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.

overturning: when confinement unleashes an uncontainable church

Posted on by September 14, 2021

It had been two weeks since I sat in a normal church service. And that Sunday I ended up with wet pants, which, for the record, isn’t normal anyway.

I was holding a restless 15-month-old who has outgrown his ability to snuggle through worship and sleep through sermons. So you can see where I’m going.

overturning: when confinement unleashes an uncontainable church

Nope, little Kavanagh was a big boy now, and wanted to crawl in the aisle, hang over the chairs in front of us, flirt with the people behind us, and purloin all the pens and New Guest forms he could get ahold of.

Friends, he could not be contained. And when I tried to nurse him to sleep during worship that day, he suddenly detached himself so violently that I had to make the split-second decision to either a) expose myself to the entire west side of the congregation, or b) cover myself in time, overturning the cup of water I was holding.

It was a cold, impromptu baptism for both of us.

I brushed off as much as I could and hightailed it to the nursing moms’ room, where I had spent many services over the last ten years. That tiny little room, recently upgraded into a beautiful, soft-lit haven, was a refuge when we couldn’t be contained in the huge sanctuary and needed the comfort and privacy of smaller walls to hold us.

The service streamed through the wall-mounted screen and my attention went back and forth from it to Kavanagh, occupying himself with the toys, or – even better, according to him – the contents of my purse.

I rescued the things I didn’t want him to have, like my sunglasses, the charging cord, and a bar of chocolate. I left him the eight pens (that many?), one fork (sigh), and also the mints, which he couldn’t open. But no matter, he found one that had probably rolled around loose for several months and popped it in his mouth. I let him have it, and started eating the chocolate.

That was two weeks earlier. None of us imagined what things would be like shortly after, when the world went on lockdown.

I felt a little guilty because I knew this was a huge transition for many families, but it was pretty normal life for us. You know that meme that said, “When you find out your normal daily lifestyle is called a quarantine” and the puppet character looks awkwardly away? That’s us.

We already work from home. We already homeschool. Most of our ministry is from home or through social media. And after being self-employed writers for almost two years at that point, we were already used to not having predictable income.

So when Kav stabbed me in the eye Monday night with not just one, but two pens (because in a house of writers, pens are everywhere), I suddenly had a small dose of what many of you were feeling: Hemmed in, confined, unable to do my normal stuff. At a loss. I had to spend the day with it patched, resting, not able to read or write enough to get any work done. 

Quarantine day 4? 5? Whatever. Pirate day. In which we...
A) dress like a pirate
B) talk like a pirate
C) learn how terrible pirates actually were and why we DON’T want to emulate them
D) wear a patch for the fun of it because your toddler stabbed you in the eye the night before with not one, but two pens.
I got D but don’t recommend it.
Both pens were capped, praise God, but I have some scratches and one is right across the center. SO MUCH PAIN. Feeling much better today though and hopefully we’ll be back on track tomorrow. But no storytime from me today, friends.
I mean, me hearties. Argh.
xo

I had no depth perception, but eventually I got the hang of eating without making a mess all over myself. When I scrolled social media, it took me a few tries to accurately hit the “like” button. First world problems, for real.

The next day I was mostly back to normal (eyes heal super fast, praise God) and I had more to do at home than I know what to do with…which was fine, because I’m the introvertiest introvert I know. No plans? Everything’s cancelled? You mean, for the good of our community and the health of our loved ones we have to stay in our house full of books and do the work we love to do?

Well. Introvert’s paradise. Some of us were made for such a time as this.

Because it’s not only a virus that is germinating.

This is a fertile time for so many good things, and God is birthing movements and boldness and unrealized giftings in His people at an accelerated rate. The more we cooperate with that germination, the more we flip the other on its head, as God did with Joseph’s capture and imprisonment, using it for the saving of many people.

And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors.

– Genesis 45:7

In this season God is calling His people to outgrow their ability to passively doze through worship and sleep through sermons.

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.

– Genesis 50:20

We were an entire world of people living in an imprisonment of sorts, a whole kingdom of people alive who had the same opportunity to hear God in how He wants us to overturn these circumstances, to take what the enemy means for harm and use it for good, doing whatever it is that we each are best at for the good of those around us.

Some of us are bakers, and we bake.

Some of us are builders, and we build.

Some of us are teachers, and we teach.

I am a reader, a writer, and an intercessor, and I did those things, pivoting in ways to reach out spiritually and emotionally when we couldn’t reach out physically. And let’s face it, I’ve never been great at reaching out physically anyway.

But nothing we did then or do now stays in a building.

God is offering this as a time to step up in bolder ways, using these callings for His kingdom at a level that I would normally brush aside as too much. But this is all too much.

We’ve lived isolated for a long time, and this new situation only makes physically obvious what has been true for a generation. The lockdowns are just an honest picture of how we’ve lived for years – head down, looking at our phones and laptops, distracted and closed off more than ever, missing the world around us.

The time to overturn that is here.

I heard a lot of people complain about how terrible people were with the selfishness of hoarding, the panic-raising of the media, and the drama-seeking of the immature. And I saw some of that. But mostly in the beginning of the lockdowns, I saw the opposite.

