Marian Vischer

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Receiving Your Own Life This Thanksgiving

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We welcome “easy gratitude” into our hearts like easy friends, the ones who stride effortlessly through our front doors, tossing their coats on the sofa, sliding the metal cars and Legos to the side so they can prop up their feet. They help themselves to coffee, fold the basket of laundry while they visit, make honest conversation so that it’s not like conversation at all; it’s just breathing with words.

Most of our gratitude is like that easy friend. It’s a no-brainer. It’s so obvious, it often eludes acknowledgement. Except for during weeks like this, seasons set apart to give thanks for what is good and true and beautiful in our lives.

We give easy thanks for family, food, time with those we love, early sunsets that blaze like fire, the earthy, simmering, smoldering scents of the season, all that we have, that if we’re honest, we know we don’t really deserve. 

If even at a subconscious level, we are thankful for grace, for all things undeserved but often under-appreciated.

We toss around “grace” to describe the lovely and the unmerited and the fantastically unexpected.

And we should. Grace is everywhere, lowly and loving even when we don’t acknowledge its existence, its movement in our everyday, its inexhaustible ability to never tire of giving and giving and giving with nothing in return, its utter inability to be anything other than its character.

We love this side of grace, even if we fail to comprehend how counter it is compared to how we are.

But what about the “flip side” of grace? This “side” isn’t actually an alter ego but is instead so blended into grace’s wholeness that we can’t tell where the blazing-beauty-of-the-sunset-grace ends and the unwelcome-mess-of-our-real-lives-grace begins.

What about the grace that we don’t acknowledge as grace at all but as gross imperfection and discouraging failure and ends that don’t meet and seemingly hopeless relationships? And how is this even grace?

When we take turns around the Thanksgiving table this week, when we say what we’re thankful for with teary eyes and bursting hearts, I doubt we’ll offer gratitude for the hard roads. And that’s okay. We don’t have to. We can say we’re thankful for our health and our children and roofs over our heads and we should. We should.





But might I offer the possibility of another Thanksgiving table, one that’s equal parts table and altar? It’s okay not to invite anyone else. It’s okay for this conversation to be private and unspoken and simply between you and the Giver of Grace, the One who is Grace incarnate. 

This is the Thanksgiving Table of Imperfection and Failure and Hardship. It’s the place where we sling our everyday heaping platters of all that we wish was different and we give thanks anyway.

Ann Voskamp calls this the “hard eucharisteo” in her book, One Thousand Gifts. It’s a Greek word in which thanksgiving and joy and grace are all bound together. Eucharisteo is what Jesus did in the upper room with the disciples when He broke the bread and gave thanks even as He was preparing to die. 

This is not an easy thanksgiving. It’s a humble and determined submission that only Grace can provide.

I call it what I’ve begun to call the many verses that seem to comprise the song of my story: Receiving My Own Life. 

What does that mean? 

It means not looking at what I think I want or what I feel I deserve or what someone else has or who I want myself to be or who I want others to be. 

It means unwrapping my own life, every part of it, as a sacred gift. 

It means receiving my inability and imperfections as purposeful graces because they show me that I am not, nor will I ever be, my own savior. 

It means receiving real life.

It means receiving the harsh reality that I will keep on disappointing my husband and he will keep on disappointing me because we are human and we are sinners and this is marriage. Grace enables us to keep on loving anyway. 

 We are frail and finite, faulty and forgetful. And because we are one, our sin is constantly scraping up against one another.

But disappointment brings us to repentance and repentance brings us to forgiveness and forgiveness brings us to restoration. Restoration over and over again until our days on this earth are over. 

This very real relationship is hard precisely because it is real. We’re not roommates. We’re not Prince Charming and Cinderella. We have never ridden off into the sunset on our trusty steed. Unless our banged-up Toyota Sienna is a trusty steed and in that case, okay. There may be an element of fairy-tale-ness to the adventure that is our life together after all. 

But receiving the disappointment also means receiving the opportunity to acknowledge my humble state, his humble state, our humble state. We can offer grace to one another only because we’ve first received it from the only One who can save us.

This is hard grace. And we need it.

It means receiving the obvious reality that I am woefully selfish and not the mom I’d like to be on most days. 

I can be harsh. I can be distant and distracted and preoccupied. I can wield cutting words like a world-class fencer. I can speak before I think and what’s worse? I can speak even after I think and the words don’t always come out any differently because I do. I can want and wish for different every day and no amount of might can change the condition of my heart. Ask me how I know.

But receiving the harsh reality of imperfect motherhood means receiving the opportunity to fall on my knees in sheer and utter need. It means being broken when I see their hurt that I’ve caused. Sometimes it means running after a crying boy in the backyard and falling on my knees before him, both of us in tears and me, the grown-up who has acted like a spoiled child, apologizing over and over and him forgiving in an instant because that’s what children do more readily than grown-ups: forgive. 

This is hard grace. And we need it.

It means receiving the embarrassing realization that I am just bad at stuff that comes easily to so many others. And it means living loved anyway. 

Not talent-type stuff like singing or ballet or being able to paint. I don’t want to be a contestant on The Voice. I’d just like to be a contestant on The Competent. I’m talking about basic stuff like staying within my budget and getting laundry done and managing my time well and getting up early so I can stride into the kitchen and fix oatmeal without wanting to slay someone for no reason other than the fact that I am half-asleep and grumpy and they are awake and needing a lunch to take to school. 

I often lack discipline and diligence when left to myself. And I definitely lack determination in the wake of failure and this would be fine-ish if my lack didn’t affect others, which it often does. Bring on the guilt. 

But receiving the harsh reality of imperfect character and questionable competence means receiving the opportunity to live loved anyway. It means ravenous, desperate listening to the word of God that says to me, Child, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. You are loved. You are mine. Nothing can take you away from me, not even your own everyday failure. Especially not that. 

I was needfully reminded by my friend Ellen last week that fear only motivates temporarily but love motivates in a way that lasts. She encouraged me to “live loved” {that’s her line, by the way} and now I want to turn those two words into a billboard to mount on the roof of my house. 

Living loved makes all the difference. 

I can look at my failure and turn from it in my own strength, making lists and reading books and resolving to just get it right from here on out. Or I can look at my Savior who came because we are all lacking. I can still seek change but instead of seeking it through my own strength, I ask for the change that only He can manufacture. Change that is lasting not because I never fail but because it’s fueled by the Grace and Love to get back up and keep going anyway.

This is hard grace. And I need it.

It means receiving my own story even though it is not the one I would have asked for. 

Though I am honest here, I am also private about some hard things.

 I don’t want to provoke interest or curiosity. Quite the opposite, actually. Though I’m purposefully veiled, I write about the reality of painful things only to tell you this: Just when I think I’ve gratefully received that which is past and that which I cannot change, I’m often blindsided by remorse and self-pity, anger and shame, a desire to deny and a compulsion to hide.




But receiving our own stories invites us to come out of hiding. It invites us to step into a story that is greater and not all about us. It invites us to accept raw, beautiful, and sobering realities: 

Triumph would seem normal without tragedy. 

Redemption wouldn’t exist without failure. 

 Real change would be under-appreciated without season after season of real disappointment. 

The joy of new mercies would be everyday no-big-deal-ness without the dark night of weeping.

A new start can only be celebrated in the context of something else that came to an end, often painfully.

The Thanksgiving Table is a feast of paradox because The Thanksgiving Table is a feast of Grace and that’s the upside-down-ness and inside-out-ness of what Grace is and Who Grace is. 

Grace is paradoxical, non-sensical even.

Grace welcomes the bride in her beauty and the beggar in his rags.

Grace soothes our scars and lifts our downcast faces so that we can see the beauty in the brokenness.

Grace leads us away from what we think we’re missing, prompts us to acknowledge our actual bounty, and then takes our hand and dances around it with us. 

Grace knows we need to apologize because we can be idiots and she accompanies us to do what we ought, pride-swallowing and all. She shows us the greatness of humility.

Grace keeps running after us even though we push her away like an unruly toddler, wanting to do all this business of living all by our big selves.

Grace gives us days that are so rich with obvious goodness, we can’t contain the fullness. And Grace gives us days that rain such heavy buckets of sorrow, we can’t contain the sadness. 

We can’t separate easy Grace and hard Grace because it is all grace.

I cannot write those words or read those words or deeply acknowledge those words without getting weepy. I am not that old yet but I’ve lived long enough to know this Truth with all that I am:

Life is all grace.

Today and this week and throughout the coming days, think about what it means to receive your own life as a gift. To receive the moments of wide-eyed wonder and the moments of teary-eyed disappointment. To bask in the bounty and make peace with the pain.

Wherever you feast, whatever your story, whoever you are, gather ’round the Table of Grace. And give thanks.


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Choosing Your Absence from Something You Love: 5 Things I’m Learning

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Five posts into writing a blog series I loved in early 2018, “The Sacred Art of Receiving Your Right-Now Life,” I found myself drowning in a sea of very normal roles and responsibilities. I’ve been living out the message of that series in real time instead of writing it down and hitting the “publish” button like I’d planned.

There was nothing crisis-like or dramatic about any of it, only that all the things conspired against my writing all at the same time. Or at least that’s how it felt.

  • Married with three children
  • I have a job, but it’s not full time.
  • And because it’s not full-time, a year ago I also took on a couple of freelance jobs that became triple the work of what I expected. (Lesson learned.)
  • My kids were doing all of their kid things. Two of them are teenagers, which means there’s no end to the shenanigans (and maternal angst.)
  • From February until the end of school, I lived in constant stress. Then summer and working from home with kids. Bless it.
  • After nearly 20 years of teaching Economics to college students, my husband began a brand new career last August. We’re grateful and excited; it’s such a good fit for him. But it’s meant long hours, working on Saturdays, and yours truly filling in the gaps. It won’t always be like this, but building a business requires a great deal of heart and hustle (and uncertainty.)
  • Also? Our girl graduates from high school in less than 8 weeks, and this year has stretched each of us in ways we couldn’t have known ahead of time.

Guys, I’m tired.

But do you see what I mean? These are normal things, good things. Every role and responsibility I have means that I’ve been entrusted with gifts and people and opportunities to nurture and steward. But good things still come with hardship.

Which brings me to the first thing I’m learning during a season of living my stories instead of writing them down:

1. Too many good things at the same time are still too many things.

Sometimes we can’t help it. Sometimes we really are at the mercy of season and circumstance. But sometimes we let too many things in during a season that’s already sagging under the weight of all the good things.

Like a generous host throwing a grand party, we leave the door open and the lovely guests keep filing in, champagne glasses held high in celebration. Next thing you know, the floor has collapsed under the weight of this fine party. Here’s the part where I chuckle because this exact thing literally happened last year in the town where I live. It’s fine. No one was seriously injured. It’s a metaphor that works, is what I’m saying.

2. Life right now is much more about managing my energy than managing my time.

I’ve only fully realized this over the last several months and guys, it’s a game-changer. Busy as I am, I have actual time on my hands. We all do if we’re brutally honest. What I don’t have leftover is energy. And the things I really miss (like regular writing) require a mental and emotional energy that’s currently taken up by other required roles and responsibilities.

