I see the pregnancy tests on the end of an aisle out of the corner of my eye. I’m just here for eyedrops, I think to myself, just eyedrops. But as the line inches forward and social distancing gives me a few extra minutes to stand within arms’ reach of the pink boxes, curiosity - or maybe it’s premonition - gets the best of me. I throw one in my basket, behind the back of my seven year old, who will surely have a dozen justifiable questions about this little box if she sees it.

I just need to rule it out, so I can stop imagining things. Nine dollars is a small price to pay to have my sanity back.

I purchased the little box undetected, but I did not get my sanity back. 

Baby #6 will be here in February.

//

There’s a well known story about Jesus in the gospels, when he takes five loaves of bread and two fishes and miraculously multiplies this meager serving of food to feed thousands of people. The awe of this event causes the people to call him a prophet and a king, and beg him to overthrow the oppressive Roman rulers of their time. If he can make food just appear, surely he is capable of all kinds of miracles, and these people were there for it. I get that. I would be, too.

But I can’t help but sit with a small detail of this story that comes a bit earlier in the day. Jesus and his disciples had gone up on the mountain to sit down for a bit. From their vantage point, it wasn’t difficult to see the huge crowd following them. Jesus sat there unbothered. The disciples on the other hand, they saw reality. It was Passover, one of the most sacred holidays of the Jewish people, and there were thousands of them making the long trek toward their small crew to learn more about this mysterious Jesus figure. 

So when Jesus asks his disciples where they might be able to buy food on the top of a mountain, you and I can certainly understand the skepticism of their response. Are you serious, Jesus? They had to be thinking, You did notice we are not exactly near a market, yes?   

Andrew, one of the disciples, finally voices what feels obvious: “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?”

What are they for so many? Like, come on Jesus. You aren’t really thinking about feeding this crowd, are you? This is enough for one, maybe two people. It’s certainly not enough for what you are thinking of doing. We have to face reality here. 

At least, that’s what I would be thinking. 

So I get Andrew on this question. I really do. I’ve asked it of myself a hundred times in the last three months, since that small premonition in the line at the drug store became a stark reality. Who am I for so many? I am already giving all of myself, every minute of every day.

I don’t have enough for what you are asking us to do, Lord. 

//

I took the pregnancy test late in the afternoon, but I had already planned a fun evening with my oldest daughter that I wanted to be so present for, and because we would be gone for the night, I waited until the next morning when we got home to tell my husband. We pulled up to the house just after breakfast, and Alex already had the other kids loaded in the stroller to head down to the park. When we got there, our big three ran off to their favorite spots, and we stayed back pushing the littles in the swings. 

I had been sitting on news that I had to tell him for 18 hours. That’s the longest I have ever held this secret from him. I wanted to tell him. He’s an incredible dad, and one of the most selfless men alive. But this would be our 6th child. All of them under eight years old. We never planned on more than four. Did I mention we were already giving all of ourselves, every single day? Special needs, two busy toddlers, a curious seven-year-old with incessant (but very good) questions about life, and a four-year-old still learning to write his letters and control his anger - it takes all we have. 

The smallest, apprehensive fear of how is he really going to feel about this? caused me just the slightest bit of trepidation, but because I could not do 18 hours and one more minute of secret-keeping, I decided to jump in with no introduction.  

“Babe, I took a pregnancy test last night.”

“What?!” he responded, wide-eyed and confused, but rightfully, more concerned with the result than my motive. “Are you pregnant?”

I smiled/grimaced/braced myself and said, “I am, Babe. It was positive.” 

He laughed - laughed - which was the best thing he could have done in that moment - and then wrapped me up in a hug. Despite my anxiety, my heart knew he would react this way. The worry was more about our coming reality than my husband’s attitude toward it. We both know what a miracle this is, and it’s one we never have taken for granted. 

“Wow! Ok. Well, not sure what you’re doing here God, but…” he stopped for a second, looked down at me and said, “are you doing ok?”

“I think so. I have... complicated feelings, babe.” I got quiet for a minute, still unable to name it all, sitting with the very real tension of gratitude and overwhelm, sorting through what I thought I was allowed to feel.

“Ha!” he chuckled back. “I think you’re allowed to have complicated feelings right now.”

“Thank you for saying that,” I said through an insecure smile. I’m sure I mumbled a few other unremarkable things, but mostly I remember us being ok, just not saying much; pushing our two toddlers on the swings to the background of giggles and squeals and requests for help reaching the monkey bars from our older three.

“It’s going to be ok,” Alex pipped in. “One day at a time, that’s all we can do.”

//

I wonder what the disciples really thought after Jesus fed all those people in such an improbable manner, as they cleaned up after the crowd and had twelve baskets of food left over. 

Were they shocked, but not surprised? 

Were they shocked because they saw a miracle, something they could never manufacture on their own. They did not believe it was possible to meet the physical needs of so many people, and who could blame them - it did not look possible. Until it happened. 

But were they not surprised because it was Jesus, after all, the man they left everything to follow because they believed that in Him, they would find everything they were looking for; they would find life. This was not the first time they had seen something miraculous, they could not have been too surprised Jesus made it happen again.

I think that’s where my heart is, somewhere on that vacillating line between shocked and not surprised, if it’s possible for a heart to live in that paradox. 

//

We know now that two fish and five loaves of bread was indeed enough to feed more than five thousand people on that Passover holiday all those centuries ago. It was sufficient “for so many.” 

Will I be? 

The news of a 6th baby shocked me, because my husband got a vasectomy a year ago, I only have one fallopian tube, and we still got pregnant anyway (while I was breastfeeding!). I'm shocked that we now own a 12-passenger van, as if I'm running a summer camp or working for the HVAC repair company. Nothing practical in me says this pregnancy is possible, or that my capability is enough. 

