gluing the cracks

It was somewhere in the summer 2004, I think. Memory gets hazy with three children so don’t hold me to that. But I know I was home from college, browsing clothes I did not need and bathing suits that would not flatter at my hometown Target. I heard a young girl fussing near the door, I’m still not sure why. I don’t know if they were coming in to the store or trying to leave, but I honestly was not paying too much attention. Kids throw fits, it happens. But then it got a little louder, and a little more difficult for her mama. The young girl was having a full blown meltdown by the time my eyes found the commotion.

And what happened next caused the whole front of the store to turn their attention to the door.

Another woman, who appeared to be just slightly older than the struggling mom, came through the front doors, obviously appalled at the poor parenting she was witnessing. In a callous and unsympathetic manner and loud enough for anyone within 50 feet to hear, with disgust in her voice she said, “Control your child!” Then kept walking.

And then, in an instant, the mom cracked. Each of us onlookers heard a screeching, “What did you say?!” And then saw the mom take the ten quick and angry steps to get in front of the crass commenter and stop two inches from her face. “You B____! She is autistic! Do you want to come over here and tell me that again, as if I can do something about it!” More swearing ensued. There was never any physical fight but I sure thought there would be. I could not see the commenter’s face, I have no idea if she had any remorse. I just watched her keep walking, trying to get away from the angry mom in front of her.

It all lasted no more than ten seconds. The middle-aged woman returning to her shopping, the mama returning to her inconsolable child. And with a heart beating slightly faster than the minute before, I tried to keep shopping. It was a short incident. No security, no handcuffs, a frustrating misunderstanding really; hardly worth talking about any further.

But thirteen years later, the whole scene is still burned in my memory.

And so are the feelings I had as I left that day: I would never, ever, be that judgmental. When I am a mom, I will show tons of grace and do nothing but encourage the moms who need it.

I would have no idea that God was actually going to ask me to be the mom begging not to be judged.

*****

We pulled up to the park on Father’s Day anxious for some sunshine and a picnic lunch. As usual, Cannon had his very favorite Cars slippers on and was excited to take off running toward the swings. I turned from the front seat and said, “Ok buddy, let’s put your shoes on.”

He quickly lifted his right leg toward me and I took off his slipper and replaced it with a gray slip-on shoe. And then it all went downhill.

“Ok bud, other foot.” He didn’t move.

“Cannon, let’s put your other shoe on.” He pulled away, protective over the Car slipper still on his left foot.

I forced the issue a bit more. “Cannon Lee, you need two shoes on. The slippers aren’t safe to climb in.” He started getting angry as I kept reaching for his left foot. Tired of asking, I forcefully took off his slipper, put his other shoe on and unbuckled him from his seat. He went from smiling to inconsolable in under ten seconds.

I thought if we kept walking toward the park he would calm down, but with each step further and further from the car he became more and more distraught, his body against the weight of mine as he reached back and I pushed forward. Alex grabbed him from me because I was struggling to not drop him, and the fight continued. We made it across the parking lot and to the closest park bench, but things were falling apart. Cannon was turning all shades of red, purple and blue from crying—no, wailing—and his parents were not far behind. With all of his three-year-old might he fought us to go back to the car for his slippers, and when we would not let him it brought out everything bad in all of us. He started hitting, swinging his little arms as fast as he could against Alex’s face, then against his own.

And to me, that’s the worst, when he does that to himself. Rips my heart out every time.

Then Alex and I started in on each other. “What do you want me to do?” Alex asked.

“I have no idea what to do!” I responded a little louder.

“This is awful.” He said in return.

“I’m sorry our life is so awful!” I told him through gathering tears. “Give him to me.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. But he cannot act like this! He cannot hit! He cannot make life impossible! And he cannot wear slippers at the park! We are going home!” And as I tried to grab Cannon out of Alex’s arms (who was—rightfully so— a bit reluctant to hand him over to a mama who, for all intents and purposes, had cracked) Cannon’s flailing body almost fell to the ground in the process. We caught him, but the whole scene looked awful.

Just ask the few dozen families at the park who watched it.

*****

I want to tell you that my faith in God has not waivered one bit in the face of a little boy whose life is confusing and, to be straight with you all, incredibly difficult. I wish I could say that I have had endless patience with the attempts to run off, with the refusal to sit and eat at the table, with head banging and arm flapping and a desperate longing for him to ask any question other than the one he asks a hundred times a day, “Where’s the volcano?” (Thanks, Dora). And I really, really wish I could tell you I patiently cleaned up another episode of fecal smearing (it is what one might guess it is) at 10:30pm two nights ago. But I didn’t, I sobbed through each and every swipe of the carpet.

The only thing I can tell you is that my hope, and faith, are paper thin right now. And that motherhood has completely stripped me of any confidence I had in my ability and my hard work. More than a decade removed from that memory of the Target yelling incident, I know exactly how that mama felt when she yelled “…as if I can do anything about it!”

That is, in eight words, exactly what autism feels like sometimes.

*****

I walked my crying little guy back to our van in the parking lot, all at once ashamed of myself and frustrated at everything that had just happened. Cannon and I both sat in our seats and sobbed for a few minutes, him over his beloved slippers and me over my beloved child. Every fear in the world rains on you in moments like this:

It will never get better.

The therapy is useless. So are the diets.

He’ll be in diapers his whole life. And wearing Cars slippers.

You only have another few years until he is much stronger than you.

Your other two kids will resent their life.

Say goodbye to dinner with new friends. Probably even old friends.

And it goes on. Fear is so bossy, and incredibly loud. And when it starts pouring down it is all too easy to forget everything I know about hope.

