For several years when I was a kid, my parents hosted big New Years’ Eve parties. They weren’t fancy or elaborate, but they were full of people. All of our friends and their families were invited, a mix of adults, teenagers, and younger kids in one house. About 9pm, people descended on our home to laugh, play games, drink root beer floats, eat snacks, and count down to the new year. 

When the calendar officially changed over, everyone threw confetti. And I don’t mean a few handfuls. We threw a lot of confetti––enough to coat the family room floor with an inch of what looked like rainbow-colored snow.

Now, it’s important to know I grew up in a house where glitter was not allowed. My mom preferred things clean, and often when she entertained, we ate off of fancy dishes set over linen tablecloths. After she died, my family joked about who might possibly need three closets worth of tablecloths–all of which she actually used! 

For many years, she ironed sheets. In contrast, my iron has maybe been used 10 times in more than a decade, and I certainly have never ironed my sheets. My dad even recalls measuring the distance between the flatware before a dinner party to ensure everything was set properly. (As the sixth child, I don’t ever remember her doing this, because as any parent knows, you learn to let go of the little stuff more and more with every child. She loosened up quite a bit by the time I came around, as our New Year’s parties showed.)

But once a year, those rules were put aside. By 1am, paper plates would be strewn around the house, blue, yellow, red, and green confetti hidden in every crack and crevice of the couch, and sleep-deprived parents left to clean it up (with the kids’ help, of course).

It’ll be a few years before I am ready to take on parties like my family did years ago–and who knows if I ever will. (While the stuff of dreams for a kid, confetti is the stuff of nightmares as a parent.) Yet those nights were a gift to so many. We laughed, ate, and enjoyed one another’s company. We got to know new families and made memories with old friends. Even to this day, I get comments about those unforgettable evenings.

But regardless of whether we host big New Year’s gatherings or have a neighbor over for pizza, we can still love others as we practice hospitality. We can show the goodness and generosity of God as we share life with each other.

You don’t have to commit to confetti. (Trust me, the mess is a commitment. If you choose to embark on the confetti journey, make sure your vacuum cleaner is equally committed.) But as we welcome others into our homes and our lives, it’s helpful to remember three key truths about hospitality.

1. Hospitality can be messy, costly, and tiring.

At my family’s New Year’s Eve parties, guests spilled drinks. Confetti clogged the vacuum cleaner (like I said, make sure you’re prepared). Buying snacks for everyone costs money. It was exhausting to clean up. But I love what Tim Chester said in A Meal with Jesus: 

Hospitality will lead to “collateral damage.” Food will be spilled on your carpet. You'll be left with clearing up. Your pantry may be decimated. But remember that God is welcoming you into his home through the blood of his own Son. The hospitality of God embodied in the table fellowship of Jesus is a celebration and sign of his grace and generosity. And we’re to imitate that generosity.[1]

No one has been more generous than our God, and his hospitality toward us led to the death of his Son. Who am I to complain about broken glasses or crumbs on the floor? We should expect hospitality to cost something—and as we stain-treat carpets and refill the refrigerator, we remember the hospitality of our God.

2. Hospitality is not a performance. It’s an act of service.

I have so often twisted hospitality to make it about me. I want to cook the perfect meal so I look good. I want my house to appear clean so my pride stays intact. I want to throw a good party so people like me. There’s nothing wrong with good food, a clean house, a beautiful tablescape, and a fun party. Those can be ways we love and serve others well. But when our motive is to caress our own pride, we’ve gotten it wrong. 

1 Peter 4:8-10 says, “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace.” 

We don’t practice hospitality to make ourselves look good. It’s not about us. We welcome others in, just as God has welcomed us. Hospitality is about loving our neighbor and serving them, and in doing so pointing to the grace and love of God.

This truth also frees us from the pre-hosting frenzy that traps many of us. As we clean and cook and prepare, some of us run over anyone in our path who may detract from those goals: our kids, our spouse, anyone who interrupts our effort to get ready for guests. We steamroll those in our own homes, showing anything but hospitality to the people closest to us. 

If we remember hospitality is about service instead of performance, we can let the little things go. We can do our best to prepare, but we do not sacrifice our families and our sanity on the altar of ego. If our own kids and spouses do not feel welcomed as we’re trying to show hospitality, we’ve missed the point.

3. Hospitality points to who God is and what his kingdom is like.

Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners[2], he called us to invite those who cannot repay us[3], he commended those who fed, welcomed, clothed, served, and visited “the least of these brothers and sisters”[4]. Over and over again, he taught through word and action that we are to welcome those the world does not welcome. We’re to serve those who cannot repay us. We’re to love others even when they don’t deserve it. After all, that is what Christ has done for us, and that is what his kingdom is like.[5]

The kingdom of God is a place full of sinners who have been forgiven, strangers who have been welcomed, enemies of God who have redeemed, hungry souls who have been filled with the love of God. That is us. Now that we have experienced the extravagant hospitality of God shown through his Son, we are to demonstrate that to others. We’re to show those around us that God is loving, gracious, and generous. 

Through the food we prepare, the homes we steward, the meals we drop off, the people we visit, the strangers we invite for coffee, we get to display the kingdom and character of God on earth as it is in heaven. We get to practice resurrection, sharing new creation life to a world that is hurting. 

What a grand and beautiful calling we get to live out this holiday season and even in our ordinary, everyday lives.

[1] Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission Around the Table (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011), 49.

[2] Mark 2:15-17

[3] Luke 14:12-14

[4] Matthew 25:31-46

[5] Note that Jesus demonstrated hospitality, but he didn’t do it by hosting in his own home. So if you feel like in this season you cannot host or you don’t have the space or you need to practice caution during the pandemic, there are still ways to show hospitality. You may just need to think outside the box and get creative. Jesus didn’t have a huge home with tons of entertaining space. We don’t need that, either, in order to welcome others with love and grace.

I used to stay up until the early morning hours when my family got together for holidays. The night before Thanksgiving, a few of us would prepare stuffing and turkey for the next day while others chatted around the table in the eat-in kitchen. Late on Christmas nights, we’d sip leftover eggnog and eat the final few slices of Swedish Tea Ring while we laughed, cried, and told all the same stories we’ve been telling for years.

Eventually, someone would stop denying their drooping eyelids, and we’d make our way to bed. Back then I could stay up late, because I was kid-free and a lot more carefree. I didn’t have to worry about a sick child climbing under my covers or a baby who wouldn’t sleep or pregnancy insomnia. I could avoid sleep if I chose to, because it would most likely be there when I wanted it.

Three pregnancies and four kids later, life looks a little different. My youngest was born a couple weeks before Christmas, so that year sure wasn’t sleep-filled. There have been other seasons when sleep has been hard, too: the Christmas my mom was diagnosed with cancer, the next Christmas when my dad was in the hospital with cancer, the Christmas I struggled the most with anxiety and depression. During those times, I’d toss and turn with worry. Or I’d endlessly scroll to cope. Or I’d give up altogether and walk down to the family room to watch TV, because laying awake in bed drove me mad.

Sleep can be one of the most frustrating things when we don’t get it and the most life-giving when we do. It’s something we sometimes choose to forgo, and sometimes it’s taken from us. Around the busyness of the holidays, with late nights, travel, endless preparations, and that pesky New Year’s Eve holiday, sleep (or lack thereof) can often feel like a burden and frustration.

But in Psalm 127, the author, Solomon, speaks of sleep differently. In this psalm, sleep isn’t a burden. It’s a gift we are meant to steward.

Solomon says in verses one and two:

Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.
It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.

These verses don’t promise eight consecutive hours of rest every night. But what these verses do tell us is that we have a God who is always working. A few chapters earlier in Psalm 121, the author tells us that the LORD “will neither slumber nor sleep.” The fact that God doesn’t sleep and we do tells us a whole lot about who he is and who we are. We are his finite creatures meant to depend on the infinite Creator.

Eugene Peterson said, “Psalm 127 insists on a perspective in which our effort is at the periphery and God’s work is at the center.”[1] What does it look like to live out that truth in our actual lives, especially during the chaotic holiday season? How do we steward the gift of sleep––no matter how much of it we’re getting? We don’t get all of God’s gifts in equal measure to the next person, and sleep is the same. But are we doing the best with what we have?

Here are three questions that may be helpful to think through when it comes to sleep:

1. Am I missing out on sleep because I insist on anxiously toiling? Or is this lack of sleep part of doing the work God’s called me to do in this particular season?

When we sleep, we set aside our agendas and our to-do lists. We work hard throughout the day, but there comes a point when we have to say, “That’s enough for today.” Are we able to say that? Are we able to come to the end of the day with our hands open to God and surrender all that’s been done and left undone?

“Unless the LORD builds,” the psalmist says. God is the one who brings fruit from our labor. If you feel like you’re running around like a headless chicken, what would it look like for you to slow down and surrender? What would it look like for you to lay your head on your pillow and pray, “God, that’s all I have for today. Would you do something with it?”

There are seasons when sleep feels especially difficult. And for those with chronic illness, insomnia, kids with major medical issues, or certain professions, sleeplessness can be your norm. It seems like a gift everyone else got except you. But know that God is not holding out on you, and he can and will sustain you in your exhaustion. Plead with him for the physical rest you need, and no matter how he answers, trust that if he’s called you to a particular work or season, your labor is not in vain.

2. Am I struggling with sleep because I’m plagued by worry?

I have spent more nights than I can count staring at my bedroom ceiling and working out every possible scenario to whatever life problem I faced at the time. The “what if” questions hound me at night. Anxiety seems louder when the world gets quiet. But sleep is an act of surrender, a chance to pray, “God, you are in control and I am not.” Again, back to Psalm 127: He builds the house. He watches over the city, so you don’t have to.[2]

3. Am I stewarding my kids’ sleep well?

(This one relates mostly to parents with younger kids, but it’s worth thinking about for anyone who will be having littles in their home this holiday season. If you’re a grandparent, aunt or uncle, or friend, and you’ll be having other people’s kids in your house, consider how you can help, not hinder, parents as they navigate their kids’ sleep situations.)