But I'm not surprised either, because there is a sovereign God behind every detail of life, and statistics have never been in the way with him. It is Jesus, after all, who feeds the masses with only enough for two, and comes back to get us every time we wander away thinking that He just isn’t facing reality when he puts good work before us, forgetting how safe we are with him - a God of unexplainable miracles.

Who am I for so many? I don’t know the answer. But every day I think I'm not capable of raising six children, I’ll take comfort in knowing someone much greater than me says otherwise.

Cannon turned four years old this week. We celebrated with a family dinner, and his therapist decorated his room with a banner and a few balloons. It was all low-key and simple. He would not have wanted, nor would he have really understood, any more fanfare than that. But from start to finish, the whole day had me guarding tears and hiding my red eyes under a hat.

He did not really like when we sang ‘Happy Birthday' to him. He refused the gluten and dairy free cookies I made just for the occasion. He still has no idea what to do with a present put in front of him and we worked all day on getting him to answer one question: “Cannon, how old are you?” He still responds with, “I’m Cannon,” a response I know I should not scoff at, because “What’s your name?” took the better part of a year to get to. But still, “I’m four” is an elusive concept and as much as I want to, I cannot will it to come from his mouth. 

I woke up that day wanting his birthday to resemble, even in the smallest ways, the birthday of a neuro-typical four-year-old: enjoying a few new toys and smiling as we brought out a special birthday treat, feeling loved and celebrated in the way birthdays should make you feel. For Cannon it was just another day: therapy in the morning, school after lunch, play in the backyard until we make him come inside. For me, the whole day was reminder after reminder of what isn’t. 

And I couldn’t help but feel one thing: I just wish it was different.  

I don’t always feel that way about this journey. In fact, most days I feel confidence. While he is not even on most neurological development bell curves, this little guy has come so far since his diagnosis. On his second birthday I remember trying to get him to look over at me when I called his name so I could just take a picture of him, and the closest we could get was when Alex finally got a smirk after practically standing on his own head to get Cannon’s attention. Today, he can say “cheese” when I tell him to smile. On his third birthday he had a few words, but today he has lots of words, hundreds of them. Mostly nouns, a few high frequency requests, and with a little bit of guiding he can sing “The Wheels on the Bus” and knows most of the songs from Daniel Tiger, often surprising us with sweet sentences like “You can choose to be kind!” Watching him learn and grow is one of the greatest delights of my life; it is hard to put words to the feeling of seeing your son do something you really wondered if he would ever be able to do.

But it’s also hard to put words to the feeling of longing for something he might never do. 

Those are the two lanes that special needs parents travel this journey in: sheer joy and complete uncertainty. One has the scenic view of patience and hope and gratitude for the littlest things – and all of those sentiments are so real and genuine, you never want to leave that lane. But it’s so easy to drift, too easy; and often without warning you can find yourself traveling down the road littered with potholes of bitterness and unending questions – there are just so many questions– and your journey goes from pointing out the beauty around you to gripping the wheel in silent anger. It’s usually when my hands are clenched tight that I start to wonder again why we are on this road at all, and that’s when I wish it was different. 

And then, in the very next moment, I feel guilty for wishing it was different, as if I do not love my son fully and completely as the exact little boy he is. But then I want him to have a friend to celebrate his birthday with him so badly the tears can barely be held in. Pretty quickly I am back to feeling grateful for how healthy he truly is – in the special needs world you do not take for granted when your children can walk and jump and speak at all, and one visit to the pick-up line at Cannon’s preschool will remind you of that. But then I land back over in sadness, because we’ve been to a half dozen different four-year-olds’ birthday parties in the last few months, with lots of friends and presents and cake, and I am not even sure my little guy understands what a birthday party is. Back and forth, drifting between the emotions that are opposite one another, but both completely true. 

If you’re wondering if you can feel gratitude and sadness at the same time, ask a mother - she’ll tell you that you can. 

I think there are going to be many more days in our lives that I will wish things were different, but I take heart knowing that, for one brief moment, as he waited for the whole purpose of his life’s story to unfold, Jesus did too. 

“Father, if you’re willing, take this cup from me.”*

God, if there is any other way, please do it. If your plan can be different than this one, I’m asking you one last time to consider it. You are the Creator and Sustainer of all, you could change this! You could make another way!

“Yet not my will, but yours be done.”

And it was. And the one thing Jesus begged God to do differently became the best thing that ever happened to any of us.

At this juncture, there are many days when it is hard to imagine how the struggles of a little boy could lead to something good. But then again, we are still waiting for the rest of the story, too. 

I don’t know what Cannon will be like on his fifth birthday. I dream of one day celebrating the incredible progress that every special needs mama holds a sliver of a vision of, but I live mostly in the day to day, because there’s enough to both celebrate and cry over on any given one. But I do know this, on the days I want something different, I remember that one day, everything will be different. We live with the promise of Heaven, sealed by the one thing God did not take from his son.

Until then, I’ll keep counting the ways that being Cannon’s mom became one of the best things that ever happened to me.

*Luke 22:42

The envelope sat on my desk for three weeks before I opened it. I had seen the return address right when I pulled it out of the mailbox, The Department of Health and Social Services logo with the name of our assigned social worker from the Developmental Disabilities Administration.

Why I still flinch just a little bit when I see that logo in the mail, I do not know.

She had called me the week before to remind me of our son’s upcoming fourth birthday, and that his status with Early Intervention Services through DDA would officially be terminated unless I reapplied for eligibility.

“Was he ever officially diagnosed or were his delays compensated through services?” she asked.

“No ma’am, he was diagnosed with Autism-II in October of 2016.”

“Ok, he will remain eligible for DDA services then, as long as his diagnosis came from an appropriate specialist.”

