full.
Being care-full with each other — is how we care for each other.
Your grace is my oxygen and your kindness is my healing and I’d shrivel up and die without your love.
Favourite Resource for Home Goods: Grace Crafted Home
Favourite Resource for Home Goods: Grace Crafted Home
I smiled over at you this morning. Why want a happy marriage when you could have a growing-in-grace marriage?
And this is who we are growing into:
We are cultivating a growing marriage by:
Cupping each other. Daily.
Connecting to Cues. Constantly.
Care-full. Always.
It’s true — I have just about broke us.
But when I watch you last week, bent over that snapped fine gold chain of mine, wielding a pair of pliars, trying with those huge Dutch hands of yours to repair my broken necklace with that pendant engraved with “Beloved” — I realize:
The way we stay each other’s beloved forever — is to keep breaking, changing, and growing together.
And I brim and blur, watching you trying to repair my strand of broken belovedness, and I keep telling you, still with your winter work coat on, that you don’t have time for this, that you have more important things to do than trying to find and fix the busted links — but you look up at me:
“I’ll take as long as it takes — to fix and change whatever I have to — so you get to wear — your Belovedness.”
And I read your eyes reading mine.
Read your eyes searching mine, saying more, saying all the things that don’t need to be said again — and neither of us move but the space between us evaporates, and there is a closeness, a belovedness, that says everything:
We get to be the person who does this for the other, who get to cup each other’s vulnerability, who get to read all the connection cues, who get to be the care-full, who care enough to cultivate and grow love large.
When you hand me the necklace, broken and repaired, I nod, your eyes holding mine.
The real romantics are always the boring ones — who let another heart bore a hole deep into theirs.
You nod slowly: Real love is making whole decades of every moment tell the whole truth about the whole growing-in-grace gospel.
And in that moment, your eyes smiling into mine, I could feel it all over again:
How marriage is two people who keep reaching and stretching and unfurling and growing in a thousand little ways, grace growing us into the deepest joy that lasts forever.
As a small Valentine’s Day gift from our home to you — today is our last day for the free wooden heart lip balm with a $25 world-changing fair trade order from our Grace Crafted Home, 100% of proceeds supporting and loving vulnerable young girls in the Kenyan slums– the best kind of growing-in-grace love gift that changes our homes — and theirs.
February 13, 2019
PSA: Why You’re Not Alone & It’s Never Too Late
Chrystal Evans Hurst was that girl — the girl who struggled with insecurity, anxiety, and comparison. And she used to think that she was the only one — the only woman who felt lost in the middle of her life. She thought no one else struggled like she did to move forward through the messy stuff. She thought everyone else had something she didn’t have that made life a little easier for them to navigate. But what’s she’s found is that we all struggle to some degree in our lives and that the keys to moving forward are available to everyone. Chrystal inspires young women to stop worrying so much about how to dress, who to hang with, or who to love and instead face every day with an attitude of mindfulness and gratitude remembering their unique, God-given gifts and the beauty of God’s plan for their lives. Chrystal is an encouragement for women young and old alike as each one seeks to honor as we all seek to honor “the gift of the girl inside” in practical ways each day. It’s a grace to welcome Chrystal to the farm’s front porch today…
guest post by Chrystal Evans Hurst
In my late teens, I was on a long drive—a three-hour drive, to be exact—headed from one Texas town to another.
I’d filled my car with gas and my purse with a few snacks to make sure that I could complete the trip without stopping to put fuel in my car or my stomach.
The best snack in my purse? A Hershey bar with almonds.
Drifts often happen in life because we get distracted.
I was saving that one for the perfect moment. When that time came, I reached into my purse and felt around for it, combing every nook and cranny of my bag with the tips of my fingers, expecting at any moment to feel the smooth wrapper underscored by the bumpy goodness held inside.
The bar wasn’t in there so I looked over to the passenger seat and then to the floor below.
