I sit at my computer to submit myself to year-end reflections on this last day of 2023, and I fall headfirst into photo memories. Before long, tears are streaming down my face. As I flip through photos of my kids as babies, of my husband and myself as babies too, I just can hardly stand it. I love them so much. It’s a sea of love that I feel for them. I am blessed. I am grateful.
I find myself longing for some of those memories that are gone. I find myself longing for crocheted hats that once hugged those bear cubs’ ears. I find myself longing for chubby cheeks to kiss endlessly. I find myself longing for those snuggles and cuddles that were a constant all those years ago.
As a mother, I have learned that every stage in life comes with its unique moments to treasure and reflect on. Each beautiful newborn head, each sprout of a nose, each and every kissable finger and toe are delightful. Yet from that tiny miracle come cries, demands, and strain that overwhelm. While wading through these seasons, we learn which boats to ride, which rafts to jump on when our boats tip over, who to call for help, among other things. I have loved every single chapter that I have had as a mother, and each one has brought with it a lesson to transfer to the rest of life.
The end of the year is kind of like my longing for my kids in their littleness, their innocence. And in the same way that I sometimes long for the younger version of myself, I long for a little more time to think about the ways I grew and was challenged throughout the past year. So as I ponder the everyday moments along with the big ones, I find myself feeling joy and awe at the big places and decisions that I’ve made in the last 12 months. Which is why I say yes and give myself a few more moments to think about what are now-memories from 2023.
In 2023, I have experienced God’s grace, his truly amazing grace, his sea of love for me. Without adding a single skill or talent to my life, I have learned to rest in his provision and to fully depend on him in a job, in marriage, in motherhood, and in friendship too. I have learned so much!
Join me in reading through these higher thoughts and other things, uncovering and pondering the challenges and joys from a selection of 2023 journal entries I’ve copied here.
january 24, 2023
Why is a gut instinct so hard for me to hone in on? I want to know what I sense and be honest with myself as I reflect, act, decide. Ugh. I am so in tune with others’ thoughts and feelings that it complicates my sense of vision and ability to see how to get from A to Z. Father, would you help me to see the wounded, broken, weak, and hungry the way that you do? Help me to be aware, be sensitive, to acknowledge what I observe and to trust you. Father, I depend on you.
january 29, 2023
“I’ve got a weird feeling, Mom,” my brand new 10-year-old tells me.
“Ok, tell me about it.” He can’t determine whether the feeling is a good one or a bad one.
“It could be that I’m nervous. Or excited,” he says.
I get it. My body feels confused sometimes too. I wonder if it’s a bit of both. I wasn’t sure what to say. I was aware of all the host of things that I should say. And even some things that I shouldn’t say. And thoughts swirled about how it could be this moment he grabs onto for some inexplicable reason. It could be this moment that makes or breaks him. With all of the pressure of what I ought to say or what I shouldn’t say and the million rippling impacts that whatever I do say buzzing in my ear, I stay where I am comfy on the couch and keep beckoning him to fill me in. He never arrives at a conclusion. I decide that’s ok. I never really arrive at one either. I tell him he can keep thinking if he wants. If he figures it out and wants to tell me about it, I assure him that I’m all ears.
I’m amazed and often puzzled that at 40, I’m still struggling with everyone else’s voice in my ears when I get into situations like these. What’s new is I intentionally decided to not say anything that I felt like I should say. And I intentionally chose not to give additional space in my mind to anything that was a could. I also was intentional about the shouldn’ts. I respectfully noticed them and drew a line in the sand. I did what I believed God has gifted me to do. I welcomed. I listened. I pondered with the 10-year-old.
God is teaching me that not only am I to trust in his understanding and lean not on my own wisdom. He is also teaching me to lean not on others’ understanding…aka the 40 years of accumulating voices in my mind, especially in these enormous moments. Momentous moments.
Perhaps being me–the me God is drawing out, developing, and delivering–perhaps being me is discovering me in these very surprising ways. At the intersection of my child’s questions and my listening heart. Perhaps I discover me at the crossroads between a pressure to perform and permission to ponder. I am 100% the listener. The ponderer. The host of joy and comfort and peace. Father, thank you for the insight you show me as I walk though the every day and the extraordinary. Sometimes on the same day. Sometimes in the same moment.
february 5, 2023
So Christian told me tonight that he can see the Spirit lead me to share stories that help people and that all the doubt and questions that I feel after the fact are spiritual attacks from the enemy. I don’t think I’ve ever considered it that way. He said to consider that God’s promise to me that I be made uniquely to be me in the world as a storyteller or a person who shares is important and true. This is a challenging, new idea.
