let your heart lie fallow.

In wooden pews on Sunday morning. Stooped over God’s Word at wind-whipped daybreak. Over the kitchen sink as my heart runs ahead. The pricking. Plowing. Tilling. This year has been full of heart preparation, the rocky soil broken and made ready for a planting.

But God let my heart lie fallow. A season of rest for the soil. Nothing planted. Just waiting. My heart has exploded with joy for others as I’ve watched God nurture and grow planted dreams in their lives. And still a bit of sadness tinged the corners as I wondered what my part was. I’ve questioned my significance and I’ve questioned His plan and I’ve wondered aloud about hope.

But when the fallow ground of your heart is ready, the Lord quietly ambles across rows in the thick of night. He tenderly plants while you’re unaware. And you stay unaware until the first tiny sprout pushes up through the ground.

You look at that sprout. You’re amazed. It isn’t what you had been preparing for. But in His goodness and sweetness, God has chosen a plant that only you could know you wanted deep down. Only He knows how you whisper in your heart and cling to the heady scent of gardenia blooms and honeysuckle vine and tea olive carried on soft breezes. He knows what’s been hidden underneath for years and years. A sweet reminder that He holds your heart.

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Recently, I shared that what I thought would be a year of writing became a year of waiting. Something sweet has come out of that waiting: sharing my notes on life with others live and in person with my spoken words. I’m so thankful that the Influence Network keeps letting me come back and share all of my scribblings. I’m teaching again this month on rest and margin. Rest is God’s hope for you; Jesus’ call to you. It IS God’s design for the ebb and flow of life. Margin is the tool to get there. If you feel the call to rest, wonder how to build margin into your life or need to know that the burden of doing, doing, doing is not God’s heart for you, I hope you’ll join me next Thursday night at 9pm (EST). Find more here.

winter gives way to spring.

Maybe it’s long walks on bright afternoons.

Maybe it’s the way all the world is on its tippy toes with forward motion. Green things. White things. Pink things. Tiny buds full of possibility.

Maybe it’s the way fresh air blows through a stale house.

Maybe it’s that my fourth grader is studying poetry. Poetry! And it’s my dear friend, Emily, and she’s so right that hope is feathered. Maybe it’s the way his eyes are stubborn with the belief that he just doesn’t get poetry but we’re talking about frigates and books and he’s just finished The Hobbit and he’s been to the Shire.

Maybe it’s the way hope does give flight. Maybe it’s giving voice to a dream and seeing my husband’s wide and dimpled grin as he prods the what ifs.

Maybe it’s that eight year old girls decide to make color coordinated fruit plates for snack.

Maybe it’s yard work and shovel driven soreness and the smell of compost.

Maybe it’s the way a five year old says something is bodderin’ him and toof.

Maybe it’s just me.

But maybe it’s you, too?

these stars of mine.

On a fresh Spring morning, the dog and I fumble down the steps and out into the world. It’s still at least an hour from dawn and we are trotting through this sleeping giant playing our morning song.

It’s the soft plodding of my shoes hitting asphalt and cement over and over again. It’s the sharp tinkling of his tags against the metal clasp on his leash, gentle and melodic and full of his simple joy.

The sky is still the dark, deep blue of eventide and the wind is just barely carrying what will be the fragrant assault of the blooming season.

God begins His daily work, the beautiful and complex work of His hands: He wakes up the world. My song changes.

It’s the call and response of the Whipporwill, Lark, Wren, Blue Jay, Dove, Owl, Robin. How I can’t even begin to draw lines around one chirrup before another begins. How the soft wind blows the wisps of hair off my damp brow.

I am Abraham.

These are my stars.

Days walking in an unknown direction. Promises and dreams and hopes so full and pressed tight that I can’t hold them in. When the answer tarries. When I don’t feel His goodness, His light, His hope. In the dark of night.

I am Abraham.

These are my stars.

I have only to look. If He sends me where I don’t know. If He changes all my dreams. If He always answers with not-yets. If His goodness and light and hope feel far. If darkness surrounds me.

I have only to listen. I can’t count the beautiful ways He has made music through these feathered, winged things. I can’t count.

