Three hundred and sixty-five days.

A year has gone by.

A year ago tomorrow I was praying about going to Virginia.
A year ago the day after tomorrow I signed up.

But I never expected this. 

I planned and had expectations, but what God did this year was amazing.

The truth is that this year has been the hardest, most wonderful year of my life.  To face sickness, tragedy, and depression.  To stand before God at a loss of what to even say to Him and to have Him love me in the midst of it.  To learn the hard way that His arms are strong and capable of carrying me home.  Words don't cover things like this.  And then to leap- to go to Virginia.  My time there was sweet and shaking and purposeful.  To learn about eternity.  To fall in love with people from every other nation other than my own.  To tell people about our God- to care about them and the smallest details of their lives- it felt like flying.  To have that kind of a summer follow that kind of a winter felt like a promise coming true.  And then, to come back to campus with a new job and a different perspective.  To relearn faithfulness in the small things.  To grow again.  I never expected my life to change so much in one year.  My goals, my dreams, my heart, my approach to God, to people, to life, even.  To redefine success.  To redefine love.  To redefine friendship.  To watch all of these things change and shift before my eyes has been incredible; it's all too much to wrap my mind around.

I can't help but imagine fifty years from now tracing back through my memories and saying- I remember that year.  That was when everything changed.

To remember loss and the sound of the ocean.  jet noise and a room full of students.  guitar strings.  pencil meets paper.  bright smiles.  salt and rain and bright stars on sandy beaches.  snow and anchors and breaking.  That year was the beginning.

I don't know what comes next, friends.  I face pages yet to be written.  There's a sad sweetness for the past and exciting anticipation for the future, and a deep rooted faitfulness for what's right now.  I'm excited and ready for risking and jumping and flying again- whatever that looks like, whenever it comes.  whatever the next three hundred and sixty-five days may hold. selah.

Like freedom in the spring

Merry Christmas.  I caught myself today saying it so many different ways to so many different people.  Sometimes I say it like a statement.  Sometimes I say it emphatically!  Some moments it's more like a question?

Sometimes Christmas feels like a question.  I don't know what kind of family you have or what kind of life you come from, but my guess is that it's not perfect.  It has flaws and scars and maybe wounds.  Maybe deep, empty silence.  Maybe things you wish were different and people you make wishes for.

Yet that's not what today is about-

That's what occurred to me today as I sat around my own table, with my own family, with my own self, with my own flaws.  We are imperfect people who were rescued by a perfect love.  That's what it's about.  It's about the redemption plan created to buy back our hearts from darkness to light.

It's about this idea that if the whole Bible is true- radically, emphatically, undeniably true- then redemption is possible for us.  Light is possible for us.  Love is possible for us- even out of our flaws and scars.  That because of this child born of a virgin, in a manger, to a rough and broken world, we can have a relationship with God.

And that feels like a miracle to me.

No matter what else feels wrong, that's right.  That is a reason to celebrate today. With the sunrise and with the sunset.  With my flaws and with my family.   Redemption- through a child in a manger, through a God big enough to rescue, and through a king who will make all things right again, like freedom in the spring.

Merry Christmas, dear friend.  I hope you spent it with people who know you, people who remember what has been but have hope for what can be.  May you never run out of reasons to celebrate.

"Love with reason, love without reason, and love with reason not to."

In all honesty, I sucked at that today.

I write these things not because I have everything together, but because I don't.  Sometimes I'm unloving and argumentative and completely awful.
And that's exactly the point.   To examine our flaws together, to trace every knick and every fissure.  To work on them, piece by piece, day by day, moment by moment.  To put goodness back together again.

 love joy  peace  patience  kindness  gentleness  self-control

Let us set our compass north and head in the true direction of home
[even when we feel lost]
Let's try to make peace where there isn't any
[and be honest when we fall short]
Let's attempt to right the wrongs
[and admit that sometimes we don't have all the answers]

Let us try again tomorrow
[and thank God for the grace to begin again]

(Here's sharing, with permission, an actual letter written to an actual friend many years ago.  When I write letters, I put my heart into them.  Here's hoping you'll understand that.  Here's hoping this might be for you this winter.)

