The Merry Month of May {I've been published in a lovely magazine...}
Since I was a very young mom, I’ve nurtured and nourished a dream of being a published writer. My very first article I ever submitted to a publication, was an op-ed piece…
…to Glamour magazine…
…about the beauty and advantage of sexual abstinence before marriage.
They sent it back. Rejected.
Shocker, I know.
But I had just enough people in my life who continued to encourage me in my nascent gift of putting pen to paper. All they did was circle back every year or two and ask me, “Are you still writing? You have a gift, you know! Keep using it. Keep writing!”
Seriously, that’s all they did, and that’s all I had (there were only 2 or 3 people) and that’s all I needed.
In 2017, I gestated and birthed (both wrote, edited, self published and self-launched) the book "The Women of Advent". Now, before you run and buy a copy, please know that there are one or two glaring “clerical errors”.
For one, my auto correct would not stop changing the name of the character “Rahab”…
…to “Rehab”.
Epic
Fail…
…a failure deserving humiliating self-flagellation, thus I share with the whole world, this accidental selfie. Complete with popcorn ceiling and “boob light”.
Again: I deserve it.
{…now, please go and buy the book…because otherwise, it is actually very good, so I am told.}
On to even better news. This past week, I published a {beautifully written, completely polished and professionally edited} piece, with the gorgeous full-color women’s magazine called Eden And Vine
{click on the image to purchase the issue featuring my article, plus much more inspiring content
The title of my article is “Unafraid To Ask”, and it’s the vulnerable story of my own coming into my full identity as a daughter of the Most High. I’ve heard it said, and I believe it to be so, that if you deeply resonate with a Biblical character, that is because there are things tucked inside the identity of that historical figure that you are meant to live into, and embody.
My Bible character is Achsah. To whom only a scant 4-ish verses are devoted, in all Scripture.
Still, I’ve been carrying her message, and embodying her essence for twenty years, and feel like I am just getting started.
No spoilers. If you are so inclined, please go purchase issue 7 of Eden and Vine, and in so doing, support a female-owned, Christian small business. Eden and Vine is turning the niche magazine space on its ear! Tens of thousands of subscribers, and they are barely getting warmed up.
a (sold) piece of art that I created almost ten years ago, in a style I have since outgrown. But I will never outgrow living into this Biblical historical figure, named Achsah.
…my grandson, glancing over his grandmother’s article…be still my heart.
Honestly - I’m so proud. I haven’t been able to get to the messages and emails, all telling me that these words have impacted them profoundly. The Father LOVES His daughters. Never be afraid to ask largely of the Lord.
This Is My True-Truth {...my testimony...}
(Maybe tuck in with a tall glass of iced tea? This one’s a little bit conversational…)
I once heard it said that what most people call “their testimony” is actually their history. And their history is fine, but it is who God is for you right now today that is your testimony.
I don’t want to split hairs, it’s okay by me if you go back many years to tell a story, and you call that your “testimony”. But something in what I heard rang so true for me. I’m happy to tell you my story - but that is what I call it. If I am looking backwards, I am sharing my “story”.
My testimony is very much a “right-this-minute” reality.
Here is my testimony, in this middle-place of my life. These words are, as it were, hot off the presses.
(Out of compassion, I will also say this: if you are in the kind of hard season where good things in someone else’s life feels like a sting, if it makes you feel left out of God’s goodness - I understand. Please stop reading now, and come back when you’ve healed up. I’ve been there. Close down this blog, and put your face in Scripture - not some other lady’s book. Book studies are fine, but no preacher’s wife worth her salt would point you to some book when she can point you to the Living Word. And yes, I can say this - as a writer of books.)
Let’s lead with this, because honestly? This is a big deal for women.
Without a single diet plan, with no restrictive eating other than gentle intermittent fasting, and without harsh exercise, and after menopause, my body is at a happy weight. It is natural for me to say “no” when I feel like saying no - to any kind of food. It is natural for me to say “yes” to more water, to fresh vegetables, and also to cake and ice cream. I said “yes” to a Snickers bar yesterday. I say “yes” to bread. It bloats me, sure. It makes me a little uncomfortable. So I don’t say “yes” to it all the time. But if you set it on my plate? Especially if you made it just for me? I’m all in. Pass the butter.
