I can picture their faces: Wendy, who took an awkward junior higher under her wing; Jen, Amy, and Wanda who made time for a college student on a busy campus; then Linda, Nancy investing in a young woman, a new mom. Each walked the road I longed to call my own, not flawlessly, but with a vulnerability and an invitation to sojourn together.  Some of these relationships developed effortlessly, others were purposefully pursued and scheduled.

These women, in different stages and seasons, each gave me a gift that I’m still unwrapping today. They discipled me. They gave the gift of their intentional presence, hours in conversation, offering perspective, pointing me, again and again, to Jesus – to His Word, teaching me to pray by practicing it with me.
I have been on the receiving end. And I have given, too, of my heart and time, for other young women. And the process, the beauty of transformation unfurling in the lives of those I’ve been privileged to journey alongside, it has brought joy, and sometimes heartache, and it has changed me.

Discipleship.  It is at the core of the Christian experience, a grace offered along our pilgrimage on the narrow way – this strange experience of living as free and fully loved people, longing to know, really know, the God who is beyond comprehension, and learning to abide in Him.

And I find today, with a life full of friends and endless books and blog posts available, with challenges and encouragement abounding, that discipleship is the place I am aching to return to. Discipleship is where the gritty growth really happens. And it is a hole in my life right now.  I heard this interview last week, and it has been ruminating in my mind, causing me to think about the gift of discipleship:

How often do I long to embrace a calling and look to climb ladders and build platforms, when really, I need to go lower, to break open the hard places and walk under the wisdom and grace and truth-telling of a one who has also set her heart on pilgrimage, someone I rub shoulders with in real life, who loves because Jesus commands and invests because she longs to see the image of Christ revealed.

Oh, how I need that intentional relationship, centered on transformation, where vulnerability and honesty pave the way for the hard, beautiful labor of spiritual formation. And while seasons of solitude and silence provide a unique, and sometimes necessary catalyst for growth, this work of discipleship, like community, calls us to acknowledge our weakness and need for another. It flies in the face of our celebrity culture and distracted lifestyle.

And I suspect even when wrinkles deep reveal years of laughter, and my hair is white as snow, I will be found, even then, as I am today: in need of accountability and challenge, of a grace filled place where wisdom can speak to my pride, and failures are brought directly to the cross. I do not want to see the day I isolate myself from the wisdom and tenderness of women who’ve walked this road and can breathe encouragement and truth right into my soul, not today, not ever.

So, how ’bout it, friends? Maybe today is the day to begin to pray for a woman who has walked this road with faithful heart, to  learn from her, maybe read a book and hash through it together? Maybe today we yield to this sweet grace? What do you think?

And as the printables and theories and practical advice floated around, I began to wonder if I was missing out on something.  I certainly don’t have a lack of need for change.  We don’t live in chaos here (at least not everyday…) but I could certainly use some fine tuning: in our basement, our schedules, my muscles and the state of my floors, the lack of laundry system and our life goals, to name a few.

As I sat through a recent gathering where an experienced mom shared her plethora a systems and theories on organization for the home, and as I read Tsh’s advice for setting attainable goals (and the best way to achieve them) and Ann’s perspective, I wondered how much of this has to do with personality.  On the Myers Briggs’ scale (which a new friend, Kamille explains amazingly, here), I’m a raging ENFP – pretty extreme in all the categories (extroverted, intuitive, feeling, perceiving). I’m no expert in personality theory, so I may be totally off here, but I would guess that some of the amazing women pumping out the practical advice and insane lists for successful resolutions are probably pretty strong in either the sensing and judging categories of the Myers Briggs personality type.

You see, when I’m thinking about goals and projects, I circle around ideas, draw them out, visually – whether in pictures of word maps.  I make ven diagrams and turn them into flowers and fill them with our schedules for the week, and draw pictures of what I’d love a finished room to look like, and then watch it become that over time, rather than making bulleted lists and checking them off.

So when it came to a New Year’s resolution(s) I spent a few weeks pondering it, and came back to a single focus that I’ve been circling around for years: learning to abide. I know, it totally flies in the face of measurable goals, and I’m processing through what it looks like, practically, to establish rhythms that make space and facilitate growth in this, and how those rhythms might influence my daily schedule and home and relationships – and I suppose that’s where it gets more practical.

