November 8, 2016 · 6:07 am

To Change the World with My Own Two Feet

Daniel Ogle and I met when he was the associate pastor of my home church. He’s since moved on to another church, but we try to stay connected via texts written in sarcasm font. We both love snark and words and American Pickers and Jesus (not necessarily in that order). Also, coffee. (Always coffee.)

He asked me to write something over on his real estate and I said, “OF COURSE!” and then took like, two weeks to send him something. It’s fine, we’re cool.

So if you want to read what I Google-Doc’ed him, land here; be sure to stay awhile, because his words are so good, y’all. I’ve met Jesus more times than I can count through Ogle.

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April 14, 2016 · 2:49 pm

The Day I Tore

Prologue:
I was born into a soccer-loving family. I grew up on the soccer fields, first as a spectator at my brother’s games, and then as a player: small and clumsy but fast and fearless.

It took a few years – I was not naturally gifted like my brother – but I started making the cuts. First, in sixth grade onto our YMCA’s first-year premier team, then in seventh grade as one of three girls on the coed junior high team, then in eighth grade on a travel team that won tournaments across the southeast. (The coach of that team was the highest-ranked coach in the state and moved on to coaching a professional indoor team the following season.)

By my senior year in high school, I was selected as one of three female All-State student-athletes representing my school in the sport of soccer. (There was a banquet and everything.)

My soccer-related injuries in all those years were: numerous face balls, a broken toe or two, sore ankles and knees, and six tight stitches just below my knee from running into a metal bench on a water break. (A cute senior on the boys’ soccer team wrapped my leg in his white tee-shirt to staunch the bleeding. Someone should probably make a rom-com about this.)

I worked hard to become the player I wanted to be, a fast right midfielder with the full 90 minutes of endurance in me and a strong kick to set up goal after goal. Guys, I am 100% bragging right now.

I love and have loved this game my whole life.

Chapter One and Only:
I picked the game back up in my twenties, joining an adult league with some co-workers, mostly to get back into shape and fall back in love with the game. A few weeks into the season I found out I was pregnant with my daughter, so I quit.

Nearly seven years later, I joined the same league again, different team, higher age bracket, worse shape, but still crazy about the game. I had grown antsy on the sidelines all over again watching my kids play, wishing I could be out there running the midfield and setting up the offense.

My first game in almost a decade went all right, all things considered – for the first twenty minutes. By then I was ready for an inhaler (I don’t have asthma), and to just go home and cry myself to loser sleep (even though my team had won).

The second game, however, went a little differently.

My endurance was still a joke, but the strategy of the game was starting to come back to me. I still had my speed (for an EXPLOSIVE ten seconds or so), and I knew where to play to space and managed to get a few decent touches in. (Guys, I am 100% bragging right now.)

About thirty minutes into the first half, one of our strikers dropped the ball back to me. It looked like it had a weird spin on it, so I backed off to let it bounce. I was wide open, and a quick glance up the field showed lots of open space for our front guys to make a fast break, if only I could get a good kick past their defense.

So I stepped off the pass to line up my kick. I was near the sideline, so when I stepped backward on my left leg and heard a loud pop, I thought I had accidentally stepped on some ice near someone’s water bottle or cooler. Cleats on crushed ice, that was the sound I heard in my head and that still makes my skin crawl.

For a split second, I turned around to apologize or excuse myself, but then immediately felt the fire racing up my left leg. I fell to the ground, wondering what the H just happened. I couldn’t process it. Did I pull something? Did I step on something? Did my ankle guard crack somehow? What was that popping sound?

Turns out it was me, the popping sound loud enough that nearby players heard it, wondering if I had stepped on a rock or somehow knocked my cleats together. It was a sudden pain, an intensity I had never, ever felt before, like someone had lit me on fire from the bottom of my heel to the top of my calf. Two teammates had to carry me off the field, and I nearly burst into tears when someone tried to pull off my cleat.

They finally got my cleat and my sock and my shin guard off, and I remember apologizing profusely because I hadn’t gotten a pedicure in MONTHS. Someone stuck my foot in a cooler full of ice, someone else’s sweet kid offered me his seat and ran to fill my water bottle back up, everyone was kind and attentive and assured me when I apologized over and over in embarrassment.

By the end of the game, I still couldn’t bear any weight on my left foot, but the pain had subsided. Teammates, opponents, neighbors, my husband and kiddos – it was a collective effort to get me to the car and then home, certain ice and rest and painkillers would do the trick.

It wasn’t until the next morning when I went to the doctor that I found out my Achilles’ tendon had ruptured in two, and the sickening pop that still nauseates me every time I think about it is precisely what that sounds like, and the fire shooting up my leg was the tendon ends unraveling as they came apart. (You’re welcome.)