And even if all these things, I will always want to love the One who took bumpy skin and wispy feathers and tiny eyes and scrawny legs and put the melodic breath of a symphony inside.

Always.

bread broken.

I thought I’d start a fresh week with some real truth.

It’s been hard for me to write here lately because of many things but mostly because it has felt false to come here and share pretty pictures and light type things when the truth is this: I struggle. It’s very much like when Tom and I bicker. I’m horrible at small talk until there is a resolution.

This isn’t some big thing brought on by sickness, tragedy, huge hurting. It’s just the daily type of thing that makes a murky mess of life sometimes. The biggest portion seems to be that in six months my youngest will be in school. On the day he starts it will have been 11 years that I’ve had a small one at my table for lunch, that I’ve tucked tiny toes in for nap time, that I’ve snuggled with pudgy arms mid-morning. I won’t lie. It hurts and I feel full of something akin to opportunity. Mostly, I feel burdened by what is next. It’s a question and I don’t know the answer or if there even has to be a next at all. But everyone seems to be interested in it and I feel a bit like I’m circling something I’m equally afraid of and confused by.

This thread in the woven thing that is my life is pulling everything a bit out of shape and I’ve struggled with some feelings of significance, or really lack of. I know all the right and true things. It’s just that I wear myself out trying to do it right, even the struggling. It seems so silly to type out here that I actually think about whether I do it wrong the right way.

In my Bible study, we’re digging into Mark. This week, I read as Jesus asked Peter who He was. You are the Christ, Peter answered. In tearful contemplation, I’ve wondered what He really is to me.

On Sundays I’ve been making bread. It’s good and I’ve always wanted a bit too much to be like Ma Ingalls. It’s easy and quick and in the course of a few hours, I can have warm bread on a plate. And Jesus is the bread of life. Bread that can only be enjoyed, taken in, when it is broken.

I know that He is broken for me and brokenness in me. And so I’m learning to lean in to the winnowing, allowing Him to bring me to the end of myself and over murky messes so that I will see Him more clearly.

I wonder. Who is Christ to you? In me, He is the end of should be, the beginning and existence of grace, freedom.

less should be. more just be.

I made soup tonight: the good, hearty, wintery kind. Except I forgot to keep it at a good simmer so you can imagine how I found the brown rice after an hour of basically sitting in warm broth. It was seven pm so we made sandwiches and scurried off to bed soon afterward.

My mornings have been full of pulling the quilt I’ve held on to from freshman year up tight around my chin instead of braving the prickly cold air with a run or a walk. I still remember when my mama and I proudly picked those tattered mauve and green and yellow squares stitched tight. It was 1994. I had garnet and hunter green plastic hangers to match. My daddy built a loft for my dorm room with a shelf underneath that held my 13 inch tv. It was the same tv Tom and I used for the first year of our marriage. We sat on our oversized couch in our teensy apartment and watched as the world fell apart in September of 2001. We hadn’t celebrated a year yet.

We are in the thick of a fumbling and exhausting season that is ministry sometimes and means that Tom is away many nights. The truth is that I’ve been underwater. I’ve let my hope get trampled a bit and let the light grow dim. Last week all of the pushing and plowing and shouldering I’ve been trying to do in my own strength finally outweighed my scrappy self and I fell hard. After a few days of my husband hovering to make sure I didn’t try to pick all of that junk back up with my stretched out spaghetti arms, Sunday came. And Sunday brought messy tears in the middle of the pew. And Sunday brought the Whisper to change. And I whisper-yelled back, “HOW?”

And today brought something fresh. The resolution to expect less: of myself, of my day, of my ability to scratch off scribbled lists. I had three goals today, three easy goals that lots of other mamas and friends and people could easily do quicker than quick. And every single time I put my little foot down toward one of those goals, I asked the God of all grace for Help. I didn’t get them all done just so. I’ll have to go back tomorrow and try again.

But the light got brighter. And I have decided to expect less so I can be more. Be more aware of how the morning light hits the quince branches I brought in from the cold snap. Be more thankful for dirty feet and little people and homework and short legs. Be more affected by the unabashed love of a five year old boy for his mama. Be ever so grateful to find that my lovely friend, Scooper, wrote about this very thing earlier today. She is a beacon for me in this area and her words are full of wisdom.

