I’ve dropped by to pick something up and she, a mother with one daughter beyond college and one who’s eleven, tells me because she’s been there herself.

“After this they’re women. You know that, right?”

I look over at them: they are already looking like women and acting like them at times too. Eleven is still child, but it is also stretching toward adolescence and adulthood at an alarming rate.

I sigh. A big one. “I know. I mean, I can guess.” I tell her.

The girls run in the yard and around the big tree that shades the front of their house. It’s almost summer and the sun is still high at 5pm.

“And then they’re off.” She’s thinking of her older daughter, I know. “And all we have are the memories of the little girls.”

She smiles. And I’m a little sad as I pack my kids back into the minivan. We have to stop at the market before we go back home so we do.

And maybe this is why I’ll write a little less this summer.

Maybe this is why I’ll hang out on Facebook and Twitter a little less this summer.

Maybe this is why I’ll say “no” to the speaking engagement and the conference this summer.

Because I want to enjoy them. I want to burn these days into my mama-memory. Because she’s right. It all changes {and I’m hoping that in the change and in the journey —- even in the struggle— it will be good} and it is quicker than a blink.

I’ll throw the ball in the yard and cuddle with a pajama-clad seven-year-old on the sofa without my phone. And I’ll jump in the pool even when I don’t want to get my hair wet — because I want to be the mom they remember swimming with and Marco-Polo-ing with rather than the mom tapping away at a keyboard while they frolic.

And hopefully we’ll remember the summer of eleven-and-a-half and seven-and-a-half with fondness.

What’s changing in your life right now? In your family?

For years I squinted at my reflection trying to believe I was beautifully and wonderfully made for the Bible tells me so, and then one day my mother got cancer and I realized, it’s not about how you view yourself. It’s about how you view life.

As women, we suffer from an extreme case of Guilt, and many women believe the guiltier they feel, the better a person they are, but it’s a lie. All it’s doing is preventing us from effectively loving our children. Guilt makes us wallow within, versus allowing us to invest in others.

And sometimes it takes something as hard as cancer to learn what we had in the beginning: An identity defined by something other than the past.

When we believe we are loved, everything around us becomes, as Ann Voskamp says in One Thousand Gifts, grace. A hand-wrapped present from the father of the heavens, and once we start believing this, then, and only then, can we look in the mirror and see someone who deserves that gift.

And it’s in this love that we find our true calling. A calling that rises above weight and numbers and dress sizes. A calling that says we are made in God’s holy image, and what does this mean?

It means, we were created to give God a face.

Maybe this is done in the way you serve a customer at Wendy’s, or through the way you mop floors or fold the laundry, or maybe it’s in the way you splash paint on canvas.

However you do it, you are an extension of God on this earth. You are made to reflect his beauty. I believe that if we were to truly realize the identity we had in Christ, we could move mountains. We could show such extravagant mercy and compassion and gentleness, we would die for one another and to ourselves, while creating masterpieces of music and art and literature because we wouldn’t be.

Instead, he would. God would be, within us.

***

I’m giving away a copy of my new book today, Mom in the Mirror: Body Image, Beauty and Life After Pregnancy, co-authored by Dr. Dena Cabrera, and foreword by supermodel Emme.

Here’s an excerpt from the book:

Giving birth produces life in more than one sense. It’s the baby powder, milky-breathed spirit found in the softest limbs you’ve ever felt, and it’s the respect a man feels for his wife as he watches her give up her body for another.

And it’s the deep-rooted soul satisfying feeling of knowing you were born for more than the mirror. That you were born to see the face of God in your child, and to know, you yourself are a miracle.

To enter the giveaway, leave a comment in the comment section. 

There is something holy and powerful about words.

I wonder about God and Jesus and the fact that He is the Word. The Word in living flesh is Jesus. A person. God.

The Word.

There is something scary and powerful when it comes to words.

Words are things to be weighed. Thought through. Sifted. Held.