“Yes, it did.” I responded. (He was also not very kind, that specialist, but I leave that part out).

“I will need a copy of all of his paperwork, and I am sending you the application packet for ages 4-21 today. I’ll need it back no later than 90 days before your son’s fourth birthday.”

“Thank you.” I said. I think I meant it as a question though. 

“You’re welcome, Mrs. Blackburn. Happy Holidays!”

Three weeks later, with a post-it note on the refrigerator daily reminding me to “Renew DDA for Cannon!” I was still ignoring it. The truth is, I don’t like going back. The diagnosis paperwork is 11 pages of hard for me, line after line of quantification and qualification of a sweet little boy that I think falls far short of capturing him, but to any objective observer is frustratingly accurate.

But I don’t love looking forward too much, either, and getting mail from the Developmental Disabilities Administration with flyers reminding me of our legal rights, tips for starting school, and programs around our city for those with developmental disabilities is exactly that – a monthly notice that will not let us forget Cannon’s future will be unchartered territory for all of us.

None of this is what I pictured four years ago, when we opened a gift on Christmas day and saw a little blue blanket inside. “It’s a boy!” we all yelled, followed by tears of joy and an immediate image of a big sister squeezing her little brother on the next Christmas card. And when life gives us a story that we’re not prepared to live out, our immediate reaction is to resist it. I think maybe that is why I cried for most of that first year, because when reality keeps running head first into a hard heart, it hurts. Reality needs a soft place to land and I would not, could not, give it one.

So God had to completely change what I couldn’t.

There is a popular tale among special needs parents called ‘Welcome to Holland’ – a metaphoric story about planning a trip to Italy, learning the Italian language and studying the maps of the cities you’ll visit, even getting on the flight to meet all of your friends there and then hearing upon arrival, “Welcome to Holland.”

Holland? But you’ve been planning to go to Italy. You got familiar with Italy. All of your friends are sharing beautiful pictures from Italy and you really want to be in Italy.

You want to hear your little boy sing in the preschool Christmas program with other three year olds, not fill out DDA paperwork.

You want to sign him up for Tiny Tots soccer, not a one-to-one aide for group settings.

There is a list 100 items long that you would rather be doing than the work in front of you, and I think it is ok to acknowledge that. It’s not, however, ok to stay there. 

God’s story of his chosen people is one story after another of someone not getting what they want, but getting something only God could do. Sarah wanted children in her youth, God gave her Isaac when she was 100 years old. Jeremiah wanted anything but the work of a prophet, God gave him words that would be cherished and studied by believers for the rest of earthly history. Paul wanted to go with Silas to Asia to share the gospel, God re-directed him to Greece and brought the gospel to Europe for the first time.

If I am learning anything from God’s narrative and history of redeeming a broken people in a broken world, it is that what we want is not always a great indicator of God’s perfect plan, for our lives and for His glory. And at some point we have to decide what gets our time, our energy, and our prayers: what we want, or what God is actually doing. How we answer that with our lives will change everything – perhaps most importantly it will change how you see what must be done. To borrow from Goethe, you’ll learn to love it. It may be impossible to see right now, but one day at a time, regardless of what you are carrying and even when it is so hard the tears far outweigh hope, you’ll still be so thankful God chose you for something you could never do on your own. 

a third birthday reflection for just enough brave

On the bottom of our six-level bookshelf, a dozen journals are stacked and cozied up against the left hand corner. That’s my childhood, I think whenever I see them there. And not just my childhood, but my angsty teen years and thought-I-knew-it-all college years, and even the combination of lonely + intense + amazing graduate school years.  Every now and then, I pull out these journals that I have kept for a few decades now, and I read through some of the entries. Allow me to entertain you for a moment with a few highlights:

November 5, 2001

Dear Journal - Well, I don’t know where to start; my life’s been crazy lately with school, soccer and a boyfriend. It’s almost too much stress for me to handle. I seriously can’t get anything done.

December 5, 2001

Dear Journal - Guess what, I made All-American! Pretty cool huh? Oh, and Chris left yesterday for the Marines! He left so quickly! I’m really gonna miss him! My mom is really sad about it! 

December 26, 2001

Dear Journal - It’s the day after X-mas and winter break is going on right now! It’s so awesome. I’m still doing ok on my diet, but I’ve cheated a few times! Brian and I are still 2together. He got me some really pretty earrings and a Bop It for X-mas. Our 2-month anniversary was last Thursday! Wow, huh?

December 18, 2002

Dear Journal - Well here it’s been a whole year and I haven’t written! I’m so sorry! But I’m not gonna forget for a while now, I promise! Here’s what’s happened: Broke up with Brian (he was so dumb and I had absolutely no regrets), went to Homecoming with Kevin Madsen and it was fun. I didn’t go to my Junior Prom because I was coming home from Florida with the National Team that day, but it was totally ok ‘cuz I didn’t really want to go. Hard to explain but I really didn’t. I played really bad in Florida, and I know it was because I screwed myself over by not eating enough. But I won’t let that happen again! Rage finally beat the Blues in the semis at Regionals. It was so awesome! Then we won the whole thing. But the week before Nationals I tore my ACL at Regional Camp. But I’ll be back on that National Team, I will! And one of the coolest things happened: I’m going to Arizona State! I absolutely love it there and couldn’t be happier about my decision. Gosh a lot has happened that I can’t believe I never told you about. But I promise more details later. This was just a quick recap! I’ll write tomorrow, but it is 12:17 and I have to wake up in 6 hours! Bye!

A few reflections:

*Almost too much stress for me to handle. Oh my. Tell me about it, fifteen-year-old Katie.

*Brian, if you ever read this, you were not dumb. You were a very sweet first boyfriend to me.