february 22, 2023
Father, what is this work you have entrusted to me? I am full of wonder and some apprehension too. You know I don’t want to mishandle it. And fears press in. News of events on the other side of the world feels terrifying. Stories on this side of the world feel scary too. How do we know truth? Father, you are the giver of all good things. Guide me in your truth.
march 11, 2023
This week was full, full. So much good and, of course, plenty of hard. The thing I am most thinking about is my tendency to force myself forward to do what I sense that my audience most expects when I am uncomfortable in a situation. Yet, I don’t want to be unfaithful to the Spirit within me. Father, guide me into wholeness as I continue to grow and learn how to be a body-spirit-soul person. I want to be wholehearted, in sync with your movement and wholly guided by you.
march 23, 2023
I look at myself and wonder. Where did I go? When did my face start to do that? Why do my clothes fit like this? Why do I care? What about my core values of real relationships and authenticity and goodness and integrity? I feel the strain of life. My 12-year-old calling “everything horrible.” My 11-year-old screaming at the 6-year-old for eating edamame loudly and the 6-year-old screaming back. The 10-year-old melting down because of his hair and his friends at school criticizing him and not including him in his activities. The 8-year-old missed all of it…not old enough yet to be too upset…I don’t know. I just don’t know who I am seeing when I look in the mirror. And I certainly don’t know who it is I see in pictures. God help me find who you want.
april 7, 2023
I find myself improving in some very small ways. Yet in other ways I find myself feeling under attack and moving the other direction. Just recently, I noticed I’ve begun to feel a sense of despondency about my age in life. I am middle-aged now by all measures and I’m letting my grays show. I am unwilling to hide my age, but at the same time I choke on some deep level at the reality of being the bloom that is going to droop and wither and drop.
Reality has flung itself before me, and I am feeling it. Am I the only one who feels bombarded by realizations that I’m a nuisance [I imagine] to many 20- and 30-somethings? My own children are taking important stands. Trying to plant their stakes and assert their convictions and values. Of course I’m proud of that. Yet I want to be a guide who is trustworthy. I want to inspire curiosity and encourage wonder and foster advocacy for those in minority groups. Just how can I do this in a way that upholds reality and takes its energy from God’s truth–his living word? This is my prayer.
april 11, 2023
Being stuck. My life has been a long, rolled out piece of tape, to which I am often stuck or tangled within. I desperately desire to be free, to be unstuck, to be light and unencumbered by the sin and lies and traps that beset me. I feel I am so easy to fool, ensnare, and defeat.
april 23, 2023
Traps. Treks. Bars. These are some words that are reverberating in my mind this morning. Not only do I not usually write/reflect early in the day, but it is also unusual for me to happen with clarity on my writing goal before expounding on, processing, and otherwise dragging those ideas onto paper first. Perhaps it is time to harvest a mission before taking my book to the next step.
Last night I felt a familiar melancholy, a drift of pressure and bleakness that hovered over me. I was depressed by it. I acknowledged it and endured it. Slowly, it lifted off like a gray rain cloud. In the place of the cloud was night sky. There was also a call to something. I need some space. I need some quiet. An opportunity to be quiet with my thoughts and my body and my spirit. I lay down in bed with some choices. I could grieve over the broken things. I could cry in frustration over the continual “trapped” feelings I suffer from. Wave after wave and cloud after cloud of prison bars descends over me, a tent of in-escape that I am covered by. I could pummel something in my anger at my inability to break cycles I so want to break. But these emotions are all symptoms of my human condition, my sin condition. And the actual cure won’t be accomplished through emotional release, though there is plenty of good in release.
Quiet.
What my being needs is space to be quiet. An intentional space where activity stops. Physical movement stops. Mental flitting around stops. Spiritual ponderings pause. All of the buzzing in my heart, soul, and spirit simply stop. And I am still. And I am quiet. And I am listening and I am awake.
So often as I draw silence and quiet around me, it is along with a fuzzy blanket and sleep envelops me. I am taken in as a child from the cold. Sleep swarms around me and pulls me deeper into her arms. It is pleasant and wonderful. But sleep without peace takes me into tumultuous dreams and distracted mornings. And the accumulated record of “peace-less” nights means while my body is restored of its strength, my mind and my heart and spirit are still swirling around. I need and want and crave quiet.
And the mission, perhaps the vision of my book, is to describe this. I want to paint the picture of the cloud that blows into place like storm clouds and the way my entire being becomes trapped. I want to detail the ways of the wind. The lines that form on my forehead. The look in my eyes. I want to expand awareness of the way our lives miss peace. And I think it is because we lack quiet. And I want to discover how over the years the Holy Spirit has empowered me to rest and receive quiet and hear and listen and then the joy and abundance that rains down after. This is the start of that.
may 7, 2023
Smells have always been a lightning rod for me. Either one that transports me straight to heaven or one that twists my inner being in torturous ways. Right now the smell of a synthetic freshener is assailing my senses. But I can’t escape elsewhere lest my other senses be tried. The children all want things, questions about watching TV or having pumpkin seeds. Then another is asking me if I am stressed.