Just the other night, we let our kids stay up extra late. We were having a great time with neighbors, a few of whom we recently met. The kids ran around playing together and it was one of those nights when you lose track of time. At some point, I glanced at my watch and realized, “Oh my goodness! It’s way past their bedtime!” We herded the kids up to bed as quickly as we could–and the next day was a disaster. They were cranky, overtired, lethargic. My kids need their sleep.

Fortunately, we didn’t have much else on our calendar. We had a low key night the next night, put them to bed a little earlier than normal, and no one was worse for the wear in the long run. In the busyness of the holiday season, though, that recovery time can be hard to come by. Sometimes one event gets piled on the next and we all end up starting the new year far more exhausted than we’d like.

But what does it look like in your family to steward your kids’ sleep? Does it mean you have to set boundaries with extended family who expect you to stay out until all hours of the night? Maybe you and your kids love staying up late on New Year’s Eve. We did this often when I was growing up, and we made memories I’ll cherish forever. But I also know everyone in our family needed time to recover from those late nights. What might that recovery time look like in your family?

We have a God who cares so deeply about his children that he’s provided us with means to rest. Just as he’s given us gifts like food and finances and abilities to steward, he gives us sleep. And that sleep is not only a time to be physically refreshed, but it’s also a time to remember that it is our Maker who sustains us.

There’s no need for anxious toil, no need for worry, no need for us to enter ourselves and our families in the holiday rat race. What a gift.

[1] Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 112.

[2] For the sake of brevity, I don’t have time to address more severe anxiety. But know that I’m not necessarily speaking here of clinical anxiety or other serious mental health issues that can keep us awake at night.

The other night, my husband and I were watching The Chosen, and one of my favorite things about this show is how it depicts the disciples wrestling with what Jesus is doing (or not doing) and why certain events and struggles happen. Why doesn't he heal everyone? Why did he allow Lazarus to die? Why did he only raise Lazarus and no one else? 

These kinds of questions have been around for thousands of years. And I'm not sure we've gotten much closer to an answer, at least not one that satisfies our human need for closure.

But I keep coming back to what God says to Job when Job didn't understand his suffering: “Where were you when I established the earth?” (38:4). God then continues to question him: Are you in charge of the morning? Do you control the clouds? Do you give the horse its strength? Eventually, God says, “Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Let him who argues with God give an answer” (40:2).

Job replied, “I am so insignificant. How can I answer you? I place my hand over my mouth. I have spoken once, and I will not reply; twice, but now I can add nothing” (40:4-5). 

It is a grace that Scripture so often shows us how others have had the same kinds of questions we have. We wonder why God does what he does or why he allows suffering. But at the end of the day, all we can do is admit that compared to God, we are so insignificant. We have no idea how to run the world or keep the universe going. We do not know how to put the moon in place or how to calm the waters. We can ask all kinds of questions of God, but when he responds with his own questions to us, we've got nothing.

But still, even in our insignificance, we have a God who loves us with a never-ending love. Being insignificant in Job's words doesn't mean worthless–Job is simply admitting his smallness compared to God's grandeur. We are finite, but we are valued. We are loved. We are held. God so loved the world that he gave us his Son. He loved Job, and he loves you, and he loves me. 

We want answers, though, don't we? We want explanations we can comprehend. Even more than that, we want explanations we agree with. But as A.W. Tozer wrote, “[God] owes nothing to the worlds His hands have made.” Besides, he is so far above and beyond our view and understanding that our minds probably could not process the answers even if he gave them to us.

So we're still left with our questions–and sometimes all we can do is continue to bring those questions to Him. We lament like the psalmists and Job, and in our lament we find hope as we keep coming back to a God who can be a mystery to us. We bring him our doubts, our fears, our complaints, and then take one more shaky step of faithfulness in our everyday lives.

We may not have the tidy answers we want from God. But, as one author wrote, we have a story. Consider these words from Tish Harrison Warren in Prayer in the Night:

“Francis Spufford writes, 'We don't have an argument that solves the problem of the cruel world, but we have a story.' This is why, no matter what we claim to believe or disbelieve, what rises to the surface in our most vulnerable moments is inevitably the story on which we build our lives. 

Christianity does not give us a concise explanation for vulnerability, loss, or pain, but it gives us a story–a real story in history.”

I don't have answers to the questions many of us are asking. But I do have a story. And it's a true story. It's a good story. And it's a story where, as Tolkien once wrote, everything sad will come untrue.

I recently came across a commencement speech given by New York Times columnist David Brooks. He addressed Dartmouth's 2015 graduating class, noting that for so many people, their goal in life, their vision of fulfillment, is freedom–freedom to do whatever you want, freedom to achieve anything, freedom to choose your way of life or your partner or your career. 

Those kinds of freedoms can be (but aren't always) a gift and a privilege. Most people don't have near unlimited options in life. But even for those who do have myriad choices, those endless possibilities are not necessarily where happiness and contentment can be found. 

Brooks writes, “But your fulfillment in life will not come from how well you explore your freedom and keep your options open. That's the path to a frazzled, scattered life in which you try to please everyone and end up pleasing no one.” 

Even if you're only trying to appease your own desires, our desires shift and change. Only chasing those desires when they feel desirable can send us on an exhausting road where we never quite catch what we're looking for.

Instead, what if our fulfillment actually comes not from endless options, but from making commitments? 

Fulfillment in Commitments

“Making commitments,” Brooks says, “sounds intimidating, but it's not. Making a commitment simply means falling in love with something, and then building a structure of behavior around it that will carry you through when your love falters.” 

Marriage, of course, is the most obvious example. For anyone married longer than about six minutes, you know that eventually the feelings of love will falter. But having a structure of behavior–habits, practices, disciplines, community, etc.–can help you through if and when you need.*

I think our faith is the same way. For most of us, there will come a point (or many points) when our faith will falter. We will doubt God. We will wrestle with why he works the way he does. We will question his ways and his timing. Our feelings of passion and excitement and inspiration will wane. We may even wonder, “What else is out there?” 

But fulfillment doesn't come in endlessly chasing our options; it comes in committing to the things that are good, right, beautiful, and true. Fulfillment can't be found in the words of Job's wife who said, “Curse God and die” (Job 2:9). Rather, Job walks through the valley of the shadow of death. In the middle of the mess, he says, “Though he slay me, I will hope in him” (Job 13:15). 

Job doesn't find what he wants by abandoning his Maker in the midst of distress; he doubles down on his commitment to his Redeemer (19:25). And in doing so, he finds redemption.

There are plenty of seasons when we need to pivot. There are relationships we may need to walk away from for very good reasons. There are jobs we need to quit, habits we need to break, goals we need to set aside. But in a culture constantly chasing the freedom of options, many of us can be stuck in a strange no-man's-land where we're not committed to anything. We're not deeply rooted. We're not holding fast to what matters. And so we're left like a wave of the sea, tossed around by the wind.

A Structure of Behavior

One main way of building that structure of behavior around our commitment to Jesus is through practicing the spiritual disciplines. Our transformation to become more like Christ is all by grace–but God uses practices like prayer, silence, and fasting along the way. Committing to be in the Word, even when we don't want to, can be a tool God uses to get us through the valley to the other side. Spending time in prayer–even if it's angry prayers of lament–can help us press in close to our Maker instead of running away. 

When you think about your spiritual life, what does it look like to build a structure of behavior around that commitment? What does it look like to be so devoted to Him that even when all is shaken around you, you stand firm? 

No matter where you are in your spiritual life and what you're facing, though, rest in this:

Even when we falter and fail, even when our commitment to Jesus seems only as strong as Peter's three denials, HE cannot and will not ever fail. His love will never waver and his faithfulness will never end. 

Amen?

I have never been more tired than I’ve been since becoming a mom. Nighttime feedings in the infant years, the endless needs of the toddler years, and the looming anxieties coming in the big-kid years can often keep me awake at night and anxious during the day. Trying to meet the needs of everyone in my house, much less myself, is no small feat.

It’s easy to feel like I’m running on a hamster wheel, wearing myself out while little progress is made. 

Yet I’m realizing so much of my exhaustion isn’t surface-level. It’s not always just a matter of needing more sleep, although that wouldn’t hurt. It’s much more than that, deeper than that. 

So many of us walk around with our shoulders sagging, our heads down, and our eyes only half open. We’re worn and weary physically, yes–but also emotionally, spiritually, mentally. We’re exhausted from the pressure to perform, we’re tired of fear grabbing us by the ankles and crippling us, we wish we could stop constantly feeling like we’re letting people down. A solid night of sleep or a week-long vacation would help our tiredness, sure. But that only scratches the surface.

We need deep rest for our souls.

The Truest, Deepest Rest

In Matthew 11, Jesus talks about giving rest to the weary, saying, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).

At first glance, his words might sound like a quick fix or a magic spell. But that's not what Jesus offers. He offers himself. He offers the truest rest, the deepest relief to our exhaustion we cannot find anywhere else. He tells us that true rest is found when we take up the yoke of Christ, when we come to him instead of going our own way. 

In Jesus’ day, Pharisees often spoke of carrying the yoke of the Torah. They accepted the burden of the Law. That was part of being a good Jew—you carried this burden and lived it out all the fine points of the Law. But Jesus offers a different way, and he rejected the legalism and pride evident in many of the Jewish leaders’ lives. In Matthew 23:4, he calls out the scribes and Pharisees says, “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders…”

But the yoke of Jesus does not do this. The yoke of Jesus comes not from an attempt at performance or perfectionism. It comes from mercy and love. And so Jesus calls his listeners to give up the burdens they’re carrying, to stop hitching themselves to exhausting and impossible standards of the Law and of the culture. Instead, he’s saying, Here, I have something better. Hitch yourself to me, and when you take up my yoke, when you go my way, you’ll find what you need.

