Marian Vischer

Good Words for Your Mother’s Day Weekend

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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“Never Stop Starting” & 4 Other Truths to Keep Your Hoped-for Work Alive in the Midst of Your Right-Now Life

On February 24, I sat down to write a tidy little post for those of us who feel like our right-now lives are keeping us from our hoped-for work. Eight posts and over two months later, I’m still learning how to live responsibly in the right-now while not letting go of the hoped-for. It’s continually relevant because it’s a tug-of-war we experience every day.

This “balance” is not for the faint-hearted. Not only do you battle the limitations of the right now, you battle the voices of the right now.

Do you actually think you’re a real writer, a real artist, a real counselor, a real photographer, a real teacher, a real leader, a real coach?

Aren’t you neglecting other things that could use your attention?

Wouldn’t it be easier for you to let go of this dream and settle for a normal life?

The answer is yes. To all of those questions.

And that’s why we need encouragement. Because making space for our hoped-for work when there are sheets to wash and kids to raise and a real job to show up for takes creative strategy and courage. Sometimes we’re convinced that the voices are right. We’re tempted to close the coffin lid on our hoped-for work, cry a few tears, and move on like a responsible grown-up.

I’m mostly for all for being a responsible grown-up. But I wrote this series because I don’t think the answers are as “all or nothing” as we assume. There’s hope in the messy middle. So today I give you one more pep talk in this final post of the series.

1. Honor the sacred rhythms of work and rest.

You are not a machine that can be programmed. You are a person who needs to be cared for. A person with limited brain space and finite energy. Rest sometimes feels lazy but it’s one of the most productive things we can do for our right-now work. Whether it’s a weekly one-day sabbath from all work or stepping away from the screen when you feel stuck, learn the rhythms of rest that are fruitful for you. This is how we maintain momentum, sanity, and perspective. Also, your work will be better. I promise.

2. Your right-now life and your hoped-for work may be more closely tied than you think.

While I blogged in the midst of marriage and motherhood and homeschooling and public schooling, I learned how to create content, how to market that content, how to run a self-hosted WordPress site, how to interpret Google Analytics, and how to create basic graphics for my posts. Unbeknownst to me, I was acquiring what smart people call “a skill set.”

A little over a year ago I ran into a friend on a rainy Friday. We chatted for a few minutes and she mentioned that the local non-profit she directs could use someone to help with their new website, manage social media, help create content, etc. She knew I could do these things because she’d been watching me do it on my blog.

All those years of making space for my hoped-for work in the midst of my right-then life? It had layers of purpose beyond what I could see.

Not giving up on writing in the midst of the messy everyday ended up earning me a steady paycheck for my right-now season. I still don’t make money blogging, but I do make money because I’ve been blogging.

My point? Keep showing up and doing the work. Be open to learning new skills that accompany the work. You never know how it may all be mixed up together in happy, surprising ways.

3. Don’t focus on numbers or popular support.

It’s okay to become successful but don’t let wishful outcomes mess with the heart of your hoped-for work. It’s a normal temptation, one that even Jesus dealt with as his own work was finding favor with the masses. I love how Tim Keller breaks down this pivotal moment in the life of Christ:

When Simon told him that there were huge crowds gathered to see him, Jesus said that they should immediately leave. Though he was riding a wave of popular support, Jesus left it behind. Why? He was much more interested in the quality of the people’s response to him than in the quantity of the crowd.  

— Jesus the King: Understanding the Life and Death of the Son of God by Timothy Keller; passage referred to is Mark 1:35-38

We want to know that our hoped-for work will mean something in quantifiable terms. We want an “ROI,” a return on investment for all the blood, sweat, and tears we’ve poured into it. Too often, we assume that ROI means “big.” Sometimes it does. But I think we’re prone to measuring results in ways that are all wrong. Jesus wasn’t interested in how many people were in awe of his message. He didn’t come to be popular. He came to change hearts with his love and his truth, to call people to himself. He said the road would be narrow. {That’s code for “most people will reject what I offer.”}

From Jesus, we learn to be wise and even strategic, but not at the expense of faithfulness to our true work.

Jesus ascended to fame. But he just as quickly fell into disfavor, a disfavor that led to his death by the same crowds that had previously cheered him on. But life defeated death. And our hoped-for work bursting forth from the messy right-now reflects this same redemption. Friend, be faithful to the work. Keep showing up. You are an offering to your Maker and to the world he made. He can be trusted with the outcomes.

4. Never stop starting.

You may have awesome momentum for a solid month. And then everyone in your house gets the stomach virus and passes it around for two weeks. Momentum has packed her bags and hitchhiked to Montana. Motivation got tired of waiting for you and took off with Momentum.

It doesn’t take very much real life to yank us off the rails. That’s why you need this three-word mantra: “Never stop starting.”

Isn’t that what we do every day in so many ways, whether it’s exercise, parenting, spiritual disciplines, or sticking to a budget? Just last night I was fed up with schedules, fed up with my kids needing money, and fed up with the dailyness of dinner. I wanted to run away {which is always my default fantasy.} But this morning I woke up with an ounce of resilience and said to myself, “Okay. It’s a new day. We can do this.”

You’ll stop. And sometimes you feel like you’ve got no start left in you. You don’t need a lifetime’s worth of start. You only need enough for today.

5. You need reinforcement.

You’re pursuing who you are while living in a world that is trying to make you into someone else. This is war.

Like soldiers, we need reinforcement by way of fresh hope and steady encouragement and one another. On the days when you don’t feel like fighting and in the moments when you’ve stopped believing, return to this space and remember what you’ve forgotten in the daily grind of right now.

Share it with your friends, your family, your community. You may find some unexpected community in the process. And if you do? Link arms with likeminded others. We all need our someones.

When the right now feels extra messy and the hoped-for work is languishing in a corner, come on over to this place and find possibility again. I’ll have a link to the entire series in the right sidebar. It’s all yours.

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Though this is my last official post in series, next week I’ll have a list of ALL my favorite resources — links, books, and online spaces that keep me going and teach me useful things along the way. It’ll be fun.

I can’t thank y’all enough for showing up here. Your company has been a gift. I appreciate each and every word you’ve shared in response. You’ve encouraged me more than you know.

I’ve got some fresh content up my sleeve but I look forward to revisiting this topic of hoped-for work and entertaining your questions on the subject. Keep them coming! What are your greatest obstacles to pursuing your hoped-for work in the midst of your right-now life? What specific encouragement do you need for your own life?

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

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

I have a small index card that I’ve lost and found again at least six time in the last couple of weeks. This tiny card boasts my scribbled out notes for what was to be my next post in the series on work. Notes in the form of bullet points that I hoped to flesh out later with real sentences. But life hasn’t allowed for real sentences, much less paragraphs-turned-blogged-posts lately.

Sometimes life only allows for bullet points.

I’ve been writing a series on work and I have loved it. The more I write, the more I realize I have to say about the subject. Last week I asked a question on the blog’s Facebook page and I was surprised by the quick and thoughtful responses. Your questions and frustrations only fueled the content I hope to share.

But my right-now life and my hoped-for work and not in sync at the moment. I can resent that. And I have. Or “I can see my limits as a gift instead of as a liability,” as my friend and fellow writer Emily Freeman puts it.

The truth is, my next post on work was supposed to go out a week ago. But I’ve had some limitations to reckon with. Time and space are in short supply. I’ve had several moments of external panic and many more moments of internal resentment over the whole thing. I’ve been tempted toward two opposite extremes:

1. Steamroll my way through my task list anyway, fueled mostly by fear and anxiety.

2. Give up.

I’ve done both of these in the past and am tempted to fall into either ditch even today. But on Monday morning a funny thing happened. My husband and I were talking about the upcoming couple of weeks and he could sense my edginess. And by edginess I mean the slamming of kitchen drawers and yelling for kids to get in the van already and “Where is my COFFEE?!?”

Thankfully he was a kinder soul than I was in that moment. He asked what I needed, what he could do for me during these next couple of weeks that are going to be extra hectic.

The morning school commute gave me time to sit with his generous question and to figure out what, exactly, I did need.

“I need time to write,” I said. “Writing makes me feel like my truest self and connects me to God.” I need to find the time and space to keep writing, even though it’s going to be crazy. I don’t want to lose my creative work and my momentum.”