*****

For all of my life, I have believed in a good God. But I need to admit something: he seemed really, really good when I was enjoying incredible success as an athlete, marrying an amazing man and welcoming healthy babies in to the world. He has felt less good since autism.

But he’s not less good, and I know this. I do. I think that he is just asking my child-like faith if it is ready to be made real, if it will stand up to really hard circumstances, if day in and day out I can clean up smearing, sit patiently through inexplicable outbursts, be willing to leave places we couldn’t quite make it through the door of, and humbly do this work. I spent many years dreaming up a much sexier version of gospel-living and kingdom work. But with every elevator door we pass by that we must stop and push the button for, with every time we turn the car down an unfamiliar street and cause a panic-attack, with every minute I want to say “I quit,” I hear the familiar voice I’ve known in every season of life, still there: this is kingdom work, and I have never changed.

The fear might be louder, but the truth is stronger. And though I am a slow learner, I know the truth to go back to.

...in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them (Psalm 139:16)

I’ve cracked. But truth is gluing me back together. May it always be so. 

measurements

We measure things, all of us. So aware of all that is bigger, grander, beyond our control, or outside of our ability to explain, we use measurements as a means to grasp what we can, however we can— with the intent to put our lives onto a tidy shelf in our minds and label its contents: this is what I understand, this is what I am worth, this is how other people think of me.

We measure height, weight, growth, and shrinking. We measure bank accounts and retirement funds. We measure influence in likes and comments, and we measure accomplishment in applause. We quantify our lives in every way that we can, because against the backdrop of a life that is unpredictable and impossible to control, there is comfort in knowing and naming, in calculating who we are with whatever satiates the appetite to be known for that moment.

I first noticed this tendency in myself when I started writing on the internet seven years ago. I would toil over an essay, proud of the way I crafted sentences to be both rhetorically beautiful and theologically sound (that was the goal, anyway). I prided myself on honesty and connecting to the most common experiences of my peers that I could, then I would hit publish and share it with the world (or, with my Facebook friends, who certainly felt like the whole world in my self-centric mind).

One hour later, I’d wonder if anyone “liked” it and casually open the browser. I did not know at the time what was happening, but I see it so clearly now: the measurements—not based at all on my effort to honor Jesus but rather on my word’s and their reception with others—they would take over my day. I was valuable if people liked my words and I wanted to quit writing forever if people didn’t. My worth was found wanting or not based on the fickle, simple click of a tiny thumbs up button on a screen.

My words, my value, my day. And over time and too many emotional roller coasters, I learned that the problem with measurements is that there is simply too much of me in every equation I use.

It’s easy to make a life out of measurements; too easy, in fact. And when we set our sights on the one we want—whether it be salary, followers, publications, purchases or promotions—we chase it hard, with all of the God-given talent and passion and creativity we have. And while God-given pursuits are noble, needed even, it is also tempting in that chase to forget how Jesus went after his God-given pursuit: we go fast, famous, and big, always considering ourselves and our influence. Jesus went slow, overlooked, and small, only considering the will of his Father and the heart change his words of truth offered.

We chase what we can measure. Jesus walked through life in awe of the immeasurable one, of His Father.

At the heart of our misplaced pursuits is a simple solution, not easy, but simple: chase Jesus first, then we will chase after purpose like He did. We don’t need to abandon our creativity, our good endeavors, our goals or our passions; but we might need to do them in a different way, we might need to stop measuring them and simply let God use them. Open handed, humble, willing to let our very best effort and accumulated hours go completely unseen, we must remember that God has always used a very different system of metrics than the world, and all the applause on earth cannot earn the favor of a Perfect God. The cross, and only the cross, already did.

But a heart that pursues him and his glory with all that it has? That, friends, is where the abundant life is found. That is where we find joy immeasurable.

God does not need us, not one of our fancy offerings or impressive measurements is even worth holding up to the One who told the oceans where to stop. But he uses us! He lets us be a part of kingdom work and gives us real influence right where we are. How often do we sit in awe of that truth? And in the end, I think we will find that the most important measurement of all is the distance between a perfect God and our feeble and fickle hearts, and the marvelous fact that only scandalous grace could bridge that distance perfectly.

Everything changes when we stop measuring ourselves for Jesus, and simply start following him. 

__________

*This essay originally appeared on the Open Door Sisterhood blog.

writing to great grandma

“Mommmm! How do you spell ‘Great Grandma?”

“Harper, please don’t yell across the house. Come out here and I will tell you how to spell it.”

“But mom! It’s a surprise for Great Grandma. You can’t see it.”

“But I am not going to wake up your brothers, Harper. Can you come to the couch and I’ll tell you the letters?”

She sauntered out to the living room just a minute later, arms full of supplies and awkwardly cut paper hearts. After she spilled the contents of her tiny arms onto our oversized ottoman, she warned me not to come too close. “I just need the letters, mom. I’m making a card for Great Grandma. But you can’t see it yet.”

“Oh, Harper girl, that is really sweet, love! Great Grandma will be so excited to get that.”

“Yeah she will.” (Harper does not often lack confidence in her ideas.)

“Ok, are you ready for the letters? G-R-E-A-T, then a space, G-R-A-N-D-M-A. Great Grandma.”

Harper elaborately decorated the rest of the card with drawings of stick figures and hearts, swirly circles and even a depiction of her great grandma getting the letter out of the mailbox. She finally showed me her masterpiece with a beaming smile of pride, then folded it approximately 18 times into a thick, unrecognizable shape, and put it in an envelope. We sent it off, and I gave the card no more thought than that.