Letting Go of Our Burdens

What burdens are we carrying that we don't need to carry? What would it look like to carry his yoke instead? Because his yoke is easy and his burden is light, but too many times we carry what is crushing us instead.

As the writer of Hebrews says, “let us also lay aside every weight, and the sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:1). Our souls are weary from carrying sin, carrying worry, carrying failure, carrying self-condemnation, carrying perfectionism. What would it look like if we threw off all those weights? 

I think we’d experience a lot more joy, even in heartache. We’d experience a lot more freedom, even when we have work to do. We’d experience a lot more contentment, even if we don’t have as much as the next person.

Letting go of our burdens doesn’t mean we will never have suffering and sorrow. We will mourn and lament. We will grow tired in this life, because we are finite people living in a fallen world. But this is what Paul was getting at when he wrote from prison, “I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philipp 4:12-13).

We can let go of burdens like condemnation and worry, perfectionism and insecurity. And we can cling desperately—even through tears—to the assurance that God knows, he cares, and he loves us with an infinite love. We can lay our burdens at the feet of Christ and receive what he offers instead.

There is no better rest for our souls, no easier yoke, no lighter burden than that.

This post is adapted from a chapter in my book, All Who Are Weary: Finding True Rest by Letting Go of the Burdens You Were Never Meant to Carry. If you’re weary and worn, I hope this book is an encouragement to you.

I usually listen to a podcast episode or a few minutes of an audiobook at the start of my workouts to distract my brain from thinking about how much I do not want to be working out at that moment. Then, when I’m about halfway through exercising and my body loosens up, I switch to a playlist with a few bangers from my high school and college years. Nothing gets this almost 40-year-old mama’s feet moving a little faster than hits from the 90s and early aughts. 

One morning last week when I went on a run and was still in that first half of my workout, I listened to a podcast interview with Gary Haugen, the founder of International Justice Mission. IJM is an organization helping those facing modern slavery, exploitation, and abuse. They serve people who have suffered unbelievable trauma, pulling men, women, and children out of horrendous circumstances such as sex trafficking. 

When you’re working in those types of situations, regularly witnessing the worst of what humans can do to each other, it’s easy to get so discouraged and hopeless that all you want to do is throw in the towel. So how do you keep going? How do you press onward when everything keeps pushing you back? 

Haugen’s answer was this: “Joy is the oxygen for doing hard things.” 

When he said that line, I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and typed it into the Notes app on my phone. It’s not a new idea, but it’s one I needed to remember. He went on to talk about how if you’re going to keep working for justice, staring evil in the face, and fighting for good, joy has to be there, too. 

We have to breathe in joy like oxygen so we can continue moving forward. Otherwise, it’s like we’re working while holding our breath. Eventually, we’ll collapse.

I don’t know what day-to-day work you’re doing. Maybe you’re in the trenches with people suffering from the worst kinds of evil. Or maybe you’re not necessarily dealing with evil and trauma, but you’ve got other challenges on your plate. You’re helping care for your aging parents or teaching a child with a disability. Maybe you’re running a business or nursing a newborn or calling the insurance company yet again. 

The circumstances we all face are not equal. You may be carrying far heavier burdens than I am, and still others carry even heavier burdens than either of us can fathom. But we all face some level of struggle, and so we all need joy to keep us going. We need to know life can be good and sweet and delightful. We need to hear laughter and eat chocolate and notice butterflies and remember that God created pandas. We need to listen to good music and feel the sun against our skin and watch our kids splash in the ocean. 

Some might say those little moments of joy are shallow, unnecessary even. But I think making time to experience moments of joy, however small, is an act of resilient hope. And you can’t do hard things without at least a glimmer of hope.

So friends, put some proverbial oxygen in your lungs this month. Breathe in joy, wherever and whenever you can. And then keep going, knowing that while the hard stuff won’t necessarily disappear, joy doesn’t have to disappear, either.

Encouraged by this post? Check out my book, All Who Are Weary: Finding True Rest by Letting Go of the Burdens You Were Never Meant to Carry.

“Boys will be boys.” 

They use the phrase as a lazy defense 
of chaos, 
of tempers, 
of misogyny, 
of cruelty.

As if boys don’t have the ability to control themselves, 
as if that’s all we expect.

“Boys will be boys,” the media’s told 
from a microphone at the big white house. 
But the phrase doesn’t make sense to me as I listen. 
The boys she’s talking about aren’t like the ones I know. 

My youngest son asked me to snuggle today. 
Then he smiled big, his eyes lighting up with a glimmer. 
Mischievous, to be sure, but nothing malicious. 
That glimmer is just a warning 
you’re about to get attacked with a hug, 
one where he tries to, “Squeeze yow guts owt!” 

“Boys will be boys,” I’m told. 

My middle boy bangs sticks against a tree, 
yells loudly just for fun,
and asks me to time him
as he runs laps around the cul-de-sac. 

Then he comes inside before dinner, 
grabs the silverware from the drawer, 
and sets the table, feeds the dog, asks how he can help. 

“Boys will be boys.” 
I’m tired of that phrase being an insult, 
a sign of the low expectations 
we have for the men in our lives. 

‘Cause my oldest son knocks softly on the door 
and asks if I’m okay, 
asks if there’s anything I need, 
asks if we can play soccer in the front yard. 

“Boys will be boys,” we’re told. 
As if that’s a reason to let them be mean. 
Be bullies. 
Be vulgar. 

Boys don’t have to be “those kinds” of boys, 
the ones where unkindness is cool 
and rage accepted, 
even rewarded. 

Sure, mine are the rough and tumble kind. 
They wrestle to work out issues and laugh hysterically 
when someone farts.
I have plenty of pictures of them covered in mud.

But boys will be boys is not an excuse, 
no, not in this house. 

It’s a prayer–

that my boys will be like the ones I’ve always been around: 

That they’ll be like my husband who makes me coffee, 
stays up late to do does the dishes,
selflessly serves for no gain of his own,
prays and leads and loves in both small and grand ways. 

Like my brothers, 
one who, though he’ll firmly deny it, 
cried hard in the back of the church at my wedding 
and would jump in front of a train for me if I needed. 

Another who spent hours and hours when I was a kid
teaching me how to do a proper layup
then decades later spilled his sweat
unloading a moving truck, assembling beds, organizing our garage.

And the oldest, 
the one who’s rushed to my house in an emergency, no questions asked,
watched my children, fed them copious amounts of pizza and ice cream, 
given up time and money 
to love me kids, 
to love me…

“Boys will be boys,” they say. 

And I pray my boys will be 
like the ones I know so well. 

Like my dad, 
a man who’s seen war, seen grief, seen loss, 
and yet says through it all, 
“We have much to be thankful for.”

“Boys will be boys,” they say,

but I look at Jesus, God incarnate,
who showed up not with pomp and power, 
but as a boy in a manger,
who wept with those who wept, 
came near to the outcast,
and took all the blows meant for you and me 
and loved us through it all.

If boys will be boys, 
then that’s what I want. 
Because boys in my world have integrity. 
They do what’s needed and work hard and admit where they’re wrong. 
The boys I know hold doors, 
give up their seats, 
change diapers, 
fold laundry, 
serve 
and guide 
And love.

Boys will be boys, yes. 

But may they be like the boys I’ve always known.

This post was written in response to comments made in April, 2025 by White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt.

Last year, I worked through the Bible chronologically with The Bible Recap. If you’ve ever read through the Bible, you’ll know that at one point in the Old Testament, it seems like you’re doomed to an endless cycle of depressing narratives and prophecies about the disobedience of Israel and God’s subsequent judgment.  

These are hard passages to read. Taken on their own, these narratives usually don’t have happy endings. They’re filled with violence and gore and suffering.

But it didn’t have to be that way. We know that suffering is a part of living in a broken and fallen world, but for ancient Israel and Judah, they heaped so much grief upon their own shoulders because of their rebellion against Yahweh. 

Many of these stories and prophecies in the Old Testament say something to the effect of, “But Israel would not listen.” God said to do one thing; they said no. 

For example, 2 Kings 17:13-14 says, “Yet the Lord warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and every seer, saying, ‘Turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes, in accordance with all the Law that I commanded your fathers, and that I sent to you by my servants the prophets. But they would not listen, but were stubborn, as their fathers had been, who did not believe in the Lord their God.” 

2 Chronicles 24:19 says, “Yet he sent prophets among them to bring them back to the Lord. These testified against them, but they would not pay attention.”

Judges 2:17 says, “Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they whored after other gods and bowed down to them. They soon turned aside from the way in which their fathers had walked, who had obeyed the commandments of the Lord, and they did not do so.”

Jeremiah 6:16 says, “Thus says the Lord: “Stand by the roads, and look,’ and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’”

Israel rejected God’s ways, running after something they thought was better. And what did they give up in that pursuit of their own agenda and their own idols? The reluctant prophet, Jonah, tells us. 

Jonah 2:8 says, “Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.”

Now, I’m not necessarily erecting shrines or bowing to a golden image, but there are plenty of ways I choose to worship and trust something other than him. I pay regard to vain idols in my own 21st century way, and I forsake what God wants to give. He says, “Do this,” and I too often say, “No.”

God’s way offers Sabbath, but I bow to the god of productivity. 

God calls me to live in community, but many times serve the idol of pride and self-sufficiency.

God asks me to fix my eyes on Him, but my gaze is transfixed by the glowing rectangle in my hands. 