I felt instantly better. There is power and freedom in voicing our needs and allowing someone we trust to help us carry both our burdens and our longings. But there was something else, something even more remarkable. My “art,” my writing, my hoped-for work — it stood up for itself with a voice I hardly recognized:

I matter. I am not merely a hobby or a selfish indulgence as she is prone to think. I am food for her soul. I am the thread that connects her most deeply with her Maker. I am the therapy that helps her sort through the rubble and clear out the cobwebs. I am her offering.

That was on Monday. Today is Wednesday. By the time you read this it’ll be days later. I knew I wouldn’t get to write until a couple of days after that conversation. But I was able to bear both the busy-ness and the lack with a bit more peace.

Why? Because my work had wedged her big ol’ audacious self into the space of that real conversation and said to my husband {and to me}:

Girfriend needs to write. Are you gonna give her a room up in this place or not?”

This week, my hoped-for work sounds a little bit like Madea and looks like an index card.

It doesn’t look like completed blog posts or a finished series on work or a lead magnet on my blog or a turned-in book proposal.

But it does look like promise and it feels like a priority. The bullet points matter. They serve as shorthand arrows that point to a deeper story.

Today, I searched through a pile in my office again for the holy grail index card and thought to myself, “There it is. My big important work scrawled in bullet-point form with smeary pencil + two different colors of ink.”

Sometimes our right-now life means our hoped-for work looks like bullet points instead of books.

My right-now life means that I run around a lot and write half-coherent thoughts on receipts that end up in the bottom of my purse with gum wrappers and sloshed coffee. It means I dump my favorite purse onto the kitchen counter and attempt to soak up the coffee from the leather while trying not to cuss in front of my kids as I salvage my precious thoughts. {True story. As in, this very thing just happened yesterday.}

Here’s what I’m trying to say.

My hoped-for work — the writing I do in the wee hours of the morning and in the last minutes of the day — it’s not exactly magical. It’s messy. It’s limited. It is literally sitting in scraps all around me waiting to be turned into something a bit more masterpiece-ish.

But those scraps are important because I’ve said so. I’ve cleared off my desk and put the junk on the floor.

The contents of my dumped-out purse are still on the kitchen counter. My e-mail can wait and so can the dishes. Why?

Because I need to sit down right here and tell you something:

Don’t give up on your hoped-for work just because your right-now life feels like a bully. Friends, we don’t have to be all or nothing about this.

Just because that guy has figured out a way to jump ship on his right-now in pursuit of his hoped-for doesn’t mean you have to put all your eggs in one basket like he did.

Just because she’s been blogging for less time than you and has a book deal and you still have two subscribers — one is you and the other one is your mom — doesn’t mean you quit writing.

Just because you have more ideas than your precious brain can hold and zero time for those ideas to come to life doesn’t mean the ideas aren’t worth scribbling down and dreaming about anyway.

Here are my two bossy takeaways:

1. Do what you can. Right now.

It begins with giving your work a voice so it can speak up for itself. This is another way of saying, “Prioritize.” Maybe your work’s voice sounds like deep and broody like Johnny Cash. Maybe it sounds British and bawdy like Adele. You already know that my work’s voice sounds like Madea because she is old-school, means business, and is funny. I need Madea on my shoulder because she tells all the other voices to “shut the _____ up.”

Your work has a voice. Listen up. {And you might want to share what you hear with someone else who loves you.}

2. Use what you have. Right now.
  • A notecard when you don’t have time for a blog post.
  • A piece of furniture from the thrift store even though you really want to have your own fixer-upper.
  • A friend you meet for coffee when you don’t yet have the courage or time to create the larger ministry you envision.
  • A children’s class at your church while you wait for a teaching degree.
  • A little league gig when your real dream is to coach for a living.
  • An iPhone camera in your diaper bag because your fancy Nikon can’t fit between the wipes and the sippy cups.

Sometimes we think our longings have to take a certain shape or they can’t take any shape at all. But that’s not true. Perfection is the enemy of Possibility. I 100% believe that there are right-now ways to practice our hoped-for work. Your ideas, your hopes, your dreams — they are still allowed to dance even if they haven’t received an invitation to the ball.

Your right-now life may feel like a lean and barren place. What could possibly grow there?

Anything. But new life always begins with a seed. And seeds tend to be tiny.

My bullet-point index card, my “Exhibit A” of “I have no time to write” — it turned into this post I hadn’t planned to write. I looked at it with discouragement and said to myself, “My creative work has been reduced to bullet points right now.”

Writing through this unexpected object lesson has been its own serendipitous consolation.

The bullet points testify that your right-now offering is enough. They serve as a deposit on what may one day grow into the vision that’s dancing about in your head.

But first? Take what you have right now and give it a voice.

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 Pursue Your Hoped-For Work When You’re Busy With Your Right-Now Life”

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

Once Jesus’ “official” ministry on earth began, he ascended to fame quickly. Jesus, a no-name carpenter from Nazareth, fed thousands of people, grew a loyal following, healed sick people, and confounded the establishment. In today’s cultural currency, he’d be out-trending Beyonce. #Jesus

Even his followers got in on the fame. They became an entourage, fighting over who was his favorite and becoming recognized themselves.

And then his story went off the rails.

He allowed himself to be crucified. To his followers this must have looked like He was complicit in his own murder, his own career suicide.

Does this sound like too much for a blog post situated within a little series about work? It does, doesn’t it.

The truth is, I’ve been wrestling with this Jesus part for weeks and haven’t known where to put him. Jesus feels dramatic and out of place. And maybe that tells us something. We compartmentalize Jesus. He’s with us at church, as the topic of our small group discussion, at a funeral, or when we’re in the depths of despair.

But Jesus seems either awkward or removed when we talk about work. Except that’s He’s not. He’s 100% relatable and 100% present.

If you feel alone in your right-now work —

If you feel insignificant and unimpressive —

If you feel like you’re getting lost in the dust of everyone else doing “important and meaningful work” —

Take heart. You have a friend who cares deeply about your work, one who meets you in messy places, one whose real life reveals that all our work matters.

When we realize this, all of work can become a sacred sort of water cooler, the place where we meet up with Jesus and discover that we have a knowing friend who’s with us in every role and every task, both the gritty and the glorious.

Here are 4 reasons why your work matters to him.

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1. Jesus is a friend in my right-now work.

Whether it’s the office, the coffee shop, the kitchen, or the field — Jesus is with us in our labor as a kind and honest friend.

Do you realize that nobody gets you like He does?

Sometimes, knowing Jesus is with me in my work feels like Jim and Pam at Dunder Mifflin. I find myself eye-rolling. And I imagine looking over at Jesus, both of us sharing a knowing smirk. Why? Because He gets it. He gets me. He knows my frustrations. He knows I can be unproductive and frustrated. He knows people can be idiots. He knows that sometimes I lash out. And while He may lovingly nudge me toward confessing that haughty attitude and giving it to him, he knows why I feel the way I do. And being understood goes a long way when I feel tired, hopeless, self-righteous, unappreciated, or uninspired in my everyday roles and in my everyday work.

Maybe that sounds weird to you, making Jesus so “human” like that. I get it. Except that Jesus was a real person, a real carpenter, a real teacher. He had actual friends, people like you and me, and they adored him.

It’s easy to be in one ditch or the other when it comes to Jesus. We can turn him into our best friend, our buddy, our “Jim.” Because He is our friend. But we forget that he also holds all things together. Literally. Like, the whole world.

Or we can see him as only God, as only seated on his throne and nowhere else. Jesus can seem like an abstraction instead of a real companion.

But Scripture, the story of his real life, and his actual relationships on this earth show us that he was both.

2. He didn’t exalt one form of work over another.

His first miracle had to do with drink as he aided and abetted in sheer celebration.

He stretched the food so that hungry crowds could fill their stomach.

He washed dirt from people’s feet.

He broke bread and poured wine.

He made his living as a carpenter, a laborer.

I know what you might be thinking. “True. But he also preached and taught and healed people and raised the dead. These are hardly everyday labors.”

You’re right. But when you read through the Gospels, these don’t get more spotlight than the bread-breaking and the fishing. They are simply part of the narrative of a man who was born to everyday people and did everyday work even though he pulsed with the literal power of God.