Once I realized this, I was able to let go of some of the guilt and striving, and replace it with grace and acceptance. I’m still sad about it. But all of my brain power and emotional reserves are currently spoken for. (See #4 if you want to know where it’s going.)

3. Structure is my friend.

A lot of us struggle with doing tasks that we don’t feel like doing. We procrastinate, distract ourselves, and make excuses. I have a friend who’s currently writing a book. As in, she’s under contract to write a book. One morning she texted me, “Haven’t gotten one word down on paper this morning but my hair and make-up look exceptionally good.” I laughed so hard because THIS IS WHAT WE DO.

And some of us struggle more than others. (Ahem, it’s me.) Add to this equation that I work mostly from home, which means it’s easy for work tasks and mom / wife / home / life tasks to bleed together into an existence where I always feel “on” and never “off.” My brain is in a constant state of whiplash from switching back and forth between vastly different roles and tasks.

“Enough,” I said to myself in January. “You are a grown-up and you can do this differently.”

Now I try to have three days a week when I work full-time and two days a week that are for my other “job,” the one where I plan the meals, get the groceries, run the errands, fill out the paperwork, email the teachers and coaches, decipher FAFSA forms, do the laundry, (take a nap,) etc.

We’re all different but my brain works better when it has a long runway in the same direction. I’m more efficient with the work I do for my job when my brain gets in that zone and can just stay there for hours. The same is true for domestic life. It only makes sense to structure life in accordance with how my brain works. It’s required all sorts of rearranging and it will never be a perfect system, but it’s given me a renewed sense of hope that I can get through this season with a measure of wholeness and stability.

I can’t stress enough that this doesn’t always work perfectly. The last few weeks my rhythms have been off and I’ve had to accept it. But each week I begin again and ask for grace. Always, I try to hold it loosely.

(If you’d like to learn more about this, I highly recommend this podcast episode by Emily P. Freeman: Design a Rhythm of Work — Theme Days!)

4. If you’re living in a pivotal life season, even one that’s not a crisis, it will take up more space in your head and heart than you realize.

No one can tell you what it’s like during the last year before your child becomes, in theory, an adult.

And just like that, the tears start flowing. (I was doing fine until now.)

I recently told a friend that I feel a low-grade sadness all the time. I miss this girl of mine already and she hasn’t even gone anywhere yet.

I think it’s because of this. When you hold that baby in your arms, 18 years feels like a very long time. It’s overwhelming, how long 18 years seems when you’re on the front end. But here we are. Though I hope and pray that our relationship will be always be close, that I’ll always be a trusted voice in her life, I know that most of the formative work is done. It is sobering beyond words, partly because I see all that I did wrong, all that I omitted, all that I didn’t know and now I do.

It’s also this. Senior year means we’re all living in the tension between a child still being under our roof and soon not being under our roof. Giving as much freedom as possible within boundaries is messy. It looks different for every child and it may exhaust you like nobody’s business.

Back in October, I drew up a “Senior Syllabus,” something we could all refer to throughout the twists and turns of this year. Sure, it’s been somewhat helpful but the truth is, there’s no real guidebook for this. We’re all simply making our way one day at a time. I pray a lot and I process it with a couple of trusted people in my life. I probably need to have a good cry or ten but I’m afraid that if I give myself permission to do that, I won’t crawl out of the corner for days.

5. Sometimes you have to choose your absence from the thing you love most.

Because there are people you love more.

For me, that thing has been my own writing. Again, it’s not that I don’t have leftover time. Monday I spent six hours of my day writing and editing content for my job. By 8 pm, I had no mental energy left, even though I didn’t go to bed for another two and a half hours. Sure, I could have come downstairs to my desk for personal writing time, but with what brain-power? (See point #2.)

Five-ish years ago I read a little book called Crazy Busy by Kevin DeYoung. He said many wise and timely things but here’s the phrase that’s stayed with me.

We must choose our absence, our inability, and our ignorance – and choose wisely. The sooner we embrace this finitude, the sooner we can be free.

In the last year, I’ve said no to speaking engagements that would have brought much personal joy and fulfillment. I said no to teaching a periodic  class, even though I miss teaching and would have loved it. I turned down additional freelance work even though the money was good.

And I’ve said no to regular writing and publishing my own words, for now, because it requires energy and intention I need to save for other things. Yes, it’s life-giving and makes me feel most like myself. And yes, this joy has a way of spilling over into my everyday life. But I tend to run after this joy, this work of my heart, with too much gusto, leaving my people in the wake. Though I desperately want to learn how to curb my own ambition and enthusiasm, I’m not there yet. And this high-stakes season is simply too precious and fragile to risk.

Even though I have so much to share with you.

I’ve been storing up posts and ideas in very organized and professional ways–scattered Word docs on my computer, iPhone notes, even an entire book I’ve outlined in a spiral notebook. I started it two years ago and I keep scribbling in it. I also want to write about teenagers–about daughters and about sons. I want to write about acceptance, doubt, everyday faith, and how the life of Christ has everything to teach us about receiving our right-now lives, even as we wait with hope.

If you’re in a similar season of working, of waiting, of wondering if “your time” will ever come around, know that you’re in good company. And that company isn’t just me. It’s Jesus.

One of the things I’ve learned from studying his life is that God’s timing for our work is perfect, and that Christ himself is with us as we labor–whether it’s scrubbing the dishes (what I’m doing after I finish this,) helping with an overwhelming research paper on Macroeconomics and The Great Recession (what I’m doing after I finish the dishes #LordBeNear,) or being diligent in the work you’ve been paid to do (what I’m doing after I finish those other two things.)

As I labor in everyday ways, I invite Jesus, the one who filled the nets of his weary working friends with fish, helped them cook it up for breakfast, and then offered them a feast on the beach. This is his heart for us. He meets us as we struggle with discouragement, fatigue, and lack. He cares about all of our work, and delights to show up alongside us with compassion, grace, and sometimes a feast. (John 21:1-14)

Whatever season you’re in, I pray you will experience Christ’s presence with you, and know his heart of abundance for you.

Thanks for being here. (And for reading all the words. I sure know how to make up for lost time.)

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I do post on Instagram pretty regularly @marianvischer. It’s a little bit of personal life (think college visits + laughable school projects + how I redid my kitchen backsplash with stickers,) a little bit of writing, a little bit of everyday beauty. In the last year I’ve enjoyed writing a couple of series there.

10 Things to Tell You Series last September, hosted by Laura Tremaine. Here’s a link to the first post in that series. 

12-Day Series with Hopewriters in January. Here’s a link to the first post in that series. 

When I do publish here, or if you’d like to stay in the loop with news I only share with subscribers, sign up in the email box and you’ll be the first to know all the things. : )

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5 Real Ways to Practice Self-Care in Your Crazy, Right-Now Life {that cost zero dollars}

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What does it look like to receive your right-now life just as it is and not how you want it to be?

What does it look like to receive this season of work you wish you didn’t have to do? What does it look like to receive this season of parenting? Of marriage? Of income? Of keeping so many plates spinning, you’re positively dizzy?

That’s been the purpose of this series — to encourage your soul in the midst of your right-now season and to provide you with practical tips to make the “receiving” a little bit easier.

We’ve talked about feeding your soul — why it matters and how to do it. And we’ve talked about why self-care matters, especially if you want to live a life defined by love.

Today, we’re getting super practical about everyday self-care and I’m reporting to you directly from the trenches. I’ve taken on too much work in the middle of a family season that also’s a bit too much. I feel stretched in every way and have had to accept that I’ll be a little bonkers until the end of the school year.

When life looks like this, we can proceed with fists clenched or we can proceed with palms open, receiving this season for what it is and opening our hearts to the ways God wants to love us, provide for us, and gently teach us.

One of the ways He provides is through opening my eyes to “everyday self-care.” I’m not talking about massages and pedicures. I’m talking about daily rhythms and practices that help us to care for ourselves so that we can receive our right-now season of life (craziness and all) and better love those around us.

Here are 5 real-life ways you too can practice everyday self-care:

1. Do normal things slowly and with care.

During the holidays I listened to this podcast on self-care from The Lazy Genius. She talked about slowing down when you wash your face at night. And so I did.

You guys, do you realize that you don’t have to hurry when you wash your face? You can take the time to massage the cleanser into your skin, to slowly rinse your face with care, to gently pat your moisturizer onto your face. It turns a daily chore into a loving ritual. I feel like it helps to calm my brain and my body before bedtime.

I now do the same thing when I wash my hair, massaging my scalp with my fingertips in the same way my sweet hairdresser does. Why have we not being treating ourselves to these daily luxuries?

If you had a friend who was struggling in some way, who needed your help to wash her face or hair, how would you care for her? Gently and with tenderness. Care for yourself in the kind way you would care for a friend. (I’ll say this a lot.)

Whether it’s a long shower at the end of the day, a warm bath instead of scrolling through Facebook, or washing your dishes slowly in a sudsy sink of hot water, the possibility of daily luxury is all around you. Treat yourself.

2. Kick hurry to the curb.

A couple of months ago I went to the grocery store mid-morning. It was a rare day of not having a super pressing agenda, so I gifted myself a latte from the in-store Starbucks and took my time through the aisles. Over and over, I said to myself: “Slow down. There is no need to rush.”

After I checked out and loaded my groceries into the car, I felt strangely relaxed and peaceful. Slowing down and sipping coffee had somehow turned a regular chore into a treat. I considered how I’m constantly in a hurry, even when I don’t have to be.

I realize we don’t always have that luxury. You may have small children who accompany you everywhere or you’re squeezing in a grocery run before school pick-up. But when you’re doing a regular chore and you don’t have to hurry, be kind to yourself and value slowness over productivity. When I slow my pace and my mind, it’s as if anxiety runs out of gas and stalls, leaving me with a rare sense of calm.

As I’ve considered the life of Christ, I’ve noticed that he was never in a rush. We tend to assume this was a cultural state of mind, yet there are so many stories in Scripture of those around him hurrying and scurrying, frantic and panicked about all sorts of things. But Jesus never responded with hurry or stress, which tells me that’s not his intention for us either.

He is a God of peace and he calls us to be people of peace — in our inner lives and in the world around us. How can we be instruments of peace if we remain in a state of hurry and stress?

When a season of life is extra crazy, when we are struggling to receive it because we just want to get to the other side, hurry may be our default but it’s not our friend. Stressful seasons are the most important times to weave rhythms of slowness into our days.

3. Live within your means.

I don’t mean in a financial sense, though that totally applies. I’m referring to your energy level, your mental and emotional state, your relationships, your calendar, your commitments, your current season.

In my next post, I’ll tell you about an entire year of rest I had to take about 6 years ago. The reasons are long are complicated but a big part of the equation was my refusal, for years on end, to honor my own limitations. I was spinning my wheels in good, but misplaced directions.

I wasn’t the only one who paid for it. For a long season of recovery, I had little to give anyone. When we don’t honor our God-given limitations, we will eventually fall apart, making it impossible to live a life defined by love.

