1. Open Instagram for “just a second.” First thing in the morning is best.

2. Google literary agents. Spend extra time on the ones way you know are out of reach.

3. Read comment sections.

4. Feel anxious about all the fighting in the comment sections for hours. Perhaps take that anxiety out on the people around you in various ways, such as being absent or lacking patience.

5. Listen to podcast interviews with literary agents talking about the size of the platform they like writers to have before they will sign them. Sit with that number in despair.

6. Brainstorm ways you can build a platform without looking like you are actually trying to build a platform, then research classes on building a platform. There’s one that’s very expensive, it’s out.

7. Text your friend copious amounts of emojis trying to convey your distress about the reel situation you’re watching unfold on Instagram. Declare your writing career over because your life is simply not conducive to finding the time/ideas/skills to dance/do voice overs/act/be funny/be on your phone a lot/make a reel and grow your platform, because apparently Instagram robots says reels are better than pictures and agents say you need to do whatever is better and so you just decide to do nothing except text your friend and complain again.

8. Come to the realization that you don’t even want a platform because everyone with a platform has to referee arguments in their comment section and remember that anxiety?

9. Move your text conversation with your very understanding friend about reels to Voxer, because there is more to say. Go back and forth for an hour or so about why you can’t make reels and how much you don’t even like reels and why the heck am I giving so much of my life to this conversation anyway?

10. Try to make a reel.

//

Thanks to Daien Guo and Brevity Magazine for the prompt. And to Ashlee Gadd for sharing.

You’ve wanted to quit this whole writing thing a dozen times in the last ten years. 

Phrases like “you should be further along,” or “she published a book only three years into her public writing life, and you’re on year ten” or “does this effort even matter?” haunt you as a writer. 

You will spend hours on an essay, and it will be skimmed in under a minute by most readers.

You will wrestle with a story and the right words and the near paralyzing vulnerability only to be told “this is not good” by an editor. You’ll cry a little, or a lot. Vow never to write again, wake up the next morning and work on the edits anyway.

You will make so little money, if you’re making any at all. Covering the hosting fee of your website will feel like a victory and a justification to your husband that your little hobby isn’t a total financial drain. If you can afford a coffee with your earnings you most certainly ‘gram it, because any evidence that writing brought a tangible return is satisfying. 

You will anticipate the publishing date of an essay, on the site you were so thrilled to be accepted by, for months - thinking it will bring in likes and comments and new followers and that thrill of seeing the share number go higher and higher. It will not.

And then on a normal Tuesday your work will, unbeknownst to you, be shared somewhere by someone and you will get some new followers; but on that same Tuesday you fought with your husband and felt bitterness toward your children and absolutely nothing about your real life changed. Followers won’t unload your dishwasher for you, they can’t apologize to others on your behalf, and they have their own houses to clean.

That essay on friendship you threw together in one sitting will go somewhat viral, something you never saw coming. You’ll tell yourself you are happy so many people are tagging their friends to tell them how much they love them, but you’re secretly hoping they are tagging their friends to follow your work. Pride and selfless service will war with another all the time. 

You’ll have moments of contentment, and mostly these will come as a surprise. When your closest, real life friends read your writing and text to tell you they loved it - that’s the best. When another mama tells you she feels so understood. When your friend from the internet hand writes and sends a card in the mail from across the country and makes you cry with her kindness. 

When you truly feel like you told the story about your life in Jesus, not just Jesus in your life. Inch by inch, you’re learning the difference.

“So that’s the journey of my writing,” you think to yourself. “To just keep getting out of the way. To tell a better story, a bigger one.” You know this is much easier to say than to do, that much you’ve learned in ten years. The addictiveness of being relevant will chase you - or you will chase it - and no matter how many times it comes up empty you’ll still be tempted to think, “No, this time I’ll find what I’m looking for.” 

And then, in the sacred quiet of the early morning, you’ll realize, even for a moment, you already have it. 

You have a good, good Father, a Creator who wove creating into your soul and just the obedience to sit down and try, to show up, to pray that you would know this God more after you’ve written than you did before, that’s the victory. 

Because your audience is just one. It always has been, it always will be. 

Something about the publish button will make you forget this, will tempt you time and time again with its promises of that elusive feeling you’re chasing, that thing that’s wrapped up somewhere in the mix of a desire to matter and a desire to love Jesus well and a desire to be loved by others.

But it will let you down again - that publish button - and you’ll go back to your kitchen table, back to the quiet, and there he’ll be again, your audience of one. He’s charitable and kind and consistent in a way no one else could ever possibly be. You’ll get back at your efforts to tell stories that illuminate Him, in all the hard, in all the good, in every breath. Because you’ve learned, you know, that’s the only time you’ve ever truly felt like you’re doing what you were created to do. 

