learning languages: a journal of grief, growth, & becoming, part 2

Every week at Grandma’s is different now. She was chattier in December and January; she ate lunch with us sometimes. She knew me, and mostly knew who the kids were.

learning languages: a journal of grief, growth, and becoming, part 2

One week we talked about homeschooling, which she did with her youngest two boys. She watched as the kids kept coming over for me to check their work or answer questions.

“How do you keep it all straight?” she asked.

“I don’t know…how did you?”

“I don’t know.” She almost grinned. “I’m glad I had all I could handle. It was a good thing. It was good for all of us, good learning for all of us.”

It is good to have all we can handle, to be stretched beyond what we think we can do…as long as we don’t give up. As long as we lean on Him. Because in spite of what people say, He will give us more than we can handle, because that’s how we grow. That’s also how, when we do the thing that was too much for us to do on our own, we recognize His grace.

We never accomplish alone, in our own strength, by our own brainpower.

And this is good news because I’ve been feeling very stupid lately while learning Greek. It is a beautiful, aggravating language that fools you with easy words like “párti” for party, and “souper market” for super market, but as soon as your guard is down it smacks you upside the head with i̱lektronikós ypologistí̱s, which is ten syllables just to say “computer.”

I know I’ve made fun of English for being stupid, but at least we have sensible blends, like sl in slow, or br in brown. For the most part, our letters flow in a civilized manner.

But in Greek, you have hard consonants like k and t at the beginning of words like ktizo (“to build”). You have phrases like esy ftiaxneis (“you make”), and you wonder WHAT in the WORLD are you supposed to do with that second word because f and t are together at the beginning of it, and you’ve also got to figure out how to deal with that weird xn in the middle.

Hint: You almost (but not quite) get rid of the “s” sound in the x, so what you’re left with, phonetically spelled, is…

[types, then quickly deletes]

…something you shouldn’t try pronouncing around your kids. Or your grandma, even if she’s Irish.

It’s sort of like learning to play violin: No one should do it until they’re an expert.

But here we are, asked to do so many things before we are experts, before we even have the slightest clue what we are really doing. Instead, we are living in ironic juxtaposition that seems to make no sense.

I do not know how we are keeping it all straight; I actually don’t think we are, at all. I think we have situations like those hard consonants that don’t normally blend, and suddenly they’re holding hands and swing dancing drunkenly together anyway, teaching us whole new sounds we never imagined. Párti.

A friend shared this a while back, and it stuck with me:

source

Can you handle feeling incompetent long enough to attain fluency? This is not just about languages, of course.

It is slow work, this absorbing and distilling and creating. Remember, we are not performing, we are becoming.

For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept,
line upon line, line upon line,
here a little, there a little.

– Isaiah 28:10

And more good news: God knows what we’re doing and where we’re going, long before we do. He is training us for the journey, making us like Him when we let Him.

He is putting us where He wants us, and preparing us for what’s ahead.


In the Old Testament I’ve made it to Judges, which is sort of the Best and Worst of Bible Stories. I’m currently still toward the beginning where it’s pretty normal, before you get to the what-the-what parts that remind us once again that just because we read about someone in Scripture, it doesn’t mean God wants us to imitate them.

I would, however, love to add t-shirts to our merch page that advertise “Jael’s camping gear”…tents, hammers, gorgeous rugs, mugs of warm milk…I digress.

We do need to talk about Jael though, because she’s a prime example of someone being where you don’t expect them to be, doing what you don’t expect them to do.

We’re in Judges 4, when Deborah, a prophetess, is judging Israel. She was an answer to prayer after twenty years of the Israelites’ sin and oppression, and with her leadership, they were finally ready to stand up to their oppressor: King Jabin of Hazor.

So Deborah summoned Barak and gave him the word from the Lord, telling him how to defeat Sisera, the general of the King Jabin’s army. Barak said he’d only go if Deborah went with him, and she said, Sure, but since you were a pansyyou won’t be able to take out Sisera; the Lord is going to let a woman do it. My paraphrase.

Instructions and strategy follow, and then we get to this odd sentence right in the middle of the action. No segue, no transition, no apparent reason why it’s there at all:

Now Heber the Kenite had separated from the other Kenites, that is, the descendants of Hobab the father-in-law of Moses, and had encamped as far away as Elon-bezaanannim, which is near Kedesh.

– Judges 4:11

And we’re like, Who is this guy, and why do we care? What is he even doing here? But if you know the story, you know where this is going and why that sentence is there.

