Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 192

how to have the very best equation for a really good week, a good life

The hour drive it takes to get to the lake on a Sunday afternoon, I think of the Sunday morning sermon.

The preacher was preaching pure gospel, how to be born again.

Twenty-five years he’s been preaching it in our little country chapel, to the hog farmers, the corn-croppers, the mothers with babies in arms.

How you can’t work for it, angle for it, or jockey for it —

You can’t earn God’s love. You can only turn towards God love.

When we all unpile, the little girls run and cousins squeal and holler happy at the water’s edge.

My mama and I stand there, toes in sand and the wind blowing back hair —

Our faces turned straight into the sun.

It’s the gift, that’s what the preacher said.

Salvation is the gift, the one wrapped in God taking on skin, laying His bare love out for the world, arms spreading to the very ends of the limbs of the tree of life.

There is their giddy laughter.

There is their young, wild running.

There is my mama smiling.

There is that singular sea gull writing across the sky. These are gifts. They beg praise to Him.

Holy joy lies in the habit of murmuring thanks to God for the smallest of graces.

Sure, I mess it up and gripe a thousand times, but just like you keep doing the laundry, you just keep beginning fresh again — The habit of thanksgiving is the one habit to wear for a lifetime.

And the thing is, really —

There is only one gift — the one ocean of Christ that falls as rain over us in a thousand ways.

Christ is the offering and salvation is the gift and repentance is what makes us recipients of grace.

Christ is the gift. Christ is the bridge Home. Christ is our joy. How can I forget this, ever stop giving thanks for Him alone?

Happiness is not getting something — but being given to Someone.

Communion with God is possible anywhere.

 

Read on for more encouragement — where I’m over at (in)courage today…

Links for 2015-09-21 [del.icio.us]

Cities around the world will host #QCommons this Thursday night

Incredibly powerful...tune in where you are and learn how to advance the common good.
life after reading the headlines

"...tragedy has changed me. But hope has changed me more." Beautifully stirring & honest

when the promises are in the distance, waiting to be welcomed home

I read Micha Boyett’s words and my breathing slows. She gives perspective. And hope. And a refreshing lightness to not take what doesn’t matter too seriously. She revives: When you order the tangle of your days around Him, He untangles you. She moves: The moments all matter. The daily awareness of the small add up to the whole of your life, and her words are like a dawn, stirring you to wake and walk. It’s a grace to welcome Micha Boyett to the farm’s front porch today…

by Micah Boyett

We’re way behind schedule when we walk in the door and I call out a litany of frantic mother phrases, “Shoes off! Hands washed!

August-do-your-reading-for-ten-minutes!” while I lay Ace on the quilt in the living room and toss a couple of toys his way before starting dinner.

Brooks is not happy about my plan for fish tacos.

He’s on the verge of a meltdown all the time right now. He whines in the kitchen and I ignore his protests.

Monica Ayers photography

Monica Ayers photography

“Sometimes you like dinner and sometimes you don’t and that’s just how it goes, darlin.” I say. The last remaining bits of my Texas drawl show up when I lecture my children. Can’t help it.

August is not whining. He’s in his room with his nose in a book about snakes.

I breathe out a Thank you, Lord for that reality.

He’s seven now and beginning to overcome his temper. Asking him to read for ten minutes last year might have erupted in a full-blown big kid tantrum.

And, bless it, my child is actually doing what I asked.

Brooksie takes his whining away from the kitchen. The fish is salted and peppered and ready to go on the pan. I’m moving from fridge to cutting board, listening for Ace, watching the timer for August’s reading. Chop the onion, slice the avocado.

I hear Brooks’ little four-year-old voice. He speaks quiet: “You are the cutest baby in the whole world, little Acer. Cutest little baby in the whole world.”

I put down my knife and peek into the room next door, where Brooks is on his belly, his chin propped up by his hands. Ace is on his back, his neck contorted in that way only babies can bend.

He’s staring at his big brother in awe.

Brooksie sings, “I am Ace-y, I am Ace-y. I’m a sweet little boy! I am Ace-y, I am Ace-y. And I bring so much joy!”

“Careful with your kisses, Brooksie!” I call from the doorway of the kitchen. Brooks is covering Ace’s face with wet smooches, and Ace is grunting his discomfort.

