Category Archives: Christianity

10:58 p.m.

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I haven’t written in awhile. I’ve been running on iced coffee and dark chocolate. (Figures.) And I should be sleeping instead of writing right now because I’m tired and I’m promising myself that I’ll wake up early to go running. But my mind wants to write instead of sleep.

Today I drove to Missouri. I made myself a latte, opened the sun roof of the car and danced behind the wheel as I drank in the sunlight and navigated the back roads of southern Iowa. All alone, just me, my coffee, and the music. It was a necessary hiatus. Cathartic.

This month has been busy. I’ve worked every day in May except one. Eat, sleep, work, drink coffee. Repeat. Life has seemed cyclical lately. At times it’s felt rote. Routine. The rhythm is sometimes soothing. Familiar. But in the past weeks it has at times felt somewhat pointless. Tiring. Like this circle I’m on doesn’t have a destination. And there are all these questions and things and facts about this world that I don’t understand. And they jumble in my brain as I run around in circles. And I know there is a destination (or at least rest stops along the journey), but yet, the unsettledness comes in waves.

I can’t nail down a precise reason for the unsettledness. Really, life has been great lately. I love my job. I’m healthy and happy. I have the most incredible friends. I’ve laughed more in the past week than should be allowable. I have incredible things on the horizon. But yet, there are things that I don’t get. Like people dying of cancer. Like babies born way too premature, life hanging in the balance. Like rudeness. Like how some people seem to find love so easily. Like relationships in general. Like what to do with my wanderlust. Like what the meaning is of the rote-ness and routine-ness of certain seasons of life. Is there a point to the rhythm?

And the answer I got as I drove south into Missouri was yes, there is a point. But I have to choose to make a point of it all. I have to choose to make the routine things sacred. To make them meaningful. Sacredness is a choice. And when I opt into it, everything becomes significant, or at least holds the capacity to be significant. The early morning latte-making, the laughter in the kitchen, holding my niece’s hand, running on gravel roads, picking dandelions, writing a letter, watching the sun set over the lake, dancing to music behind the wheel of the car. If we so choose, everything is meaningful.

And as for all those things I don’t understand? Well the big guy upstairs pretty bluntly tells us that we don’t get to understand it all. That’s the thing about being human, you know. There are just things that we don’t get to know. But I guess I don’t have to know. I don’t have to understand. Someday I might, and I think I can be okay waiting. But for now I just pray for peace to surround me. I pray for more moments of pure joy…singing in my car…laughing until my stomach hurts…picking dandelions with a babbling two-year-old. I pray I would opt into those moments. Because in those moments, when I choose to make them meaningful, everything is okay. The racing world halts. The cyclical motion stops. And it’s not rote. It’s not routine.

It’s breathtakingly brilliant.

shadows

early morning light

Red Rock sunset

The roundabout ways

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I’ve been stuck in the 23rd Psalm lately. Its comfort and its promises are soothing, are filling me with peace. The past couple days I have been especially struck by this line:

“He guides me in straight paths for His Name’s sake.”

A book I’m reading by Rabbi Harold Kushner says the Hebrew phrase “straight paths” has a more complex meaning than the English translation conveys. In Hebrew, “straight paths” literally means “roundabout ways that end up in the right direction.”

Roundabout ways that end up in right direction.

Intriguing.

Kushner goes on to say this:

“Maybe in plane geometry the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. But in life the shortest distance to our goal may be an indirect, roundabout route. The straight line between us and our goal may have hidden traps or land mines, or it may be too easy and never challenge us to discover our strengths or give us time to let those strengths emerge.”

Everything about this world screams at us to take the shortest way. The easiest way. The straightest line. And we would think this would be the “straight path” the psalmist is referencing. But what if this “straight path,” this “path of righteousness” is really the roundabout way? What if it’s only by taking this roundabout way that we are kept from traps or downfalls? What if it’s only this roundabout way that reveals great passion and strength within us? What if it’s only by this roundabout way that we end up in the right direction?