How am I healthy and at a weight that I’m happy with? Well, Holy Spirit is the consummate teacher.
Not many books have been read, and I absolutely didn’t surf a bunch of blogs. Listening to the Lord, and to my own body became the plan. (Obviously, there are women under very extenuating circumstances - circumstances of life and death, not gas and bloating. If that is you, please do read all the books and blogs you wish. The Lord will lead you to answers!)
It is one thing to do research that is Spirit led. It is another thing to turn to self care as a kind of new, midlife identity. God has given me the gift of health, and yet I haven’t had to pull over (figuratively speaking) every few miles and check under the hood about every little thing.
If you are getting healthy results, and you are doing things differently than I am, or if you are one who loveslovesloves to research all things health because that is part of your original design, and because you’ve heard the Lord about it , then party on, my friend, and I am not at all surprised. Because we are all, each and every one, differently…and fearfully….and wonderfully made.
That marriage, up there in that picture? We fought for it from before day one. We radically receive one another, as Christ as received us. Does this man have faults? Do I?
Nah.
Just kidding. We have glaring faults. With the exception of infidelity, we have faults that other couples would call “deal breakers”. I’ve been a secret spender. I am an INFJ (if you’re into that) which is supposedly the most difficult personality to be married to, because I have ideals, man….I have standards. I’m a deep feeler, and far too quiet sometimes. He is both a team player to a fault, and a strong leader to a fault. If that confuses you, welcome to my world. Home boy is both a pleaser and an alpha male, and I sometimes feel more “herdED” than “heard”.
What does that do to me, and inside me? Well, it makes me decide to be a grown woman who does not expect her spouse to be all things, or a mind reader. It creates inside of my spirit a fabulous opportunity.
What is the fabulous opportunity? I get to think and choose what is important. I get to actually honor my husband, just as God has made him, and just as he happens to be, flaws and strengths. I will never get to have one without the other. And it is not my job to manage his mind.
It is my job to manage my own mind, and give him authentic honor. Sometimes, that looks like pushing back on him!
This is actually closer to Biblical relationship than some of what I’ve heard taught in a few of the buttoned-up, bullet-pointed marriage seminars. Submission does not equal checking my brains or my sense of what is right at the door.
Thankfully, I am married to a guy who not only sometimes makes me have to push back on him (if we were alike, one of us would be unnecessary), he sometimes…eventually….comes around to seeing it my way.
And sometimes not.
C’est La Vie, no? Such is life.
Regardless, in this season of our lives, it is more and more natural for both of us to radically receive one another, regardless. Negative beliefs about each other have no control over us, at any point in our thinking. We are fully confident that the other either is, or eventually will be fully submitted to Christ in key areas, and Christ is the one who gets to manage the other’s mind.
Our passion for one another is alive and quite well. I’m saying that delicately.
Can I just say I think he’s hot? Can I just say that?
The Holy Spirit has taught me that the passion and intimacy in my marriage is equal to the sum total of the quality of my thoughts about this man. Honestly? Passion can be made “new every day”, by applying the simple Gospel to my actual struggles. I am renewed, by hearing God speak over us, and believing what He says.
On to my creative practice. It is normal and natural for me to wake up with fresh eyes. Do I often have to contend for that? Absolutely! But complete victory now comes in minutes. Literally. It is now normal and natural for me to awaken, and instantly…automatically…all negative, sad, or overwhelmed feelings are pushed far, far behind me.
I lost my father in August of last year. What that did to me, was to make me a gratitude ninja. I became so thankful for my friends and my family. Losing the delight of my life (other than Jesus, my husband, kids and grandkids) only served to give me a determination to actually honor his memory by walking in abounding emotional health, and vocal praise.
So I have been surfing all the normal waves of grief since early 2017, when my dad was diagnosed and began to decline in ways that those close to him could tell, but others perhaps could not. Our whole family knew that without a miracle, he only had about 5 years left, at most.
And I still surf the same waves after last summer’s profound loss. Just a week ago, the Preacher and I made a hospital visit to a church member. As we entered the hospital parking lot, tears stung my eyes. I couldn’t figure out the sudden wave of emotion. Truly, I wondered why I felt weepy!