*I remember the day my older brother left for the Marines, just three months after 9/11 and with everyone thinking war would be imminent at some point soon. My mom wasn’t just sad about it, she was devastated. I can still picture that day so well, and I remember that I had never seen her like that, with swollen eyes from crying and so few words to even talk about it. I could not have understood that feeling as a teenager, but with three of my own now, I think get it.

*The diet stuff. Ugh. What I see as I read it now is the start of almost a decade of stronghold for me; almost ten years of starving, bingeing, purging, writing down every single calorie that I put in my mouth and now a lifetime of stomach issues that are very likely a result of the way I treated my poor body for too long. All because a fifteen-year-old really wanted a six pack.

*The people in my life as a teenager helped define it. I think I’ll be holding on to that thought quite a bit.

Of course my journal entries got deeper as my faith and maturity did. I wrote through the next decade in much the same way: highlight by highlight - more soccer and more injuries, more food issues, more boy issues. In fact, that last topic took over around 2008, because I had been in about six weddings at that point and had never had a date to bring to one, and a clear sense of longing seemed to accost my words for the next few years. Then children came in to the picture, and it wasn’t so much a place of longing I was writing from, but a place of desperation, with Lord, please help me! sentiments of all kinds.

And that emotion is usually where I still write from.

Three years ago, just enough brave was born. After four years of blogging with my best friend, I had planned on putting the words—at least the ones for the internet—to rest for a while. But when a friend asked me over breakfast one morning why I wasn’t writing, I realized I didn’t have a good answer, and I definitely did not have a God answer. (Side note: these kind of friends are good ones. Keep them around). So I started again from the most honest place I could think of, and that was the desire to be brave. Just enough brave.

Life and motherhood have taken a hard turn off the map I had spent a few decades of life plotting and following, walking me and Alex straight into unknown and fairly scary territory. But I kept writing, and this tiny space on the internet has safely held some of the most vulnerable words that have ever come out of my heart. I have always, always loved this about writing: it helps me see what is true about me in ways I could not have seen before I wrote it all down. And still, the best part comes a few years (sometimes decades) later, when you can look back and laugh at the things you thought were stressful, cry at the hard lessons you thought you understood but had to really learn the hard way, and mostly see how far God has brought you - how his provision has never wavered, and how he has been good enough to not give us what we want, but what we need. My words have truly become an anthology of getting what I needed.

For that reason alone, I’m so glad I wrote it all down.

Here’s the truth: writing for my own heart and writing for an audience are two very different things, and I have found that I am not very good at doing both. But I have also found that when I do the former, the later seems to happen organically. Unforced rhythms are the most sustainable rhythms, and I think that is true in every area of life, but certainly in writing.

Writing has taught me so much; more than I know how to sum up and wrap a bow around, because the lessons never stop. It has taught me to be honest and to be brave. It has shown me my pride and my tendency to compare myself to others. It has been the friend that has never kept score but welcomed me with open arms when I returned after a long break. And it has been what God has used to lift my eyes back up to him. I have loved words my whole life, but now I need them.

An anthology of getting what I needed. Thank you, Jesus.

For Cannon, on his third birthday

He came into the world so easily—one push, two pushes, then a baby boy on my chest, with a precious little face that mirrored his daddy’s from the very beginning. We wrapped him in a yellow, gray and blue blanket, the one he still spends every night with, and brought him home the day before Mother’s Day. I wish I had written more during those first few months of his life, or maybe taken more pictures. I don’t remember them like I want to, or like I remember them with his big sister. The details escape me every single time I try to recall them and for this, I feel so guilty. But I do remember that everything about him was gentle: the way he slept, his smile, his cuddle, his coos, even his yellow, gray and blue blanket.

But three years and three kids are not kind to a tired mama’s memory. And when we add the hazy details about when it all started to change, when the gentleness faded into disconnection and the coos stopped attempting to become words, it gets even hazier. It was an eighteen-month well-check, then a speech therapist, then a special school, then a specialist, and a hundred thousand moments of is this what I think it is?

It was. It is.

The tears still come, all the time I’m afraid. I would love to report that we’ve moved in to the rhythm of autism and we’ve got it, but that’s a lie. All we’ve got is Jesus, but that’s enough.

Because even through the fog that has been the last three years, and the way it got so thick and scary since the diagnosis, I do know this: when something is wrong, you have to make sense pretty quickly of a God who only does what is right. And this does not happen in a few peaceful quiet times and some tranquilly answered prayers in a journal. For me, it has been more like a street fight, questions thrown like punches and protests of my heart held out in self-defense. A broken record of Why? How? When? My fault? on repeat in my head the whole time.

It took me many months to understand I was asking the wrong questions. The only one I really needed answered was who?

The simplicity of it all still catches me off guard, because the everyday reality of life is anything but simple. I was drowning, spending all of my strength to keep my head above the water and when you’re working that hard to just fight the current you cannot hold anything else. But a new question and a new answer came in like a life preserver—it didn’t take me out of the ocean but it allowed to catch my breath, rest, and not have to fight so hard. It told me we would make it.

The answer to who was this: a perfect God, and a precious little boy.

If God had not given me Cannon, I wonder if I would have ever cared to look and learn how big He truly is? I could not even see the shoreline from where I was, yet God holds the entire ocean in the palm of his hand. This, still, is the most miraculous thing in the world to me.

The road ahead is long, and it is for a lifetime. I won’t pretend that the lessons are done being taught and that we can wrap this all up in a pretty bow and call it complete. In fact, I think it’s the opposite. After the hardest, most tear-filled year, I think we are only just starting. But if at one time I was drowning and unable to see the shore, today I have a life preserver and I do, very clearly in fact, see the shore: it’s God’s glory, his eternal purpose and redemptive plan for all of life. It’s not going to be easy to get there, but we will.