“Yes, I am I guess,” I say as I accidentally slam shut a cabinet door.
I walk myself to my bedroom to hide for a moment. Only to be hit by the waft of fake floral scents. I am stressed by my increasingly formless body. I feel everyday that the last vestige of beauty that I have is slipping away. I see my kids becoming older, more mature and beginning to look more like little adults. In an ironic twist I notice their figures grow well while mine seems bent on ruin and feels more and more ugly. And I feel wrong for feeling this way. “Embrace your age and your season,” I try to tell my own relatives. But who am I to suggest this? I am despising every wild gray hair I see and I feel angry at my face and how wide and round and vacant it feels. I feel that the features I most liked about myself (vanity?) have somehow faded or vanished altogether. Tonight anyway I feel colorless and formless, like I am receding back into the nothingness I was before I had form. This is how I feel. And the lingering scent doesn’t help me one bit.
may 9, 2023
There was so much anger and distress in my heart that my mind and heart and body began to lose control of any sense of stability. I felt so completely overwhelmed that I threw every piece of clothing I own that wasn’t already in my closet on the floor in my closet. The folded clothes. The dirty clothes. Shoes. Dresses. Jewelry. My unpacked suitcase. I was seething with anger so I just threw everything in there. I was desperate for comfort. So cold and alone and upset did I feel that I was ready to lay in a pile of clothes for comfort.
may 11, 2023
About 10 years ago I remember writing about one missing ingredient in my life–confidence. And now, all those years later, I’m still missing that same thing. How does one acquire confidence? Through practicing tasks repeatedly until one’s risk and attempts at success are achieved? Is it that I lack confidence because I continue to shrink back from trying? But I do take steps of faith. Often too! In me is a constant torrent of second guessing. Help me, Lord. Be my confidence.
may 13, 2023
As I get closer to the end of this journal, my mind hones in on what else might be ending. Perhaps a thought pattern that isn’t serving a good purpose? Maybe a bad habit? All I know is that the days feel more fraught. My relationships feel very significant and most of all my struggle with throwing off the facade that wants to cover up the real me is coming more into the light. I want to just be who God made me to be. I want to be free from CONSTANTLY being trapped, stuck, locked in. I want to be able to acknowledge my emotions and to not crumble like wet sand in the wake of an oncoming current. How can this come to pass? I want to use my voice with authority and wholeness. I want to affirm people. I want to encourage people. I want to build them up and support the good things they bring to others. I want to stop analyzing the risk of saying what I think…I want the freedom to say it and the maturity and strength to hear the response.
How can a woman my age accomplish this? How can I be a leader and lead others? How can I know I am moving in the right direction? How can I live and speak and act in confidence? I am unhappy with the insecurity I feel–more so I am unhappy that I feel so insecure about who I am. I thought by now I would have outgrown it, but instead I seem as steeped in it as ever.
I read that INFPs are the personality type with the lowest confidence. I read that the melancholic personality is the one most likely to reflect and overanalyze and get stuck in emotions. I read that they need space and need to take up space in their own lives. I guess this is what I need to do.
How do I take up space in my own life? Where is my voice? Who is listening to it? What else can I say or do to be heard? How does my voice get restored? What redemption does it need? Where is it broken? What does God want me to do with it? Here you go, Lord, Whatever you will and whatever you want, that I will do.
june 15, 2023
Day 1000 or thereabouts. I wonder how many days of my life I have written the date and then scrawled some words. Someday I should tabulate that. I would be curious to know.
As for today it’s been a mixed bag of a day. It began as most days do, full of promise. There was the usual amount of morning tension–what do I do today and in what order? But I resolve it without too much ado. Then there was the question–do I exercise? What do do if so, and etc. I opted to mow the back yard which was a solid 30-minute endeavor.
A friend came over and I left the kids here at home and went to have a convo with a new friend in Evansville. I felt a bit scattered but overall that was life-giving. Overall I continue to struggle with feeling overwhelmed. I’m not sure how to get a handle on it.
And tonight there was an unnecessary disagreement about rice of all things. Who wants to die on the hill of rice? I won’t go into it but Christian and I disagree on making one of the kids eat it. I am trying to put myself in both my kids’ shoes and in Christian’s. We got into an argument about what do with the kids who don’t want to eat what is on the table. I ended up withdrawing myself to give him space. Somehow after dropping the conversation, I found ourselves arguing about it again later. Now we are mad at each other over rice. Rice!
june 17, 2023
Today–in true diary style–I will describe my ups and downs. I tore myself awake, nearly crying from a dream so overwhelming I was unable to rescue myself sooner.
