How completely satisfying to turn from our limitations to a God who has none.

A.W. Tozer

When I was in college, it was a big trend on campus to wear MudLove bracelets. If you didn’t attend a small Christian college in the Midwest like I did, think popular–like the W.W.J.D. bracelets, but with elasticity and a word or phrase instead of an acronym. Last week in need of encouragement, I dug out two of many MudLove bracelets that read:

I’d been searching for a mantra to carry with me through COVID-19 and was reminded of the word of the year I had chosen for 2020. It was thrive. There was a part of me that thought two words or phrases would be overdoing it. I thought about just picking one bracelet to wear. But no, I needed–I need–both messages. So without overthinking, I’ve been wearing both bracelets, just like this.

While everyone has something they’re dealing with or going through, I have been learning to break up with myself. This isolation period has made me realize that I’m not exempt from selfishness or comparison or pride just because life looks a little different. I am fully responsible for my attitiude, my joy, and my effort in light of my circumstances.

Quite honestly, everything in me wants to push back and argue reasons why my life isn’t fair. I was supposed to get an uninterrupted maternity leave. My mom was supposed to be able to come help with the baby. In my perfect world, my husband wasn’t going to get the flu during all of this, nor was he going to walk through other health challenges we’ve never experienced to this degree before. My firstborn son was still going to be in daycare twice a week so that I could have more breathing room. Work wasn’t going to need me for 8 weeks at least, and I definitely, definitely wasn’t going to spend my Spring like I spent all winter: kept inside.

As I’m saying this, I’m sure you you have your own list of how life hasn’t been fair to you over the last six weeks. You had expectations for how March, April, and beyond was all going to go and you had to cancel just about all of it. We all have validated reasoning for experiencing the grief we are walking through and I for one, know that I am not alone in what seems like the seven stages of this. So I don’t want to pretend like I’m on my own island or that so. many. people are going through severely worse trials.

And while that is a valuable conversation for another time, somehow Jesus has continued to meet me in all of my selfishness. I have found him at the end of every egocentric thought. I have come back to his voice after every outspoken, misplaced frustration I’ve put on my family. Jesus never fails to remind me of his truth when I’m fighting back feelings of sadness, fatigue, and unmet expectations.

For the first half of Sheltering in Place, I’d like to think I was doing alright in terms of my attitude and how I dealt with the disappointment of “life” being cancelled indefinitely. I’d like to think that I rose to a lot of my challenges: caring for my kids in the midst of unstructured days, walking alongside my husband in the unknown as best as I could, and stewarding my mind and body well after delivering Nolan. But let me tell you, that has not been true lately.

I, so often, have truly felt like I’m losing my mind. If I could use a personal day to have time away from being a wife or being a mom, or seriously, living with myself–oh, I would. Because don’t we all just need a reset sometimes? But in the rare stillness I feel in our apartment this week, it was like Jesus whispered a thought to me: keep giving your very best.

My very best. My very best? “I tried that, God. It hasn’t paid off. Anxiety, frustration, exhaustion still blanket the atmosphere of my home. I have nothing left to give,” I answered back with tears. Within seconds, a forgotten movie scene came to mind. My fingers scrambled to YouTube and soon I found the movie clip of a scene I was searching for.

In Facing the Giants, Coach Taylor has the ultimate task of motivating a careless football team after continuous losing seasons. During practice, he calls out Brock, one of his most influential players for being an apathetic, discouraging leader on the team. He challenges Brock to do the dreaded death crawl across the field with his teammate on his back. While Brock asks his coach if he wants him to get to the 30 yard line, Coach Taylor declares he thinks Brock can make it to the 50. Before getting down on the turf, Coach looks into Brock’s eyes and says, “Just promise me you’ll give me your very best.”

What unfolds in the moments to follow seems inixplicable of the human will. As a blindfolded Brock struggles to crawl with his teammate on his back, ready to quit, Coach Taylor drops to all fours alongside his player. He reminds Brock that he promised to give his very best. With each stride, Coach exclaims that Brock can give him more, that he can keep going–that he can give his very best.

“Don’t quit!
I know it hurts.
You keep going!
It’s all heart from here.
You promised me your best!
Keep going!
You can!
You can!”