I went in to watch Cannon sleep last night; he is still so gentle in everything he does, even in his sleep. As I watched his chest rise and fall all I could think about were the words “It’s your breath in our lungs, so we pour out our praise…” God’s breath, Cannon’s lungs, my praise. And then I thought about this: we are never really drowning when God is doing the breathing.

*****

I had no idea three years ago what life would look like today. And I have no idea what it will look like in another three. I know so much more and so much less at the very same time, and I am ok with that. But it’s His breath, our lungs, and for His glory. And I do know that’s enough to get us to the shore.

Cannon Lee, who would I be if it weren’t for you? Love you forever, sweet boy. We will get there together, I know it. 

We snuggled up on opposite ends of our oversized couch, sunshine streaming in the window enough to light the room that perfect hue of morning soft, of peace. She had come over with coffee in hand, one for each of us, because all attempts to catch up at an actual coffee shop seem to be thwarted by little people these days. But friends who get that, who can walk in to your home during naptime and squeeze one hour of heart sharing in to their day, and your day, they are a special class of blessing.

With my legs folded up underneath me and hands wrapped around my warm latte, she started with the question we all start with, the default, the one that is clear enough to be universally understood but flexible enough to be taken to any level one chooses to answer with.

“Katie, sweet friend, how are you?”

*****

Maybe it is the season I am in, but the days feel so long. I am up before the sun comes through my eastward office window every morning, circling phrases in God’s word with the intention of carrying their truth far in to my day, but the impact so often lingers only as long as it takes me to walk up the stairs when the first little feet start to pitter patter above me.

I get breakfast ready, fill the baby’s bottle with milk and more often than not have to prop him up with a pillow—holding the third child is becoming more and more of a luxury time does not always allow me these days. I find the preschool bag and finally remember to look at the notes the teacher sent home the day before. We needed to help refill the class snack closet? I’ll grab some animal crackers next time I am at the store. I play hokey pokey with my words for ten minutes before I finally convince the four-year-old to let me comb her hair, and then I listen to her tell me a dozen times how much it hurts when I do. It does not hurt, it’s just part of the deal to tell me it does. I get the two-year-old’s school bag and fill it with his favorite snacks, things he will be motivated to work for at therapy, food that he will happily pick up his picture cards, matching them to the correct name, and hand them to the therapist for. We find socks and shoes and pants and shirts and does any of it match? It does not matter. If it’s clean, or clean enough, it works.

And we are off. One parent does preschool drop-off and another does therapy and the baby goes along for the ride. It’s 8:30am. The whole day is still ahead of us and I already feel like a crazy person and didn’t I read something this morning about nothing being outside of Jesus’ control?* Someday I will remember with clarity, and maybe some application, what I read just three hours earlier.

But I am good. I’m so good. Because this is all I ever wanted. This life, with little mismatched socks and long blonde hair that hates to be combed and three small people who need me for so many things, it is my dream job, and I don’t deserve it. It’s a contradiction of sorts, this incongruity between the life I prayed for and the feelings I sometimes have for it in the middle of the day to day minutiae. But when everyone is buckled in safely and we are all on the way to our places for the morning, I’m overcome with gratitude. What beautiful work I’ve been given to do.

So yes, I am so, so good.

*****

I went in to this new year with many dreams for my words, for the writing I love to do. I have a book proposal and essay topics outlined in pink and yellow post-it notes on the wall of my office and I look at it every day, sometimes with confidence and sometimes with a cringe. What do you want to do with this, Jesus? Does the world even need more words right now? Of course the answer is no. The world does not need more words; we need more quiet, more listening ears. But the world does need more obedience, more humble disciples doing their best with their gifts to make much of Jesus and not make anything of themselves.

Perhaps that is the source of my tension. I really have nothing to say if I am not in some way talking about how things only make sense in my head because of God, and didn’t I just read that nothing is outside of Jesus’ control? But in a world full, so full, of good writers and beautiful creators and social media mavens giving advice on how to increase one’s platform, my head is leaning in and listening and reporting back telling me “yes, yes, do all those things and keep-up-with-the-hypothetical-‘writing Jones’. But my heart pauses, telling me that my words should only be building a platform for the gospel to stand on, not me. Never me. What on earth do I actually have to offer from that platform?

But I am good. I’m so good. Because this is a beautiful tension to wrestle out. This life with a love of words and an even greater love for Jesus, it is my privilege to do the hard work of creating something meaningful but staying small in the process. It’s a contradiction of sorts, this incongruity between the dreams of ‘being a real writer!’ and the conviction that I am supposed to be the smallest, most insignificant part of that dream. But at the end of the day— or maybe I should say at the end of an essay— when somehow my own heart is still and in awe of the way God is weaving every detail of our stories into the most glorious picture, I’m overcome with gratitude. What beautiful work I’ve been given to do.

So yes, I’m good. I’m so, so good.

*****

There are a hundred moving parts to our days, and every one of us has a posture toward God that affects how we handle, and what we build with, all of those parts.

Some days it is hard, it is really hard.

Some days it is fun, it is really fun.

Most days it is a mix of those things, like life generally is. We rejoice and mourn, celebrate and repent, gather and find solitude, and do our best to be busy with the right things.

So how am I?

I am a sinner saved by grace. It’s a contradiction of sorts, this incongruity between the life I deserve and the one I have been given because of grace. I am still figuring this all out, and I think I always will be. But when I think about that question, “How are you?” and I hold out the things that make up who I am, and I know what—I know Who—they are all for, I’m overcome with gratitude. What beautiful work I’ve been given to do.

In all of it— in the mothering and cleaning, the disciplining and special-needs-learning, the good work of words and the important work of loving others, in all things, God has supplied all I need not to make it easy, but to make it.

So I’m good. I’m so, so good. Because God is. May that always be my answer.    

