Author Archives: Shannon


About Shannon

Alaskan homeschooling mama of eight sweet kids. Loves Jesus, writing, coffee, Dickens, and snapping a kitchen towel at my husband when he's not looking.

trying my patience: grace for others as we grow

Posted on by February 7, 2024

The kids were pulling presents out, and Kav held one up.

“Who’s this for?”

I pointed to the name written on it. “It starts with V. Who do you know starts with V?”

“Dad,” Finn answered for him.

Um, okay. Right, Dad starts with V…if his name is Vince, at least.

trying my patience: grace for others as we grow

We’re all working on the English language here in this house, even the parents who write and wrestle with commas for a living, and also the older kids in various levels of literature and language arts.

Reagan brings me her journal and holds it out to me. The sentence she’s trying to write is “Finn is coughing today,” and I bet you can guess which word is tripping her up. Because English is hard, and also stupid.

So far she’s tried “koring” and “caing” and I’m super excited that she’s figured out the “ing” part consistently. And I know you can’t sound out the word coughing because the letters don’t make sense, but she needs to at least try. She knows what the sounds are.

Often though, she doesn’t want to try, so we get these wild random spellings that aren’t even close. And I can’t blame her, sometimes laziness is my default, too.

I could just spell it for her. If she copied it enough times she would probably learn it, and learning is why we’re doing this, of course. But we’re not just wanting her to memorize; we’re wanting her to think, and solve, and resolve. And for that, she needs to sound it out. We want solving problems to be our (and her) default, not just memorizing answers.

And when she tries that, that’s when I’ll give her the real answer and explain that English is hard and stupid. (Okay fine, probably not.)

But I won’t step in if she’s not even trying. I’m not playing tricks on her; I’m teaching her that we can do hard things. Simultaneously, God is teaching me the same thing, because this slower-than-molasses progress tries my patience like you wouldn’t believe. Her way is not my way. But if I push her to do things my way, we take a small frustration and turn it into a much bigger conflict.

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

– Ephesians 4:1-3

I’m helping her navigate problems and grow, and we all do that growing and navigating at different levels. We understand things differently because we have different perspectives.

For example, most of us know exactly what’s happening in this verse:

…for [Jesus] was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise.”

– Mark 9:31

It’s pretty straightforward to us. We’ve read the Book, seen the crime play out; we know what happened and we’ve heard the story a zillion times.

But His disciples – those closest to Him – didn’t get it. They didn’t see what was coming, and this was their response:

But they did not understand the saying, and were afraid to ask him.

– Mark 9:32

To us, there’s no ambiguity. The way Jesus said it is the way it actually happened. But if we put ourselves in the disciples’ shoes, what He said was totally bewildering. Is He really talking about Himself? Is he being symbolic? Does “killed” really mean “killed,” or does it mean something else?

Are we dealing with something that’s straightforward, or is there more to it than that? Is “cough” spelled C-O-F-F, or does it have some of those confusing extra letters in it?

So in their misunderstanding, they respond in a way we totally relate to. They were afraid to ask Him. The Greek for fear here is “phobeo,” and it is a strong fear, meaning to put to flight, terrify, frighten, or incite dread. It’s the kind of fear that avoids and leads to more misunderstanding. I don’t want to know, so I won’t ask. So they didn’t.

Maybe they were too proud, too insecure to reveal their ignorance. Maybe they were hoping the situation would just go away. And we do those things too sometimes, glossing over and avoiding what makes us uncomfortable.

And sometimes we’re afraid to talk about things directly, so we talk behind each other’s back. We don’t want to look stupid or wrong, so we put other people down, instead. Which is interesting because in the very next verses, here’s what the disciples do:

And they came to Capernaum. And when [Jesus] was in the house he asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?” But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest.

– Mark 9:33-34

They competed. They puffed up. They pointed fingers. And then they avoided again, refusing to admit what they’d been doing. Fear, pride, and insecurity were still driving them, and they didn’t want to do the hard work of considering something unfamiliar and seemingly impossible.