In my dream I was turned around in a snowy, New York City, having put a dent in a car that belonged to a woman, A, whom I knew would be beyond angry but would forgive me. Besides being incredibly late, I was carrying more than I could handle in every way possible through the same snowy streets. My hands were full, my misgivings stretched to the limit. I was suddenly being pursued by a man who I perceived would steal from me at best and take advantage of me at worst. As in all terrifying dreams, I moved like one mucking through sticky sludge. I went back and forth between finding myself in a car and walking and running and panicking. In this part of my dream I was not conscious that I was dreaming (which sometimes I am).
Eventually, I arrive at a battered apartment. Crates, scattered wooden planks, and boxes fill the space. A is taller than normal. The apartment lurches three, maybe four stories above my head. The task is to reload the car with all my possessions, things I’d brought with me. I don’t live here. But I’ve brought too much. It’s taking too long and I’m letting everyone down. Somehow I pull myself out of the nightmare, but I awake with a terrible longing to repay A. To make everything right. She doesn’t care about any of my stuff–my money, comforts of life, games–there is nothing I can offer her that will win back her approval. I have truly failed her.
The dream is acknowledged. I am out of bed and the real day unfolds. I am unsettled because there are tasks to do before Quinn’s party. But there is also quiet time, moments to pray and ponder and discover God’s daily truth, something to cling to that will let me move with confidence and clarity through my day.
But as I am sipping my coffee and snapping a picture of half a cheese danish from the patio, Anni comes out bursting with questions about our agenda. “Where are we going tomorrow? What are we doing?”
“Church,” I tell her. She tells me that she is done with church. Does she mean done like school is done for the summer? Or does she mean done like she is done with the 6 and under gymnastics class because she is too big for that now? I am annoyed at the interruption but know I should unravel this “done” pronouncement. Do I have to deal with it now? I am whining inside my head. Feelings of being overwhelmed ramp right up. I may as well be in A’s quasi NYC apartment being chased by a scary man. I tell her we go to church every Sunday and that we won’t ever be “done” with it. She sighs and says she is bored of being at church and she doesn’t want to be in the small room any longer. I tell her she won’t be and that she has been promoted. I suppose tomorrow I’ll find out if she likes the 1st grade class.
I wrestle long with a sense of unease about the day, the morning, and what I need to do, including which verses I want to read. Pressure surrounds me like a rubber band squeezing a wrist. I pull out my Bible and end up in 2 Corinthians. I read about the ministry of the Spirit and how through Christ I can be transformed and I can experience God without a veil and I can have the cloudiness of my mind lifted. I note a bunch of observations. The number of times “letter(s)” is mentioned. Likewise “ministry.” I summarize the whole passage. I call out some phrases that I’d like to look up sometime.
Then Christian comes out. My face is a display of consternation, to which he responds, “What’s wrong?” I despise the question because I don’t want him to perceive me as needy but I am entirely overwhelmed that the slightest disruption amplifies my neediness.
I confess eventually, after an inordinate amount of tears, accidental rudeness to two or three children, and a weeping run through what things need to be done that I might be more of a perfectionist than I realized. Now what to do with that?
The rest of my day was up from there. A successful 9th birthday party at the indoor trampoline park for Quinn. An hour-long conversation with my mother-in-law in Spanish. I can’t believe my comprehension. And some errands to run with Christian later. But I continue to ponder the perfection moment. What do you want me to know about this, Lord?
july 5, 2023
There is a work that must be done, must be written. Now that I have confirmation and commission to write, the question is what to let come out? Words slide like smooth silver, slipping through the silences as thoughts seek to shine. Which thoughts? I am praying next to that end. To the question I’ve pondered for decades. What story? Which one ought I to bring into the light? Which story best shines light on the marvelous things God did, God does, God will do in my life? Out of darkness and into the marvelous light.
july 25, 2023
I am discovering freedom bit by bit from the oppression of pleasing others over pleasing the ones I want to please first. Myself, God, family, etc. So often I will sacrifice my family and myself in order to make others’ lives easier. While it’s kind to let others choose, it’s not unkind to assert one’s needs and wants. As I continue to go on this road to discovering God’s love [for me], I am learning to be me and that it is true that God has given me what I need, that I am equipped and that I am righteous. A saint who sins. I am free in and through Christ. No need to keep putting on a mask of pretension. People want to see who we really are anyway and don’t care about who we want to be perceived as. Father, help me simply to be me all day everyday.
august 13, 2023
How do you go from being a writer with two or maybe a dozen fans, to being a writer with hundred and more? I don’t want to be famous, but I do believe I have words to share. Words that need to be read. I think of a delicious meal–the duck confit with roasted or braised vegetables. It was a masterpiece. It was meant for my lips and for my experience. It was truly decadent. I am so glad I tried that meal and I hope to enjoy it again soon. Like that. I believe that I have something to say–a story and more to share–that will inspire, challenge, and entertain those who read it. But how do you invite these people to taste and see? A compelling marketing campaign? A podcast? A stellar agent? While God has unmistakably said, “You–write,” he has not made it clear to me how these words are to get before others’ eyes.