*Hebrews 2:8b

It’s crazy out there, isn’t it? The banter and the name calling, the rhetorical one-upping, and the utter loss of respectful modes of communication from the top down. I feel like I am watching a street fight with wide eyes, every so often hearing my own voice chime in with a “yes, good hit!” and then immediately feeling ashamed for condoning violence at all. It is so much easier to just hide away, to close the browser, turn off the news, and just stop talking about all these things: these leaders and laws and marches and 'who exactly are we keeping away and why?'. But history does not have a strong record of happy endings when too many people look away.

Today, I have three little babies right in front of me. They are so innocent, so blissfully unaware of the rhetoric informing the world they are growing up in. But not for long. They see my despondent demeanor, they catch moments of conversations that don’t yet make sense but plant words and emotions they grapple with. They do not know what they do not know yet, but the puzzle pieces are collecting and putting together a scene of history that is, and will be, theirs. If for no one else but them, I want to lean in to conversations. In fact, I have to. Truthfully, I’m not sure how to put all of these puzzle pieces together either. 

I cannot and will not attempt to explain executive orders. I am far too unfamiliar with government structures and systems to speak to them. If I am honest, I could not even name the members of my local city council, so making generalizations about our government feels unfair. I have many questions and many concerns, and a gut-level reaction that is waving a red flag at what is happening on a policy level, but I do not feel informed enough to speak to them, not yet.

I am also just a mom. I stay home with my kids and teach a little bit and find the fringe hours to put together words but I am not a lawyer, a lobbyist, a government employee, a journalist, economist, historian or anyone else who has the background and context to understand both immigration and law.  

But on the other hand, I am a mom! Full stop. And I think that qualifies me for a whole lot. It makes me both a stakeholder and an influencer, and it also means I get a say in all of this and how I let the conversations 'out there'  take on life in our home. And the problem I see right in front of me, the thing that this mom can do something about today, is fear.

I am also crazy about Jesus, so I start there, with what I know about him and how he felt about people, and about fear.

 And he was pretty clear on both of those things.

Jesus had immense, palpable compassion for people; for his followers who often had such trouble actually understanding him, and for the lost who often could not recognize him. He came with truth and never shied away from it, but his gospel was not one of self-preservation. And he spoke about fear often, never once saying that it was acceptable to live with but always reminding us that there was really only one thing to be afraid of: our own sin.

I do not say this lightly, but I think we sorely misunderstand following Jesus if we believe faith in him is in any way about self-preservation. And I think we thwart efforts for the gospel to move forward when we let fear get too big. Because when we are scared, we get a little too pushy about the boundaries of our self-preservation and we tend to start drawing the lines of our safety further and further away. But logic tells us what happens when we decide our lives need to take up more space: someone else loses theirs.

But this is where I, just a mom, come in. This is when I choose the true gospel of grace by faith, centered on a man who willingly lost his life to save mine; not the American gospel of save yourself, centered on an ideology that our lives are more valuable because they are privileged, or that this life is all that we have.

Grace by faith remembers the sovereignty of God and falls to our knees at the reality of who we are without Jesus. It declares and reminds our hearts every single day that God is either fully in control or not at all, even when we have no possible way of understanding all his reasons. Grace by faith says the way to true life is found in laying ours down, and quite possibly losing it, keeping true fear in a proper perspective. Grace by faith says his glory is far more important than my security. Grace by faith remembers that we have a breath of time to know Jesus in this world and an eternity to finally enjoy him forever.

I do not take safety for granted. I want to feel safe, and I want my kids to feel safe. Of course I do. And I think we are allowed that. We make decisions every day to draw those lines of safety in places that allow our hearts to rest, and those are all a little bit different for each of us. We pick schools, foods, locations, cars, and a hundred other things for our children based on what we believe is safest.

But what I am determined not to do is draw a boundary line of safety so big that I can no longer reach anyone with the gospel. Or a line so big it hurts another mama’s chance at safety for her babies. Or a line so big I get comfortable in a home I was never meant to be all that comfortable in, but rather create a home I am willing to risk losing in order to gain the one I was actually created for. Only grace by faith can help me keep those lines in the right place.

I am just a mom, but I am the mom who is going to teach my three about fear, so that makes me, and all of us just moms, pretty damn important. My kids are either going to learn to be afraid of everyone and everything- of entire people groups, of turbans and accents and different shades of skin- or they are going to learn that we are all sinners in need of a savior, and that we are only to be afraid of what can kill the soul, not the body. I’m determined to teach them the latter, for one simple reason: that is what Jesus taught us. 

So today, this mama chooses faith, and actually counts my life as nothing compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus. Because I want the life I have been given to matter. I want to do what I see Jesus commanding us to do.

I am just a mom, but I think I have the most important job in the world right now.

The lure of the blank calendar, it tempts me with possibilities every single year. This is the year I will be more, be different, be better, I think. And because I cannot resist the temptation offered by a package of new sharpie pens and a completely clean planner, I dive in to New Year’s dreaming and goal-setting and word-choosing like the best of them. I consider myself a connoisseur of list-making, actually: those of you who share in my joy of ‘checking boxes’ will understand that. And this year, perhaps more than any other, and I know with so many of you, I am desperate for new.

Desperate: having an urgent need; eager, impatient, fraught, forlorn. It sounds a bit dramatic when I put it like that, but in some ways it is an accurate representation of my heart.

__________

Just after Thanksgiving my little family drove to the base of Mt. Spokane and cut down our own Christmas Tree for the first time. It was cold and damp and gray outside, and I had to grab Cannon by the hood of his jacket no less than five times before he took himself for a jaunt into the woods, but we absolutely loved it. There was a bonfire and candy canes and the smell of fresh pine everywhere. We found the perfect tree for the corner of our living room, cut it down and then watched the staff get it ready to travel home.