Dear friend,

Hey there.  I've missed you.  I hope your life is filled to the brim with good people and things that bring you joy.  Reasons that wake you up in the morning, that make you feel alive.  I know that has not always been the case.  Winter is the coldest season, and it feels like the longest.  The days get shorter and darker and it's much easier to lose your purpose and sense of direction.  To have light, to have enough to see by, to live by, to live in is not always the easiest thing.  Sometimes the easiest thing is to get tangled in negativity and pessimism.  The world says that the person that doesn't expect anything won't be disappointed.  To just take what you're given.  I used to believe that and it kept me from getting hurt.  But it also kept me from truly living.

Sometimes winter is a fight.  To expect good things.  To trust that God is in control, that we're safely in the palm of His hand.  To feel alive.  To remember our sense of purpose.

Don't let the cold steal your sense of wonder.  You are an incredible human being, and the world needs people who have come alive like you, who have a reason to believe.  Don't lose that.  Don't let anyone take it.  Don't listen when they tell you that you're wrong for having wild dreams.  Wild dreams and steadfast hope in our God are the only way to live.  If winter is a fight, I'm fighting right alongside you.  Until I get to see you again- love with reason, love without reason, and love with reason not to.

"And miles to go before I sleep"
-Elizabeth

To be like a child again

Finally finishing the semester has left me with extra time.  It feels like magic.  I've been spending most of my extra time these days with my nieces and nephews.  They're wild kids who I am deeply in love with and fiercely protective over.  They have brought a depth and a richness to my life that I can't explain and sometimes don't understand.  Hanging out with them has made me think about what it means to be like a child.

Kids are unabashedly honest.  They don't know any differently.  They say what mean without thinking about how it sounds or how it makes them seem.  While some of what they say is embarrassing or down right mean, it's refreshingly honest--something my speech could sometimes use a little more of.  Kids also aren't ashamed to love what they love.  If they love climbing trees, they'll run around covered in grass stains.  They don't care what they look like or how them seem to other people.  What other people think isn't important.  They're doing what they love.

One of my favorite things about kids is that they know how to dream with abandon.  My nieces and nephews want to be doctors and lawyers and ballerinas.  And who am I to tell them differently?  When I was little I wanted to be a lion tamer, a teacher, and the first woman president.  When I was 10, I was convinced I was going to be Jane Austen.  Kids naturally have reckless dreams.  They don't know phrases like "You can't do that," or "that's not practical."  We're the ones who tell them that.  They have the courage to dream with freedom and to believe good things can come true.  To be like that again, to be so convinced that what lives in your heart is possible, is beautiful to me.

I remember trying to explain the concept of money to one of my nieces.  After a few minutes of frustration, I kept telling her "It pays for things.  It buys stuff."  I just repeated phrases like that thinking, eventually she'll get it.  After ten more minutes, I remember insisting, "It's important."  She smiled at me and said, "Why?  It's just green pieces of paper."

Whenever the power went out as a kid, I fell in love with life all over again.  There was a magic and a simplicity in how everything simply stopped.  Responsibilities seemed temporarily suspended, like life was hanging in midair so that we could have a day to really live in each other's company.  The TV was broken, the radio didn't work, phones ran out of battery, and everything that seemed to normally fill our days was exposed as useless.  As a kid, it seemed weird to me that every day held things that didn't seem to matter, while rare days like these held the only thing that did- loving people.

I tell you all of this because I've been trying to be more like a child lately.  It's not something you'll hear most adults say.  But there's a beauty in dreaming with reckless abandon, in speaking truth, in loving without prerequisite, and in trusting that you'll be taken care of.  Now, I'm going to frolic in the snow and in the outside cold and in the warmth of people I love.  I dare you to do something child-like today.

It's finals week.  My brain is mush, but I'm leaving you with a November memory:

I got to help lead a discussion today, but it was so much more than that.

I got to stand in front of a class today and say that we matter.  Your story matters, and what you have to say is unique and important.  There are things in your life worth fighting for, worth writing about, and worth sharing with other people.

I got to ask questions and grapple with answers.  I got to be a part of a discussion about need, poverty, community, isolation, richness of spirit, individual struggle, and sweet victory.

There's no way this is going on my resume.  Take a breath and reach deep down in that part of the heart that aches every time it feels like none of your dreams are possible or even close to coming true.  That's where I'm tucking today away- do you feel it, right there?  Today is wrapped in a blue-cloud cloth, tucked away from cynicism and pessimism and all the other -isms that try to tell you to stay silent when you feel like singing.

For all of the moments that have felt insignificant, today, this day, was for you.