But a concept like abide, this is the kind of thing I can soak into and explore.  And I may, really, I must, do some practical things to make this resolution a reality, but I have learned that my goals must be rooted in essence and intuition, more perception than practical for them to take root in my life. And I suspect this is true of others, but not all.

I’m wondering if our approach to resolutions, and possibly our effectiveness in carrying them out have a good deal to do with personality type, how we process information and goals. Maybe this is why some of us are swept up with the idea of a one word resolution, or a picture, and others by lists and planning.  And I am so thankful for the organizers and the sensors out there, the best friends and bloggers, the sisters and husband who offer a perspective and a plan completely different from my own, and for things like Pinterest that let me reap a harvest of their best ideas, tailored and filed in pictures for my visual brain.

So, today I’m soaking in the sweet smell of firewood burning out there in the crisp air, and coming home happily to enjoy the hundred year old radiators that make this drafty house warm. What a crazy, beautiful world – where we’re all so different, and we can learn and grow and stretch muscles we didn’t know existed.  How about you?  How do you make goals and resolutions? I’d love to hear!

Note: This post totally grew out of an article I read and comment I left on (in)courage Bloom Book Club, where Tsh from Simple Mom is talking about her new book, 52 Bites. This Intuitive Feeler is very much looking forward to purchasing it, and gleaning from her wisdom!

And our Christmas was full of wonder, because its easy to come by when you’re two and five, and these little ones brimming over with their child-faith, they draw me right in to it. I think about last Christmas, a year ago, and the healing that has transpired here, and I am hushed by His goodness in it all.

But mixed in with the wonder and the meditations, our Christmas was not without the stench that no doubt marked the stable that first holy night. Only the foul festering here was not so much malodorous, but rather a soul stench emanating from within me: the creeping up of fear and control, of pungent sarcasm and defensiveness, the stink of an old self and the ache of this broken world with its bruised relationships.

And as long as I have breath I will wrestle with this stench. But Christmas, it doesn’t hide the stink of the stable, Christmas celebrates His coming right smack into the dark ugly of it. And I am indebted to those who walk this road with me, and point me back to the One who forgives and makes new, who came to give life, and who offers it today.

And in our little church, I am discovering the beauty of liturgy and the rhythm of the church calendar, and I am surprised to learn that Advent is the beginning of the church calendar. And isn’t this how we begin a new year: with hope, full of expectation, and yes, waiting on the One who writes our stories and numbers our days? And why would I, why do I start anywhere else but here: raw anticipation, deep hope and expectation that Jesus will come right here – into the mess and frailty of this broken life, of this weary heart, of this very moment?

And this is my prayer for this new year, that a cadence and rhythm would develop in these days, that I would learn to daily quiet this heart and hear His voice, His coming in the midst of stench and wonder unfurling altogether here.

I am so thankful for each of you who journey with me and read these words and share your hearts, in email and in comments.  I pray that as you look to the new year, His peace & grace, His rest and very Presence will fill your hearts, your homes. Merry Christmas, friends, and Happy New Year!

Less than two weeks till Christmas and somehow we still have that teepee in our dining room, and the only tree making merry here is the Ficus we inherited from my in-laws when they moved down south.

We are usually all over the Christmasifying of our abode, but the last two months have been a little crazy here. Today I find myself unpacking from a week of travel, living with a half hung garland messily wrapped around the banister and a candle-less advent wreath, that, truthfully, we’ve only used once. And this year it hasn’t really mattered. The conversations in our home and the meditations of this heart have been centered around the manger, and I’m honestly considering just throwing a string of white lights on the Ficus and calling it done.

And I’m thinking, in the midst of this mixed up house here, where fall leaves and jingle bells linger together and bristle the lines of separate but equal seasonal decor, that sometimes we work real hard to get it all right, to celebrate correctly, to make everything count and mean something.

I grew up in a home where Christmas was celebrated lavishly. The sheer quantity of gifts and cookies (I’m talking dozens of dozens!) and people through our doors during all those merry years drove memories deep, spoke right to the heart of the beauty of lavish love, extravagant giving, warm hospitality. And I remember  the prodigal’s father, offering all he had to celebrate, and of heart of a woman who offered an extravagant gift  at Jesus’ feet, of her costly worship. I think of three wise souls, waiting and watchful for the new King coming, who searched far and labored hard and brought costly gifts, and of how in our home, our gifts (both material and those of time and energy) were expressions both costly and beautiful, to celebrate His coming.