{For more on this topic of honoring our limitations, see my last post: The Secret to Practicing Self-Care in Your Crazy, Right-Now Life.}

If your right-now life feels bananas, if you’re living beyond your means but you can’t take anything off your plate {it happens}, choose not to add anything else to it. Finish what you must and then resolve to move forward with intention. In the words of St. Benedict, “Always we begin again.”

4. Work with what you have, right where you are.

There is a holy hush that comes over my mind and soul when I quit wrestling and simply receive what is mine with gratitude. This applies to everything from my home and possessions, to the opportunities I have…and don’t have.

This series I’m writing, while precious to me, has unfolded far more slowly than I planned. I have had to honor my limitations in the form of time and energy, which means I write in the smallest slivers of my full schedule and publish less often. I worry that I’m losing momentum and my writing skills, that people won’t keep reading, that the deep longings I have to encourage others as I write from my own heart will go unmet and unblessed. When I look around and see writers passing me by, it’s easy to lose heart, to panic, to throw in the towel.

This verse comforts me:

Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. Psalm 16:5-6 (NIV)

Living a “limitless” life is not the goal. Notice that the psalmist is thanking God for boundary lines. Our good Father knows what we truly need and what we don’t. He alone is our portion and our provider. We can trust him with the limitations he’s placed in our lives, knowing that they provide protection or perhaps just a necessary pause.

We waste precious mental and emotional energy comparing our lives to others. We cannot simultaneously reach for what is not ours and receive what is ours. We can only do one or the other.

5. Feed yourself.

I’m talking about spiritual food and actual food. When our lives are especially crazy, we tend to neglect the most basic necessities, like nourishment.

As I said in an earlier post of this series, we can get a little crazy when we don’t eat. We lose all perspective. We despair. We cry. We don’t think or feel or act as we should. We act like young children with low blood sugar.

When I began to see Scripture as my food, it changed everything. It helped me prioritize time with God in his word, not merely as a spiritual discipline but as the daily sustenance I desperately needed.

The same is true for the actual food we eat. I love this illustration from Anne Lamott on teaching others to feed themselves in the same way they’d feed their beloved pastor if invited over for lunch or dinner:

They wouldn’t say, ‘Here Pastor, let’s eat standing up in the kitchen. This tube of barbecue Pringles is all for you. I have my own,’ and then stand there gobbling from their own tubular container.

No, they’d get out pretty dishes, and arrange wonderful foods on the plates, and set one plate before Veronica at the table, a plate filled with love, pride and connection. That’s what we have longed for, our whole lives, and get to create.  From, A Few Quick Thoughts on That Diet You Are About to Fail

A couple of weeks ago my energy level was so low, I felt chronically sleepy and overwhelmed. How in the world was I going to do all the work set before me when all I wanted to do was nap? I couldn’t abandon my responsibilities or stop being a wife or leave my children as orphans. And even though I knew this commitment level would only be for a season, I still had to get through it.

As a last resort, I switched up my eating for this season I’m in, prioritizing my own nourishment. The details don’t matter because we’re all different in the ways we need to eat, but I will say this. As Anne Lamott advises, feed yourself with the care and intention you would employ if you were having your pastor or dear friend over for a meal.

The way you nourish yourself matters. Within a few days of making the changes I knew I needed to make, enough energy has returned for me to (hopefully) meet the daily demands of my current season. It’s impossible to receive your own life if you’re not feeding yourself in the most basic ways.

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And on that note, let’s take a break and enjoy a snack. : )

Because I have more real-life tips for practicing self-care in your crazy, right-now life, there will be a Part 2 of this segment on everyday self-care. In the meantime, what practices would you like to begin implementing in your own life?

I’ll leave you with my favorite quote on self-care:

I have become clear about at least one thing: self-care is never a selfish act–it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others. Anytime we can listen to true self and give it the care it requires, we do so not only for ourselves but for the many others whose lives we touch. ~ Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak

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If this series sounds like something you need, all you have to do is subscribe to this online space. (You can do that in the box below this post.) If you’re already subscribed, yay! You’ll automatically receive it. The series is totally free.

Simply come and receive.

Whenever the latest installment of the series is published, you’ll be the first to know and you won’t miss a post.

Other posts in the series:

Post 1: How to Live Your Ordinary Life with Extraordinary Purpose

Post 2: The One Word that Forever Changed How I Approach the Bible

Post 3: When Your Right-Now Life Needs a Realistic Way to Study Scripture

Post 4: The Secret to Practicing Self-Care in Your Crazy, Right-Now Life

Click here to leave a question or comment. You can also chime in on social media. (Links below.)

The Secret to Practicing Self-Care in Your Crazy, Right-Now Life

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Do you ever feel like certain seasons are defined by weariness?

  • the mental and physical weariness of your own everyday life
  • the emotional weariness of living in a cruel and tragic world
  • the personal grief and private trials of your own small life

We’re only two months into a new year but I write from a place of utter weariness. It’s been a long year already.

I lost my friend to cancer almost three weeks ago.

She was my own age – a wife, a mom to 3 kids, a beloved Kindergarten teacher. We lived next door for 10 years, raising our kids on communal popsicles and sharing so much of life together.

I’ve been working on this post in fits and starts for two weeks, writing from a place of grief and all of its accompanying friends – fatigue, confusion, and weepiness that comes out of nowhere. I wish I was a child who could be sent to time out. For like, 4 weeks.

There are still mouths to feed and work to do and decisions to make, and this is a good thing. But I go through these everyday motions with a heaviness I can’t shake off.

It’s not an unfamiliar place. Just over three years ago, I lost another dear friend to cancer – a wife and mom in her 40s, a devoted college professor, the most loyal friend.

Loss has a way of refining our truest priorities, doesn’t it?

A year and a half ago, my grandmother’s death reoriented me in ways I didn’t know I needed. The words I read at her funeral began my journey of receiving my right-now season of life even though it meant letting go of a hoped-for dream, of learning to see limitations as gifts instead of liabilities.

But this is a lesson I am slow to learn.

There’s nothing like losing two women your very own age to force you to examine what you want your own life to be about, especially when they’ve loved you and others generously.

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I had a difficult conversation with my husband recently. It didn’t start out as a speak-the-hard-truth sort of talk; it really just began as an apology. But we can’t always predict where our words will lead and this particular exchange landed me in a painful place. I’d been operating from a know-it-all place of entitlement and expectation. I could see exactly what the issues were and guess what? I wasn’t the problem.

Except that I was, in fact, a very big part of the problem.

This is marriage. Nothing happens in a vacuum; we’re both wrong and also right. But in this case, grace showed up and allowed me to receive the hard truth, to hold it up to the light and discern a thing or two.

Here’s the paraphrased version:

We loved each other almost immediately. Back then, I knew how to live fully and freely in the moment, to laugh long and hard and easy. I was audacious and optimistic and brimming with love. But that person doesn’t come around much anymore. It’s sad and frustrating to be with someone you don’t much recognize, to miss the person you fell in love with.

He reminded me that I know all too well what that’s like. And I do. For a long season, I didn’t recognize him either. By grace, God brought him back, but I know what it’s like to miss someone even though you both still live under the same roof.

Then he said something that I can’t stop thinking about:

I don’t care if you never put another meal on the table. What matters to me and to the kids is the person you are when you’re with us. And we’re all walking on eggshells around here.

Happy times.

The drama of our life together is one for the books. We are a marriage of redemption, partially because we’ve given God so much material to work with. At first, I resisted the truth he spoke because I wanted to blame him for my own stressy demeanor that has apparently had everyone treading so lightly.

But he spoke those painful words in love and I knew he was right. The truth is, I’ve missed myself too.

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I know what you may be thinking: What does any of this have to do with rest and self-care?

I’ll tell you what. I have not been living within my means.

What’s the secret to practicing self-care in the midst of your crazy, right-now life?

Learning to recognize and receive your own limitations. 

When I don’t live within my means, I don’t live a life defined by love. I live a life defined by stress, anxiety, worry, and control. I am not kind or patient with those I love most.

Simply put, I’ve increasingly stretched myself too thin. I’ve said yes when I should have said no. I’ve been so busy tending to the immediate and the urgent that I’ve neglected the important. I’ve chosen agenda over relationship. I’ve tried to be my own savior and other people’s too. I’ve let fear have its way with me. I’ve brewed extra coffee instead of taking a nap.

I’ve learned these lessons before and I should know better. I’ve read Essentialism for crying out loud. But living beyond our means doesn’t happen all at once.

Step by step, I’ve slowly crept into the rolling fog of overwhelm until I could no longer see clearly. I’ve been blind to my own sin and lack of love, blaming others for my woes — spouse, kids, circumstances I didn’t deserve.

Which brings me back to the beginning of this post. What do I want my life to be about?

Love.

I want to live a life defined by love.

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Jesus said that the second greatest commandment (after loving God with all that you are) is loving your neighbor as yourself. We tend to zero in on the “neighbor” part of that verse, while ignoring an implicit truth.

To know how to love others, we need to know how to love ourselves.

This is the trickiest of truths to unpack, partially because our culture paints “loving yourself” into some sort of Real Housewives caricature of personal indulgence. That’s not the sort of loving yourself I’m talking about. That’s just narcissism.

The great thing about the Christian faith is that we have a God who became a real man and lived among us. His life is actually written down for us, which means we can learn from him and through him.

Here is the perfect example of someone who loved God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength AND loved his neighbor as himself. Jesus, even though He was God and could have lived beyond his human capacity, chose not to. Which means He lived within his means. He honored his own limitations.

He slept when He was tired.

He retreated from crowds when He was overwhelmed and needed to rest, regroup, and pray.

He took naps, even when a literal storm raged around him and everyone was freaking out. When He woke up, He calmly took care of business and did not waste precious energy coming unhinged.

He dined leisurely with friends and family.

He made wine flow abundantly so that his loved ones could prolong their celebration.

He did not hurry. 

He did not heal everyone who needed healing.

He did not take advantage of every great opportunity that came his way, even though those closest to him said he should. 

He learned a trade and worked, making beautiful and useful things with his hands.

He knew that the Scriptures were his food and his life.

Jesus was not a workaholic. He honored the God-given rhythms of work and rest.

Even though we know that God’s power sustained him through temptation and suffering, I can’t help but wonder if the fruit of these disciplines helped nourish him during the times when he did have to live beyond his means.

When He was being tempted in the desert for 40 days.

When crowds were pressing in on Him.

When He kept teaching for hours on end and had to feed thousands of hungry people. 

When the religious establishment harassed him endlessly.

In the days leading up to his death.

As he suffered and eventually died for a world that did not see who He was.

Like him, we face situations or seasons when we’re forced to live in crisis mode, when there are no healthy rhythms because we’re just trying to survive or help others survive. Jesus lived in the same broken world we live in — he was called upon to step in to crises, to go without sleep, to do God’s work when he was exhausted.

But he didn’t live this way all the time.

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What might it look like to seek the greatest good of those around you in the same way that you naturally, instinctively, seek the greatest good for yourself?