//

This essay is an exercise in second person writing, inspired by a prompt from Ashlee Gadd, who shares the whole exercise in Rhythm. Sign up to get this prompt and 51 others right here!

I don’t pretend to know what I am doing in the kitchen. My culinary accomplishments max out at chocolate chip cookies that are not flat or overcooked, an achievement that is still one I pat myself on the back for. And while I have yet to put much in to practice, I do love a good cooking show and have watched enough Top Chef to learn a few things about the basics of culinary excellence, my favorite among those tenants being the concept of mise en place.

‘Mise en place’ is a French phrase that means “everything in its place.” It refers to the setup required before cooking: chopping all the vegetables, measuring out all the spices, preparing the cuts of meat or any other ingredient needed for the dish. It means all of the necessary utensils are ready, the pots and pans are out, and the oven is preheated. For the chef, mise en place is all about being prepared. Having ‘everything in its place’ helps ensures that when the cooking begins there are fewer errors, interruptions, forgotten ingredients or time wasted. And as I watch the seasoned chefs on television take their craft so seriously, from the setup to the plating and presentation, I can’t help but think about how mise en place works in my writing, too.

The image that first comes to my mind is my big white desk. I love this desk. It is beat up and scratched, the middle drawer is broken and the whole thing needs to be sanded and re-painted, but this desk has been good to me. It’s seen me cry more than my husband, it knows how much time I’ve wasted on social media when I should have been working, and it’s given me a place big enough for my Bible and books and all the bills, too. This desk would be the first thing that goes on my mise en place list. Next would be my coffee. Cold brew coffee, that is, and maybe French press if we are out, because I’m rather picky and I cannot drink just any ole kind of coffee if I’m going to be productive. Then I would probably light a candle, because I write mostly early in the morning, and those pre-dawn hours are complimented so beautifully by the company of a pretty candle. I’d certainly have my journal and my sharpie pens out, and likely the book I am currently reading in case I remember a sentence that had given me an idea while I read. And finally my computer, placed gently in the middle of it all. Of course the house would have to be quiet, because I tend to need total silence to write anything decent. And as mentioned, it would be about 5:30am, before anyone is awake and any events of the day have stolen my mental margin for creating. Yes, this is a good mise en place.

The problem is, I hardly ever write like that.

And I think one of the biggest problems plaguing writers and creators of all kinds, is that we think we need that in order to write.

I have spent so much time pinning pictures of writing spaces or researching the best planners, hoping that if I can just organize what writing looks like it will somehow inspire the words in a new way. And I don’t think I am alone in this, as I have seen a whole lot of great flat lay pictures  of hands around a coffee cup with an open computer on someone’s lap. They are usually in bed, often with a decorative throw blanket nearby for some color and if they are really spiritual, an open Bible, too.

(I meant no offense if you have recently taken that very picture. I’m all about the pretty flat lays and I would totally open my Bible for a picture, too. I am that girl.)

I can get so caught up in thinking I need everything in its place to write that I don’t have any time left to do the actual work of writing. I want to create, but I’m stalling. I love the mental image of a writer and I sure love the finished product, but that space in between –  when it is just me and my words, battling for territory in the most true and honest places – that’s not always an easy place to be.

It is so much easier to just take the pretty picture, and in the meantime, see what everyone else is doing with what was supposed to be my writing time.

I would love to simplify writing down to a three-step formula, or the ever-popular five-point list of ‘things you need to write, and write well’. But like so much of life, writing has proven to me again and again how low-maintenance its friendship is, and that it simply does not need all that much in place. Sure, a big desk and a nice candle are luxuries, but I’ve written some of the most profound and honest words of my life in the most unlikely of places: on the small screen of my phone in the waiting room at the hospital; in the basement of my parents’ house while we lived with them in the middle of our move; short sentences that inspired entire essays while I waited for coffee or in the carpool line at preschool; at the kitchen table with Daniel Tiger in the background – because the idea came and I knew it was fleeting, and I needed thirty more minutes of help from the screen to occupy my kids before that idea left for good.

When I think about all of the writing I have done for the last eight years, I would have completed virtually none of it if I had waited until everything was in its perfect place. Because inspiration rarely waits for you to get ready; if you’re going to write, you need to be ready. Thinking that I need more than I already have in order to write is writing from a place of scarcity. But knowing, believing, and being confident that I already have far more than I need is looking at what is right in front of me and seeing the generosity of it all, and then writing from a place of abundance. And it’s a reminder I preach to myself every single day.