The giver of the kisses lets go and turns his head to me, still hovering above his brother’s face. “Mama, look. I can’t stop. He’s just too cute.”

. . .

Ace is four and a half months old.

He just learned to roll from his back to his belly yesterday. He had no idea what happened but found himself face down on his blanket. He got his neck raised high enough to find me with his wide, confused baby eyes. How did I get here, Mom?

Ace loves to lick cloth. No pacifiers for him: only blankets and stuffed animals, and whatever t-shirt he is near, as long as he can lick it. He loves to stare at me—his mama—and when he catches my eye his smile explodes. He’s got ocean blue eyes and the face of a baby doll. He has Down syndrome.

. . .

I’ve been thinking about Hebrews 11 lately. That part in verse 13 when the people who have lived by faith are described as “still living by faith when they died.” Scripture says, “They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance . . .”

Welcome. Hospitality. What does it mean to be hospitable to the promises of God?

Maybe welcoming God’s promises requires the same sort of hospitality we give any guest who arrives at our home: preparation, waiting, making room for the promise to have seat at the table, even as it’s still far off in the distance.

So I’m making space in my spirit for the promise of God’s goodness.

I’m setting the table, sweeping the floor, looking for the promise that God is making all things good in this moment, right now:

as Ace learns to use his mouth so he can one day speak,

as his brothers learn to love Ace’s uniqueness as much as they love what makes him like everybody else,

as I learn to receive Ace’s developmental differences and call them beautiful.

Here’s the thing with hospitality: I don’t get to treat God’s promises like something I own or deserve.

True hospitality is not begrudging the guest, demanding anything of it.

Hospitality is simply inviting God’s promises to have a seat at the table, whether or not I understand them, whether or not I can claim them right now.

Faith is setting a place for them, offering them tea. Having tea with the promises in the silence.

And faith acknowledges that sometimes God’s promises wait in the distance. Pain waits there too.

. . .

How are you doing?

Friends want to know. I’m almost five months into a new life as the mom of a special needs child and what can I tell them except that I am in love with Ace?

I tell them he is perfect. Never has a baby been so sweet and generous to his mama. He sleeps well, he smiles always. He cries only when completely necessary. And he waits for us to love him. He giggles and wiggles and snuggles up better than any baby I’ve ever known. He lays his head on my chest while he looks at the world.

How am I doing? I am loving my baby.

And still I know that loving him is going to hurt more and more the older he gets. He will be teased. He will be misunderstood. His brothers will at times feel overshadowed by the height and depth of his differences.

It will hurt when Ace struggles.

It will hurt when we watch him race to keep up with the other typical kids on the soccer field.

It will hurt when he works harder and longer to learn to talk and walk and write his name and read.

Listen, I want to know right now if Ace will go to college.

I want to know if he’ll find a job he loves.

I want to know if he’ll have girlfriend or even a real friend, a friend who will love him without pity, without obligation.

I want to know if he will live on his own or if my older boys will feel the burden of caring for him when my husband and I aren’t able to.

And if they do, will they be bitter? I worry about these things every day. Can I be the mom he needs, the mom who can balance pushing him toward independence while still protecting him from a brutal world?

. . .

“Mama, Daddy told me you both cried when you found out Ace had Down syndrome,” August says as we walk the block from his school to the car. “Why did you cry?”

The promises wait in the distance where the pain waits. They wait together in the space where God is.

And God is here too. With August and me. I push Ace in the stroller and Brooks is up ahead shooting down the sidewalk on his scooter.

“Well,” I pause, gathering my words. “We cried because we love Ace and we didn’t want anything to hurt him. And we knew Down syndrome would make a lot of things harder for him.”

“And it also made him the cutest baby, right?”

“Yeah. Totally the cutest.” I smile at August and wonder what a seven year old can know about the gift he’s been given: how Ace will form how his brothers see God, see the world. There are promises waiting for August in this story too.

When you pass through the waters I will be with you.

I have called you by name, you are mine.

We see the promises from a distance and will we welcome them?

“Brooksie, slow down buddy!” I yell down the sidewalk past the kids and adults walking toward the street corner.

Brooks waits for us and the crossing guard holds up her stop sign. We cross.

Forward, forward, in this moment and always moving toward the next one.

