Day 33 of Lent - Happy Birthday, Preacher!

Today is not just the first day of spring, it is also the birthday of my favorite human. My pastor. My person.

He is my closest, most incredible friend. I love him unreservedly and completely. We are a package deal, and let me tell you, the moment anyone has treated him with a pattern of disrespect (which thankfully is not often at all), I’m no longer their friend. I will hang in there with anyone once, twice, even three times. But if I see a clear tendency towards disrespect, I put some distance there. That is a solid boundary for me, and I believe it is a healthy one.

God gave him to me to “walk him home” in this life. God gave him to me to serve, to feed (sometimes), have his back (at all times), to take care of, and love unconditionally.

I love his lion heart for the Gospel, I love the way he preaches the lavish grace of God, I love the way he can play drums, or guitar, or he can preach, or build a house, or fix a car. He’s like a human Swiss Army knife. There’s very little he cannot do. So, for his birthday, I felt like going big, this year.

This is his present:

I know it’s just a (super nice, all leather, all power, sunroof, tonneau bed cover, quad cab) truck.

But there is an amazing story behind this truck! Anyone who knows us, knows that our stuff is never just stuff. All our stuff has a story. Because we live in dependence on the Lord for everything we have.

So this, friends, is way more than a truck. It’s another “God-Truck” for The Preacher. (That’s what he called his old truck, which is still alive and well and passed down to a family member!)

I think we are going to do something we don’t often do. I think we might actually take Monday (tomorrow) off. I will try to share some gorgeous shots of the Smokies tomorrow evening, as we squeeze all the sweetness out of the “birthweek” of the hottest preacher I know.

I sure love you, Tim Atchley!

Day 32 of Lent, and Spring's Brief and Beautiful Ache

I’m trying to figure out what it was about this that made me ache. It made me ache in that familiar way, like when snow falls or babies are born. There’s something about beauty mixed with ugly mixed with cracks mixed with gold. There’s something about loveliness that can’t possibly last.

So I am an enneagram 5, but my 4 wing has a really big butt and she takes up a lot of room inside me. (And if you think I take those numbers seriously, we must be complete strangers…)

So the “enneagram 4 wing force” is strong with me, and I apologize in advance. Bradford pear blossoms on a cracked and dirty tray make me verklempt. If that sort of emoting troubles you, I beg you, look away.

Maybe it’s the loss of my father, last year. Maybe it’s a dozen other smaller losses combined, but the ache is making…has made…me wiser, softer, and sillier. I am more ready to risk - and that is saying a lot, because risky is already basically my middle name.

I know. I know, you look at me and see someone so careful. But look deeper. Deeper, still. The part of me that willingly stood beside my husband when he quit his full-time job with benefits to pastor full-time? The part of me that threw caution and workbooks to the wind to educate her children with mostly whole books and life experiences? She’s still there. The part of me that has refused, at great risk, to let myself feel beholden to those who did much to try to make me be? She’s still alive and alert. She hasn’t even taken a nap in 30 years.

Every beautiful thing God has done in me and for me, the meticulously gorgeous design of my family and my life, and the glory of the weighty calling that is on us - is not because anyone supported us, though so many have and do and will.

But they have, and they do, and they will because Living God has bathed us in favor. That’s true for you, too. You can risk, without fear of man. The only problem is, I cannot believe this for you. And I’m telling you, it is not easy to walk in simple faith in God’s goodness.

It is risky business to know these things for sure. To live like I believe it invites misunderstanding.

Spring’s brief and beautiful ache makes me even more willing to “fail, having dared greatly”.

I told you to look away!

“It is not

the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”