Which leads me to something that happens in our house occasionally: Vin or I will explain something to one of our kids, and they’ll interrupt us with, “I know.”

(Right, this never happens at your house. Humor me.)

So Vin or I will answer, “No, if you knew, I wouldn’t need to be telling you,” and then continue what we were saying, hoping that this time they’re paying attention. Because we know the “I know” is blowing us off. Sometimes it’s insecurity and pride, pretending to understand something they don’t; and sometimes it’s laziness, not wanting to take the time to consider a different perspective. It could be any number of things, really. If solving problems were easy, we wouldn’t call them “problems” in the first place.

And we don’t solve problems in all the same ways, any more than we sound things out in the same ways. For example, I have no idea how they teach language arts in the South, where they are reckless with vowels. Excuse me for yelling, but I AM SO GLAD I’M NOT TEACHING MY KIDS ENGLISH IN THE SOUTH.

Because in some places there, for example, little i says ee, and big I says ah. As in, “Be steel and know that Ah am God.” If I’m quiet, I can hear this in the voice of my pastor’s wife.

But it’s not just vowels; it’s also syllables. In the South they remove them from some words (I was shocked and bewildered the first time I heard a Southerner pronounce “oil,” which to me should sound like “oy-ul” and not just “ull”) and then, messing with vowels again, they put extra syllables into other words where God never intended them.

How many syllables does “sin” have? Two if you’re from certain parts of Texas: See-in. Clap, clap. Two syllables. No big deal, we both agree sin is wrong. We just say it differently.

Months ago I went to a reception for a new friend and I didn’t know how to spell her name on the card I brought for her. So I asked a mutual friend. Unfortunately, that friend is from the South, and I don’t even know how to phonetically write what she said. But as she coached me through the spelling, it was sort of like, “Kye (rhymes with eye) – ah – ee – ayus –”

And I thought to myself, What’s an Ah? What the heck is an AYus? I knew it made perfect sense to her, but I had no clue. So I smiled, nodded, and happened to look down at the cake, which had our friend’s name on it in frosting.

If you’re from the South, I hope you know I love you. We’re saying the same things; we just say them differently.

Communication can be hard. Understanding and loving each other can also be hard. Jesus didn’t buy peace with compromise, but He also knew His disciples were befuddled, wrestling, and had their own insecurities and growth to overcome.

So He patiently let them wrestle – you think He didn’t already know what they were talking about along the way about who was the greatest? – and then He brought some gentle correction and perspective.

And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.”

– Mark 9:35-37

The thing about little kids is that they love to learn. They don’t pretend to have all the answers. They love risk and wonder. They’re not afraid to ask questions and they’re not driven by pride or insecurity. And generally, if they’re with someone they trust, healthy kids are excited about the unfamiliar instead of afraid of it.

But when we see people doing something unfamiliar or unexpected, we tend to create circles of belonging and exclusion, like the disciples did in the very next verse:

John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.”

– Mark 9:38

Jesus responds to their tattling with perspective and wisdom in His correction, because He knows they are still sounding this out, too. He doesn’t want them — or us — to just memorize; He wants us to broaden our perspectives and consider new things. He wants us to think, and solve, and resolve.

But Jesus said, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. For the one who is not against us is for us. For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward.”

– Mark 9:39-41

We often misunderstand things that are perfectly clear when they’re not what we expected or predicted. But the Holy Spirit is teaching us, making us like Him, and He doesn’t want us to just memorize principles, because memorizing answers isn’t the same as solving problems. He wants us to walk in a manner worthy of our calling:

With all humility and gentleness. With patience. Bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

(Even if we don’t know an A from an Ayus.)

To do that, we need to consider the unfamiliar, and do hard things. We need to grow deep and wide. We need to snuff out comparison with humility. We need to try our patience, stretching it farther than we thought it could go. And when we do, grace will press out our insecurities and pride and unnecessary conflicts, as light presses out darkness.

