life lately

Mulling over the fact that it’s mid-November, and there are only six weeks left of another year—why does time seem to make less and less sense the more it goes by? I perpetually feel like my body is dragging my brain a month or two behind it, so lost in thought that it doesn’t comprehend the act of turning the calendar even though it’s my own hand doing it. Wasn’t it just September?

Anyway, I’ll spare you all my endless ability to marvel at the passage of time. I wanted to write something light today—something like a snapshot of my current life, what I’m doing and learning and thinking about.

Doing

• Primarily, spending a lot of time with Clara. She is two years old now and the sweetest and silliest person I know. She is speaking in full sentences, but there are still times when I’m the only one who understands them, and I’m going to be sad when that’s not the case anymore. She is inseparable from Alfie, Pooh, Percy, and Bunny-Llama (her four favorite stuffed animals) and one of our favorite things to do together is sit in the rocking chair singing hymns before bed. “Mo see sah?”

• Working out with Sydney Cummings and my sisters-in-law, via YouTube and group text. We commiserate on our pain as well as celebrate our progress. I’ve always loved working out, but I’m especially loving Sydney’s challenges and seeing myself get stronger and stronger. Clara looks forward to it every day, too!

• Going through the prerequisites to become a “member” at my church. Between you and me, I find the entire concept of church membership rather strange and possibly superfluous, but I suppose it’s the best system we have at the moment and so I’m trying to get over myself so that I can become more involved in and accountable to my church body.

Learning

• You all already know I’m taking Intro to the Hebrew Bible from BibleProject, if you’ve read my recent posts. I’m about 60% of the way through and totally enthralled. If you have even the tiniest interest in the subject, you should try this class. (They also have shorter ones on different topics!)

• I’m also learning everything there is to know about baby and toddler sleep, because why not? I had no idea how my perception of sleep would change when Clara was born—at first, it was the biggest stressor of them all, but now it’s one of my greatest fascinations. Did you know there is an enormous amount of science around how we sleep, even as babies? That there is actually a TON you can do to improve sleep quality—your own as well as your kids’? It’s so cool. I’m currently getting certified as a pediatric sleep specialist because that’s how interested I am in the topic. Yes, my enneagram 5 is showing.

• And one of my weekly(ish) highlights is learning dressage at my horseback riding lessons, which I’ve now been taking for a full year. Even though the progress seems slow at times, I can look back at where I was a year ago and see how much stronger my legs and core are, and how much better my seat has gotten. Many thanks to Pilot, Whiskey, K-Bar, and Halo for their patience with me. ;)

Thinking

• Is the risk of stifling God’s work in the world worth taking Paul’s admonitions about women in the church as changeless commandments for all times and all places? I’ve been reading a lot about what the New Testament teaches about the sexes (and how it aligns with the greater story of the Bible) and I’m starting to worry that we have, as it were, strained out a gnat only to swallow a camel. After all, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28)—until you are a woman who wants to teach the Bible, and then the most important (and disqualifying) factor about you is that you are female? I do understand the idea of “equal in value, separate in role,” but even so, we have enough history with “separate but equal” in this country to acknowledge that the philosophy does not actually lead to equality in a practical sense. Even if Paul was referring to all women for all time and in all places (debatable), does God care more that men should never hear the Word of God taught by a woman, or that women should be treated as equal image-bearers and Kingdom ambassadors by men? Are we capturing the spirit of the rule or only following its letter? Are we being Christlike or Pharisee-like?

• It’s a little unnerving, but also encouraging, to consider how I’ve grown as a believer over the past 10 years since I was first in Bible school. Unnerving, because so many of the black-and-white beliefs I held then have shifted or been shaded in with detail; this can make me feel like a heretic at times, until I remember that it’s not heresy to allow the Word of God to correct and reprove the errors in my thinking, even when those errors were taught from a pulpit. But it’s encouraging, too, because even when I’m afraid of being rejected by those who don’t agree with me, I have seen that God is still faithfully walking with me, sharpening me, and molding me into something a little bit more representative of His image. It’s He, not any particular denomination or theological camp, that I am required to follow.

these are the days: september

(This post is inspired by Emily P. Freeman and her recent podcast episode, “Point and Call”.)

It’s September, suddenly - one of my favorite months of the year, and I’m concerned that today is already day three. Ten percent of the month is already behind us. The days go so fast, in a blur, so I feel the need to mark time here before it gets away from me.

