as for me and my house

It’s finally quiet. Clara has been crying for the last hour (and I don’t mean cute whimpering like other babies do—from birth Clara’s only two tones of voice have consisted of “happy as a clam” and “bloody murder mad”)—a mix of pent-up separation anxiety and the exhaustion of learning to say new words and just being alive. She was an absolute delight all day long, smiling and laughing and practicing “Mama” and even venturing into different rooms of the house without me. I guess at bedtime it all caught up to her.

I can relate.

It’s been a beautiful summer so far. I love watching Clara’s fascination with the smallest of things. She loves floating on the lake and visiting Grama and Papa and Auntie Amy and having playdates with Auntie Hannah and barbecues with her little cousins. We go yardsaling on the weekends and spend Saturday evenings with some friends from church, talking about things that matter. It’s so lovely and there’s so much joy.

But somehow it always catches up to me—the sense of dread and not-good-enough, the little nagging negativities of scrolling through social media and reading the news that pile up and up and up, until I hate everything and everyone and myself most of all. It makes me feel lost, far from God somehow, wondering with Ecclesiastical doom what the point of anything is. Church is complicated, politics are confusing, culture is a disaster, and I just want to be a recluse for the rest of my life so I can ignore it all.

Unfortunately for me and my selfish nature, that’s not very Christlike.

But what is Christlike? This question has kept me up at night—knowing that there are believers who consider it most Christlike to live in holy seclusion from the world in the name of testimony; there are believers who consider it most Christlike to be as much like the world as possible in the name of outreach; there are believers who consider it most Christlike to vote red; there are believers who consider it most Christlike to vote blue; and any number of other extremes, plus whatever lies in between.

There is one thing that has been a helpful north star for me in the last few months as I navigate this madness: the reality of the Kingdom.

I first wrote about the Kingdom of Heaven and its gospel months ago now, and I had no idea at the time what a common thread that concept would become in my walk with God. Everything points me back to it. Jesus began His ministry saying “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near”—because He was near, and He is king, crowned by a wreath of thorns on the cross, and resurrected from the dead because nothing in that Kingdom obeys carnal laws. And if Jesus is King, then what He doesn’t need is me to find the solution to the world’s conflicts or to defend Him on social media or to grace Him with my extraordinary talents. He just asks for my allegiance.

al·le·giance /əˈlējəns/ (noun)

loyalty or commitment of a subordinate to a superior or of an individual to a group or cause.

Loyalty and commitment to my Superior and His cause.

It’s the cause that asks me to love my neighbor as I would show love to myself. To not only forgive, but love and pray for the people who are against me—even the people who hate me. To do for others as I would want them to do for me.

Jesus is the King of an upside-down Kingdom, where it’s the poor and the persecuted and the meek and the mourning who are most blessed, and it’s the rich and the revered and the proud who are most to be pitied. Allegiance to this Kingdom takes unlearning of natural, carnal instincts and adopting of a new way to see, hear, think, be.

Why do we despair when politics and culture celebrate the carnal instead of the Kingdom? Of course they do! It is our job, not theirs, to live as citizens of the Kingdom—until they are ready to join us and declare allegiance to the one true King. Ignoring it all isn’t the answer, but neither is despairing over it. We are “longing for a better country—a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:16 NIV) and we must “live as citizens of heaven, conducting yourselves in a manner worthy of the Good News about Christ” (Philippians 1:27 NLT).

This is not an easy task. Many will certainly fall away under the pressure of the world and its temptations—many will cast aside their allegiance to the Kingdom of Heaven in favor of allegiance to the rulers of the world. But what a gracious God we serve, who doesn’t write off anyone, but desires all to return to trust in Him (Ezekiel 18:23), and gives each and every one of us an open invitation to make that choice!

Now, therefore, fear the LORD and serve Him in sincerity and truth; cast aside the gods your fathers served beyond the Euphrates and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. But if it is unpleasing in your sight to serve the LORD, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living. As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD!

Joshua 24:14-15

the night warriors

Little Miss Clara just turned seven months old, and she is still waking up once a night for a feeding. Sometimes it’s 3am, sometimes it’s 6am, or anywhere in between… but ultimately it means that I have been called out of my sleep and out of my bed every single night for more than half a year.

Since we were dealing with literally hourly wakings in the first few weeks of her life due to all the complications she had with nursing, and since I had three solid months of horrific insomnia after her sleeping and feeding issues finally resolved, getting up once at night for 20 minutes isn’t really that big a deal. I can do it, and I don’t really mind. But every now and then I get a nagging spirit of discontentment and impatience and think, She should be over this by now. She shouldn’t need a night feeding anymore. She’s big and healthy and I want my sleep back.

