april thoughts in bullet points

• ^ This is my favorite person. It was fun (and also very scary and stressful at times) helping him and his dad take a tree down by our carport over the weekend. I have been struck anew lately what a privilege marriage is.... a privilege and a responsibility that together we get to be a mini-model of God's love, honor, and grace toward us.
• I used to think it was normal and right to refer to myself, as a Christian, as "a dirty, rotten sinner saved by grace." It didn't begin to occur to me until recent months and weeks what a flawed viewpoint that is. Yes, it's right to identify sin as what it is: sin, rebellion, unrighteousness, offense against the holiness of God Himself. But as a saved person it can't be right to identify myself with that sin any longer. I do not find Jesus or Paul or Peter or the other major characters of the New Testament referring to themselves and their followers as sinners - I find that they, almost without exception, use the word "saints" instead. I am not a dirty, rotten sinner saved by grace; I am a saint who, yes, still sins, but who is being perfected by the gracious hand of God every day. Can it be anything but damaging and wrong to look at myself differently than HE looks at me? Can I be so arrogant as to think I'm being super-righteous by getting more down on myself than God Himself does? Can His precious blood sacrifice possibly be "not enough" to WIPE AWAY my sin and change my identity completely?! I don't think so.
• Speaking of being a saint who still sins... who is still in the process of being sanctified... sometimes this sanctification hurts. The breaking of pride hurts. I experienced this afresh last week and sometimes I would just rather say, "Nope, not going through this, God, not even for You." But I have found it true again that God draws near to humility, and that what is lost by the painful destruction of my pride is gained back tenfold in the way He picks me up from my epic fail and gifts me with His presence and closeness so much more richly. The Lord loves those He chastens! Hallelujah that He values His children enough to guide them to righteousness, even when it hurts.
• I have been thinking about the concept of lament. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of examples of lament in the Bible; most of the Psalms fall into this category along with (obviously) the whole book of Lamentations. I wonder sometimes why we don't see more lament happening in our worship and prayer times in the church. We sing a lot of praise and joy, which is needed and right, but it is only a small facet of worship. Huge depths of spiritual truth and growth and understanding of God are found in the laments of the Bible, and when we act like coming to God from a place of pain isn't okay, I think we miss out on a whole aspect of His character. God isn't too small to handle our pain or our anger or our fear or our complaints. And I sometimes think He would rather we come to HIM with these ugly things than do what we normally do, which is (for me) take them out on other people or to the all-knowing Internet. God is ready and willing to hear our deepest hurt and offer His grace, comfort, and healing. And it's usually in these places of pain that we find ourselves softened to the truth of God's Word that can help redirect our perspective and set us free.

So yeah... that's a little tip-of-the-iceberg taste of what has been whirling around in my head lately. There is so much wisdom and knowledge and truth to be had from our God and it just makes me excited. :) What's been on your mind recently?

happy spring + goals for a new season

 Photos taken at Priest Point Park, Olympia, Washington.

It seems like winter has been eternal this year. If it had been a proper winter, with long stretches of frigid clear days and blankets of snow, I don't think it would have bothered me... but no, it was a western Washington winter, and not only that but the wettest western Washington winter in decades (at least). Rain and gray for months on end has worn me out.

But yesterday and the day before we got just a hint of springtime, with sunshine in patches and temperatures in the 60s. Sam and I hiked at Priest Point Park and strolled through downtown Olympia and worked in the yard and it was like I finally started to break free of a winter-long depressive state. It is time to make things new.

Goals, spring 2016:

- spring clean my life

- plant a lot of flowers

- get involved in women's ministry at church

- get my name out there

- go hiking as many weeks as there's sunshine to do so

- line edit my book

- actively love my church family

- listen to a hermeneutics/Bible lecture every day

- keep doing daily yoga

- balance my eating habits

- get a lot of fresh air and exercise

- get out of my comfort zone

on time

 

Have you ever watched The Dark Knight Rises? If you have, I’m sure you remember the near-unbearable suspense climax as our favorite heroes fight desperately to disable a time-sensitive nuclear bomb. One moment too late, and an entire city could be wiped out. It is a race against the tirelessly ticking clock.

I just pulled up the clock app on my phone and watched the second hand go by for a full minute. Quite literally, I saw an entire minute of my life disappear—lost forever. Irredeemable. And I thought how odd it is that we do not respond to life’s ticking clock the same way we respond to a Hollywood time bomb.

Think: our lives are forever ticking by. Seconds pass on a tireless rhythm, and with them pass hours and days and weeks. Time is like a gun to our backs, pushing us closer and closer to the End—an End which history tells us we must inevitably reach, be it by death or Rapture. No act of genius or heroism can stop the ultimate Clock.

So where is our urgency?

Why are we lounging in our lazyboy recliners instead of perched rigid on the edge of our seats?

The only difference between our lives and the peril of Gotham City is that we have absolutely no idea when it might all stop. Shouldn’t that sharpen our senses rather than dull them?

People say it all the time: “Oh, sorry, I’m just so busy right now. I don’t have time. Maybe later, okay?” It’s the ageless excuse to avoid things that are hard, things that are unpleasant, things that just don’t seem like a priority. I just don’t have time.

Liar.

Don’t you understand? If you are honest with yourself, time is all you have. The plot twist is that you have no idea how much. So spend it wisely.