I saw people freely give of their time and resources to help educate and feed other people’s children. I saw businesses declare grace for unpaid bills. I saw business owners continue to pay their employees in spite of their doors being closed.

I saw an entire community of creatives rise up to reach out with their giftings, bringing warmth and connection in the face of isolation – singing, acting, reading, reciting poetry, giving free lessons, sharing what they know with others. Building the kingdom.

And even after we saw that it was a sham, that the numbers of sick and dying were inflated with unreliable tests and a media who had other agendas than the truth in mind, we still saw those things. Even in the face of Communist mandates that attempt to criminalize singing in church, or attending classes without an experimental injection (even as a remote student, because it was never about science), we see people overturning these situations for the Kingdom.

They are not confined to the walls around them. They are cooperating with the movement of a Spirit who crashes against the walls, uncontainable.

We’ve waved adios to normal so much over the last two years that it feels like nothing else will surprise us. But if the church will keep its eyes open, praying, listening, leaning in hard to God’s calling for each of us in this time, we won’t be surprised anymore.

We’ll be the ones who overturn this, because the church was never meant to be a building. It was always meant to be unleashed.

resilient: the trait that covers a multitude of sins

Posted on by February 16, 2024

Friends, this is an excerpt from Work That God Sees. Enjoy!

We avoided ER visits at least three times that spring day: Once, a sibling left her baby brother alone on the couch (but he didn’t fall on his head), and twice, another child was caught carrying a knife the entirely wrong way (but no one was stabbed). The dryer was busted, so we were channeling our inner Little House on the Prairie and clothes were hanging everywhere to dry. Also, our ice maker was on the blink because it didn’t like the glitter that fell into it.

resilient: the trait that covers a multitude of sins

We had tears during math, so I grabbed a file full of stickers – big stickers, little stickers, one sticker for every problem, I didn’t care how many stickers it took as long as she found joy in it – and suddenly I realized that I need the same thing sometimes, too. Not stickers, but whatever will bring a little more joy to the day and its drama: a fresh cup of tea, a few minutes with the cat, or an hour of outside time for the kids so I can read for a while in a quiet house.

I came across this verse, and in a moment of homeschool rebellion, wrote it in our math textbook:

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.

– 1 Peter 4:8

This verse was good news because we had a multitude of sins that day on top of the chaos already mentioned: broken dishes, tantrums, yelling, an almost-ruined camera, blaming…I’ll stop there. But if we could love each other earnestly at the end of the day, those loud memories might quiet a little under His covering, and we might have a little less chaos tomorrow. 

I won’t pretend it’s easy, though.

We moved on from math to science, and my oldest son was reading about the discovery of protein structure. It was a hard process; scientists had already figured out how to find the structure of a molecule, but proteins were so much smaller and more complex that it made discovering their structure that much harder.

And I think it’s sort of like how I can understand how love covers a multitude of sins, but I am still trying to learn how to consistently stay loving in the midst of the chaos. Not everything is solved by a handful of sticker sheets or a fresh cup of tea. So many small humans, so many complex behaviors, and I am so often out of answers, out of energy, and out of patience.

Some days are full of life-changing events that threaten to devastate us: A diagnosis. A confession. An announcement. An event that happens so fast, we don’t have a chance to prepare for how it is going to shake our reality in the days to come. A multitude of sins.

Sometimes facing tomorrow is more than we think we can handle after the day we’ve just walked through.

“But,” as my son’s science book said, “some people have dozens of times more perseverance than the rest of us.”

And that’s what I want to be: Persevering. Steadfast. But also, resilient.

If steadfastness is pushing through to breakthrough, resilience is rising again after devastation or loss. They both move forward and they often go together. We are steadfast when we have survived the waiting; we are resilient when we have survived the breaking. And there are many days when motherhood breaks us wide open.

Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.

– 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17

We moved on to a Bible lesson, and the kids and I talked about Jericho: The marching, the yelling, and the walls falling down. The obedience, the declaration, and the miracle.

“It doesn’t make sense!” Chamberlain said. And she was right; it never makes sense. Marching around a city can’t make walls fall down, right?

But it did, because God told them to. Obedience is powerful. Especially when it doesn’t make sense.

Forgiveness doesn’t always make sense. Reconciliation doesn’t always make sense. Most big moves – starting a business, a mission, a family – don’t always make sense. Mothering in the midst of the overwhelm, in the clutter and the mayhem and the mess, and then getting up to do it all again the next morning in spite of how the day before attempted to break us, doesn’t make sense.

But here we are, you and I, doing it. Over and over again.

We can do whatever He’s calling us to: Adopt, give birth, defend the helpless, write the book, heal the breach, comfort the hurting. Cover the multitude of sins, earnestly love the sinner. We can survive the breaking, and rise from ashes. We can do whatever He says.

When school was done, we got in the car. And I don’t remember where we went that day, but I do remember that the trees were budding and it was in the sixties, and we drove with the windows down so everyone could hear our Alaskan kids complain about how hot it was in the Stagecoach. 

But all those tiny green leaves had a sermon, and they still preach to us: In case you ever think your story is over, God has given us nature to show us that a season of bleak winter is never forever. 

