faith

Just When I Think I’m the Teacher

Posted by

0

I find her curled into herself, all knobby knees to her chest and tears sticky on her cheeks. She loves them to stay there, craves for me to see their dramatic fall. It’s the stuff of an aspiring teenager and that’s about enough to take the wind right out of me- the changing I’m witnessing.
With elbows on my legs I bend to meet her gaze and ricochet her emotions.

“You’re angry. I get it that Mondays are tough. And I see you.”

“I just hate going to school because it’s so hard for me and I couldn’t find my other slipper and I’m freezing (oh, the desperation). I want to be home with my family.” (Ah, yes. Bringing out the big “family” bomb sounding so well and good.)

We were in the aftermath of the flinging bootie, her burst of growling. I saw myself plain as day in those angry eyes.
“I’m really glad we had two days together. What if our government made you go to school 7 days a week?” (Which at the moment was tempting me beyond what I could handle.)

The brother interjects just like a brother. “Yeah. At least you have the weekend.” Not now, oh righteous one. Eat your Fruit Loops quietly. 

“Then we would get longer summers.”

“What if you didn’t? What if you had to go to a school where you couldn’t pick your own friends and the teachers made you hate God or you got in trouble?”

Why? Why do I say things like this? Guh. 

“I would still love Him.”
The crease in her forehead relaxes to curiosity. “Are there schools like that?”

“I don’t know.” It’s then I consider stopping but that would be wise and stuff so, I keep going.  “But there are people who lose their lives and even their heads for trusting in Jesus and not following other faiths.” And I believe in my bones He weeps at each family and limb torn apart, for every child found face-down on the beach or bloody and forgotten, every ounce of pain in every lonely mother.
“What’s great about where we live is we have the right to guns so we can protect ourselves.” I say it aloud so they’ll feel safe, and how do I explain that death means nothing when we know where we’re headed? How do I really even explain it to myself? Because what, Lord, of the things happening that words can’t contain? It’s heavy, too much.

The day moves on with a morning bell, an exhale in the car once the noise of the three of them hits the school sidewalk, me cursing my decision to say oh the many things. I scrub at tacky milk spills on the table and pick up wadded toilet paper from the floor and think, thank You that I never have to tell them we don’t have breakfast…or food at all. Thank You for not asking us to hide or risk being murdered. 

We get a mailer of a handsome boy in Africa whose name we try pronouncing. We’re told of the way he doesn’t learn ABC’s or 123’s because he has to work for his family at his tender 6 years old. How the prevalence of auto-immune diseases threaten his existence, and his favorite food is rice.

I become frustrated at their giggling, their poking each other’s sides in tickling. When I’ve washed my hands of them, put them to bed, she sneaks down to me in the dim light coming from above the stove. As I whip around to march her back to her room I see the way her hands cup the box. Tears come again but this time she’s keeping them full, rounded like bubbles at the crests of her lids.

“Here, Mom. He needs this more than I do.” The words hang in the kitchen with the lingering smells of dinner. I choke and grab her to me, the whole of her many months of saved dollars smashed between us. The doll she’s giving up, an afterthought.

Just when I think I’m the one teaching, she gives me the lesson of my life.

“…and many rich people were putting in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which amount to a cent.
      …for they put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she owned, all she had to live on.”   -Mark 12:41-44

  

“Perfectly Willing to be Perfectly Human”

Posted by

2

Midwestern cold knows not mercy. It crawls and creeps into every crevice until even the breath you take is sharp against your lungs. The kind of bitter that leaves you nauseously trying to warm your fingers against your dad’s chest when you wear the wrong gloves.

I held the barrel as steady as I could but still it wavered. My adrenaline made it difficult to sight in that small spot behind the shoulder where he’d always told me to aim. On an exhale, with the heat of my breath forming moisture beads on the gun, I closed my eyes and pulled tight the trigger. The deer never took another step.
“You got ‘im,” my dad said. All his words were edged with giddiness and somehow the mistake of washing my hair with Pantene instead of doe urine was forgotten. (I may be admitting a near 20-year secret that this wasn’t by accident. Sorry Dad- we all have our limits.)