I don’t know if you have felt like me this week:
Ready to throw in the towel with the circumstances surrounding you.
At the end of your rope, after a long day of trying to figure out your new-for-now-normal. You may be working through devestating news about your job or your future. Maybe a relationship you have is going sideways and you don’t know where to go from here. Or maybe it’s incredibly exhausting raising kids who don’t know how to wrestle with being home all of the time. And news flash, neither do you, really. I have no idea what your day-to-day looks like right now, but I’m praying that you will sense Jesus whispering the same thing to you:

Don’t lose heart. Keep going.

Our challenges may not get less challenging. I know for a fact that when I wake up tomorrow, my toddler is still going to be a toddler who doesn’t like being told no to anything. I will probably find the cleanliness status of my apartment disheartening and my stress levels fluctating every hour. But I’m still accountable for how I steward my thoughts and feelings and I am the only person responsible for how I respond to the matters of my day. Jesus knows it’s hard, but he also knows that when we walk with him, we always have more to give. So don’t quit. Thrive. And let’s ask Jesus to help us give our very best.

Take care & take heart,

Time is a funny thing. Right now in our world, there is a pandemic wrecking our bodies, our economy, our mental well-being, our daily schedules, our expectations and much more. With the global outbreak of the Coronavirus, I’ve had countless time to reflect on endless nothings that rabbit trail into all sorts of thoughts. But the main thing I keep coming back to is the concept of time when it comes to my life.

Three weeks ago, I came home from the hospital with our second son. We named him Nolan Graham after longingly expecting his grand arrival. He is perfect to us in every way and I love the joy that newborns bring. Getting to watch each stretch or yawn or infant snore stirs up the best of my emotions. And then when I think about the fact that he joined our family less than a month ago, my mind can’t wrap my head around the right orientation to time.

How can it feel like I’ve never known a life without him and yet I’m just beginning to learn about this little bundle? I then look at my firstborn, Griffin, and find it so hard to recall our lives before he came into the world. But there was a life before. There was just the two of us, Hunter and me. Once before, we were newlyweds starting life together in a world of exciting and yet nervous unknowns.

When I step back to reflect on a short 27 years of life, all at once I can picture myself in the corner of Mrs. Qadeem’s 4th grade class working on a writing assignment and at the same time, I’m a mom of two under two sitting at a desk in the corner our Wisconsin apartment. Time seems to stand still and fly all in the same breath. If I could just hang on to it long enough to really lean in to every moment, I wonder how much more fulfilled my soul would feel. I wrestle with being so many things to so many people while also longing to still be that eleven-year-old girl who was easily invigorated by elementary school writing assignments.

How do you hold the tension well of being present in your life right now and honoring the truest parts of you that have always been intrinsically wired within you? I’m a wife, a mother, an employee, but I’m also creative and find my best self in my writing and other arts. I find value in contributing my distinctive work to the world through creating, leading, and collaborating on ideas. And yet, to name just a few, I am the diaper changer, bath time supervisor, financial investor, and crying calmer to two small humans. My world’s don’t always intersect in a way that confidently assures me that I am valued, or crushing the parenting gig, or producing meaningful matter that ignites people, even if it’s just meant to inspire me.

One of the phrases I hear myself say all too often is, “Before I became a mom..” and I realize I’ve separated my life into their own time-periods based on titles I carry. Before getting married, after having Kid #1 or Kid #2, when I was still working at the salon as a hair stylist, after I became an Executive Coordinator at my job, before I became a work-from-home-mom: all of these are seasons of my life I have subconsciously categorized my experiences in. It’s compelling to me that this is how I would organize my life story, when I so deeply desire to be known by people for who I am instead.

Furthermore, the very thing I want to be known by: my creativity, my thoughts or ideas, my true heart does not get hardly any of my focus. I am not convinced that this is intentional, as so much of my time naturally gets directed toward my marriage, my tiny, tiny children and maintaining order within my home. I’m not looking to be the next best-selling author or inspirational Instagrammer, but I am questioning how to allow myself to be all that I feel called to be while I spend my days cleaning cottage cheese curds off of a high chair tray and scrubbing jumbo crayon scribbles off of my walls.