When she woke up way earlier than usual the other night—2:30am—I was really frustrated, and wondered if I was doing something wrong, or if I needed to sleep train her. But sitting in the rocker in her pitch-dark room, with her warm milky breath on my cheek, I began to pray for her, as I always do. And I remembered: “Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).

Without these wee-hours wakings, would I be as faithful to pray?

Daytime comes with diapers and housework and to-do lists, nap routines and mealtimes and chores. It is so easy to cease praying when my mind and hands are constantly busy. But at 4am, when there is nothing to look at, no one to talk to, and nothing that needs urgent doing—when there is only a baby in my arms and the hum of her sound machine in the background—I am reminded to pray, and reminded of the countless spiritual wars that have likely been won in these dark and quiet nights by the prayers of mother-warriors across the generations. It may be that the mightiest power in the cosmos is within easy reach of the empathetic hearts and nurturing hands of praying moms.

My mom is one of the fiercest warriors I know. So was my mother-in-law, Suze—whose loss I feel keenly every day, though I hope God still lets her intercede for us in heaven. I have seen spiritual battle done tirelessly by both of them on behalf of their children, day and night, not for a mere seven months, but for decades.

I can only hope to follow in their footsteps, and if I need to keep getting called out of bed at 4am to build the skills, then so be it.

the kingdom of heaven

For most of my life I’ve had dreams that were far larger than my actual potential. Dreams of becoming a famous author, a renowned photographer, a household-name Bible teacher—for as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to be somebody.

The older I get, the smaller and closer to home my dreams become. I think this is due in equal parts to becoming more realistic, more complacent, and more self-aware. I used to be able to conjure up an imaginary version of myself who enjoyed the apparent glamour of doing a nationwide book tour for my New York Times bestseller, but now, exactly nothing sounds appealing about becoming a glorified traveling salesman whose product is me.

As I continually learn from God, watching Him so slowly and patiently do the work of a Farmer cultivating earth’s harvest, the dreams that once seemed so pressing lose their urgency, along with some of their shine. In their place, a fascination with the glorious mundane takes root—and the small spaces where the first rumblings of world-change always begin, person by person, moment by moment, surrender by surrender.

I asked Sam a few weeks ago, “Do you think it’s dumb if my dream job is just to go back to work at Spuds part-time?” It wasn’t so very long ago that the thought of being satisfied with such a small position in life would have been preposterous to me. But doing the manual work of sorting produce and stocking freight, peppered with cheerful interactions with customers, showed me a little of what I think God intended when He designed work as a good and necessary part of human existence. He made us to work, and to glorify Him in the very doing of it, so that it matters little what kind of work it actually is—big or small, grand or humble, meaningful or mundane. It can nourish the soul and magnify the Creator and bear witness of Him to others, regardless.

And the same can be said for the up-and-down, meaningful-as-well-as-mundane work that is child-rearing, though I feel plenty of words have already been spent on this topic, so I don’t know how much I need add. Only sometimes raising a baby feels like racing on a hamster wheel, where the days are made up of three-hour cycles of sleep-feed-play and the weeks stretch out long and changeless, even though the baby is changing invisibly every day. This, too, is the slow and patient work of the kingdom—the tiniest seed, but with the mightiest potential.

I suppose the hardest part of it all is wondering if I can still have a voice from such a small stage. Does anything I write or create really matter if it comes only from the boring “normal,” instead of the grand? I know there are plenty of “Instagram influencers” who have built their whole brand on sharing the boring normal, but it’s just that—a brand. It’s not real normal, blotted with tears of frustration and gapped by voids of loneliness which no filter can conceal. I don’t want to produce fodder for the ever-starving content machine of social media “mom culture.” That isn’t me at all. But I worry that there aren’t many other options for me now that I’ve had a baby. It’s hard enough to build credibility with a broad audience in the Bible teaching realm as a woman—let alone as a mom.

I remember wondering, before Clara was born, if she’d change me into someone completely different from the self I knew. She has, and she hasn’t.

She has certainly helped me along this journey toward the goodness of small-but-deep work. She’s given me an appreciation for how slowly and graciously God does His work, too. She reminds me that “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matthew 13:44). There is a treasure in this that is real and lasting and worth every sacrifice, even when to others it just looks like any old field.

But she hasn’t fundamentally altered the person God made me, the person who is a student and a teacher and longs to help others learn who He is through His Word. My days look different now, but the ultimate goal doesn’t, and I pray every day that God will allow Clara’s little soul to be the firstfruits of the calling.

Then some children were brought to Him so that He might lay His hands on them and pray; and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, “Let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to Me; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” After laying His hands on them, He departed from there.

Matthew 19:13-15