Category Archives: adoption

we are the house on fire: how we stay alight

Posted on by July 9, 2024

I sat in the parking lot with Finn and Kav, waiting for the bus of campers to arrive. The boys were great but it was hot and muggy, and I was the whiny one. I’d skipped breakfast, wasn’t feeling well, and was starting to lean toward the exhausted and hangry side of things. A quick search in the car for snacks only produced a couple tins of mints.

Finally, I saw the girls, who had pulled into the other parking lot and gone through the opposite side of the building, and started to spill outside into our parking lot – and I tried to flag Cham down, but missed, and she went back in.

Ughhhh, fine. We got out to fetch her, and found her just inside. Hi, hugs, ready to go?

“I don’t think I can go yet.” She looked at her camp leader, who was on the phone listening to someone.

I raised an eyebrow, and the leader gave a tired smile.

“Okay,” she said into the phone, “so you want me to ask them…if they encountered God…and if they want to share a testimony?” Ah, talking to our youth pastor.”And see if they want to…record it…on a video?”

My extremely unspiritual response was, Ohh, no way. I had been sitting in the parking lot for twenty-five minutes, having hot flashes in a sweatshirt while trying to entertain two boys and wondering how many calories could be gleaned from an entire package of Altoids. I didn’t care if the campers saw angels, were slain in the spirit, or raised the dead; I needed to get home, eat some food, and probably go to bed.

Isn’t that terrible?

we are the house on fire: how we stay alight | Shannon Guerra

Every month, my premium subscribers and I have a q&p (which stands for question and ponder because I don’t need more pressure in life) and last month someone asked how we can keep from burning out, from losing our fire. We talked about people we respect who seem to have lost their first love, who used to be spiritually mature but now feel heavy to be around, who somehow waned, who seem more focused on problems than Jesus.

So, what causes that? How do we not end up there? And how can we help them return?

Hard questions, no easy answers, especially when we recognize our own struggles with just being tired and hangry. But let’s hash out a handful of them.

fear…or, worship of safety

We talked about how there’s a pooh-poohing tendency among some who’ve lost their fire, who walk in fear versus walking in love because safety is revered more than Jesus. And when safety is the idol, unfamiliarity can breed contempt.

Many fire starters seem dangerous and unfamiliar – new methods, new speakers, new worship styles…but also, old methods and routines (like prophecy or fasting or praying in tongues) can feel threatening to someone’s careful bubble of propriety if they’ve never experienced them before.

Sometimes people have weak beliefs that they don’t want challenged (or exposed) by those unfamiliar things. Further, they often don’t think other people could handle being exposed to them, either – which is fear-based control.

But we don’t walk in fear; we walk in love, and perfect love casts out fear.

So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

– 1 John 4:16-18

We still tend to face two trees – the tree of knowledge of good and evil, versus the tree of life – and sometimes still choose the forbidden tree of knowledge. Not that knowledge is bad, but the desire to be right at all costs is, because it places our trust in ourselves and our own goodness and right-ness.

If we want to be right more than righteous and free, if we are so busy accusing and policing others, if we are wanting all of our steps micromanaged in safe assurance rather than risking the wild interlocking of freedom and obedience, we aren’t looking at Jesus.

But He’s the One we need to know.

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

– 1 Corinthians 2:1-5

pain…or, fear 2.0

Acute pain, whether it’s physical or emotional, can overshadow everything else. I’ve struggled for years with a terrible skin condition and sometimes my skin hurts so bad as the water hits it in the shower that all I can do is focus on breathing as the humidity sears my nerves.

The other night I sat in the shower and had this moment of wondering why I was still there, doing nothing…I realized it was because I still needed to shave, but I was dreading the action of reaching out and grasping the razor with my hand. In the back of my mind, I knew that curling my hand around it, no matter how lightly, would be even more painful because my skin cracks with the movement, and movement comes with pain.

Some people’s fire has died out because they learned that movement can come with pain – and it’s not always true, but in their eyes, for the times it has been true it’s made it not worth the risk of trying again. The pain is louder than everything else.

We think of the phrase “first love” and things like innocence, naivety, joy, even immaturity or childlikeness come to mind. But life has hard spots that tend to harden us and teach us to fear. We realize there’s more to love than sunshine and rainbows, and sometimes the clouds take over.

In my life, I’ve developed a fairly jaded view of adoption, especially compared to people who have no experience with it. It’s not something I’m proud of; it’s something God is currently, actively working in me to heal. But that jadedness and hardness comes from being burned, from trying and loving and pursuing, and being rejected and wounded and traumatized in return.