Last week a letter came in the mail from my grandma, Harper’s great grandma. She is my only living grandparent, having lost my grandpa and her sweet soulmate exactly two years ago. Since then, grandma JoNell has sold the big, beautiful home that held every memory of the last 45 years, moved in to a small retirement center, and spent many, many hours in the company of silence. When I opened the letter, it was a simple seven lines of beautiful, classic handwriting, the kind we just don’t see anymore.

Thank you so much for your nice letter and the sweet things you said.
I think your letter and the things you said were very good for a child of your age.
If you keep trying, I’ll bet you can be writing a book by the time you’re in school!
You are a very smart girl.
I’d love to have letters from you anytime.
Love, Grandma Mahoney

When I read this letter to Harper, she beamed, the image of her wise and gentle great grandma held in her heart as she took in the words that told her that special woman was proud of her. She brought the letter to her room and it is still on her dresser. I imagine we will put it someplace safe soon, but for now, Harper likes to see it.

I have done a lot of work in the last two years, things that I am proud of and that I hope have meant something. I’ve taught many classes and written many essays, some that have reached more people than I would have ever imagined. We bought a new house and a new car and we have diligently kept our debt at zero. I contributed to a book and celebrated it with parties and beautiful pictures. I’ve participated in Bible studies and book clubs, submitted articles at a few dream publications, read heavy theology and again and again set lofty goals for myself.

But I have not written a letter to my grandma.

Harper did, because my four-year-old seems to have a radar for what is important, one that I might have misplaced in my pursuit of doing important things.

Zack Eswine wrote these beautiful words about the mission of Jesus, saying that while we go big, fast and, popular, Jesus went small, slow, and overlooked. I want to say that the small, slow and overlook are my heart, but I wonder if my life has backed that up. The tiny letter from my grandma hit me with the conviction of a bag of bricks.   

There’s a world of people out there I tend to think I need to applause of, and there are people right in front of me I actually know but can so easily value less. The silent cheers of likes and comments can feel so loud and affirming, a moment of a fleeting "I matter!"-- gone as quickly as it came. I think it is time I switched things up a bit, and stop simply saying small, slow, and overlooked but living them.

I’d love to have letters from you anytime. You got it, grandma. 

His breath, our lungs, and the little boy who changed everything

For Cannon, on his third birthday

He came into the world so easily—one push, two pushes, then a baby boy on my chest, with a precious little face that mirrored his daddy’s from the very beginning. We wrapped him in a yellow, gray and blue blanket, the one he still spends every night with, and brought him home the day before Mother’s Day. I wish I had written more during those first few months of his life, or maybe taken more pictures. I don’t remember them like I want to, or like I remember them with his big sister. The details escape me every single time I try to recall them and for this, I feel so guilty. But I do remember that everything about him was gentle: the way he slept, his smile, his cuddle, his coos, even his yellow, gray and blue blanket.

But three years and three kids are not kind to a tired mama’s memory. And when we add the hazy details about when it all started to change, when the gentleness faded into disconnection and the coos stopped attempting to become words, it gets even hazier. It was an eighteen-month well-check, then a speech therapist, then a special school, then a specialist, and a hundred thousand moments of is this what I think it is?

It was. It is.

The tears still come, all the time I’m afraid. I would love to report that we’ve moved in to the rhythm of autism and we’ve got it, but that’s a lie. All we’ve got is Jesus, but that’s enough.

Because even through the fog that has been the last three years, and the way it got so thick and scary since the diagnosis, I do know this: when something is wrong, you have to make sense pretty quickly of a God who only does what is right. And this does not happen in a few peaceful quiet times and some tranquilly answered prayers in a journal. For me, it has been more like a street fight, questions thrown like punches and protests of my heart held out in self-defense. A broken record of Why? How? When? My fault? on repeat in my head the whole time.

It took me many months to understand I was asking the wrong questions. The only one I really needed answered was who?

The simplicity of it all still catches me off guard, because the everyday reality of life is anything but simple. I was drowning, spending all of my strength to keep my head above the water and when you’re working that hard to just fight the current you cannot hold anything else. But a new question and a new answer came in like a life preserver—it didn’t take me out of the ocean but it allowed to catch my breath, rest, and not have to fight so hard. It told me we would make it.

The answer to who was this: a perfect God, and a precious little boy.

If God had not given me Cannon, I wonder if I would have ever cared to look and learn how big He truly is? I could not even see the shoreline from where I was, yet God holds the entire ocean in the palm of his hand. This, still, is the most miraculous thing in the world to me.

The road ahead is long, and it is for a lifetime. I won’t pretend that the lessons are done being taught and that we can wrap this all up in a pretty bow and call it complete. In fact, I think it’s the opposite. After the hardest, most tear-filled year, I think we are only just starting. But if at one time I was drowning and unable to see the shore, today I have a life preserver and I do, very clearly in fact, see the shore: it’s God’s glory, his eternal purpose and redemptive plan for all of life. It’s not going to be easy to get there, but we will.

I went in to watch Cannon sleep last night; he is still so gentle in everything he does, even in his sleep. As I watched his chest rise and fall all I could think about were the words “It’s your breath in our lungs, so we pour out our praise…” God’s breath, Cannon’s lungs, my praise. And then I thought about this: we are never really drowning when God is doing the breathing.

*****

I had no idea three years ago what life would look like today. And I have no idea what it will look like in another three. I know so much more and so much less at the very same time, and I am ok with that. But it’s His breath, our lungs, and for His glory. And I do know that’s enough to get us to the shore.