For me, the creative process has been so generous and so forgiving, and also so unpredictable. Our hearts don’t follow a schedule as much as they capitalize on a mind that has been searching for that inspiration all along. When I am constantly looking, always learning, and disciplined enough to be writing in as many margins as I can find, that is usually when the best words come to life.

Mise en place is an ethic, a mindset, that I love. But when it comes to creating, there are truly only a few things I need in place – and they aren’t really things at all: a love of writing and a desire to keep at it no matter what, and a belief that God, our creator, delights in creation. I do my best to live, learn, pray, write, and repeat. And I keep at it, wanting all the stories I tell to point back to One who gave them to me.

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.

We measure things, all of us. So aware of all that is bigger, grander, beyond our control, or outside of our ability to explain, we use measurements as a means to grasp what we can, however we can— with the intent to put our lives onto a tidy shelf in our minds and label its contents: this is what I understand, this is what I am worth, this is how other people think of me.

We measure height, weight, growth, and shrinking. We measure bank accounts and retirement funds. We measure influence in likes and comments, and we measure accomplishment in applause. We quantify our lives in every way that we can, because against the backdrop of a life that is unpredictable and impossible to control, there is comfort in knowing and naming, in calculating who we are with whatever satiates the appetite to be known for that moment.

I first noticed this tendency in myself when I started writing on the internet seven years ago. I would toil over an essay, proud of the way I crafted sentences to be both rhetorically beautiful and theologically sound (that was the goal, anyway). I prided myself on honesty and connecting to the most common experiences of my peers that I could, then I would hit publish and share it with the world (or, with my Facebook friends, who certainly felt like the whole world in my self-centric mind).

One hour later, I’d wonder if anyone “liked” it and casually open the browser. I did not know at the time what was happening, but I see it so clearly now: the measurements—not based at all on my effort to honor Jesus but rather on my word’s and their reception with others—they would take over my day. I was valuable if people liked my words and I wanted to quit writing forever if people didn’t. My worth was found wanting or not based on the fickle, simple click of a tiny thumbs up button on a screen.

My words, my value, my day. And over time and too many emotional roller coasters, I learned that the problem with measurements is that there is simply too much of me in every equation I use.

It’s easy to make a life out of measurements; too easy, in fact. And when we set our sights on the one we want—whether it be salary, followers, publications, purchases or promotions—we chase it hard, with all of the God-given talent and passion and creativity we have. And while God-given pursuits are noble, needed even, it is also tempting in that chase to forget how Jesus went after his God-given pursuit: we go fast, famous, and big, always considering ourselves and our influence. Jesus went slow, overlooked, and small, only considering the will of his Father and the heart change his words of truth offered.

We chase what we can measure. Jesus walked through life in awe of the immeasurable one, of His Father.

At the heart of our misplaced pursuits is a simple solution, not easy, but simple: chase Jesus first, then we will chase after purpose like He did. We don’t need to abandon our creativity, our good endeavors, our goals or our passions; but we might need to do them in a different way, we might need to stop measuring them and simply let God use them. Open handed, humble, willing to let our very best effort and accumulated hours go completely unseen, we must remember that God has always used a very different system of metrics than the world, and all the applause on earth cannot earn the favor of a Perfect God. The cross, and only the cross, already did.

But a heart that pursues him and his glory with all that it has? That, friends, is where the abundant life is found. That is where we find joy immeasurable.

God does not need us, not one of our fancy offerings or impressive measurements is even worth holding up to the One who told the oceans where to stop. But he uses us! He lets us be a part of kingdom work and gives us real influence right where we are. How often do we sit in awe of that truth? And in the end, I think we will find that the most important measurement of all is the distance between a perfect God and our feeble and fickle hearts, and the marvelous fact that only scandalous grace could bridge that distance perfectly.

Everything changes when we stop measuring ourselves for Jesus, and simply start following him. 

__________

*This essay originally appeared on the Open Door Sisterhood blog.

My desk faces east, looking out the window onto our quiet street and beyond, where I can just barely see the tips of the mountain peaks in the distance, all still covered with snow from what has been a long winter and what has turned into a long and still-cold Spring. I meet the day right here, every morning, every season.

For most of my life I have been somewhat of a 'morning person'. Even in my teen and young adult years when it was an option, I was never naturally one to sleep until noon. But being a ‘morning person’ always meant waking up in a relatively good mood, and outside of that the standards were low. Before children I set the alarm for enough time to get ready for work, and after children, I simply let them be my alarm, and I learned quickly that with little ones no one is 'morning person' because motherhood demands you learn to be an ‘all hours of the day’ person, good mood optional.