Moving up ahead.

Up ahead where the promises wait.

 

 

Micha (pronounced “MY-cah”) Boyett is a writer, blogger, and sometimes poet.  A former youth minister, she’s passionate about monasticism and ancient Christian spiritual practices and how they inform the contemporary life of faith. She is the author of Found: A Story Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer Boyett and her husband live in San Francisco with their three boys. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook, Instagram, and her blog. 

I read Micha’s words in Found: A Story Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer and my breathing slows. She gives perspective. And hope. And a refreshing lightness to not take what doesn’t matter too seriously. The daily awareness of the small add up to the whole of your life, and her words are one of the most beautiful, memorable reads, like a dawn, stirring you to wake and walk.

 

Links for 2015-09-19 [del.icio.us]

Cities around the world will host #QCommons next Thursday night

Incredibly powerful...tune in where you are and learn how to advance the common good.

Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [09.19.15]

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:

campingwithdogs
campingwithdogs
campingwithdogs

come away for a bit? and explore the wonders of camping with man’s best friend

oh, you know — just a way for fence to be friendly #whateveryfenceneeds

go make a splash this weekend!

yeah,  pretty crazy wonderful stuff everywhere #FaithStartsAsAWayofSeeing #1000Gifts

get some soul rest

 being a selfless gift like this dad? there’s a lot of every day ways to be a hero

so…did you know that?

everything you ever wanted to know about …

Agne Gintalaite

even garage doors can prove that  ‘Beauty Remains’ everywhere

#FaithStartsAsAWayofSeeing #1000Gifts

one pretty unforgettable journey

Eduardo Leal

okay, so maybe every community does need their own….

‘graffiti grannies’ ?! #MakeBeautyEverywhere

oh, c’mon…. who doesn’t love a really happy ending? (yeah, me too ;) )

 your soul needs a slow walk like this…

uh…. I usually break out into hives over numbers…

but actually — the elegantly interwoven fabric of mathematics. Fascinating info! #MamaToAKidinMathmaticalPhysics

Sebastian Erras

 life is always, always, always a matter of perspective – what we too often miss

#FaithStartsAsAWayofSeeing

He’s making good out of even the bad days. 

And God’s good plans are bigger than any of your messes, your regrets, your bad mistakes.

Because You say to the lost: Come.

You say to the Unlikely: Beloved

You say to the Battle Weary: Rest.

In a hard and beautiful world,

Your grace is the only pillowed relief for my tired soul

to rest in You making all things new.

And all the brave heaved relief & smiled their Amen.

Like this graphic? Simply click here for the whole library of FREE PRINTABLES:

Collecting tennis shoes to help refugees – thank you, thank you, thank you 

“I know shoes may seem small, but God is big, and my prayer is that meeting this basic need will help encourage and heal broken hearts and show them the love of Jesus.”

On a dry lakebed in Nevada, a group of friends build the first scale model of the solar system with complete planetary orbits: a true illustration of our place in the universe.

And just how great our God really is.

theindependent

never, ever give up hope. Twins separated after WWII — reunited 70 years later 

Mary Anne Morgan

this is really beautiful: Seeking a Soft Heart

“My year of yes has been this: yes to pain. Yes to hurting and yes to letting God be enough. Yes to allowing others to walk in and out of the gates of my heart with their muddy boots even if it is scary. Yes to letting others love me in my brokenness. Yes to a soft and supple heart.”

you are not “just”…  a nurse, or just “fill in the blank”!

Instagram of the Week

… that day, on the tilting spin of a hurting world, you find yourself at Shiloh, Israel’s first capital, where the tabernacle of the Presence of the the Lord Almighty Himself lived among an unlikely people for over 300 years on this dirt — and you think about taking your beaten up sandals off because God’s one relentless hound of heaven & He comes over a thousand hills because He wants His home to be with the wandering & busted up.

Hannah knelt on this dirt here & she wept that she felt like an empty woman, an unwanted, unproductive woman.

Sometimes a heart has to howl to breathe.

Sometimes a woman has to walk away from the motions of everything else & lay down a million unspoken dreams at the feet of God.

Sometimes skies can feel like ceilings & prayers can feel like cruel jokes & no one ever really knows how many tears a field or face have known.