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bits and pieces: how we build the Kingdom with small offerings

Posted on by December 23, 2023

“You don’t need the light to go down the stairs,” I mumble as I flip the switch off. I do this at least once a day and the stairwell isn’t even dark; there’s a window at the bottom, and light from the kitchen filters in at the top.

And even if it were utterly dark (which it almost never is at our house), humans – even small humans – know how to walk on stairs. We’ve done it a million times, even carrying bags of groceries or dozens of eggs. It’s muscle memory. But the kids flip the light on just for the fun of it, I guess.

bits and pieces: how we build the Kingdom with small offerings

We like to see where we’re going, and we like the way to be clear. I was reminded of this last week when I drove to church through heavy snow and hated it with every mile, knowing I could do it but not liking it. In those times we kind of wish we had the cop-out of not being able to do something so we can beg off from the responsibility. But no, we can do hard things like driving on sloppy roads, and learning how to use cantankerous sewing machines, and going through the bureaucratic hoops of guardianship.

We were officially granted guardianship of Reagan on Tuesday, which is an odd thing because we’ve been her parents for over eleven years and she’s been 18 for a month already. So yay, that’s done – until next month, at least, when we repeat the process with Andrey. Now we just need to get used to all the new paperwork routines and deadlines (have I told you lately how much I hate paperwork? SO MUCH) and new adult-y things for her, like establishing her own bank account, which is also an odd thing because we’re supposed to get all this in place as soon as possible but we won’t even have the decree in hand to do so for 4-6 weeks, because this is the government we’re talking about.

Right, the sewing machine isn’t the only cantankerous one around here. Maybe we should switch subjects and talk about cheerful things, like how we didn’t die when we drove home in the ice fog last week.

It was the same day I mentioned a minute ago, when we were driving in the heavy snow to church. But on the way home, the snow had stopped and the roads were clearer, and I even told Cham she could turn on the radio to look for Christmas music.

And then four minutes later we hit the ice fog on the highway.

At first I thought it was fine, but then I quickly realized we were driving through a cloud that was adhering to us. Ice started building up at the top of the windshield, and then it crept lower. I flipped the wipers on and they helped a little, but within another mile they went right over the glaze that continued to spread downward.

“Turn off the radio,” I said, and flipped the heat to its highest setting. We were still four miles from home and all those little tiny particles kept building up on each other.

And I think this is when I repented of angrily flipping off the light switch to the stairwell, because seeing where we’re going is more than just a luxury sometimes. It’s one thing when you have muscle memory to walk down the stairs, but it’s a totally different thing when you’re on the highway in the dark, and ice is covering more and more of the windshield as it shrinks your view of the highway in front of you.

There was nowhere to pull over. The road was barely plowed, two lanes had shrunk to one and half, and there was no shoulder. Pulling over and putting on hazard lights meant blocking what was left of the slow lane, and surely we would’ve been hit in the fog.

So we did what we had to do, and kept going. The ice continued to crawl further down, and I continued to crouch further down so I could see the road out of the clear space left in the windshield. We were in this catch-22 – we had to drive slow because we couldn’t see far in the fog, but we also had to drive as fast as possible to get home before we couldn’t see anything at all.

Sometimes stopping and quitting isn’t an option. Sometimes we must keep going; we have to see it through, even when we can’t see ten feet in front of us. We know we’re in danger, we know God has to protect us, and we know that stopping doesn’t just mean rest or quitting, but something far worse.

And we made it, obviously, because I’m here writing to you about it. We barreled through the last intersection and pulled off the highway, drove up the hill, and then up our driveway, and the relief would’ve been complete if we hadn’t driven separately, because Vince and Afton were still out there behind us somewhere.

Eight minutes later they pulled in the driveway and pounded up the stairs and into the kitchen. Our conversations were all “Oh my gosh,” and “I’ve never seen it like that,” and gratitude that we pray over this highway every single day.

I wonder if those tiny daily prayers matched that ice fog granule for granule, keeping it at bay so we could get home in time. Because good and great things build up on themselves, too.