How do I stop longing to know the girl that was inspired to write about majestic mountains at Sandburg Elementary after gazing at scenic calendar photo on the wall and start becoming that same imaginative girl as I mother a curious toddler? The best qualities of who I was can still be part of who I am if I intentionally hang on to that girl with every new hoop in life I jump through. While I am so grateful for growing in my character and wisdom as a result of my experiences, my hope is to build upon what makes me, distinctively and originally me.

I don’t have all of the answers, but I do have the ambition to keep diving into the depth of my questions and to live in the now. Maybe my wondering will reveal the shadow side of my soul I’ve been hiding away. Perhaps I’ll learn new things about my wiring that will spark more authentic creativity out of me. Maybe I’ll discover what it looks like to appreciate each orientation to time in their own fullness.

The best part about the faith I carry in Jesus is that I follow a God that was with me at my deepest and darkest and present for every moment of my highlight reel. He sits with me, ever intentional and present, even in my investigating and struggle to reason well. He’s already on the other side of my pilgrimage to becoming. So maybe, maybe what I’ll find in trying to discover all of the best characteristics and qualities of me in the midst of my responsibilities and seasons of life, what I’ll really find is more of Him.

Take care & take heart,

One of my favorite videos on the internet is by Trey Kennedy called “Do Less, God Bless“. I fall over laughing every time he references people going to the unnecessary extremes in life that need to do a whole lot less. It’s side-stitching funny to me and “do less” has become a strong phrase in my vocabulary any time I catch people taking things to the extreme.

The irony is that I’m the one that needs to do less. I’m not sure what the main cause of me going into panic mode this week has been, but I feel frantic from a million little things. Not in an anxious way, but more in a desperate-to-control-what-I-can’t kind of way. My feelings are deafening to me and my mouth has yet to figure out what my brain already knows: no amount of talking about what I can’t change is going to solve that very thing.

And yet, here I am. A close family friend who is a licensed therapist told me when I was a middle schooler that I take on feelings three to five times more intensely than the average person. While it was a shocking statement to me, it’s served me well over the years to understand that I at times can be in my own stratosphere of pain, disappointment, frustration, excitement, confusion and every feeling in between. And while it at times it can be comforting to have an explanation for the depth of my emotions, it’s isolating all in the same breath.

But I’m grateful for words. I’m grateful for a second chance at sorting through the magnitude of my feelings that seem to take up rent in my chest while I think out loud on paper. The funny thing about emotions for me is that they always seem to be urgent and don’t stay silent for very long, not usually anyway. To remain quiet for me is to deny authenticity, but to vocalize myself is to be at risk of my heart not landing with safe people who can help steward the weight.

Do you ever get done reflecting on your day, only to conclude that you just weren’t that impressive? I’m forever indebted to the people that take the time to listen to me every time the pendulum swings to the other extreme, but for days especially like today where I just seemed to spew how I felt about people or how situations made me feel threatened and panicked…I would love to do a whole lot less. My massive need to verbally process how things feel can turn into a persuasive speech in a matter of seconds and change the trajectory of how others view the people or situations I feel so fiercely about. I’m very aware of how I need to be slow to speak and quicker to steady my heart so I can actively listen.

So tonight, after a long week of wrestling with the change I consistently resist, my prayer is to get to a posture of doing less, of controlling less, amidst the impossible of feeling less. One of my recurring, subconscious thoughts is that people who have the ability to suppress their feelings are strong, and I am not. I wonder if some people suppress what they feel to avoid exposure to pain and disappointment. I’m just not that good.

I’m pausing on that thought to redirect to the question: What if strength is actually the ability to feel your feelings, but ultimately surrender them to the One who is stronger?

My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.

2 Corinthians 12:9, New Living Translation

One of the fights of my life will always be between controlling my circumstances so that I can recorrect inadequate feelings I desperately try to avoid — and — surrendering control by sitting in the rubble to purposely, longingly sit closer to the feet of Jesus.

My final question for heaven tonight as I watch the sun set is, “If God designed me to hold so much passion and so many sensitivities, what beautiful picture did he have in mind for me in the way that I steward them?” C.S. Lewis used to say that, “Pain is God’s megaphone.” In my life, I want to be so near to him that he only needs to whisper to me.

May we lead lives that hear the loving whispers of Jesus
as His grace perfects our weaknesses
and fortifies our character.

Take care & take heart,
Natalie