mad, but

One of my favorite retellings of the Cinderella story is the 1998 Drew Barrymore film Ever After. It’s the source of many of the random quotes and sayings I use in my everyday life, but one line of Prince Henry’s has always struck a particular chord with me:

“I used to think that if I cared about anything, I’d have to care about everything, and I’d go stark-raving mad. But! Now I’ve found my purpose.”

I exist in the middle of that quote—somewhere between the word “mad” and the word “but.” One of the hardest things about writing (essentially, publicly journaling) for the last 14+ years has been the pressure I constantly feel to cover everything, to respond to everything, to consider everything. Whether I’m writing about a lightbulb moment I’ve had regarding God’s purpose for the church, a line-by-line study of a chapter of the Bible, or a meandering musing inspired by some little snippet of my life, it’s easy to feel like I’m wasting my time if I can’t head off every potential argument or acknowledge every possible perspective.

And it does, indeed, make me feel stark-raving mad.

It reminds me of something I heard another writer I admire say in an interview recently: “You have to be willing to disappoint your biggest fans, or else you’ll become a caricature.” This, to me, intersects with the Ever After quote right at the end—in the words “my purpose.”

My purpose.

What I’m learning, painfully slowly, is that I’m an individual. I’m small. I’m one person living one life in one comparatively tiny radius on the earth. When I write, I can only write what God is showing me. I can only show you how He’s shaping me. Inevitably, my limits will disappoint you eventually.

I can’t speak for every person or cover every experience. Even on topics in which I’m well-versed, I can’t address every point or counterpoint. There just isn’t enough of me.

I love that there are so many people who support my writing and enjoy reading my work. It’s a humbling and, at times, terrifying realization. What a gift it is to be able to write anything at all that somebody else out there might glean a grain of truth or insight from.

And, with all the love in the world, I confess: I don’t write for “fans.” I write because this is how I learn, and I’m learning to follow God’s Spirit and listen to His voice. I’m learning to let Him define my purpose, and that it’s okay if my calling doesn’t resonate with yours.

I know how hard it is, when you enjoy someone’s work or admire their gifts, to keep a separate sense of self from them—so that when they change their mind on something, it’s okay if you don’t; or when God is revealing something to them, it’s not a commentary on what He’s revealing to you. We tend to admire people we identify with or aspire to be like, and it can feel personal when they go in a direction that we can’t or won’t—but it isn’t.

You can still learn from those you don’t perfectly align with. I can still love those I don’t agree with. We can still be enriched by those whose lives are in a very different place from ours. And because we are all just individuals, with our small and limited perspectives, we need that diversity of thought in our lives. To know anything doesn’t mean we have to know everything.

There is only One who is omniscient. There is only One who has it all right. As Rich Mullins once said (oft-quoted by my mom and dad), “We were given the Scriptures to humble us into realizing that God is right, and the rest of us are just guessing.”

the God of Genesis

I’ve been reading through the Bible in 180 days almost every year since I got married 10 years ago. It’s been so good—flying high over the surface of God’s Word from January to the end of June, sometimes with a large group of fellow readers and sometimes with a small one. Some years it’s been lots of audio Bible; some years it’s been pages of personal notetaking; some years it’s been writing out insights daily or weekly for those reading along with me. I’ve learned so much about the structure of the Bible, the character of God, and the story of Jesus as the Savior of Creation.

With that big-picture foundation in place, I knew it was finally time to dive deep again. And what better place to start than the prologue of the story?

Every day in January, I read through Genesis 1-11, discovering questions and curiosities, noticing truths about who God is, learning new things about who God made me to be, and realizing what a different world we could all live in if we knew the God of Genesis.

He’s a God of order.

The Creation story doesn’t tell us how He made a material universe out of a blank void, but rather how His Spirit formed an orderly world out of a chaotic wasteland. He carefully separated out the different components of the world—light from darkness, sky from waters, land from seas, day from night—and grouped together the different life forms into their kinds: vegetation, sea creatures, birds, and animals. The pinnacle of it all, human beings who were made in His likeness, He created as one and yet also in two: male and female.

He wants to collaborate with humans.

Instead of creating the earth to be a space for Him to practice dictatorial tyranny, He commissioned His image bearers to rule over it together and to participate in the ongoing activities of life-making and ground-working.

He is a gentle parent.

When His image bearers were deceived and betrayed Him, He didn’t get angry. He didn’t make harsh threats. He didn’t leave them alone to think about what they’d done, He didn’t strike them dead on the spot, He didn’t shame them for their stupidity or their nakedness. Instead, God sought them out, heard them, cared for them, and covered their shame.