I pray for natural and supernatural help, Lord. You are the “way-maker, miracle maker, promise-keeper, light in the darkness,” as the song goes. “That is who you are.”
So while I have no idea how He will spread these words–His words–the stories and words He’s impressed on me to write, I am confident that He can take them to two or a dozen or a thousand others. HE is in the business of multiplying. But honestly, if my story helps even one person, then in my eyes, it is successful.
august 23, 2023
God has focused my attention on story for years, for my whole life I would say. My earliest memories around this theme are the books I read and the stories I was taught in Sunday School. As I consumed these stories, I noticed their impact. Certain stories influenced my core beliefs and drew me to be interested in details of life. Stories made me aware early on of the interconnectedness we can have with each other. They also made me aware of how complex people are and how complex I was in my developing personality, interests, and ambitions.
Somewhere along the way I sunk so entirely into others’ stories in books and in church and in the Bible that I lost myself. I gave myself to the direction and will of the stories I was taking in. I merged myself with them. I found myself in these stories and came to feel most alive when buried in a book. That my story was significant or that someone might be in my circle of influence as a result of living within the range of me wasn’t something that I thought about consciously. In fact, as I grew up, while I wondered what my story eventually would amount to, I had the impression that it wouldn’t take off or matter until “one day” or down the road until one day when God would wake me up and say, “You’re story is starting…now!” Like a move…
But it had been rolling since before I was born. When he knit me together in my mother’s womb as the Psalmist says. The hairs on my head were numbered, the details of who I am were sketched and painted. And God was full of love for his creation. A sea of love.
Little by little God awoke me. He spoke at different times and brought me to life by surrounding me with support and especially input and influence from godly mentors and leaders in my life. He fills me up so I can be poured out, and He has uniquely equipped me to do that through story.
september 18, 2023
This morning I woke up trying to push dreams away and to accept that morning had come. My face feels full of allergy and thickness, like I slept under a film of ragweed. But because I don’t want to remain in this state, I took action. I drank some water first. Then took an allergy pill. Then I enjoyed a sneeze attack–this one I cannot control. It just seizes me. Following this, I blew my nose and wiped my eyes with a wet paper towel. I imagine I am wiping away the invisible film. Am I really? It is effective, so I don’t need to wonder, some kind of film had dusted my face. From these, I clean my glasses which have been subject by this point to the sneeze-filled air and my fingers while I had plunked them on and off to sneeze and wipe my eyes.
This is part of my morning routine, part of how I transition from sleep to awake. But to encounter my day I must first wipe away any evidence of night and the habits of sleep. And because I live in Southern Indiana, where seasonal allergies exist, I am intentional about dealing with the affects of that.
Am I as intentional when it comes to remaining in Jesus? Do I recognize the way evil like a nightly settling of dust falls over me? How do I purify myself from sin? Reading 1 John has opened my spiritual eyes to understand that eternal life, found in Jesus, is a present life. It’s wrapped up in how I presently live. It’s summed up by 1) believing that Jesus is the Son of God and 2) loving our brothers and sisters. This love is taking care of their needs and responding to the teaching that the Holy Spirit teaches us. Loving others also is informed by doing right–loving righteousness.
september 22, 2023
Yesterday I spent a couple of hours praying, writing, and processing my longings. And I discovered that I want to be writing and that I don’t want to be in the specific leadership position that I am in. Throughout this last week, I have been circling this questions, but as I sat and sipped coffee, I realized that I needed to approach it with honesty and that I needed to think about a course of action.
As with many other endeavors in life, I have said yes to a need that I am capable of filling…for a time. And now nearly 12 months in, that time is close to being completed. I cannot believe I have this clarity. But I have prayed and worked and listened, and here we are. Of course, I don’t want to disappoint anyone, but I’ve been down this road before. God will be with me.
september 24, 2023
For 40 years (or thereabouts) I have walked in wonder over my calling. What am I supposed to do, I have questioned. I’ve asked others I’ve asked God. I’ve asked myself. But arriving at the answer has been a wilderness experience.
Today I am in Numbers 21. I realize that this chapter marks a significant moment. Israel begins to capture cities and to settle. Israel gains ground and is starting to taste the fruit of God’s promise. They are beginning to acquire the Promised Land.