God reminds me he’s in control, but I demand that I should be in control.

God says worship him alone, but I put people or power or political ideologies or pride on a pedestal they were never meant to stand on.

The truth is you can’t run away from God and towards steadfast love at the same time, because God is love. He is, “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6). What idols could be worth giving that up for? 

But here’s the even greater truth. We’ve all walked away from the love of God…and yet his love pursues us. Over and over again in the Old Testament narratives and in the prophets, we see Israel’s sin–but then God’s compassion (see also passages like 2 Kings 13:23, Isaiah 14:1).

Lamentations 3:19-24 says:

“Remember my affliction and my wanderings,
the wormwood and the gall!
My soul continually remembers it
and is bowed down within me.
But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”

And Micah 7:18-19 says: 

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity
and passing over transgression
for the remnant of his inheritance?
He does not retain his anger forever,
because he delights in steadfast love.

He will again have compassion on us;
he will tread our iniquities underfoot.
You will cast all our sins
into the depths of the sea.

And those prophecies and so many more culminate in the ultimate demonstration of love shown in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the one who took the punishment we deserved (John 3:16, Romans 5:8). We ran away, so God came after us. What a grace.

I don’t want to run away from steadfast love, and Jonah’s words offer a convicting reminder to let go of the idols we’re so tempted to worship. Giving up what God offers will never be worth it. 

Yet even so, even when I fail, I can hold onto the hope that God’s steadfast love runs after me, even when I’m running away.

Thanks be to God.

Encouraged by this post? Check out my book, All Who Are Weary: Finding True Rest by Letting Go of the Burdens You Were Never Meant to Carry.

My husband and I raced to the emergency room with our then two-year-old, my face covered in tears and my entire body shaking. Our son had just taken a horrible fall. He was responsive and seemed okay, but I was not. I thought there had to only be bad news to come.

The incident happened at the height of the pandemic, so only one parent was allowed to accompany him into the hospital room. While I wanted to be with our boy, I knew my own hysterics probably wouldn’t help anyone–especially him. I opted to wait in the car, my always-calm husband assuring me he’d text with updates as often as possible. 

I sat in the parking lot, my body still trembling, my head spinning, my mind fearing the worst. I’m often a worst-case scenario thinker, and sometimes that mindset has its perks. Something spilled? I’m ready with wipes. Travel plans delayed? I’ve already thought through Plans B, C, and D. But this time, there was no coffee spill or plane delay. This was my son, hurt, in the hospital, with me unable to even be with him. 

What if he has brain damage? What if he’s fine from the fall, but this is one of those stories where they find some other horrible ailment while they’re running tests? What if he has multiple bones fractured? What if….

My fears ran wild, and my worst-case scenario thinking wasn’t doing me any favors. Instead, it added fuel to the fire of my worry.

By the grace of God, my son sported only a few scrapes and bruises, and in his little voice, he assured us later that next time he’d be sure to fall on something soft–like a mattress or a trampoline. (Next time? Please don’t let there be a next time!) In the following days and weeks, I still fought anxiety and worry, scared something would arise that the doctor’s didn’t catch. But God protected him, miraculously. I still shudder when I think about how much worse it could have been.

But stories don’t always end like that, right? Some end with death, sickness, and tragedy. For every story of healing and protection, there are a thousand more that can seem to us like they’re stories of God looking away or walking off the job. Many of us believe God can heal and protect–but we don’t know if he will. And in our finite minds, that kind of unpredictability can make us hesitant to trust him. 

When We’re Afraid of How God Will Answer

Year ago, my mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and six months after her diagnosis, my dad was also diagnosed with cancer. It was the same season we had other family members walking through health issues with their children, the same season, through extraordinary circumstances, my husbands’ income went to zero (literally) overnight.

At that time, I didn’t simply fear what could happen. I feared what God was going to do. I started to fear coming to him with the worries in my life, because it seemed too risky–he seemed too risky. The prayers about my mom’s sickness had seemed to me to be answered with a cancer diagnosis for my dad. The prayers for provision during hard times seemed to be answered with financial struggles. If God answered my prayers like this, then he wasn’t the one I wanted to keep approaching with my pain. Even Jesus prayed for a way out in Gethsemane, and yet he suffered a gruesome death. If that was the case, how would God answer me? 

I didn’t really want to know.

So often, we want to hold our broken heart close to our chest, because we think that if we give it to God, he might toss those broken bits around and stomp all over them. Maybe we know in our head he’s good and faithful and loving. But in our view, the unknowns make him seem unreliable. We end up afraid to come to God, because we don’t fully trust him. We don’t want to say with Jesus, “Your will be done,” because we’re scared of what his will may actually be. And so, like Paul Miller wrote, we start to prefer “the safety of isolation to engaging the living God.”[1]

But Scripture tells the story of a God who is trustworthy, a God who cannot be otherwise. When the Israelites stood scared in front of the Red Sea, God came through. When Job sat scraping his sores with the shards of a pot, God didn’t walk away. When God’s people grew discouraged and despairing, longing for the Messiah to come, he showed up with flesh and blood. He doesn’t always work the way we expect, but he is wholly and fully trustworthy. And it’s that trustworthiness that allows us to stare hard situations in the face, to name all the worst-case scenarios, and not be afraid.

Not Afraid of Bad News

In Psalm 112, the author talks about the character traits of one who fears the Lord, follows his commandments, and lives a righteous life. Then verse seven says, “He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the LORD.”

The psalmist knows the bad news will come. He knows what it’s like to live with hardship and struggle and enemies. But he also knows that the steadiness of his heart rests not on the predictability of his circumstances but on the trustworthiness of God. 

Charles Spurgeon wrote of this verse:

[The righteous person] is neither fickle nor cowardly; when he is undecided as to his course he is still fixed in heart: he may change his plan, but not the purpose of his soul. His heart being fixed in solid reliance upon God, a change in his circumstances but slightly affects him; faith has made him firm and steadfast, and therefore if the worst should come to the worst, he would remain quiet and patient, waiting for the salvation of God.[2]

Can you even imagine being able to say that you’re not afraid of bad news? Even if you can consider all the worst-case scenarios, none of it scares you? 

That’s a trait I desperately want. There’s so much to worry about in this world. As moms we carry worries not only about our lives but also the lives of our kids. The weight of all of that can crush us–but it doesn’t have to. We will grieve, mourn, and lament, of course. We are broken people living in a fallen world, and we will not escape that heartache until Christ comes again. But in the meantime, fear and worry need not come along for the ride.

Our ability to not fear rests entirely on God’s ability to save. The pages of Scripture and the cloud of witnesses around us testify to the fact that he has saved and he will save. He will do what he’s promised to do, one day making everything right, healing every pain, wiping every tear, restoring all that's been lost. The very resurrection of Jesus attests to that truth.

Friend, I don’t know what fears and worries weigh on your soul today. But I do know that they can feel heavy–sometimes debilitatingly so. They can nag at you and trip you up and keep you discouraged and despairing. But there is a sure foundation we stand on, a God who holds us fast even while the winds and waves beat down. And he will not let us go. Not now. Not ever.

By the grace and power of God, whatever comes our way, may we be able to say with the psalmist, I am not afraid of bad news. My heart is firm, trusting in the LORD.

[1] Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2009), 125.

[2] Charles H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David, Volume 3 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1990), 18.

Encouraged by this post? There’s more like this in my book, All Who Are Weary: Finding True Rest by Letting Go of the Burdens You Were Never Meant to Carry.

A couple weeks ago, I sat around a lunch table at a conference talking to new friends. In between bites of sandwiches and sips of coffee I lamented, “I feel like in every part of my life–parenting, work, health, faith–I’m running the hurdles. And I know eventually I’ll get to the finish line. But I am tripping over every single hurdle in the process.”

I try to carve out time to work on an essay. Then one of my kids gets sick and has to stay home from school, so I have to pivot. 

I try to wake up before the kids so I can have a few minutes of quiet time. But the dog keeps barking at 2am, so by 6am I succumb to the snooze button.

I try to make myself a healthy lunch, but I’m too tired to cook, the kids didn’t eat their chicken nuggets, and I end up scarfing down their leftovers and topping it off with a piece of Halloween candy. (Snickers has protein, right?)

I have all the best intentions. I even have organized to-do lists and a color-coordinated Google calendar. But I just cannot seem to get my life together right now. 

Anyone else feel like that? 

When my head hits the pillow, I often think about all that didn’t go according to plan–the coffee date I had to reschedule, the boxes that didn’t get checked, the fact that we ordered takeout for dinner, again. My meal plan I so dutifully filled out on Sunday night said we should have eaten all those vegetables I bought when my cooking motivation peaked while in the produce aisle. Hopefully the lettuce won’t wilt by tomorrow.

I look back on the day, and I can see that I parented, worked, fed people, and more or less tried to do what my life required. But I didn’t do it as perfectly, gracefully, flawlessly, promptly, or (insert your own adverb here) as I envisioned.

In her latest book, The Plan, Kendra Adachi writes, “It’s normal to want to have a good day. Maybe even the best day. But if your best day becomes the measurement for all other days, you’ve already lost. Not only that, but ‘the best day’ probably equates to ‘successfully executed plans,’ and I’m not sure that’s the rubric we want…We have diminished living to getting things done.” 

We expect to run the hurdles, perfectly, every day, gliding over each obstacle and interruption as if it wasn’t even there. Anything less than that deserves our self-criticism. 

This is an exhausting way to live.

After I shared at that conference lunch table how I couldn’t get my act together in this season and was tripping over every proverbial hurdle, one friend looked me right in the eyes and said, “Yeah, but you’re getting back up every time.” 