Sometimes the narrative shifts and we see his epic power juxtaposed against his everyday work — signs and wonders that would astound anyone and rightly earn trending hashtags. Yet the epic is seamlessly woven into the everyday. Sometimes He even turned away from spectacular work, choosing instead to rest or pray.

These things should tell us something.

Perhaps you’re “just a stay-at-home mom.” You’re “just a customer service rep” or “just a teacher” or “just a creative.” You’re in good company. The “justs” don’t define you even though the world and your own mind are trying to convince you otherwise. Jesus was described as one who “had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.”

He lived as an ordinary man doing mostly ordinary work that was infused with extraordinary love and redemptive power. His earthly fame and “success” was short-lived by our standards.

There is no “sacred / secular” divide with our work, not from Jesus’ perspective. There are no “Christian callings” that should be more esteemed than other vocational callings. Jesus’ very life reveals that it is all sacred.

3. He met people in their everyday work and came alongside them.

He went to men working on their boats.

He fished, building relationship with them in the everyday rhythms of work.

He talked with a woman while she fetched the water she needed for the day — both helping her and asking for help from her with the everyday business of getting water.

He came to Levi while he was sitting at his tax booth.

Will he not also meet you in your everyday work, giving you strength when you’re weary and hope when you’re burned out — at the stove or by the bedside or sitting in the windowless office?

4. He used all kinds of work as a metaphor for the kingdom of God. This is huge.

So many of Jesus’ parables are grounded in work.

  • Leaven and flour — kitchen work
  • Sowing seeds — agricultural work
  • Building a house — construction work
  • The dishonest manager, property and stewardship, vineyards and tenants — financial and managerial work
  • Lost sheep — shepherding work
  • Giving a great banquet — the work of hospitality

Jesus spoke the language of work because we speak the language of work. Why? Because work matters.

Our work is a key filter through which we understand the kingdom of God and our unique yet everyday roles in this world.

Our work can be the gate through which we become more intimately acquainted with Jesus, our faithful companion. Both the work that allows us to “feel his pleasure,” and the work that is so frustrating, all we can do is cry out to him for help, renewal, wisdom and understanding. Either way, our work is where we can find Christ. It’s not a place where he retreats into the heavenlies and leaves us on our own.

No matter what your right-now work looks like, Jesus’ call to you is the same as to the men and women who linked arms with him 2,000 years ago: Follow me.

He extends his hand to you just like he extended his hand to them. Their lives with him were not compartmentalized. As they fished, He fished with them. As they hosted guests, He was in their midst. As they worked to feed hungry crowds, He was right there, showing them how to do it and helping them.

He is with us in our work because if we are in Him, it is also his work. {John 15:4-5}

Will you trust Him with it?

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I wish I could hand you “4 tips to only doing work you love and that matters. And how to make millions of dollars doing it.” That’s sort of what we all wish for, right?

With gobs of money and time, I’d hire out the unpleasantries, be less stressed as a mom, pay experts to help me, and bask in “meaningful work” all day.

I’d also have little need of Jesus. No desperation. No need of his strength that meets me in weakness. No need to hope. No being surprised and relieved when possibility shows up out of the impossible.

I’d have everything I wanted, yet be without the most meaningful gift my messy life hands me when it feels extra uninspired — a Jesus who shows us in the trenches as my companion, my comfort, and my help.

I’m learning to meet Him in work that is complicated and hard — in marriage, in motherhood, in writing, in running my home, in work that doesn’t come naturally to me and makes me feel like a failure.

Ultimately, this isn’t about me. It’s about Him. Meeting Jesus like this compels me to worship, to love, to live all of life — whether I’m wiping tears or writing words — coram Deo, before the face of God.

Friend, your “meager” right-now work can actually hand you the most invaluable gift — the company of Christ himself. One who has always met his own in their right-now work and compelled them to offer whatever they have each day, even as they hope for change.

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If you’re new here, we’ve been talking about hope and possibility when it comes to our work, especially the work we’re not loving so much.

“How to Pursue Your Hoped-For Work When You’re Busy With Your Right-Now Life”

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

Hope and Possibility, straight to your inbox! Subscribe in the box below.

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

I don’t know how long I’d been complaining, mostly to myself, about how I didn’t have time anymore to be a writer. I had a long list of excuses — both valid ones and ridiculous ones — to justify my bouts with self-pity as I envied the generous writing lives of others. I camped out in my certain failure and assumed that I’m light years away from reaching a single goal, all because of time limitations.

That’s where I was in January. But more on that in a minute.

If you’re reading this post, perhaps you’re curious about how to move forward with possibility into something else — whether it’s something creative you long to do on the side, a ministry or volunteer opportunity you’d like to pursue, or how you can keep your day job while moving into other work that feels more in line with who you really are.

You know you need more time and you hope this post will tell you the big juicy secret.

I don’t have a secret. But I do have a story — my own story as a wife, mom, employee, and hopeful writer whose current season of life is bursting at the seams. Yet somehow, somehow, I’m recovering bits of time to write in the margins. From this right-now story, I have takeaways that you can implement right where you are.

Two things before we begin.

1. Ironically, I have a long history of being terrible with my time. It goes without saying that I am not an expert on this matter. Which is its own special qualification because I know what it feels like to be bad at this whole time management thing.

2. There are countless awesome resources on time management and how to pursue the work you love, books written by actual gurus. {I’ll list some of my favorite resources at the end of the series so stay tuned.} But here’s the thing. I haven’t read most of the guru books. I’m not looking for “40 days till my dream job” or “how to make six figures in six months.”

There’s nothing wrong with any of that but I don’t want to turn my life on its head in order to reach a certain goal. My husband and I have three kids who are growing up all too quickly; these four people in my life come first. I also have a sweet part-time day job that I work on when my kids are at school. So I’m looking for everyday ways to lean into my hoped-for work even as I’m busy with my right-now life. I believe that’s where most of you are as well.

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Here’s what happened in January:

I read this post by Ann Voskamp — “How to Make Time and Space for the Life You Really Want.” It was a re-post I’d read before. But something about it clicked.

I was sick of letting my limitations boss me around. I was tired of telling the ideas in my head that they would have to wait to be born into words, that maybe they would never be born at all.

I was tired of self-pity.

Instead of feeling guilty about not using my time more wisely, Ann’s post about the young soccer players of Ko Panyee challenged me to make time with the ingredients I have on hand instead of wishing for the ingredients I don’t have. If a bunch of barefoot kids in a developing part of the world could run toward their dreams by building a soccer field out of floating trash, surely I could wring out some extra writing time throughout the week.

God gives us everything we need for space — but we will have to make space.

God gives us all the ingredients for time — but we will have to make time.

God gives us everything we need to live — but we will have to make a life.

No one just gets space. 

No one just gets time.

God gives you the raw materials — but you will have to make your life.

~ Ann Voskamp

I decided to make peace with imperfection and to receive the raw materials of my own writing life, even if it came to me in pieces instead of in plenty.

We’re halfway through March and I can tell you that it’s working. It’s messy and imperfect. But it’s working.

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So here are the 4 takeaways — how to create time when it doesn’t seem to exist.

{Keep in mind that these apply to any new tasks or goals you have in mind, even if they’re not work-related.}

1. Do the things that only you can do. Consider how you might outsource the rest.

I’m the only one who can be my husband’s wife and my kids’ mom. I’m the only one who can write the words that are burning a message in my soul. Because I’m personally contracted with an actual job that pays me real money that our real budget actually depends on, I’m also the only one who can meet those obligations.

{I’m not outsourcing watching my boys play golf together.}

Everything else is negotiable.

  • I can pay someone else to really clean my house once or twice a month. We’re not doing this yet but we plan to in a few months.
  • I finally taught every child how to do their own laundry and I decided not to micromanage any aspect of it. Because micromanaging takes time.
  • I gave up making the kids’ lunches every day. The cafeteria does the cooking.
  • Dinner is so simple right now — tacos, spaghetti, anything I can do in the crock pot, etc. We order pizza once a week. My goals are basic: dinner around the table together, easy prep, easy clean-up, something everyone will eat.
  • I’m on the e-mail list for an online grocery ordering service when it comes to our newest supermarket. Order my groceries online and then pick them up at the store without leaving my minivan? Yes please.