There it was. My Hershey bar was on the floor. Somehow it had fallen out of my purse. Vexed about the dilemma of the snack being just out of my reach, I could hardly focus on the road.
Chocolate. Cravings. Are. Real.
So, of course, I tried to figure out how to get to my chocolate without having to stop the car.
The chocolate bar was distracting me and my distraction caused me to drift ever so slightly outside the safety of the lane lines.
I felt the rumble strips of the freeway underneath my tires warning me to get my eyes back on the road.
**********
Drifts often happen in life because we get distracted.
We might be preoccupied by something that isn’t good for us, or we might simply be preoccupied with doing the next thing.
For a moment—or in a series of moments—we don’t pay close attention to who we are, who we want, or maybe we never even get started.
How do you stay on track or get back on track in your life? The same way you stay on the road when you are behind the wheel.
The antidote for distraction is focus, the choice to pay attention and live aware.
The problem is that we live in a world that seeks to convince us that we can pay attention to multiple things — giving them fractions of our gaze — and still stay the course, keep on track, and make it to our destination.
But that’s simply not true.
**********
I was jolted to attention by the reminder from the rumble strips to stay in my lane. It wasn’t long, however, before I started thinking about that Hershey bar again.
But, this time instead of simply being distracted by by the chocolate, I convinced myself that I could reach over and grab the bar without consequence.
The problem is that once we’ve gone too far for too long without living attentively, we become less shocked by and less sensitive to the changes that we have allowed.
Isn’t this what often happens to us in real life? We deceive ourselves into thinking things aren’t that bad.
We rationalize and in doing so deceive ourselves. We justify, defend, or attempt to explain away. I did it with that candy bar. I’ve done it with my life.
I’m guilty of being consumed with the right now, the immediate.
The problem is that once we’ve gone too far for too long without living attentively, we become less shocked by and less sensitive to the changes that we have allowed.
The distraction desensitizes us.
The “every once in a while” becomes our norm.
We no longer have an inner argument each time we move farther away living God’s best. And all drifts matter — even the small ones.
**************
I did reach for that Hershey bar. I took my eyes off the road for just a few seconds, leaned way over to the right, and stretched my arm as far as it would go.
I simultaneously felt the rumble strips of the freeway underneath my tires again as the roughness of uneven ground as my car careened over grass, rocks, and dirt.
This is what happens in our lives. We waste a few minutes and gradually waste a few years.
We spend too much time with a certain person and that innocent relationship turns into an affair.
We take one semester off from school and realize a decade later we never went back.
We take one Sunday off from community and months later wonder why we feel disconnected and lonely.
But here’s the good news. If you are in a drift of some kind, there is a remedy. You, my dear, have the ability to choose.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve drifted a little or if you are smack dab in the middle of a ditch.
No matter where you are or what you’ve been through, the girl in you still has a chance.
I’ve known a number of women who wish they’d avoided the drifts they encountered as teenage girls.
They drifted either because they didn’t know or didn’t believe that the work of their younger years is to lay a solid foundation for the rest of their lives.
They didn’t intend to drift. They were just distracted with friend drama, dating, or doing whatever it took to be liked or loved.
But old and young alike, we girls have the opportunity to decide to live with focus, starting by focusing on the God Who loves us most, who paid a price for our lives, and Who has an opinion or two about how we should live the lives He gave us.
And as long as we are still alive and have breath in our lungs. We get to choose Him, love Him, and seek His plan for our lives.
**************
I sat in the grassy median, stunned, but still alive. My car had a few bumps and bruises but it was okay too.
Honestly, I felt like a total idiot. Who puts their life at risk for a chocolate bar?
But in my real everyday life I’m guilty of putting my abundant life at risk but not choose God’s best and living a life focused on His guidance, direction, and instruction.
you have the power to change your course.
And life is too precious too waste.
If you’ve been living distracted, deceived, or desensitized, the good news is, you are still alive today to choose.
Even if you are a little bumped or bruised from the choices you’ve made thus far, today, you have the power to change your course.
You can choose God.