A few months ago I got a typewriter. A gift from my husband: an old IBM Selectric. It has since broken {we need to figure out how to fix the vintage machinations} but when it sat on my dining room table, near the windows with it’s own chair, I was often tempted to steal a piece of paper from the printer in the guest room, to roll it down at the back, make it square with the side and begin to type.

It took me a few days to get used to the analog-ness of the keys. I made mistakes and striked-through many a C that should have been a D. There are few do-overs on typewriters. Aside from white out {who wants to wait that long} and correction tape, typewriters make us think before we pound out a flippant word.

I wrote a couple letters on the typewriter. A note of thanks to my husband. My seven year old tap tap tapped out a few sentences, mostly her name N-A-O-M-I-G-R-A-C-E-M-A-R-K-L-E-Y. So proud of herself, she sat back and looked at the magic at her fingertips.

She tried so hard to make those letters count. Bent over the keys, she was so happy at her accomplishment. Each word was a mountain to climb and every mistake was monstrous.

There is so much more permanence to words than we give them credit.

Sitting around with family and friends over the weekend we talked about the times someone commented on our weight gains or acne or teenage awkwardness over the years. Of five adults, every single one of us remembered something significant. Something horrible. Something funny. Something that wounded and took on a life of it’s own 30 years later.

Words are full of power.

Words inch us together over long divides. Words knit together hearts that have been broken over seventeen years. Words reach down deep and save.

Words whispered, written, spoken to our people, the ones who are the closest {our partners especially}. These ones need to hear these permanent words.

And what can be more holy than the words I-Love-You.

Their bones stretch and they seem to get taller and taller every time they emerge from their room with rubbing-eyes and hair that’s been knotted overnight by their pillows.

They are stretching and growing and moving and sometimes I just want it to slow down. I get a panicky feeling when I think that it will all be over so soon. That in a blink it’s done.

It’s done.

Here are these children who need me less and less and who will I be when I’m not needed? Here are these children under my roof for only a few more years and they are turning into women right in front of me.

But then I wonder that as their bones stretch and hands lengthen into the hands of teenagers, will I be able to grow into the mother they need? Because at this point, I don’t even feel equipped to mother an eleven year old and a seven year old.

It’s easy for kids to grow. It’s who they are. They are born growing. But me? It’s hard for me to adapt and change and growing for me isn’t natural.  Not at all. It feels like I’m cracking and arthritic as I try to stretch to meet the needs of a family who is all growing older.

And it’s not just their bodies that grow. It’s their hearts and minds and spirits. And all of a sudden when they ask the big questions, they really expect a big answer. Or at least one that makes an ounce of sense. And most of the time I really don’t know the answer.

{I’m learning to say, “I’m working through that one too.”}

So will I be able to stretch my stiff heart into the elastic heart that my children need? I hope so.

I’ll have to rely on them a bit, I think, to show me the way. I’ll take their lead: to grow when they grow, stretch when they do and move with grace as they are learning to do so beautifully.

 How are you being stretched right now?

I’m learning that God is good all the time.

I’m learning that God is good even in a desert.

I’m learning that the power of waiting on him and learning what that actually means.

I’m learning about God is true even when I don’t see Him or feel Him. My understanding of it doesn’t change Him.

So, humbly, I’ll ask you to jump over and visit this post on a newer site I’ve been writing for.

God is Good all the Time

“I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” Psalm 27:13-14

These two verses have been my hope in this season of life lately.

Understand, the last two years of life for my family have been hard. In fact, if I look back over 17 years of marriage, the last 48 months have been the hardest ever. A little less than three years ago, we lost our home. A casualty of the burst housing bubble, we packed up and moved from our little community that we loved to a place of stark suburban sameness. For the next two years, we tried to find our footing in a new place that we hoped could be an Eden but ended up a desert.

Sometimes life simply is a desert, I’ve learned. It’s sandy and thirsty and even the most devoted of lovers of Jesus can begin to doubt His goodness. 