Sometimes we know we need help but our thinking is stuffed inside a box. Get out of that box and look around. There are almost always creative solutions. Maybe your kids want to earn some cash? Or a neighbor kid would love to get paid for doing some housework or mowing your lawn? Perhaps you can barter things with a friend? Maybe online grocery ordering is totally worth the time and energy it saves? {Bonus: No impulse buys.} These are just some ideas to get you started.

2. Create a new rhythm.

Once I finally felt inspired to “make time” where there didn’t seem to be any, the first action step I took was a game-changer. I decided to go to bed even earlier than I already did so that I could get up earlier. Maybe you’re in a season when you can stay up late and sleep in. Also, if you have babies or toddlers, you probably need all the sleep you can get. Different seasons of life rule out certain options. The point is, what are your options during this season?

My forty-something brain is not the same as my twenty-something brain. And my forty-something schedule is radically different too. This brain right here becomes illiterate after dinner. For me, right now, mornings are where it’s at. I love being up before the sun and before my kids / I hate getting up before the sun and before my kids. Translation? Waking up has always and may forever be painful for me. But the reward of having that daybreak time alone and giving myself a long runway to drink coffee, become coherent, read, pray, write, etc. before I have to go upstairs and make breakfast is a game-changer.

A scene from “morning time.” It’s dark outside and the house is quiet. Glory. Also? There are dead flowers but this is not the time to tidy.

This morning space clears out my brain’s cobwebs and sets the stage for the work that begins after I drop the kids off at school. Psychologically it says to me, “You are taking your work seriously. You are making time for important things.”

Here’s another idea. Depending on the kind of work you hope to do, consider blocking out all or part of a weekend every now and then. This is something I just did a few weeks ago and plan to do again this month. I went to my parents’ house 30 minutes away, hunkered down in a guest bedroom, and worked for most of my Saturday. It’s amazing what a gal can get done without refereeing fights and acting on the sudden urge to paint a wall.

3. Honor the sacred yes and no. {And don’t feel guilty about it.}

I have two writing goals I’m working toward. Because I’m saying yes to them during this season, it means I’m saying no to most everything else.

This is essentialism, something I define as “the art of editing your own life.” In his book, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less {highly recommend}, author Greg McKeown says this about editing as it applies to our commitments:

a good editor is someone who uses deliberate subtraction to actually add life to the ideas, setting, plot, and characters. Likewise, in life, disciplined editing can help add to your level of contribution. It increases your ability to focus on and give energy to the things that really matter. It lends the most meaningful relationships and activities more space to blossom. 

To create time where none seems to exist, you have to get downright bossy. An edited life may not be popular or easy to come by. It’s painful in the moment to say no. But when you’re able to live in the assurance and abundance of your truest “yeses,” it’s worth it. Living like a bossy editor isn’t necessarily a forever thing. It’s just a right-now thing.

4. Wherever you are, be all there.

We’ve all heard this, right? In an age where tiny computers in the palms of our hands invite us to step through a thousand simultaneously opened doors, being present takes discipline, a word I sort of hate.

Recently, I read these words on Instagram from my friend and fellow writer / wife / mama / plate-spinner, Elizabeth Maxon, and they struck a chord:

Balancing an unconventional job as a writer and mommy / wife role isn’t always easy. Honestly, it’s messy. Here’s the best I can do — When I’m with them I can’t carry any guilt about what I’m not doing as a writer and when I’m writing I can’t carry any guilt about what I’m not doing as a mama. Being completely present is key. Wherever you are today, be all there.

I’m the worst at being “all there.” I blame part of it on my brain which has always fired a thousand thoughts at once ever since I was a child. Busy brains make it hard to be present. I blame part of it on my own propensity to feel guilty about pretty much everything. And finally, I blame it on not cultivating the habit of committed presence. Habits take practice. And one of the habits I hope to cultivate during this season of life is “all-in-ness.”

If I’ve set aside time for writing, I try to be “all in” and only write. I limit the distractions and don’t feel guilty that I’m not doing something else with that time. If I’ve set aside time to watch a movie with my kids, I try to be all in and not feel guilty for not writing or not cleaning up the kitchen. During this season of life in which the hat-changes are many and the energy is in short supply and the limitations seem to have the upper hand, the simple but challenging practice of presence is the key to making our time and energy count.

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I’d love to hear your ideas. Let’s talk about them in the comments or on the blog’s Facebook page. This is the good work of community; we’re better together. I plan to list all sorts of resources at the end of this series. I’d love to include some of your ideas on how to create time and save energy.

This post is part of a series: “How to Pursue Your Hoped-For Work When You’re Busy With Your Right-Now Life”

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

Hope and Possibility, straight to your inbox! Sign up in the box below.

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

The perks of my long-ago waitressing job were free family-style feasts before the dinner shift and leftover focaccia bread to take home. The non-perks of the job were sore feet and the smell of garlic and marinara sauce that seemed to linger on my skin even after I showered.

I was 25 years old and three years married. Instead of attending law school after college, something I’d planned since I was 10 years old when I aspired to be the next Sandra Day O’Connor, I got married and recovered from four years of self-induced exhaustion. I also reevaluated everything I thought I wanted and ultimately chose college teaching over a career in law.

The road to my revised career wasn’t tidy. When my husband and I both began grad school three years into our marriage, we’d already trudged through more vocational trial and error than we’d expected to in our young marriage.

When we moved to a new state, him to pursue an advanced degree in Economics, me to pursue the same in American History, we were excited and hopeful. And also broke.

He went to school full-time. I’d applied to the program late so I took just one class while I waited for in-state tuition and hoped for a teaching assistantship. I spent the rest of my time greeting hungry customers with “Buonasera! Welcome to Bella Notte.” I was no stranger to humbling jobs but this felt extra-humbling. Not because it was waiting tables, a job I sometimes actually liked, but because of the timing. There I was, full of eagerness and enthusiasm, on the cusp of finally knowing and pursuing what I really wanted —

And I could only afford to take one class.

Instead of running headlong into the rest of my life, I was mostly rattling off the nightly specials and refilling the drinks of strangers.

But I had that one course. Week after week, I sat with a mix of students held captive by a quirky and brilliant professor who wore plaid sport-coats, walked with a limp, and challenged every notion I held about the American South. I instantly adored him. And I was hungry for all that academia had to offer, voraciously devouring each book and article, writing my heart out, and becoming deeply engaged in discussions.

I knew this was where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do. What I didn’t know was that this particular professor was an Endowed Chair at the university. And that he was one of most famous historians in his field. And that it was a ridiculous honor to sit in one of his classes.

His class was simply my happy place in the midst of unhappy work. Had I known who he was, I would have curbed my enthusiasm like any reserved history student with half a clue.

Dr. Freehling took notice of my enthusiasm, cluelessness and all. Unbeknownst to me, he’d spoken to the Director of Graduate Studies. So when a position for funding and a teaching assistantship opened up in January of 1999, I got a call. Out of the blue. The position was all mine because you don’t argue with an Endowed Chair. I still cry just remembering this story.

Dr. Freehling went on to become my major professor as well as a father figure to me over the next four years. He had a daughter exactly my age who lived far away. In a way, we became surrogates for one another. He believed in me, made me a better writer, and saw potential that I didn’t see in myself.

When my husband and I found out we were going to have a baby during my last year of coursework, I was overcome with angst about the future of my PhD. Instead of hammering home the importance of my work and the privilege I’d be giving up, Dr. Freehling gave me the permission and encouragement I needed to embrace the fleeting season of motherhood and all that it would demand. The PhD would always be there; a baby would not.

And that’s how God used a loving atheist historian to provide me opportunity when none existed, to hold my hand as I stepped into courage, and to gently guide me off that same path when it was time to close one chapter and begin a new one.

It would be the first of many reminders that I am only so much in control of my story.

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Those four years in graduate school were a roller-coaster in every way. If I think of that time as a book, it would look something like this:

  • Ch. 1: Obscurity and Nightly Specials
  • Ch. 2: Opportunity knocks.
  • Ch. 3: School is hard and awesome. I love my professors + friends + classes + all the books.
  • Ch. 4: The neighbors beneath our apartment are growing weed. And there are roaches here.
  • Ch. 5: Let’s move.
  • Ch. 6: I don’t believe in God anymore.
  • Ch. 7: Maybe I do.
  • Ch. 8: We are so freaking broke.
  • Ch. 9: Yay! I’m finishing my coursework!
  • Ch. 10: We’re having a baby?!?
  • Ch. 11: I quit.