You can choose to pay attention to the His plans for you based on His Word.
And in doing so, starting today, you can choose to live.
Chrystal Evans Hurst is the best-selling author of She’s Still There and co-author of Kingdom Woman with her father, Dr. Tony Evans. Now, Chrystal brings her same loving but no-nonsense style of encouragement to teenage girls in Show Up For Your Life. She reaches a wide audience speaking at conferences, writing for Proverbs 31 Ministries, and teaching and leading women in her home church.
Chrystal empowers young women to keep it real while sharing her adventuresome experiences and encouraging young women to live God’s adventures for their own. What’s a girl to do if she’s insecure, anxious, or feeling as if she’s not enough. How can she operate with a perspective that recognizes the potential God has placed in her.
Chrystal has asked those questions too. She also was a teenage girl that wandered away from the life that she had purposed to live. Chrystal is not passionate about helping young girls not to make the same mistakes. In Show Up For Your Life, Chrystal uses her poignant story of early and unexpected pregnancy, as well as other raw and vulnerable moments in her life, to let young readers know she understands what it’s like to try and find your way. Chrystal emphasizes the importance of the understanding your worth, believing in your God-given design and the beautiful journey as it is shared authentically from one girl to another.
[ Our humble thanks to Zondervan for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
February 11, 2019
Loneliness in Marriage? One Simple Secret to Turn Things Around
Sometimes it can creep into our lives with an unwelcome stealth. Ann Wilson will tell you she would never have conceived that she could be surrounded by a husband, kids, and friends, and yet still feel its clutches suffocating her heart. But there she was, married 10 years, two kids, busier than ever, and yet lonelier than she had ever been. And it seemed to her that her husband was totally oblivious to her needs and more often than not, to her! It’s a grace to welcome Dave and Ann Wilson to the farm’s front porch today…
guest post by Dave and Ann Wilson
He was a good man.
A cofounder of a megachurch, Chaplain for the Detroit Lions, inspiring on stage and a leader of men. Everyone loved him and wanted to follow him, but I was left in his dust.
My heart felt bruised and cold like the chilling winds that skate over Lake Michigan in the dead of winter.
We were in a bad place in our marriage, and I didn’t know how to find my way back home!
That was my on and off again reality until—before I knew it—ten years had passed. Then out of nowhere, Dave suddenly wanted to make a huge deal out of our tenth anniversary.
He took me out to a very nice restaurant. After we sat down the waiter began bringing roses to our table. Each rose was to signify a year of our marriage.
Dave began to pour out his heart about the ten years we had spent together.
I had to admit that he was being very sweet. He was like a little boy that night as he kept waiting for the next thing he had planned to happen—I could tell he even planned what he was going to say when each rose arrived.
This was a sweet, and grand gesture and I knew he was trying to make up for lost time, but it felt too late.
Joy Prouty
On the way home he surprised me again by stopping to go “parking”…if you know what I mean.
I simply said…“I have lost my feelings for you.”
I had made it through the dinner and his planned parade of roses, but the idea of being intimate, passionate, or spontaneous with him in a middle school parking lot was just more than I could handle at that moment. He had “that” look and I tried to ignore it, but eventually he made his move towards my direction.
In my head, I was thinking, Ugh, I can’t even… I cannot go there.
He seemed baffled by my lack of affection, and then he asked why.
I simply said…“I have lost my feelings for you.”
There. I finally said it. I wish the words would have brought me to tears, but they didn’t.
The look on his face reflected utter shock. He had just planned this romantic evening and instead of all he had dreamed of for the night, he was coming face to face with the reality that all I had dreamed of for my life was in ruins. I knew that my words killed him, but I was at a point where I didn’t even know what else to say.
I was in this alone and now, and I knew that since I had finally told him, it would be the beginning of the end for our marriage.
He asked me to explain what I meant, so I said, “I feel like you’re never home. I feel like you’re not engaged with me. I feel like you’re not engaged with the boys. My heart for you feels dead, and I feel lonely and forgotten!”