When we visit my in-laws, I fall in love with the simple ways they gather around a tree, and the hymns and carols spring up, laughter roars, time goes slow, small gifts exchanged here and there, last year the gift of goat, given to a family whose names we’ll never know. There is intentionality and focus, a centering down. And the heart of it all reminds me of the shepherds, confronted with glory come down right in the midst of them, leaving their flocks and entering in to the very presence of the Humble King, and this is how we celebrate together.

As we seek to raise our children now, to sojourn through this life with grace and integrity, the pendulum has swung back and forth in my heart. And I have held high the ideals of simplicity and scoffed at lavish expressions like a grace grinch, not recognizing the way those very gifts have shaped me. And I have longed for a formula, some simple solution to take all the magnitude of the Word Made Flesh and translate it flawlessly into Pinterest-worthy crafts and activities, that drive home the fullness of God into gingerbread and Advent readings. And it sounds ridiculous when I write it out here, but, really this is what I’ve wanted.

And something cracks open in me when my sister says it: when she tells me they’re going big this Christmas, letting go of the limiting of gifts and attempts to make small something that bursts big with celebration in their hearts. I sense that lavish love longing to pour out, to make memories and teach truth by living it out well, full of joy.

And its a beautiful thing that there is no formula to celebrate a perfect Christmas.  My sister, she tells me straight, that there was a time when high holy days were laid out in stone, and directions were clear, and not one could keep that law perfectly.  And that is why we celebrate the God made Flesh coming to fulfill what we couldn’t.

And you can make fourteen dozen cookies and welcome neighbors and family and strangers into your well-prepared homes, and it can be all for your glory or desperately, beautifully for His. And you can buy all the fair trade gifts or give only to those in grave need, and store up judgement and anger in your heart at those who fail to see the need, or you can do the same in humility and forbearance, moved by compassion and the leading of His Spirit. And the externals, the giving gifts and making ready, it can all be an act of pride or it can all be graceful whisper of humble worship.

Because the Word Made Flesh looks at the heart, and meets us in our mangers and messy stables. And we can worship with extravagance and we can worship in hidden humility, and the Spirit who divides bone and marrow will quiet us with His love, bring us to repentance, and offer us the gift of coming before Him this Christmas, just as we are, when we come.

This Christmas, I am comforted that I serve this Humble King who came down low in a manger, who gave both wise men and shepherds value, and welcomed them into His presence.  O, come, let us adore Him.

Twas the night before advent… and the procrastinator who lives in this house was up past midnight, stapling twine to broken frame, creating something out of the random supplies that cause drawers to jam and husband eyebrows to escalate in equal parts confusion and wonder.

And the stapler that’s traveled to college and classroom and found a home now on the counter in the mudroom spits its last staple on the last piece of yarn: just enough, no more, no less.

The past few years we’ve incorporated a beautiful tradition from my husband’s family.  For each of the four Sundays preceding Christmas, we gather in the evening, light a candle and read scripture, a Christmas story, sing quiet hymns and carols that tell of the God who formed the world being formed in a womb, the Word made flesh.

As our kids grow (and perhaps, more honestly, as I grasp for something centered, quiet here in the midst of much noise) I long to make each day fixed on this beautiful story.  So this year, inspired by Tsh’s calendar, and the scripture and corresponding crafts and ideas from Amanda, I make this, out of found paper and last staples.

And the printer’s not working, and it’s late, and they only open one day at a time – so I draw the candle – a clue to today’s sweet reflection, and hang 24 empty days.

And perhaps that’s just it.  That we need have only just enough, that we move forward, one foot in front of the other, one day at a time. And I’m pretty sure we won’t make all 24 crafts, but we are beginning, and today little eyes grew wide at the beauty of light coming to darkness.

And tonight, this grown-up heart, full of darkness – of fear and frustration and worry and judgement, was quieted by the light burning steady, exposing the deep dark of brokenness and selfish center of it all.  Quietly, without fancy or fanfare, the empty dark is filled by light, in this heart, this home, this world.  So I light a candle, and scribble out day 2, and move on to laundry, this first day.

I laugh today, when I see my face here.  And I own that I am likely the one fussing with glasses, which are fitted poorly and keep sloping to the left – not an altogether inaccurate portrait of the off-kilter balance of my life in this particular season. And I laugh at the title, How to Give Thanks Like an Artist, because artist is a word much more familiar than writer or blogger – the terms of use most common that weekend.