In addition, they sing praise and lift their voices about their conquests. There are three unique references to words:
- The Book of the Wars of the Lord Numbers 21:14-15
- Israel sings a song Numbers 21:17-18
- What the Poets say: Numbers 21:28-30
As a woman who has this week finally understood what her calling is–writing–this means a lot. I have hovered over words and songs in Scripture, evidence of literary significance and oral tradition related to words. I am thrilled to see this theme celebrated in the Bible. What affirmation it gives me!
october 13, 2023
How can I stop being so self-critical? I hold myself to impossible standards and then I am failing before I can even take a step forward. This is no way to be!
I want to go back to being in awe of the body and beauty and brain that God reminded me of nearly 20 years ago as I sat on the rocks over Lakeshore Drive in Chicago. With the blue of Lake Michigan spanning before me, my body was stinging with the realization of how amazing and unique I truly was. In this holy moment, I felt singular and loved and most of all, full of appreciation for what God had done in assembling all the body parts he had in me. He had made me aware of what a gift it all was. Yet I had no sense of what I was supposed to do after that point. People would ask me what I wanted to do with my life back then…oh how I hated that question.
When they asked, I felt like I was doing a live pop quiz…and certainly failing. “I don’t know what to do with my life,” I wanted to scream. I wanted to partake of life and to contribute to life, but I was unfocused and dismissive of my gut instinct. My gut signaled interest in fields that I felt my family would disagree with. I could not see my way forward.
I was wrapped up in my desires to be loved and found and to come together with a companion for life–a soul mate, a man I could bring a family into the world with. I was bewildered by my options.
In all of this, I absorbed the blame. There must be something wrong with me. I am rejected and unwanted I felt. But as I look back, I see a girl floating along, carried by wind on the water, a woman whose sails were unfurled, unknown to herself. Like a butterfly who doesn’t know she has transformed into maturity, I was a young woman, a writer and an artist who did not possess self-awareness, who neither experienced freedom to roam and come to a decision in her way. I felt crushed by the myriad voices around me as they asked me to share what I was doing with my life. I couldn’t see what was clearly in front of me. What kind of job should I try to get? It felt so overwhelming to me. All I could settle on was that I loved to help others. So I became a woman who wanted to help others.
This was good too. I helped many others. And I loved those jobs. A language trainer. A swim coach. A Bible study leader. And yes, eventually, a wife and a mother.
A letter to myself from myself:
Amber, take the grace and kindness and compassion that you lavish on others and receive it for yourself. God has created you for a purpose. You no longer need to search for it like a quest or some treasure at the bottom of the sea. The blueprints–his fingerprints–are all over. What you need to do is to allow the Holy Spirit to fill those sails, allow them to be raised and released so that His winds can blow through you. You are the woman God has called you to be.
october 23, 2023
I am a writer. Therefore the thing that I am is a target for the enemy. I believe in my heart that no person can live, truly live on material or physical food alone. It is the word of God that builds us, sustains us, and refines us. Jesus, gives me the life that I do not have elsewhere.
november 8, 2023
I’m always amazed at how these journals fill up. And they are a record. A running piece of evidence that I am constantly impacted by the world and vice-versa. I want to use the power that God has given me to do his work, but I also want to embrace the gospel for exactly what it is without adding or taking anything away from it.
I have come to be aware of my gut instinct over the last year. It is a signal within my body that is very distinct. In fact, it is a gift that enables me to notice when I am in or out of alignment with how I believe God has intended me to live. In other words, my gut tells me when a core value is at stake, under threat, or the opposite, being celebrated.
What comes to mind is conscience a well, that part within you that directs and reminds and sometimes prickles when you’ve lived out or acted out of alignment with those values. I’m thinking of how that little green (was it a bug?) guy that ran around with Pinocchio…telling him not to do this or that.
I am now in a place where I am allowed to ask what the relationship between my gut and the Holy Spirit is. What I have now come to is that my gut instinct–the inner voice that sits at the seat of my heart can be directed. It is in some ways like a mirror. When within my heart my emotions are a mess, my gut signals by way of a gut/body feeling that something is wrong. Now I can communicate that situation to others. I can process it. I can pray over it. But what I should not do is suppress or ignore it. As I grow more aware of what it’s like to acknowledge my gut feelings, I learn to see what my true values and beliefs are. This is something to ponder.
november 28, 2023
As a former lifeguard, it feels a bit embarrassing to admit that I’ve had a rocky relationship with the word save and its collocations get saved, be saved, are there more? Clearly, the set Christian phrases don’t get tossed around from the chair. When a person in the water even begins to struggle, the lifeguard is on alert, ready to whistle and jump. And some times the rescue comes before the swimmer even realizes he or she is in danger. My focus was on swimmers when I was in that chair–how strong they were, how small or young they were, how rowdy or dismissive of rules they were. For me, these points populated a map producing a rolling likelihood of saving or rescue from the chair. 99.9% of the time with my controlling whistle, I was able to prevent a situation where lifesaving measures of any kind were necessary.