Turns out that feelings can flat-out lie & there’s a Lover who carries around a bottle to catch every tear & He cups the tear-stained faces because He longs to cup the impossible prayers we can’t even speak & pour Himself into the emptiest places that have been masked far too long.

Prayers can go straight up like honest incense anywhere.

And God, He welcomes the aching — and can be welcomed into the ache.

And miracles happen whenever the emptiest places are made into a dwelling place for God.

The sky right there felt like a begging invitation.

#IsraelListening #Shiloh #UnspokenBroken #1000Gifts

Join a farm hick on Instagram for a tour through Israel this week? 

this guy — is a hero to our kid, and today? today’s his day…

remembering his hero, his father…

speak HOPE…speak LOVE…speak LIFE

[ print’s free for you here ]

Hey Soul? yeah, no matter what keeps hounding this week,

just feel how the love of the Hound of Heaven is closer —

His warm breath of blessing & comfort & closeness, right there close, even right now. Listen — listen to who He says you are:

“In Christ, you are complete, you are dearly loved, the Beloved, and you can do ALL things through Christ, who strengthens you, and you aren’t who you were yesterday, you are being made new today and you are an OVERCOMER & a Conqueror today because of My love!” (Col2:9-10, Col3:12-13, Phil4:13, 2 Cor5:1, Ro8:37)

If you listen long enough to all the loud voices about who you should be, 

you grow deaf to the beauty of who you are — 

and who He’s making you right now to be. 

That’s all today: Nothing can overwhelm us today, this week, like God’s GRACE can OVERTAKE us.

‪#‎PreachingGospeltoMyself‬ ‪#‎Forward‬!

[excerpted from our devotions in our little Facebook community … come join us?]

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.

Links for 2015-09-18 [del.icio.us]

Why Forgiveness Matters

yes... "My forgiveness didn’t excuse what they did; it allowed me to stop being the victim."

when you’re desperate to find the light — when there are no windows

Kristen Strong was born and raised in Oklahoma surrounded by comfortable familiarity in the form of wide-open prairies and a deep well of extended family. After she met and married her military man, change became the theme of her life. Many of her transitions experienced were due to being part of an air force family. But different, hard-fought lessons from change were learned in other ways, like when she and her husband, David, discovered their daughter had a life threatening neck injury. Read on as Kristen gently encourages you to gather hope for the times of difficult change in your own life. It’s a grace to welcome Kristen to the farm’s front porch today…

by Kristen Strong

I  kissed my eight-year-old daughter Faith on the forehead as she drifted off to sleep, wishing like crazy we were in her cozy lavender bedroom rather than this sterile, mint-green operating room.

If only she were drifting off to sleep before a play date with friends instead of drifting off to sleep before a date with a surgeon who would operate on her spine to correct her broken neck.

I continued to whisper, “Jesus is here, Jesus is here,” long after she closed her eyes.

I said it for me as much as for her.

I carefully got off her gurney, thankful the children’s hospital in our town let me ride on it with Faith right through the swinging metal doors to the OR.

After the doctor and nurses gave gentle assurances about my girl’s care, I walked with heavy steps back through the oversized doors into the steady, open arms of my husband David.

We plodded along in a half hug down the hall toward the waiting room of the hospital.

After we arrived and David held the door open for me, I stepped in and quickly scanned the room.

And that’s when my knee-high brown boots stopped dead in their tracks. My eyes darted around the waiting room again, and I stood there slack-jawed while shaking my head back and forth.

David, noticing my frozen posture and expression, came up next to me. “What’s wrong?” he asked, following my eyes around to the room.

“What’s wrong?” I repeated, annoyed he was missing the obvious. “It’s . . . it’s this room, David!” I stammered, whirling in a circle and pointing.

“Just look! There are no windows in this room!”

His eyes swept the room again. Sensing what was coming, he began rubbing my back in short, quick pats while whispering quietly, “No but I think—”

I wheeled around to meet his eyes.

“What were they thinking to make a hospital waiting room without windows?

Who could have designed such a thing?

How are families supposed to wait out their babies’ surgeries in a room without any way to see outside?”

My hands flew up and down, up and down. “How is anyone supposed to feel hopeful in this . . . this tomb?”

David pulled me in close, mind going a mile a minute trying to figure out the quickest way to calm me down. I leaned against him, ignoring the overt stares of others.