What can I say, we packed a lot of crazy into four short years. Those days of smelling like marinara sauce were short-lived in the whole scheme of things. But it didn’t seem that way at the time. I fought for my perspective on the nights when the shifts were long and the tips were bad. I didn’t think in terms of “hope” and “possibility.”

Thankfully, they hunted me down anyway. That’s because our stories intersect with others’ stories and with an ultimate story, like a divine matrix.

I see how every one of those chapters shaped me invaluably. How hope kept showing up even when life felt like it wasn’t working out. I wouldn’t change the person who came out on the other side.

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So what’s the one gift your right-now work is giving you? A story. A story in which you, the main character, perseveres and comes out changed on the other side. 

I already know that’s not what you want to hear. Story doesn’t make your right-now work go away. I’m not even providing you with a three-part action plan. What kind of a helpful blogger am I?

Also? I just used the “p” word — perseverance. What is happening? I’m the gal who writes about grace! And rest! And letting go!

Perseverance sounds like the business of bootstrapping our way through hard days. Not exactly a message of hope for you, my exhausted and heavy-laden friend. But what if I told you that your hard days of wiping bottoms or listening to angry customers are part of a story?

I believe they are. A story that’s situated “in between.” I believe this is where we all live out our narratives. And while I know this on the epic level of redemptive history, I forget that this reality plays out on the everyday level too.

All of life reflects the tension of living “between the now and the not yet.” Our literature, our paintings, our movies, our labor — they reveal our human frustrations and fears, as well as our hopeful longings — longings that will one day find fulfillment. Longings for beauty, for justice, for reconciliation, for rest.

We taste them now. But it’s only a crumb in comparison of what’s to come.

Work was created to be perfect. And personal. It wasn’t created as drudgery. It wasn’t supposed to encompass things like layoffs and bureaucracy and environmental destruction and rejection letters and a toddler smearing her diaper across the wall during naptime. Our work is marked by brokenness, but it’s also infused with the hope of redemption.

Sometimes our work is glorious and we feel fully alive, tasting a spoonful of what it was meant to be. {I’m sorry I just said “spoonful” after discussing poo.}

In the midst of our right-now work, we need to know we have a place in a story that’s going somewhere. And we need to know that our right-now work is just as much a part of the story as the hoped-for work. 

Perhaps we need look no further than our own stories to remind us. As I remembered that redemptive saga from 1999, I recalled many other scenes from my life, scenes in which my potential felt small and my dreams seemed ridiculous. From this vantage point, I now see what I couldn’t appreciate then. I get a glimpse of story. Perhaps you can look back and say the same thing.

Perseverance is renewed when we place our right-now and our hoped-for within a narrative — both our own narratives and the overarching narrative.

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My favorite novelists are the one who produce the best characters. As we follow these characters through a story, we see that they do not return the same. They embark on a journey. They break out of prison. They stare death in the face and survive. And they come back changed. The treacherous mission, the White Which, Voldemort, the season of marinara sauce, even the seemingly endless chapters of poo and tantrums  — they do not have the last word. Hope does.

I believe hope is the fuel of perseverance. And that perseverance is the bedrock of story. Just ask Harry Potter or Bilbo Baggins or Lucy Pevensie. Ask Andy Dufresne and “Red.” Ask Jesus.

The curtain closes on disappointment, devastation, derailment, and despair.

We wait.

And we wait.

The curtain opens on redemption. And we go wild.

We’re able to keep watching, to keep reading, and even to keep working when we are buoyed by hope and possibility. And because story is both epic and everyday, we see redemption in little ways, every day, if we’re willing to look for it.

— when he finally apologizes

— when your co-worker actually thanks you

— when you’re surprised that your own feeble efforts produced dinner on the table at the end of an impossible day

Perhaps you feel like the work in this scene of your life will never end. That the curtain has closed, never to re-open on anything better.

I can’t promise that perseverance will ever land you the exact brand of your hoped-for, not in this life anyway. But I can remind you of story, promising that you’ll come out changed on the other side, perhaps even tinged with hope in some small way at the end of this very week.

When the days are long, remember that you’re writing a story with your life. You don’t have to show up with a prepared plot. You simply have to show up with hope.

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You May Also Enjoy

When Hope Swoops In and Unties the Knots {Or — The Cure for a Week of Doom}

On Stories and Scars and True Transformation

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This post is part of a mini-series.

“How to Pursue Your Hoped-For Work When You’re Busy With Your Right-Now Life”

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

Hope and possibility, straight to your inbox! Subscribe in the box below.

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

I long to be a full-time writer. I used to keep that a secret because our dreams are vulnerable things to release to a watching world. What if it never happens? What if everyone then knows I’m a “failure” by my own standards? And maybe by their standards too?

The great thing about being in my 40s is that I’m a tad more brave. I’m less afraid to tell you what I truly desire and what I really think. This year, I resolved to write brave. Less sugarcoating. Fewer disclaimers. More real.

So there you go. I’ve said it. Writing is my dream job. Not because it sounds easy or lucrative but because my DNA has the helix of a writer.

{And that last sentence is precisely why I will never be a scientist.}

Perhaps your dream job is teaching middle school kids or coaching young runners or being able to quit your full-time job so you can be at home with your children.

Right now my real life means I don’t get to be the purveyor of words as I’d like to be. There are other priorities that trump writing.

Roles like wife and mom and domestic engineer coexist with my part-time paid job. {A part-time paid job that involves writing so yay for that.} And jobs that give you money are critical because they pay for necessities like groceries and kids’ braces and my orthodontist’s flat screen televisions.

I’m profoundly grateful for my work — the work that pays me and the work that doesn’t. Sometimes God gives me glimpses of my unique purpose in a particular task, why I’m just the person for it. That insider’s look is a rare privilege we don’t often get.

But much of life doesn’t feel affirming like that, does it? Like you, I live in the tension between the real and the ideal. Whether it’s vocation, marriage, motherhood, or keeping house, I confess that plenty of my right-now work isn’t my hoped-for work.

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I believe I can admit these things and still be grateful for my real life. I believe it’s possible to embrace my right-now season of motherhood even as I’m nostalgic about the already-gone season and weepy about the yet-to-come season. I can acknowledge that it’s hard and exhausting and I don’t know what I’m doing. And also that it’s wonderful and I’ll probably miss it one day.

Right-now motherhood doesn’t always look like hoped-for motherhood. I love my children even though I sometimes want to kick motherhood to the curb.

So how can we grateful for what we have yet still long for something else?

Part of the answer lies in the fact that we do this every day in countless ways. You may have everything you once hoped for — marriage, children, home, community, work. But that doesn’t mean you’re not struggling. This is what it’s like when we live in the place between dreams come true and dreams that aren’t yet. 

Because I’m a Christian, I believe that every good gift in this world is a reflection of what we’ll one day taste in all of its fullness. Even the most obvious gifts this life may offer now — the gorgeous home, the beautiful family, the dream job, the revitalized neighborhood, the perfect meal — are but dim reflections. We were created to enjoy good gifts. These are ancient and sacred longings.

But I’ll be the first to confess that my longing for the gifts usually displaces my longing for the Giver.

I know this. But it doesn’t stop me from trying to gather up as many dim reflections as I possibly can, hoping that the sheer abundance of them will add up to the shining, glittering fullness I long for.

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Back to my dream of a full-time writing life. Right now I don’t get to write my own stuff as much as I’d like. I can be pouty about it on the inside. Sometimes I even feel downright panicked, which is weird. But when that panic settles into my chest, it signals two different things that can actually coexist even though they need to be unpacked differently.

1. That my agenda for my life has displaced my trust in God’s agenda for my life. 

and / or

2. That I’ve succumbed to fatalistic, “all or nothing” thinking. When that’s the case, it’s time to think outside the box and and step forward with hope and possibility. 

I’ll get to this second issue in my next post. For today, let’s camp out in the first issue.

My agenda for my life has displaced my trust in God’s agenda for my life:

When I’m holding my agenda with white knuckles, it’s become an over-desire. I’m believing the lie that I know best what I really need to be fulfilled and that my real life is getting in the way. It makes me super fun to live with.