Trauma works in a similar manner. Sounds, smells, images on a billboard or commercial, and suddenly like the deer I cannot take another step. It’s a bullet between the eyebrows of my past. Unseen until it’s too late.

This anxiety disorder thing I became aware of when I was thirteen and pimpled. This thing I’m still learning to manage almost two decades later. It can throw me into defeat about as fast as a deer drops. I start to believe I’m stuck and wonder if I’ll forever be doomed to a life of fear. Talk of hope begins to feel like a hoax.

Professionals call it “all-or-nothing” thinking. Isn’t that a dainty little package? I prefer to name it a “slippery slope of lies,” or possibly even “perfectionism.”

When I can pull myself far enough away from this type of thought-processing I start to ask questions like: What if I embrace the difficult, ugly bits of my life along with the graceful? How would it look to say yes to the hard the way I say yes to the easy? What if beauty is in the ashes and connection happens from being vulnerable about our wounds?

“What if part of God’s message to the world was you? The true and real you?”   -Donald Miller, Scary Close

My past doesn’t define me. Speak. Believe. Repeat.
But it is part of my story. And I think that might just be okay.

“I am willing to sound dumb.
I am willing to be wrong.
I am willing to be passionate about something that isn’t perceived as cool.
I am willing to express a theory.
I am willing to admit I’m afraid.
I’m willing to contradict something I’ve said before.
I’m willing to have a knee-jerk reaction, even a wrong one.
I’m willing to apologize.
I’m perfectly willing to be perfectly human.”   -Donald Miller, Scary Close

Barefoot Peaches

Posted by

0

With knees pulled in close I watched the rain linger on my peach tree branches like diamonds gracing ear lobes. They hung until they were too heavy, held too much and then fell. One by one they went.

Tink. Plink-tink. 

It became a song the likes of Disney could form into a magical illusion. I saw Fantasia. It was creepy. But the way of rain is my tune. A beat of the gutter, percussion on the patio. It was all very romantic save for the permeating smell of trash. Sidenote: why do ripe strawberries and melons stink of garbage? Anyone? Bueller?

***
I want peaches so badly. When I drove home a few years ago with the fresh purchase, peachy tree roots swaddled like a promise, I had visions of overflowing bushels of fruit I’d carry into the house each August. I wanted to brag about my bare feet and sweet bounty. Make jam and stuff.
Yeah, not a single bloom in three years. Because Colorado thinks snow on Mother’s Day is one wild prank. It is, my friends.

Last spring I coerced my husband into wrapping our bushes. We wove frost-resistant tarp around our lilacs and I dug up my lettuce seedlings. It is so much stinking work to garden in this climate. I swear I fret more over a half-inch plant than I do my children’s souls. OK, that’s going a smidgen far. My point is I stress plenty over those stupid things.

The storm crescendoed only to steady again. I’d seen the forecast for the weekend: worst blizzard in decades (my interpretation).
Familiar angst started to rise. I began to make mental checklists of supplies, materials, and gallons of milk.

Until I didn’t.

What if I decide stillness? How will this play out if I drop my shoulders and travel the way of trust? 

Not only did the snow come it sifted all night, weighing heavy on limbs and leaves, breaking branches and giving me a stomachache. An inch would have been plenty but no, we got six for pity’s sake. 

Morning dawned like a war zone. Flowers bent low and trees were pinned to the ground. And a knowing started to invade my heart when I looked at the trees, their trunks still sturdy.

Storms can leave us battered and bruised, but when we trust we are held in every outcome they don’t uproot us.

“A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out. In faithfulness He will bring forth justice.”  -Isaiah 42:3, NIV

Why We Need You

Posted by

0

“…when the story of earth is told, all that will be remembered is the truth we exchanged. The vulnerable moments. The terrifying risk of love and the care we took to cultivate it.
And all the rest, the distracting noises of insecurity and the flattery and the flashbulbs will flicker out like a turned-off television.”  -Donald Miller, Scary Close 

If you haven’t been stuck in a car outside an elementary school pick-up line, quite frankly…you’re among the few still sane in this world. But if you’re like the rest of us, you know what that 20 minute standstill is good for. All those texts. Just as many stray eyebrow hairs. (What is it with daylight bringing those suckers front and center?) Screaming toddlers who throw sippy cups at the dashboard. And of course, catching up with the other soldiers in the trenches. I like to call us moms.

