My mom poked her head out the back door this morning to see the sunrise while I was sitting on the porch with my coffee, trying to be a Foreboding Presence to the robins who keep wanting to build a nest over the barbecue grill. Today is the weekend for her, and she likes to make big breakfasts on days like today but I at least got the coffee started since I was up first.
It’s little moments like these that make me grateful to live with my parents. No one I’ve met personally has ever given me grief for this, but you see a lot of disparaging things online about my generation and how we have no work ethic and eat too much avocado toast and need to move back home so mommy and daddy can support us.
But I wonder if the people who say those belittling things aren’t actually envious of those of us who have found and re-formed community with our families of origin. Of the support we offer one another, not transactionally but from a place of love and care and mutual respect. Of the healing we have found because we’ve all grown as people in the years we’ve been apart, and in the new years we now have together. Of the years ahead that I get to spend with them before they go Home.
So write your articles, make your jokes. I’m gonna go inside and see if there’s pancakes and bacon. . . . Accessibility description: The sun shines brightly behind an apple tree several hours after climbing over the Midwestern horizon. A red brick porch column lines the right side of the frame, connecting to a brick wall lining the bottom of the frame. The author’s camper van sits in the grass glistening with dew. There’s actually a gravel driveway under there but nature got ahead of them last year and it’s overgrown. Add that to the list of neverending spring chores.
This is my second HopeWords conference. It’s significance in my life didn’t sink in right away, but over the past year as I put myself out there more and with the anticipation of this year’s conference, I have found that this annual gathering has become deeply meaningful to me.
I first heard about HopeWords last year when Esau MacCaulley posted about being a speaker. He was one of my seminary professors before he landed his position at Wheaton. I got the chance to reconnect with him, and as usual he gave me a hard time about not being traditionally published 🙃(All in good time, friend).
When I saw that Ann Voskamp was in the lineup, I knew I HAD to go. Her book “A Thousand Gifts” was instrumental in helping me walk through the culture shock of my first year living overseas. To hear her in person would mean the world. I dragged along my copy in hope of getting it signed; I was the last one in line and before I could even say hello, the conference organizer whisked her away so she wouldn’t miss Katherine Paterson’s session. I don’t blame him; who wouldn’t want to sit at the feet of the author of “Bridge to Terebithia”? Ann gave me an apologetic look and a quick hug, which I’m more than content with. Maybe in heaven I will find her sitting on a front porch somewhere, and we’ll share a glass of lemonade and talk for a thousand years about all the wonderful gifts God has given us.
I met so many wonderful people, all at different places in their writing journeys and from all over the country. I got to sit and have lunch with Michelle van Loon, an author whose work I found through a mutual friend. I ran into a woman who went to seminary with the author of a book I referenced heavily in my master’s thesis on the Church and the #MeToo movement. Even the small conversations with a mother who brought her teenage daughter to encourage and inspire her writing gift encouraged and inspired me.
I came into the conference feeling so uncertain of myself–even though writing has been the one thing in my life I have ever been confident about, I overflowed with imposter syndrome. “Everyone else here is a REAL author. I’ve only ever blogged and written academic papers. I shouldn’t self-publish, it won’t make me a REAL writer. I can’t pitch my ideas to the agents who came specifically to hear pitches; no one wants what I have to say. Why am I even here?”
But what’s unique about this conference is that it’s not about the business of publishing. It’s about *being* a writer; about wearing that badge with honor and growing into this important and beautiful work that God has given us to do. It’s about being encouraged to not become weary in doing good.
By the end of the conference on Saturday evening, that uncertainty and doubt had washed away. I knew I needed to keep moving forward with launching my book, self-published as it is. To keep looking for places to share about the work I had done in seminary. To buy the domain name and create the Instagram account and make the business cards. To go ahead and call myself an author.
That same Saturday evening, the host announced the preliminary lineup of authors and speakers for the 2024 conference. I signed up right then and there, still in my seat. Now I’m back in the parking lot outside the Granada Theater, sitting in my camper van reflecting on last year’s conference and all that has happened since. It’s rainy and cold this afternoon and there’s no heat in my van, so the minute check-in opens I’m heading indoors, where it will be warm and full of life. And coffee. ❤
taking winter like taking medicine– a bitter herb that goes down rough like the bare branches scraping against each other in the icy winds outside.
taking winter, taking time in these still-long post-solstice nights to keep the inner life alive in the leaves of books and journals until the branches burst with spring buds.
taking winter like taking part in the breaking of bread with beloved souls or in the dance of the earth around the sun, slowly tilting back toward new life.