Over the last several months I’ve seen encouraging progress in prayer, and sometimes it surprises me in its suddenness: Oh yeah, I prayed for that, as I notice a kid making better media choices, and another kid having better sleeping patterns. I keep noticing small but visible victories, these little pieces that start adding up and instilling courage, reminding me that prayer is a powerful work that builds on itself, too. We don’t have to know what the answers or details are, we just need to agree with God’s will for goodness and healing and restoration.

And that brings me back to my efforts with the sewing machine, because I don’t really know what I’m doing with this fabric, either. I just know that I want to make something beautiful out of these bits and pieces.

I don’t have a pattern, and I don’t really want a pattern. Some people follow intricate geometric designs, and I admire their precision and planning. But I don’t want to do that; my brain space for precision and planning goes to writing, and this is play.

Why is it that it’s so much easier to not have a plan when it comes to this? With bigger life situations when I don’t see light on the next five steps, it’s not play; it’s frustration and fear and self-doubt. But here with these bits and pieces, I don’t know what I’m doing but I’m also not doubting myself. I know that if I mess up, I can seam rip; if I cut too many pieces, I can use them in something else.

That’s what I can do in your situations, too, the Holy Spirit keeps reminding me. That’s what grace is. Nothing is wasted.

We take things so seriously. A lot of our situations are serious, of course, but we fret over them as though we’re more attentive and concerned than God is, which is stupidly presumptuous. We spend a lot of our lives flying by the seat of our pants, and it seems like that’s by design because God does amazing things with our loaves and fishes, scraps and thread. He knows we don’t know what we’re doing half the time, and there’s huge comfort in that.

It’s not my job to create the material or know exactly what the finished product will look like. I’m just taking the material available and pulling certain pieces together, doing what I know to do – and when we know better, we do better – so these bits and pieces in front of me can become something beautiful, useful, and redeemed.

There’s a dark, moody scrap here, telling a kid no, they can’t go to a certain event. And there are lighter, brighter scraps over there, laughing together during movies and telling old family stories. Threads of abiding prayer weave through every day, holding pieces together. And I think, so far at least, this is all I need to really know.

We want to do something grand, but often all we have energy for is bits and pieces. Are the bits and pieces enough, though? They have to be, because it’s the only way things are made and accomplished. A book is read – or written – a word, a sentence, a page at a time. Relationships are built one interaction at a time. Breakthrough is achieved one steadfast, grace-filled, desperate day at a time.

Our obedient, faithful bits and pieces counter the ice fog of life, and it’s enough. We have vision for the next couple of small steps, we have strength for the one busy day ahead of us, we have patience for one more go-round with the kid who’s been cooking our grits. It’s all we can do. Like manna that cannot be hoarded for more than the day ahead, we cannot store the effort and strength and energy we need for all these things. We can only build the character that perseveres and comes out victorious with one small, obedient decision at a time.

It’s not about doing everything just right. We don’t always know if it’s working. We know if we’re obeying, though. And we also know when we’re procrastinating by praying for more guidance when the way is already clear, but just not as clear as we want it to be. We want undimmed light for all 17 steps, not just the first couple.

But if risky obedience is approached a little more like play, joy suddenly takes the place of anxiety. It all hinges on trust, though – Does He care? Does He have our best in mind? Is He big enough to cover my imperfections?

Yes, to all three.

Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need. I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not destroy the fruits of your soil, and your vine in the field shall not fail to bear, says the Lord of hosts. Then all nations will call you blessed, for you will be a land of delight, says the Lord of hosts.

– Malachi 3:10-12

The angel of the Lord encamps
    around those who fear him, and delivers them.
Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!
    Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!
Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints,
    for those who fear him have no lack!

– Psalm 34:7-9

Joy and freedom and expansion are markers of the Kingdom. Fear and dread and anxiety are the enemy’s methods to waylay those.

Obedience, courage, and surrender are contagious. Sometimes people wait for the obedience of someone else to move. So your obedience creates a current that moves the less willing, and momentum sweeps through like a rising tide that lifts all boats and aligns many in the right direction. Our obedience isn’t just for ourselves; it changes the atmosphere and culture around us.

