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. 

This beautiful northwest summer was all the things that summers are made of: the lake days and the barbeques and the nights that stretch out their sunsets long and slow. It was kids laughing and friends chatting and the lingering smell of baby sunscreen— the scent of heaven, I’m sure.

This summer has been so good to us. Not easy, but so good.

I will always remember this as the summer my daughter continued to amaze me with her bravery, going from jumping off the dock into to someone’s arms to calling the attention of anyone within earshot to “watch my 360!” and wanting to go under water with no life jacket at all. She’s not a baby anymore, she’s a little girl who puts her own clothes on and no longer needs my help with her shoes, and I watched that transformation happen right in front of me.

It was also the summer bookended by two distinct appointments: one with clipboards and conclusions, another with a doctor and a few hopeful theories. The months in between were marked with all kinds of dance steps: forward, backward, a few side shuffles and mostly rhythms I have no idea how to follow, but music I’m growing more comfortable with by the day. But the other bookend was a little boy who didn’t even like the bath when summer began and would swim to the middle of the lake with a grin on his face by the end if we let him—a beautiful reminder that things do not always finish the way they start, and what amazing grace that is.

It was the summer the third baby began to crawl and we hardly noticed; such a stark contrast to the first two who had cameras ready as soon as they found their knees and started rocking back and forth. I remember just looking down at the carpet and the baby was pulling himself toward a remote control and I said, “Oh, he’s crawling. Good job buddy.” Don’t worry, we’ve started planning for his counseling later in life, poor third child.

It was the summer that I read books that actually changed me; words and sentences that are now written on post-it notes around my home, reminding me of truths that make every heavy thing feel a whole lot lighter.

It was the summer I felt the poles of being at my worst in front of people I love and being at my best only in the quiet moments with Jesus: both serving to strip away any illusion I had that I’ve got my stuff together. I so do not. But I have a Savior, and that’s better.

It was the summer of gourmet hamburgers and fruit salad. It was root beer floats and ice water with strawberries. It was lounging on hammocks and four mile walks. It really was everything good, and it was a lot of things hard. But mostly, it was the summer God got so much bigger, the summer I learned that broken things are daily being made new, and that repentance must be part of the rhythm of my life, not the random occasion. It was the summer I’ve had to be the most honest with myself and others, a time I’ve had to come clean about my selfish ambitions and trade them for the beautiful gift of insufficiency.

And now, sitting here on the horizon of a new season, anticipating the order that comes with regular schedules, a daughter in preschool (praise hands!), and the fresh desire to see God’s kingdom come in the smallness of my simple life, I can only think that every season is good and hard, because life is good and hard. But I’m learning how to hold both with joy, how to live both with gratitude, and how to actually love both, the good and the hard, because of the glory God can get in them.

Both. There is so much tension in that word. We must need Jesus because he’s the only one I know who can handle both.  

Summer, thanks for being good to us.

Jesus, thanks for being the best for us. And thanks for giving us the summers. That was so good of you.

Y’all know I’m a sucker for a good story. I love a beginning that engages me; a middle that is suspenseful, painful, hopeful and all the things that real life is; and an ending that is meaningful—not necessarily happy, as there can be plenty of meaning found in places one might never call happy—but closure that I can live with in light of who the characters really are and the kind of future I can imagine for them.

I think everyone loves a good story. In many ways, our lives are a played out narrative of what we believe about ourselves and the world we live in.

This story, our story, is a story about reckoning.

Reckoning is a strange thing. To learn something, discover something, accept something, it divides your life into two distinct pieces: before the reckoning, and after the reckoning. Last week our family, in many ways, reckoned with something we had suspected, maybe even feared, for many months. Our little guy, two years old and full of goodness in every way, was put in a really big category that he’ll spend his life, one way or another, defined by.

The honest truth is that I am relieved. For many months we have been waiting, watching, treating this precious boy more like a research project than a child, and it’s been exhausting. When you are wondering if you are looking at a developmental delay versus a developmental disorder, everything, everything goes in to a score column for one or the other. Every good day, every smile with good eye contact, every time he looks up when you call his name, every new word, all of it putting points into the he’ll be fine category. And then the humming, the awful sound of his head against a door, the babbles coming from his mouth trying to form words but just can’t, the vocabulary lost, the recent weeks of regression, all of it tallying in the column that we don't want to look at. And yet, we have to.