Maybe that’s the rubric we need to start using. Instead of calculating the success of each day based on how well it adheres to our plans and expectations, maybe we consider how we kept going when life got hard or how we pivoted when plans changed. Maybe we congratulate ourselves for slowing down because we’re tired or we’re hurting. Maybe we count it a victory when we wave someone over to carry us to the finish line, because we certainly aren’t making it there on our own.

Friend, I don’t know if you feel like you’re conquering the world right now or if you feel like you’ve fallen flat on your face while everyone watches. But I don’t think every day has to be our “best” day. Those days are great, and we get to celebrate them when they come. But if today isn't your best day, that doesn’t mean you’re failing. 

It means you’re living.

This post was originally shared in the Coffee + Crumbs newsletter.

In a recent sermon, my pastor asked the question, “What do you expect when you pray?” 

It’s a good question to ask. Most of the time, if I’m honest, I don’t expect a whole lot–or I just don’t expect nearly as much as God ends up doing.

The text for that sermon was Acts 12, the story of when Peter was freed from jail and showed up at the door of praying believers. A servant girl, Rhoda, answered the door. She was so stunned that she left Peter at the door, ran back inside, and he just stood there, still knocking. I can imagine the smile on his face, the knowing shake of his head. He was probably in disbelief still, too. Even while he had walked out of that jail cell, he had thought it was a vision. 

No one expected God to do what he did–miraculously free Peter from prison. Yet God blew their expectations out of the water. 

Maybe you have a story like that, a time when you can look at what God did and say with confidence, “He did far more than I ever expected.” I hope you have a few stories like that, and I hope you tell them often. 

But what about the other stories? What about the stories where we pray in anguish on our knees, begging God, even expecting God to do something…and he doesn’t? Or at least it seems like he doesn’t? You pray and you pray and you pray, filled with expectation that God will lead, guide, deliver, heal, save…and you’re met with silence.

What do you do with a God who doesn’t seem to live up to your expectations?

I have been praying alongside a friend for something, and God doesn’t seem to be doing a darned thing. I’m not going to lie–I’m pretty upset with him about it. I know he can do something; he’s shown that to me over and over again. But he won’t–or at least he won’t do the thing my friend and I want him to do. In this one area, he hasn’t met our expectations, not even a little bit. And that ticks me off.

I’m not the only one who’s gotten more than a little bit upset that God hasn’t done what we want. Habakkuk expected God to help, crying out, “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear?” (1:1). The psalmist, Asaph, went to far as to question God’s character saying, “Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up his compassion?” (Psalm 77:9). Jesus’ followers expected a Messiah, and yet they wept as he was led to his bloody death (Luke 23:27).

Sometimes, I find myself fighting cynicism and discouragement when I consider what I expect of God. After praying the same things for a very long time, I struggle to keep my expectations high. My prayers can easily grow weak, unbelief poking holes in the fabric of my faith until all I have to offer God is a tattered and worn rag.

But maybe some days, that’s enough. Maybe that threadbare faith can be an honest offering to a God I’m sometimes mad at, a God I don’t understand, a God who doesn’t always do what I want, a God who certainly doesn’t do what I expect. 

I need to raise my expectations of God. I know this. I’m far too cynical and far too “realistic” to trust that God can do things like he did for Peter in Acts 12. I want to pray boldly and believe fervently. I want to expect God to do what only he can do.

Yet there are seasons when I do wait with hopeful expectation. There are times I feel full of faith and pray with eager longing, excited to see him work. And then sometimes, those expectations, those prayers, seem to go unanswered. Or worse, unnoticed.

Andrew Peterson wrote in his song, “The Silence of God”:

It's enough to drive a man crazy
Or break a man's faith
It's enough to make him wonder
If he's ever been sane
When he's bleeding for comfort
From thy staff and thy rod
And the heavens' only answer
Is the silence of God…

It is a unique and devastating pain to expect God to move and hear silence instead. 

You may know that pain well, and maybe that pain has fueled your prayers. Or maybe it has nearly extinguished them. But here is what I know: We have a God we can expect much of. He is a God we can pray to and wait for with childlike faith that he will do something. 

But we also have a God who will never, ever, ever line up exactly with our expectations. And we need to think long and hard about our true expectations of God and what we want out of the Creator of the universe. We need to look back at Scripture and see what his people expected of him and notice what they got instead. If we do this, I think we’ll realize pretty quickly that God’s failure to line up with what we long for may in fact be a severe mercy and a surprising grace.

After all, if God did what we expected, Jesus would still be in the grave.

I don’t know if your heart is heavy with unmet expectations or if your soul feels full with anticipation. Either way, consider the words of Lamentations 3:16-24:

He has made my teeth grind on gravel,
    and made me cower in ashes;
my soul is bereft of peace;
    I have forgotten what happiness is;
so I say, “My endurance has perished;
    so has my hope from the Lord.”
Remember my affliction and my wanderings,
    the wormwood and the gall!
My soul continually remembers it
    and is bowed down within me.
But this I call to mind,
    and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
    his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
    “therefore I will hope in him.”

Thanks be to God. 

The sun presses gently on my back. It’s late spring, so the heat doesn’t feel too harsh, more like the reassuring weight of an arm resting on my shoulders. The weeds have crept their way toward the perennials in the garden bed. I stand there, hands on my hips, looking at the dirt, assessing what needs to be done and how much effort cleaning out this portion of my parents’ yard will require. I’m only in town for a couple of days, and I don’t want to leave my newly widowed dad* with a half-finished chore. 

Much of the yard sits under a canopy of shade, massive oak trees towering over the lawn and garden beds. Mom used to plant flowers every year. Impatiens lined the shady areas. They were easy to take care of and didn’t mind the lack of direct sun. A few geraniums filled the pots on the patio where the sun shone brightly, unhindered by the trees casting their shadow nearly everywhere else.

It’s been months since she passed away, and Dad has since gone back to work at church. He keeps himself busy with teaching and studying and meeting the needs of others, all of it providing a better alternative to him being alone. This house all six of us kids grew up in is too big now for him to tend himself. Instead of a joy, this home has become a burden.

Tears well up in my eyes. I stare at the weeds and wonder how my mom managed this task every spring and summer. I chuckle as I remember how she shipped us outside with a pair of gardening gloves and instructions on what section of the yard to tackle. I resented the chore for years. It’s only now, staring at the overgrowth, that I realize how beautiful the hard work made it.

Bending toward the ground, I begin to pull at the weeds, clearing out a space large enough to plant a few flowers. I’ll be leaving in a few days, so I can’t do all that much. Yet I have to do something. I can’t bring my mom back and I can’t heal my dad’s broken heart and I can’t cure cancer. 

But I can pull weeds.

****

“Does writing poetry make you brave?” Daniel Nayeri asks in his memoir, Everything Sad is Untrue. “It is a good question to ask. I think making anything is a brave thing to do. Not like fighting brave, obviously. But a kind that looks at a horrible situation and doesn’t crumble. Making anything assumes there’s a world worth making it for.”[1]

I sit on the couch in my family room, reading those words after scrolling through the headlines of the day. Wars rage, death looms, children are murdered, evil masquerades as good, power is wielded in brutal ways. We can’t escape all death, devastation, injustice, and heartache. Some of us can look away for a while, able to opt out of the horrors of the news when we feel overwhelmed. But grief, in some form, on some level, will come for us all. How will we meet it?

When my heart feels heavy, I often find myself writing in my journal or pulling flour and sugar out of the pantry to bake. My restless hands need something to do, something to create. I ask myself if baking and writing are worth the time, if whatever I jot down or mix up actually matters when the world is burning.

But I remember Nayeri’s words. I remember when he talked about his grandmother and how life dealt her a great deal of sadness, enough sadness, he writes, to make her a poet, to make beauty out of horror and art out of ashes. 

He continues, “I guess I’m saying making something is a hopeful thing to do.”[2]

****

The Nazis established a concentration camp during World War II called Terezin, also known by its German name Theresienstadt. Nazis often strategically used this camp as propaganda, deceiving the outside world by showing how well the Jews were being taken care of there. In reality, it was a place of death and disease, suffering and unimaginable hardship. 

Terezin often played the role of a transit camp, and many prisoners were eventually deported to death camps like Auschwitz. Approximately 144,000 Jews were deported to Terezin, and by the end of the war, only 19,000 were alive.[3]

In this place, with death looming not in a far off land but at every turn, a group of women created a cookbook. 

The women jotted down recipes on any scrap they could, their work compiled in a hand-stitched manuscript eventually (and almost miraculously) obtained years later by one of the prisoner’s daughters. Those words were then translated and preserved in a book called In Memory’s Kitchen: A Legacy from the Women of Terezin. 

Many of Terezin’s inmates couldn’t bear to think of their past and of what they once had. For so many people, hope for a return to any kind of future wore off quickly, chiseled away by the brutal conditions they faced. 

But this group of women dared to remember. As hunger gnawed away at their bodies, they wrote down recipes for strudel and vanilla cake, asparagus salad and Viennese dumplings. Remembering was an act of defiance, a conscious refusal to let their spirits give up, despite bodies ravaged by disease, starvation, and unfathomable oppression.

In the foreword to the book, Michael Berenbaum, director of the United States Holocaust Research Institute wrote, “Recalling recipes was an act of discipline that required them to suppress their current hunger and to think of the ordinary world before the camps—and perhaps to dare to dream of a world after the camps.”[4]

****

Kneeling in the dirt, I keep tugging at the weeds. Thanks to the recent rain, the unwanted plants release their grasp on the earth. I toss them in a pile on the bluestone steps next to me. My eyes start to water, and I wipe my tears with the back of my hand, dirt now smudged on my cheeks. 

Part of me doesn’t want to be here. I don’t want to tend to a garden that reminds me so much of my mom. I want to curse the weeds that seem to tarnish her memory, like cracks in the glass of a picture frame. But I also know I have to be here. I have to remember.