There were some speculations, of course, sideline diagnostics, some WebMD site-trolling, but I figured it didn’t hurt badly enough or long enough to be anything serious. And I wasn’t playing NEARLY hard enough to tear something. PUH-LEASE. This is weekend soccer with a bunch of over-30-year-olds.

GUYS. Did you know weekend athletes over the age of 30 are EXACTLY the people who will tear their Achilles’ tendon?

Epilogue, In Pictures:

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Youthful Innocence


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Wizened Reality


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Friends Tell It Like It Is


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FAT FOOT


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It Has A Name

The Beginning.
(Of a 10ish-week road to recovery, a road that probably doesn’t lead back to the soccer fields any time soon.)

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March 25, 2016 · 5:58 pm

Good Friday: The Darkness Gathering

I’ve heard the story a thousand times. It never gets old, even as it never changes. Every time I hear it, I know how the story ends. I know that third day miracle, the impossible making believers around the world and throughout the centuries.

I still hold my breath between John 18 and John 20, my heart skipping beats in my chest. Every year I settle deeper into Good Friday, into the bone-breaking, veil-tearing darkness gathering. I close my eyes and try to feel what those first disciples felt, their very lives, their every breaths staked on the man hoisted upon that cross.

I know so well my own darkness, my own bleeding need for saving. I know the twisted bitterness sitting cold and hard in my gut, the slash of the whip and the drive of the hammer my own doing. I let the darkness in me loose, clutching this part of the story because this is the part of greatest tragedy, of greatest recognition.

The created world, favored by a creative and attentive God, suddenly godless. Suddenly without the hope that lingered in the back of our minds, at the tug of our hearts. This dark Good Friday a hitch in our throats, every fear, every demon clawing to get out, to spread its ink over this godless world. My own darkness home here.

I settle in. I listen to the earth groaning for salvation, to the wailing of defeat. I cannot look to the end of the story, to the prophetic words and the hope-filled promises, not yet. I need to let my darkness do its deed; I need to know my part.

I need to know it is finished.

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March 24, 2016 · 8:45 am

Maundy Thursday: This is Our Cup

The words are familiar to me, to many of us who believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

This is my body, broken for you.
This is my blood, poured out for you.

When I am most aware, I whisper those aching words with reverence, the weight of them pressed against the inside of my cheek and held there. I take the bread solemnly, the silence echoing louder than betrayal.

The words of Jesus at the Last Supper often hold heavy for the Church, whether Communion is a weekly ritual or reserved for the holiest of occasions. The Church sits quietly, stilled, as the bread is raised and broken, the wine poured and blessed.

We hear those words again, some of the very last words of Jesus, Son of Man, and we hold our breaths in remembrance of Him.

During this ritual, we feel the holiness. Somehow, a few words, a couple of poetic sentences that surely made little sense to the men who heard them first, spoken with a heavy, hopeful heart centuries ago still manage to capture us, steady our attention.

If we close our eyes and open our hearts, if we really focus, tilting an ear to Heaven, we can hear these words of Jesus. We can hear his hands breaking the loaf into pieces, hear the sound of wine splashing into an empty cup. We might even hear the desperation in Jesus’ voice.

His time is near. It must be done. He watches as bread and wine — his body and blood — are given out to the twelve he has chosen. Men who bicker, men who falter, men who just don’t get it, not yet.

I can picture Jesus watching, looking around the table at his closest friends. His last supper, his final feast with his most devoted followers. Unassuming men he chose, not because of power or influence, but because of their simple faith. He called; they came.

And his body and blood, broken and poured out, entrusted to these twelve men and for the whole world.

What an image, just as powerful yet more subtle than the image of the cross. Around this table, with bread crumbs in his palm, a wrenching reminder of what is in store, Jesus could still turn back. No doubt this last supper sounds like bones breaking, like blood and water pouring out. The bread tastes dry in his mouth, the wine bitter enough to bring tears. And only Jesus knows it, feels it, tastes it, gets it.

Now, today, on this side of the Crucifixion and impossible Resurrection, we get it, at least a little. As his Church that understands the meaning of that last supper, as his people who celebrate and remember Jesus’ words, we break the bread and we pour the wine and we invite those whose reverence still settles them in their pews and draws them to the altar. To come, to dip the bread in the wine, to partake in the holy feast, the New Covenant. To know and trust and remember his broken body, his blood poured out.

It is a ritual well-known and cherished by the Church, a pointed understanding of what Jesus was truly offering when he offered his disciples the broken bread and shared cup.

The body of Christ, broken for you. The blood of Christ, poured out for you. For me. For the whole world still unaware, still wondering if there’s more.

What a beautiful, tragic night that was in our faith history.