It took me a moment to realize: because of COVID, this was my first visit to a hospital since my father was in the hospital last summer. Grief. We carry it in our neurons, when we have loved well. It’s normal. What isn’t normal is to let grief interfere with your relationships, or with your original design.
See, my people need the version of me that is whole, healed or healing, healthy, and full of hope. Because I love them, turning inward is not an option. Expecting them to emotionally carry me is inappropriate. Because I love them, my own whole, integrated, original design is what I am determined to give them, as much as it depends on me to do it.
These are things Holy Spirit has taught me. And so….there is flourishing, because that’s His will for my life.
(I warned you that this post would be chatty…)
Can we talk about my nest? My home? The creativity I am unleashing inside these walls is at an all time high.
Believe me, I’ve had long, dry creative spells. I could - and probably should - write a book about how that, every time I set my mind to a creative work, the push back was so fierce and so heart rending and so personal as to be terrifying. I have crawled across broken glass, figuratively, to be able to call myself an “artist” today.
How? Leaning into anything and everything God says.
This home of mine is lovely. It is organized and quirky and exudes a presence and a hospitality that friends with much larger, more beautiful, million-dollar-homes have told me is tangible. My dear friend Jeanne Oliver tells me that her overnight visit to our home ranks in her top three times of feeling loved and cared for in her life.
This culdesac is a small colony of heaven to us and others. (I bet your home is, too!) My family lives all around me, and now also my friends Angel and Derrick and Sadie. The Preacher and I often yell to each other, from one of us at one end of the house, to the other at the other end of the house: “WHO EVEN ARE WE?!?”
We don’t even know. It’s above and beyond what we could ask, think, or imagine.
How? How can we live this way, in a somewhat declining, lower middle class neighborhood that others have actually fled?
Well, the Holy Spirit is my coach. He is my mentor. He is a consummate teacher. He told me, years ago: “Love what is, and love what is yours.” And so - I obeyed.
That’s it. You can’t have the results of obedience without obedience. God is still your good, good Father, but obedience sets your life on a certain trajectory that no one can reverse engineer. (Please read that one more time!).
If I have gotten off track, it is only by changing my mind to obey what the Holy Spirit has said, can my life (and heck, let’s be honest - even my dang day) be put back on a trajectory towards its lovely, original design.
Believe me, your original design is what you want. It’s the “you” that your people most need, and it’s the “you” that will flourish, nomatterwhat.
These words? They are my testimony. These pictures? With the exception of our “couple” photo, I have been careful to only pick what’s on my phone from just the past week.
Why allthewords? Why chat with you about these things? Here’s why:
“This is what the LORD says: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, nor the strong man in his strength, nor the wealthy man in his riches. But let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD, who exercises loving devotion, justice and righteousness on the earth— for I delight in these things,” declares the LORD.”
I hope you heard me when I said (and I said it often), “The Holy Spirit is the consummate Teacher.”
I don’t have anything to boast about that’s mine, or comes from me, but I am allowed a certain kind of “boasting” in knowing God. And He is mine. Every good thing in my life, including this season of favor and sweetness, stems from knowing who He is, and refusing what does not line up with His goodness and His gospel. Even grief, though real and wholly normal, has to become something that works for my good and His glory.
Otherwise, I’d act out and act weird and….I’d just act. I’d put on an act. Without a simple faith in a simple Gospel found in one simple Book, I’d have to resort to the interwebs for my identity, and I’d have to depend on worship songs for my theology…
…and I’d have to read other women’s books instead of write my own God-given vision.
On that note, it actually isn’t inconsistent whatsoever to tell you that I’ve also been deeply inspired by this piece of writing by Phylicia Masonheimer, titled “May His Abundance Never Scare You”.
“The lie that suffering is more holy than Sabbath seasons is just that: a lie. Suffering teaches us much; the things I’ve learned through chronic illness, surgery, job loss, false labors and a difficult marriage will be with me forever. The imprint is eternally upon my heart. But I am learning that our abundant seasons, our harvest seasons, are as full of lessons and goodness as the famine was. Refusing to accept them just shortchanges our growth. Refusing to open our hands and hearts to the fullness of God’s abundance helps no one and hurts us.”
May I be one who understands and knows the Living God. May I testify from this place, always.