  • Honoring your limitations and honoring their limitations
  • Receiving compassion and grace for yourself, giving compassion and grace to those around you
  • Receiving rest for yourself and providing rest to others
  • Caring for your own body and caring for the bodies of those you love — with food, with tenderness, with intention

I am not my own end game. When I learn how to care for myself in this Jesus way, I also learn how to care for others in this Jesus way.

Living loved helps me live love. 

I continue to learn the hard way that if I don’t honor my human limitations and care for myself accordingly, I can’t love others well. Or sometimes at all.

Even if there weren’t others to care for or live in relationship with, knowing that the Creator of the universe loves you and delights in you regardless of what you accomplish — that’s who God created us to be. Learning to live loved is enough.

But people do need you. They need the unique brand of love and work and giftedness that only you can offer the world.

  • They don’t need a bootstrapped version of you that will burn out.  
  • Or a dutiful but resentful version of you (my personal favorite)
  • Or an apathetic, checked-out version of you
  • Or a you that is so focused on everyone else that you are falling apart on the inside / bitter / coping in all the wrong ways

By learning what it looks like to love ourselves in the midst of our right-now lives, we can begin to live lives defined by love.

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I’ve tried all sorts of things in the name of self-care — exercise, eating well, taking supplements or medicine, getting a break. I still do these things to varying degrees. But I’m here to tell you, after years of trial and error, that honoring my limitations makes more of a difference than anything else.

Learning to rest, to let go of what I can, to ration my energy, to always count the cost of stress — these are the most loving things I can do for myself and the people I love.

In what areas do you need to rest, scale back, or let go?

What may feel selfish at first could actually breathe more life into yourself, your work, your home, and the world you influence.

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The next post in this series, coming to you sooner rather than later, will get super practical. I’ve learned there are little changes we can make in our everyday lives that yield big exhales (to us and to our people.)

If you find yourself in any of the following statements, the next post in the series is for you:

  • I can’t spend money on spa days or shopping weekends. How can I practice self-care? (Me either.)
  • My life has zero margin.
  • I have little kids. What is this “rest” you speak of?
  • I literally don’t know where to start. I’ve always been focused on the needs of those around me. To think of my own feelings, desires, or needs is a foreign concept.
  • I probably focus too much on myself and not enough on those around me. How can I find a healtier way to care for myself?
  • I’m so busy fulfilling my many responsibilities. Self-care will have to wait.
  • I am a Real Housewife and this post offends me. How DARE you?

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If this series sounds like something you need, all you have to do is subscribe to this online space. (You can do that in the box below this post.) If you’re already subscribed, yay! You’ll automatically receive it. The series is totally free.

Simply come and receive.

Whenever the latest installment of the series is published, you’ll be the first to know and you won’t miss a post.

Other posts in the series:

Post 1: How to Live Your Ordinary Life with Extraordinary Purpose

Post 2: The One Word that Forever Changed How I Approach the Bible

Post 3: When Your Right-Now Life Needs a Realistic Way to Study Scripture

Click here to leave a question or comment. You can also chime in on social media. (Links below.)

When Your Right-Now Life Needs a Realistic Way to Study Scripture

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If you’re here for the first time, welcome! We’re in the early stages of a new series, The Sacred Art of Receiving Your Right-Now Life. It’s all about living your ordinary life with extraordinary purpose.

Here’s what I’m learning. I can provide soulful encouragement and how-to tips all day long. But if we don’t begin with one of our most basic needs — being fed and nourished on a soul level — we’ll lose perspective and momentum quickly, no matter how good our intentions and ideas are.

There is one thing that helps me receive my own life, undesirable days and all, more than anything else. It’s the truth and sustenance of God’s Word. 

I invite you to read the previous post — The One Word that Forever Changed How I Approach Scripture — so that you can have the full context for this post.

Here’s the main point: I began to desire God’s Word when I realized it was my food.

Without it, I ricochet through my days much like a hungry child with low blood sugar. My life is easily defined by my frustration, circumstances, and selfishness. With it, I’m more grounded and centered. I have a perspective that’s so much bigger than myself and my own little kingdom. I walk in a spirit of truth instead of a spirit of crazy.

With the foundation that God’s Word is our food, it’s time for us to learn how to eat. There are countless approaches to studying Scripture, but my goal here is to share lessons from my own journey and to help you find practical ways to be nourished in your right-now life.

One thing to remember. Any food is better than no food.

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A Tale of…a Lot of Group Bible Studies

I did my first real group Bible study when I was in graduate school. I was a young mom with a new baby. I was also just coming out of an intensely dark season of my life spiritually. I had gone from belief to not knowing what I believed to definitely not believing in anything to shakily embracing my Christian faith again. That’s a story in itself but not the point of this post.

I was starving. Our new church advertised a Bible study and they had childcare.

Armed with All The Colored Pencils, my notebook and my Bible, I devoured each week’s Precepts inductive lesson even though it often meant cramming the night before (because grad school + a baby that didn’t sleep.)

I probably loved Precepts because of its timing in my life and not because it’s a tailor-made approach for me. Which just goes to show, it’s really not about the method. It’s about the intersection of your right-now life and what you have access to.

When my young family moved to the town we live in now, I got involved with the weekly small group studies at my church. We did everything from book studies to Books of the Bible studies to Beth Moore studies. They had childcare for my little ones (praise) and it also provided relationship and community for me as a young mom in a new place.

The most meaningful study for me during those years was Beth Moore’s Believing God. No surprise, it was all about the timing. Again, I had survived a dark and painful season (of a totally different nature) and I was struggling to believe in God’s goodness and faithfulness. That study and Beth’s teaching was a lifeline to me.

As my kids got older and their schooling demands meant I could no longer spend a morning in Bible study, I floundered. I can’t even remember what my “quiet time” looked like in those years but it was a time when life felt more defined by my circumstances and what I “should” be doing than by who God is and what’s He’s already done for me. Spiritually speaking, I probably lived in a chronic state of low blood sugar and it showed up in every area of my life.

About five years ago, a friend from college told me about Bible Study Fellowship (BSF.) I was 100% not interested. I’d heard of BSF and it sounded, um…not for me. Too structured, too old-school. But there was something about it I couldn’t shake and I was finally in a season that offered time and energy.

Long story short, I traveled to an hour-away Bible study for two years with a friend of mine. We then had the privilege of helping begin a BSF satellite group in our own town.

This is my first year in five years not being involved in BSF and I miss it terribly. While there is no one way for every person, Bible Study Fellowship fed me richly and deeply with the Word of God like nothing else ever has.

When I studied the Life of Moses, God was bringing me out of an impossible place and into a promised land.

When I studied John, I was living in the tension between my right-now work and my hoped-for work. Week after week, Jesus’ words and life spoke into that tension in a way that literally changed me, that helped me accept God’s perfect timing. The Gospel of John taught me to receive my right-now life in all of its unnoticed abundance and in all of the ways it fell short of what I longed for.

Do you know what my own journey with Bible studies tells me?

It’s not about finding the one perfect way to be in Scripture.

It’s about letting the richness of God’s word into your daily life — no matter the season — and being desperate for Him to meet you right where you are.

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Enough backstory. Tell me what to do!

Group Bible Studies

A group Bible study might be for you if: 

  • You struggle with intrinsic motivation and need the accountability of a group.
  • You like to process what you’re learning with others.
  • You need to receive what you’re learning in a variety of formats — studying on your own during the week, processing with a small group, and perhaps having teaching on the topic from a leader that ties it all together.
  • You have small children and have access to a Bible study that provides childcare.
  • You need to get out of the house.

A group Bible study might not be for you if:

  • Your time is scarce.
  • You get super annoyed when you process things in small groups with a variety of personalities.
  • You don’t have convenient access to one.
  • You have a schedule that means your involvement will be hit or miss.

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Studying God’s Word on Your Own

(fail…and then find something that works)

This current year of my life — with where we are as a family, with my job and some extra work — doesn’t allow for a group study. I got the big idea that I would go through the book of John again on my own because it meant so much to me and I longed to dig deeper.

I was not consistent. Like, at all. But I did get really good at drinking coffee and jumping right into work and shuffling papers around.

One of the reason group studies have often worked well for me is because there’s accountability. When someone expects something of me, I do it. And if someone doesn’t? I can be hit or miss. I meet outer expectations. I tend to resist inner expectations.

BSF worked for me because I had homework due every week and I have never been the gal who shows up without my homework done.

After spending last semester snacking my way through devotionals and being hit or miss with John, I knew I needed a new approach. But still, there was the issue of time. I don’t have a morning or an evening to go to a study or even to join an online group.

The first week of January, I met with a friend and she introduced me to what I’m doing right now. I call it “Bible Study Devotional Journaling.” I literally just made up that title as I typed it. : )

Here’s the thing. No one is holding me accountable. But after a summer + semester of being spiritually “hangry,” I have craved my time with God each day because I know how badly I need it.

Like any discipline (a word I don’t love), the fruit of the habit becomes its own reward. This is what continues to motivate me day after day, not the habit itself. 

Yes, your personality matters and we’ll talk about that more in a minute. But once you begin eating real food every day, once it becomes the sustenance that keeps you grounded and centered in the truth of who God is, you don’t want to go back to nibbling crumbs every other day and wondering why you feel spiritually anemic and unsteady.

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“Bible Study Devotional Journaling” how-to:
(Guys, please help me find another name for this.)

Step 1: Choose a devotional that goes through a book of the Bible.

I’m using Tim Keller’s The Songs of Jesus: A Year of Daily Devotions in the Psalms.

Step 2: Grab a simple composition book and a good pen. You’re ready to go!

Step 3: Read the Scripture passage.

Don’t read the notes from the author. Don’t read the prayer. Just focus on the Scripture. Read through it once or twice.

Step 4: Start writing.

I try to write down 20-30 things, going verse by verse. Here are the types of things I write:

  • Who does God say He is?
  • What attributes of God do I see? (Faithful, good, patient, just, merciful, etc.)
  • What is He promising?
  • How I resonate with particular verses of the passage.
  • A one-sentence prayer in response to a verse.
  • A truth statement.
  • A personal application in response to a verse.

Step 5: Read the commentary or devotional.

There’s a reason you read this last. It’s important to let God speak to you when it’s just you and the Scripture itself. I love commentaries. I love looking up the original Greek or Hebrew for a certain word. But that’s not where I begin. The Word itself and the Holy Spirit are enough. After I’ve done my own verse by verse examination and study, I love seeing what the author of the study or devotional has to say about it. This can offer extra insight.

Step 6: Read back over the verses, what you’ve journaled, and maybe the commentary / devotional. Write a short statement. 

Add some more things that you didn’t notice the first time and then read over all that you’ve journaled. Is there an overarching principle or truth statement you want to carry with you for the day? This forces me to synthesize what I’ve read and apply it in a more concise way.

Step 7: Pray

Sometimes I write out my prayer. Sometimes I write out and pray the author’s prayer. Sometimes I just sit in my chair and pray, not writing out anything.