I was gone.
I had given up.
I was in this alone and now, and I knew that since I had finally told him, it would be the beginning of the end for our marriage.
I don’t remember how long we sat there in silence as I waited for his reply, but instead, Dave said the most bizarre thing: “Honey, I just have to do something first.”
Do something? What was he talking about? Was he about to go somewhere?
Dave was going somewhere, alright… just not anywhere I expected.
A moment that should have been the beginning of the end for our marriage was instead the beginning of a new beginning.
Instead of yelling at me like many of our other conflicts, Dave began to pray.
He somehow turned around in our Honda and put his knees on the floorboard—with the steering wheel in his back.
I was speechless.
Then he began to pray out loud, repenting of being too busy and being lukewarm—begging God to help him become the husband and father he was supposed to be, and not the hypocrite he had become.
His knees on the floorboard left me floored as well. I just sat there looking at him, barely able to believe what I was seeing. It was there that I realized my heart had become a brick inside of me—but in that moment, it began to break.
As he prayed, I could suddenly hear God gently whispering to my soul, Ann Wilson, you have been trying to get your happiness from your husband, and I never made him for that. I never equipped him to fill all your needs. I am the only One who can meet all your needs.
The message was undeniably clear. I hadn’t been willing to even kiss my husband of ten years, but when God’s words rang out in my heart, I became willing to do something even crazier: I turned around and got on my knees beside Dave.
The simple secret begins with realizing that a purely horizontal marriage just doesn’t work.
I prayed, “Jesus I too want to surrender all of my life to you. I’ve realized tonight that I’ve been trying to find my life in Dave. I’ve been trying to get from him what only You—and You alone—can provide. I have been believing that if Dave would just be a better husband, then I could truly be happy. That is a lie. You are my true source of joy. I choose you again tonight as my life. Take my life and our marriage and do great things in and through us.”
As I reminisce some twenty-eight years later, I can tell you that our moment of repentance changed everything… and I mean everything.
The secret we had been missing for the first decade of our marriage began to become our new daily reality—and I now pray that this will begin a new reality for you, as well.
The simple secret begins with realizing that a purely horizontal marriage just doesn’t work.
There is no life—no power in ourselves alone.
Without the vertical—without God in first place—we search for life where there is no life. We realized that as wonderful as we both were as people, we made pretty lousy gods.
It took a vertical miracle to change our horizontal mess.
That night was the beginning of God crashing in on the loneliness of my icy heart! If He has the power to resurrect Jesus from the dead, He has the power to breathe new life into a dead marriage.
Your marriage.
It is found simply, yet profoundly, in Jesus.
The answer to the longing and loneliness of your heart is not found in the…
perfect spouse,
the perfect amount of money,
or the perfect marriage.
It is found simply, yet profoundly, in Jesus.
Don’t waste another day like I did trying to find happiness in the horizontal.
Take the first crucial step…Go vertical!
Dave and Ann Wilson are co-founders of Kensington Community Church, a national, multi-campus church that hosts more than 14,000 attendees every weekend. For the past twenty-five years, they have been featured speakers at Family Life’s Weekend to Remember®, and have also hosted their own marriage conferences across the country. They live in the Detroit area, where Dave served as the Detroit Lions Chaplain for thirty-three years.
For anyone who is married, preparing for marriage, or desperate to save a relationship teetering on the edge of disaster, Dave and Ann offer hope and strategies that really work in their new book, Vertical Marriage. Through their unique perspectives, they share an intimate, sometimes hilarious and at times deeply poignant narrative of one couple’s journey to discovering the joy and power of a vertical marriage.
[ Our humble thanks to Zondervan for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
February 9, 2019
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [02.09.19]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you right here:
wanderingnotlost_
wanderingnotlost_
wanderingnotlost_
she’s capturing the wonder of our world right here in extraordinary ways
can you even?!?
couldn’t agree more: life is just better with friends
“Now the commencement speakers will typically also wish you good luck and extend good wishes to you. I will not do that, and I’ll tell you why.