This garden was hers, and it was beautiful. Taking care of this yard required more work than I appreciated as a child. But for years, our backyard served as a place for graduation parties and Sunday grilling and afternoons laying in the hammock. I know my memory idealizes the past, but right now, I’m okay with that. I’ll gladly view my childhood through rose-colored glasses, because it's those memories that keep me digging in this dirt, fighting against what threatens to crowd out the beauty that once was, the beauty that could be. 

****

J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote a story about a character named Niggle. Niggle was a painter. He envisioned painting a grand tree set against a countryside and even a forest in the picture, along with mountains and birds and deep, strong roots. But he kept getting interrupted in his work by neighbors and needs and the responsibilities of everyday life. Others didn’t understand why he even bothered painting at all, when there was far more important work to do. And so despite Niggle’s best efforts at painting, he couldn’t quite make the image on the canvas match the image in his mind. Parts of it were barely completed, “and only so so, at that.”[5]

Eventually, Niggle passes away and travels through purgatory and eventually to heaven. At one point on the journey, he rides a bicycle down a hill and is met with the most astonishing sight: a Tree, his Tree.

Tolkien writes, “He went on looking at the Tree. All the leaves he had ever laboured at were there, as he had imagined them rather than as he had made them; and there were others that had only budded in his mind, and many that might have budded, if only he had had time.”[6]

Niggle continues through this new country, realizing he was wandering along in his picture, the one he’d imagined but never had time to finish painting. His traveling companion, Parish (who used to be his neighbor), also realizes they’re traveling in Niggle’s picture, and he’s astounded. He wonders why Niggle never told him about this clever creation, to which another man replies:

"He tried to tell you long ago," said the man; "but you would not look. He had only got canvas and paint in those days, and you wanted to mend your roof with them. This is what you and your wife used to call Niggle's Nonsense, or That Daubing."

"But it did not look like this then, not real," said Parish.

"No, it was only a glimpse then," said the man; "but you might have caught the glimpse, if you had ever thought it worth while to try.[7]

Like Niggle, I dream of painting a proverbial tree stretching its branches out over a grand landscape. But I can barely get a few leaves done, and everything I try to do never turns out quite as I’d hoped, always tarnished by grief or pain or the realities of life that keep me from feeling like the thing could ever be truly finished. Still, I long to plant a garden that won’t be overrun by weeds. I want to cook a meal that satisfies for more than a moment. I wish I could write words that could forever heal an aching soul.

I question if my efforts are in vain. But then I remember Niggle. And I wonder if maybe one day when heaven comes to earth, my so-called leaves will have grown and matured and become far more than I could have ever imagined. 

Maybe God will have taken the words I wrote and the food I cooked and the garden I tended and made something far grander with it. Maybe, whether it’s poetry or cooking or writing or painting or planting, what we see now is only a faint glimmer of what we will someday see face to face.**

****

The daughter of one of the Terezin inmates said, “Yet here is the story of how the inmates of the camp, living on bread and watery soup and dreaming of cooking habits of the past, found some consolation in the hope that they might be able to use them again in the future. By sharing these recipes, I am honoring the thoughts of my mother and the others that somewhere and somehow, there must be a better world to live in.”[8]

I’ve never dealt with the trauma and horror they held in their bodies, the grief that weighed down their souls. But I want to hold onto hope like they did, even while in my very ordinary life my hands shake and my knuckles crack and every ounce of fear and loss tries to pry my fingers away from that hope. I want to live defiantly against the darkness, not avoiding the pain or futilely trying to sweeten what will always be bitter. I want to look at the life that is, and the mess that comes with it, and dare to imagine a world beyond the brokenness.

****

Wiping off the dirt and tears, I take a break and drive down the road to the garden center. The last time I was here, I wandered through the aisles as my mom loaded up flats of annuals into the flatbed cart.

I pick out just a couple flats—a few impatiens, the geraniums for the pots. Maybe I’ll get a new kind of flower this time. I reach the cashier, and I grab a tissue from my bag and turn my head to wipe my eyes. He swipes my credit card, I push the flatbed card to the car, hiding my tear-stained face from other customers.

I feel silly still grieving a loss I know is nothing compared to what others have suffered. It was a “clean loss,” not one filled with torture or betrayal or injustice. My mom got sick; then she died. That’s the whole story, an unremarkable one in the grand scheme of human history. 

Even so, I think any loss deserves to be grieved, albeit in different ways and to different extents. I try to bear witness to the stories of others and hold onto their sorrow as best I can, knowing I can’t ever fully know the pain they’ve carried. At the same time, I have to tend to ache in my own heart. Even a clean loss leaves a wound.

I return home, carry the flowers to the backyard, and get to work. Why am I doing this? I think. My dad won’t be entertaining anytime soon. I’m flying back to Chicago in a couple days. Will anyone even see this garden?

Yet something compels me to keep working, to keep weeding and digging and planting. I don't know what will come of this work, how soon the weeds will return or the rabbits will come to gnaw at the flowers’ buds. But sometimes hope looks like dirt under your fingernails and sweat on your brow.

As each plant settles itself into the earth, their stems gradually bending toward the sun, I clap the soil off my hands and take a step back to evaluate my work. I shake my head and shrug my shoulders. This garden is nothing like it once was, I think. 

But it’s something. 

Small and incomplete, this little plot of ground is my offering, a way to glimpse what one day will be.

*While written in present tense here, this story took place over a decade ago.
**This section adapted from an earlier post that can be found here.

[1] Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue: A True Story (New York: Levine Querido, 2020), 122.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Cara de Silva, ed. In Memory’s Kitchen: A Legacy from the Women of Terezin (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), x.
[4] Ibid, xvi.
[5] J.R.R. Tolkien, “Leaf By Niggle,” in The Tolkien Reader (New York: Ballantine Books, 1978), 100-120.
[6] Ibid, 7.
[7] Ibid, 9.
[8] de Silva, ed. In Memory’s Kitchen: A Legacy from the Women of Terezin, xliii.

The other day, I came across an interview with Ye (Kanye West) where he talks about everything from the music industry to faith. (It's a fascinating listen, although please be mindful the language is terrible, and I obviously am not condoning his views.) 

Ye said, “I have my issues with Jesus. There's a lot of stuff I went through that I prayed and I ain't see Jesus show up. So I had to put my experience…in my own hands.”

We could jump to criticize Ye–but maybe he's voiced something so many of us have felt at one time or another. Maybe you're feeling it now.

Abraham thought God would show up a little sooner, and when God took his grand old time, Abraham slept with Hagar in order to try to fulfill the promise God gave him (Genesis 16).

The Israelites grew impatient on their way through the wilderness to the Promised Land, grumbling and complaining over and over again and so often trying to take matters into their own hands (e.g. Exodus 32, Numbers 21:4-5).

In the midst of his sorrow, Job felt God's supposed absence. He lamented, “Behold, I go forward, but he is not there, and backward, but I do not perceive him; on the left hand when he is working, I do not behold him; he turns to the right hand, but I do not see him” (23:8-9). 

The psalmist cried, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” (‭‭Psalm‬ ‭13‬:‭1‬).

When Lazarus died, “Martha said to Jesus, 'Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.'” (‭‭John‬ ‭11‬:‭21‬, emphasis mine).

The disciples were pretty darn sure Jesus was the Messiah, but then the “Messiah” was murdered. What are they supposed to do now? Luke 24 says about the two on the road to Emmaus, “And they stopped walking and looked discouraged…'But we were hoping that he was the one who was about to redeem Israel'” (Luke 24:17, 21, CSB).

I prayed for God to heal my mom from cancer years ago—and then on a cold February day I watched a couple men carry her body out the front door in a black bag.

In other words, for so many people before Christ and for us who have come after, it can often feel like we prayed and we ain't see Jesus show up.

Yet the solution to God's supposed absence is not to take matters into our own hands. Of course we have work to do, and we shouldn't be lazy or idle. But did you catch what Job said in the passage I mentioned above? “[O]n the left hand when he is working, I do not behold him.”

When it seems like God isn't working, he is. When it sounds like he's silent, his Word is alive and active. When we're grasping for God's hand, he is walking with us through the valley of the shadow of death. When we don't understand what he's doing or why he's taking so long, he is remaking all of creation. 

So what do we do in the meantime? 

We wait. 

“Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” says ‭‭Psalm‬ ‭27‬:‭14‬. And Psalm 130, “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning” (verses 5-6). God's people waited to enter the Promised Land, they waited for the Messiah for hundreds of years, and we wait for him to make all things new.

So often we (and others throughout Scripture) end up an angsty, discontented mess because of our penchant for giving up on God too soon. But when we give up on God, we miss bearing witness to resurrection. After all, as Peter wrote, “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness…” (2 Peter 3:9). God's not slow; we're just impatient.

I don't know what you're facing this week. I don't know if you feel the nearness of Jesus or if you're wondering if God cares enough to show up. But I do know that two thousand years ago, the Son of God came in flesh and blood. I know he showed up in ways no one expected to do what no one else could. 

I know that Christ has died. Christ has risen. And Christ will come again. 

So I don't want to take matters into my own hands. I want to rest in his. Because he has shown up a thousand times before, and he will keep showing up every single day of my life, whether I notice or feel or hear him at all. 

And one day, he will show up in all his glory, and we will see him face to face and wonder why we ever doubted in the first place. 

Thanks be to God.

I am a very goal-oriented person. I love making lists of things I want to do, day-dreaming about how I’ll be different 12 months from now, jotting down a vision for where I want to be in five years. Add to that a new planner with crisp, clean pages and a pack of high quality pens, and I am one happy girl. 

The only problem comes about a month later when I realize how unrealistic my goals were. The kids woke up extra early, so I didn’t write every morning like I’d hoped. A family crisis came up, so I ordered takeout instead of cooking my way through that one cookbook like I’d intended. My body decided to shut down and get sick, so I missed those workouts I’d planned to do.

