You’ll never lose by
digging deep, staying true, not giving up,
building character in the crucible of challenge, breathing in, hanging on, & becoming
more weighty below the surface
than you are impressive above it.

Louie Giglio

Have you ever thought about how you want to be remembered? What do you want your friends or your kids to think about when they think about you? It’s a giant question I’ve been asking myself lately.

It’s been a tough year. I’m not sure anyone could have planned for 2020 like this and it’s caused us all to wrestle with uncomfortable what-if questions. What if this doesn’t get improve? What if I get sick and don’t see improvement? What if this goes on for months and months? What if more of what I looked forward to this summer or this fall gets cancelled? The hardest part of this season is that every variable is unknown and we’re not in control.

And man, does it feel like Groundhog Day. I’ve lost count, but it certainly feels like I’ve lived the same day over dozens and dozens of times. We have one of those giant desk calendars I like to put on our fridge because of how big the squares are for each day of the week. I started the year thinking this would be great for fitting our schedules into, until we got to April and now May, and the days are still left blank. The size of each empty space seems to taunt me every time I wander for a snack (which, if we’re being honest is at 30-minute intervals at this point in quarantine).

Compelled to experience a different start to my day this past week, I went for a walk at 6:30 in the morning. 27 degrees is one way to really wake up, in case you’re wondering. But as I walked, I kept coming back to the question I didn’t want to answer. How do I want to be remembered? I’m not promised anything in this life and as painful as it is to reflect on my own mortality, it’s a true reality I’ll face someday. The sun began creeping up as I walked in silence to the sound of my own footsteps and empty thoughts. I couldn’t think of anything. Not one thing.

Until this idea came. “I want to be remembered for being patient.” I literally laughed out loud. What? That’s what came out of my heartfelt search for what mattered to me? I couldn’t think of a word that describes me less than the adjective patient. But as I kept walking and the sun continued to rise, it occurred to me that if this is really true, I am a long way off from modeling the life I want to be remembered for.

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If I were to carry a spirit of patience, a domino effect of other attributes would follow. A patient person stands close to humility. With a patient heart, over and over you see compassion, too. When patience is present, so is peace. I’m not sure how often people around me experience these characteristics being lived out of my every day interaction with them. In fact, as of lately, I know this hasn’t been true of me most of the time. Most of the time, I’m more concerned about what practicing patience will cost me.

Patience requires self-control, endurance, and equanimity which are three things that have always felt unachievable to me. Controlling my emotions and tempering my attitude has so often seemed like I was giving up my authentic self-expression. Pressing on in light of feeling misrepresented, misunderstood, or minimized by not trying to correct someone’s opinion of me is my biggest relational struggle.

When I’m not self-aware of this, I interrupt conversations to push my own opinion through before other ideas can override mine. I live life in absolute haste. I compete with the clock to get things done exactly the way I want things done. And worst of all, I don’t slow down enough to love on my people the way they need to be loved: intentionally and unhurried.

For me, living a life of patience, of gentleness — it costs me. It costs me to surrender my selfish plans. It requires me to take ownership of being wrong. I have to come to terms with the reality that feeling misunderstood doesn’t mean I’m not seen. If anything, I’m being given another opportunity to be refined.

Even now as I continue to wrestle with my pride, I realize I’ve been focused on the wrong side of the sacrifice. Jesus, in all of his patience and perfection, counted the cost for me. He added up my selfish, habitual behavior, my resistance, my conceit. He carried the weight of my unkept promises to try harder when all he wanted was the realness and rawness of my heart. Jesus knew every bit of what my vacillation would cost him. And yet, he allowed my flaws to hold him to the cross, to take his last breath. The price he paid for me took his very life.

But — in all his sovereignty, my mess wasn’t greater than his love for me. I’m not bigger than his mercy and I’m not above grace. So when I struggle with not wanting to suffer in my small, self-centered world, I have this hope: I have what it takes to be patient because Jesus is ever-patient with me. I have been extended the gentleness and endurance it requires to love beyond conditions. By spending my years trying to live out of this kind of steadfast perseverance, I hope what people ultimately remember when they think of me is this one thing:

Loving people so intentionally is worth the cost of surrending ourselves over to Jesus. He turns our feelings of hiddenness into the ultimate hiding place where we can truly know his peace and be his peace to those we are called to love.

Take care & take heart,

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,