We don’t have a specific label, or an official diagnosis, or a doctor or therapist telling us what our sweet boy will and will not be able to do as he grows. None of those things feel important right now, and I don’t know if or when they will. What we do have is a collection of discussions with a lot of people and professionals who care about this boy, using the words we have been holding at a distance and gently encouraging us to lean in to them. We have learned in the last few months that social communicative disorders are categorized as a spectrum because, well, that is truly what they look like when each precious soul fighting one is lined up. We’ve got a smart, sweet little man who has a ton of strengths and some significant struggles, and we are working through each one as they emerge. But we have so much more to learn. So much. We’ve ordered the books and scheduled the meetings and learned that when God tells us to ask him each day for what we need to get through just that day, we have to truly believe in enough for that day.

But let’s get back to the story about reckoning, because that’s the really good part.

When we realized that God was going to be asking something very hard of us as parents (and he asks hard things of everyone), we had to get real clear about who we believe He is. CJ Mahaney once said that, “You need your best theology in your darkest hours.” And that was certainly true for us. But if there is anything I can say without a doubt God has been teaching my husband and me over the last year it is that his character is unfathomable, holy, and good. He has been preparing us for this in ways we could not have imagined even six months ago. We never questioned if God loved us, or if he loved our little boy, because we know the cross answers that without a doubt. We also know that there is nothing God allows that he cannot use for his glory, even the special needs of children—maybe especially the special needs of children. And we haven’t had to wrestle at all with “why” because we know “Who” and believe in the story He has been writing since he separated the dark from the light. He has been so good to us to lift our eyes off of our circumstances and let them land on Him, on the one who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us.

One needs only to spend a short time in scripture to know that it is a story of redeemed suffering. Joseph, Abraham, Job, Jeremiah, the bleeding woman, Jesus, Paul, and hundreds of others held together by their hope of future glory. No matter what brings suffering on, all of it is covered by the blood of Jesus; every single moment of longing for heaven was answered on the cross, and we get to cling to Him as we wait for the glory that is to be revealed to us—what a privilege.

And while reckoning does bring about a certain amount of, let’s call it comfortable acceptance, it certainly doesn’t make this easy. In fact, I am still a hot mess as I write this. There are a handful of people who have had to quite literally wipe tears from eyes in the last two weeks, and I've been keeping a whole crew of friends at an arm's length because I'm not sure what to say. My husband and I sat in the office in our home the other night and asked questions of one another that no parent wants to think about; questions about the future, questions about school and adolescence and all the what ifs that will kill you if you let them take over. We are not confident in much; but we are confident that we cannot do this apart from total dependence on God. We simply do not know what comes next, only what comes today. But since tomorrow has enough worries of its own, we’re doing our best to camp here and remember the daily bread.

I wrote before about the peace I have that this story has a perfect start, and will have a perfect ending. I still believe that to my bones. Right now we are in that middle, living the suspenseful, painful, and hopeful moments that real life is; waiting for an ending that is meaningful—not necessarily happy in this world, as there can be plenty of meaning found in places one would never call happy—but the closure we long for in light of who God is and the kind of future he has prepared for us.

And as we wait, we get to raise the absolute sweetest boy on earth. I mentioned that in one way or another he will be defined by this struggle, and he will, but we are praying boldly that he defies it in the process.  I hope you all get to meet him one day; he’ll melt your heart.

“In the path of your judgments, O Lord, we wait for you; your name and remembrance are the desire of our soul.” Isaiah 26:8

We started speech therapy with our middle son when he was 18 months old, back in January of this year. One of the things our therapist taught us was to incorporate a start-stop language repetition to the routines and play that we already do with Cannon. For example, when we would swing him around- something he loves to do- we would pick him up, and with a predictable cadence say, “ready, set…” then wait for eye contact from him and finish with, “go!” It was a practice we began daily, and for the last seven months we have been swinging, repeating, meeting his eyes, almost willing the words to finish that sentence to come out of his mouth.

And then last week, out of the clear blue summer sky, Cannon climbed on my back, grabbed my neck, and completely unprompted by me said, “Set, DAA!”

Seven months of working on this phrase, of any part of it to come out of his sweet mouth. Hundreds and hundreds of spins and swings and slides and two persistent parents so badly wanting to hear the word “go” finish our sentence. And then one day, he just said it. “ Set, daa!” And now this little man walks around saying this at any opportunity— jumping off the couch, pretending to drive in the front seat, playing hide and seek: “Set, daa! Set, daa!” It’s so, so beautiful.

I have to confess though, that after seven months and all that spinning, I started to wonder if I would ever hear it. We brought out our very best enthusiasm and anticipation every single time we would pick him up to practice, and in all these months our enthusiasm could not pull the words out of him. “Ready, set…” then leaning in closely with my own mouth open as if to mimic the word he needed to tell me what to do next… and then silence. Hundreds of moments of silence; the loudest sound in the world sometimes.

It’s a little bit funny to me that God would choose a moment for Cannon to grasp set go when I was not prompting it from him at all. No enthusiastic play on my part, no fanfare, no looking down at his big green eyes willing the words from him. He just got in position and was ready when he was ready. A little ordinary miracle on a Wednesday afternoon.