He models both grace and boundaries.

There were clear consequences for Adam and Eve’s sin, and they were upheld graciously as protective boundaries, not punitively as wrathful punishment. The same gracious boundaries led to the catastrophic Flood—not because God hated or wanted to destroy what He had made, but because the earth was so corrupted that it must be cleansed.

He is clear and direct.

We don’t have to guess or infer or hope to figure out what He wants. When He called humankind to rule over Creation, He said it directly and repeated it several times. When He received Cain’s subpar offering, He clearly communicated how Cain could do what was right. When He made a covenant with Noah, He spelled out the exact terms.

There is so much more, an endless wealth of truth to be mined from these first eleven chapters of the Bible. This month, I’m zeroing in on Genesis 1, and already overwhelmed by the beauty of how God created our world and how the Spirit inspired the Biblical authors to record it.

If you want to join me in any of this, here’s the plan I made (and here’s the notetaking journal I’m using):

• January: Read Genesis 1-11 daily

• February: Read Genesis 1 daily, and Genesis 1-11 weekly

• March: Read Genesis 2 daily, and Genesis 1-11 weekly

• April: Read Genesis 3 daily, and Genesis 1-11 weekly

• May: Read Genesis 4 daily, and Genesis 1-11 weekly

• June: Read Genesis 5 daily, and Genesis 1-11 weekly

• July: Read Genesis 6 daily, and Genesis 1-11 weekly

• August: Read Genesis 7 daily, and Genesis 1-11 weekly

• September: Read Genesis 8 daily, and Genesis 1-11 weekly

• October: Read Genesis 9 daily, and Genesis 1-11 weekly

• November: Read Genesis 10 daily, and Genesis 1-11 weekly

• December: Read Genesis 11 daily, and Genesis 1-11 weekly

inner earthquakes and hellfire

Today I resurrected the old @halliewrites Instagram account that I started about six years ago, right when I was working hard on my first book and building up a community around the Bible180 Challenge. I was 24 years old, had been married four years, and had no children. These were only the earliest days of Instagram stories and reels didn’t yet exist, so the entirety of my presence can be found in a handful of photo posts with captions. Looking back at those posts, for me, is like a glimpse into the story of a young woman I met once, but barely remember.

But because I lived it, I can read the paragraphs in between the posts that the true outside observer will never see.

Can you tell that in the space between the first post and the second, the life I thought I had exploded?

Do you sense that between the colorless self-portrait and the phone camera snap of the last autumn leaves, I nearly gave up and walked away?

And in the caption beneath the bachelor button at the top of the grid—dated June 8, 2019—can you hear the shaking breaths of someone who survived, but still desperately fears that a survivor is all she will ever be again?

I may barely remember that person, but I will never forget that fear. I thought I had been permanently shelved, sidelined by God, and that I was doomed to waste the rest of my life because what I believed were my best years had been ruined by grief. If I wasn’t going to get to change the world as a young, free, childless Proverbs 31 wife, when would I ever have the chance?

But what I said in that caption rings true: “God works slowly. He’s a farmer, not a magician.”

I’ve aged 5 years and had two babies since then. I’ve continued to write, even though many times it seemed pointless. And I’ve been learning that no one changes the world without first navigating the earthquake within themselves.

I think I am just now learning to yield to the seismic shifts of the Holy Spirit in me. I don’t expect to be out there massively changing the world anytime soon, especially since the world that’s most important to me right now is that of my 3-year-old and my 6-month-old. But my heart is overflowing with thanksgiving for God’s grace and goodness that has gone with me at every step, even when I was sure He was the one trying to lead me over the edge.

I’m so thankful that I was born in the year 1994. A little earlier, and I’m fairly certain I would have been caught in the farce of idealistic Christian mommy blogging, hot on the heels of extreme purity culture. A little later, and I would have been buying into the deceptive appeal of today’s “tradwife” crowd. I missed them both by just a little, and thank God.

I’m so thankful I got married at 20 years old. Although processing through the sense that I couldn’t really have a fair choice in the matter at such a young age has been fraught, I know that God was gracious to teach me some very important things a lot earlier than I might otherwise have had the opportunity to learn. I lost less of my life to the lies.

I’m so thankful I married the person I did. I can’t imagine anyone else being able to weather these existential storms with me so humbly. The Holy Spirit is leading us as we walk after Christ together, side by side, and there is nothing more gloriously kingdom-of-heaven-like than that.

I praise and glorify God my Father that He did not allow me to stay the same, even when the process of change felt like traversing hellfire. His vision for me has been far greater, in the real and important ways, than my vision for myself ever was.