This doesn’t mean that certain things, like writing and communicating, shouldn’t be as life-giving as they are to me. It doesn’t mean I should feel guilty about the way I’m wired. And it doesn’t mean that writing can’t be pursued in some form.

This also doesn’t mean that I need to pull myself up by my bootstraps and pretend to love the many mundane but essential tasks that make my family’s world and budget go ’round. It doesn’t mean I should feel guilty because I don’t love ALL THE DOMESTIC THINGS.

I’m human, y’all. And so are you. Like I said, we have the ideal and we have the real. Living in the middle is not for the faint of heart. And let’s be honest, work is called work for a reason. It’s literal labor.

Here’s what I’m getting at:

Sometimes my right-now work feels like it’s interrupting my true work. And when that happens, it means my ideal life has smothered the gifts and opportunities of my real life. 

Friends, this is backwards. Not to mention dangerous.

I love what C.S. Lewis says about real life:

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So what’s the secret?

We all walk a fine line as we seek to establish the rhythms and priorities of our everyday lives. How do we know what to let go of {or possibly even outsource} and what we need to keep? Sometimes we say yes to things we shouldn’t and they become obstacles that keep us from our real priorities and a life of semi-sanity. Sometimes we mismanage our time and that keeps us from our truest priorities. I’m guilty of both.

But sometimes our real priorities are the very things keeping us from our hoped-for work. That’s the season I’m in. Maybe you’re feeling it too.

I can panic over this. {And I have.} Or I can make peace with it and dare to receive the beauty and opportunity, realizing that this “really is the life God is sending me day by day.”

The heart of the issue reveals that I’m in a standoff with Trust.

  • God, do I trust that you know best right now?
  • Do I trust that there are purposes I may never know?
  • Do I trust that there is a time for everything and every season under Heaven?
  • Do I trust that you are still doing unseen “kingdom work” in the midst of my right-now life?

When I’m able to answer “yes” to those questions, I can embrace my right-now work because I trust that God has given it to me. This is not a cosmic killjoy sort of God. This is the God who loves me and created me. He is cheering me on. He is actively living through me, whether I’m cleaning up dinner, forgiving someone who’s hurt me, publishing a blog post, working at my job for a local non-profit, or asking for wisdom.

Trust is freedom.

And free people are way more awesome to be with than fretful, bound-up people. I don’t know about you but I want to live free, no matter how bound-up my circumstances seem.

I can embrace my right-now motherhood, messy though it is, because God is humbling me every day through it. And even providing moments of great hilarity and joy, despite all the tears and fears.

I can embrace my seemingly insufficient writing life because He’s the one who put words in my soul. I can trust Him with the offering and the outcome, no matter how meager it seems.

I can embrace my current path of struggle while I hope and pray for a breakthrough.

Each day, I know what it’s like to sit down at a table where both Celebration and Frustration are dinner guests for the same meal. I’m learning that I don’t have to resist this hard-to-swallow reality; I can simply receive it.

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Jesus is the secret behind the secret.

I can write all day about receiving your own life. I can motivate you with words like “accept” and “embrace” and “gratitude.” But those are superficial fixes if I don’t tell you the real secret.

Jesus dealt with this same issue when he lived real life on this earth. Scripture says he sympathizes with every hard thing we’re going through because He can relate.

I don’t throw in Jesus at the end of a post because it’s the Christian way to wrap this up. I speak from the realness of his Word and from my right-now life. I speak from weeks that have dredged up more questions than answers, weeks where The Gospel of Marian’s Way has ever so subtly and subversively displaced The Gospel of Jesus Christ.

When I examine the life of Jesus, I see that He was fully human. He had plans for each day, much like I do. He got hungry. He became tired. He sometimes needed a break from the crowds. He knew what it was like to be frustrated and discouraged, even angry. He was bursting with gifts and wonders that he sometimes had to keep on the down-low.

He held so much human potential. 

How ironic then, that Jesus, the greatest communicator and miracle-worker the world has ever known, spent 30 years in the trenches of the everyday and only three years in public ministry.

Every interruption, every annoyance, and every grand opportunity — they were all received within a single framework: the will of the Father.

It’s taken over 2,000 words in a blog post that’s breaking every rule of the internet to arrive at the truth I never realized until I wrote it:

So that WE can receive our own lives in the same way.

Jesus knew what it was like to live in the tension. He prayed over his own suffering while also receiving it. And aren’t we exceedingly grateful? Because He received his own life, He released the hope of redemption into every nook and cranny of the world.

This same Jesus is alive and well within those who believe. It means that we too can make our plans and dream our dreams and serve the world with our gifts. But we proceed like He did, from a place of trustful and hopeful surrender to the Father’s will.

You don’t have to choose a life of exciting intention OR a life of dismal surrender. Jesus weaves all things together into the cohesive fabric that is your life. Ironically, limitations and possibility are BFFs. {But they usually hate each other before they can become friends.}

Receiving your own life means you hold all things — the mundane and the marvelous — with open hands of gratitude, acceptance, hope, and possibility.

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Yesterday a friend sent me some encouragement from Psalm 25. The title for that Psalm is “Teach Me Your Paths.” In it, David pleads for protection, for deliverance, for wisdom about how to proceed from his troubling circumstances. Instead of formulating his own strategy, he affirms the attributes of God and takes comfort in his love and character. In verses 20-21, David asks these things:

Guard my life and rescue me; do not let me be put to shame, for I take refuge in you. May integrity and uprightness protect me, because my hope, Lord, is in you.

See that little word “hope” there at the end? Tim Keller says this about “hope” as it relates to this passage:

Verse 21 uses the word ‘hope’ to translate a term that means to wait eagerly for God. This is not resignation or passivity but an active stance toward life.

Did you hear that? Hope is active and eager!

But hope is not like a relay baton. We don’t grab hold of it and take off sprinting toward our own glorious win. Rather, we sit with it. We pray over it. We release it to the One who is Hope incarnate, the One who holds all things, including our very lives and longings, in his loving hands.

Friends, we can receive the here and now. We can enjoy the presence and power and perspective of Christ today. And we can do that while waiting eagerly for a more spacious place — whether that spacious place is a different job, a less exhausting season of parenthood, resolution in a difficult marriage, or more time to pursue the longings that God has placed in your heart.

Here’s what I know. There is freedom in receiving your own life. And there is hope for redemption.

But it might mean dying to your current agenda, which isn’t the same thing as dying to your dreams.

Nearly all of the most cherished and beautiful gifts in my life have been born out of something that either hurt badly or had to die. “Interruptions” can be gifts like that.

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If you’re like me, living within the tension of your right-now and your hoped-for, here’s a prayer for us, an arrow to rightly orient our minds before we can move forward with possibility.

May this prayer divinely settle into the soil of our hearts:

God, I thank you for my right-now work and my right-now life. I acknowledge that my right now is sacred, a gift from a personal and sovereign God who knows my needs and the needs around me. 

I confess that I long for more, that my right-now work and my right-now life seem insufficient and incomplete. Bottle my longings like you bottle my tears. Sow them in fertile soil and bring about the proper fruit in due time.

May you bring me joy in the right now, diligence in my daily tasks, strength when I am weary, wisdom for the days ahead, and grace for the moments when my ambition and my agenda try to grab the throne that rightly belongs to you. 

Jesus, help me to receive my own life just as you received yours. Give me eyes to see redemption and a heart that isn’t afraid to hope. 

Amen.

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A disclaimer and what’s coming next {even though I said earlier that I’m done with disclaimers}:

A looooong post, I know. But I hit publish anyway. If you’ve made it this far, thank you. {And congratulations. Now go have a sandwich.}

While I absolutely believe that my agenda for my life can easily displace God’s agenda for my life, I also believe that it’s okay and even fruitful to prayerfully pursue our hoped-for work even as we accept our right-now work. They’re not mutually exclusive, you see.

But we can’t move forward with hope and possibility if we’re not rightly receiving our own lives first.

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Need more possibility even as you receive your own life? 

This is the first post in a mini-series on the blog that’s all about moving forward with hope, even as we appreciate the gifts of the right-now.
Enjoy these additional 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

Subscribe in the box below and you’ll receive each new post in the series.

Hope and possibility, straight to your inbox!

*header image and clothesline image courtesy of Pixabay. Amazon link is an affiliate.