Cannon Lee, who would I be if it weren’t for you? Love you forever, sweet boy. We will get there together, I know it. 

before the morning

My desk faces east, looking out the window onto our quiet street and beyond, where I can just barely see the tips of the mountain peaks in the distance, all still covered with snow from what has been a long winter and what has turned into a long and still-cold Spring. I meet the day right here, every morning, every season.

For most of my life I have been somewhat of a 'morning person'. Even in my teen and young adult years when it was an option, I was never naturally one to sleep until noon. But being a ‘morning person’ always meant waking up in a relatively good mood, and outside of that the standards were low. Before children I set the alarm for enough time to get ready for work, and after children, I simply let them be my alarm, and I learned quickly that with little ones no one is 'morning person' because motherhood demands you learn to be an ‘all hours of the day’ person, good mood optional.

But when my second was five months old, everything changed. I was drowning—faking it pretty well, but drowning. Parenting a baby and a difficult toddler, wrestling with questions about who I was, the work I had left behind that I was very confident in my ability to do in order to pursue the work of motherhood that I felt like I was terrible at, and all of it was messing with me. And when I really started paying attention to my heart I realized how noisy I had let my life get; from sun up to sun down, invited and uninvited noise at every turn and I could not find a counterbalance to it all.

Then one day, after spending the weekend with a friend who I watched beautifully live out this practice in her own life, I set my alarm for 5:00am. I read the Bible, I wrote, I prayed, and I marveled at how quiet the whole world felt at that hour, at how quiet my heart finally felt. And then I did it again the next day. And the next day. And the next.

That was two and a half years ago.

(And yes, I did want to take a nap about 3:00pm every day that first month. Sometimes I still do. Power through and be willing to go to bed at 9:00pm.)

Today, I think there are ‘morning people’- those who can get up and do what needs to be done and might even have a skip in their step as they do- and there are ‘before the morning people’- those who get up before the chaos, the demands for milk, the diaper changes, and the frenetic search for matching socks. Those things still happen, but they don't happen first. I knew I had officially become a ‘before the morning’ person the day after we brought our youngest home from the hospital. He was an every-three-hours eater from day one, but even then, when my alarm went off at 5:00am I knew what was waiting for me if I could just get my feet on the ground, and the allure of that quiet, it was enough. I pushed the baby’s Rock ‘n Play out to the table with me, and my little man joined my morning routines until he was big enough to sleep through them (which took almost fourteen months by the way—because what is this ‘sleep training’ you speak of? Apparently my children were born immune to it.)

When I think of the woman and mom I was two and a half years ago and the one I am today, I know the difference, and it is the morning. I am not more or less saved, not more or less holy, and not more or less accomplished (though I am rather efficient with my earliest hours). And I don't have a sense of pride built up in my morning routine as much as a sense of desperation; I need it, my heart needs it. Because when I did find the quiet, the counterbalance to the loud world we all live in, it was in that quiet, with—finally—nothing competing for His attention, that God got big. He was too small in my loud world, an equal part of equal size of the thousand moments that made up an average day. It was in the quiet, before the morning, that He finally became unmatched.

And with all that the journey of this last year has brought us, my heart has desperately needed Jesus to be big, to be unmatched. Really, haven’t we all?

On a technical and politically correct level, there is nothing magic about the morning, no command that says if you want to hear from Jesus he has office hours only before dawn. And yes, technically, that is correct. But I push back a little, because I think there is something magic about the morning: it is untouched, not yet derailed by a day that did not unfold like I planned. It is fresh, renewed, and I will say it again, so beautifully quiet. I think the Psalmists were on to something as the chorus of their praise echoes with sentiments of in the morning, show us Your steadfast love, Lord. I cannot prepare for everything the day will bring, but I can prepare my heart to trust who is writing it all, who has commanded the morning since my days began, and who has taught the dawn to know its place. *

For months the sun has stayed stubbornly behind those mountain tops out my window, as if it were too cold itself to want to come out and play. But as we inch our way toward a new season, the day turns gold a little bit earlier every morning, offering to light the day longer and longer, warmer and warmer. These are the mornings I wait all winter long for, when I can look out the window and watch the magic that turns dark to light so quietly and effortlessly, just like it has been doing every day since God called it all 'good'.

But I think the real magic is that in these same hours of quiet at the desk by the window, as the day comes alive and greets the world, so does my heart.

Morning glory, indeed.   

*Job 38:12

Jesus, people, and launching a book

It started with five words.

“We are writing a book!”

And it ended with something I did not expect.

On Saturday, April 2nd, I stood in a room in Sacramento, California, with over 150 people who were there to celebrate Coffee + Crumbs and the humble words we have offered to the world every month. I got to see my friends from Sacramento loved on by their people, and I got to hug and laugh with the writers who have made me better in more ways than I can tell you. We gave hugs to readers and thanked them for coming, we tried our best to read essays without crying and we failed miserably, and then we stayed up until 1:00 in the morning eating In ‘N Out Burger and talking about the future of Coffee + Crumbs with literal tired eyes and full hearts.

It would be impossible to name a favorite moment of the weekend, but one of them had to be a walk along the river with Sonya. We had the latest flights out, with two hours and a sunny day we had to take advantage of. We talked about politics and social ills, she shared about her three months young adoption of a beautiful three-year-old girl from China and what that has meant for her family dynamics, and I talked about Cannon and what he has meant for my faith and my marriage and my heart. And as I chatted with Sonya about so many things, I was reminded that our best writing does not come from the easiest things in life, but the hardest. And you know, the hardest things are also where I have met Jesus the most—so there is certainly something to that. Shauna Niequist once said that all writers want good stories to write, but God is going to make you live them first. This, friends, is one of the truest things I know about writing.   