Is the dim light enough? Just enough for this step, and the next one, and then next one? Because these days, just those little steps might be all we have in us. And maybe that’s for a good reason.

Will you find your identity in your grand achievements and accomplishments, God asks us, or will you find it in Me?

I believe in the bits and pieces: Joy, freedom, expansion, obedience, courage, and surrender. He’s using these small steps of ours to make grand, beautiful things out of the scraps we have left.

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risk and wonder: the language God speaks

Posted on by November 24, 2023

I pulled the ancient sewing machine from its box and stared at it. We hadn’t spoken in years; I wondered if I still knew its language. There’s the cord, there’s the On switch, there’s the light and the pedal. Okay. I can do this.

risk and wonder: the language God speaks

I’d been thinking about pulling it out for a while but had conveniently hidden different sewing projects from myself so they’d stop nagging me. But that weekend, the duvet on our bed somehow (read: a cat is definitely responsible) acquired an L-shaped tear three inches across, right in the middle of the bed. Blargh. So there was no more putting it off; I had to reacquaint myself with the dreaded sewing machine.

You know why I like knitting and crochet? They’re simple. No buttons, no rethreading, no electricity; I control all the tension. No mysterious mechanisms hidden behind plastic panels that connive to take a simple length of thread and twist it into a conglomeration of mangled boy scout knots amid your fabric.

So, this machine and I…as you can see, we have a history of misunderstanding each other.

Also – and this is important, as you’ll see in a minute – this is a short-armed machine. As, I believe, most sewing machines from the 20th century are. You need to know this because the tear I had to repair was in the middle of a duvet the size of the Goodyear Blimp.

It went like this: Stuff three-quarters of the duvet through the tiny opening of the short arm of the machine. Hand crank the wheel, needle down, pedal for three stitches, push reverse button –

Wait. The reverse button doesn’t want to be pushed. Weird. Okay, push harder. Yep, there it goes, we are reversing, reversing, good, lift off the button – and now the &*%$ button doesn’t want to lift off; now it just wants to reverse. And the needle is stuck in the fabric.

By now the aforementioned snarl of thread has affixed itself to the underworkings of the machine, wrapping everything from the bobbin underneath to the Tesoro station down the street in miles of tangled thread.

But at least now I remember something of the language of sewing: One of its dialects is definitely laced with profanity.

Maybe this is why I’ve been learning that grace is perfected in weakness.

Several minutes later I have cut away the snarl of thread, freed the needle and duvet, and we are ready to make a quarter turn. So I lower the needle, lift the foot, stuff the remaining quarter of duvet through the tiny hole in the machine so as to replicate a small donut giving birth to a futon. Hand crank the wheel to ease the pedal into motion, remove pin, and take some comfort in stabbing said pin into the helpless tomato pincushion. This part of sewing, at least, is strategically therapeutic.

I hesitate to tell you all this because many of you are already fluent in Sewing Machine. Some of you are master quilters and seamstresses with years of expertise at this instrument, and you understand how this machine works so much better than I do. I just know the basics, and everything beyond that for me at this time is just grace.

(Yes, before any of you ask: I did oil the machine. Eventually.)

Anyway, I finished the project and got the duvet back on the bed, which was a good thing because in the stretch of a few days we went from a cold snap to a blizzard with seventy miles per hour wind. And this reminds me that heat and electricity, too, are grace – more of those mysterious things that provide abundance that I can’t control or contrive on my own, like perfect, even stitches.

We take hold of grace like we take hold of the time we have between power outages: We can’t control the power, but we do what we can do, like refill water bottles, flush the toilets, wash our hands. The power being on doesn’t do any of those things for me; it doesn’t shampoo Reagan’s hair or get the boys through their baths or finish the laundry. We have to do those things, but the reason we can do them is because the grace and power – er, electricity – is available to us.

And I don’t understand how grace works either; it’s mysterious mechanisms are a wonder to me. I also have buttons I don’t want pushed, and sometimes the tension is totally out of my control.