It was on such a day, as I was likely checking my teeth, that I spotted her. I knew her car from when our girls weren’t in kindergarten. Before they dumped their Crayolas into a big bin together. Back when they wore pink tights and tutus and were barely potty-trained. Back when we each only had the two children.

I waited for her to look up, the timing of this particular social medium still a mystery to me. Eventually her head turned and I shot my hand in the air like I had suddenly noticed her too. But she didn’t wave back. Oh, she didn’t see me, I thought.
Except we quit talking. She wouldn’t return my texts. News traveled that they were moving. And I was crushed.

It can be daunting, can’t it? Friendship isn’t always like those flowing beach novels. It isn’t as faithful as a Thursday night sitcom from the nineties. We try, we get hurt, and somewhere deep inside we make a vow to never let it happen again.

“…it is a surrender. We open up to another person, and to God, our particular questions and dilemmas.” -Emilie Griffin, Small Surrenders

It would be a tragedy if we were to stay safe. My heart, your heart is beautiful. And it is desperately needed in this culture. Even the parts you don’t like about yourself, they are a piece of the beauty too because something incredible happens when we say we struggle, fail. It allows another the freedom to say, “Me too.” It allows the Spirit to start changing and growing us.

“How can we be loved if we are always hiding?” -Donald Miller, Scary Close

When we offer the wisdom of our life experiences and the truth of our inadequacies we harvest an intimacy with someone who will be there when tragedy strikes and we are brought to our knees. We share a bond that pushes us beyond stagnant faith. We live out the love of the gospel, because don’t think for a minute it won’t stretch us to also love well in our communities.

Been hurt? It’s okay. We all have.

Follow me through Lenten season at southeastcc.org/lent

A Good Christian Girl Who Vowed Never to Read a Word of 50 Shades of Grey. And Then Did.

Posted by

1

There is that tinge of shame when I scroll through Facebook lately and see the stones being thrown to the 50 Shades of Grey movie. “Boycott!” urge the titles. “Stop Pornography!” To which I say, yes. Please. Stop it.
I read the articles of damnation, the strong language in blogs with phrases like “stylized sexual violence” and “abuse” and “twisted.” I get it. And I was there only months ago.

The mental judgments came automatically. Never. I will never read that crap. It wasn’t something I declared publicly, it was more of a quiet resolve because actually, I know much on the subject of sexual addiction. A subject I take seriously.

Until the first trailer came out and a single phrase wouldn’t let me rest: “You’re the one who’s changing me,” Christian said.

Aw, come on, I thought with the eye-roll of a teenager. That sounds…like a story…worth reading. But it’s, you know, erotica, which clicks off the tongue like a sin and is not a genre I have ever, ever read. Like, ever. 

So I did what I had to do. Cautiously and with copious amounts of trepidation I lifted the book jacket with the silver, textured tie. Two weeks later I finished the last chapter in the series. I know. I can hear your gasps of fright, but just bear with me for a minute.

Here’s the problem I’m finding with these well-intentioned bloggers who want everyone to donate to women’s shelters and scream with tear-stained compassion to save the generations, many of them haven’t read the books.

Since I have, I’ll give you my perspective. It might just be one you haven’t heard.

It’s Not About the Sex
I’m. Serious. In a fierce wrench of irony, this story is about abuse, freedom, and redemption. (Are you gasping again? You’re even covering your mouth with one hand, aren’t you?) Did you know that most addictions start from childhood exploitation? That the cycle of bullying and shame lead a person to try to survive in any way that will allow them to escape the pain of what they’ve endured? Meet Christian Grey. A very wounded man who was objectified first, then finds a woman who opens him to an emotion he’s never allowed himself to feel- love.

“The image of a powerful man who’s really still a little boy, who was horrifically abused and neglected, who feels unworthy of love from his perfect family and his much- less- than- perfect girlfriend…” – Anastasia Steele

I’d even go so far as to say this is an example of the kind of love we’re called to exhibit.

“And it strikes me like a thunderbolt- that’s what he needs from me- unconditional love.” – Anastasia Steele.