I entered into two years of doubting the goodness of God, two years of wondering if He really has good things in store for me, and two years of resigning myself to the fact that the desert might in fact be the reality…

Read more…

For the days when your wisdom has flown and all that you really want to do is curl up with your Instagram feed,

For the days when you can’t type one more word for work and all the words for “fun” and “creativity” have seem to have been used up by your professionalism,

For the days when there is really nothing to say, what do you say?

What about the times when she just really wants to tell you the story about the girls at school and the kitty erasers and the things she builds with her own two little hands,

Or the times when the grief is too much and words {any words} seem empty,

What about the times when the quiet is so much more valuable than any offered up words,

For these times, do you really say anything at all?

What about when there is only laughter, or exhaustion or frustration? Do words really do anything powerful?

I don’t think so.

So maybe today, we can listen. We can soak up the words that the others speak around us, our children, our spouses, our own hearts. And maybe we can begin to practice the art of receiving words which is what we expect of our people (and our readers) each day. 

“Being heard 
is so close to being loved 
that for the average person, 
they are almost indistinguishable.”

{David Augsburger}

There is nothing more life-giving than when someone truly believes in you.

Not the clichéd slap-on-the-back “I believe in you.”

No, not that.

It’s the I-got-your-back, you-can-do-this, I’m-amazed-by-you super-fan that only your  closest people have the power to be to you.

I can sit across the out-to-breakfast table with a friend and say, “Girl, you got this.” And it goes a long way, I’m sure.

I can email my closest Internet sisters and share a prayer request and they can say, “Girl, we will pray.” And that means oh, so much.

But when my people, and by that I mean my people, tell me that they believe in me, it goes to the end of me. It moves past belief into action. And it has the power to move me past belief into action.

I believe in you means nothing if we aren’t willing to take the actions needed to support someone in that.

{We so often believe but we do not act}

You have that power. Yes you do. For your husband or wife. For your daughters and your sons. For your mother. For your father. For your people, you truly have the power to help them succeed.

So today, find your closest person and tell them that you are their biggest fan. You believe in them. That you know they are amazing. That with you, love trumps all the rest.

Then step back and watch them fly.

I’ll be honest I feel so inadequate.

I’m no Chris Marlow, and I’m no Lindsey Nobles or Kristen Howerton. I don’t have my hands and arms deep into the orphan care crisis or the homelessness epidemic. I’m not rolling up my sleeves weekly to fight for the rights of foster children or the elderly.

Instead, I have my hands in deep in the dishwater of my kitchen sink helping my seven year old finish her math homework and walking through the spelling of “Pennsylvania” with my fifth grader for a school project. When I’m making lunches and shuttling kids to soccer practices, I feel about as far away from the big Human Care issues as someone can.

I am inadequate. I really am.

But I’m sure if you asked Chris or Lindsey or Kristen, they would tell you they feel the same. At some level, we are all human and not a one of us can fix the problems of the world.

The point is we are ALL inadequate.

But we all, each, in our spaces and worlds do what we can. And I firmly believe that God fills in the gaps of our inadequacies.

It could stop here. I could finish the dishes, wipe off my hands and kiss my children as they lay their recently-showered-heads down to sleep. I could grab my iPad and watch the latest show that makes the worries of the day numb in my head.

Or I could write.

My passion is grace: to write and speak up for those who’ve been given none. There is some crazy, holy fire that has been placed deep within me to fight for the un-graced and the dis-graced.  And this, I believe, is human care at it’s finest.

Without love, the rest of what we do is a clanging cymbal. Without grace, the rest of it is legalism.

I will do well with the resources that I’ve been given. So I have a laptop and words that flow and fingers that can type. I have a mouth that can string words together that make sense.

This is how I dig my arms in deep to the human care crisis today. I roll up my sleeves and speak up for grace.

And I teach my children this same grace. I don’t care if I raise children who are the best at their sport or who will get into the best university but I do want to bring up girls who are lovers of people and deep lovers of the wide grace of God.