Every one of us is thinking daily about the world we live in, about the fear and the anxiety and the politics and the maddening headlines. In fact, some of us are thinking so much about all that is wrong that we can’t celebrate what is right, all of the ordinary miracles around us. I’ve certainly been in this place, tallying in the “bad” category almost daily and forgetting to mark in the “good” category, too. It is no wonder the heaviness in my heart has been so present when so much of what I’ve been doing is scorekeeping for evil.

But that’s not how it’s supposed to be. We weren’t designed by Perfection Himself to merely survive our lives by avoiding as much bad as we can, nor is our call to begrudge and complain about any and everything that doesn’t fit our preferences or meet our needs. We were meant to celebrate the joy that He gives us right here in the midst of the bad; we were meant for glory, and that often shines brightest in the dark, if we will let it. The Christ follower has an incredibly important responsibility: to hold in our hearts the paradox that is the miracle of every breath and the unspeakable pain of a sinful world. It’s so, so hard. I fail at it every single day. And then… “Set, daa!” Oh, yes, something has been building the whole time I only heard silence.     

And something is building now.

One of the greatest sins of the Israelites was that they kept forgetting how much God had showed up for them. The seas were parted, but in the waiting that followed, they forgot. The manna came from heaven, but in the resistance at Jericho, they forgot. And really, we are the same. Tragically, the same. We watch the news and cry “where are you, Lord?” forgetting that he is in the very breath it took to call out to him. Somewhere along the line, the fear in our hearts has drowned out our ability to see the ordinary miracles. Paul Tripp says, “[Amnesia] is the worst kind of blindness. It’s the physical ability to see without the spiritual ability to really see what you’ve seen. It’s the capacity to look at wonders, things specifically designed to move you and produce in you breathless amazement, and not be moved by them anymore. It’s the sad state of yawning in the face of glory.” It’s being so devastated by the headlines we forget to celebrate a little boy who found a new word.

God is always building something. Maybe we will see the answer in seven months or seven years or maybe not until we view history from our eternal vantage point. But something is happening, because God still has us here. I have this picture of God in heaven and Jesus at his right. The Savior of the world is poised and ready to come back for us, aching in the pain of sin and seeing each tear falling from our eyes. And there is God, feeling the same ache, waiting until the perfect, predestined moment to send this Savior back for his people. He’s watching, waiting, saying to his son, “Ready, set…”

We are just waiting for God’s “go”—waiting and trusting, clinging to the evidence of his goodness in all the beautiful, ordinary things.

We are sitting pretty in the middle of the very best time of the year around these parts: summer. When you live in a four-season destination, the seasons themselves become verbs, universally understood and described by locals according to the activities we can and cannot do based on the weather. And right now, everyone summers: sprinklers, lakes, popsicles, baby sunscreen, red cheeks, s’mores, and 9:45pm sunsets. It’s all just dreamy. Ten months out of the year we more or less live our lives around school and work schedules. But summer in the Pacific Northwest rolls around and all of a sudden we work around our summer. The early, quiet, peaceful rhythm of the mornings makes the days feel welcome and full of potential; and the long-lasting sunsets have this beautiful way of helping me savor the day. When I really sit with all the goodness that fills this time of the year, it is impossible not to measure my gratitude in fresh ways.

And along with the change of pace, there is this new sense of possibility. The schedule-free weeks could be a time of rest, or a dedicated season of goal achieving; summer seems to offer whatever our souls need the most, doesn’t it? For me, the long-days are a mix of both: I read more, I write more, I see my people more in the summer. And yet, for the last two nights, I’ve poured myself a glass of Trader Joe’s sparkling limeade and taken a sunset bath after the kids are in bed. (I know, getting crazy around here!) I can count on one hand the amount of baths I have taken in the previous nine months. But once that blissful quiet of the post-bedtime hustle sets in over our home, and I look outside and see that the sun is still giving me permission to take in the day, I feel like I have to do something to honor it. So I do. We are in a really cool play all day, savor all evening cadence, and I like it.

This year, the gift of summer is refining me in so many ways. We have all adjusted well to my little guy’s therapy schedules, and we are learning, with the Lord’s help, to pan out on our perspective a bit more than we had been. It is certainly a day-to-day process, but progress is much more easily seen from start to finish, so we have to learn to hold both. Cannon is not saying more words than he was yesterday; but he is engaging with tasks and people 100 times more fully than he was two months ago. It’s always a battle for my faith, because I want to come home from each therapy session and say “He said two new words today!” But it is so much more encouraging to say, “He’s not in the same place he was when we started. He’s growing.” God continues to teach me more about Himself and his glory through my son than he ever has through anything else, and that’s not something I say lightly. It’s just true. And see? There’s that hustle then savor pattern showing up again right here, on this journey, too.