From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty.
Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don’t take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either. And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then, your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship. I hope you’ll be ignored so you know the importance of listening to others, and I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion.
Whether I wish these things or not, they’re going to happen. And whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes.”
we gathered ’round this one – they’re enduring the harshest conditions, often against all odds
good words right here: Talking Back When Shame Keeps You Silent
this restaurant employee? 5 star: “Be just a beacon for 10 seconds in their life. I think that’s what life’s all about…”
LOVE their vision here, yes, yes, yes: combining public housing with the mission of a public library
so maybe age is just a number?!?
Hay Man: love what he’s doing here… and why
let’s please pass more love like this around?
reunions like this? never, ever get old…
These Winners of The 2018 Underwater Photography Competition Will Take Your Breath Away
you’ve got to meet him: an extraordinarily kind and giving man
at 9 years old he’s collecting coats for those in need: “Zero dollars, FREE!”
smiling through tears at this: When I Pray for You
He taught himself to draw in prison. Now he’s winning over the art world!
a most beautiful story of adoption
a salute to the little ones with big scars who are surrounded by incredible families, medical professionals and communities
a teacher who is using her story – to help her students find their voice #BeTheGift #TheBrokenWay
Post of the week from these parts here:
… right there with you as seemingly every single day can feel like this stream of tiny traumas piling up?
None of us are alone in any of this. Here’s to letting hope get into the folds of things:
this award winning choir director? just hoping to serve others the same way his mother served him
just, thank you, Scott Sauls: You will accurately discern what your real beliefs are about God when the storm comes
Want the gift of light breaking into all the broken places, into all the places that feel kinda abandoned?
These pages are for you. It’s possible — abundant joy is always possible, especially for you.
Break free with the tender beauty of The Broken Way & Be The Gift …
And if you grab a copy of Be The Gift? We will immediately email you a link to a FREE gift of THE WHOLE 12 MONTH *Intentional* Acts of Givenness #BeTheGIFT Calendar to download and print from home or at your local print shop! Just let us know that you ordered Be The Gift over here.
You only get one life to love well.
Pick up Be The Gift & live the life you’ve longed to
on repeat this week: Come to the Table
…make us brave enough to hold on to Hope, Lord:
Hope for the impossible, hope for the unlikely, hope for the unexpected, hope for the improbable — because hope is nothing else but the spine of faith.
We dream hope again tonight, steadied in the storm —
for Hope in You is the anchor of our soul (Hebrews 6:19).
For the One who watches over the storm around us,
is the One who makes peace within us…
and this is our hope come true.
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
February 8, 2019
When You Need to Hear that You Have it In You to Go a Little Bit Further
Sally, Sarah, and Joy Clarkson are remarkable women who share a remarkable friendship. Sally has spent her life investing the hearts of women through writing and speaking, pouring love and wisdom even as she pours a cup of her favourite Yorkshire Gold tea. Sally always believed that friendship was the foundation of growth, influence, and healing in our lives. It was that love and intentionality that Sally longed to pass to her daughters. Now that Sarah and Joy have emerged as women in their own right— writing, speaking and studying at Oxford University—they have come together to write a book about the beauty, depth, and importance of investing in soul-shaping heart satisfying friendships. It’s a grace to welcome them to the farm’s front porch today…
guest post by Sally, Sarah, and Joy Clarkson
We were in Prince Edward Island, the home of one of our favorite literary heroes: Anne of Green Gables.
That morning, we had eaten our fill of the bed-and-breakfast’s delectable spread and made plans to visit the White Sands Hotel (which features prominently in the Avonlea stories). We thought we might walk there for an early lunch, so we finished our breakfast and headed to the concierge.
“How far is it to the White Sands Hotel?” we asked.
“Oh! It’s not too far,” answered the kind Canadian concierge, “Just four kilometers or so.”