Just before they wrapped our tree, a young man placed the base in a small box-looking machine, stepped back and turned it on. With wide eyes and a bit of confusion, Harper watched this machine shake our tree relentlessly, buzzing and humming as thousands of little pine needles fell to the ground around it.

“What is he doing, mommy?”

“Oh Harper, that machine is actually helping our tree. It’s going to make all the pine needles that aren’t healthy fall off, so that what we take home is a beautiful, strong tree!”

“Why is it so loud?”

“Well, it has to shake pretty hard to do its job. But once it is done, our tree will be fresh and ready to decorate!”

“Oh,” she said in relief, believing me when I told her what was happening to our tree was good, even though it looked intense.

I think I know a little bit how that tree felt, because this has been the year God took my faith, gently held it out for me to look at, and gave it a good, hard, much-needed shaking.      

And as much as I want to run to something new, something with potential rather than memories I cannot change, I know that God didn’t do all that shaking just for me to move on even though I so want to. I want to move on. I want to stop crying and feeling fragile when I pride myself on being faithful. I want to get back to genuine joy. I even want to write about something different, something that isn't born from the curveball life threw at us this year. I want to stop feeling like I am putting one foot in front of the other simply doing what I am supposed to do and start feeling like I am running my race with the energy and purpose a Christ-follower should have.

But sometimes, it’s not as easy as that. Sometimes, we just need to slow down, then take a good look at all the things that fell off of our heart during the shaking: the pride, the self-sufficiency, the correlation between my works and my blessings that I absolutely believed existed. The life that I wanted was also one that I thought was honoring God; but it was, in all honestly, equally honoring to me. And that life, with those motivations, that is what is left on the ground right around me.

__________

For 30 years, I have had a strong faith in Jesus, one I believe is grounded in as much logic as faith can have, but made true only by the work of the Holy Spirit in me. My belief in Jesus has, for as long as I can remember, been real and deep and even meaning-making for me. It is how I have always seen the world and three decades and many naysayers offering perspectives to the contrary later, I still cannot make sense of the world any other way but His. And yet, my faith has been the faith of someone on the balcony, not the faith of someone traveling down the road.

Sure, I’ve given my thoughts, offered my opinions on the best way to get there- wherever the destination might have been- even shared truths meant to motivate and encourage travelers. But I’ve done it from the balcony. I have talked about God being good, but it’s been from a personal place where it was really easy to believe that. I've never been one to ignore the pain and plight of so much of the world, but I never had to bring that pain and plight home. This year, I have, and I feel a whole lot more like a traveler. I still talk about God being good, but I have to watch a little boy hurt himself in my care and actually believe it; we have to face a very unpredictable and very unnerving future and say "but God, you are still good."

The balcony was not a bad place to be, but being a traveler is what finally shook all that wasn’t real off of my faith.

A year ago I would have offered you a little bit of Jesus and a little bit of me.

Today I know I have nothing to offer, I'm just sharing what I’m learning as I travel.

__________
 

A few days ago I went to leave a message for a group of friends about why I could not commit to something, and without warning the tears just started falling. It is in moments like these that I realize I might not be done being shaken. When my friend asks at gymnastics class how we are, or when a phone call across the country to my best friend goes from easy catching up to deep sorrow about a hard week in seconds. My unbelief gives me away in moments like this. I am shamefully prideful and still, at times, feel paper thin. I never know when I will be able to talk about our life and Cannon’s journey in a manner of fact way or when I won’t be able to get a sentence out before I’m choking up. But I do know this: we are not moving on from this year as much as we are moving in to what this year taught us. And in the midst of a complicated diagnosis that very much complicated our life, that lesson can be summed up pretty easily: God is faithful forever, perfect in love, and sovereign over us. 

My prayer is that I would walk in to a New Year knowing that my faith may have been shaken, but my soul isn't stirred. Jesus won it long ago and he will keep it until the end. I'll fail a thousand more times at doing this life well, but He won't. Maybe I'm not desperate for new so much as I am desperate for Him. 

I fell hard on the ice last week. Real hard. It happened in an instant: I was getting babies out of their car seats to go watch a preschool Christmas concert and in no time at all I was on the ground of the parking lot with a one-year-old cocooned to my chest, unaware of the fall at all. But if my instinctual reaction was to protect Jordi, something else had to give, and since no hands were available to break my fall it was just a tailbone and solid ice. The pain quickly shot up my back and down my right leg, but an entourage of parents and grandparents ready to see their four-year-olds under the spotlight were all sympathetically “ohhh” and “ouchhh”-ing from a few feet away, so I had to act like this was no big deal. But it was. I smiled my way through the concert and then finally let myself feel how much it hurt when we got home, and as I laid on my back unable to roll up to my tailbone at all, I realized that this was basically a perfect metaphor for what life can feel like: I fell, it hurt, and I cannot carry all of this anymore.

My heart has always battled bouts of this urge to quit. Always. I ran for student council president in eight grade and lost and then never, ever tried again, even though I always wanted to. But trying again and losing was basically the worst thing my fourteen-year-old mind could imagine happening so it was never worth the risk. It took me six solid years of writing before I ever called myself a writer, because for most of those six years I operated on a fast-moving pendulum of “I want to write forever!” to “I should quit, no one like these words anyway,” and the poles of those feelings could knock back and forth on the daily.

Because here is the thing: trying feels vulnerable, and what if you try and fail? The people pleaser in me feels the slightest bit of shame at even the thought.

And last week, perhaps more than I have ever felt the urge to quit, I really wanted to. I was at the end of what I could handle, the joy I should have in the faces of my babies felt more like a grudge, the words I put to paper felt meaningless, and my body physically craved a sleep so deep that I could just have a break from thinking about all that is in front of me right now.