Less than a week later, back home in Spokane, we were getting ready for one more launch party to book-end a week of celebration. Around 12:00pm on Thursday I heard a knock at my door. My husband went to answer it and immediately I heard “surprise!” and yelling and hugging and laughter. When I walked around the corner to the front door there was Emily, my best friend who had flown in from Atlanta (!!!) with her precious duaghter to show up for this little local book launch.

Cue the ugly tears.

This is the same woman who got three kids under five years old in the car and drove five hours by herself when I was in labor with Cannon to make it to the delivery room in time for his birth, so I should not have been surprised. But I was. I was totally shocked and speechless with gratitude. Showing up for people is the greatest gift we can give them, and I know that not because I have done it perfectly, but because Emily has done it for me. 

Ashlee Gadd flew in Friday night, we splurged like rockstars and got our makeup done by my favorite makeup artists on Saturday, the books never made it off the UPS truck for delivery so my sweet Dad drove around Spokane buying every copy he could find, and then we got ready to party thanks to my mom and Tannya and my talented MIL who handmade all the gorgeous desserts.

And one by one, people started filling in. I wish I could articulate what this felt like.

You’re here! You’re really here for us, for this book! You showed up! I felt underserving the entire time, like all these people got duped and were really there for the wine. But they weren’t. They were there to celebrate something with me and Ashlee, and they did just that. I want to name every single woman who came and tell each of them how truly grateful I was for their presence, but just know this: I will never, ever forget the night that 70 people gathered together with delight in their eyes. Never. I was on the verge of tears for two straight hours because of them, because of people. It was love in real life, and it was perfect.

It makes total sense to me that Jesus is all about people, and all about showing up. 

*****

So now I sit on the back end of this amazing experience, reflective and introspective and humbled all at once.

Writing a book is, with few exceptions, every writer’s dream. Just ask them. Often times the content of said book is only loosely defined, but most of us have allowed ourselves to think about it—to picture a cover with our name on it, imagining it on shelves at Barnes and Noble and ourselves sitting at a table signing hundreds of copies.

So when an email came into my inbox from Ashlee Gadd with those five words in it, I saw the first step towards every writer’s dream handed to me.

And y’all, it has been a dream. It has been the sweetest gift to write a book with a team of women whom I both admire and love, who have made me laugh hysterically and cry uncontrollably, who have taught me and challenged me and encouraged me and loved me. I have a new respect for Ashlee, who has spent countless hours working on this dream and sacrificing so much so that we could all have a small piece of it.

But what I did not expect, and maybe I should have, is this: nothing about my real life has changed.

We wrote a book, and so far, people really like it. (All the praise hands!) But I feel the same today as I did over a year ago, perhaps slightly more humble. I struggle with the same sin. I fail at parenting in many of the same ways. I get my priorities mixed up in the same manner I always have. I got something I always wanted, and the best thing it did for me was remind me that it is not what I needed. Not the book or the applause or the attention, anyway.

But isn’t this the very thing we fail to believe all the time? That when we get what we have always wanted our lives will change; that we will be content, accomplished, we will be someone.

To the only audience that matters in the end, we won’t. We will never be more or less than we are right now, because the most important work in our lives is what Jesus did on the cross and that was finished long ago. This is a paradox that used to baffle me, but not just leaves me grateful. 

Still, book launch week has also given me something I did need: a whole lot of perspective and whole lot of amazing people. And in the end, this is a story about people; about the gratitude my heart feels when I think about them, and about how, if I have learned anything in the past two weeks, it is that I want to be for people, I want to be someone who shows up.

We hope you love the book, because we sure loved writing it, and we are very proud of the hard-fought words that fill up its pages. It would be all we could ask for to know that those words made a small, meaningful difference in the story of your motherhood. But when this work is a distant memory, when we are all reading and celebrating the next thing, we hope you remember Jesus and people, and what love for each of them looks like in real life.

I leave you with this memory from an amazing two weeks of book launches, because it perfectly captures so much of it.

I mentioned that the books we ordered for the party in Spokane did not arrive in time for the party, but we really wanted to at least fill the pre-orders that night. I called my Dad, who had already offered to help in any way we needed, and asked him if he wouldn’t mind spending a few hours in the car and grabbing every copy of the book he could find around town. Without hesitation, he said yes, hopped in the car and was on his way.

Ten minutes later, as my Dad was on the freeway headed to the northside of town for the first stop, I got a text from him:

“Katie, what is the title of your book again?”

Stay small, friends. 

the whole story: a thank you note, from me to you

Oh dear reader, thank you. Thank you for being here, for meeting up in this little space and then being willing to come back for a visit. I do not tell you this enough, but it humbles me to no end that these simple words actually have an audience, and that by the grace of our good, good Father, they connect with some of you. Do you know I keep every email, every message, and every word of encouragement you all have sent? Yep, every single one. From South Africa and New Jersey and Texas, from the teacher at my daughter’s preschool, from the fellow special needs mamas, and the friends I do life with on a regular basis— when you tell me that something I offered on paper was even the slightest bit encouraging to you, I praise Jesus and then ask him to help me to show up again and write some more.

Because can I tell you the truth? This has been hard, at times harder than I have wanted to work through, and I cannot do it without him.

When I started just enough brave I was certain God was calling me to pioneer something big and bold in my city. I had grand visions of people all over my tiny pocket of the country being inspired to live bravely and fight for justice in their places. I was slowly but surely stepping in to an idea I knew—and still believe—was from God as an advocate for women in the sex industry. I wanted to tell a different story about them, and I wanted to help them see a way out. Well, God raised up a few like-minded women and we stumbled our way through something we had no idea how to actually do. But let me tell you something: all God needs is obedience, He’ll do the rest. And he has. He has sustained and grown something that is allowing women in a very dark place to see Jesus.