I’ve also been writing. A lot. I’m dreaming of a book and I’m actually walking in to that dream as best I know how to. I think most writers dream of the book they will one day write; I certainly have been my entire life. And yet, my efforts have always been stifled by the reality that anything I can say, someone else can say better. That, and I spent five years trying to force pretty words from my brain onto paper and I never got farther than a potential title. I once watched an interview with author Amber Haines, and she said of the book writing process, “Wait for the fire.” And right here, in the midst of motherhood that feels like it is drowning me some days, the embers are staying warm enough to slowly, but surely, grow. It has been the best thing for my heart to listen to Jesus every morning and feel my way towards him in words. And that’s what the book is shaping up to be about: Him, and the knowledge that he is unchanging and unspeakably beautiful even when life feels the opposite. This is the truth I am learning right now, so it’s the lesson I’m writing. (I must add that publishing and writing feel like two very different things to me. It’s all safe and controllable over here in the writing: me and my words, and a few sets of trusted eyes on them. It’s all vulnerable and unpredictable over there in the publishing, where thousands of writers offer their very best efforts every day, only to be told it’s not good enough. So, I don’t know what that looks like. I think I want to try, but when you write about Jesus you’re pretty much forced to measure success as a greater view of Him, and I already have that. So I guess I can say that this writing has been worth it, no matter where it ever goes.)

With two months of the best of the year still ahead of us, we are all looking forward to more of that summer list of sprinklers, lakes, popsicles, baby sunscreen, red cheeks, s’mores, and 9:45pm sunsets. And friends, lots and lots of friends. I’ve never been more inspired by and grateful for the people around me. Friends that are faithfully navigating hard marriages, thinking about returning to school, pursuing their own writing goals, raising precious babies and teaching them about Jesus, opening their homes and family to foster children; you name it, and I have people in my life doing it. It’s the best, seeing the body of Christ on display, doing the unique and beautiful things he has given each of us to do, learn, persevere through, pray for, and believe in.

Wishing you marshmallows, campfires, friends to ask good questions around them with, and the sweet cadence that only the summer can bring.

As soon as I heard the crying from my two-year-old’s room, I looked over at the clock. 4:38am: an hour of the day only redeemable by the fact that it is summer and the sun had just begun throwing gold over the tops of the hills I can see from my window. How beautiful, I thought briefly, and then stumbled my way to my crying boy.

Just ninety minutes before this I had nursed my six-month old back to sleep for the second time. And six hours before that, with an end-of-the-day mom tank blinking its caution light on “E,” I lost my patience with a bedtime-stalling three-year-old and shut the door on her without a prayer or a kiss; I simply could not muster either after she threw the Doc McStuffins radio at me when I told her sleeping with it was off the table. Toddlers, man. A strange species of loveable crazy-makers.

So after 15 minutes of rocking my two-year-old and praying that all too familiar mama prayer, Lord, you can do all things; please let this child go back to sleep, I realized that both the Lord and my child wanted something different from me, and our day was beginning far earlier than I was ready for it to, forcing a familiar sentiment forward in my mind: I don’t think I can do this.

Without question, being a mama is far harder than I ever imagined it would be. I don’t think I went in to this gig naïve, I just think motherhood is something we can only be, at best, marginally prepared for. I had my share of stay up late, get up early nights in college and graduate school—surviving on four to five hours of sleep is not a new thing. But surviving on four to five hours of (broken) sleep for three and half years? I’m just not sure one ever gets better at that; we simply learn to operate at 60 percent of full capacity. And really, being tired is just the beginning.

My three-year-old is in a constant state of “put your eyes on me, mom!” and stomping her feet in whiny distress when any answer I give her is not what she wants. The opportunities for heart training and teachable moments are not hard to find with her; we are in a spin cycle of precious obedience that we celebrate, and pulling-my-hair-out defiance that we agonize over. My two year-old, still searching for his words, needs something very different than her right now. His demeanor has been much easier to parent than his big sister so far, but his developmental needs are an emotional wringer. That, and he is also a two-year old boy. We all know what happens when you turn your back on them for too long: something, somewhere in the house will need a clean up. And then there’s the baby, and all I can say about him is praise to you, O Lord, for an easy baby whose greatest need is a full belly. Life with these beautiful three is all hands on deck, all the time.

Layered on top of exhaustion, discipline, speech therapy and cleaning up the latest spill, there’s the hardest part of motherhood: fear. Because every day there’s another story to remind me just how real and present evil is in this world: another life taken with a gun, another young girl’s dignity bought for pleasure, another diagnosis stealing the dream of a precious family.   