The narrative reel of my mind spun on storylines like:

Years of therapy produces no real results for autistic child.

Strong-willed teenage daughter rebels from parents.

Mom writes about trusting God in hard circumstances but cannot actually trust him when life is the hardest.

The theme was clear: what if I try so hard at all of these things God has given me, and ultimately, I fail?

When that question creeps in, I resort to doing what I have done so many times before: I decided I simply cannot try so hard, because that gives my heart an illusion of being a little bit more protected.

But here is what I know: that is the wrong narrative to begin with, and that is fear. Because God has given us work to do. It’s hard work, sometimes it is downright painful work, but it is good work. It’s parenting for the long haul and accepting that even when we steward these little hearts to the best of our ability, we are merely planting and only God makes things grow; it is repairing what the world would absolutely deem a hopeless marriage even when you would be justified in walking away from it; it is doing what you know God has given you to do: writing, creating, serving, making music, caring and pouring in to someone even when it feels like none of it matters. Remember that the world uses a very different metrics system than Jesus, and if it is this work that we want to quit, these good endeavors that God can truly get all the glory for, I think it is really the Holy Spirit pushing at the seams of our heart saying, “Pay attention to me, because if you’re trying to do this on your own you will want to quit.”

(And sometimes that nudge is less gentle and you actually fall on your arse, which is apparently what my heart needed to pay attention.)

Life is not so pretty and clean-cut that I can pretend a well-written sentiment will be enough to get me through the hardest things. I know myself well enough to be certain that I will want to quit again, because there will be long seasons that do not produce fruit and there will be efforts met with no applause and there will always be fear competing with faith.

And there will always, always be Jesus.

The target of our lives is not moving. It is sure, and it is steady, because our aim is the glory of God. It is not elusive, and it is not just beyond what I can manage. It’s there. My job is simply to reorient my steps to that end, and not to the gains I hope for in this world because those are the things that are moving. Following Jesus has always been modeled by laying down our lives and our gains for something better, for Him.

Perhaps my favorite prayer in all of scripture comes from the plea of a desperate father, crying out to Jesus and saying, “I believe; help my unbelief!” Those words might be all we can find, but when we want to quit, they are also all that we need.

Lord, I do believe. Help my unbelief! Help me Jesus, to not want the kind of faith that believes you are only good if our circumstances change, but to believe that you are good because you never change. 

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

Colossians 1:15-17

By him. Through him. For him.

Six words that are becoming a lifeline to my anxious, wandering heart these days.

Right in front of me, I see so much that makes me want to run. I see a stack of insurance paperwork that has officially overgrown the paperclip. I see a scatterplot data sheet where I track every single SIB (self-injurious behavior) my sweet boy resorts to out of frustration so that we can nail down antecedents and coping mechanisms.

I see a handful of dear friends absolutely distraught at the outcome of our democratic process and another handful hesitantly relieved. I see our communities existing on far ends of a spectrum that no man-made bridge can bring together, and I see fingers pointing at one another across the aisles of our churches, not just our political leanings. But I see many people somewhere in the middle, knowing that from the day we demanded a king* our fate was sealed: a sinner would always be our political leader, no matter the banner they carried in to that position.

But it’s a mess, so much of it. Life can be a mess. Autism is brutal and politicians operate and execute on half-truths, at best. And I have to be honest, some days my mind runs anxiously away with the headlines: the ones in my own home and the ones we are screaming at one another.

But by him. Through him. For him.

All things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities— by him, through him, and for him.

It’s a truth that stands forever. But dang, it does beg some hard questions from us. When I look at my Cannon, I don’t get the luxury of basking in God’s goodness because circumstances are good. No. Autism is so, so hard. Instead, we have to confront questions like this: is it really possible that something like autism could exist for God’s purposes? Would a loving God really allow a child to have a handicap that he will carry with him through adulthood, or is this just a flaw in the system?

And as followers of Jesus, we don’t get the luxury of looking around the world and at our own nation and putting hashtag blessed on every picture of the flag. No. People are hurting and scared and imagining a future in this very country they believe their own children are not welcome in. Instead we have to ask if we truly believe that God knew before he divided darkness and light who would be the head of the free world all these millennia later. Would He allow corruption and power hungry men and women in places of great decision-making power? Would he allow a nation to fall? Would he sustain a nation through turmoil and blame shifting? Was the election of 2016 just a mistake while God was looking away?

By him, through him, for him.

There is no flaw in God’s system. And the only time in all of history he ever looked away was when the sin of the world landed on his precious son; a pain so great for a Father who so perfectly loved his son that even He had to turn his face away**.

So how do we make sense of all the mess?

We remember by him, through him, for him.

We go back to the truth that God’s purpose is not to bless us. That’s not popular, but it’s true. God’s purpose is his glory. His glory is our good. Our good is being made more like Jesus through the sanctifying work that is raising a child with special needs or loving a neighbor who makes us crazy or actually praying for a leader who arouses nothing but animosity in our hearts.

The hard part is not looking around at the messes we all live in and being angry; the hard part is being hopeful, in having an absolute expectation of coming good; it’s loving and listening well and showing up and standing on God’s word because it is the truest thing about who we are and what we are even doing here. The hard part is being so undone with gratitude that the world wonders how we could be so joyful when something so big invades our lives. Jesus holds all things together, even the things that look broken by autism and irrevocably damaged by leadership. If our hope was only here, of course those things would shake us. But if our hope is truly in God’s kingdom, we are not shaken because He is never shaken.

God will get the glory for every big and little story of history, even this inch of it that we occupy. We can be sure that even when we don’t understand, all things are headed toward a glorious end.

By him, through him, for him.

Six words. Such amazing grace captured in just six words.

*1 Samuel 8:1-22

**Matthew 27:46