But when my second was five months old, everything changed. I was drowning—faking it pretty well, but drowning. Parenting a baby and a difficult toddler, wrestling with questions about who I was, the work I had left behind that I was very confident in my ability to do in order to pursue the work of motherhood that I felt like I was terrible at, and all of it was messing with me. And when I really started paying attention to my heart I realized how noisy I had let my life get; from sun up to sun down, invited and uninvited noise at every turn and I could not find a counterbalance to it all.

Then one day, after spending the weekend with a friend who I watched beautifully live out this practice in her own life, I set my alarm for 5:00am. I read the Bible, I wrote, I prayed, and I marveled at how quiet the whole world felt at that hour, at how quiet my heart finally felt. And then I did it again the next day. And the next day. And the next.

That was two and a half years ago.

(And yes, I did want to take a nap about 3:00pm every day that first month. Sometimes I still do. Power through and be willing to go to bed at 9:00pm.)

Today, I think there are ‘morning people’- those who can get up and do what needs to be done and might even have a skip in their step as they do- and there are ‘before the morning people’- those who get up before the chaos, the demands for milk, the diaper changes, and the frenetic search for matching socks. Those things still happen, but they don't happen first. I knew I had officially become a ‘before the morning’ person the day after we brought our youngest home from the hospital. He was an every-three-hours eater from day one, but even then, when my alarm went off at 5:00am I knew what was waiting for me if I could just get my feet on the ground, and the allure of that quiet, it was enough. I pushed the baby’s Rock ‘n Play out to the table with me, and my little man joined my morning routines until he was big enough to sleep through them (which took almost fourteen months by the way—because what is this ‘sleep training’ you speak of? Apparently my children were born immune to it.)

When I think of the woman and mom I was two and a half years ago and the one I am today, I know the difference, and it is the morning. I am not more or less saved, not more or less holy, and not more or less accomplished (though I am rather efficient with my earliest hours). And I don't have a sense of pride built up in my morning routine as much as a sense of desperation; I need it, my heart needs it. Because when I did find the quiet, the counterbalance to the loud world we all live in, it was in that quiet, with—finally—nothing competing for His attention, that God got big. He was too small in my loud world, an equal part of equal size of the thousand moments that made up an average day. It was in the quiet, before the morning, that He finally became unmatched.

And with all that the journey of this last year has brought us, my heart has desperately needed Jesus to be big, to be unmatched. Really, haven’t we all?

On a technical and politically correct level, there is nothing magic about the morning, no command that says if you want to hear from Jesus he has office hours only before dawn. And yes, technically, that is correct. But I push back a little, because I think there is something magic about the morning: it is untouched, not yet derailed by a day that did not unfold like I planned. It is fresh, renewed, and I will say it again, so beautifully quiet. I think the Psalmists were on to something as the chorus of their praise echoes with sentiments of in the morning, show us Your steadfast love, Lord. I cannot prepare for everything the day will bring, but I can prepare my heart to trust who is writing it all, who has commanded the morning since my days began, and who has taught the dawn to know its place. *

For months the sun has stayed stubbornly behind those mountain tops out my window, as if it were too cold itself to want to come out and play. But as we inch our way toward a new season, the day turns gold a little bit earlier every morning, offering to light the day longer and longer, warmer and warmer. These are the mornings I wait all winter long for, when I can look out the window and watch the magic that turns dark to light so quietly and effortlessly, just like it has been doing every day since God called it all 'good'.

But I think the real magic is that in these same hours of quiet at the desk by the window, as the day comes alive and greets the world, so does my heart.

Morning glory, indeed.   

*Job 38:12

It started with five words.

“We are writing a book!”

And it ended with something I did not expect.

On Saturday, April 2nd, I stood in a room in Sacramento, California, with over 150 people who were there to celebrate Coffee + Crumbs and the humble words we have offered to the world every month. I got to see my friends from Sacramento loved on by their people, and I got to hug and laugh with the writers who have made me better in more ways than I can tell you. We gave hugs to readers and thanked them for coming, we tried our best to read essays without crying and we failed miserably, and then we stayed up until 1:00 in the morning eating In ‘N Out Burger and talking about the future of Coffee + Crumbs with literal tired eyes and full hearts.

It would be impossible to name a favorite moment of the weekend, but one of them had to be a walk along the river with Sonya. We had the latest flights out, with two hours and a sunny day we had to take advantage of. We talked about politics and social ills, she shared about her three months young adoption of a beautiful three-year-old girl from China and what that has meant for her family dynamics, and I talked about Cannon and what he has meant for my faith and my marriage and my heart. And as I chatted with Sonya about so many things, I was reminded that our best writing does not come from the easiest things in life, but the hardest. And you know, the hardest things are also where I have met Jesus the most—so there is certainly something to that. Shauna Niequist once said that all writers want good stories to write, but God is going to make you live them first. This, friends, is one of the truest things I know about writing.   