I’m up on Deeper Church today. Wanna come visit?

This is Revival

Revival was the thing whispered when I sat in pews as little girl. When we prayed for God to return to the land, to our schools, to the US of A {as if he’d abandoned us already} we asked for revival.

Revival was the thing whispered in prayers as we spoke in tongues. In the middle years we went to charismatic church and revival was on everyone’s lips. Oh Lord, bring revival! We prayed over and over again.

Revival.

Revival.

It was as far in the future as the second coming of Christ.

In my mind I thought revival would mean scores of people either flooding the churches every Sunday or later I wondered if revival meant millions speaking in tongues and falling on the floor with holy laughter. In my head I had created the idea of “revival” to mean “repentance…”

{keep reading}

I kissed her still-babyish cheek and fixed the pillows behind her head.

“Of course I want to be with you, but Mommy and Daddy need some time by ourselves for a few days.”

She began to cry. “If you wanted to be with me you wouldn’t go away!” And then when she began to cry harder my heart tore open.

I haven’t traveled without the kids since October and I don’t have any more plans until this September. This has been a year that I’ve needed to stay home and I’ve planned it that way.

But how do you explain this to a seven-year-old?

“I do want to be with you. For the rest of my life I want to be with you,” I told her.

She still cried, and put her skinny little arms around my neck with ferocity.

“You can stay with me forever if you want,” I said. I knew that at least with this one, the wings of independence will start to spread sooner than either of us want.

She seemed to calm down and turned to pull a favorite book out from next to her pillow. “Will you read to me?”

“Only if you turn the pages,” I answered.

And I spent longer than normal with her that evening. I pushed her bedtime back while we read and giggled and I read one-more-poem again and again until my eyes were tired and hers were drooping shut.

Staying and pouring into the daily lives of my children is my highest calling in life right now. I am a wife and a mother first and the rest of my life’s dreams and ideas fall in line in second-to-one-millionth place.

It all comes after.

And for a split second in the cozy of her bedtime nest I wondered if would be a better mother to her to stay home. If her fierce weeping were a sign that she needed me this week.

It was hard going to bed that night.

Before she drifted off to sleep she asked me to wake her up in the night and bring her into our bed. Normally I wouldn’t indulge her. If she wakes and wants to snuggle, my door is always open. But will I wake her to do it? No. She and I both need our sleep.

But last Tuesday I set my alarm for 2 am and nudged Chad to go and get her.

Being a good mother sometimes means saying “no” to my children and “yes” to another equally important relationship: the one with my husband. Sometimes right and wrong is on a gradient, meaning, at times, both paths are right.

Being home with my daughters is right. And so is going away with my husband. I can’t do both at the same time, so I have to choose.

And the only way I can do this is by knowing there is grace in this. The only way I can do this is by knowing I’m modeling the right type of relationship to them. The only way I can do this and not weep myself is by knowing that they will be okay and perhaps stronger for it.

Did my kids have a good week with us away? They did. But was it harder than normal? Absolutely. Were there times I wish I could have been there? Yes. But did we also need the time together. Unquestionably.

We came home early this afternoon, brought in some groceries minutes before my mother pulled up to our house with two kids, their clothes and bunch of stuffed animals in tow.

“Mama!” Naomi pointed at me through the car window and ran up the steps to meet me. She threw her arms around my neck, this time without crying.

My oldest saw me and her face broke into a wider grin than I think she had planned on. She was happy to see us too.

It’s easy to decide between right and wrong.

But it is oh, so hard to decide between what is right and what is right.

Between taking the time to write the risky words that are pushing out of my heart at a fever pitch and between being present with my husband in the evenings. Between giving grace and requiring a consequence from my girls. Between one job and another, one school and another, one friend and another. Right and right.

Between what is right and what is right is a hard choice to make.

What do you do? When you have to choose between what is right and what is right?