I found a coin from The Netherlands when I was 10 years old. I was camping about an hour east of Seattle, deep in the mountains, and as I walked barefoot through the camp sites I suddenly felt something underneath my feet that seemed out of place. I looked down to see a square coin, and couldn’t believe my luck. A coin, IN THE DIRT, from half-way around the world.
Continue reading I Collect Dead, Dying Things. I Collect Brokenness.
I’ve heard God doesn’t make mistakes.
I’ve heard it is impossible…
Everything about you. Your nationality, your skin color, gender, hair texture. How expressive or reserved you are. How introverted or extroverted you are. Your ability to sing or create art or to fearlessly barrel race horses. Your laugh.
NONE OF IT IS A MISTAKE.
God knew exactly what he was doing when he reached across time and space and birthed you in the darkness and fashioned you into something spectacular.
You are not a mistake.
It is impossible for you to be a mistake. Because it is impossible for God to make mistakes.
I spent my whole life thinking I was a mistake. That who I was was so shameful. The way I theatrically tell stories, how I want to weep for three days every time I watch The Green Mile. How making a space look beautiful fills me up with so much joy I cannot even express it. How injustice makes my blood boil. How my idea of “good church” involves crying with and laughing with and eating with a handful of people at a time.
Because I always thought I should want other things. I should be less passionate. Less emotional. More practical. More extroverted. Less awkward for heaven’s sake (Lord, above have mercy).
But none of these things about me is a mistake.
It’s weird, but not weird at the same time, to say that THE WORLD NEEDS YOU! And it needs ME. And not in a self-absorbed way, but simply because we are here and because we exist means that God destined for each one of us to be here.
The family he placed us in is not a mistake. Your birth order. Gender.
The country we were born in is not a mistake.
Our skin color is not a mistake. And all those freckles you have or don’t have.
God isn’t surprised you made it earth-side. He isn’t surprised you think post-it-notes can save the world, or that you haven’t been able to find a pair of matching socks in your house since 2007.
God knit you together and created you exactly perfect. Where you are standing right now, that earth beneath your feet that bears the weight of your presence, it is sacred because a sacred being stands upon it: you.
You are priceless. Invaluable. Never compared against another. Never regretted by God.
You are not what has happened to you. What someone took from you or did to you. You are not what someone else says you are, or even who you say you are. You are deeply and irrevocably eternal and brokenness is not eternal.
Stand in this today. Say it out loud. Because a thousand voices are telling you otherwise. Speak this truth over yourself and your children and all the people…that you are not a mistake.
God doesn’t make mistakes.
I’ve heard it is impossible.
It is impossible for you to be anything other than exactly what God created. And this is not something to fear, it is something to rest in.
Think of your family. Think of your siblings. Your cousins. Your aunts and uncles. Your Grandparents.
What are they like? Are they thriving? Are they the type of people you’d like to be someday? Do you smile when you think of them?
Generational curses run in EVERY family, because we all carry the heaviness of sin in our bloodlines.
Continue reading How Generational Curses Are Hurting Your Ability To Thrive
If God has called you to it. Do it.
Continue reading You Are Called To Stand Up, Even If You Are Standing Alone
I remembering telling someone once to stop saying sorry to me because they didn’t mean it. And I was tired of hearing it every day.
That simple, childhood realization was the first time I remember distinguishing between an apology and a repentant heart. I didn’t know what to call it. I just knew I was being lied to. Continue reading When Sorry Isn’t Enough: A Christian’s Response
I took a walk to the sea-salt water with my daughter today. She is 9 months old. And a year ago, when I first learned I was having a daughter, fear overwhelmed me. Because I had deep dark scars and mothering a girl terrified the still-broken parts of me.
We walked along the road. Mercy riding on my back in a carrier, gravel smacking together under my boots; the soft sound of mud too. Dirty drips of water squeezing between blades of spring grass.
It was a perfect evening for a sunset walk. And my soul padded along to the pace of my steps, perfectly present in that moment.
Life happens in the now, a friend of mine said. Right now, this very moment, this is your life, your next breath is the future, your last breath was the past.
I drank in the moments. The feel of a baby against my body. The way I could tell how she looked back and forth at everything. Is there anything more sacred to watch than a child delighting in newness?
I thought about my healing. And how sick I felt over the repeated jargon we use describe the immensely spiritual and emotionally painful wrestling with abusive people. Abusers, toxic people, narcissists…it all falls so horrendously short.
Soul-stealers I thought. That’s what they are. Like the dementors in Harry Potter.
Yeah. Soul-stealers.
We turned a corner. And Mercy spun as best she could to watch a black cat laying flat in a patch of sun.
Down the hill. And there we saw the water, heard the hum of boat engines, laughter from across the water.
I walked to the edge, you know, where land meets shore? It’s always such a reverent moment. Like even the dirt doesn’t dare get too close to the sea, it keeps to the edges of the sand and watches in awe at all the happenings of a small beach. Earth contains the sea, cups it into the deepest crevices and lets it fling itself into the depths and shows it all the deepest parts of itself. The sea knows things about earth we never will. Earth and sea. They are intimate friends.
And there we stood, Mercy and me, drinking in the smell of the salt stuff in the air on our skin, the way the birds were settling in for the night. It’s all for you to enjoy, whispered the Holy Spirit. That voice I’ve come to love and crave.
This is what I know: there is an unspeakable joy present in the lapping of water on a shore.
We turned to walk home. Already, the sun felt lower, cooler.
And Mercy sung softly in her little baby voice and I knew she felt it too: God, here with us. It has taken me a long time to learn how to welcome God into the everyday walks. He hovers, ever-present in the air around us, like a bright-winged eternal friend.
And then I smiled, because I just knew deep, deep down, something in me healed…
Fear is rarely release all at once. It is the daily, momentary surrender that changes us so. And it is the daily, momentary choice to refuse to hate, to turn your face to the Son and let him carry us.
We are not just persons. We are souls. And if souls be pained, then they must be healed by an Eternal Healer.
And to be healed we must let him heal us…