It Isn’t a Perfect Story
Duh. You may be completely uncomfortable with all the bombings. The F-kind. You might not be able to read the types of scenes E.L. James orchestrates because you know what it will do to your heart, or rather, your crotch. Great, have boundaries. I’m all about boundaries. I came across plenty that could be triggering to someone who’s a victim or recovering from addiction and it matters. Tread carefully, be aware when reading, and if you find yourself in a real relationship that is unsafe well, run like hell.
Are there ways other than blindfolding to speak the truth of love? Obviously.
Could she have left out all that sex? Yeah.
Was it a little codependent? In the end.

What The Characters Taught Me

“And now here you are- brave and strong…giving me hope. Loving me after all that I’ve done.”
“I’ve avoided intimacy for so long- I don’t know how to do this.” -Christian Grey

There is hope for those who have lost their way. Sure, we all make our choices and some of them have grave consequences, literally. Selfless love, however is powerful enough to bring the darkest of circumstances to light. The deepest of scars to healing. Christian had to face his demons, do the work, and stretch himself consider change that made him more authentic. Anastasia had to ask herself if she could love him through the process.
I suppose if I’m being this honest I can say that I have had to ask the same questions. Do I want authenticity in the face of pain, shame, failure? Yes. When my relationships fall short, wound me, need forgiveness, am I willing? I want to be.

Know Why Society is in a Tizzy
I was raised to be fearful. “Don’t let your lips touch alcohol! Don’t utter a single disrespectful swear word! Don’t even think it,” they’d say at a whisper. These can be helpful principles. Instead, it left me disconnected to the extreme that I was afraid of anyone who didn’t believe the same as me. Of four-letter words that frankly, some situations call for.
I often think of the adulterous woman in the New Testament who was dragged naked to Jesus’ feet. Or Solomon, who was likely a sex addict himself with all those concubines, and didn’t hold back a racy few poems in the Songs. Or David, who was a murderer that needed the sultry legs he saw on top of the veranda. Truth tells me God uses the broken, the damaged, “the bottom of the barrel sinner” (as in all of us who know we need grace). Fear can keep us from coming eye to eye with people who need to know they aren’t alone.

This is not some sort of have-to-it’s-the-absolute-best-book kind of rant. Maybe you’ve read all you want to know from this post and I respect that. I also support all manner of efforts to cease pornography. With nearly $3 billion dollars a year in revenue and the average age of exposure at eleven, it’s an epidemic that is ruining our marriages, culture, our souls. It alters brain chemistry, for goodness’ sake. Perhaps we should consider 24,000,000 adult internet sites combined with the accessibility of smartphones which lends me to think, this single movie may not be the ultimate tipping point.
The movie, I have not seen. I may never see it nor am I condoning that it’s a good way to spend your time. You’ll have to decide that for you.

What I am saying is this is a shockingly moving story of the power of unconditional love and healing.

Oh and that women’s shelter? Let’s give whether we see the movie or not.

A Breeze Banging Blinds

Posted by

0

‘Tis the season for sunburns and skinned knees. For crickets harmonizing in the dark and ceiling fans that keep warm air circulating. It’s time for ice cubes crackling in tea and grills that sizzle with the searing of meats. Bring on pasta salad, watermelons shaped like baskets, and volleyball nets in backyards.

My eyes are tired. I am tired. The night settles into a quiet rest, every last scary thought cast into oblivion with my mother’s caress across their forehead. A breeze hits me through blinds that bang easy on the sill. I let down because all three of them are finally down, and I escape from lengthy lists of what I will need to attend or pack on these last few days of school. I forget about the laundry backed into a corner of my bedroom, ignore the toothpaste splattered mirrors, and let the cool wash over my skin the way water showers my Impatiens.

But somewhere in the midst of all this easing there is aching. A nephew who will have a funeral. A marriage withered and dry, cracked on the edges with pain that doesn’t give. A parent with a diagnosis that guts a family. The quiet eases nothing. The emptiness, a beating of the soul. A summer’s breeze, razorblades, because it feels that nothing is as it should be and everything has changed.

“What if we have it all wrong? This question recently came from a friend. “What if danger, heart-wrenching circumstances, sorrow is our means to life?”