Ministry can be really, really hard on people, and on marriages and families. It’s not meant to be (just as adoption isn’t meant to be traumatic) but it is the nature of the battle. It takes a lot of solid, core-nurturing structures and supports in place for people to take on any critical mission and not get burned while they’re fighting on the front lines. So for these spiritually mature people we hold in high esteem who seem to have lost that fire, I wonder if something like that has happened. I wonder how many are wounded warriors who have seen too much and not known what to do with it – or they didn’t have a community to help them deal with it.

resistance…or, unwillingness to surrender

Have you heard the Lord ask you to do that one thing, but you put it off, and eventually just never did it?

Yes? In a way, that’s a good sign. Not because you disobeyed, but that you remember, because it means you still hear Him.

However, if the answer is no because you’re inclined to shove something nebulous that you don’t want to be reminded of back into its hiding place – something you don’t want to deal with, something you want to forget, something you have no intention of ever letting the Lord convict you about – that’s a bad sign. Because eventually we can silence the Lord’s volume in our life by not responding to it. Coolness and stagnation come from resisting the Spirit; we get calloused to His nudges and promptings.

Sometimes we’re guilty of a willingness to do many good and hard things just to avoid the one thing He’s calling us to grow in. And we put spiritual spins on it: Worshipers will sing rather than intercede. Intercessors will intercede rather than process, confess, or forgive. Servants may attend all the functions and do, do, do while avoiding deep study of the Word, and allowing it to do the work in them.

The good news is it takes only one second to turn the volume back up again, as fast as thought: Lord, I’m sorry. I want to hear and obey. Make me willing.

distance…or, lack of abiding

We are responsible for our own abiding and proximity, but we’re also meant to hold each other up. Let’s go back to the fire analogy: We can be around people on fire, or we can be around people dripping wet, and their effect on the atmosphere is likely to affect our burning, too. And some church communities (or friend groups, or families) are just not burning.

Some of us have forgotten what it means to burn so much that the slightest movement that’s warmer than lukewarm seems to be fire, and it’s good enough.

We do ebb and flow. And that’s why we need each other, why we need to be discerning about our closest friends and community.If I get burned so badly there’s nothing left in me to light on fire and I just feel like wet ashes, I have friends who can listen and show me what it is to be on fire but not be consumed. And when they need help, I can do that for them, too.

But if I’m around those who are contentedly not burning, they’ll pat me on the back and tell me it’s okay to lose my fire. And if that attitude takes hold and I stop abiding entirely, who will be around to rekindle me?

So we need to circulate and remind others who they are and how they’re meant to burn, but maybe be careful about not overdoing it – be aware of our own abiding, and keep returning to those we trust who remind us of who we are, because our own fires can be put out by too many wet blankets. We need Holy Spirit to blow through and bring oxygen to keep us aflame, but we need the Living Water to keep us from burning out, too. Abiding in Him will keep us firmly in the sweet spot: On fire, but not consumed.

Here’s who we are:

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

– Ephesians 2:19-22

We are the house on fire He dwells in.

We don’t demand the furniture be arranged just so; we trust He knows the best layout. We open the Word as He opens us, and the clutter starts to burn away: the distractions all over the counters, the misunderstandings and misconceptions laying every which way on the shelves, the regrets spilled all over the floor. He puts things in their right places, making sure some don’t take up more space than they’re supposed to and that others take their rightful place on display instead of hidden away in a dusty corner.

He creates restful order, sweeping out lies, opening the windows and letting fresh air in so the smoke blows out – leaving pure joy, holiness, and desire. We didn’t know we could survive the fire until we surrendered to it.

I don’t know: confronting confusion with equanimity (and satire)

Posted on by February 1, 2024

Our seventh attempt to get through to a hotline. You are number 120 in queue, your wait time is 45 minutes.

Thirty minutes later: You are number 97 in queue, your wait time is one hour and twenty-eight minutes. Wait, what?

Almost two hours later: A noise that sounds like someone picking up the phone to answer. And maybe they did, but we’ll never know, because the call was disconnected.

[OH EXPLETIVE]

I don't know: confronting confusion with equanimity (and satire)

Have I complained about government paperwork enough already? Too bad, here we go.

If you’ve never heard of it before, let me introduce you to the concept of the “Circumlocution Office.” You’ve probably experienced it many times, just not by that name.

The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under Government. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office.

– Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

The Circumlocution Office is where All Things Bureaucracy and Paperwork go to die. But they don’t just die – they relocate, then circumvent, then redirect, then dawdle sluggishly toward some oozey pit of phone lines, paper-stuffed cabinets, and stale TicTacs in a room like a giant coffin with apathetic lighting until all papers within have disintegrated from the erosion of procrastination.

Thanks to the guardianship process for two of our kids, we are in the middle of applying for multiple programs for both of them. (This is required, not optional, don’t even get me started.) I’ve mentioned before that paperwork and administrative duties are my hate language – as opposed to actual love languages like coffee, memes, and good sushi – and the process of navigating this system has challenged all my efforts toward healthy self-medicating, including prayer, staying up too late reading, and a slightly addictive obsession with Sudoku.

If you’re not familiar with Sudoku, the instructions are precise: Every row, column, and square must have only one of each number (or in our case, color). Even at the higher levels, it’s hard but not confusing. When you feel stuck there’s always a solution if you consider it long enough. The rules are simple and they don’t change.

In spite of being in the guardianship process for over a year, we have yet to find a single corner of this arena where experts agree on how the process is completed, and none of it has been streamlined for ease and efficiency.

It was equally impossible to do the plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express authority of the Circumlocution Office. If another Gunpowder Plot had been discovered half an hour before the lighting of the match, nobody would have been justified in saving the parliament until there had been half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence, on the part of the Circumlocution Office.

– Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

Enter Paperwork Saga, round two: Day of Phone Calls.

Paperwork requires phone calls because applications and government websites are designed by mystical regulatory leprechauns in such a way as to give you only a third of the information you need to fill them out. The rest is a riddle of precision guesswork spiked with threats of legal retribution if you forget to cross a T or you accidentally double dot an I.

It turns out though, there are some wonderful people whom you can call. Most of them admit the system is a mess, and none of them actually work for the government.

Unfortunately, none of them know the same things. For example, I have asked approximately fourteen people if we could apply for a particular requirement for our kids before they turned eighteen, and every answer without fail has been “I don’t know” until one person finally said, “Oh, absolutely. In fact, it takes about a year for it to go through. So you should’ve applied a year ago.”

*headdesk, headdesk*

But here’s what I’m learning: Most of the things we dread are not as bad or hard as they seem. And when they are, you get writing material out of it. (Also, the extraneous forms and duplicate paperwork can usually be composted as bedding in the chicken coop.)

This glorious establishment had been early in the field, when the one sublime principle involving the difficult art of governing a country, was first distinctly revealed to statesmen…Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving — HOW NOT TO DO IT.

– Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

One government website says “You can try applying online.” (Try? Try? Like it’s one of those ball-throwing games at the State Fair?) The instructions continue with this disclaimer: “Depending on your situation, it may be hard or it may be easy.” Um. Greeeat. Turns out, if the website craps out in the first thirty seconds every time you try filling out the forms, it’s definitely hard.

Two people told me, “Call this office. They will definitely be able to help you get this waiver.” They had to tell me repeatedly because, at this point, you can see how skeptical I am of anyone’s surefire solution. But I finally called the office and left a message. The following week, I heard back.

“No, sorry,” the guy said, “we only do this waiver, and you need this other waiver. There are actually five different waivers,” he admitted, “and I know it’s really confusing. But you need to call this office, in Anchorage.”

How are we supposed to get anywhere when even the professionals who are supposed to guide you through this don’t know what they’re doing because the system is so bloated?

…The Circumlocution Office went on mechanically, every day, keeping this wonderful, all-sufficient wheel of statesmanship, How not to do it, in motion. Because the Circumlocution Office was down upon any ill-advised public servant who was going to do it, or who appeared to be by any surprising accident in remote danger of doing it…

– Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

After that blunder, someone assured me, “You can call this number for help, these people definitely know what they’re doing, they do this for a living.” Thereupon I called the number and an answering machine picked up; it said they may (What? May?) return my call within ten business days.

But hey, to their credit, they called two days later and got my voicemail. It was a woman whose first language was definitely not English, and her message directed me to the same website that was unnavigable in the first place.

Numbers of people were lost in the Circumlocution Office…Boards sat upon them, secretaries minuted upon them, commissioners gabbled about them, clerks registered, entered, checked, and ticked them off, and they melted away. In short, all the business of the country went through the Circumlocution Office, except the business that never came out of it; and its name was Legion.

– Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

Among the many things we don’t know about this process is that all these people (the ones we’ve dealt with, at least) are actually kind, respectful, and encouraging. Maybe I was prepared for otherwise after two years of officials behaving like Gestapo who wouldn’t even respect a person’s right to breathe freely. (Those protocols really brought out the worst in humanity, didn’t they?)