And what a call for us the Church to follow Jesus, to share in his brokenness, to be the new body of Christ so willing to pour out and down and into the cracks of this hurting world.

We are the Church. And this is our cup.

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February 10, 2016 · 12:20 pm

The Dust in These Bones

Today is a sacred, symbolic day for the church. As a proclaimer of Jesus (with a long history of irrational sentimentalism), I place ALOTTA importance on this day, Ash Wednesday. The emotional youth group kid still trapped inside me absolutely LUVS this somber kick-off to Lent, the heavy meaning behind burnt palm branches and anointing oil, the grounding reminder of the dust in our bones.

“For dust you are and to dust you will return.”
(Gen. 3:19)

Those words still me every time.

But today, and maybe for this season of Lent, I want to land on a different piece of Scripture calling us back to our beginning.

“Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”
(Gen. 2:7)

I think of those first passages in Genesis, the pure poetry behind a creative and involved God. I think of the light and the earth and the sea spinning into existence, the glory of God stamped onto every atom of this created universe. I think of the magnitude of God, and the smallness of our galaxy, our sun, our world, in all of it. I think of our outright insignificance, and the pure beauty of every tiny thing in our tiny lives.

I think of God, an infinite and uncontainable God, and his illogical interest in us, in me, right here and right now.

I think of how the story goes, how God saw this world and declared it good, from the sun and the moon and the stars to the mountains and sycamore trees and untamed oceans. How God filled this world with created life, wild, beautiful, bizarre animals to run and swim and fly. How God took his time and fashioned in his way every big and little thing that catches my eye and breath.

And then, after all of that perfect detail poured out straight from God, he crouched down in that created dirt, the smallest grains of sand in this grand and glorious earth, and thought, “Just one more thing before I’m done.”

I think of how God, creator, artist, poet, scooped some of that dirt into his infinite hands and formed eyes, hands, legs, a brain, a heart, arms, knee caps, eyelashes, ears, hips, lungs, bones, marrow.

And then, miracle of miracles because creation was not yet complete, God leaned in close and breathed his infinite breath into this dust cavity, awakening every handmade inch.

Today, as I close my eyes and remember the dust from which I came, I will press into the God who wakes it up in me.

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February 9, 2016 · 7:01 am

The Season of Jesus

When Jesus saw him coming he said, “There’s a real Israelite, not a false bone in his body.”
Nathanael said, “Where did you get that idea? You don’t know me.”
Jesus answered, “One day, long before Philip called you here, I saw you under the fig tree.”
Nathanael exclaimed, “Rabbi! You are the Son of God, the King of Israel!”
Jesus said, “You’ve become a believer simply because I say I saw you one day sitting under the fig tree? You haven’t seen anything yet! Before this is over you’re going to see heaven open and God’s angels descending to the Son of Man and ascending again.”

John 1:47-51, The Message

It is the rising crest, the building climax. This is the season of Jesus, his final years on earth, packing eternity into one held breath.

I’ve tried, for many years now, to wrap my mind and arms around Lent, to bear hug what it means to draw closer to Jesus as he draws closer to the cross. This season of remembrance, of following his dusty footsteps to Golgotha, to death, to the excruciating trade for eternal souls.

I lose a bit of myself each time, and gain so much more of Jesus.

Each year I get pulled in deeper. The hitch in my throat grows thicker when I think of Jesus, of his short time on earth and even shorter time drawing in as many as he can as he heads back toward Heaven. The knot in my gut tightens as I think of what it means to follow Jesus up that hill and onto that cross. I try to understand what it means to love so thoroughly it bleeds one dry. On honest days that thought makes me shudder.

I wonder often what it must have been like to be called, touched, seen by Jesus on earth. To be one of the first who saw who he really was, no matter how dimly. To stare astonished as miracle after miracle rolled along behind him, a wake of healing and loving and letting in.

So here we go, another Lenten season, another chance to focus more wholly on Jesus and his journey, to taste his presence and soak up his words. To walk alongside him as he hands out fish and bread and sight and salvation.

To know, even as we dive in head first, that we haven’t seen anything yet.

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December 17, 2015 · 10:05 pm

Losing Gravity

I’m really terrible at self-promotion, and it makes me feel slimy to place any spiritual significance on my own writing, but today’s specific piece in my Advent devotional is exactly where I am right now, and maybe where you are too, so I wanted to share. I’ve been kind of grumpy lately, even if I put on a good “Christmas Holiday Spirit” show, snowman sweater and all. Kind of like gift-wrapped underwear. So here’s to losing gravity.

*     *     *     *     *

“My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer; by night, but I find no rest.”
Psalm 22:2

We thought we knew what it meant to be desolate. We thought exile from the garden was the very bottom of our fall. We thought we knew the darkness.

But we have not felt such a void as this. We did not know God’s presence was the only thing that tempered us.