And he has done it not because of me, but in spite of me.

But two and half years ago, that was my brave. And I believed if I could find just enough of it, God would honor that. That ministry has grown in ways I would never have pictured. No website, no social media, only—much like this—vague descriptions of our end goal coupled with massive amounts of prayer and faith. We have a prayer team, consistent donors, and a support group far bigger than I had even thought to ask God to grow it. And yet with every month of growth or moment of ‘only-God’ praises, I have had less and less of a role. It has grown bigger, and I have gotten much, much smaller. I have had to.

It was just over a year ago that we started seeing signs of ‘something wrong’ in our little guy. So many of you have followed that journey since I started sharing it, but all roads seemed to point to autism from the beginning, and that is where we find ourselves today.

I wish you knew how many times I have asked God, “Why?”

“Lord, we were willing, we were ready to go anywhere! But what Cannon needs is here. Why are you keeping us here, why did you give us this? We were willing to go!”

Yet God is so patient with our myopathy, isn’t he? We can only see right here, right now. All of human history has been directed by his hands and we are so quick to grumble over the things we do not like in this moment. But over my months of protesting, he gently kept whispering this to me: ‘If I have asked you to do it, no matter what it is, you’re going to need to be brave.’

If he has asked me to be a special needs mama, I need to be brave.

If Cannon is angry and upset for reasons I cannot understand, I need to hold him tight so he doesn’t hurt himself, and I need to be brave.

If treatments and therapies and endless doctor appointments sweep away savings accounts and extra income, I need to trust that it is truly God’s money anyway, and I need to be brave.

If we cannot participate, or have to cancel plans, or if my little one is misunderstood by onlookers and people who do not know him, if we have to sit outside a birthday party while others walk in and silently wonder why we can't just yet, I need to offer a quick plea for patience and grace, and I need to be brave.

If we do not understand why, if there is no clear cause and no clear cure, if for all of our effort we cannot find a formula that guarantees a way through this, I need to trust the Author of every great story, and I need to be brave.

‘This is your brave, Katie. You only have to find just enough of it.’

If I could summarize our short time on this journey so far I would say this: God has grown bigger, and I have gotten much, much smaller. He’s always been big, I just haven’t always seen it.

And all along the way, I’ve done the only thing I know how to do: be honest about it. I have been honest with my grieving and honest with my hope. I have written from exactly where I am because there would be no possible way for me to pretend to write from some other place. I have thought a hundred times in this past year that I should quit, that these hours spent at the computer could be better spent researching methods and therapies and all manner of options for treating something that is so hard to wrap our hands around.

And almost every time, in the moments I am most ready to stop, there’s an email, or a text, or someone somewhere—maybe I know her but most often I don’t—telling me not to. Bob Goff said once that, “God doesn’t pass us messages as often as he passes us each other.” That, sweet readers, could not be more true for me.

A few months ago, as I was processing all of this with my friend Jen, she said something to me that I have been holding on to all this time. “Katie, I don’t think it is an accident that while your little guy has so much trouble finding his words, God has given you so many of them.”

God certainly does not struggle to see the whole picture, does He?

Today, I am just feeling… I don’t know, some combination of grateful and pensive, as I sit here thinking about how far God has taken me, and what he has done as I have so imperfectly shared the story. This space has kept growing. But I keep getting smaller. While I used to want to be a Writer, capital 'W', and a Leader, capital 'L', now I just want to be someone with unshakable faith, even if it is merely the size of a mustard seed.

If I did not see it two and half years ago, or even a year ago, when two very different journeys began for me, I see it so clearly now: He increases, we decrease. And as that happens, as the distance between God and us gets bigger and bigger, his glory fills in the space. It is so, so beautiful; I just had to get much lower to see it this well.

*****

So dear reader, that is the just enough brave story. My life looks so little like I thought it would when we began. But it looks exactly how God wants it to, and knowing that is all that I need to feel so incredibly grateful to be chosen for this work. I still think and pray all the time about how and when and why to share in words—when you are convicted to your core that God sees every single motive that governs your heart it quickly changes how you do everything. But for today, I think I will keep at it. These hours could be spent in a dozen different ways, but so far they have all added up to teach me about God, and they leave me more in awe of him with each passing one. Time well spent, I think.

I know now that brave is not always leading and not always grand and not even always something anyone but God will see. Being brave is doing exactly what God has asked you to do, and humbly pointing every bit of that work back to the One who sustains it. If you ask me, I think humility is the new brave.

So, what do you say we all keep getting smaller?

And a hundred times, thank you for letting me tell you everything. You are good friends to listen so well.  

sometimes it's both

It had been an off morning for Cannon since I got him out of bed. He wanted to be put down but he didn’t want to walk. He kept reaching back for something in his room but got fussy when I turned around to walk back in there. He knew what he needed but I didn’t. He had thoughts and feelings but no words for either of them, and both of us felt the frustration of it.

Cannon, just tell me what you need.

Mama, I want you to name what I need for me.

These are the moments that hurt the most.

We had just thirty minutes before we needed to be out the door and on the road to therapy, but my little man just was not having it. Didn’t want his milk, didn’t want his Thomas trains, certainly didn’t want his siblings all up in his space. It took both me and Alex to get his diaper changed and clothes on, sixty seconds of fending off flailing arms and legs that were not without a side glance and biting comment among the two of us. You hold his arms. I got him! Babe, don’t let his leg go. He’s strong! After the wrestling match Cannon went right back to his corner on the couch and buried his head in his blankets. Then he took his socks off, of course. More wrestling ensued.