Had they used their faces, not for communication, not to utter thought and feeling, not to share existence with their neighbors, but to appear what they wished to appear, and conceal what they were? And, having made their faces masks, were they therefore deprived of those masks, and condemned to go without faces until they repented?

– George MacDonald, Lilith

The difference is that during the plandemic, those officials demanded that you wear a mask, too, and they turned into freakish banshees if you refused – and ironically, instead of covering ugliness, their masks revealed what was really inside and made them more hideous than ever.

“How long must they flaunt their facelessness in faceless eyes?” I wondered. “How long will the frightful punition endure? Have they at length begun to love and be wise? Have they yet yielded to the shame that has found them?”

– George MacDonald, Lilith

But it seems like most professionals have come back to just being decent people, truly trying to help. And we need help, because the system is a convoluted mess.

It’s such an intimidating process. Court documents flooding my inbox, meetings with lawyers, interviews with court visitors. It all seems very official – and it is – but it’s also very human. And maybe this is a secret, but the formality is a cover for an extremely informal, fluid process. It, too, is just a mask.

We want to walk through the process correctly. The problem is that there’s no correct way to do it, and all the experts tell you something different (unless it’s “I don’t know,” which is alarmingly consistent).

And honestly, I would rather hear “I don’t know” than a bunch of misleading information. So this is a good step – a cultural willingness to admit humility, to let go of pride and ego, to acknowledge we’re all in this together, needing answers. How else do we make sense of the things that don’t?

Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.

– Titus 3:1-3

Of course, cooperating with a system isn’t the same as capitulating or conforming to that system, just as being “submissive to rulers and authorities” isn’t the same as sucumbing to tyranny. So we work the problem in front of us, sitting in the discomfort of not having immediate solutions. The answers are there, regardless of how ambiguous they look right now. Time will either bring the solutions to the surface, or they just won’t matter because we will have bigger things to deal with.

What I’ve really needed to hear from someone is, “Yes, it’s a mess. Yes, it’s confusing. You’re doing fine.” And praise God, the Lord brought someone who said that very thing, and it was such a comfort. (She still didn’t know how to file for SSI…but I digress).

So friend, if you are walking through something hard and complicated, and there are no clear answers and lots of confusing directions, let me tell you: Yes, it’s a mess. The world is a cleanup operation, and these are confusing times. We don’t have all the answers but Jesus does, and we have the mind of Christ so we are able to discover Kingdom solutions. We can wait for the revelation while we sit in the mystery. You’re trying and waiting and trusting? You‘re doing fine.

There’s another number sitting on my list that I’ve been referred to multiple times. Overcoming my jadedness, I finally call and a woman with a smoker’s voice answers.

“You have access to the internet?” she asks, and directs me to a website with a big yellow button to apply.

Short form, easy. Now I feel reckless and brave, and ask if she can help me navigate this other arena.

“Yep, that’s the Something-something-aging-something office. Their number is –”

“Wait, that’s the office I need?”

“Yep. Their number is…” and she gives me a local number with real people who live here in Alaska and actually answer questions.

Miracles abound.

I called the lady and she was so nice. The person with all the knowledge and resources and answers will call us next week and help us through the whole process, she said.

“Of course, you don’t have to go through our office, we’re just here to support you. You can go directly to the federal government website if you want.” And it was all I could do to not scream, No! I need you, please don’t leave me! (Of course, she hasn’t called me back yet, and it’s been over a week. So I guess that’s on my to-do list again tomorrow.)

But something that keeps recurring to me is that many of these things that seem like such a big deal – so time consuming, such hassles – end up being nothing in the long run. I don’t just mean that in perspective they are small, but that they often just dissolve into nothingburgers, distractions that just took up too much brain space when we could’ve been cultivating peace and productivity elsewhere.

The Spirit reveals what we need to know when we abide. And often we don’t need the answers as soon as we think we do, so resting in the mystery of His timing is an exercise in growing in trust and equanimity. It’s easy to slip into intimidation and pressure, but taking a step back means we won’t allow the enemy to magnify that stress in or around us.

Instead, we can counter that stress and confusion with prayer, compassion, Sudoku, and mockery of inept government systems as we expose the mask and move toward a more transparent, healthy, and secure culture. We will try and wait and trust. My big situations, your big situations – will they even matter in the big picture? I don’t know; it’s a mess out there. But you’re doing great.

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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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