The fields are bare now, ready to sleep for the long winter. We cook more soups as temperatures drop, watch more tv as the nights take up more hours of the earth’s rotation. I knit stitches on a sweater here, a hat there; pick up my phone to tap out thoughts to copy into a draft later. The work of life continues, but indoors and inwardly. It is a soft work, in which repentance and rest will be our salvation; in quietness and trust will be our strength (Isa. 30:15).
November has rolled around, which means (for those of us in the Northern hemispheric latitudes who experience these distinct seasons) digging tubs of winter clothing out of storage and remembering where the heck you put the ice scraper. In Indiana this year, the frost has come in before the corn has come down; the beans made it but the wind will need to rattle through the tall brown stalks just a little longer before harvest. Rural driving requires reducing oneself from summertime fast-cars-and-freedom speeds to a slow and watchful winding around grain trucks parked on road edges and tractors ambling along as far to the right of the double yellow lines as they can. And when the crops come down and the clouds of dust and chaff stir up, the deer more hastily pick that moment of all possible moments to dart in front of your car — you simply can’t be in a hurry. There are no “New York minutes” out here, and sometimes people are eager to tell me as much.
I do appreciate the slower pace to my days — not just from being in a different state and subculture, but the stage of life I’m in and the work I do to live fully into it. Though I sometimes feel a twinge of “survivor’s guilt” for stepping out of the whitewater rapids of a traditional 9-to-5, I wouldn’t trade this weird and wonderful cobbled-together life for it. Often at the end of an 8-hour office day I would come home with most everything scratched off my to-do list — a mental boost for an Achiever; a tangible set of accomplishments feeding into the feeling of having “earned” the evening’s rest. But these days as I spend a few hours here and a few hours there, a morning in the woodshop or an afternoon typing away at a cafe, a day in the garden with mom or a minute bringing in heavy groceries for dad, I find that my “accomplishments” appear slowly; the cumulative effect of a thousand little things, rather than bullet points that would look impressive on a resume. There are no Key Performance Indices here, and my brain struggles to accept as much.
But again, I would not trade it for all the accolades in the world. I mean…I might try, considering how hard-wired I am to want the win, the triumph, the recognition, the success. Which is why I am seeing in a thousand small ways the reasons God has me here at this place, in this time, for these purposes…I have for so long found my worth and identity in accomplishing things. Sometimes Christians like to point out that “God breaks us down so he can build us back up!” and maybe that’s true, sometimes. But surely not all the time; not as some universal regulation by which He is always confined to operate. I think more often than not, He is far more patient and tender with us than that. At least, He has been with me — even at my most rebellious. A bruised reed he does not break. He declared his own Name to be “gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness.” There is no harsh breaking down here, and God is gently showing me as much.
It is, rather, a slow and gentle dying, like the shifting of autumn into winter — when the days wrap us up in a long, cozy darkness and the fallen leaves crackle underfoot as we walk.
It would seem I’m overdue for my “monthly” blog post. Like anyone else, I have grand intentions of Doing Things, but then get sidetracked or something else needs to take priority or my emotional bank account is overdrawn and I have nothing left to put into words. As such, I haven’t written as much as I would like to; as much as social media marketers and “hustle culture” tell me I’m supposed to in order to “build an audience” and “attract a following” so I can “sell to more people.”
See the problem is, I don’t care. At least, not about the whole being-competitive-in-the-marketplace and getting-my-name-out-there stuff. I’m a writer, not a salesman. A storyteller, not a gimmick-hawker. An artist, not a capitalist. I don’t care about your wallet…I mean, of course I need to eat, and I would love for my words to be the means of supporting myself. But what matters more to me is that whoever does happen to read the things I write comes away with some sense of, “Oh, I never thought about it like that,” or “I needed to hear that today.”
As a result, I end up writing for quality, not quantity. One of the main reasons I collected my old blog posts into a bookis because I wanted to gather the best of my last 20 years into a small volume to be read away from ads and SEO and algorithms that require you to churn out content just to be seen. Social media is how our modern world works, but it is antithetical to how the artist, the wordsmith, the craftsman wants to be in the world. Scroll through any artisan’s Instagram and I would put money on there being a post somewhere lamenting about wanting to do what they love but feeling torn about having to sell themselves in order to do it.