It was three weeks ago now, that I had the unexpected privilege of attending a conference called Relevant, and the writing group emily p. freeman talks about in her post, those thirty minutes were, as she says, indeed a gift.  And the slices of stories shared, in that sweet circle, and all that weekend, and on blogs all over and in grocery lines and at the library – these stories do liberate and lead and encourage us further up, further in.

Somehow, though, in the midst of such sweetness and the thunder of sisters applauding the stories- really the Author (although, admittedly, we do sometimes get a bit confused)… and even after the emphasis on the value of each narrative, each piece of art, even after all that I hang here, in the tension of sharing free and unhindered, and the desire to create in the secret, for the audience of one, and letting it seep out, slow and natural, into the organic places in my very down to earth life in a little neighborhood, with strangers and family and friends right here, in real life.  It’s a mystery to me.

And so I clamor out words when they can’t be contained, but truly, I revel all the more in processing over coffee, with a person who can mirror back and challenge and refine, oh, so much more than I’ve discovered through a screen.  Perhaps it’s the season of life, where little ones pressing needs seem to enrapture and demand my attention and presence fully, or moving to a new neighborhood and desiring community that can stop by unexpected, when words aren’t planned and edited.  Or, perhaps its the raging extrovert in me, or the fact that verbal processing requires two, at least, or maybe being raised in a bustling house of sisters trained me to crave the real life contact.

Relevant threw this brewing conflict into my face. As I listened to Tsh talk about the pleasure of God, and serving in the places that our passions and skills intersect, I heard a collective “Amen, sister” in the air, a resounding “yes” to having found that sweet spot in writing and blogging. The fact that it isn’t so much, for me, in this season, sat uneasy.  Yet as the weekend unfolded, and friends listened deep and processed late into the night, I found some relief in the midst of the tension.

The voice I heard in the silence the weekend afforded, and echoed over and over again from microphones and across dinner tables and from those two a.m. conversations with new friends, that voice spoke a message that has been burned into this heart, again and again.

I don’t know how else to put it, than to simply say I came away from the weekend hushed by the love of God.  I was reminded that above all, I am called to abide, to dwell, to make my home in Christ.  It wasn’t just the weekend, it was the mercy of God unfurling all around, the weeks and conversations leading up to it, the abounding grace in how it all worked out for me to go last minute – the timing I couldn’t have planned.  It was an intersection of hunger and anointed women, sharing their stories, pointing me back to the Artist, the Author of all life, the perfecter of my faith.

I heard the same message reverberating all around: this isn’t about you, just share your story with humility and honesty. Let the emptiness sing, let the full places bubble over, and stop trying to figure it all out and control it. And something loosened up in me.  This fear that I had to perfectly represent my faith, or the Author of my faith, this idea that things needed to be tied up in neat little packages to be of worth, somehow the delusion lost its strength in the face of so many women living in the tension of the beautiful mess that is life this side of heaven.

And while I may not know where this writing is going or if blogging will become a sweet spot or fizzle out for other passions to grow in other arenas of my life, I am feeling pretty good about living in the “Who Knows?” because, really I know the One who does, and being fully known draws me into desire to simply be with Him, fully present, and follow one foot in front of the other.  To abide.  To dwell.

Tell me, do you struggle in the tension between real life and this online reality?  How have you made peace with it?

My eldest is enthralled with butterflies, really metamorphosis: the process that regardless of how many non-fiction, scientific drawing and photograph laden books we check out of library still evokes a heap of wonder, from her and from me, both. And I see it in her, that she is growing, and changing, and I feel it in me too. Seasons change and we mourn summer even as we curse the humidity, and autumn beckons us forward.

Earlier this fall, I received such a sweet respite from all the daily litanies here, as I headed out of town for a weekend away. For years my Mother in law has been committed to lifting her children up in prayer, as an active leader in the prayer movement known as Moms in Touch. In the spring I discovered the beauty and the power of praying scripture over my daughters – as I joined a small group of women in praying for our children and their school. And in September, I heeded the call to “Come To Me” at a regional Moms in Touch retreat, the first of many across the nation.