Right after the blizzard was Reagan’s birthday. I asked her a few days before how old she was, and she guessed and said sixteen, then I reminded her she was seventeen and asked how old she would be on her birthday (you can file this under “sneaky math”). And with that hint, she got it right and said eighteen.

Eighteen.

Eighteen.

I’m not quite ready for this, and I need grace here, too.

After she went to bed on her birthday I checked on her, asked her if she had a good day, and asked her again how old she was.

“Seventeen?”

“No, you were seventeen, but this is your birthday. So how old are you now?”

“Sixteen?”

But no, she is eighteen, which means nothing and yet everything all at once, and suddenly she’s an adult and she’s been our daughter for eleven and a half years. And I never in a million years thought that on this day we would still need to help her remember what her age is, or help her choose clean and appropriate clothes for the day, or that I would be assisting her with shampooing and scrubbing every time she’s in the shower. I don’t know what I thought. I guess I expected miraculous healing, and also that not as much would need healing.

I had a dream once, many years ago, that she was healed. She spoke perfectly, in full sentences, with perfect pronunciation in her husky voice. And that, too, was grace – a gift to see her the way God sees her, a vision that I could never have seen on my own.

Having an adult daughter live with us isn’t new; Iree lived with us until last summer. But this is different because this younger adult daughter needs help with hygiene, and language, and toileting, and we’ve suddenly moved from what just felt like parenting into caregiving. The line is blurry with special needs but the age makes it suddenly more pronounced. We have finally stepped over into that “someday” that we always talked about – “someday, when Reagan’s an adult, she will still live with us” – and suddenly today, and every day from now on, is that day.

There was always this thought in the back of my mind that she would be healed before we got here. But here we are.

She could still be healed. She has already been healed of so much. But still, we now have an adult daughter eating breakfast at the table who needs to ask to be excused lest she quietly wander off somewhere. And then I’ll remind her to wash her face and turn her shirt around, because I noticed she put it on backwards. I don’t mind those things. I just thought that by the time we reached this day, we wouldn’t still need to do them.

I stop here, lift my hands from the keyboard, and cover my eyes with them. And I remember that this is the language of special needs, heavily laced with words like Yes, and No, and expletives. There’s also grieving in tongues, and intercession, and so much grace perfected in weakness, I don’t understand any of it.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

– Romans 8:26

I was talking to a friend recently about the steward who buried the talent because he was afraid of loss, afraid of his own inability, and afraid of his master’s wrath. He didn’t understand a lot of things, either, but because he chose fear and safety instead of wonder and risk, it crippled his growth and cost him severely.

When we misunderstand our Master’s values, we rely on ourselves and our own abilities, and get a reward that reflects it. But our Master loves grace, and obediently risky investment, and watching us try and learn and lean into the giftings and nudges He gives us. He loves it when we trust Him and need Him to pull us through.

And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

– Romans 8:27-28

We do what we know, and when we know better, we do better. So we’re all in this uncomfortable process of learning better and then figuring out how to do better.

My first several years as Reagan’s mom were tumultuous as we both learned about the safety found in grace. But now she and I are learning to understand each other.

Crocheting and knitting were awkward when I first tried them, but now I have muscle memory, and things that used to be hard are easy. And that’s what’s happening as we grow and learn, when we are willing to walk in the wonder of trusting Him in all the things we don’t understand.

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.”

– John 14:12

If we think we have to understand everything before moving forward, or we refuse to try something new because we can’t risk imperfection or pain or failure, we will never achieve any “greater works” because we’ve chosen fear and safety instead of risk and wonder. And our reward (or consequence) will reflect it.

But there’s great power in our desperate need for grace. The realm of risk and wonder is where He’s called us to live: Where we are learning and trying and growing, gaining revelation, beginning to understand new things while living in the tension of so many mysteries.

It’s the only place where we see things the way He sees them, and not just as they seem to be. And it’s where we learn to not just understand His language, but to be fluent in it, because risk and wonder and grace are the language God speaks.

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