Real life so often seems to get in the way of living my best life.

Maybe you can relate? 

I recently listened to an episode of the The Lazy Genius podcast with Kendra Adachi. Kendra talked with author Kelly Corrigan about how not everything in your life needs to be optimized. “You don’t have to be in this constant state of self-improvement,” Kelly said.

It’s so simple, but some of us (me!) can all too easily heap goal after goal after goal on our backs until our knees buckle under the weight of our own expectations. Our overzealous desire for self-improvement leaves us worn down and discouraged months or even weeks later.

But sometimes you just get to be a person. Certain things in our lives can be what they are without optimizing them to death. 

Just the other day as I was packing my kids’ lunches I thought, “I should really get more creative about what I give them.”

But why?

I assemble decently balanced meals they will (mostly) eat. Their lunches are fine. While what I feed my kids does matter to me in general, in this season, taking their school lunches to the next level really doesn’t matter. They don’t care. I don’t care. And the only reason I even thought of stepping up my lunch game was because I saw a few Instagram reels showcasing lunches that I thought, for a moment, I should aspire to make.

It’s a silly example, I know, but especially as we move into a new year, so many of us have a tendency to want to improve every single little aspect of our lives. And while self-improvement is important, maybe we don’t need to improve every area of life in every season of life. 

I’ll still set goals and use my new planner. But as I do, I want to live my real life instead of constantly chasing after a version I will never attain. 

If your goals and expectations can easily get out of control like mine, maybe this year, we can focus on the areas of growth that are most important to us–and then let the rest go. Maybe this year, we can take a deep breath, release what we don't need, and finally let “good enough” actually be good enough.

Cheers to a new year, friends. May it be one filled with creativity, joy, and plenty of grace along the way.

This post was adapted from a piece originally shared with the Exhale Creativity community.

The needles on my Christmas tree are falling rapidly now. If someone runs too closely to it, a handful will come off. If you bump it, hundreds pour down. I’m dreading the vacuuming job required after we carry it out the door. I doubt there will be many needles left on the branches...just a bare trunk to be tossed to the curb.

Life sometimes feels a bit like that. We’re shaken like a tree losing needles. Sometimes, the shaking has happened little by little as we grow tired or life just feels chaotic. Other times, we’re hit by horrific headlines, sickness, death, injustice, and division. Like needles on a dying tree, our tears fall hard and fast, leaving a mess to be cleaned up. Eventually, we’re left standing bare. If one more thing happens, we’re not sure we’ll even stay upright. We feel weary and raw, vulnerable and desperate.

But often we have to reach the point of desperation before we reach for God.

In Life Without Lack, Dallas Willard writes:

Desperate faith is all about trusting God when the shaking begins and everything crumbles around you. Through the prophet Haggai, God speaks of shaking “heaven and earth, the sea and dry land” (Hag. 2:6), and the writer of the book of Hebrews picked up the cataclysmic theme, explaining that this “indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain” (Heb. 12:27). What remains is the kingdom of God that cannot be moved...

Maybe we feel like a Christmas tree on December 26–the glimmer of lights gone, the branches exposed. Our sense of control, our plans, our goals, our views, even our beliefs...they’ve been shaken. But the process isn’t fruitless, because it reveals the things that cannot be shaken–and those are the things we need to hold most tightly.

I know my silly tree metaphor falls apart eventually. But the point is this: If you’re feeling shaken up, know that who God is, who he says you are, what he’s doing in the world, the kingdom he is establishing on earth as it is in heaven...those things can never be shaken. They do not change. They’re not going anywhere. So we can cling desperately to our God rather than try to rely on what is bound to fail and fall.

As Willard also wrote, “The faith of desperation—trusting faith—digs in, holds on, clings tight, and says, ‘I don’t care what’s going to happen, I am holding on to God!’”

That is not an easy prayer to pray, but it’s one that leads us to a place where we can say with the psalmist, “I have set the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken” (Psalm 16:8).

What’s been shaken loose in your life this year? What remains? What does living out the faith of desperation look like for you this week?

Whatever this past year brought, and whatever next year will bring, may we be people who hold on to our God. May we be people clinging tightly to him even as everything else is shaken loose.

J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote a short story called “Leaf by Niggle.” The main character, Niggle, is a painter. He envisions painting a grand tree set against a countryside and even a forest in the picture, along with mountains and birds and the tree's deep, strong roots.

But he keeps getting interrupted in his work by neighbors, the needs of others, and the responsibilities of everyday life. Those around him don't understand why he even bothers painting at all. There's far more important work to do. And so despite Niggle's best efforts at painting, he can't quite make the image on the canvas match the image in his mind. Parts of it are barely completed, “and only so so, at that.”

Eventually, Niggle passes away and travels through a sort of purgatory and eventually to heaven. At one point on the journey, he rides a bicycle down a hill and is met with the most astonishing sight: a Tree, his Tree.

Tolkien writes, “He went on looking at the Tree. All the leaves he had ever laboured at were there, as he had imagined them rather than as he had made them; and there were others that had only budded in his mind, and many that might have budded, if only he had had time.”

Niggle continues through this new country, realizing he was wandering along in his picture, the one he'd imagined but never had time to finish painting. His traveling companion, Parish (who used to be his neighbor), also realizes they're traveling in Niggle's picture, and he's astounded. He wonders why Niggle never told him about this clever creation, to which another man replies:

"He tried to tell you long ago," said the man; "but you would not look. He had only got canvas and paint in those days, and you wanted to mend your roof with them. This is what you and your wife used to call Niggle's Nonsense, or That Daubing."[1]

"But it did not look like this then, not real," said Parish.

"No, it was only a glimpse then," said the man; "but you might have caught the glimpse, if you had ever thought it worth while to try.

Like Niggle, I dream of painting a proverbial tree stretching its branches out over a grand landscape. But I can barely get a few leaves done, and everything I try to do never turns out quite as I'd hoped, always tarnished by grief or pain or the realities of life that keep me from feeling like the thing could ever be truly finished.

It's so easy for us to wonder if the meager work we've done each ordinary day of this life will ever amount to anything–if the toddler's owie we soothed or the meal we made or the report we completed or the time we gave will ever add up to anything of significance. It's hard to see sometimes how God might use each zig and zag of our lives for eternal good when at every turn sits a pile of brokenness threatening to bury us.

But then I remember Niggle. And I wonder if maybe one day when heaven comes to earth, the metaphorical leaves we've painted will have grown and matured and become far more than we could have ever imagined.

Maybe one day we'll see how God took the words we wrote and the food we cooked and the garden we tended and made something far grander with it. Maybe, whether our work includes parenting or poetry, pastoring or painting, what we see now is only a faint glimpse of what we will someday see face to face.

And so maybe, just maybe, our work today is to keep trying to catch those glimpses.

Onward, friends.

[1] Quotes from “Leaf by Niggle” found in The Tolkien Reader.

In a recent newsletter, author, writing teacher, and podcaster Jonathan Rogers talked about the inefficiency of hospitality. He went on to discuss more about how to be hospitable to our own creative ideas, a practice I’m woefully bad at. (Read his newsletter here for more on that.) But his words about the broader topic of hospitality have really stuck with me. 

I really like efficiency. But, as Rogers wrote:

Genuine hospitality is alway inefficient. Inefficiency is one of the main ways you show guests that they’re welcome. You don’t get them in and out as quickly as possible…You go to more trouble than you have to. You ask your guests questions; you listen more than you talk. And if things go well, your guests begin to talk to one another, and you learn things you didn’t know to ask.

Efficiency has its place. I like to make sure the dishwasher is empty before I have guests over. If I’m hosting a big holiday dinner, I take out all my servingware the night before to ensure I have what I need and I know where each dish will go. I write lists and keep track of what needs to get put in the oven and when it needs to start baking.

There are plenty of ways we can try to make hospitality more efficient. But at the end of the day, efficiency is not the goal; welcome is. And making people feel welcome sometimes–maybe even always–takes more time, more intention, more inefficiency than some of us (me!) feel comfortable with. 

Our attempts to be efficient must serve the greater goal of making others feel welcome. If we get that backwards, we’ve missed the point of hospitality altogether. 

So this holiday season, if you’re hosting a big gathering, sharing cookies with neighbors, or trying to practice hospitality with your own kids, remember that it’s okay if so much of it feels inefficient. It’s okay if conversations take longer or you have to drive out of your way to pick up that one item or there’s more cleaning up to do than you thought.

Efficiency can be helpful and necessary. But welcome matters more.

Cheers to making our family, friends, and communities feel welcome this Christmas season, just as God has welcomed us.

Bourbon Cider Cocktail with Cinnamon + Ginger
Yields 1 drink*

2 ounces fresh apple cider
1 ½ - 2 ounces bourbon (depending on how strong you like it)
½ ounce freshly squeezed lemon juice
½ ounce Cinnamon-Ginger Simple Syrup (recipe below)
A large handful of Ice

Add all the ingredients to a cocktail shaker. Shake vigorously for about 15 seconds. Strain into a chilled glass and garnish with a cinnamon stick or slice of lemon. Enjoy!

Cinnamon-Ginger Simple Syrup

½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup water
1 Tablespoon roughly chopped fresh ginger
½ cinnamon stick

Add all ingredients to a small saucepan set over medium heat. Stir until the sugar dissolves. Remove from heat and allow the syrup to cool completely. 

Once it has cooled, strain out the ginger and cinnamon stick. Store in a sealed container in the refrigerator. Leftover syrup should last in the refridgerator for at least a few weeks.

*I have also made this for a crowd. Just keep the ingredient ratio the same and add everything to a large pitcher filled with ice. While I prefer to shake the cocktail and strain out the ice, simply serving it in a pitcher with the ice works great, too.