Less than a week later, back home in Spokane, we were getting ready for one more launch party to book-end a week of celebration. Around 12:00pm on Thursday I heard a knock at my door. My husband went to answer it and immediately I heard “surprise!” and yelling and hugging and laughter. When I walked around the corner to the front door there was Emily, my best friend who had flown in from Atlanta (!!!) with her precious duaghter to show up for this little local book launch.

Cue the ugly tears.

This is the same woman who got three kids under five years old in the car and drove five hours by herself when I was in labor with Cannon to make it to the delivery room in time for his birth, so I should not have been surprised. But I was. I was totally shocked and speechless with gratitude. Showing up for people is the greatest gift we can give them, and I know that not because I have done it perfectly, but because Emily has done it for me. 

Ashlee Gadd flew in Friday night, we splurged like rockstars and got our makeup done by my favorite makeup artists on Saturday, the books never made it off the UPS truck for delivery so my sweet Dad drove around Spokane buying every copy he could find, and then we got ready to party thanks to my mom and Tannya and my talented MIL who handmade all the gorgeous desserts.

And one by one, people started filling in. I wish I could articulate what this felt like.

You’re here! You’re really here for us, for this book! You showed up! I felt underserving the entire time, like all these people got duped and were really there for the wine. But they weren’t. They were there to celebrate something with me and Ashlee, and they did just that. I want to name every single woman who came and tell each of them how truly grateful I was for their presence, but just know this: I will never, ever forget the night that 70 people gathered together with delight in their eyes. Never. I was on the verge of tears for two straight hours because of them, because of people. It was love in real life, and it was perfect.

It makes total sense to me that Jesus is all about people, and all about showing up. 

*****

So now I sit on the back end of this amazing experience, reflective and introspective and humbled all at once.

Writing a book is, with few exceptions, every writer’s dream. Just ask them. Often times the content of said book is only loosely defined, but most of us have allowed ourselves to think about it—to picture a cover with our name on it, imagining it on shelves at Barnes and Noble and ourselves sitting at a table signing hundreds of copies.

So when an email came into my inbox from Ashlee Gadd with those five words in it, I saw the first step towards every writer’s dream handed to me.

And y’all, it has been a dream. It has been the sweetest gift to write a book with a team of women whom I both admire and love, who have made me laugh hysterically and cry uncontrollably, who have taught me and challenged me and encouraged me and loved me. I have a new respect for Ashlee, who has spent countless hours working on this dream and sacrificing so much so that we could all have a small piece of it.

But what I did not expect, and maybe I should have, is this: nothing about my real life has changed.

We wrote a book, and so far, people really like it. (All the praise hands!) But I feel the same today as I did over a year ago, perhaps slightly more humble. I struggle with the same sin. I fail at parenting in many of the same ways. I get my priorities mixed up in the same manner I always have. I got something I always wanted, and the best thing it did for me was remind me that it is not what I needed. Not the book or the applause or the attention, anyway.

But isn’t this the very thing we fail to believe all the time? That when we get what we have always wanted our lives will change; that we will be content, accomplished, we will be someone.

To the only audience that matters in the end, we won’t. We will never be more or less than we are right now, because the most important work in our lives is what Jesus did on the cross and that was finished long ago. This is a paradox that used to baffle me, but not just leaves me grateful. 

Still, book launch week has also given me something I did need: a whole lot of perspective and whole lot of amazing people. And in the end, this is a story about people; about the gratitude my heart feels when I think about them, and about how, if I have learned anything in the past two weeks, it is that I want to be for people, I want to be someone who shows up.

We hope you love the book, because we sure loved writing it, and we are very proud of the hard-fought words that fill up its pages. It would be all we could ask for to know that those words made a small, meaningful difference in the story of your motherhood. But when this work is a distant memory, when we are all reading and celebrating the next thing, we hope you remember Jesus and people, and what love for each of them looks like in real life.

I leave you with this memory from an amazing two weeks of book launches, because it perfectly captures so much of it.

I mentioned that the books we ordered for the party in Spokane did not arrive in time for the party, but we really wanted to at least fill the pre-orders that night. I called my Dad, who had already offered to help in any way we needed, and asked him if he wouldn’t mind spending a few hours in the car and grabbing every copy of the book he could find around town. Without hesitation, he said yes, hopped in the car and was on his way.

Ten minutes later, as my Dad was on the freeway headed to the northside of town for the first stop, I got a text from him:

“Katie, what is the title of your book again?”

Stay small, friends. 