Then, it came: hanger. My face was hot, and my footsteps were heavy.
We were well fed and ready for a jaunt, so four kilometers sounded like nothing. The concierge pointed us in the right direction, and we set off.
Oh, it was beautiful. It was June, and wildflowers were thick in every ditch. The sky was blue that day, but it was never too warm. The air that day was cool and pungent, with the fragrance of burgeoning life in every nook and cranny of the earth. We chatted and chirped as we marched on our way, taking in the fresh loveliness of it all.
We were having such a good time that we hardly bothered to wonder how long we had been walking, when suddenly it occurred to us that we’d been on our feet for quite some time.
We stopped the next people we passed on the trail and asked if we’d missed the turn.
“Oh, no!” said the wife. “It’s about four kilometers up that way,” her husband added. We thanked them and kept walking.
Four kilometers to go? It was only supposed to be four kilometers total!
At least we had a beautiful view, Sarah remarked. And she was right . . . for a while.
Ten minutes later the trail disappeared, and we found ourselves on a small path of pebbles next to a two-way highway.
We walked in a single-file line. Every few minutes, a car would rush by, sending our hair into a panic as the wind tossed it around. We tried to talk, shouting back and forth in our little queue. But then one person wouldn’t hear, and we’d have to shout it four times for the other person to catch it, replacing the initial delight of sharing with an objectless annoyance.
So eventually we fell into silence.
Then, it came: hanger. My face was hot, and my footsteps were heavy.
Joy Prouty
Joy Prouty
Joy Prouty
“How long are we going to walk?” I demanded.
“I’m so sorry, honey. I think the man at the desk must have gotten his directions wrong,” my mother said, genuine sympathy on her face.
“I think you have it in you to be brave and strong.”
“Well, I guess so!” I dramatically stomped my foot, causing a cloud of dust to emerge from the gravel. “I just can’t walk much longer! I’m hungry and tired, and I think I’m getting a sunburn.”
My mother’s face softened. “I wish I could change this, but I can’t. But you know what? I think you have it in you to be brave and strong.”
In my present purposeless rage, all this talk sounded like pacification. I was not pleased.
Sarah chimed in, “You’re like Anne of Green Gables. You’ve got an adventurous spirit.”
I would have done anything to please Anne . . .
“Do you think you can walk a little further with me?” my mother said.
I’ve found that life usually requires more of us than we expect.
I supposed I could.
*********
We walked 12 miles that day.
Just like that day, I’ve found that life usually requires more of us than we expect.
More effort, more tears, more bravery, more endurance, more ingenuity than we knew we had in our capacity.
But I’ve also learned that I am stronger than I think, that there are reserves of energy and endurance that I can access if I just decide not to give up.
When my mother looked into my eyes that day and told me she knew I could walk a little farther, she set a tone for my life.
You are capable of more than you know.
You are the right one to handle your life.
You are never alone in the journey.
You have your Girls’ Club around you, and more fundamentally than that, you have God.
I think you have it in you to go a little bit farther.
She spoke that same message to me this year.
I started my PhD last September. Just like the walk to the White Sands, it seemed like a challenge but a manageable one.
What I couldn’t have bargained for was the onslaught of loneliness after my three best friends moved away, the awkwardness of trying to figure out if I was doing this doctoral research right, the unexpected injury of my mom’s eye, the wondrous interruption of my niece Lilian’s birth.
All of it left me dizzy, tired, overwhelmed.
Up to that point in my life I had worked hard, but I had never encountered anything that seemed insurmountable.
But in that moment, I genuinely wondered: Can I do this? Am I enough?
Women have called out the strength in me that I didn’t know I possessed and helped me rise to the occasion of life.
I poured out my heart to my mom on the phone. She listened. She empathized. And then she said, “Joy. You have borne so much. I’m so sorry this year has been difficult. But I’m not worried about you. The Lord will take care of you. I see your roots growing deep. If you press into this season, trust God, and keep going, I think you will see the fruit of it.”