How I Almost Let a Horrible Light Fixture Ruin My Life

In a perfect world, life should pause when you move your family and all of your belongings to a new house during the busiest part of the year.

But it doesn’t. We are grown-ups and therefore we carry on, even if we are not always keeping calm. People need to be fed and clothed and helped and loved, major life transition or not. And so, like many of you, I schlep around our three kids who are at three different stages of life in three different schools and with three different sports. Church and basketball practice and birthdays and invites — they all keep going.

And then there is this house, which we dearly love, patiently waiting to be settled into and cozied up so that it can love on us and the people who come through our doors.

These are all the best problems really. We have jobs! And children! Who get to receive an education and play sports and have friends!

We have a lovely house for which we prayed and waited so long, one that shelters us and felt like home from the very beginning.

I write these things to remind myself because over the weekend I was not all, “Yay house and I’m so grateful for shelter!”

No. I was standing on top of my daughter’s bed WEEPING because of a light fixture from 1959. My bewildered husband looked at me and made the dreaded remark that husbands sometimes make when they are trying to console a crazy woman: “It’s not the end of the world.”

But in that moment, it was, in fact, the end of the world. It was so much the end of the world that I left the house and found myself in my favorite Chinese restaurant with a to-go order. Extra rice. And an egg roll for good measure. Because a gal needs nourishment when the world is ending.

This would probably be a good place to insert the backstory.

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I have a teenage daughter who cares very much about her room.

Like her mama, things like color and lighting and aesthetics affect her greatly. We are both “highly sensitive” types in these ways. And while she has HER VERY OWN ROOM on the “lower level” {as we like to call it}, her space has what the Nester refers to as “lovely limitations.” Limitations like textured cement walls, tiny windows that let in minimal natural light, and brown carpet with matching brown rubber trim.

And a light fixture with no globe that hails from 1959, when the house was built.

She’s a freshman in high school. These are the years when the world can begin to do a number on one’s angsty, adolescent, insecure soul. The years when school and activities and the social scene and pressure about the future can demand more than one’s fragile self can give. I want our home and our family to be a refuge from all of that. And because I love her more than words can say, I want to give her a space that says,

Come, child. Come lay your head and rest your cares and let it all go for a spell. Come sleep and dream and feel the love in this place that we’ve prepared for you.

I can’t give her straight A’s or a full-ride to college or protect her from a broken heart. But I can give her soft sheets and a furry comforter and an excessive amount of pillows and twinkle lights.

This was my motivation and my vision, a lovely and cozy sanctuary for my teenage girl who will only live here for a few more years. {Please pass the tissues.}

And then an Evil Light Fixture tried to steal everything.

An Evil Light Fixture with no globe that should have so easily detached from the ceiling and been replaced with a capiz shell chandelier that I got for $20 and had planned to fit ever so easily around the existing bulbs.

But this fixture got all 1959 on me with its sketchy wires and Houdini way of being UNREMOVABLE without the services of a professional electrician. It mocked me as it dangled from the ceiling.

It resembled the torturous lighting of an interrogation room. Which was appropriate because the sudden anger of the moment made me want to murder someone.

Let’s recall the aforementioned sensitivities to bad lighting. This room had the worst lighting in the house. Also? I had less than 48 hours to do complete the project. My daughter was away on a Young Life retreat and I had planned to surprise her when she returned. For two whole months, I’d been planning a secret re-do for this particular weekend.

But back to Friday night.

The Evil Fixture sapped my will to even launch the project. I was bone-weary from an extra busy week. I had everything I needed in place and the clock was ticking. But the perfect  paint color and cozy bedding and party of throw pillows would only make the space look like a girly version of an interrogation room if I could not remedy that fixture.

So I abandoned the cause altogether and drowned my despair in Asian vegetables + extra rice + eggroll in my bed while crying and watching a movie like a responsible grown up.

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Rest {and Chinese food} are magic. By the next day, I had a vision that came to me in bits and pieces.

A lampshade frame.

Yarn and fabric strips glued all Bohemian-like onto the frame.

And this GLORIOUS wall-hanging that the Nester posted just last week.

This is why God made Pinterest.

We come across ideas that lodge themselves in our brains. And then these ideas become friends with one another and help a sister out when the pressure is on.

Here I am on Sunday afternoon with a massacred lampshade frame {from a lamp I snagged off the curb}, a hot glue gun, yarn, and whatever other Bohemian doodads I could find in my craft closet.

Let’s all pretend this is a flattering photo of Marian.

Again, this is the Evil Light Fixture when it was winning.

And this is the Evil Light Fixture DEFEATED and hidden by a Boho chandy.

It was one of the greatest decorating victories of my life. Even more than the flipped-over rug and the dining room turned lounge of yesteryear.

You won’t find this fixture in a magazine. It looks more crafty than couture. I hope to add more yarn and beads to make it a bit more substantial. But it worked. Resourcefulness and perseverance WON. And even though she would have picked a tiered chandelier from PB Teen in a perfect world, she actually said she wouldn’t change her one-of-a-kind chandy, pieced together with love. And a lamp shade from a stranger’s curb. And a lot of anger and unbalanced hormones if I’m being honest.

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I know this post appears to be about a DIY chandelier. But it’s not.

I needed that small victory something fierce.

Life today is more of a balancing act than it’s after been. From morning until I fall into bed, I spend most of my time doing what I have to do {because I’m trying to be a responsible grown-up} and have precious little time to partake of pursuits that make me come alive. Pursuits like writing and pondering and creating. I’ve started some meaningful projects in recent months and been unable to finish them.

There are four unfinished posts in my drafts folder as we speak.

A book proposal that I’ve recently restarted but had to put on hold. Again.

An entire house that’s waiting to be cozied up.

These are hardly tragedies. But Discouragement and Guilt and Frustration and Weariness have been my constant companions. I walk around with a low-grade grief because certain projects that I dearly love have either died or are still waiting to be born. Things that cannot have life unless I breathe it into them.

And so the bullies that live in my brain taunt me with thoughts like:

Maybe you should just give up. 

You don’t have what it takes.

You have to manage your time perfectly.

Just be grateful and quit dreaming.

You don’t have the resources or know-how to make this work.

So when I finished this room all by my big self AND defeated the Evil Light Fixture that felt like an impossible foe, I cried. And also did some high kicks.

It felt like the first win I’ve had in a long time. It gave me courage and confidence. It showed me that the worthwhile endeavors which make us come alive are indeed work and sometimes work is anything but fun. I gutted this one out, y’all.

And it was so worth it.

Most of all it reminded me that there is almost always possibility lurking beneath the impossible.

Maybe this applies to your marriage or maybe it applies to a room in your house with bad fixtures.

Regardless, it’s inspired me to think outside the box about how I can make regular writing a possibility. And finishing my proposal a possibility. And completing one room at a time a possibility. And working through hard relationships a possibility.

And most importantly, thinking about how I might take certain things off my plate so that some of these life-giving possibilities might become real.

Sometimes we just need the smallest of victories to keep us going.

Reminders that redemption awaits us in the most everyday of challenges. Even if it’s just an Evil Light Fixture.

P.S. I know y’all love a good BEFORE and AFTER as much as I do.

BEFORE

AFTER

She told me she never knew this room could look so pretty. Honestly, I didn’t know it could either. It’s been a gift to us both.

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If you’d like to DIY your own Bohemian chandelier, here are my very lazy instructions:

1. Find an old lamp shade and rip off the actual shade so that you’re only left with the skeleton of the shade.

2. Decide the shape of your fixture. I just needed one round oval piece. But you may choose to keep both the top and bottom parts of the shade plus the vertical pieces that connect the two. If you turn it upside down, you could have a beautiful tiered chandy.

3. Choose your yarn, ribbon, fabric strips, strings of beads, pom-pom fringe, or whatever materials you want to use. Cut strips of varying lengths.

4. Wrap the end of each length of yarn or ribbon over the frame and hot-glue it to the inside of the frame. Keep cutting strips and gluing. Do this 5,000 times or whenever you like what you’re seeing.

5. Attach the fixture to the ceiling with little hooks that you hang coffee mugs on. {I don’t know the real name of them but they screw into the ceiling.} I only needed two. Lightweight metal frames dangling with yarn don’t weigh very much so this shouldn’t fall from your ceiling. If it does I am not responsible.