Go pray circles around that next step and kick up some dust, because this is how we cover the multitude of sins, and how we rise from the ashes. The Lord has given us the city.

You can find Work That God Sees here, and if you’d like future posts sent directly to your inbox, you can subscribe here.

in january: how fasting declutters our soul

Posted on by January 2, 2023

I heard a book slam shut, and Vin announced, “Now that it’s January, I have no motivation to finish that book.”

“Which book?” I asked, not looking.

“Any book,” he said.

“I hope you’re not referring to the one you’re supposed to be writing.”

And praise God, he wasn’t.

in january: how fasting declutters our soul

We’re only a couple of weeks into the year and I’ve already slammed a book shut, too. It started promising but then sunk into coarse humor, and while snark is probably both my highest spiritual gift and my love language, I have no patience for vulgarity.

(I guess I should point out that I’m not referring to the book I’m writing, either. It’s a fair question, though.)

So out those books went, along with all the other things we’re decluttering in the New Year.

The need to declutter is more dire than ever because Kav hit the fast, destructive crawling-standing-grabbing stage of babyhood months ago and he’s going to start walking any second. But it’s okay; now that Vince and I are in our forties, as parents of eight kids with miiiiles of experience behind us – a whole toolbelt of wisdom, an armory full of tactics and methods to navigate every stage of childhood –we now know exactly what to do:

It’s called “choosing your battles.” Which means, we just started moving things to the library.

And this, too, is wisdom.

First it was a coffee table and then a huge potted plant, but then we added the Christmas tree. And then we squeezed in the card table for Christmas puzzles.

I should point out that the library is only 9×11, and it already contained floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and an upright piano. By the time we were done, it was so stuffed that you couldn’t reach many books without first moving a small piece of furniture or an umbrella plant the size of a mini-fridge.

But now we are moving things out in reverse, both in the library and the rest of the house. It’s a deep breath in, and a long exhale, and the white space is reemerging. Christmas décor, unworthy books, jars of unidentifiable pantry items, unmatched mittens and gloves worn to shreds: all packed, given, or thrown away.

For the last several years, January has been a season of prayer and fasting for our family, and that is a refining, purging, decluttering work in itself.

I will take my stand at my watchpost
    and station myself on the tower,
and look out to see what he will say to me,
    and what I will answer concerning my complaint.

– Habakkuk 2:1, ESV

Every year it brings layers of breakthrough, but never in the ways we expect. And the answers usually come in phases – a little clarity here in this season, a little more direction a week or two later (sometimes in an entirely different area), and some serious resolution after a month or two.

And the Lord answered me:

“Write the vision;
    make it plain on tablets,
    so he may run who reads it.”

– Habakkuk 2:2, ESV

I’ve been reading about the watchmen in Habakkuk and the weeds in the garden in Matthew – and God is extravagantly efficient, unwilling to let sin continue because He loves the sinners so much, but He’s also equally unwilling to waste such an opportunity to grow His people.

In this season He is also cleaning house — washing us clean, because we are His temple. He is revealing, exposing, and taking care of the clutter, clearing the way for margin and white space as He aligns things into the right places. But He’s also addressing grime and dark corners of vulgarity, pulling things into the open so the atmosphere can be one of fresh air and light, as it’s meant to be.

And sometimes during fasting there’s this gnawing pit in the stomach that has nothing to do with food hunger. It’s a heart-hunger that wonders if grief – this fasting from the thing we’ve lost, or waiting for the breakthrough we feel desperate for – is accomplishing anything. We wonder if anything is happening while we wait.

“For still the vision awaits its appointed time;
    it hastens to the end—it will not lie.
If it seems slow, wait for it;
    it will surely come; it will not delay.”

– Habakkuk 2:3, ESV

I’ve shared before that when we moved to this house, we learned about fasting, non-food-wise: We were fasting from everything that was packed up, and also fasting from our sense of home and having a place to settle into. Keep in mind, we still possessed all those things, but they were packed, so we were choosing not to access them. And as we felt the absence of those things – fasting from them – we prayed for breakthrough, for answers, and for a place to settle in. Just like we do when fasting from food, we feel the hunger, and the hunger triggers us to pray. This kind of fasting was just a different kind of hunger.

It turned out though, we were already home, and God knew all along, of course.

And praying for breakthrough is a fast of its own, when we are fasting from the things we are longing for – the answers, the provision, the specific things we are wanting and hoping and praying for. It reveals the things we’ve been distracted with, and realigns our priorities, and declutters our soul.

“Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him,
    but the righteous shall live by his faith.”

– Habakkuk 2:4, ESV

We still have antique Christmas ornaments hanging in our front windows, and a family of porcelain snowmen congregating above our kitchen cabinets. This weekend they’re finally getting packed away – and with any luck, we’ll even finish that puzzle we started at Christmas.

Copperlight Wood: In January - how fasting declutters our soul

And we are fasting, and the words go in, and the words go on paper, and the words are spoken, and He, the Word, is teaching us the awe-full power of words because He is the Word Himself – and He will always have the first word, and the last word, on our situations.