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Choose a simple all-inclusive Bible study…and maybe a friend.

If my current method doesn’t sound like a fit, if you need something more structured (and with less writing), consider a Bible study that has a passage and directed questions for you to answer. I did this study for the Book of Galatians and it’s a great approach. Everything you need, including the Scripture, right in one book.

If you can’t do a group study but you don’t feel like you’ll stick with something on your own, what about asking a friend to meet with you once a week or every other week? This is a great compromise because you still have accountability but it’s not A Big Weekly Thing You Attend.

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The Word on the Go

Now that we carry computers around in our pockets, we can carry Scripture with us wherever we go. you on your journey.

Read Scripture App

You guys. This is the coolest.

It’s a free app that provides videos and context along the way. There are reading plans and reminders you can set to spur you along. It’s for everyone from kids and teenagers to people like you and me. Seriously, if you don’t know where to start, download the app and begin with this.

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Your Personality Matters

God’s Word is for all of us. But there’s no one best way to study the Bible.

Know who you are. Chances are, you don’t need a personality test to tell you what you already know. You know whether you’re disciplined or not. You know if you’re sort of ADD or not. You know how you learn best. You know if you need to study with others or if your time is richer on your own. You know what you have time for in this season and what you don’t.

I know that reading through the Bible in a year is highly recommended and a great spiritual discipline. But you guys, every time I’ve tried I get so bored. I lose interest. I dawdle and procrastinate. I just can’t.

I’m sustained by God’s Word when I dig deep into smaller passages at a time. I love to take an entire year and study one book. This feeds me so richly, but I know it’s not for everyone.

I have artistic friends who have journaling Bibles with wide margins. They draw beautiful images as they study and it makes God’s Word come alive to them.

I’ve been in small discussion groups that literally were such a struggle for me, it got in the way of studying Scripture. I know, I’m a horrible person, but it’s true.

Take what you know about yourself and apply it. Don’t feel guilty. Walk in freedom and experiment! Just find a way to eat that’s nourishing, sustaining, and doable for you. 

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Hearing the Word

Sometimes we place so much emphasis on personal Bible study, forgetting that for centuries, most Christians couldn’t have a “quiet time” as we think of it today for one very big reason: they were illiterate. 

Priests rolled open the scrolls and people simply listened. They read the Word and congregants believed them. Preachers proclaimed the Gospel and this spoken word found its way into the desperate hearts of men, women, and children.

Whether it’s sitting in church regularly and hearing the faithful preaching of God’s Word or listening to sermons on your iPhone as you drive to work — hearing the Word matters. It matters a lot actually. If you’re beating yourself up because your personal quiet time isn’t as robust as it “should” be, know that there are many ways God feeds his people.

Sometimes I’ll play the audio version of Scripture on the Bible Gateway app on my phone as I drive or clean the kitchen. And if you want something super cool (that your kids will dig), check out Streetlights — the actual Word of God being spoken (with an urban, street vibe) in your home or car, via your earbuds. The spoken Word is a powerful thing and it will not return empty. That’s God’s promise, not mine.

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A Few Final Thoughts: On simplicity, new habits, and real enemies

You may be tempted to run out and buy a pretty new Bible study, Moleskin journal, and fancy pen to start your new Bible routine.

But here’s the thing. New and fresh will only get you so far.

When I needed a different approach this year, I grabbed The Songs of Jesus devotional I already had and an old composition book from ye olde pile of castoff notebooks.

I spent zero dollars. But every day, I feel like I eat a 5-course meal.

A friend told me this and it’s too good not to share:

The way to become like Jesus is by spending time with Jesus. We can call it spiritual discipline but it’s really just time with him.

The more I feed on God’s Word as my daily sustenance, the more I desire this time with Jesus, the Word who became flesh and came to dwell among us. 

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Some of you have asked what to do when God seems distant, when his Word seems to leave you no different than when you arrived, when it feels like duty instead of desire. I’m familiar with all of these places. And as much as I’d love to talk about it here, I’ve already written too many words for one post. These are topics I’d love to write about in the future because they’re part of my story.

Here’s what I will say right now:

  • Come hungry, asking to be filled.
  • Come seeking and honest, asking to be met in personal ways. Just this morning, my passage in the Psalms began with this question: “Why, Lord, do you stand far off?” It is good and okay to go to him with our gut-honest questions, feelings, and perceptions. He welcomes us just as we are.
  • Come often. Habits and disciplines can feel awkward and contrived at the beginning. Keep coming to the table hungry and see what happens.

One final word. There is a real enemy who wants to keep you from the sustaining truth you need to receive every day, the truth that enables you to receive your right-now life with hope for the future, with trust in God’s timing, and with the certainty that God is at work even the most mundane or painful seasons of your life.

In Ephesians 6, the passage about putting on the whole armor of God, there is but one offensive weapon mentioned in the entire list. Guess what it is?

“The sword of the Spirit,” the Word of God.

Know that when you are fed, you are able to fight.

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If you have ideas you’d like to share with others, practical ways that you’ve been nourished by God’s Word, share them in the comments! I’m only one person. Let’s learn from one another.

If you have questions you’d like to see me address, I welcome them. You can leave them in the comments section or email me directly.

If this series sounds like something you need, all you have to do is subscribe to this online space. (You can do that in the box below this post.) If you’re already subscribed, yay! You’ll automatically receive it. The series is totally free.

Simply come and receive.

Whenever the latest installment of the series is published, you’ll be the first to know and you won’t miss a post.

Post 1: How to Live Your Ordinary Life with Extraordinary Purpose

Post 2: The One Word that Forever Changed How I Approach the Bible

Other Resources:

“He leads me beside streams of toilet waters.” (a real-life tale of how Scripture shows up in the mayhem of your right-now life)

The Best Online Bible Studies for Women by Kayse Pratt

How to Wear Courage in Your Right-Now Life {a personal post + a wearable reminder}

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No matter the art — be it painting, dancing, mothering, writing, counseling, teaching, or design — we grieve when we can’t seem to find our voice, our place, or our offerings. Joy and discouragement live too close in our hearts and we can’t reconcile our desire with our constant disappointment.

– Emily P. Freeman, The Next Right Thing Podcast, Episode 5: Offer Your Work With Hope 

I began this post (for at least the third time) after I anger-folded the laundry. My sock-matching companion was the kind voice of Emily Freeman on her podcast, The Next Right Thing. As she offered a prayer at the end, I stood over the mismatched socks and cried as my anger dissolved into its true self — grief.

My last post here was July 3rd. I’ve been writing on the internet for about 9 years and this is by far the longest lapse I’ve ever had between one published post and another.

The truth is probably what you’d expect. My plate is full. Like most of you, I’m busy juggling good gifts like a home, a marriage, children, dinner, relationships, community, a steady job, some freelance work.

A lovely art print of Ecclesiastes 3:1 sits above my desk, a daily reminder to receive the gifts and callings of each season.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. 

I feel like I’m in a better place than ever about receiving this season of my life with acceptance and gratitude. Until I’m not.

///

Where is my best life?

A couple of weeks ago I talked with my friend and fellow writer, Kimberly.

She spoke of how hard it is to feel like you’re constantly living out of your weakness and lack instead of your strengths and gifts. In response, I offered rambling words of hope and encouragement in the face of heartbreaking disappointment she’d recently experienced. I talked about how living out of our weaknesses keeps us dependent on Jesus, how it keeps us in a posture of humility and grace. Saying these things to my hurting friend — it sounded simple and right.

Little did I know that a few days later, I’d be yelling through tears {at my blindsided and bewildered husband who just was trying to leave for work} that I want to live out of my strengths and gifts, that I’m tired of operating from a place of weakness, from a place of cluelessness, from a place of frustration and anxiety.

The truth and perspective I shared with Kimberly had up and vanished.

Whether it’s mothering or running a home or work I don’t know how to do or balls I keep dropping, the voice in my head has been crystal clear:

You, my dear, are not living your best life.

Kimberly and I spoke of our shared disappointment, how the writing life that we envisioned isn’t eagerly extending an invitation to us. Her circumstances are different than mine but the outcome is the same — we long to make a certain kind of art and offer it in a certain kind of way, but limitations seem to have the last word. It’s a silly lament compared with the real tragedies of hurricanes and family fracture and cancer.

But desire is a stubborn thing. It will not stay quiet just because the limitations tell it shush or because the problems could be so much worse.

To be sure, there are gifts in the disappointment of closed doors. Like the very best girlfriends who show up with ice-cream after a bad breakup, Grace and Acceptance have shown up on the doorstep of my angsty heart as I’ve sought to live faithfully, albeit messily, in the tension between my hoped-for work and my right-now life. God has handed me unexpected joy and satisfaction in my present callings, even the ones that don’t come naturally to me.

Still, sometimes you find yourself folding t-shirts on an everyday Monday and you begin to cry.

Even when you have a beautiful life, even when you’re grateful for all the gifts, the sadness that arises from longing is still there, lurking just beneath the surface.

///

the courage to wait

I call it “receiving your own life.”

Almost everything I’ve written over the last 9 years passes through this filter. Receiving your own life is about living in the tension between your actual life and your hoped-for life. Sometimes the backdrop of this tension is a marriage that’s a disaster, a kid who’s gone off to the far country, mental illness, or financial ruin. Sometimes it’s sickness, unemployment, addiction, or an unrelenting discontent.

I’ve lived against more than one of those backdrops, so I know from experience that learning to receive your own life with trust and gratitude is a fight. We use words like “contentment” and “letting go” and “acceptance,” all of which convey a gentle, graceful surrender.

But that’s not what it’s felt like to me.

I’ve been trying to land on a fitting word that helps me die to my own agenda and receive the life that’s right in front of me.

It’s courage.

But not courage in the sense of heroics or bravery or bootstrapping. The real architecture of courage is actually quite different.

The Latin root is “heart.”

Living courageously means that we live vulnerably and honestly. It means we live with a confidence that’s grounded in the truth of things, even when we’re afraid, even when the truth of things is not what we wish for.

I recently did a word study of courage from the Bible. Of everything I studied, this verse still floors me:

Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord! 

Psalm 31:24 

Do you see that? It takes courage —

to wait. 

To wait for what the Lord is going to show us and do for us and do with us.

God did not say, let your heart be patient, all you who wait for the Lord!  He said to let your heart take courage.

There is a strength, a fight, a trust required to wait for the fulfillment of desired things.

///

when you miss your real life because you fear you’re missing out

Like I said, I’ve walked some legitimately painful roads in my 40-something years, so writing about the difficult intersection of waiting and art and desire sounds dramatic and ridiculous. Still, we cannot always rationalize our way out of grief. We can find perspective. We can live from a place of hope. We can trust in a timing that’s filtered through God’s love. But we grieve what we grieve and I’m tired of letting my inner critic bully me about this.

Courage helps me wait.

And as I wait, I learn that the waiting room is not merely an interlude or pit stop; it is its own worthy destination. The waiting room is a place where I’m stripped of ambition and given the opportunity to commune with God in my disappointment and doubt. It’s a place where I can stop and breathe and receive this dazzling life of mine, imperfections and all. Waiting rooms have a way of helping us see what really matters, even as we wish that certain circumstances were different.