It’s my prayer for you, too. Expect less. Less should be. More just be.

for when you wish.

It’s a bright and beautiful King Day afternoon. I’m in the kitchen trying to find the right water temperature for dishes. The hot water runs over my hands bringing up pink skin. The tinkling of a full sink begins.

I look out the wavy glass of the window on our backyard. The boys are playing baseball. The dog is stealing the ball.

“GroooverrrrrRRR!” Big smile.

And then huge, hard, cold punch to the chest. I wish. For so many things but mostly that some of the hard things would be taken away. And now my tears are plinking on the edge of the cold counter top. One. Two. Three.

Tumbling, tumbling and my thoughts follow all full of Haven’t-I-been-good-enoughs and Isn’t-it-time-to-move-ons and This-is-not-so-beautifuls. All of the sudden my kitchen is filled with the stale air of why. In my experience, why almost never brings fresh wind.

But then something rustles through the clapboard shambles of my mind: this is just buffing. It must be from Him. Nothing so fresh could come from me right now.

This? Is just buffing. All of these things that rub my skin so raw and pinky tender are revealing something so beautiful: Christ in me. And words can’t begin to scratch out how much I need to see Him in all the bits and pieces of my life. To encounter Him and His grace and His enough over and over again: the thrum, thrum, thrum of this buffing.

When I was eighteen and beginning a faith walk unlike anything before, I was looking for a Lord to spit-shine me up real good. Make me acceptable, liked. Show me how to have a good life. It was how I needed to come to Him and I’m so glad for His grace.

Just now-almost eighteen years later-I am beginning to see that it is less about being shiny and good and more about being closer and closer to a Savior. It is the only way through.

This buffing hurts but it is beautiful.

make room for beauty this year.

Here’s how I want to start 2013. It’s something I’ve been wanting to say to you.

I have a beautiful place to live, to be.

Here’s why. It’s not because of all the things in it: the old and creaky tables that tell stories or the crisp and new white chairs my mama got me for my birthday. It isn’t those things or the pictures on the wall or the well used hardwoods or the shiny banister on the stairs. No, none of those things make right now beautiful. It’s not because my husband has the perfect job (he doesn’t) or my children always, always smile sweet and compliant-like (they don’t). It’s not because every little thing my straining heart has ever chased after is finally slipping into my grip (it’s not).

Right now? It’s beautiful because I chose to believe it is. That’s it. Imperfection doesn’t negate beauty. Rough spots don’t disallow beauty. Bitterness can’t wash it away. Bathrooms with wall paper falling off in big, fat sheets don’t erase beauty. Pain can’t rob my right now of the beauty that is there. Raisin like, wrinkly dreams on the back burner can’t chase beauty away.

Beauty is a fact. It’s part of God’s currency in this world. He is original beauty. He created it. He owns it. He bestows it. It is always present. Always.

2013beauty3

The way to make beauty in your life? Is to believe that it is already there. Right there in the midst of all the things you never really did want and the halfway done things that make you throw your hands up in the air and the hope that is so much like a wisp that it trails right through your fingers. Right there, beauty is shimmer shining and glinting and if you wet your dry and scratchy disappointment eyes with the balm of belief you will see it.

Choosing comes first. Decide for it. Decide to believe in the God of beauty. And then? Like a baby hearing his mama for the first time, you’ll know the tinkling of tiny beauty bells. And then? You’ll put your hand alongside the Beauty Maker’s and He’ll make lovely things through you.

Whether it’s the walls that make a home for your heart or the skin that wraps your tender soul up or the fences that mark out what your life looks like right now, let 2013 be the year you decide for beauty. You’ll waver. You’ll fight. You’ll want to give up. Don’t.

wonderment.

Once a week my smallest person and I hurry home to eat lunch at the dining room table. We sit across that wide oval expanse and he sings, talks, tells me he was the leader today. Except it’s “weader.” His eyes are a sea of smooth caramel brown lit with joy, wonder and mischief. He got them from my husband and I’m ever so glad it’s a heritage that continues. His eyebrows dance up and down over his forehead as he sings about Rudolph with so much gusto and expression.