These are the days of long, hard shadows in morning light, angled across all my flowers and filtering through their petals like tiny stained-glass windows. These are the days of cold nights, as evidenced by the chill in the lake water when we spent last week together at the cabin, and sometimes even a layer of fog to mute the world on my way to work in the morning.

They are days of learning many random things I never thought I’d need to know: how to stack russet potatoes, the best way to rotate the new produce in with the old, a hundred four-digit PLU codes. All those little things that make a shelf look nice? Someone does them - they don’t just happen by magic. I guess I knew that, but it didn’t mean anything until I became the one turning milk cartons to face the right way in the cooler.

And they’re days of learning many deeper things - the kind that have to be learned again and again, day in and day out. Like learning to set my eyes on Jesus, who has already endured and overcome every heartbreak and struggle I face. Learning to take refuge in who He says I am, and remember that He alone (not my feelings, not my mistakes, not my perceptions, not another person) gets to name me. Learning that He doesn’t always disclose the destination, or even the goal, but He does faithfully take the next step forward with me.

Welcome, September; don’t go too soon. I want to enjoy these days with you.

big, improbable ideas

This week I read a statistic that troubled me. On the YouVersion app, which populates different Bible reading plans and similar resources, a reading plan covering the theme of “justice” in the Bible has a 70% user completion rate.

The problem? It’s only a three-day plan.

That is, only 70% of people who sign up for a reading plan that will take three days can actually follow through on those three days.

It’s not surprising. We all know that our attention spans are shrinking, our lives are getting busier, and longform content is becoming less and less popular. We’d rather get the one-minute summary video with an eye-catching slideshow than take in the full depth and breadth of a topic. But it is still troubling.

One of the biggest projects I’ve created through this blog so far is a plan to read through the Bible in 180 days. If 30% of people won’t follow through for three days, how many will still be in it at the end of 180? One percent? Less?

Part of me fears that my vision is too big. It’s too much to expect of people, to read through the whole Bible. It takes too long. They don’t want to do it. They’re too busy. They’re too distracted. It’s one of those lovely, big ideas that I should probably pass off as improbable, if not impossible.

And I know that IT IS a hard task. I myself took this year off from Bible180, because it’s a big investment of time, energy, and brainspace to read through the whole Bible in such a concentrated amount of time. But whether you try to read the Bible in seven days, 180 days, or 365 days - it’s still going to be a really big book that requires really big commitment. We can’t distill it down to a one-minute video and still capture the beauty and complexity of who God is and what He has done.

And I know this, too: There are people that have completed Bible180 from beginning to end. Some of them within the 180-day timeframe, some of them taking a bit longer, but they’ve done it. I know who they are. They’ve shared with me how it has impacted them. Even the ones who made it to Deuteronomy, or to Jeremiah, or to the end of the Old Testament - they experienced transformation, too.

There is a pressure to make things easier. Faster. More bite-size, accessible, watered down. There are plenty of voices telling me I have too many big, improbable ideas - that nobody wants to do that much work.

But I contend that some of us are hungry to put in the work.

Some of us are hungry for the dense, nutritious meat of the Word. Some of us - probably more of us than anyone realizes - have been on a diluted diet for far too long, and we long to know God in His richness. His depth.

Maybe it isn’t about whether I can keep 500 people on task to read through the Bible that matters. Maybe it’s about whether the five or ten or twenty of them that were truly starving get fed.

The Bible school that I attended in Florida attracts one, maybe two dozen students every year. Not the hundreds or thousands that other institutions can boast. But the ones that uproot their lives to spend their days marinating in the fullness of the Bible, the ones that put dollars and hours behind their desire to learn from its every page whether they ever reap a tangible return on the investment or not - these are just one example of the truly hungry. And when the truly hungry seek after what can truly satisfy, they will be filled - even as their appetites are whetted for more.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Matthew 5:6

We’re all in different places in our walks with Jesus. Some of us need the milk-based diet - we are babies and we need someone else to hold the spoon. Some of us have been stuck on milk for a bit too long, but haven’t yet identified our real need for something different. Some of us have long outgrown the liquid diet and our souls are crying out for more substantial nutrition - and the skills to feed ourselves - to fuel our growth.

There’s a good place for cutting things up into bite-size pieces. But to the fear that I have too many big, improbable ideas that “no one” will ever want to partake in, I say that’s not true. Because I am someone, and I am starving, and I know that I am not the only one.

Are you one of the hungry ones? I’d love to hear about your experience with the Bible and what you feel is missing from your current spiritual “diet.” Leave me a comment below!

(The photos in this post were taken on a recent hike to McCall Point, Columbia River Gorge.)