A few days ago, one of my kids walked in from the garage holding a nearly empty, Costco-sized bag of tortilla chips. He stuffed a few crumbs into his mouth when I realized, “Wait, isn’t that the bag that’s been sitting in the garage all night?”

So yeah, my kid is eating stale chips from the garage. But also, why were the chips in the garage?

After school every day, my kids raid the pantry for snacks, wondering what they can scarf down while I remind them to eat their lunch leftovers first. In a couple of my kids’ lunchboxes, there are usually large portions of sandwiches and apples still waiting to be consumed. They take a few bites, then beg for the snack food. I probably too often give in, knowing my husband will end up taking the day-old apple slices for his own lunch the next day–a parenting sacrifice neither of us knew about when we signed up for this gig.

One day when I gave into their need for snack food, my daughter took the Costco-sized bag of chips into the garage, and she and her neighborhood friends munched on the last couple servings while drawing or planning or plotting or whatever elementary-aged girls do these days. Despite my myriad reminders to throw out the trash, the bag got left in the garage with only a few crumbs…which one of my sons gladly polished off a day later.

My point? The snack situation in my house always seems dire. I mean, how can these tiny humans eat go through Costco-sized anything as quickly as they do?

I’m trying to more often make some snacks, because let’s be honest, prepackaged goodies from Costco aren’t easy on the wallet. Sometimes, I’ll bake a batch of muffins or healthy-ish cookies or apple bread to feed the ravenous wolves that circle my house about 3:40 every Monday through Friday.

A few weeks ago, the toddler napped longer than expected, so I seized the opportunity to make a batch of scones. And of course, not long after they were out of the oven, the wolves swooped in from school and happily inhaled said scones with the fervor of an animal who hasn’t eaten for weeks.

Thankfully, they were kind enough to leave one lone scone for my husband to enjoy the next day. And no scone remnants were left in the garage.

Whole Wheat Pumpkin Scones with Bourbon Glaze
Yields 8 Scones
Adapted from Sally’s Baking Addiction

Scones

1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
1 cup white whole wheat flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
½ teaspoon kosher salt
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold
½ cup canned pumpkin puree
½ cup lightly packed brown sugar
¼ cup plus 1 Tablespoon heavy cream
2 Tablespoons bourbon
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2-3 teaspoons turbinado sugar for topping

Bourbon Glaze*

3 Tablespoons unsalted butter
¼ cup maple syrup
2 Tablespoons bourbon
1 cup powdered sugar
Pinch of kosher salt

For the scones

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, pumpkin pie spice, and salt.

“Cut” the cold butter into the flour. To do this, you can first cut the butter into small cubes, and then mix it into the flour with a fork or pastry cutter until the mixture is crumbly. Another option I like is to use a cheese grater. Grate the stick of butter into the flour, then mix with a fork or pastry cutter until crumbly.

In a small bowl, whisk together the pumpkin, brown sugar, ¼ cup of heavy cream, bourbon, egg, and vanilla until the ingredients are thoroughly incorporated. Pour the wet ingredient mixture over the flour mixture and stir gently until a sticky dough forms. Stir as gently as possibly and don’t mix any more than necessary.

Scrape the dough out onto a floured work surface. Add some flour to your hands and form the dough into a circle, about one inch thick. Cut the dough into 8 triangle shaped slices and transfer to the lined baking sheet (make sure you leave at least a couple inches between each scone so they don’t get smushed together when they bake).

Brush the scones with the last tablespoon of heavy cream, then sprinkle turbinado sugar on top of each one.

Put the baking sheet in the freezer for about 15 minutes.

While the scones are in the freezer, preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Bake for about 18-22 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Allow the scones to cool for a few minutes on a wire rack, then top with the glaze (instructions below). Scones taste best when enjoyed fresh, but if needed, you can keep them in the refrigerator for a couple days.

For the glaze

Add the butter, syrup, and bourbon to a small saucepan set over low heat. Stir together until the butter is melted. Turn off the heat, then whisk in the powdered sugar and a pinch of salt to taste. Drizzle over the scones.

*The alcohol in the glaze won’t cook out completely, so if you’re serving kiddos or others avoiding alcohol, you can omit the bourbon or skip the glaze altogether.

There are hundreds…yes hundreds…of pieces of candy stashed around my house right now. One of my children has sorted each type into different bags, making sure every candy finds its proper place. Another child dumped everything in a bucket. My third kid opted for a combination of sorting and dumping–he’s selected his favorites, bagged those up, and then stockpiled what’s left in a pillow case.

The sugary aftermath of Halloween is no joke, and over the years we’ve tried various methods of dealing with the copious amount of sweets. (My current favorite thing to do is to bake batches of these blondies with leftover candy and then freeze the blondies to eat down the road!)

But at least for me, while I certainly love my fair share of chocolate, there comes a point when the candy and treats are just too much. I don’t say this because I have loads of self-control. Anyone who’s put a bag of chips and a bowl of guacamole in front of me knows I certainly haven’t mastered that part of the fruit of the Spirit. I just prefer savory over sweet most of the time…except when there’s Option C: savory and sweet. When in doubt, pick C, as the old high school test-taking saying goes, right?

This recipe for Cocoa Cardamom Mixed Nuts is a healthy-ish version of Option C. It’s got a little bit of the savory from the nuts and a little sweet from sugar and cocoa powder. These are great for wrapping up to gift during the holidays, or you could set a bowl out for people to enjoy before or after a holiday feast.

Or, if you’re like me, keep a stash in your pantry for when you’ve got the munchies but need a break from the piles of M&Ms, Twix, and Skittles elbowing their way into every corner of your home (and stomach) this time of year.

Enjoy!

Cocoa Cardamom Mixed Nuts
Yields 3 Cups

1 egg white
1 cups raw almonds
1 cups raw hazelnuts
1 cup walnuts
⅓ cup granulated sugar*
2 Tablespoons cocoa powder 
1 ½ teaspoons ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon coarse kosher salt

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Spray the parchment paper with a little bit of cooking spray.

In a small bowl, whisk the egg white until frothy. Set aside. 

In a medium bowl, add the nuts, sugar, cocoa powder, cardamom, and salt. Mix well. Fold in the egg white and stir until combined.

Pour everything onto the prepared baking sheet, being sure to scrape out all the liquid from the bowl. Spread everything out so it’s in a single layer. Bake for about 45 minutes, stirring once or twice during the baking process. 

Remove from the oven and allow the nuts to cool for a few minutes on the baking sheet. Then transfer to a plate or jars to allow them to cool completely. Serve immediately or store in a tightly sealed container for up to two weeks.

*NOTE: Use up to a half cup of sugar total if you want this recipe to be sweeter.

I walked into Costco earlier this week, and my eyes bugged out of my head when I saw Christmas trees on display. Their twinkling lights led the way toward aisles filled with toys and reindeer lawn ornaments and holiday gift wrap. 

Every year, retailers do this. And every year, it catches me off guard. 

Maybe you’re one of those people who like to get a jump on things, and honestly, I admire you. I’m the kind of person who, every year, plans to get a jump on things, but somehow I still wind up wrapping Christmas gifts at 1am on Christmas Day. I’ve always been like this–old habits die hard, I guess. In high school and college, I’d stay up all night to finish a paper, and I wish I could tell you I don’t do that kind of thing anymore. My brother used to say, “If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute!” I’d like to believe that saying is true. But also, if you wait until the last minute, you end up wanting to pull your hair out and scream at everyone and no one in particular. But I digress…

My point is that there seems to be a constant battle between planning ahead and living in the moment. One minute, we hear things like, “Savor every minute!” or “Be present!”, and the next, we’re walking through Costco in August wondering if we’re the only ones who haven’t bought red and green wrapping paper yet. 

It’s hard to live in the moment when you feel perpetually behind. I feel that even in my house. As one does, I recently snooped around on Zillow to check out houses in my neighborhood (someone admit to me that they do the same thing?), and a neighbor’s house is on the market and it is stunning. I knew she was good at design and decor (which are not my forte), and I also know that photographers and home stagers can work wonders. But my admiration for her style and the work she put into her home quickly turned sour. My husband and I are doing some work on our house, too, and I suddenly felt really, really behind. Her home was what mine should look like.

Mine was the “before” picture, hers the “after.” 

It’s so silly, I know. But in those couple minutes spent looking at house photos, the comparison beast started to growl. I felt so behind in what my own home should look like. All too often, I also end up feeling behind in my writing, behind in getting my kids’ Halloween costumes figured out, behind on knowing what our Christmas plans are, behind in my parenting abilities, behind, behind, behind. 

But thank the good Lord that life isn’t that kind of race. 

In Acts 20, Paul is determined to go to Jerusalem, where he knows it won’t be a cakewalk. His trip may even cost him his life. But then he says, “However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace” (Acts 20:24).

The only race that matters is the one God has set before us–the one where we get to follow our Savior all the way into eternity, savoring his goodness and proclaiming his glory each step of the way.

Friend, if you feel like you’re behind, in your career, in your parenting, even in something as seemingly ordinary as your home decor, let me remind us both that if we are seeking Jesus, if we are striving to follow him as we run whatever path is set before us, we can never be behind. God has given us careers and families and homes and schedules to steward well, but let us not allow comparison to trip us up along the way. Even when we fail, there is grace. Even when we wander off the path, he comes to find us. Even when we can’t see more than an inch ahead, his steady hand and his gentle voice guide us. 

Whatever your days look like, whatever roles and responsibilities and resources you have, remember the race you're running is not against anyone else. Rather, the race we run is a lifelong pursuit of Jesus.

And at the end of that race, we'll find ourselves in the only place that matters: falling right into the arms of our God.