I cried so hard my breathing turned shallow, and David said, “Baby, it’s okay. Why don’t we go to the cafeteria for a bit? Maybe it has windows. The doctor won’t call with a progress report for some time, so we don’t have to wait here right now.”

I slowly nodded up and down and let him usher me out of the room. Inside the cafeteria, my tired eyes found tall windows and my cold hands a warm cup of tea.

Before long, we walked back to the dimly lit waiting room. After going inside and finding two chairs in a corner, I set my mostly full teacup down and lowered my head in my hands. It was early morning, but the day had been long.

Still bemoaning poor building plans and the injustice of a windowless waiting room, I heard the Lord say to me straight out, “Gratitude provides a window to a windowless room.”

His words wafted over me as a kind reminder rather than a criticism of my complaining.

He stopped my downward spiral with plain truth: When change wipes all the natural light from the rooms of my heart, being thankful is the way to open bolted shutters and knock holes in thick walls. Being thankful is the way to usher the light back in.

In 1 Thessalonians, Paul tells us to pray continually and give thanks in all circumstances. Because when we offer up gratitude in all things, we show how we trust God to use all things too.

God asks us to show Him gratitude in the dark times of change because He knows that’s how we find Him in the dark. He knows that’s how we find the Light in the dark. The focus on what is missing blurs, and the focus on what is present sharpens.

The focus on Who is present sharpens, as does our awareness of his closeness to us.

I am reminded of this when I flip through Exodus to read of Moses.

He wanted to experience closeness with God, and his desires were met on an unimaginable scale.

He spent an extraordinary amount of time with God on Mount Sinai and wanted still more. But then again, isn’t that the nature of God?

The more time you spend with Him, the more you want to spend time with Him.

In Exodus 33, Moses makes what sounds like a mighty bold request when he tells God, “Show me your glory” (v. 18). But what Moses really wants is to be as close to God as possible. God grants Moses his request with one caveat. Knowing a straight-on view of his glory would be too much for Moses to take in, God tells Moses he may see His glory from behind. To protect him, God places Moses in the crevice of a rock and covers him with His hand while passing by.

I am not unfamiliar with the idea that says to know God’s glory, we are sometimes asked to sit in tight places.

But as I read this passage from Exodus, what I uncover is this: When change puts me in tight places, is it especially dark because God’s hand covers and protects me too? Can I believe it’s dark because of mercy and protection rather than abandonment?

Can I believe being thankful in all circumstances is important because it acknowledges that during the dark times of change, God is still covering me with His hand?

As I wait in the windowless waiting room, I am not abandoned. As my daughter sleeps under the care of the surgeon, she is not abandoned.

His hand—and heart—won’t abandon you, either.

Leaning against David’s shoulder, I felt the light of gratitude warm me in that windowless room. I said quietly:

Thank you, God, for an excellent pediatric neurosurgeon in our town.

Thank you for a husband not deployed and home to do this with me.

Thank you for the Petersens watching our other children.

Thank you for countless family and friends holding us all in prayer.

Thank you for this room where your presence beams, windows or not.

 

 

As the wife of a career veteran, Kristen Strong speaks from the heart of a woman who has experienced change in many makes and models. You can read more of Kristen’s writing at her blog Chasing Blue Skies and at (in)courage, the blog of DaySpring. Kristen and her husband, David, have three delightful children and enjoy their home under the wide blue skies of Colorado.

Many of her life experiences, as well as stories of others and stories from Scripture, can be found in her book Girl Meets Change: Truths to Carry You Through Life’s Transitions. In this hope-filled read, Kristen invites you to see all the ways you are loved and cared for in the midst of change. She walks alongside you as a friend, gently ushering you toward a new view of change, one that meets you at the crossroads of your own sense of anxiety and God’s sense of purpose. I’m grateful for the life-giving truth’s in Girls Meets Change. Anyone who has struggled to adjust to life’s transitions will welcome Kristen’s warm and personal perspective.