I am learning to see the beauty in the roundabout ways. These ways require more patience on our parts — patience to understand what the Lord is doing, what He is teaching us, and where He wants to take us. But in my own experience, these roundabout ways have been the most fulfilling. He has unearthed passion and strength. He has molded and pruned me. These ways have not always been easy — they have perhaps been some of the more trying, difficult days and weeks and seasons. But they have ended up in the right direction.

So my prayer is that the Lord would continue to lead in the roundabout ways. To shepherd me in His ways that are higher than mine, more beautiful than mine, more fulfilling than mine. And in the moments I don’t understand, in the moments I wish for a shorter path, for a straighter line, I can take comfort in the fact that I need not fear, for Thou art with me.

He is leading me in paths of righteousness, in the roundabout ways that end up in the right direction. 

Chiang Mai, Thailand

Still a kid

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I was babysitting last night and one of the kids asked me if I was married. “Nope,” I replied.

“Well, do you have a boyfriend?”

No again.

“Well then you’re still a kid!” she exclaimed, in all her four-year-old naïveté.

At first I was taken aback, and even took a little offense. Since when does adulthood mean you have to be married?

But later I was thinking about it and realized that maybe her four-year-old innocence was tapping into something. Maybe I am still a kid in lot of ways. A big kid. An adult kid.

And maybe I’m okay with that.

I started thinking that because I am still a kid, because the Lord has seen fit to not yet tie me down to any place or any thing or any one, I could live in Thailand last year. I could go back there this year. I can work as a barista. I can go to grad school. I can sleep in as late as I want on my days off. I can eat chocolate and sweet potatoes for supper. I can go running whenever I feel like it. I can get a drink and play Settlers of Catan every Tuesday nights with my friends. I can be a kid.

It’s not that the things that typically define adulthood aren’t good things. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t long for those things sometimes. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have moments of envy or discontentment. But learning to be content wherever you’re at means you have to have a bigger perspective. It means you have to see the silver linings of whatever place you’re in.

So yes, dear four-year-old child, I am still a kid.

Because to be a kid is to live freely and whimsically and innocently. To be a kid is to trust.

In some ways, we should all hope to remain kids.

Chewy banana bread

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Earlier this week, my two-year-old niece and I made banana bread together. I would measure out the ingredients and she would pour them into the bowl. Flour, sugar, salt, oil, vanilla. She smiled as she dumped the ingredients together and looked concerned when we spilled flour on the counter and on our clothes. “It’s okay, Abby,” I said as I brushed the floury evidence from her shirt. “You mom will never have to know,” I smiled and whispered. Continue reading →

cracks in the sidewalk

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{You must believe that I Am, in fact, good}

Those are the words that have echoed through my head all week.

You must believe that I Am good.

I must believe.

The first step is always believing. Continue reading →

Officially official {RSVPing to the invitation}

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It’s been unofficially official for a several months, but today, it is officially official.

I have clicked the button, I have paid the deposit.

I am going to grad school.

(Insert wild applause here.) Continue reading →

faith {a gracious offer}

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“The step into the situation where faith is possible is not an offer which we can make to Jesus, but always His gracious offer to us.” {Dietrich Bonhoeffer}

“Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” {John 11:40}

Lately, I’ve been coming to terms with the deeper levels of faith. The levels of faith that says, God, not only do I believe that you exist, but I believe that you can and will work miracles. You can and will do the impossible. You can and will fulfill the promises that seem far-fetched. You can and will work your will for my life and the lives of those around me in ways I simply can’t comprehend because I am me and You are, well, YOU. Continue reading →

For the times when you’d rather not have faith…

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Bear with me, I’m going to quote a large portion of one of my favorite Oswald Chambers devotionals (emphasis my own):

“Patience is more than endurance. A saint’s life is in the hands of God like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer. God is aiming at something the saint cannot see, and He stretches and strains, and every now and again the saint says– ‘I cannot stand any more.’ God does not heed, He goes on stretching till His purpose is in sight, then He lets fly. Trust yourself in God’s hands. Maintain your relationship to Jesus Christ by the patience of faith. Continue reading →