A Tale of Two Christmases

“Mama,” the little girl said, “should I make a list of everything I want for Christmas?”

Her mother stood still and quiet for a moment. She was carefully hanging tinsel, pulling the strands gently from the glittery pile. “I think,” she finally said to her daughter, “that you should come and sit and listen to a couple stories.”

The girl came quickly, for she loved stories of every kind, and she knew this would be a special type of story. It would be a story from when her mama was little, like her. She brought her big ball of red yarn and her crochet hook. She was making a long, long chain to wrap around the Christmas tree. Her mother continued to pull the tinsel apart, piece by piece, and tape in carefully in a dangling, sparkly row.

The two worked busily with their hands as the stories began…

a gift for you

So, guys, I don’t know what’s been happening in your life, but mine has been crazy. God is mixing us all up and around and backwards and it’s really good but also quite disconcerting.

There is a verse that says, “Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” (Pr. 19:21) I’m holding tight to that promise. I know He has good things in store for us, beautiful redemptive things.

Preparing to speak on the subject of my book for the first time brought up a lot of thoughts, a lot of memories. It stirred up the reality of what my journey really was: a wandering through the desert, dying of thirst. I was empty of the ability to heal myself, but God…

I’ve been seeing those two words around quite a lot lately and they catch me right tight.
But God, in His graciousness.
But God, in His mercy.
But God, in His justice.
But God, in His overwhelming, unrelenting, glorious love. 

…but God poured truth into my darkness.

I am ever so humbled and ever so thankful.

I created a little ebook just for you. It isn’t long. Perhaps not even profound, but it is me… with all the honesty and rawness I can muster, laced right through with the glory of a God who meets us right smack dab in the middle of our sorrows.

Based off the talk that I shared at the Spring Banquet, it is a manifesto of how God healed my deaf ears and brought sight to my blind eyes.

It is true that I was lost in a desert but there was more going on than just that.  

The cover art is by Brianna Siegrist (didn’t she do a marvelous job?).

I’d love to send a free ecopy to each and every one of you.

All you have to do to receive it is sign up for my newsletter {in the sidebar or by clicking here} and the next edition will contain a download link.

 Thank you, dear readers. I pray you will be blessed. 

p.s. consider sharing this with a friend?

why telling yourself to “just be happy” doesn’t really work

She’s the mother of four.

Their ages are her testimonial to the tired, overwhelming days. 4, 3, 1, and 3 months.

I’m the mother of none.

My empty house is the testimonial to my years of tears and empty longings.

We seem so different on the surface.

She can’t know what it’s like to face infertility every. single. day. She’ll never know what it is like to cry blistering tears over the hundredth negative pregnancy test. She’ll never understand the moods that send a usually sane person into there will never be a baby and I’m so tired of waiting for one so I’m going to turn the spare bedroom into an office and pretend that I never wanted a baby anyway rage.

I’ve never born and birthed four children. I’ve never sat in the middle of three screaming little ones to nurse the baby that has been waiting for twenty minutes, crying in hunger. I’ve never locked myself in the bathroom and cried because there are kids banging on the door and I. just. need. one. second. to. breathe. I’ve never sat up night after night after night with a colicky baby and a four year old with insomnia.  I don’t have four children pulling on me every day, every hour, every moment.

The surface is so different. It’s so easy to stand from the place you’ve experienced and think,

I would give anything to have all those kids hanging on me.

or

I would give anything to have a whole evening just to myself.

But here’s the honest to goodness truth:

We’re the same. This friend and I. We’re exactly the same.

She says,

“I tell myself every day that I should just be happy, but it doesn’t work.”

And I’ve said that same thing and felt that same condemnation for failing at just being content with what I have.

And when I stop in my tracks, in my baby-hunger, in my dwelling on my struggles– and I listen past her longings for a night off of mothering, I hear the same heart-beat.

The same struggles.

We’re all just human after all. So I write back and say, feeling the conviction to my bones that this is my answer too:

Oh, I don’t think we can really make ourselves be happy. I think we just have to surrender the stuff that makes us unhappy. And instead of thinking, “What’s wrong with me that I can’t just be happy with what I have?” (which makes us discouraged) just say, “God, thank you for the things I do have.”

I think it is time that we face this lie head-on. It’s really not about us being happy. It’s not about being tough enough to stuff down how much we struggle and pretend that everything is good.

It’s about surrender.

It always has been.

It’s about me, standing right here in my empty house with barrenness marking my journey, and saying:

God, I thank you.
I thank you for beauty.
For the fellowship of Believers.
For a husband who loves.
For snowflakes plastered against my windows.
For the barn full of animals.
For the friend who stops in for coffee.
For the teenage girl who asks to be discipled.

I thank you for grace, upon grace, upon grace.

Dear ones, there will always be things that make us unhappy. There will always be trials that drag the hope right out of us.  You can walk out of this desert tomorrow, but I guarantee that you’ll stumble into a new one soon after. It’s life. 

I can’t make myself be happy. I can’t even make myself be content. But I can make myself surrender the things that discourage me and thank God for the things that bless me.