In case you’re wondering, I spent two-ish hours making mine.

Here’s a view from inside the chandy:

I replaced the swirly CFL bulbs that give off murderous lighting with two spectrum halogen bulbs that give off more of a natural daylight. It’s so much lovelier, plus nobody gets killed.

{This post is linked up at my friend Richella’s “Grace at Home” series.}

SUCH a heartfelt thank you to Emily Freeman and Myquillyn Smith for featuring this post on your “Weekend Links.” Your blogs were the first two I started reading way back when and they remain my two favorites. {All the cheeks-blushing / heart-eyes emojis.}

Need more possibility in your life?

I’m beginning a mini-series {4 posts or so} on the blog that’s all about moving forward with hope and possibility. Though this current post is about doing that in our homes, I want to talk about how we do that in our work.

Because maybe your right-now work isn’t your hoped-for work?

And you want to know how to receive your “right-now life,” even as you move forward with possibility into your “hoped-for life.” If that sounds like some encouragement you need, subscribe in the box below and you’ll have each post from the series delivered to your inbox when it’s published. You may unsubscribe anytime you like. 

{Click here to read the first post in the series.}

When the Crazy Begins to Settle & the Imagined Becomes Real: Notes on a New Year

Happy New Year! 13 days late.

Cranking up the blog after the holidays is a struggle every year. Much like cranking up the juicer and cranking up ye olde exercise routine. The older I get, the more I realize that the only way to win is to keep lowering one’s standards. I don’t feel the need to try so hard at ALL THE THINGS anymore. Think of me what you wish.

This is such a weird post and here’s why. For some reason I feel like I can’t begin writing “real posts” until I sweep out the cobwebs of my life and tell you what’s been going on with my big important self. I have all sorts of things I want to write about in the coming year but I don’t feel like I can do that until we catch up.

And by “we” I mean “I” because this is obviously a one-way dialogue. Which is technically a monologue.

Before I jump into the state of things presently, I offer notes on 2015: The Year I Almost Died. Not really. But in retrospect it sort of feels like it.

The year we tried to sell our house again. Then the year we quit trying to sell our house. Then the year we tried selling our house again, again. Then the year our house finally sold and we moved. And then the year I almost died because moving is hell and I mean that with all of my heart.

Amid the whirlwind of showings and chronic uncertainty {and my minivan junked up with laundry and the dog and the kids and whatever chaos I couldn’t get put away before a showing}, some awesome stuff still came my way.

I took a part-time as the communications gal for a local non-profit. I love it and I thank God for it. Five months later, in the midst of moving, I took an additional part-time job. I also loved it. But I chose not to stay for the new year. Still, God gifted me with some beautiful new friends, 23 of whom are first-graders. I miss them but have promised to visit and read them books. I’m so grateful for all that they taught me.

On the home-front, we entered the world of three kids in three different schools — 9th grade, 6th grade, 2nd grade. I almost died again. I still can’t believe how fast it’s all going. We juggle cheerleading and teenagers’ social schedules and boys basketball and sibling squabbles and keeping our kids’ brains from turning to mush because of all the dang screens. Screens that I threaten to throw in the garbage on the regular.

Marian tried to stay strong-ish through it all, even if she did cry nearly every day and have to see her doctor about some medicinals. But moving and sleep deprivation and chaos will eventually have its way with one’s body and soul.

So when I broke my foot three weeks after moving and my kids suffered through some unsavory stuff and couldn’t really unpack or settle in, I almost died again.

December showed up with the flu and ear infections. January welcomed me with bronchitis.

And I realize this post now sounds dismal with a dash of hypochondria but the point is this. How long will it take before I learn that there is only so much one can carry before the mind and body says “enough?” Apparently for me it takes 42 years.

After our holiday travels landed us back home, I committed myself to the ministry of Netflix as I binge-watched {with a capital BINGE} like it was my job and with zero guilt. I finished Breaking Bad and Parenthood. For the win. I felt a strange sense of accomplishment in just finishing something. Anything.

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We’re on the second week of the new year and I’m writing this from my home office. Thanks to the steroid pack I enjoyed last week, I unpacked with an energy I hadn’t known since my 20s. And even though this week I’m back to my lethargic old self and I have a sick kid upstairs on the sofa, my office makes me feel like I’m LIVING THE DREAM.

I haven’t busted out the paint or made her all pretty yet. But she’s open for business and I’m in love.

Last year was hard. I’m not gonna lie. Not in the way that cancer or real tragedy or chronic illness is hard. Not even close. It was a trip to Disneyworld compared to those things. Just hard in a very unsettled, very chaotic, so-much-stress-for-so-long sort of way. I never did get my bearings.

But the crazy thing is this. I am profoundly grateful for all of it. As I look back across the last two years, one thing is crystal clear. God fought for us and I love him for that. Loved ones fought for us too — praying for our house to sell, praying that we’d find one, praying for provision, praying that God would calm the storms.

When we’re waylaid by a season crazy, we can’t see straight and that’s normal. But now, from the vantage point of this January stillness, I look back and I could weep. I never thought we’d get here.

A year ago, I couldn’t have imagined sitting here in a different home in a real office. {Not that my tiny writing nook between my bedroom dresser and bedroom wall wasn’t its own brand of tiny-awesome. I prayed and journaled and wrote my heart out in this space.}

I couldn’t have imagined the meaningful work God brought my way and what a gift it would be to me and to my family.

I couldn’t have imagined some of the doors God opened up — to speak and share with others.

I couldn’t have imagined some of the storms that He would settle, even though all of them aren’t settled.

I couldn’t have imagined how my teenage daughter would also begin to become my friend — that shopping and binge-watching Gilmore Girls covers a multitude of sins. Raising teenagers with gentleness and unconditional love and half a clue is one of the hardest things in my life.

We are both spirited, complicated, strong-willed women. Sometimes I wish we weren’t. But deep down I wouldn’t change us. {Well, I’d probably change myself.}

I couldn’t have imagined the unlikely ways God would begin to teach me about true compassion and how that compassion would begin first with myself and then to my people. For a gal who’s always looked for the book or the formula or the checklist to tell me how to do my life, I’m learning to simply close the books and trash the checklists. Because sometimes good advice can get in the way of God. More and more, God’s Spirit in me leads me to just love my people in a way that casts out fear and sends performance to the backseat.

I couldn’t have imagined that even though this kind of compassion sounds good and I’m rocking it one minute, I’m being way too hard on people an hour later.

Compassion is a process. Each day, I begin again.

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I’m grateful for the journey but I won’t lie. I’m exhausted. And I’ve committed to easing into this year with slowness and stillness and nary a resolution in sight.

And while I couldn’t have imagined so much of the goodness God has imparted after a long season of waiting and upheaval, please don’t get the impression that life is tidy and perfect. I have my fair share of angst and unanswered questions and embarrassing issues and stupid mistakes I can’t stop making.

Hope and beauty, mess and brokenness, excitement and exhaustion — they all live under the same roof don’t they? Though I breathe in complication, I’m learning to exhale trust.

2015 offered more opportunities to trust than I could have imagined. As I consider the unknowns of this new year and the tender places I still guard with a vengeance, Trust is my faithful companion. A companion I wouldn’t have without the ordeals of the last year.

I’m obsessed with fresh starts because I always need one.

As we begin again together, I hope that this little corner of the internet will continue to be a place of real talk and real grace for everyday people like you and me.

I hope to write with more courage and less reluctance. Because we all need brave friends, at least I do, and I’d like to be a brave friend, even if it’s a friend who lives in the internet on the other side of a screen.

I hope that we’ll redeem the epic and the everyday messes here together, that we’ll be able to laugh at ourselves and find beauty in the small things, the broken things, the not-yet things.

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Whether you’ve been around these parts for a while or you’re here for the first time, thank you. And if you’d like to keep up with each new post, just subscribe in the box below!

{Curious about the most popular post here on the blog in 2015? Here you go. Also? I still need to read this post every day.}

When Motherhood Has You in the Valley of Defeat

One more thing: What would you love to see more of here in 2016? Favorite kinds of posts? Favorite topics? Consider this the most informal of all surveys. You can chime in here in the comment section of the blog {scroll back up to the top of the post and click “Leave a Comment”}, on the blog Facebook page, or by sending an e-mail to marianvischer at gmail dot com. Thanks a million! : )