And far too often, I don’t think I can do this. I’m too tired. I don’t have enough strategies to discipline well and even if I did, my patience is gone and I fail to see through all the good advice I’ve been given. And mostly, I’m just flat scared of the world, and it is impossible to raise brave children when I’m not feeling brave at all.

But like God has so graciously done for me a thousand times in my life, he reminds me that the answer isn’t even found where I’ve been looking for it: in a good night’s rest or sound parenting advice or a gated community in a country with strict gun control. No. As much as I am a fan of all those things, there are no man-made structures big enough to keep out fear and keep in grace. I could raise my children in a bomb shelter and my own selfish and sinful nature would be enough to undo us all. But Jesus… every great turnaround of the heart begins with those two words, with that man.

As I poured a cup of cold brew coffee over ice, the clock crawling just past 5:00am and my toddler bringing me the remote control and rubbing his chest in his sign for “please,” I caught another glimpse of the sunrise; the beautiful warmth shining on the world thirty minutes before had only increased in intensity, and I knew in that moment that on my own, I can’t do this. I can no more raise my precious children with all the integrity that I want than I can make the sun rise again tomorrow morning.

But I’m not on my own. My hope is not in my ability to be a mama. My hope is in a Savior who covers my inability. He’s never once asked me to go it alone, and he walked this world two thousand years ago so I would know I don’t have to.  He knows what I need before I ask, whether that is patience or wisdom or faith. And he told me how to beg him for those things, summed up in this beautiful petition: Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. All our lives can be covered in those words, from the minutiae of spilled milk to the anxiety of a terror-filled world.

Your kingdom come. Your kingdom come. Your kingdom come. Not mine. Yours, Lord.

I may not have all I want as a mama. I could use a lot more sleep, a bit more compliance and I’d sure love a world I felt a little bit safer in. But then I see the morning landscape painted in gold, and I think of a God who is right here, in the midst of all the scary and the pain and moments that leave us without words, and I know I have all I need, because I have a Savior.

Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. Let’s walk in that peace today, friends. Our aim toward the glory of God and eternity with him is shaky, and on our own we will miss the mark completely. So let’s trust him to steady our hands, calm our hearts, and anchor our faith. He has, he will again.  

*Photo courtesy of Ashlee Gadd

I turned 31 yesterday, which is kind of like the feeling you have on December 26th; the year after your 30th birthday is somewhat anti-climactic. Leaving my twenties felt big, like a milestone of measurements in so many ways because thirty was basically my made-up deadline to get my stuff together. With three decades of life behind me, I thought that certainly I would feel wiser, kinder, less rough around the edges. But now the only thing I am certain of is that it doesn’t work that way. Self-imposed deadlines have always been my downfall, but this year I have figured out something worth noting: our souls don’t have a schedule, and God will have his way with us on His time, not ours. That lesson alone has made my 31st birthday my favorite so far.

Without a doubt, this has been the most profoundly different year of my life, as a wife, mom, writer, friend, and follower of Jesus. Becoming a mom of three kids under three years old in the fall, each one needing very different things from me, brought a very real shift in what made up my days; there is truly very little else going on between 6:00am-7:00pm other than, well, them. I don’t exercise like I used to, I have less time to write than I want, reading makes me feel like I’m cheating on my other responsibilities; so many things that are life-giving just don’t fit in to the minutes I have.

But maybe it’s designed that way; maybe motherhood during the little years is just not set-up to be the most productive years of our life. I think these years are just teaching us the kind of dependence on Jesus we will need when we aren’t exhausted from all the clinging but exasperated from all the worry. Every few months I stop and realize that this is actually going by faster than I can believe, and I am content to ask God, “what do you have for me today,” rather than lamenting all that I didn’t get done.

I also think this is the year I may have settled in to this title of writer in a way that I finally feel comfortable with. Six years ago this month, my best friend and I sat at her big kitchen table and started dreaming about a blog together. We poured our hearts out for four years in that space, trying things that didn’t work and being surprised by the things that did. Almost two years ago I started writing for Coffee + Crumbs, and shortly after that this space was born to capture my ever-present need to process life and faith in words. But in the last year, I’ve (almost) stopped feeling insecure about calling myself a writer, because I am; this is just what I do, this thinking of the world in 800-1000 word essays. I’ve stopped trying to copy someone else, stopped trying to manufacture success in any form other than honesty, and I’ve started to find what I really want to say: God is good, and He is perfect. I’ve always wanted that to be the message, but I’m not sure I even knew what that meant, and at times it got lost in my need for others to say, “Katie, you are good.” I know now that I’m not, and I’m chasing after nothing except knowing Him more.