I went expecting to learn lots about Moms in Touch, and came home personally, deeply refreshed. Over the course of the weekend, Moms in Touch founder Fern Nichols fleshed out the four movements of prayer a typical group walks through during an hour of intentional prayer: praise, confession, thanksgiving, and intercession.  Each of Fern’s sessions was deeply moving, particularly as we experienced them together in prayer.  But, I have to say, the morning spent delving into confession rocked my world.

Not that Fern said anything I hadn’t heard before.  But she spoke truth: plain, hard, gospel truth.  Really, she exposed the reality of our hearts, in light of the truth of God’s always loving, totally trustworthy, holy nature. And then she gave us an hour to spend in silence. SILENCE. It was beautiful.

It got me to thinking about metamorphosis, and transformation, life cycles.  I’m seeing this beautiful tension: this cycle of praise – the eucharesteo – exposing the ugliness and brokenness, pressing me to repentance, freeing me to praise again.  It’s such a gift, this repentance: that our Maker knows our frailty, that my weaknesses and constant returning back to my own controlling and selfish presets are no surprise, that he’s already prescribed the washing of my feet, the drawing back in with kindness. A beautiful, costly gift – this gift of repentance, that I so often glaze over, acknowledging my sin, but not quite confessing.  Not letting it’s weight soak in, consequently forfeiting the experience of it’s weight melting away, taking wing and disappearing altogether.

Living in this constant cycle – of praise, of repentance, of thanksgiving – frees me not just for my sake, but for the sake of others too.  The less I’m trying to keep up performances, keep it together, the more I’m willing to trade my failing and comparing for the reality of His costly grace, acknowledging that I am deeply loved because of who God is and what He has done, the more free I become to love others, out of His deep love. Repentance paves the way for vulnerability with God, with others.

This day, as monarchs rest here in their migration, as cycles of golden leaves scatter soaked in cold fall rain, I’m mindful of these life cycles, all around us: the brilliant and beautiful – leaves all ablaze, the difficult, painful processes that give birth to new life, and the unseen cycles of repentance and grace.

The other night, as the girls scurried upstairs for bath time, me herding them upwards, focused on the end goal (glorious bedtime at last!) I was taken aback by Laura’s little hand reassuring Ellie as they crawled upwards.  It may not seem earth shattering to you, but in the context of a typical “I WANT TO BE THE LEADER!” ethos that often saturates that hour of the evening and this stage of development, it washed over me like the unexpected scent of lilacs.

Few things unleash the torrents of joy that can well up, all unexpected, in a mother’s heart as those glimmering moments when her children offer unsolicited, organic gestures of kindness towards each other: the gentle word spoken, the miniature hand extended, the simple solidarity of standing alongside.  The most precious of these, and the ones that move my heart most deeply, are the secret ones, the ones that carry no sense of pretense or praise-seeking: the off-camera, overheard, raw acts of love. (And, on the contrary, isn’t it the bickering, the rivalry, the never-ending he-said/she-said, the tattling and the sibling provoking that wearies a mother’s heart like little else? More than workloads and laundry loads, more than sticky floors and cheerio-laden car seats?)

And I wonder, tonight, if it warms the Father’s heart, the way it does mine, when His children live out the love that He is in simple, quiet acts of love, in unseen gestures of kindness towards each other.  What joy to offer these tangible acts of love as unseen worship to the One whose love frees and redeems and draws me in! And perhaps this is the fleshing out of the gratitude heart that is growing here?

In my everyday, though, I find I am brimming with excuses to limit the love He desires and commands – full of fear of perception or being taken advantage of, or apprehension that I might not stand on the right side on issues of importance in the changing tides of culture and time.  And what wavering ounce of good intention I have left after my barrage of excuses is buried beneath the heavy weights of comparison, competition, and a self-focused life that extinguish the embers of love.

Yet few things are clearer in Scripture.  The greatest commandment, in Jesus’ own words: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” In our little world, seasons change. All around us, it seems, lives collapse in cancer, and divorce, and financial ruin and the inconspicuous, quiet numbing of hearts. How do I respond to the pulsing world around me? At the same time, babies are born, and marriage vows mouthed, children chase fireflies and healing happens, and even brokenness and emptiness are fertile ground for repentance, good places to begin again. So how do I respond to the enormity of all the heartache and joy that is life?

Love. Love. Love. Love.