When the morning is already hot on my arms, I pinch buds of Petunias, wrangle them loose from their stem so that many more will come. When snow has stopped its angry tantrum and frigid temperatures dissipate, chive sprouts return greener and fuller. Only when a tree’s lowest branches are sawed free can the rest of it reach high.

Come through the screen, night air. Remind us that winter doesn’t last and hope comes after death.

 

“Keep Back Nothing”

Posted by

0

“Your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him.

Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality  will ever be original whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

The principle runs through all life from top to bottom, Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay.

But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”  -C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

There is nothing for me to add except to say…brilliant. And also, maybe that we should incorporate “twopence” back into our common conversations.

Gum and Eternity.

Posted by

0

Lucky Charms is hitting their bowls and smelling oddly like the yeast I use for pizza dough. They’ve already made time to fight over who will put away the milk and which spoon goes to whom. They are trying to annoy each other with repetitive noises. Thank you, I’m thoroughly exasperated.

“I read something this morning and I’m curious what you think it means,” I tell them. Their interest is tickled enough to stop poking and grunting. “Things that we can see are temporary and things we cannot see will last eternally. Ideas?”

My oldest daughter takes the challenge by starting first, which is more about not letting her brother talk and less about having something to say. I know this by the way she hesitates after each word. “Temporary…means…power,” she says with white dribbles on her chin.

I’m trying with great effort not to let myself get distracted by the learning curve of her hairstyle.
Um, no. “Try again.”

“Wait.” She is stalling again. Must. Answer. Before. Him. But his patience can only last so long.

“It means-” he begins.

“Let her finish and then you can try.”

She takes another stab at it, and at her brother. It’s a one-two punch if she can pull it off. “Temporary means, like, it won’t last forever.”

“Exactly.”

“But,” she says. “We can’t see, like, fairy godmothers or Santa Claus and they won’t last forever.”

Now I’m the one feeling a kick in the gut. Think fast. “Right, but they aren’t real. I think it’s talking about things that are real.” Whew. Save. Back to the exploration. “So the things we can see like our house, the trees, even our bodies, won’t always be around. Our souls, our spiritual hearts will live forever.”

My son picks up a small box. “Like this gum. We chew it and when we’re done we spit it in the trash.”

OK. Well, I think we got lost somewhere. Go get ready for school.

Not Enough Spit

Posted by

0

Earthy, a mixture of grass and dirt and sun and let’s face it, manure. That’s what I smell when I’m near a farm. It awakens my senses and pulls me alive. If someone could formulate this into a wax, I would wear galoshes and burn it. I would.

I think horses smell delightful as well.

Did camels? In the dust and sweat of the desert thousands of years ago, did camels emanate this kind of aroma?
I love their lips, horses and camels alike. They are soft in a way that no baby bottom can compare. I’ve run my fingers along their noses, felt the warm exhale as they breathe. It is a risk, this petting of 6 foot, 1,000 pound beasts. Camels bite.

Steel is quite a contrast to this. In early centuries it would have been bone or wood. I’m talking about sewing needles. (Can I pause and just mention that whittling something so small out of bone is incredible. A work ethic unknown in our day.) Now they range from a couple inches to half the length of a ruler. The eye, that stupid opening where a slobbery piece of thread never fits, can be as large as 6 mm. Or 0.23622 inches. I don’t know what this means except to say, teeny.

My feet are propped on a folding chair that doesn’t belong to a table. The wreath on my auburn front door is twingling in the glare of sunshine because it’s mid-morning and I haven’t taken time to unplug it. Debris from Christmas still abounds, and I’m letting cartoons play much too long. Because my heart is landing in the sands of the Holy Land.

“Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

– Matthew 19:24 NASB

It can’t happen. One thousand pounds, fitted through six millimeters. All the spitting in the world wouldn’t get that thing slick enough to slide into a hole like that. It’s hopeless. 

But I just need the new model of the 4Runner because if we’re spending that kind of money and keeping it forever, I certainly don’t want to start out with an older body style. 
And my decorations are looking their age because all that we got after our vows is telling a decade-old story and I do not want get stuck in a rut.
Oh, and that bank statement needs higher numbers in the balance column without sacrificing my addiction to overpriced, delicious, so-worth-it coffee. 