Oh dear reader, thank you. Thank you for being here, for meeting up in this little space and then being willing to come back for a visit. I do not tell you this enough, but it humbles me to no end that these simple words actually have an audience, and that by the grace of our good, good Father, they connect with some of you. Do you know I keep every email, every message, and every word of encouragement you all have sent? Yep, every single one. From South Africa and New Jersey and Texas, from the teacher at my daughter’s preschool, from the fellow special needs mamas, and the friends I do life with on a regular basis— when you tell me that something I offered on paper was even the slightest bit encouraging to you, I praise Jesus and then ask him to help me to show up again and write some more.

Because can I tell you the truth? This has been hard, at times harder than I have wanted to work through, and I cannot do it without him.

When I started just enough brave I was certain God was calling me to pioneer something big and bold in my city. I had grand visions of people all over my tiny pocket of the country being inspired to live bravely and fight for justice in their places. I was slowly but surely stepping in to an idea I knew—and still believe—was from God as an advocate for women in the sex industry. I wanted to tell a different story about them, and I wanted to help them see a way out. Well, God raised up a few like-minded women and we stumbled our way through something we had no idea how to actually do. But let me tell you something: all God needs is obedience, He’ll do the rest. And he has. He has sustained and grown something that is allowing women in a very dark place to see Jesus.

And he has done it not because of me, but in spite of me.

But two and half years ago, that was my brave. And I believed if I could find just enough of it, God would honor that. That ministry has grown in ways I would never have pictured. No website, no social media, only—much like this—vague descriptions of our end goal coupled with massive amounts of prayer and faith. We have a prayer team, consistent donors, and a support group far bigger than I had even thought to ask God to grow it. And yet with every month of growth or moment of ‘only-God’ praises, I have had less and less of a role. It has grown bigger, and I have gotten much, much smaller. I have had to.

It was just over a year ago that we started seeing signs of ‘something wrong’ in our little guy. So many of you have followed that journey since I started sharing it, but all roads seemed to point to autism from the beginning, and that is where we find ourselves today.

I wish you knew how many times I have asked God, “Why?”

“Lord, we were willing, we were ready to go anywhere! But what Cannon needs is here. Why are you keeping us here, why did you give us this? We were willing to go!”

Yet God is so patient with our myopathy, isn’t he? We can only see right here, right now. All of human history has been directed by his hands and we are so quick to grumble over the things we do not like in this moment. But over my months of protesting, he gently kept whispering this to me: ‘If I have asked you to do it, no matter what it is, you’re going to need to be brave.’

If he has asked me to be a special needs mama, I need to be brave.

If Cannon is angry and upset for reasons I cannot understand, I need to hold him tight so he doesn’t hurt himself, and I need to be brave.

If treatments and therapies and endless doctor appointments sweep away savings accounts and extra income, I need to trust that it is truly God’s money anyway, and I need to be brave.

If we cannot participate, or have to cancel plans, or if my little one is misunderstood by onlookers and people who do not know him, if we have to sit outside a birthday party while others walk in and silently wonder why we can't just yet, I need to offer a quick plea for patience and grace, and I need to be brave.

If we do not understand why, if there is no clear cause and no clear cure, if for all of our effort we cannot find a formula that guarantees a way through this, I need to trust the Author of every great story, and I need to be brave.

‘This is your brave, Katie. You only have to find just enough of it.’

If I could summarize our short time on this journey so far I would say this: God has grown bigger, and I have gotten much, much smaller. He’s always been big, I just haven’t always seen it.

And all along the way, I’ve done the only thing I know how to do: be honest about it. I have been honest with my grieving and honest with my hope. I have written from exactly where I am because there would be no possible way for me to pretend to write from some other place. I have thought a hundred times in this past year that I should quit, that these hours spent at the computer could be better spent researching methods and therapies and all manner of options for treating something that is so hard to wrap our hands around.

And almost every time, in the moments I am most ready to stop, there’s an email, or a text, or someone somewhere—maybe I know her but most often I don’t—telling me not to. Bob Goff said once that, “God doesn’t pass us messages as often as he passes us each other.” That, sweet readers, could not be more true for me.

A few months ago, as I was processing all of this with my friend Jen, she said something to me that I have been holding on to all this time. “Katie, I don’t think it is an accident that while your little guy has so much trouble finding his words, God has given you so many of them.”

God certainly does not struggle to see the whole picture, does He?

Today, I am just feeling… I don’t know, some combination of grateful and pensive, as I sit here thinking about how far God has taken me, and what he has done as I have so imperfectly shared the story. This space has kept growing. But I keep getting smaller. While I used to want to be a Writer, capital 'W', and a Leader, capital 'L', now I just want to be someone with unshakable faith, even if it is merely the size of a mustard seed.