For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night. While they are saying, “Peace and safety!” then destruction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains upon a woman with child, and they will not escape. But you, brethren, are not in darkness, that the day would overtake you like a thief; for you are all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night nor of darkness; so then let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober.     - 1 Thessalonians 5:2-6

all things new

 

It’s October, and the yard has a  thick carpet of merry-colored leaves. Trees reach their blazing sunshine-clad branches toward a sky too blue to seem real, and if only there would be a hint of chill to welcome back boot-and-scarf time of year everything would be quite perfect.

I can’t walk fast in the fall. It’s like the world is brand new and I have to see it all afresh. Hurrying ruins this God-given moment to just breathe in the new season, and I hate that everyone seems to think green lights are mandatory even during such a time of magnificence.

We take moments of silence at funerals and prayer rallies, but we let life drown out the beautiful moments and the awestriking views. There’s little time for wonder in the 60-mile-per-hour, redlight-greenlight world.

But when I see Mt. Rainier rising like a foaming wave from the eastern horizon, or the clouds brushed pink over the Black Hills to the west, I can’t just go onward in indifference. It’s like the world has a new coat of paint—a thrilling foreshadow of what is to come, when one day this beautiful but burdened Creation is remade into something even more perfect.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”
Revelation 21:1-5a

nisqually national wildlife refuge

 

These first October days have been sunny and sweet. Sam and I have been housebound by sickness all week, yet just seeing the sunshine filtering through the windows and the yellowing maple leaves in the backyard has been delightful. Today, finally well enough to go out, we took a leisurely stroll down the boardwalk at Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge, soaking up fall colors and a big sky and a rare view of Mt. Rainier.

And about the heron… I’ve been trying to capture a Great Blue Heron for years on camera. We get them in the swamp at home sometimes, but they’re very, very skittish and I’ve never been at the right place and right time. I saw this heron at a distance, but it was well beyond the public access part of the refuge and I don’t have a 600mm wildlife lens, so I moved on. Not even ten minutes later it just so happened to fly across the marsh and land like ten yards away! I was able to move in close enough to easily fill the frame just using my 135mm lens—not a very shy bird. :) Definitely a day of triumph on the camera front!

time hurts

 

I wish I could bottle up that smell, that beautiful combination of tilled earth and fruit blossoms, of prairie winds and fresh dew. It’s the smell of walking to the irrigation field at sunrise and of jeans wet to the hip from trudging through tall hayfields. It’s the smell of crisp blue skies held up by white mountain pillars on every corner. It’s the smell of home, a smell that transports me back to a strange amnesic state in which the last several years are erased—in which I fully expect to open the front door and find all four of my siblings still at home, Amy still a toddler, and Lenny still alive.

Time hurts today.

sebring light

 

I could not have been ready to go back to Florida after eleven months of absence. Coming back to people I last saw on the other side of the world, to a place where the softness of evening light never fails to break down the hard shell around my heart—I should have expected the tears, I suppose, but I really thought I could maintain my masquerade of strength for seven days.

Maybe I did, in some ways; I only cried in front of a few, though I wanted to cry to them all. Not tears of mourning or discontent, but tears of raw, long-buried pain. The pain of eleven months without the encouragement that can only be found in fellowship with other believers in the Truth, eleven months of being hardened by the unrelieved presence of Darkness. There is an unmistakable Light in Sebring, Florida that I haven’t yet found anywhere else.

I'm so afraid
Of what you have to say
Cause I am quiet now
And silence gives you space

I'll never be, be what you see inside
You say I'm not alone, but I am petrified
You say that you are close, is close the closest star?
You just feel twice as far, you just feel twice as far

And I’ll fall, and I’ll break, and I’ll fake you out…

“Fake You Out” by Twenty One Pilots

untitled

 

It’s odd to think that on February 21, 2014, I stood next to this man at my wedding rehearsal thinking I loved and knew him—when, almost fifty days later, that love looks like a childish fancy compared to how much I love him now. I can hardly imagine what fifty years might bring—but I’m excited to find out. :)

now i just sit in silence

 

There are many untitled drafts lying in my Documents folder, crisp and white like the pages of books that everyone likes to look at but no one cares to read. It seems months since I had a heart-to-heart with my own soul; January and February were some of the loudest months of my existence, though cloaked in dense fog and layers of snow. Then March—married, settled in a new place, and suddenly there is so much silence that I sometimes feel like I’m being screamed at. So I pack a few more things into my daily planner and get busy with trivialities; after all, there is no greater discomfort to a Jonah soul than the quiet that reigns before the storm.

Daily, I pick up my Bible and read. Daily, my eyes skim across words that don’t seem to penetrate the barricade of my stubbornness. Daily, I fight the shame of a hardened heart, caked in the filth of resentment against a God who was supposed to be following my agenda—was supposed to have ended the wilderness wanderings by now, given me some kind of tangible calling.

But then—what calling ever comes to closed ears? It’s always been hard to hear His voice when I’ve stopped up my heart to the silence.

Hands folded, eyes closed, ears opened. There—in the darkness behind my eyelids I can see Him.

He is looking out from my husband’s kind hazel eyes.

Silence.

The blinding light of revelation.

The quiet days of grocery lists and dinner plans, workouts and photography experiments—all permeated with the undeserved joy of being loved and led by a man whom I respect without reservation.

“This is your calling.”