But what I will remember the most from my year as a thirty-year-old is this: God got big and I got small. He’s so good, and I think I finally believe that He is after his glory in all things: the way I love my husband, the way I parent my babies, the words I send into the world, and the way I care for my people. I have spent the last decade believing that I needed to do or be something bigger in order to make a difference for the Kingdom, and that a success for someone else meant a loss for me. Not anymore. God’s kingdom will come no matter what, and my part in that has nothing to do with who sees or what they think. And with that, celebrating the victories of my friends has become one of the joys of my life; what is better than seeing someone live into the work God has only for them?

And after years of tension that I’m not doing enough, something beautiful happened to me: I understand that I actually can’t do enough, yet I am free to do as much as my heart will allow me to do purely. There is rest in that place, a rest I haven’t ever known before. Because of who He is, I have a peace and a fire, and both feel right.

Now on a completely separate note, there are other notable things about being thirty-one. For example, the gray hairs are here to stay. I’m officially on a twelve-week rotation to cover them up; and because I can’t afford to go down to eight, weeks 7-12 are straight up painful. I also cannot lose my last few pounds of baby weight and the button on my jeans is too uncomfortable to sit down in, so I finally went high-waisted; but don’t worry, I’m very aware of “mom-butt” and plan on wearing long tank tops under everything until I die or stop eating chocolate chip cookies. I am up and at it by 5:30am but am basically useless by 9:00pm, so I’d fit right in with all my senior citizen friends. But other than hair and weight and sleep, I’m totally feeling young, wild, and free! (Ha.) (I have to laugh, or I’ll just cry.)

But really, I love getting older. Every single day is a gift, and that truth only becomes more and more real to me. Here's to 31, the most significant insignificant birthday of my life.

All good storytelling must come with a good beginning. It’s the hook, the grabber, the attention-getter that really gives us the stamina to stay in the story. It’s true when you read them; I think it is even truer when you live them.

*****

This story didn’t start six months ago, when we knew our sweet boy should be saying more, babbling more, mimicking more. It didn’t start on Christmas, when his zone out episodes were so pronounced they prompted a doctor appointment and an EEG as soon as possible. And the story didn’t start last week, when five ladies with clipboards watched his every move, noting where he failed and where he succeeded; when they asked me to fill out paperwork quantifying everything he does into never, sometimes, always categories. And the story didn’t even start when they told me there were “significant deficiencies present,” that a lot of therapy would begin immediately, but also that, “we don’t want to overwhelm you, so we won’t say more, for now.”

This story starts with our perfect God. Immeasurable. Incalculable. Incomprehensible. Every story starts with Him. And He is writing each one with the aim of pointing to his glory. Every single one. Even the ones I probably would have written differently; even my little boy’s story.

That doesn’t mean this is easy. In fact, watching my child struggle, hearing what people think, learning a new language and what it all means for our family, and fighting back the urge to explain to everyone who is around that my quiet two-year old is the sweetest two year old on the planet! is actually the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

I want to grab the ladies with the clipboards and tell them all the things he is so, so good at; how swings and slides and Dora make him the happiest boy on earth. I want to tell them that he’s fast, that he has his daddy’s running calves and I think he’ll probably set a state record in the mile someday. I want everyone to see him grab my face and give me a kiss, how he purses his lips and puckers up like he means it. I want everyone to watch him snuggle with me, because he loves to pull his knees up, tuck his arms in, and get cozy on my chest; the same position he spent the first few weeks of his life in. But I can’t get them to look up from their box checking, from the story they are writing about him. I know, it’s their job and we all need this, he needs this. But I cannot say this is easy.

It’s not easy when my little guy pinches and bites because he can’t yet say “no” or “mine” or any other toddler phrase to indicate he’s not ok. It’s terribly hard to explain to other mamas I barely know that he doesn’t have a malicious bone in his body; he is just learning how to behave with what he has in his tool box. My heart is screaming that I’m trying every hour of the day to help him fill that toolbox, I am! He’s a good boy; I’m trying to be a good mom, really! But that’s not what anyone wants to hear, not as they comfort their own child and examine the bite mark mine left. So I just apologize again and again, worrying too much about what they think. No, this part, the middle of the story, is not easy. Most good stories have some hard.

So I am reminding myself daily that every great story does not start with the hard, but with the Perfect. When the story starts with Perfect, we get a different story altogether; one that is never so hard that redemption can’t be woven through each chapter.  

I do not know what is ahead for my little guy. I know there will be challenges, and I expect more weeks of near-constant tears on my end. I know there will also be victories, that he will learn a new word and we will cheer him on like he won a gold medal. I anticipate a good week, then a bad week, then a madder-than-hell week and a bursting with gratitude week. I imagine a lot of repentance, and at times, a desperate longing for home… not this one. Aren’t we all longing for our real home, though?