Though Twitter is a terrible way to start your day, I happened to be awake at an ungodly hour one morning last week and came across this quote from author, Shawn Smucker:

In my limited experience, letting go of the things I wanted the most has allowed me to see the real and wonderful life in front of me.

Story of my life.

I’ve had a number of turning points across the last twenty-something years, moments when I let go of personal ambition like a child lets go of a helium-filled balloon. First the panic and the pang. Then the acceptance and eventual peace.

It’s terrifying to let go, even when we know it’s the right thing to do.

We can only speak of courage in the face of fear. And isn’t fear our greatest foe when we’re fighting to receive our right-now lives? We fear that an opportunity will pass us by. We fear that we’ll misspend our lives. We fear that we’ll regret not giving more to our families or we fear that we’ll regret not pursuing vocational opportunities. We fear that God won’t answer our prayers in the way we want him to — or even that He will answer our prayers in the way we want him to.

We fear that we’re getting it all wrong.

Everyone else is supposedly out there living their best life and what are we doing? We’re crying on laundry day and wiping our noses with dryer sheets.

Cue the courage.

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what the professionals aren’t telling you

There are so. many. “experts.” They bombard us with “good” information every day, persuasive messages rooted in helpfulness. But I can’t help but wonder if the sheer volume of it all is dulling our discernment.

Has self-help gotten too cozy with Jesus?

A curated life — aka a life that mostly lines up with our unique strengths, gifts, desires, skill sets, etc. — well, I’m just going to say it: That is not necessarily the way of Jesus, even if it seems to be the way of Christian Self-help (which we sometimes confuse with Jesus.)

I’m not saying we shouldn’t problem-solve or climb out of pits. I’m not saying we haplessly pitch our tents in the land of misery and call ourselves more righteous because of it. And I’m definitely not saying our unique gifts don’t matter.

I am saying that every death, big or small, is a two-fold opportunity:

To reject pride and self-sufficiency and the idolatry of our own agenda. 

To receive God and grace and unexpected gifts.

The thing about Jesus is that He always tells the truth, even if it’s not the cozy truth we want to hear. Sometimes his words sound like crazy talk. He says that you gain your life by losing it, that the first shall be last and the last shall be first. The Jesus Way is upside-down and inside-out and even those of us who follow Him — well, we forget because the Jesus way gets mixed up with ambition and comfort and success and your best life.

I’m not trying to be preachy. I drink the Kool-Aid too.

This is already my longest post ever, but I’m going to go deep and dramatic for one last moment. Stay with me?

///

A courageous life may not look like your best life.

Do you think that when Jesus was dying a humiliating public death, the people in the crowd were thinking, “How successful he is! What a legacy. We should find out his best practices.” Of course not. They pitied him, they hated him, they called him a liar and a fool and a fraud. “What a wasted life,” they must have thought.

Though they stripped Him of his clothes, they could not strip Him of courage. Jesus-courage isn’t rooted in bravery or self-actualization or crafting a perfect life. Jesus-courage is rooted in vulnerability and humility and sacrificial love and a future glory that is not of this world.

My words may not be as inspiring as the messages from your favorite experts, but I can’t write about real courage without bringing Jesus into it. Because He knows what it’s like to live in the ultimate tension between the now and the not yet. He lived and died in that tension. He wept in that tension. He was forsaken in that tension.

And this means He is a kindred companion to those of us who also live in the tension, who die to our hoped-for agenda on a daily basis, who lose our lives to give it away as we fold the clothes and braise the pot roast and wipe the tears and help with math homework and grade the papers.

He’s with us when we set aside our fancy degrees and personal giftedness to do something less visible but more significant.

After all, He came to earth fully man and fully God. He had the “skill-set” to call down the angels, to display his true power, to climb down off the cross. But He humbled himself and remained a servant. For us. And for the joy set before him.

This is the same Jesus who is with us today. He understands. And because He was and is the perfect incarnation of all the things we lack, He offers us courage as we wait because He offers us Himself.

He is our courage.

///

FOR YOU! : )

Still here? I know. Could this post be any longer?

Yes it can.

Because I made something for you.

I know what you’re thinking. “Marian, you just said you have no time. When did you make stuff?” And the answer is, many months ago and with help from a creative soul sister. The timing wasn’t right to offer it but now it is. Yay!

A year and a half ago, one of my dearest friends gave me this courage necklace for my birthday.

I didn’t know how much I would need that word but Jesus must have known because I have worn courage (literally, on this gold cord) almost every day since.

This necklace doesn’t have magical powers, nor will it slay actual beasts or fold your laundry. It simply serves as a visual reminder that you need courage every day and all you have to do is ask for it.

  • Courage to receive your beautiful, messy, right-now life just as it is, even as you wait with hope.
  • Courage when Fear is a bully and calling all the shots. 
  • Courage to say yes, even though you don’t know what you’re doing. Courage to say no, even though the opportunity may not come again.

Courage is ultimately a person who gives us strength to wait, to trust, and to hope in better things than what we can even imagine.

///

UPDATE: The necklaces have all been spoken for. Thank you so much for your kind and supportive responses! I may offer additional pieces down the road so if you enjoy wearing meaningful beauty like I do, make sure you’re subscribed to marianvischer.com and you’ll be the first to know. I’ll also keep you in the loop on Instagram @marianvischer, so you can follow me there too!

Here are the details:

I have 32 of these.

I’m offering them for $15 each and that includes shipping. These necklaces are a sweet, creative labor of love. Each hand-cut, hand-stamped, “hand-hewn” (yep, we actually cut and filed these babies) comes with a gold cord that gives you about a 16-inch drop. I’ve had mine for a year and a half and it’s still just as lovely. The cord makes it light and casual and simple to wear with anything. And it’s super easy to layer with other necklaces.

You could also put it on a different color cord.

Or a short leather choker tied in a bow in the back. So many possibilities!

I am too lazy to be high-tech about this so here’s what we’ll do:

  • If you’d like a courage necklace for yourself or as a gift, simply leave your Paypal address (the email you use for Paypal) in the comments section.
  • MAKE SURE your current shipping address is updated with Paypal so I send it to the right place.
  • If you don’t feel comfortable with that, you can send it in an email to marianvischer@gmail.com. Use “necklace” in the subject line.
  • I’ll invoice the first 32 people who reply with a Paypal address.

I hope this will be as meaningful a piece for you as it has been for me! Feel free to leave any questions in the comments.

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Thanks for sticking with me. Now that I’m settling into a fall rhythm, I hope to occupy this space a bit more regularly.

In the meantime, if this post resonated with you, you may also enjoy these posts and resources:

Posts

How to Pursue Your Hoped-For Work in the Midst of Your Right-Now Life {a series}

How to Waste Your Life and Call It Beautiful 

How a 92-Year-Old Woman Taught Me the Real Value of My Right-Now Work

Books

A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Live by Emily P. Freeman

Creating a life of meaning is not about finding that one great thing you were made to do, it’s about knowing the one great God you were made to glory — in a million little ways.

The Gifts of Imperfection by Dr. Brené Brown — I love her transformative work on courage!

8 Favorite Resources to Make Your Hoped-for Work a Possibility in Your Right-Now Life — some of my favorite, encouraging, balanced, grace-filled resources on this topic

New here?

I’m all about helping you recapture the possibility of your right-now life. Each post provides courage, companionship, and resources for life lived real.

If that sounds like something you need, sign up in the box below to receive fresh hope and possibility delivered to your inbox.

And I have a free gift for subscribers. : )

If you’re overwhelmed by the many educational options for your kids, if you’re curious about the most important questions to ask, I have a FREE resource created just for you!

How to Waste Your Life and Call it Beautiful

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There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

When the baby of our family was born over nine years ago, I had a seven-year-old and a four-year-old.

With seven plus years of motherhood under my belt, I’d learned a few lessons about letting go, chilling out, and realizing that it’s all going to be okay. In light of this hard-won Zen version of myself, I decided to enjoy my third baby like nobody’s business.

I would not fret. I would not pursue unnecessary work or projects. I would bask in this last brief season of babyhood and love on my darling boy whose very name means “mercy.”

Mercy. That’s what he meant to my husband and me.

For a very long season, I assumed that I wouldn’t have another baby. My marriage had almost ended. I was working full-time. Life was terribly messy.

And then, it wasn’t.

God breathed compassion into our story. Our third child represented the underserved gift of new life for our family and I resolved to enjoy his babyhood in a way that my angsty, younger-mom self wasn’t able to do with my other children.

Today he is a curly-headed, third-grade boy with a perfect sprinkle of freckles across his nose. He’s much too big for me to carry and he talks like a teenager, compliments of his older brother and sister.

I’m sure his babyhood seemed like a long stretch of time when we were in it — short nights, ear infections, teething, smeared pureed food in his hair. I can barely remember those episodes now. What I do remember is that I received that short season of my life as a gift.

I devoted myself to adoring him.

Much of my life’s work up to that point seemed irrelevant. My education, my career, all the books I’d read, the ambition I’d cultivated — I didn’t technically need any of those things to be an adoring mother.

Sometimes I wondered if I’d wasted the gifts I’d so earnestly stored up.

/////

I’ve been many different moms over the last sixteen years. Grad school mom, part-time working mom, full-time working mom, homeschool mom, stay-at-home mom, work-from-home mom, single mom.

I don’t feel like I’ve ever gotten it quite right.

As I look back across my story as a mother, the one chapter that feels most “right” to me is the one I just told you about — that one to two year season when I cherished my last baby with lavish intention. I did not call it wasteful. I called it beautiful.

Lest you think I’m someone who believes motherhood is my highest calling and the one thing I was put on this earth to do — I assure you, I am not that person. Though I’ve always longed to be a mother and I was over the moon about each one of my babies, reconciling family with personal ambition has been one of the greatest struggles and missions of my life.

Since I was ten years old, I wanted to attend law school right after college. I majored in the right things. I took the LSAT. But at the age of 22, I arrived at a painful conclusion — a career in law didn’t seem very compatible with raising a family. Not for me, anyway. And just like that, I veered from what I’d always wanted to do. It’s hardly a tragic story. Instead of law, I pursued and enjoyed college teaching. After that I fell headlong into my passion for writing, and I’m now enjoying a “second career” in early education nonprofit work and communications, a vocation that combines so many of the jobs that came before this one. I feel one million shades of lucky.

But I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Sometimes I’m still sad I didn’t go to law school. That doesn’t mean I regret not going. It simply means that my heart continues to beat strongly for the kind of work I would have loved.

Over the holidays I was at a retirement party for one of my husband’s colleagues. I had the loveliest time chatting with an acquaintance of ours who’s been a happily-practicing attorney for many years. I asked question after question about his work — why he loves it, if he’s glad he went into law, etc. I told him that I’d always dreamed of being a trial lawyer. He told me I should still think about it, that it’s not too late.