[ Our humble thanks to Revell and their partnership in today’s devotion ]

Links for 2015-09-17 [del.icio.us]

The Inconvenient and Uncomfortable Truth of the Gospel

"When we look closely at the hard sayings of Jesus, He doesn’t say protect yourself. He says deny yourself..." @WeareTHATfamily

Links for 2015-09-16 [del.icio.us]

The trouble with vacation time: Why Americans won't take time off

40% of workers left vacation time on the table last year...
Women collect tennis shoes to help Syrian refugees

only God: "She had hoped to collect 200 pairs of shoes, and she received more than 400."

when you just want to know it’s all going to be okay

Dear you,

Dear Self and me and you and us,

Really, it’s all going to be okay.

You’re going to be okay.



Promise.

Remember when you were 16 with that ridiculous hair?

And how you’d thought that by the time you got to here, to now, it was going to be good? That by now everything would be all good.

That by now you’d know down in the very marrow of your bones, what it’s like to really live loved. That you’d be known. Fully known. And wholly embraced.

That the Big Dream would have happened, that the peace and the purpose and the Big Point would be under your skin, that the awkward would be gone and that you’d finally fit and that your life made a real difference, you’d made a real mark, and that you really mattered.

You don’t have to worry: We all get to make one unforgettable mark. And every day, with every word, we get to decide: Do we mar the world, or mark the world?

Why in the world disdain the small? It’s always the smallest strokes that add up to the greatest masterpieces.

Because the thing really is: Do we ever really know which mark we make — that will matter the most? The extraordinary things happen nowhere else but in the everyday and today can always be the beginning:

That card you signed and sealed and put in the mail, the way you smiled and nodded to the white-crowned woman bent over the still-green bananas, the way you dug around in the dirt and and left that seed or that gift of the knees and that prayer whispered for a stranger or that glass of water you handed to someone and winked because you just knew —

You’ve got to remember: we don’t know when and how we are leaving the greatest marks on the world. It all matters.

Believe it: Every tremor of kindness might erupt in a miracle on the other side of the world.

And the only way to ever leave beauty marks on the world is with bits of yourself — and this will hurt. Things of realest beauty don’t bring us glory — but Him glory.

Dear you, and self, and me, and us, —  Just For Today —  take these words, words of Dag Hammarskjold[image error], Secretary-General of the United Nations, words that you can take to the bank, take to eternity: “It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for … the masses.” Christ left the ninety-nine for the one.

Where you are, with that one child, that one street, that one call, it is a noble, Christ-called thing. It only takes one person to change the world — and one individual, one soul, can be all your world.

Really, beautiful You: The most exquisite marks anyone makes with their life — are the marks done in secret. The mark that no one — but One — will ever see.

And tell yourself this when you feel forgotten and invisible and unimportant: So the celebrities get their celebration here.

But the wise are the hidden who hold out for heaven — and the applause that comes from God. This is to choose the far greater.

I know you’re brave … and you’re scared. Because you keep doing big things that seems so small and you wonder where all this is really going and you only get one life here —

And though you’re weary, you do hard things and you keep getting out of bed and this is always the hardest part — and you keep believing that Christ didn’t leave this world until He showed us His scars — and He won’t ever let you leave this world until you leave your most beautiful mark. To show Him.

So Just For Today — listen: you’ve got to keep going.

His Kingdom is Upside Down and in Him your part is large and lovely and needed and art.

So go get the milk and take out the trash and throw in the laundry and wave giddy to the neighbors because there is a plan and there is a purpose and there is a God in heaven who didn’t just ink you onto the palm of His hands but etched your name right into Himself with nails and He’s hasn’t just got your number, He’s got your heart.

He sees you, hidden in Him, and you aren’t ever forgotten because God can’t forget those right in Him. You’ve never missed the boat when you’re holding onto the Cross.

So really — you’ve got to believe it for your 16 year-old-self and 56 year-old-self and for yourself right now: really, it’s all working out okay.

Because God’s writing your story and He never leaves you alone in your story, and His perfect love absorbs all your fear and His perfect grace carries all your burdens, and your story is a happily ever after because Christ bought your happily ever after so you always know how this story ends:

You’re going to be okay.

Dear Self, tuck this away to read again whenever you need to know it again — and promise me, you’ll laugh and sing and dance a bit today?

Heaven and His Kingdom and The Feast is coming!  — so go ahead and pass down the fudge brownies.

Love,

Me.

 

 

Related: 3 words to arrest that comparison thief that is robbing you of joy