But what I do know is that this story will end the same way it started: with our Perfect God. And I don’t want to miss one second of the glory that my little boy’s life might give to Him. Not one second. Who am I to wish away anything that would make much of Jesus? Isn’t that is what we are here for in the first place?

So no, the story doesn’t start with challenge, or diagnoses, or developmental delays and missed milestones. It doesn’t start with tears or feelings of failure. It doesn’t start with unknown or wondering or hoping and praying that all the therapy results in making up these deficiencies. It will include all of those things, and we will have to learn how to live each and every one of them. But they will all help us get to the ending, the Perfect ending.

The uncertainty of this story is both impossibly hard and going to be fine, and it is both of those things at the same time. I don’t know what will happen, but I know that the worst thing that could happen would be missing Jesus in all of it. The paradoxes of walking with a perfect Savior in a far from perfect world are many; there is a very real tension of wanting so many things for our children but wanting one thing for them above everything. But this story, this may be exactly how God is getting us to that one thing, to Him. To Perfect.

For each one of us, all of our lives are bookended with Perfection; a single sentence in the big story between Eden and a New Earth. And I can’t think of one thing that would make the in-between more worth living fully, for His glory, than knowing that.  

*A note from Katie: I prayed for three days before publishing this essay; it's a big deal to tell the world that your child, someone you love more than life, is struggling. But I've never known how to do anything in my writing but be honest, and when you stare at a good, good God for that long, every story that makes you cling to Him seems worth telling. We have no shame or stigma associated with Cannon's journey or the therapy he will continue doing; he is a happy, healthy, joy-to-parent little boy. And we just want God to get the glory for the perfect gift he has given us in our family.

Alex and I bought our first home in 2013. We had welcomed Harper six weeks before, and even though we knew our budget would be down to the penny every month, buying turned out to be the best option. We looked seriously at three homes: the first needed too much work, the second rejected the offer we put in, and the third was at the very very very top of our budget and we just didn’t know if we could take the chance. But when the first two options didn’t work out, we landed on the third and went for it. Prayerfully and nervously, I might add.

We walked in to a beautifully simple home with four bedrooms, a big backyard, a nice open kitchen and dreams of raising our family in that space. It was a house I never thought we could afford at the time, but we trusted God with our pennies and three years, two more babies, and a hundred memories later we made it a home.

I never want to forget the feeling of gratitude I had for that space. It was more than we needed then, and it has been everything we’ve needed since.

This weekend, we packed up all we own, got rid of half of it, and moved the rest into a little storage unit until our new house is ready for us. We’ve picked a new place to make our own; same size, different layout, and just because I want my fellow writers to be a teensy bit jealous: a writing room. With French doors. (I could be noble and tell you we bought the house because it had four bedrooms all on the same level, but come on, it was the French doors).

Still, as excited as I am for a new place, I can’t help but look at the one we just left and feel nostalgic for it. Our first home was the place Harper and Cannon learned to crawl and walk, and where they both found out quickly that as soon as they could reach the bay window, they could see daddy coming home.

It was the place Alex and I woke up early a million times to sit at the table together and talk about God’s word as the sun said good morning from the mountain view behind us. And it was the place we prayed fervently for our family, our friends, big decisions, and small anxieties.

It was the place we crammed more than twenty people into our living room for small group, where we had make-your-own-pizza dinners with friends, birthday parties in the backyard, and where, last summer, we devoured sweet red cherries from the tree in the front yard.

It’s where we fought and made up, where we all took plenty of timeouts, where we hugged and loved and laughed a lot. It was our home; simultaneously our clean and messy place, our put together and falling apart place, our comfort and growth zone place. And I think that maybe, that’s just what a home should be.

As we pray over the new street we will live on, the home we will all continue to grow in, and the people we will welcome through our doors, we want God to teach us even more what it looks like to love Him well with our place, to be brave in this world for His glory. 

I'm so thankful for our first home. It will forever be that, our first place. What a privilege. A home is no small thing, it's a great thing. And the goal is really the same no matter where we physically are: As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Let it be so. 

Good Friday. It is a day that, for followers of Jesus, is a bit of a misnomer. It is good, in the sense that it was the day our Savior turned over every right of his own to give them to us. It is good because we know that it is followed by the most miraculous event mankind has ever known: the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. It is good because without this day, there is no hope for humanity.

But in reality, this day was painful, it was scary, is was full of fear and it was, for a short time, a moment that darkness won.

The day began with betrayal. Judas, one of Jesus’ closest friends and followers, sold the love and trust built over three years for thirty pieces of silver and a brief moment of recognition from the people in power.