In other words, she said again: I think you have it in you to go a little bit farther.
And I did.
One of the greatest gifts of friendship in my life has been that women have called out the strength in me that I didn’t know I possessed and helped me rise to the occasion of life.
Female friendship has been at the core of all societies for this very reason.
There is a fierceness and a flexibility in womanhood, an ability to overcome despite insurmountable odds.
Patient, clever eyes, looking for a way to make things work, to stitch life together like a colorful quilt made out of scraps.
We are stronger together.
Together, we can go a little bit farther.
Told through stories and encouragement based on the authors’ experiences—Sally, a seasoned mother and well beloved author; her daughter Sarah, an Oxford scholar and new mother; and her youngest daughter Joy, a professional young woman pursuing her doctorate— Girls’ Club: Cultivating Lasting Friendship in a Lonely World will speak to the importance of cultivating deep and lasting friendship at every stage in life. Join Sally, Sarah, and Joy as they explore the power, difficulties, potential, beauty, and satisfaction of friendships that help us live purposeful, Godly lives and that satisfy our longing for meaningful and intimate companionship.
Joy Clarkson is a lover of God and people, a crafter of words, and a dedicated evangelist for the soul-enriching benefits of teatime. She is currently working on her doctorate in theology, imagination, and the arts at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where she enjoys long walks on the shore of the North Sea and visits to tiny fishing villages.
Sarah Clarkson loves books, beauty, and imagination, and thinks everyone else should too. She’s a published author and recent graduate of Oxford University, where she studied theology at Wycliffe Hall.
Sally Clarkson is the beloved author of multiple bestselling books. As a mother of four, she has inspired thousands of women through conferences, resources, and books with Whole Heart Ministries (www.wholeheart.org). Discipleship and mentoring women to understand how to love God in a more personal way and how to live a satisfying Christian life are threads through all of her messages. Her popular podcast, At Home with Sally Clarkson and Friends, with over a million downloads, can be found on iTunes and Stitcher.
[ Our humble thanks to Tyndale for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
February 6, 2019
for the woman who feels passed by & wrinkled & a bit busted by life: How to Deal with the Trauma of Everyday Life
They sell anti-aging cream to women like me.
And Spanx.
And glossy checkout line headliners that splay this shock that over 40-something women can still startlingly turn heads — as if having no wrinkle lines in your skin is somehow an accomplishment of galactic proportions.
Turns out you can just be emptying your cart in checkout #6 and end up feeling more like a piece of meat than the roast that’s on sale for $1.99 this week.
Hold out for perfect and you end up holding nothing.
So you end up buying 3 tulips for your way home through the snow.
Because you’ve got people you love getting to that week on the calendar page that says the Big XXX–0 … and you feel like something’s broke.
Like the world’s gone kinda mad — like your heart and head have just up and shattered over night and you are sitting in a mess trying to put the pieces together again and we all get old and there’s no defying it —
and you aren’t all you want to be and neither is anyone you love.
Favourite Resource: Grace Crafted Home
Favourite Resource: Grace Crafted HomeEvery single day has a bit of it’s own now-traumatic stress disorder. It’s not just the life crises that are traumatic. The mirror can be traumatic — and time and aging and life can be traumatic for us who are made to breathe eternity.
But maybe : The point is that your life is meant to be spent.
The point is that your life is meant to be used up and every wrinkle means you are wringing out the good of the wonder of this thing called life.
So let the glossy people take their botox and smooth things over and pretend they aren’t wringing this thing right dry, because the rest of us are going to try and we have no shame.
The kids are flat-out growing up.
Have we’ve grown into the lives that we prayed for or have we fallen into something else?
Is this it?
Why is hope of change sometimes the one miracle you don’t dare hope for?
Snow just keeps piling on the roof.
When you really want to disappear – is when you really want to be found. When you really want to run away from everybody – is when you really want to be found by just somebody.
Snow just keeps coming across the fields, and the tulips in candlelight and the ache of a thousand popping moments has you leaning in a doorway, waiting for something to finally come and something else to finally ebb away.