The whole way home and for weeks afterward, I did think about it. I’m still surprised at the way that longing can show up unannounced and just linger for a while.

But the reality is this — I have chosen other things.

Though I have worked and still currently work, I have chosen family over full-time work and my own aspirations — even though family life hasn’t {and still doesn’t} come naturally, even though motherhood doesn’t pay well, even though it sometimes feels like a waste of intellect and resources, even though others may say it’s the less than sensible choice.

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Recently I came across a story about another woman who made a less than sensible choice, a woman who “wasted” the resources she’d earnestly stored up, a woman who devoted herself to adoring someone in a way that confounded the more knowledgeable people around her.

The setting is a dinner party. And after the dinner was over, this woman took a pound of perfumed oil and anointed the honored guest, going so far as to let down her hair and wipe the man’s feet with it.

That honored guest was Jesus. The woman’s name was Mary. The imported oil in an alabaster jar was worth a year’s wages.

Can you imagine the awkwardness? An awkwardness that was quickly followed by scoff, scorn, and even contempt. Sure, it was an expression of love and honor but did it have to be so wasteful?

Other guests made the point that the perfume could have been sold and given to the poor.

My own knee jerk reaction was that it could have been rationed out more sensibly. Surely Mary could have saved it in order to provide for herself and for others.

But Jesus didn’t say any of these things. Instead he asked the others to leave her alone and he called her offering “beautiful.”

Whether Mary realized it then or not, Jesus would die in a matter of days and this was her one opportunity to honor him with scandalous devotion.

As she was pouring out the perfume and wiping his feet with her hair, she was actually anointing her beloved Jesus for his burial.

My throat caught as I read this commentary on the story:

God’s people are expected to remember the poor … But Jesus came only once in history to die for his people. Only on this occasion would there be this opportunity to honor Him as He should be honored. 

This moment was not about the poor, it was not about Mary’s rights, and it was not about human sensibility. It was bigger than what anyone could see. Mary’s sacrifice and devotion was part of God’s purpose for her life, for Jesus’ life, and for the redemption and renewal of the world.

/////

Though I’ve given up on law school, I still long to pursue full-time my that overflows from the core of who I am. And maybe one day I will.

But my real life in this season of teenagers and sports and three different schools and community and work — well, it looks like delivering left-behind lunches, supervising math homework, avoiding the laundry, lamenting the dailyness of dinner, refereeing, running a taxi service, cheering from the sidelines, teaching life lessons while driving my minivan, and giving up on any semblance of work-life balance.

At my worst or even at my average, I can begrudge all of this because a.) it’s mundane and repetitive, and b.) it can feel like a misspent life.

I really did not want to write that last sentence because it sounds awful. But it’s where my human heart can land on any given day.

And that’s why, when I read the story of Mary and Jesus and the perfume, I came a little undone on the inside. Truth and beauty lodged themselves within my spirit and I’ve walked a little askew ever since.

While I may not have Jesus in the flesh at my dinner table tonight, He is always my companion. And He tells us that when we provide for the physical needs of those who depend on our care, we’re also demonstrating love and devotion to him.

This isn’t a post about career vs. family. It’s not even a post about motherhood. Not really. It’s about receiving our right-now lives as a gift. And that looks different for each of us.

I’m learning that in each season, I have to prioritize the roles that only I can fill. Only I can be my husband’s wife and my kids’ mom. There are other things God also calls me to do but I always return to this question:

Who needs me more right now?

{For someone who doesn’t love to be needed, answering this question is more discipline than it is default.}

Sometimes only you can be the one to earn a paycheck or contribute to your family’s livelihood. Only you can be the one to take care of an aging parent or an adult sibling. Only you can be the one to help your grown child through a long season of crisis. Only you can be the one to love a difficult student in your classroom or a neighbor who has no one else.

I write from the intersection of my own season and circumstances but this story could be told a million different ways.

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What sacred devotion have you been given for this season? Who needs to receive what’s in your alabaster jar?

Only you and your people can answer this question.

It’s easy to worship at the altar of public opinion or even at the altar of sensibility without realizing that you’ve been taken captive. Modern narratives can be sneaky like that. I’m absolutely guilty of imbibing what sounds good instead of drinking from Truth.

I’m also guilty of looking at what others are doing and then feeling like a failure by comparison. In feeling left behind, I sprint to catch up — only to find that I’ve left my own people behind in the process.

Straying from devotion probably comes naturally for most of us. For me, the key is coming back to the presence of Jesus and surrendering to the call of right now.

Today. These people. This season. This work. This devotion.

When we’re running hard toward our hoped-for life, we miss the sacred gifts of the right-now life.

Mary only had Jesus for a brief moment and she did the scandalous instead of the sensible. By everyone’s standards, she “wasted her gift’s purpose.”

Do you know what Jesus said in that moment?

Why are you giving this woman a hard time? She has just done something wonderfully significant for me. You will have the poor with you every day for the rest of your lives, but not me. When she poured this perfume on my body, what she really did was anoint me for burial. You can be sure that wherever in the whole world the Message is preached, what she has just done is going to be remembered and admired.  – Matthew 26:10-13 {The Message}

I don’t know what your life looks like today but I can tell you this. Jesus says your daily offerings are important even though they might seem wasteful by others’ standards.

I’ve lost many years’ wages. I’ve “wasted” years of education. But I only have this one window of opportunity to love my people well right now {while maintaining a semblance of my own sanity.} I’m learning that the teenage years require an availability and energy level that even surpass the little years. I’m sorry if you don’t have teenagers yet and that sentence just ruined your day.

Like Mary, we have a brief window to overflow with the specific kind of devotion that each season requires. It probably doesn’t look like anointing someone with expensive perfume and suffering public humiliation in the process. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t costly. Service is costly. Forgoing your own desires in order to equip and love another person is always costly.

Maybe other people won’t get it. There will be days when even you don’t get it. Will you believe Jesus over public opinion and even over your own opinion? He says your right-now devotion is beautiful, that it’s a proclamation of the Gospel, that it’s a unique and sacred part of God’s purpose for you, for those you love, and for the world.

{And then will you turn around and repeat this truth back to me? Every day, I seem to forget all over again.}

/////

Earlier this week I was hustling out of the grocery store with bags of food that have since been devoured. The strangest awareness washed over me right there in the parking lot.

I get to do this. I get to do all of this. And it’s bringing me joy — not all the time, but at least for today. Dear God, only you could work this sort of miracle within my stubborn heart. Thank you. And keep doing it. 

One day I won’t be needed in this way but now is not that time.

I want to receive this fleeting season as a gift in the same way that I received the long ago baby season as a gift.

I want to look back on this one, merciful opportunity and call it beautiful.

/////

You may also enjoy:

For All the Defeated Moms: You’re Actually in a Good Place

How a 92-year-old Woman Taught Me the Real Value of my Right-Now Work

How to Pursue Your Hoped-for in the Midst of Your Right-Now Life: A Series

New here?

I’m all about and helping you recapture the possibility of your right-now life. Each post provides courage, companionship, and resources for life lived real.

If that sounds like something you need, sign up in the box below to receive fresh hope and possibility delivered to your inbox no more than a couple of times a week.

And I have a free gift for subscribers. : )

If you’re overwhelmed by the many educational options for your kids, if you’re curious about the most important questions to ask, I have a FREE resource created just for you!

How to Receive Your Own Summer Life

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How’s your summer going? If that feels like a loaded question, this post is for you.

We think summer is all about freedom, but then we’re bothered because this lazy season doesn’t it take a break from comparison, envy, and unrealistic expectations. I know it’s not just me because occasionally I get out and talk to people.

We don’t all have community pools, live in idyllic neighborhoods, or pass the days on a family homestead dotted with gurgling brooks and bunnies. We may not have any accessible watering holes. We may not live in a neighborhood. We may have zero budget for vacations.

Summer can sure mess with our gratitude, especially when we’re bombarded with the realities of everyone else’s seemingly better summer. “Oh, you went to Belize? How lovely. We went to our local lake one day where I fished a used diaper, a Lunchables container, and the plastic part of a needle out of the murky water all in the same outing.” {True story from when my kids were little.}

I remind myself that one never knows the truth behind the Facebook or Instagram photos. Remember how our summer kicked off with a celebratory lunch turned complicated mess? I could have taken a super cute family selfie on said trip to Chick-Fil-A, all of us smiling as we launched Summer 2016 with ice cream and happy togetherness. You would have thought, “Those Vischers. Look how much they love each other.”

The real story is a sketchy parking lot on the way to Chick-Fil-A, peace negotiations within the confines of my minivan, and a mom who was so ticked off, she almost drove home and let everyone eat microwave popcorn for lunch. “Happy First Day of Summer Kids! Here’s some kernels coated with chemical butter to help you celebrate!”

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I’ve been writing and even speaking about this thing of “receiving your own life” for a long time. But lately I feel as though I’ve regressed all the way back to kindergarten. This makes me feel like a fraud. Also? It’s frustrating.

For my most recent birthday, a dear friend stamped these words on a bracelet for me: “Receive My Life.”

She had no idea how much I’d need it this summer as I ache with invisible scars and fight for gratitude as though my life depends on it.

Because my life does depend on it. And so does yours.

In many ways, we’re having a great summer. We’re not getting a house ready to sell like Summer 2014. We’re not buying and selling a house like Summer 2015. We’re not sprinting after toddlers who can’t swim like Summers 2001-2012. My kids can feed and entertain themselves while I work from home. The guys have golfed a lot and my girl and I have watched Netflix together like it’s our job.

This summer provides enough commitment to keep us in a routine but enough downtime to sink into a lazier rhythm. Plus I have a screen porch.

It has been lovely in so many ways.

But beneath the lovely there is still junk. Plus a rogue arrow of envy that has come out of left field and pierced my heart something fierce. “Summer, why won’t you give me a two-month break from what ails me and leave me on my porch with house magazines and cold beverages?”

/////

But summer hasn’t given me a break from the brokenness of the world around me or the brokenness of the world within me.

Instead, summer gives me a choice: open my hands to receive it all as grace or keep my fists clenched, shaking them at God and others.

I don’t always make the right choice.

Here’s what I’m still learning the hard way. You can spend your seconds turned minutes turned years wishing for a life that isn’t yours, making yourself and everyone else miserable in the process. Or you can choose to receive the beauty, provision, and even heartache of your actual life. I have a million things to be grateful for. I simply forget. And so do you.

There are things we shouldn’t have to receive, situations that it’s okay to fight against. I’m not talking about being a doormat; I’m talking about accepting that which we can’t really change — the baggage, the fallout, the limitations, the people — as we walk the path of healing, acceptance, and possibility.

I make it sound easy but let’s be honest; it’s war. Every day my real life — with all of its brokenness, lack, fear, and questions — puts up a fight and goes to war with my contentment.

And so I fight.