Yet when friends and family used the common faith expression get saved, the emotions that evoked within me were dizzying. Before middle school, I can’t point to a memory good or bad that I have with the phrase. The concept around salvation was simple. Salvation was the way to get to heaven. It was just as clear to me as a cereal being the vehicle to satisfying my morning hunger. If hungry, eat cereal. If heaven, do salvation.
Yet, I remember a friend poising the question to me about salvation one day at my private Christian school in middle school, and the cascading emotions that I have lived with ever since that time. While I’ve shared the story many times, only recently have I begun to reframe what salvation means to me in a positive light verses the shadowy sense that my had conveyed all those years ago.
We were in the art room. Was it homeroom or art class? Homeroom I think. In the small school, every classroom was repurposed as needed. We sat in the long strip of desks talking about whatever eight grade girls discussed in the Nineties. I can’t recall the origin of the conversation, but I found myself reciting a favorite Bible passage among friends (as was common in our school setting and among the friends I made then). Was it Proverbs 3:5-6? Was it the more familiar John 3:16? Were we quizzing each other? Unlikely…we would not have been using the short homeroom period to rehearse Bible verses…plus as my faux pas will reveal, I would have been conscious of which version of the Bible I was reciting had that been the case.
For whatever reason, out from my mouth burst a Bible verse. I remember how full my heart was at that moment. When else had I felt such happiness among friends who accepted me and enjoyed being around me? I felt their acceptance from the smiles on their faces. From the open body language, their dancing eyes. And now, in what amounted to everyday conversation, I felt Bible verses well up in me and experienced what it was like to have space in which to share these and special truths about how they filled my spirit with joy. When else had I had the best of all worlds? Maximum happiness in faith, in friendship, in school–three of my most prized things.
But it all came crashing down in an instant. A verse turned into a second verse and one of my friends–the girl whose opinions and approval mattered most to me–cut me off with a question. “What version are you quoting?” For those not immersed in this specific Christian subculture, her question seems obscure and lacks context. But as a second year enrollee at a small, private, Baptist school, I recognized my mistake when I heard the word version and understood its implication right away. I’d broken a cardinal rule, one which I’d been able to skate by to that point. All Scripture in our school was presented in the King James Version, and although I had never read that version or felt a special inclination toward the KJV prior to attending our school, I had also refused to accept the belief that other versions of the Bible were inaccurate, incomplete, or unauthorized. But not my friend. To her, I had crossed a line. I had quoted a verse from an unauthorized version of the Bible
“Do you believe that Jesus died for your sins and that he rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures?” or something very similar came running from her mouth faster than a faucet would pour forth its stores. The joy and delight that had moments before swelled in my heart was immediately cut off. Why did she question my salvation because I had recited a version other than her preferred version?
“I was saved and have read the NIV ever since I was a child,” I remember defending myself. But the damage was done. I could see I would have to prove my salvation to my friend. And somehow in that time, I began to also feel that I needed to prove myself to God. That I was worthy. And that I could quote his verses correctly, across as many versions as possible, and maybe too in other languages. I would merit his love and kindness. I would do it!
It’s been years and years and years, and only now do I realize how her full-scale interrogation about the state of my salvation has stayed with me and how I have made some incredibly wrong faith leaps. But God is still good. And has been good to me.
december 9, 2023
The first things on my mind this morning include the dream I was dreaming, the blue morning light coming through the window, the desk clock tick-tick-ticking, my husband’s already up and on his bike, an email from a writer friend, the school room and how eager I am to tidy it up, my desk and bedroom–how can I make it what I want? Can I move my desk downstairs? Can I build or create an office? Can my dad help? What would this take? My phone is lost between the pillows because I fell asleep praying last night while listening to Lectio 365. The day ahead of me…Quinn’s basketball game–will other kids pick on him? Pictures with Santa…what will we all wear? My weight going up a pound after filling up on pizza las night..and realizing its literally all water weight. It’s amazing that so much can be on our minds. Which thoughts belong there? Which threads like toys cluttering my kids desks can be sorted, redistributed, or even tossed right now? Which thoughts belong? Which ones do not?
Father–giving you my thoughts and allowing you to help me sort through them. What things, thoughts, or other things are whispering, enticing, or turning me away from worshipping you?
december 12, 2023
In middle school I remember a sense of pressure around becoming independent–a kind of silent imperative that welled up constantly within me. To accomplish this, I remember closing myself off emotionally and trying to become unaffected by all things. There was a spirit of being untouchable, unreachable, a feeling of not being affected by the outside world that I felt I had to nurture. For example, I remember wearing my winter coat to a basketball game with a friend and NEVER taking it off that whole game. I remember telling myself this was okay. I’m not hot I told myself. No matter that drops of sweat wet the fur around my neck. I remember not wanting to take off my coat because I perceived I smelled (probably from all the sweating!), yet I was massively uncomfortable. I remember the pride of facing an uncomfortable situation and enduring it. Why did I insist to myself that I must be stoic and not acknowledge my discomfort or do something different? Why did I feel I had to be unaffected? Strong? A wall? Why did I think I needed to be a rock in order to become independent?