“Gimme, gimme, gimme. I need, I need, I need.”

– Bill Murray, What About Bob  

It’s the mantra of America. And I’m guilty of it too.

I write in my journal questions I’d rather not answer. It’s painful to go here.
What is my camel? My eye? What feels like an overwhelming impossibility? 

-finishing a book that seems so beyond my capability
-walking back into relationships that seem dangerous, where heartache has not been absent
-a country that is truly free
-a garden, a shed, a house with a walk-around porch, and kids throwing footballs and sarcastic slurs with their daddy on acreage that is enough to stretch out but still close to town
-telling my personal story
-holding hands with a woman who has recently found a safe place to sleep and a warm meal, and wants someone to shed tears with her
-accepting my deteriorating body, my outdated clothes, my less-than-modern “stuffs” as my youngest says

If He asked me to give things up, could I?
If He asked me to go after it all with abandon, would I?
Am I willing either way?

“And looking at them Jesus said to them, ‘With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.'”

-Matthew 19:26 NASB

Giddyup.

 

 

 

One Thousand Wha…? Meandering thoughts on Ann Voskamp

Posted by

3

“We look and swell with the ache of a broken, battered planet, what we ascribe as the negligent work of an indifferent Creator (if we even think there is one). Do we ever think of the busted-up place as the result of us ingrates, unsatisfied, we who punctured it all with a bite? The fruit’s poison has infected the whole of humanity. Me. I say no to what He’s given. I thirst for some roborant, some elixir, to relieve the anguish of what I’ve believed: God isn’t good. God doesn’t love me.”            -Ann Voskamp

Wait. I need to read that again. Maybe twice.

“Take it slow,” says a friend, to which I wonder, is there any other choice? I feel like I’m reading the pages through finger-smudged glasses. My mind squints and demands, “Come again?” as I muddle through the rhetoric.

I landed at Starbucks this morning kidless, (WordPress is underlining that word in bright red right now but I’m using it anyway. I like the way it sounds. In fact, I’ll repeat it.) kidless, watching a long line of fellow addicted patrons ebb and flow through the drive-thru. A black Buick, a first generation 4Runner, swanky women whom I guess to be from the million dollar homes in Castle Pines, just-ripe teens texting in their boredom and obsession with modern culture, and suit jackets on their way to a meeting. I nestle into a corner with my books, my laptop and my journal. I have over two hours to read, do a writing practice, edit pictures, browse the internet. “This is going to be good,” I post on my Facebook status.

Oh, was it.  

“I read a chapter a day,” another friend says of this wildly popular book. Yes. Seems like a good pace. I’ll do that too.

The yellow ribbon of the bookmark I’m borrowing slumps over, smashed between ink and paper. I pull on it, ready to get the “shoulds” out of the way. You know the ones. “I should read something that draws me to God. I should read today’s checklist Bible verse. I should journal my heart, pray.” And then I’ll get to the fun stuff.

But I never leave her words.

I linger, copy, and am pulled closer. I nearly cry behind the metal post in the floor-to-ceiling window at the coffee bar. I am gripped, while preschool pick-up time runs faster and faster toward me.

“I wake to the discontent of my skin. I wake to self-hatred. To the wrestle to get it all done, the relentless anxiety that I am failing. Always, the failing. I yell at children, fester with bitterness, forget doctor appointments, lose library books, live selfishly, skip prayer, complain, go to bed too late, neglect cleaning toilets. I live tired. Afraid. Anxious. Weary.”

                                                                             -Ann Voskamp

I’m held there, struck by the courage of this woman’s journey. Not from the “poetic” beauty of her sentences, though they are beautiful. Nor from the fresh, pure perspective she offers of gratitude, though it’s stirred me deeply. What’s incredible is how she approaches a crossroads and has the fearlessness to keep going.

“The sun climbs the horizon. I throw back the covers, take another breath, and begin. I GET to. I GET to live.”

                                                                              -Ann Voskamp

She does not stay in hopelessness. She does not end at the grief, depressed and ungrateful. She pushes, seeks, and claws until she finds more.

There IS more. Much, much more.  

“At the Eucharist, Christ breaks His heart to heal ours-“

                                                          -Ann Voskamp