If I did not see it two and half years ago, or even a year ago, when two very different journeys began for me, I see it so clearly now: He increases, we decrease. And as that happens, as the distance between God and us gets bigger and bigger, his glory fills in the space. It is so, so beautiful; I just had to get much lower to see it this well.

*****

So dear reader, that is the just enough brave story. My life looks so little like I thought it would when we began. But it looks exactly how God wants it to, and knowing that is all that I need to feel so incredibly grateful to be chosen for this work. I still think and pray all the time about how and when and why to share in words—when you are convicted to your core that God sees every single motive that governs your heart it quickly changes how you do everything. But for today, I think I will keep at it. These hours could be spent in a dozen different ways, but so far they have all added up to teach me about God, and they leave me more in awe of him with each passing one. Time well spent, I think.

I know now that brave is not always leading and not always grand and not even always something anyone but God will see. Being brave is doing exactly what God has asked you to do, and humbly pointing every bit of that work back to the One who sustains it. If you ask me, I think humility is the new brave.

So, what do you say we all keep getting smaller?

And a hundred times, thank you for letting me tell you everything. You are good friends to listen so well.  

For someone contemplative by nature, December and its reflective character feel like a welcoming living room, a place that says “Hi, come on in and stay a while with your thoughts, your lessons, your happiest memories and your most meaningful changes.” December and I are basically best friends, because do you know me? Stay here with my thoughts?! I will, thank you.

But I must start with obvious: it’s been a hard year. I had three babies age three and under in my home, so, while that's been an enormous blessing, I wouldn't call it easy. We spent the majority of the year keeping bellies full and noses wiped and then navigating the new world of “the spectrum.” But what made it hard wasn’t just all the things. Everyone has things. What made it hard was that motherhood shook my life up in a way I didn’t see coming and couldn’t see through to the next step. I am so heavily type A that this messed with all my feelings, and a lot of my closest people saw edges rubbed embarrassingly raw (I basically want a do-over for May through August).

What made it hard was me.

But what made it great was grace. While I wouldn’t say I’m speaking from the wisdom of the other side—I’m still very much in the thick of all the beautiful work God has given me— I will say that real grace, healing grace, is more beautiful than I ever imagined it would be.

So yes, it's been a hard year. I feel like so many of us could say that. But the last twelve months have also held a whole lot of good, because God still weaves common graces into our everyday lives. And I think the next twelve will be full of good, too. But because it’s the most wonderful time of the year to think about all the good, and because December says I can, that’s what I’m doing now. In no particular order of value, these were some of the good things…

Our new home. I love it so much I can’t stand it. Four bedrooms all on the same level, a working gas fireplace and a writing room. It’s nothing extravagant but far more than we deserve. I hope this space brings God glory for years to come.

The Open Door Sisterhood retreat. Three gorgeous fall days days nestled in the mountains at a lakeside home, listening to women dream and problem solve, filling one another’s hearts with all the spurring on we need to get back to our lives and back to our God-given work. Heaven on earth. It really was.

The Magic of Motherhood. It really happened. The Coffee + Crumbs team wrote a book! It won’t be out until April of next year, but isn’t it pretty (you have to click to see it)?! We poured our hearts in to this project, and I learned a lot about myself both as a mom and a writer along the way. We hope you love it and nod along with it, because we’re all in this motherhood thing together. 

Five-year anniversary. The first time I left all three littles alone with grandparents was for our five-year anniversary getaway. But before you picture beaches and bikinis and coffee on the veranda, think more along the lines of a local hotel, sweat pants and  milkshakes at Fatburger, sparkling cider in bed and a movie before 9:00pm. It was so Alex and me, and it was perfect. We're so basic.

Cannon saying “set-da!” I wrote about this moment a few months ago, but it still is one of the highlights of my year. He says it all the time now, because anything that involves movement delights him to no end. But I’ll never forget the work it took to pull those words out of him, and I’ll never forget what it felt like to hear him. To many more of those moments- let it be, Lord.  

The books. The Holiness of God, None Like Him, She Reads Truth, The Life We Never Expected. Game changers, y’all. I read a lot of good ones this year, but these are keepers and recommenders and re-readers.

The hot chocolate recipe. OK. Lean in friends, because I have the yummiest easiest best most decadent treat for you. Pour 1 cup of milk in a pan over medium heat. Add 2 tablespoons of raw cacao powder and 2 tablespoons of sugar. Simmer until just barely bubbling. (I had some heavy cream in my refrigerator so I got really crazy and threw a splash in, but you don’t really need it—my diet simply doesn’t start until next year. Maybe the year after.) Carefully pour it in a mug and make sure you’re alone or your kids will steal it. Trust, y’all. Winter goodness in a cup.