  • Sometimes that means I avoid certain people and places on the internet. Because even though I know there’s no perfect, certain things are just too much for my fragile spirit.
  • Sometimes that means I pour all of the brokenness into a journal so that my mind and heart have more space to receive the everyday gifts.
  • Sometimes that means I scrawl out my edited thoughts in this online space, pressing publish and blowing words into the world like the seeds of a dandelion, hoping they’ll land in the meant-to-be places.
  • Sometimes that means I pray. And sometimes it means that others pray for me because I am fresh out of energy to articulate my lament.
  • Sometimes that means I stop what I’m doing and eat from the word of God. Otherwise I walk around spiritually anemic, wondering why I’m so cranky and angry without an ounce of perspective. “Oh yes, I’ve forgotten to eat. No wonder I’m thinking and talking and acting like a crazy person.”
  • Sometimes that means I simply keep living, doing the next thing and not letting the hard stuff of my own life or the envied goodness of others’ lives define me.

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This season invites me to slow down, to enjoy my people, to rest in the undone, and to make time for beauty.

But as I’ve learned from prior seasons of rest — sometimes when we slow, the stuffed-down grief rises to the surface. It’s only June but summer is already reminding me {for the hundredth time} that life is a broken + beautiful mashup, that it’s okay to live in the tension because I’m not alone. I have Jesus, my friend who is no stranger to living in the tension. Jesus, who feasted with dearest friends one night while being led to his death soon after.

I tell him how I feel because He knows. I quit trying to fix broken things because I’m too tired and besides, that’s his job.

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This feels like a heavy post for summer. I wish I could share with you a fun recipe for fruity drinks or 10 Ways to Make This Your Best Summer Ever. But this is the true state of things and to give you anything else feels duplicitous.

Instead, I tell you that it’s okay to laugh with your friends one minute and cry into your iced coffee the next. To receive the slower pace while you also seek healing for wounds that won’t stop hurting.

In both fresh and familiar ways, this summer invites me to “receive my own life,” to etch hopeful patterns in my troubled mind and anxious spirit, even as I enjoy my kids and my porch and sleeping in.

Maybe summer is inviting you to do the same? To receive your own unique season of parenthood, your own summer plans {or lack thereof}, your own summer budget, your own real disappointments, your own real life.

And because I’m not going to Belize or doing anything impressive, I’ll be right beside you in all my ordinary, real-life glory.

you may also enjoy

When Life is a Broken + Beautiful Mashup

Choose Life, Even When It’s Falling Apart

When Summer Gives You Crazy and You Give It Right Back

I’m all about helping you recapture the possibility of your right-now life.

If that sounds like something you need, sign up in the box below to receive fresh hope and possibility delivered to your inbox no more than a couple of times a week.

{P.S. I’ll be hanging out on Instagram this summer. Join me?}

Good Words for Your Mother’s Day Weekend

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These reads are for the mothers — the ones struggling to find the good in their own defeat, the ones entering the season of bleacher-sitting instead of potty-training, the ones who long to speak life-giving words, the ones who want a guarantee and don’t have it.

When Motherhood Has You in the Valley of Defeat

One of my own favorite posts I return to over and over because I never stop needing it.

While I don’t feel I know much as a mother, I am 100% convinced that moralism and charts and systems may get the desired results on the outside, but they won’t begin to touch the inside.

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The Ministry of a Mini-Van by Kimberly Coyle

Like Kimberly, I’m in a new season. And no one told me how abruptly it would arrive and how fleeting the goldfish years really were. My own mini-van is dinged up but well loved, wearing the scars of her service much like I as a mother wear mine.

It is strange to think I’m no longer the mom wrangling three littles, or shuttling kids to elementary school…I’m the mom who cheers from the sidelines of their lives, while they run and run and run towards their future.

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One Thing Your Teenage Daughter Doesn’t Need You to Say by Emily Freeman

Because I do have a teenage daughter and I think about the truth of this post whenever I’m tempted to speak words that will only teach her to hide behind her good behavior.

And when she hears adults tell her to be an example, she thinks that means she can never mess up, can never have problems, can never just be a teenager with struggles like everyone else. She might then mature into a woman who believes being a Christian means having it all together, saying all the “right” things, staying a few steps above everyone else.

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Good Mom by Shannan Martin

An honest post for all of us. Raising kids isn’t about guarantees; it’s about receiving grace and letting it spill over. It’s about trusting the God who holds us and holds our kids, even if they want nothing to do with Him. This is how we learn what real grace and true love are all about.

I know our kids who look us straight in the eye and say they don’t want God might be the very people God uses to remind us of His unflagging affection and authority.

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Wherever you are on Mother’s Day weekend, may you be reminded of all the mothers who have held you, nurtured you, and loved you into the person you are today.

It takes all of us, doesn’t it?

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3 Ways to Avoid Despair as You Pursue Your Hoped-For Work

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This post right here? It’s a timely one. I’ve just come off a couple of weeks of working full-time hours for my part-time job. Even though it was expected and planned for, when I’m working overtime + making sure people get fed and clothed and picked up and cheered on from the bleachers and consoled, you can count on some ugly aftermath.

You can count on a house that looks like a Category 20 hurricane swept through it. You can count on a wife and mom who is tired and cranky. You can count on this same exhausted woman to do something completely irrational like paint the living room that has knotty pine walls and has thus far required three coats of primer and can she just pretend she never started this job?

And you can count on her wanting to abandon her hoped-for work because she hasn’t written in ten days and therefore no longer feels like a writer. She knows starting is the hardest part but ohmygosh, the starting doesn’t ever get easier.

I have cleaned the kitchen, scrubbed the toilets and walked the dog this morning. It’s called “productive procrastination.” It shows up every time I have lost the will to write and also before I need to pack for a trip.

I’m oddly thankful for these adverse circumstances. They remind me that pursuing our hoped-for work isn’t all writers’ conferences and art shows and a thousand likes on social media. It’s not all perfectly steamed lattes at the coffee shop and thoughtful contemplation and art that flows off fingertips.

Presently I’m writing on my porch while also spraying poison on a patch of ants that showed up out of nowhere. And I have a child with a fever on the sofa in the living room with half-primed walls.

Sometimes pursuing my hoped-for work looks like duct taping my pajama-clad self to the chair and writing already, even though I don’t feel like a writer and I want need to finish painting the living room and my kids have been sick and out of school a lot this year.

The most epic battles are often fought on everyday soil. Fighting for our hoped-for work in the midst of our messy right-now lives is no different.

Today I give you three ways to keep your perspective and fight despair when you’re barely hanging on to your hoped-for work:

1. Don’t envy another’s work life.

I struggle with this one in embarrassing ways, believing the lie that if only I had her circumstances or his capital, I could meet my goals and do my thing. I’ve believed this just today actually. And every time I find myself sliding into the pit of envy, I have a choice to make: surrender to resentment or receive my own life.

Ironically, the challenges of the everyday usually become my inspiration. Frustration is often the fuel that gets me writing in the first place. This entire series on work — it’s been born out of my own wrestling. I thought I needed a spacious writing life to be the writer I wanted to be. God is showing me otherwise. It’s messy. But the mess is my medium and God makes art out of it anyway.

There is freedom that comes in receiving your own life instead of envying someone else’s.

And don’t be fooled by the seemingly grand and spacious lives of others. There are unique struggles that come with each stage of success. Keep working at your own pace, on the canvas of your own life.

I will never stop needing this reminder from Henri Matisse:

Much of the beauty that arises in art comes from the struggle an artist wages with his limited medium.

2. Accept abrupt transitions.

When I was in college, I ran the 10,000 meter race in track. That’s 25 laps around a 400-meter track. Please don’t be impressed. I literally needed half of those laps to get warmed up. I was never a sprinter. It was true of my running life and it’s true of my writing life. Sure, I can hustle when I need to. I can crank out a product when I’m called on. But hurry comes at a cost because I’m a contemplative at heart. I’m a long-distance, slow-paced runner living in a world that spins a bit too fast for my liking.

I don’t have the personality where I can easily switch from task to task and embrace interruptions. I have the personality that might glare at you with violent eyes if you interrupt me while I’m in the middle of deep, thoughtful work or when more than one person is audibly asking for something at the same time.

This is why I live in a perpetual state of whiplash. My right-now life doesn’t accommodate my slow-paced taste and my need for long runways.

I try to get up early because, again, it takes me a long time to adjust to wakefulness. Plus it gives me time to align my spirit with the heart of God and embrace the day’s work before the rest of the house wakes up. Because when that happens, I’m jolted into the world of squabbling siblings and “Mom! Are you making oatmeal?” Then we stumble out the door and rush three kids to three different schools. By 8:15 in the a.m., I need a nap.

Each day is a mashup of paid work, housework, writing work, family work, kitchen work, and unexpected work. Stop times and start times are not always under my control. I may be deep in the writing zone and then pow! My littlest guy gets off the bus and I am quickly zapped into the world of Pokemon trades and after-school snacks.

Changing hats so abruptly throughout the day is not my jam. But it is my right-now life. And change hats I must.

Sometimes we can use abrupt transitions as an excuse. “Well I only have an hour so it’s not worth sitting down to write.” That hour is still an hour of hoped-for work. And while it may not be enough time to finish anything, it reminds you that this is what you do. It’s the daily discipline of reclaiming your identity and relaunching your hope. It keeps you in the game and serves as a deposit on deeper work that may show up later.

3. Tell someone.

The land of hoped-for work can be a lonely place. Too often, we dream our dreams in solitude and do our work in isolation. We languish and lose momentum and tell ourselves we’re crazy. It’s the rare person who doesn’t need some sort of accountability to stay the course.

Community, whether it’s two people or twelve, helps keep me going. I’ve dared to speak my hopes out loud and I’ve had the privilege of cradling the dreams of others. Part of the reason I sat down this morning is because I told my “someones” I would keep writing — my writing friend in New Jersey who I vox and e-mail with, a small community of creatives across different time zones that I talk to regularly {thank you technology}, my husband who gives me Saturdays to work on a writing project. And you.

Yes, you. You take time out of your busy life and meet me here. And sometimes you tell me that what I wrote made you feel normal instead of crazy. You allow me show up in your life and serve you. You remind me that this hoped-for work is my offering. You guys are my “someones.”

My next post will have a few more tips to keep you going. And then I’ll have a wrap-up post with my favorite resources to share!

Thanks for staying with me. Y’all sure know how to keep a sister going.

What are your greatest obstacles to pursuing your hoped-for work in the midst of your right-now life? 

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If you’re new around here, we’ve been winding our way through a series on work. Here are the other posts in the series:

How to Embrace Your Right-Now Work Even if it’s Not Your Hoped-For Work

One Gift Your Right-Now Work Is Giving You, Even If You Smell Like Marinara Sauce

4 Simple Ways to Create Time When You Don’t Have Any to Spare

4 Reasons Why Your Right-Now Work Matters to Jesus {even if it doesn’t matter to you}

2 Ways to Give Your Hoped-For Work a Voice. Right Now.

3 Ways to Avoid Despair as You Pursue Your Hoped-For Work

“Never stop starting.” And 5 Other Truths to Keep Your Hoped-For Work Alive in the Midst of Your Right-Now Life

8 Favorite Resources to Help Make Your Hoped-for Work a Possibility in Your Right-Now Life

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