I am tired and this is the moment when I decide that I am not going to try to manufacture Christmas this year. It’s a weight I’ve carried over and over each year as my heart strains to make this season magical for my children. To rediscover the wonderment I felt when I was a child.

There is nothing more magical than God made flesh, than a warm little Christ baby carrying the full weight of redemption and rescue in every coo and every baby mew. It’s the only magic that fills full and doesn’t leave dried up desperation.

We still have twinkle lights and paper garlands. We cut snowflakes out of rationed computer paper just the other day. Santa will still come. We even got our children a dog. A dog. But all these things? I am choosing to do out of love and because He first loved me. Not because it is a race to fill up their cups with as much magic and wonder as possible before December 25th.

And when that soft and beautiful and strong night comes? I am praying that my heart will be still instead of busy and that I will know wonder like never before, trusting that God will work His eternal, not my ways, faithful, real and wonderful magic in my children’s hearts, too.

Merry Christmas, friends.

ordinary faith.

Sometimes daily life stuff doesn’t seem like much to write about.

But that is what I am doing over here. Just daily life.

I forgot to buy applesauce at the grocery store. Everyone wants to play something totally different in the exact same spot in the backyard. I can’t find the 1/2 cup measuring cup. Anywhere. Right now my 10 year old is shooting tennis ball rim shots into a big blue bucket right outside the window.

I’ve been teaching my abide series to a group of women at our church. It’s been good but my brain is swimming. I didn’t want to just stand up at the front of a room and read what I wrote so I’ve been studying verses and fleshing that whole idea out. God’s Word is full of never ending layers. I like that part.

Sometimes, though, when I am standing up there looking into those faces I feel awful ordinary. I’m not living some kind of extraordinary life full of huge moments and profound faith steps with swelling music playing in the background. I live my life. I shake my fists. I do my best to surrender my doubts and keep taking the next step. Sometimes I fight too hard.

But I’m just the sort of person Jesus chose to walk on Earth for. You are, too. The kind that is extremely ordinary and fighting doubts and sometimes surrendering. We need the gentle reminder of how He chose to begin freedom and victory.

In the end, faith is fed just as much in the fields of the ordinary.

purchased.

Almost all of the leaves have fallen off of our beautiful red oak. I watched yesterday afternoon as a squirrel jumped and skittered along a bare branch against a bright blue Fall sky.

Our girl has bolstered up her confidence and she is riding her bike without training wheels. I was in second grade when my courage finally outweighed my fear and I remember that long stretch with the downward slope where my daddy pushed me over and over again until I was ready to do it on my own. I had a pink bike with a pink seat and pink pedals. And I still remember my sweet husband on the hunt for a bike for his own girl two Christmases ago now. She wanted streamers and shimmer. It had to be just right. All the streamers have fallen off now and the shimmer is more of a glint but I will never forget his sweet face when he brought that bike home.

And so I sat yesterday on our front steps and watched the last ochre yellow turned orange brush strokes on my beautiful tree. And I counted how many times our newly brave girl made it around our yard without falling. And I sent out proud words as I cycled through the chorus of three watch-me-mamas.

I am watching.

My ten year old came barreling through the yard on a scooter, balancing as he went. I don’t write about him as much anymore. It’s not because there isn’t anything to say. It’s this: we are walking in the minefield of the heart realm and it’s becoming more and more his story.

The truth is I have never been more burdened for my children’s hearts than since 10 entered our lives. I see it. I see that without Christ we are trapped. I know the way out and I want more than anything for them to take it. So I’m learning the balance of pointing to freedom and trusting God to be at work in their hearts.

The breeze was soft yesterday afternoon and it caught the perfume I bought from the sparkly new Whole Foods just down the street. It smells a bit like patchouli and my freshman year of college. Then? I did not know that my soul didn’t have to be for sale anymore.

I know it now. My soul is not for sale. Significance? Paid for. Purpose? Paid for. Love? Paid for. Acceptance? Paid for. Security? Paid for.

And so I keep showing up for these young and tender hearts. I keep watching and I keep freedom close at hand.