A book proposal. Against all odds, and certainly against my ability to manufacture the margin in my life to make it happen, I started writing a book. The book proposal was sent out in the world for review and covered in prayer that if God wants it to land somewhere, it will. But if I know anything it is this: God doesn’t need my words; His will more than suffice. But if I know a second thing it is this: obedience and hard work feel good and right just because they are good and right; the process is good and right. The end result? Well, I always say I write words like I would blow dandelions to the wind: go where you will, words… where God wills.

Jesus. He’s always the best thing. My hope in him has never been more sure. My longing to know him more has never been stronger. He is the one who turned this year into something good.

As I look toward the last few weeks of the year, I am more grateful than ever for so many things— for my marriage and my precious little ones, for my amazing church and irreplaceable friends, and those of you who keep coming back to this space and keep telling me these words are worth toiling over, you’re near the top of the list, too. I hope you know that. This is all for Jesus. If it ever becomes about anything else, I trust you’ll tell me to put my eyes back on eternity, ok?

Let’s walk out this life keeping closest to the one who is able to keep us from stumbling, and let’s savor and practice gratitude for all the good. It’s practice for heaven, when all will be good. No, when all will be perfect.  

It's just enough brave's second birthday. Depending on how we look at it, two years can be a lot of time, or no time at all. But it is enough time for a lot to happen; and in our little home, a lot has happened. It's enough time for one baby to brew and be born and then turn into a crawling, babbling, eating-everything ten-month old. It’s enough time to watch a perfectly healthy four-month old grow and do great and then slowly, slowly, slowly stop doing great; and it’s enough time to learn a whole new vocabulary and how to sweet talk the people on the other end of the phone at one of a dozen offices we repeatedly talk to. It’s enough time to watch a little girl become a big girl, taking on preschool and gymnastics and making new friends everywhere she goes; and it’s enough time to validate that she is like her mama in many ways but mostly much stronger, much braver.

Two years is enough time to write almost 100 essays and send them out into the world with no expectations, only the hope that the Holy Spirit would direct the words to land where he wants them to. And it’s enough time to second guess this writing gig and contemplate quitting approximately 1000 times—so, yes, ten times more than I’ve sat down to actually write.

But mostly, two years is enough time for God to totally, completely, irreversibly change why I do anything at all. Especially writing.

When I started writing on just enough brave, I thought it was because the life of a Christ follower must be destined for grand adventures, sharing the gospel in the hardest places, or doing big, brave things that earned the favor of God and inspired the masses as they did. And I thought surely God was asking me—all of us, really—to start doing those big, brave things. But two years later I understand something that I didn’t when this space was born: He is, but he also isn’t.

You see, I thought having just enough brave in my life would mean that I would storm the brothels and free the girls stuck in a life they could not possibly want.  I thought it meant maybe moving across the world with my family and living an epic, book-worthy adventure—or at least merit getting our picture in the church newsletter. I thought it meant being fearless for the kingdom of God in ways that were noticed just enough to humbly accept a pat on the back. Today, I think it could be—God does ask so many people to actually do those big, brave things. But I’m starting to wonder if we can even plan for them, or if God simply surprises us with big as we do the small, brave things right in front of us.

Because it seems to me that the ways of Jesus, while always brave, have also always been small: groups of twelve rather than followings of thousands, the daily work of prayer and meals and serving the people right next to him, or stopping for the one woman who touched the fringe of his garment in the midst of a crowd curious about what he was offering them. Sacrificial and selfless. Controversial and consistent. Brave and small. Only God can make something big for eternity.

Today, I think brave means driving my sweet boy to therapy day after day, month after month, longing for progress but refusing to give up hope when that progress is slow coming because I’m fighting to remember what my hope is really in. I think brave is meeting my neighbors instead of closing the garage door behind me. I think brave is repenting of the hundreds of times I have only seen myself. I think brave is saying that I cannot do one more good thing if it means someone else has to tuck my babies in again. I think brave is believing in scripture, all of it, and letting it dwell in me richly in the face of a culture that laughs at that very idea.

I think brave is showing up for this life, my life— my preschool and therapists and bills and essays and nursing schedules and absolutely no idea if the thing I pray for every day will ever happen this side of heaven life— knowing Jesus is on the throne and that nothing can take him off. Brave is joy in any circumstance. Brave is hope when it’s hard.

Two years of longing for this kind of life that Jesus offers us has taught me that I do need a little bit of brave. But I thought I needed it to change the world; now I know I need it to just change my heart. And maybe, that is God’s plan to change the world—one changed heart at a time.

Here’s to two years of words that have transformed me in ways I didn’t even know I needed to be. And to being a little bit brave today, right where you are. Brave enough to believe the gospel is all we will ever need.

And to Jesus, because all of this is from Him, through Him, for Him. Amen.