Next came an arrest, and a barrage of false accusations toward a man who refused to defend himself. When cursed, he took it. When insulted, he remained silent. When asked to give an answer as to whether or not he was the Son of God, his only response was, “You have said so.” No arguing. No throwing three years of miracles and testimonies back in his accusers face. Just the greatest display of humility the world has ever seen.

Then came the abuse. The whip. The crown of thorns. The spit and the mockery. And while his body was beaten so was his soul, as no one emerged from the angry crowd to defend him but instead gathered a collective strength to ask that a notorious prisoner be released rather than him.

In the midst of all of this was the pain and confusion of those who gave their lives to follow him. Mary, his mother, watched each drop of blood spill from his body. Peter, a loyal friend and follower, lost himself in doubt and fear and anxiety and three times denied ever knowing him at all. The rest of his small tribe of eleven may have been somewhere in the chaos of the crowd, but none emerged as defender, no one spoke up as an advocate.

Then came the darkness. For three hours in the middle of the afternoon, there was darkness over all the land before the moment that the agonizing cry of Jesus made an echo for eternity: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The sin and struggle of the whole world laid squarely on a man who deserved none of it, satisfying the justice of God, providing every man in history an answer for the condition of his heart.

Death won the day on Good Friday. It won with fear, it won with doubt, and it won with a brief moment of wondering, “where is our Savior now?”

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about how to talk to my kids about Easter. We picked out a cute dress for Harper and polo shirts for Cannon and Jordi. We will have an Easter egg hunt with Grandma and brunch with our family. We will tell the story to Harper with the help of our “Resurrection Eggs” and try to keep the tiny silver cup and crown of thorns out of Cannon’s mouth as we do. For now, these things will suffice. They will mark Easter as a special day in their little minds, and we will pray with growing fervor that the weighty truth of this beautiful holiday lands heavy in their hearts as they grow.

But cute dresses and colorful plastic eggs will not always be enough. Our best attempts at helping our kids make sense of these three days in history will always fall short if we don’t face the truth: we live in a world that feels a lot like Good Friday. The fear in our lives today is real; we are reading stories of innocent lives taken by bombs and guns and we cannot help but wonder where next, God, and who next? How long shall the wicked triumph? The doubt in our lives is real; we are both hearing and living stories of pain and injustice and a life far from that of Eden, and we wonder if our faith is big enough to get through it all. We are watching political rhetoric fall to the lowest level of dignity, if it even has any of that left. We see divisiveness at every turn even among our own families and communities, and a lot of us, we wonder all the time, “where is our Savior now?”

So much of life is a Good Friday kind of feeling.

Mary, Peter, the disciples, and many of the people who put their faith in a man who mystified the first-century world, they spent three days thinking the story ended on Friday. They saw their Rabbi, their friend, put to a torturous death. They had watched with terror and shame as an innocent man was brutally executed and I can only imagine that their grief clouded any ability to know what to do next.

But Sunday came. And we know that on Sunday, two women went to the most guarded tomb in history and found it empty. Empty. A boulder, Roman soldiers, weapons, and law on the side of the accusers, and the once-dead defendant walked out on his own, met the two awe-struck women on the road, and greeted them. 

We know that Jesus then met his disciples on a mountain in Galilee, and before instructing them to tell this very story to the whole world, he promised, “I am with you always...”

We know that the Holy Spirit descended on the small church of believers not many days from that promise, and under the power of that Spirit the first believers spread the gospel of Jesus throughout the ancient world. We gather in churches today, two thousand years later, thanks to the conviction of those brave men and women.

The people who were the most afraid on Good Friday became the most courageous after Sunday. The very same man whom they were afraid for their lives to speak up for became the savior they couldn’t stop talking about. Their fear turned to courage because of Sunday, because of an empty grave, because of an impossible truth: He is not here, He is risen!

The whole earth is groaning, longing for Eden again. It is easy for fear and doubt and wonder to cripple our faith, like they did the evening of Good Friday.

But friends, we also have Sunday.   

As I try to tell these truths to my children, I realize anew how powerful they are to me.

Because soon the little faces in front of me will be older, and I know at some point life will start to feel the Good Friday kind of hard to them, too. But I will tell them that we serve a good, good, Father. We know that he is trustworthy, and we know that his holiness is our hope. I will tell them that our lives are as short as a breath, but that we can tell a beautiful story of redemptive work in the time we are given. I will tell them that if this story we tell on Easter is true, then it changes everything. And if it is not true, not even the Easter egg hunt is worth it. And I will tell them that when it seems like death has won the day, remember that Jesus Christ won the world. Even when life feels heavy like Friday, we can live with the joy and boldness of Sunday. What amazing grace!

And then, because we never outgrow our need to be reminded that our faith is only in that selfless act on the cross, I will tell myself those very same things.