How much of that mentality still runs through me?
I don’t have to be a rock. Jesus is the rock and he with his endless capacity for being present in my experiences does not wall himself off from me. The Bible tells of him knowing our inner thoughts even when we don’t say them. When I imagine him with me on those bleachers as a middle schooler, I imagine him embracing me in the exact right way that I would have been responsive to. I’m not sure what that would have been exactly…lavishing me first with pens, markers, paper and other crafting materials maybe…objects and implements I could work with my hands to make something beautiful out of. He would have reminded me and told me that I was such an object. He would have invited me to have allowed him to make me into something beautiful–to shape my heart into a heart that could taste and experience his goodness, the goodness of his creation, and of being with others.
I closed myself off, becoming a rock, numb to my feelings and wants, as a way to protect myself from getting hurt and from feeling hurt…to become independent. I believed the lie that I could limit the hard in my life or the hard that might come my way. I mounted an extra heap of hard to my plate by doing this. I ignored my own needs. I accepted far more uncomfortable situations, enduring unanswered and unasked questions, wants and more so that no one would see me as weak and dependent.
Jesus doesn’t leave me weak like that. He has transformed me into a person unleashed. He has equipped me as his vessel to live freely, using my hands for unique work–work that I love and that will help others. He makes me beautiful and others too through my obedience to his work in me. When I deny my needs, I do not become or look strong. When I know and acknowledge and respond to my needs, I receive strength and help and power to be whole, to be at peace, and to be a peace-bringer.
What needs do I still deny in my life? What help do I not ask for? Who am I trying to remain strong for? Who am I denying entrance into my heart? I am not outside creation in some way to where I need not, want not, feel not–rather, I am in the thick of it completely in need and in want of God’s divine presence, healing, and blessing.
I no longer want to stand aside from my needs, and I no longer want to ignore the connection points between where I end in my strength and where God has placed others to span that space. I started this out with a command and reminder, “taste what God delights in.” This is a given that God delights in us in our yieldedness. He takes delight in us not because we obey him like robots but because he designed us to please him and to in turn enjoy him.
As I enjoy chocolate cake because of its taste, texture, and design, so also God enjoys me as I become and embody the object of joy and life he has designed me to be. Why would I depart from that design? I would not do that intentionally nor willingly. Only lies from the enemy would worm their way in to try to separate me from the truth that God wants me to know–that I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
My blindness to my needs and persistent sense of needing/feeling pressure to be self-sufficient and independent throughout my life might have stripped me of simply joys and comforts. But it need not do that any longer. I will choose to enjoy what God delights in, to delight in things, to feel, to need, to be..and to experience being healed and whole within.
december 28, 2023
Without even flipping backward through these pages, I know that they are full of expressions of frustration and disappointment alike. I am sure that most of what has been written in this volume has spilled onto the page along with tears. This journal is the one I come to write in when I need to get away from the people and discover why my soul is stuck, weighed down, or under attack. I take my journal and sometimes hide in my closet to write. With a gush sometimes too violent to fully express, my emotions will rush for care and comfort as I realize them and name them in writing.
How grateful I am that God has given me this hunger for and ability to discover the innerworkings of myself and exactly which parts within me are aching, needy, hurting, in need of healing. I celebrate that God has led me to receive with joy his work in my life through the vehicle of writing. I am grateful for the power of written expression.
In the thousands of pages that I have written since 1994 when I first began to journal, the repeated need that I have returned to is to know God and to do his will. His gift to me this year has been a revelation. He has shown me that through all that I have poured out from my heart and my thoughts exactly who I am.
I have continued to feel wonder in these spaces of realization. Yes, sometimes I have wandered away from the revelations that God has given me, not satisfied with the obvious. Sometimes I’ve thought–oh there has to be something still buried, something to decode, something else that will aide me in understanding what God wants me to do.
But he has not made it difficult to discern. I have added layers and expectations to the journey. As I reflect on 2023 and begin to anticipate 2024, I remember the biggest lesson of all–God’s grace covers it all, every single mark I miss. There is no shame and no condemnation in Jesus. He leads me into freedom spiritually, and I will walk that way, toward his voice.
december 31, 2023
To acknowledging needs, declaring dependence on the Lord, and living unleashed in his divine calling as a writer. I am unbelievably excited about what is to come.
…to 2024…
…to more higher thoughts and other things.
Higher Thoughts and Other Things 
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