These are the moments that hurt the most.

I looked at Alex and said, “He gets more upset when we hold him down, when we force it, so let’s just give him a minute.”

“Well we don’t really have another minute; he needs to get dressed.”

“I know, but...” And I have no further rebuttal. I don’t know what to do, neither does Alex. Autism stumps us a dozen times a day.

These are the moments that hurt the most. When for all of our effort we simply cannot figure out our precious boy, which frustrates and shames us enough to get irritated with one another, and we go back and forth between being ten minutes late but having a calm little boy; and teaching him that being on time is expected of us so he needs to get going, upset or not. The first half an hour of our day and we are nose to nose with the incessant reminders that his life, our life, is not ‘normal.’

Then Harper came over with an apple for Cannon. “Cannon loves apples. This will make him happy.” He threw it back at her, but she was undeterred. “Oh mom, I’ll give him his puzzle, Cannon loves puzzles!” She set it in front of him, and he did not throw it- a step in the right direction.

I patted her little head and said, “Sweet girl, I love your kindness toward Cannon! Is that Jesus in your heart? I think it is.” She proudly beams a smile.

And then right there on the corner of the couch, we prayed for Cannon. Well, Harper prayed for Cannon, with all the childlike faith and precious gratitude one should pray. “Dear God. I thank you for Cannon and I thank you for puzzles. Please help Cannon be happy today. Cannon will have a good day at school. Thank you for school. I pray for Cannon to eat his apple. Amen.”

Let it be.

And as her simple yet beautiful words landed on all of us, I realized something she is still much too young to: God has called us all to this. He has given all of us this. And we will all be different, better, much more dependent on Jesus because of this ‘not normal’ journey. I think those can be the best kind of journey—it all depends on how we look at it. And wether we are truly, unashamedly, from our heads to our toes, thankful for puzzles and apples and school.

Cannon did move toward that puzzle. I’m not sure if he wanted it the whole time, or if it got his mind off of what he could not tell us, but he was happy, and we got his socks back on.

“Look Harper, your prayer helped him!” Another proud smile. I’m learning to believe in prayer right alongside my four-year-old.

These are the moments I love the most, when something like this reminds you that your life is perfectly, most intentionally, being lived out exactly how God wants it to.  

Hard and beautiful. Hurting and healing. The worst and the best. A moment my heart wants to feel pity and then explodes with gratitude immediately after. Impossibly, but absolutely, both.

Sometimes, life is just both.

Soli Deo Gloria. 

counting

I am a words girl. Always have been. I spent many-an-extra-hours in various sympathetic math teachers’ classrooms, laboring with them over how to show my work on math problems that I could never fully wrap my head around the logic of. A geometric proof does what again? Solve for ‘x’ and for ‘y’? It was the ‘y’ that usually did me in. Beyond the simple plus and minus work of numbers, I never grew too comfortable around them. Oh but the words! Give me Native Son and a thesis statement and the freedom to craft thoughts and my mind felt like I was curling up with a soft blanket.

Given my unremarkable (dismal is more appropriate) history with numbers, I am, perhaps, the most shocked of all at how much counting I really do these days. I’m not finding square roots or making whole numbers out of fractions, but it seems like numbers are on my mind quite a lot.

I’m a counter. I count minutes and I count likes. I count children and I count approval. I quantify my day in so many ways—too many— forgetting that what I am often counting does not actually add up to anything real. I count accomplishments and I count failures, hoping that the former has more tallies in the column at 9:00pm. I count what I have based on what I see, and it is pride, and I sometimes count what others have, also based on what I see, and it is comparison. I’m always counting.

Today is the first day of lent: a sacrificial season of the liturgical calendar that holds the space of the 46 days before Easter Sunday. It’s a beautiful season for so many reasons, but one I have stripped of its meaning with the hint of ‘I grew-up Catholic guilt’ that still lingers, coupled with my relentless score-keeping. I’ve spent many a Lenten seasons subtracting: first it was ice cream, then sugar, next social media, and I’ve even gone for all television whatsoever. I’ve been rather crafty when it comes to my numbers during lent—technically Sundays are a respite from the 46-day total, and God knows it is also March Madness so all television besides sports became the rule. I gave up ice cream but made up for it in cookie dough. And sugar—never made it past 48 hours on that one. Add, subtract, put a few tallies in the “good” column, and call it lent; that has far too often been my stride through this season.

It seems I have been missing the point.

The Lenten season is about sacrifice, and it is equally about repentance. But I think above all, it is about getting serious with our own hearts about what we are waiting and counting for.

The arc of this 46 days ends at the cross. We hold the space between now and then with reverence and with an intent to know who God is through sacrifice, but what I am certain I have done wrong in all my counting is relegate the importance of those things to only, or mostly, these 46 days. Lent becomes a talking point or a challenge, a hashtag or something to accomplish, when really all it was ever meant to look like was me on my knees in humility, knowing that all my numbers could never add up to perfect.

But Jesus never asked for perfect, he asked for repentance. And I have so much to repent. The counting, the pride, the comparison, the lack of belief in the face of hard things, the lack of boldness in the face of wrong things. Choosing to scroll rather than open His word, choosing to vent rather than take things to Him in prayer. Making an enemy of my husband while I stand on the mountain of an issue that was only ever meant to be a discussion on how to sweep away the dirt in front of us. I could go on with this; I have to look no further than the day behind me to find my need for repentance. And it is a need far greater than 46 days.