So we ask to hear the stories again. We ask to hear about our ancestors who walked and talked with God. We ask to hear how Moses saw God with his own eyes and the glory turned his hair white as fresh snow. We ask to hear how Isaiah’s lips burned with the purifying fire of heaven. We ask to hear about the great King David, how he chased after God imperfectly but with passion.

These stories bring us closer to home than we have been our whole lives. We know, with every drop of blood in our bodies, something is not quite right, not quite whole. When we are most aware, we feel the outcast, the foreignness of where we are. We know, somewhere quiet and deep down, we are in a strange and dying land, a land for which we were not made.

We feel the absence of God in an ineloquent way, a way we cannot quite place. Where once there was a pull between who we are and who we are meant to be, there is nothing. Our identity is tangled up, not in God, but in the rules he gave us generations ago. We no longer feel the draw of the bits of God within us, pulling us toward the maker.

We have lost our sense of gravity.

*     *     *     *     *

Excerpt from Long Lay the World: Essays & Images to Prepare Him Room, available for instant download.

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November 30, 2015 · 8:55 am

We Saw His Star

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There is magic in the air.

It is crisp and clean, like a snowflake landing on your tongue or the faint chiming of a bell, the sharp scent of cinnamon or pine trees freshly cut.

It all feels elusive; the waiting, the anticipation, the can’t-quite-put-your-finger-on-it. It shimmers and shines, skirts beneath your feet spreading shadows against the wall, glinting off frosted windows like tinsel, darting just out of sight when you turn your head to catch a glimpse, a miracle shy of the attention.

It is cold now, at least on our side of the world, the side farthest from the sun, the earth tilting us away from the light and toward the unknown. The chill steals your breath and catches in your throat, settling under your skin. It is bone-deep, even as we turn our collars up against the wind, wrap our scarves tighter around our chins, bury gloved hands deeper in our pockets.

It is a reminder, this brittle chill tinted with hope. It doesn’t seem so unforgiving, knowing it has a purpose, knowing it paves the way, knowing the earth will tilt us back toward the sun and edge even closer than it has in months.

Yet here we are, facing space, millions of eternal souls brushing shoulders, hurrying in out of the cold. And as we bustle and hustle and make and check lists, we wait.

We wait for dawn and then for dusk, for the earth to make its way around the sun, for the end of the day or week or month or year, for the culmination, for the prize.

We have been waiting our whole created lives.

* * * * *

This post is a sample – Day 1 – of my Advent devotional Long Lay the World: Essays & Images to Prepare Him Room, now available as an instant download. If you like what you see, grab your copy and meet me back here each day in December. I’ll bring the hot chocolate.

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November 29, 2015 · 11:26 pm

The Good Promise

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Here it is. Here we are: Advent, this first Sunday of hope, of a season recognizing and remembering how God came in after us. The more attention I give to this time of anticipation, the more heart space it takes up.

I try to remember my anticipation is nothing – not a thing – compared to the waiting and hoping of God’s people before Jesus was born to us. I try to remember God’s silence leading up to his promise fulfilled. I try to remember a people whose very identity was weighted by the attention and direction of God sliding into emptiness. I wonder if they noticed at first, how the God who spoke to them in fire and wind had grown quiet.

I wonder when their laws and rituals took the place of any intimate relationship with God; I wonder if their blood sacrifices were nothing more than duty, before leaving the temple no closer to holy ground.

Hundreds of years passed between the final prophecies of Malachi promising God’s deliverance and the first chapter in Matthew setting up the story. Generations born and gone with no new word from the God of their ancestors, the God of their history. The history of their people and their favor from God little more than legend.

We are lucky; we flip those few blank pages between the Old and the New and we jump right on in to the catalyst, the coming of Christ.

This season I hope to settle into those blank pages, the silence that stretched for centuries. I hope my heart swells with the anticipation of a promise fulfilled. I hope you’ll join me.

* * * * *

My Advent devotional Long Lay the World: Essays & Images to Prepare Him Room is now available as an instant download. Grab your copy and meet me back here each day in December. I’ll bring the hot chocolate.

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November 27, 2015 · 4:48 pm

Long Lay the World

Oh, by the way, I wrote a Christmas devotional.

Long Lay the World COVER

My photographer buddy Alan Brock lent me some of his stunning photography to punctuate my words. This daily devotional leading up to Christmas Day is intended to make God a little clearer and closer this holiday season.

You can get your own digital copy here! You can check out a free sample, or purchase an instantly downloadable version complete with high-resolution images for $4.99, or you can upgrade to include one 8″x10″ print of your favorite image ready for framing for $29.99!

I’m so excited to share this project with you. I’ve poured a lot of 5ams into this, and I hope it helps you focus on God this Christmas.

 

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