Is it possible that love is always the answer when it is the genuine article? Not cheap grace – thrown around loosely and without thought, but a deep working out of the love germinating in the heart of a Christ-follower. An overflowing of the love being poured into the believer during the knowing Him that is everything.  It is messy and anything but formulaic. It grates against my desire to control and strategize my approach towards people and situations, and requires a laying down of all my excuses and all my pride.  It seems so simple: to choose the way of love, and yet it’s costly.  It calls me to dependence on the One who is love Himself: after all, to bear genuine fruit requires a heart that’s been planted and watered, sunbathed and nurtured and pruned and pinched back.

And I have tasted that fruit, and I am here because of the Christ-lovers who’ve sown love in my life. I am longing for a life that smacks of that love – not just in words scrolling across screens but in the mundane and the close to home. I’m thankful tonight, for that little hand on that little back, and for the currents of love that bring me back broken to the place I belong. The place where Love poured out on a tree, the place where Love rose up again, unhindered and free.

“You cannot do great things in this world, only small things with Great Love.” Mother Theresa

A year’s passed since we buried my sister, a year since the unexpected loss that came in the midst of all our calculated transitions.  And my heart has ached and I have come to the end of myself this year.  I have wept, shaken my fist at heaven, appalled at the lack of redemption, even while it germinated in my own faithless heart.

In her death, she gave me the gift of discovering the dark places of my heart; the shock and finality of her slipping into eternity – and my inability to cope – exposing all my people pleasing, judging, guilt-driven motives, and pulling me, driving me, compelling me towards home.  Home.

And, yes, I have moved back home this year, our calculated transition, despite all my life’s longing and pursuit of moving far and away.  I have come back. And I have said the submissive yes on the outside, and kicked and screamed silent within, fearing the death of dreams, all the while living the reality of disappointment – mostly with myself.  I have had to come home to learn again, always, again and again, that my home, my dwelling has little to do with location and much to do with belonging.

He is my home: to abide, to dwell, to know His very presence and be satisfied in Him. This is not a new idea to me.  These are revelations I have heard and believed, truths I have spoken and taught, planted in others’ lives. I can recall with clarity the day He whispered it straight to my heart: You were made to be the woman at the foot of the cross.

But as grief has exposed my deep disbelief, and stillness has brought light to brokenness, I am rediscovering a foundation firmer than my own fabrications, a stillness sweeter than my own striving. I’ve seen the dark, ugly of this heart, and am learning to breath easy, discovering I am loved, deeply loved, in spite of it (because, really, the only one I was ever hiding it from was myself). No hiding, no impressing necessary: my life, lost in Christ.

So March comes to a close, and as the seasons change, I mark a year gone by.  I prepare to prune and uproot, plant and wait in preparation for new growth outside, and inside I am quieted and grateful, humbled by the slow, steady redemption budding here. I am home.

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I’m grateful for Ann’s words, compelling me to write and to risk, and for the many women in my life (past, present and future), like those of SheSpeaks, connecting the hearts of women to the heart of our Father God, and urging me to do the same: a broken vessel, glory, I pray, spilling out. I count it joy to sojourn with you. Thank you.

It’s been quiet around here.  I’ve been steeping.  Soaking in moments.
Sorting through the last of boxes and sorting through memories and sorting through decisions.

Reading a book.  This one – the work of Ann Voskamp, whose writing has been
a life rope thrown out to me this last year. I’m reading her words slowly, underlining,
and soaking them in, and it’s challenging and I’m realizing my perspective is often skewed
and the Word is always true and the rhythms of God’s grace are pulsing around me
even when I inadvertently drone them out with my busy, selfish life.
And I’m hearing the sweet music again. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

I am finding time to paint again, and remembering why I love it so much.

Spending a whole day on the floor playing with the almost toddler who constantly,
all day long and usually without results, pats the ground next to her, beckoning me to sit
with her, be with her and work the puzzle, read the story, pat the babydoll.
Savoring the days of endless “why, Mamma?” and uninhibited belly laughs.

And its not all pretty and serene and there are days of major frustration and more transition
on the horizon and some of us don’t deal well with these things,
but we know the One who does and we keep walking,
and discovering beauty in the journey, and I’m grateful.

Thanks for your grace as I step away from writing for a while to hear the still, quiet here.
May your year be full of the grace unfurling from the beauty that’s right around you,
and the grace that comes from brokenness, and a quiet heart to perceive it all.

{Special thanks to Nate Gehman for the use of his camera for the first four images,
and the photo credit for the last three images belongs to my dear friend, Jennifer Kathryn.}