Sometimes you can want to run away more when you are a supposed-adult than when you are a kid.
When you really want to disappear – is when you really want to be found.
When you really want to run away from everybody – is when you really want to be found by just somebody.
It’s about aging — and more. It’s about time passing and never coming back — and more. It’s about getting through the birthdays — and letting yourself be loved. Even if it’s imperfectly by imperfect people.
Hold out for perfect and you end up holding nothing.
Why is it so hard to let yourself be loved?
Sometimes you can hardly bear to let anyone try to love you because it feels like a lie.
And for crying out loud, life is too blazing short to live lies.
Is that why a million haggard people hate birthdays? Because love on that day can feel like a lie, like an obligation, like a polite duty and it’s too hard to smile and pretend through its plasticity.
Or maybe it really is — that the moment you accept love, you have to accept yourself, and there’s something in that that seems unacceptable. Strange, how there’s no love without humility – no one can accept anything except on their knees.
Maybe it’s not about birthday candles or aging; maybe it’s really about the calendar saying the time is now to look that wrinkling face in the mirror and touch that cheek gentle and whisper: “It really is okay. So you are broken. Be brave. Let yourself be loved.”
There.
Everything can still in that moment and the knots can all fall away and it has nothing to do with the tulips.
Peace is a Person. No one can steal Peace from you. And nothing can steal you from Him.
You can’t look across candles and think you’ve wrecked your life.
You can’t turn the calendar pages and think you’ve messed it up. And you can’t hold up any measuring stick and think you’ve botched it so bad, that you lose Peace, that you can’t get Peace, that you can’t find Peace.
If you have Christ – nothing can steal your peace.
I stand there watching the snow.
The house and the kids hush in the evening thickening and falling and the candles flicker boldly on.
Favourite Resource: Grace Crafted Home
And right there those memorized verses from Romans breach the surface of things, because memorization isn’t for the smug saints who have made it but for the desperate sinners who want to make it:
“Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus… ”
The enemy wants nothing more at the end of the day than to make you and all your offered years feel like a piece of chopped up meat. You’ve just got to call Satan by what his ugly name really means: prosecutor. The work of the enemy isn’t ultimately to tempt you, but to try you.
If Satan can ultimately prosecute you — you will ultimately imprison yourself.
He’s like this glossy headline mocking your weathered life: “And you look around at your life and call yourself a Christian?”
And even the weary and worn-out can cut him down with one sharp edge of a memorized verse:
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? …
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us…. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth —
nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” ~ Romans 8
The prosecutor of your soul can’t ever nail you:
Time can’t wreck your life. You can’t wreck your life. Nothing in all of this world can separate you from the love of Christ and His love is your life.
Your life is unwreckable because Christ’s love is unstoppable.
Sure, time, age, life, this side of glory is traumatic.
Living in a fallen world can’t help but be traumatic — falling is traumatic.
Every single day is this stream of tiny traumas. (Those who dare to trust call them gifts.) We’ve all had to unplug toilets and clean up puke and crawl into bed and lay waiting for His new mercies to come again before we move.
None of us are alone in any of this.
You have to let your life wrinkle. You have to let hope get into the folds of things. You are here to be spent.
Saving yourself up isn’t how the saved are meant to live. Go for broke.
And when you are broken – because that’s what happens when you go for broke – and you look into a mirror, a calendar, into that one face, and you can’t stop the aching lump burning up through the center of your heart, listen till the rain comes.
Watch how the clouds break and break open and listen for rain and reach out your hand and feel it’s wet sweetness coming down in all this vulnerable freeness.
This is the broken that makes you beautiful.
Live like this right to the very end.
Peace can fall like snow.
Our story of taking The Broken Way:
This one’s for all of us who have felt our hearts break a bit…
This one’s for the brave and the busted and the real and dreamers and the sufferers and the believers.
This one’s for those who dare to take The Broken Way… into abundance
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