I love lent because of the intentionality it brings, and I am even giving something up if only for the discipline to spend time with Him when I want to turn to that one thing. But mostly, lent is about repentance, sitting with my great need for, praising God that he allows it, learning about its pain and its beauty, about its grip and its freedom. Yes, lent is about repentance because life is about repentance. The arc of our lives ends the same place that lent does, at the foot of the cross. And my heart can hear Jesus leaning in and whispering, “Stick with what you know, Katie. Grab your words and come sit with me, because we have so much to talk about, and nothing to count.”

how are you?

We snuggled up on opposite ends of our oversized couch, sunshine streaming in the window enough to light the room that perfect hue of morning soft, of peace. She had come over with coffee in hand, one for each of us, because all attempts to catch up at an actual coffee shop seem to be thwarted by little people these days. But friends who get that, who can walk in to your home during naptime and squeeze one hour of heart sharing in to their day, and your day, they are a special class of blessing.

With my legs folded up underneath me and hands wrapped around my warm latte, she started with the question we all start with, the default, the one that is clear enough to be universally understood but flexible enough to be taken to any level one chooses to answer with.

“Katie, sweet friend, how are you?”

*****

Maybe it is the season I am in, but the days feel so long. I am up before the sun comes through my eastward office window every morning, circling phrases in God’s word with the intention of carrying their truth far in to my day, but the impact so often lingers only as long as it takes me to walk up the stairs when the first little feet start to pitter patter above me.

I get breakfast ready, fill the baby’s bottle with milk and more often than not have to prop him up with a pillow—holding the third child is becoming more and more of a luxury time does not always allow me these days. I find the preschool bag and finally remember to look at the notes the teacher sent home the day before. We needed to help refill the class snack closet? I’ll grab some animal crackers next time I am at the store. I play hokey pokey with my words for ten minutes before I finally convince the four-year-old to let me comb her hair, and then I listen to her tell me a dozen times how much it hurts when I do. It does not hurt, it’s just part of the deal to tell me it does. I get the two-year-old’s school bag and fill it with his favorite snacks, things he will be motivated to work for at therapy, food that he will happily pick up his picture cards, matching them to the correct name, and hand them to the therapist for. We find socks and shoes and pants and shirts and does any of it match? It does not matter. If it’s clean, or clean enough, it works.

And we are off. One parent does preschool drop-off and another does therapy and the baby goes along for the ride. It’s 8:30am. The whole day is still ahead of us and I already feel like a crazy person and didn’t I read something this morning about nothing being outside of Jesus’ control?* Someday I will remember with clarity, and maybe some application, what I read just three hours earlier.

But I am good. I’m so good. Because this is all I ever wanted. This life, with little mismatched socks and long blonde hair that hates to be combed and three small people who need me for so many things, it is my dream job, and I don’t deserve it. It’s a contradiction of sorts, this incongruity between the life I prayed for and the feelings I sometimes have for it in the middle of the day to day minutiae. But when everyone is buckled in safely and we are all on the way to our places for the morning, I’m overcome with gratitude. What beautiful work I’ve been given to do.

So yes, I am so, so good.

*****

I went in to this new year with many dreams for my words, for the writing I love to do. I have a book proposal and essay topics outlined in pink and yellow post-it notes on the wall of my office and I look at it every day, sometimes with confidence and sometimes with a cringe. What do you want to do with this, Jesus? Does the world even need more words right now? Of course the answer is no. The world does not need more words; we need more quiet, more listening ears. But the world does need more obedience, more humble disciples doing their best with their gifts to make much of Jesus and not make anything of themselves.

Perhaps that is the source of my tension. I really have nothing to say if I am not in some way talking about how things only make sense in my head because of God, and didn’t I just read that nothing is outside of Jesus’ control? But in a world full, so full, of good writers and beautiful creators and social media mavens giving advice on how to increase one’s platform, my head is leaning in and listening and reporting back telling me “yes, yes, do all those things and keep-up-with-the-hypothetical-‘writing Jones’. But my heart pauses, telling me that my words should only be building a platform for the gospel to stand on, not me. Never me. What on earth do I actually have to offer from that platform?

But I am good. I’m so good. Because this is a beautiful tension to wrestle out. This life with a love of words and an even greater love for Jesus, it is my privilege to do the hard work of creating something meaningful but staying small in the process. It’s a contradiction of sorts, this incongruity between the dreams of ‘being a real writer!’ and the conviction that I am supposed to be the smallest, most insignificant part of that dream. But at the end of the day— or maybe I should say at the end of an essay— when somehow my own heart is still and in awe of the way God is weaving every detail of our stories into the most glorious picture, I’m overcome with gratitude. What beautiful work I’ve been given to do.

So yes, I’m good. I’m so, so good.

*****

There are a hundred moving parts to our days, and every one of us has a posture toward God that affects how we handle, and what we build with, all of those parts.

Some days it is hard, it is really hard.

Some days it is fun, it is really fun.

Most days it is a mix of those things, like life generally is. We rejoice and mourn, celebrate and repent, gather and find solitude, and do our best to be busy with the right things.

So how am I?

I am a sinner saved by grace. It’s a contradiction of sorts, this incongruity between the life I deserve and the one I have been given because of grace. I am still figuring this all out, and I think I always will be. But when I think about that question, “How are you?” and I hold out the things that make up who I am, and I know what—I know Who—they are all for, I’m overcome with gratitude. What beautiful work I’ve been given to do.

In all of it— in the mothering and cleaning, the disciplining and special-needs-learning, the good work of words and the important work of loving others, in all things, God has supplied all I need not to make it easy, but to make it.

So I’m good. I’m so, so good. Because God is. May that always be my answer.    

*Hebrews 2:8b