So whether you’ve found me as a stranger through Instagram or YouTube or Facebook or you’re an old friend whose hand I’ve pressed a QR coded-business card into, welcome. If you’re looking for someone who posts a lot, you’ll be disappointed and it’s probably best to move on to the next content creator. But if you want something a little deeper; if you don’t mind waiting for the tastier morsels, I invite you to stay. Bookmark this page, because I don’t even have a newsletter yet (another thing that makes me a “bad writer,” I guess). Make some tea or brew some coffee, ’cause it might be awhile. But I’d like to think it will be worth it. ❤
There’s a certain smell to a late-summer Midwest evening; it stirs up from under your feet when you walk along the fields. Humidity radiates off of the corn with the residual heat of the day. Cicadas scream at you from the maple trees, making sure you know they have accomplished the Very Great Feat of bursting out of their crispy brown shells. Frogs chirp between the cattails as pink clouds fade into a navy blue sky. Fireflies and stars gently blink their way into being, joining the symphony of distant horses neighing, highways and byways whining with 18 wheelers, and trains singing their siren song. If ever there is a time to live in the moment, it is this.
Around this time last year, I was leaving behind notes for the next program director at the college I worked at. No one had been hired yet by the time I left — a symptom of a larger issue I was relieved to step away from. Regardless, I had been itching to move on from the higher ed world for a while; longer than I had even realized myself at the time. I loved my students, even loved much of the work I did. But when my position changed during COVID, it was no longer a good fit for me. So, I gave my notice and set my sights on other pastures.
The plan was to strike out on my own. To freelance as a database designer (something I was skilled at and enjoyed as one piece of my multi-faceted job), travel around in my newly-purchased camper van, and live the digital nomad life. I would relocate to Indiana as a “home base” so I could help my parents out as needed, but be able to visit friends and see parts of my own country I hadn’t yet seen. Oh, and between all those things, I would also begin building something off the thesis I had written as the culmination of my master’s degree–ministry, resources, workshops. I was set to get started on all kinds of Very Important Things.
Reader, only one of those things has happened. I’m here. In Indiana. Home base. Learning to shift my perspectives, plans, and ambitions.
Plans always change, especially when we make a big move. We find that the needs and responsibilities in our new location are different than we envisioned. We find out certain skills don’t translate as well as we hoped. We lose momentum on things we were passionate about, because there are other needs to be met right in front of us.
A year later now, and part of me (well, much of me, to be honest) feels like I’ve lost the plot. Snide, inaudible comments hiss their way through my brain and if I am not careful, into my heart. Things like You have to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. God helps those who help themselves — you’ll never prosper or get God’s favor and blessing if you just wait for things to be handed to you. He’ll only bless you if you’re doing His will, so you must be doing something wrong, or not doing enough. If you don’t have enough faith, God can’t work in your life. No one says these things directly (although they might repost a low-quality jpeg of it on facebook), and they are a poor and disappointing interpretation of Scripture. But it feels like this “must” be what people secretly think when they look at me. Like I’m supposed to be making something of myself, doing all those Very Important Things, and having some kind of outsized impact for the kingdom.
But good grief. What a lot of pressure, and from no one in particular; it’s just a nagging sense of dread, a fear of being exposed as some kind of fraud. Like a spiritual impostor syndrome.
I mean, maybe someone will “find me out” someday. They’ll find that instead of building databases, I’m building compost bins and plowing dirt so we can grow our own food. They’ll find my parents are grateful for me to be back. They’ll discover that instead of making money for someone else, I’m stumbling my way through writing books and crafting things to sell on Etsy so I can support myself by doing things I love. They’ll find that yeah, maybe I’ve lost momentum on the #MeToo project for now, but they’ll also find that I refuse to let it fizzle out because I believe it’s too important for the Church to ignore.
Ultimately though, as hard as it is for me to believe sometimes, those poisonous lies of God must be so disappointedin you are arrows from behind enemy lines. And what anyone glimpses on the outside is not the full picture of what God sees. People are only casual observers–He does the work in me, far beyond what even I’m aware of. It’s not their opinion that matters–it’s His. There’s only one throne before which I will stand on the Last Day, and it doesn’t belong to anyone who is in just as much need of grace as I am. Nor does it belong to that devil who was crushed forever beneath the heel of King Jesus.
So, I do the best I can with what I have. For now, I’ll lead a quiet life, mind my own business, and work with my hands. Just make hay while the sun shines.
This is one of my favorite summer hours–when the sun casts long shadows on the earth with hours of daylight still left in the sky, the winds calm and ever so gently rustling leaves high in the treetops, the temperature perfect enough to be comfortable in shorts or pants, T-shirt or tank top.
These are the hours for laying in a hammock with a book, taking a leisurely bike ride down an empty road, firing up the grill for a midsummer barbecue. These are the hours when it is easy to feel joyful and at peace. These are the hours when the soul can be at rest.