In our lives though, we usually don’t know the full story. Our strange little sidebars and interruptions seem completely out of place. We often think we are out of place.

So was Heber. Heber the Kenite had moved far away…sounds like the beginning of a limerick by Dr. Suess.

Anyway, after that odd sentence we jump right back into the action again: Sisera knows the Israelites are on the move, so he calls his 900 chariots and they start to move, too, but the Lord is there and He throws Sisera’s army into a panic. Sisera flees on foot while Barak pursues his chariots and army to Sisera’s hometown, Harosheth-ha-goiim, a place that would only be harder to pronounce if it were Greek.

But Sisera flees on foot in a different direction…and we find out why Heber was mentioned earlier.

Now Sisera had fled away on foot to the tent of Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite –

(Ohhhh…but wait, there’s more!)

…for there was peace between King Jabin of Hazor and the clan of Heber the Kenite.

– Judges 4:17

Heber the Kenite had moved far away…because his family was on friendly terms with the king who was oppressing the Israelites. The King that the Lord had sold them into for their disobedience.

The king who was Sisera’s boss.

The Lord put Heber where He wanted him, because…you know this story, right?

Jael, his wife was at home for the day…

Because Heber’s wife had a destiny to introduce the temple of Sisera’s head to the business end of her tent peg.

And now our limerick is complete:

Heber the Kenite had moved far away
Jael, his wife, was at home for the day
Where Sisera had fled
Wanting drink, and a bed
But her hammer made certain he’d stay.

(Thank you, thank you.)

Let’s pause here for a few important questions:

  • Can we handle feeling displaced long enough to defeat the enemy?
  • Are we mature enough to emotionally regulate ourselves, in spite of the enemy’s threat, and in spite of not knowing exactly what we’re doing?
  • Are we going to agree with smallness and shrink back, or are we willing to go and do what He sends us to, when we don’t have the full plan?

We might be where we’re at because we need this practice.


That conversation with Grandma I mentioned earlier was one of our last coherent talks. She has been so far away since then; she can barely hear me, usually doesn’t understand me, and sometimes doesn’t recognize me. She is displaced and none of us like learning this new language.

But I know growth is happening under the surface, in relationships and minds and hearts. God is giving us more than we can handle, and we’re feeling stretched and stupid and humbled as we attain a new kind of fluency.

We are learning why certain things trigger us, why we are withdrawing, and we’re finding new words for feelings we’ve never identified or bothered to articulate before.

Still, it feels like no one should have to do this until they’re an expert. And none of us want to be experts at this.

No one wants to be an expert in grief, displacement, brokenness, or feeling stupid in the things we wish we already understood.

Instead of neglecting your garden in the hope that God will rescue you from this situation and send you somewhere else, go rake your garden. Take care of your garden as if this season was the last season and you want to leave it beautiful for the next family who uses it.

– Katie James, Tetragon Lift

Is this the last season? In so many ways, yes. We do not know how much time we have left in anything, with anyone.

Last week, Grandma gave me a long hug when we were leaving. With her face in my hair, she said, “You be safe going home, now.”

I want that for her, too. We want to steward these days well, however many are left.

What feels too hard will become more familiar. The sounds we don’t know how to make will start rolling off our tongues with a little more practice. We won’t feel stupid in this area forever. (We’ll gain fluency and feel stupid in other areas, instead.)

We cannot keep it all straight, and it is more than we can handle, but we are not handling it on our own. This is where we recognize His grace, and it is good learning for all of us.



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the long way: a journal of grief, growth, & becoming, part 1

The snow fell that day without punctuation: no commas, no periods, just a steady run-on sentence of accumulation. I love the snow when we’re home, and for the last several years, we’ve been home a lot. But not in this season.

the long way: a journal of grief, growth, and becoming, part 1

In this season, we drive to Palmer at least three times a week. And it’s not just all the commuting, but it’s also home repair and two of our kids learning to drive and health issues that need to resolve plus my grandma’s care and about four seven situations I can’t write publicly about and also it seems like the WORST time in the world to go back to school because I turn fifty this year for crying out loud and it’s not like either time or money have been just overflowing around here but this is what He’s called us to so there we are.

So my thoughts have been unpunctuated, too.

You probably have your own sentences like that.

When we have unpunctuated sentences without enough breathing room for even a comma, we have to wonder what the Lord is up to.

A website login asks, “What is four plus 13?” and you stall for half a second, thrown by the words mixed with numbers, wondering if this is still English or if you just need more coffee or if you finally lost it. It’s not stupidity or exhaustion or insanity; it’s the congestion of everything running through your thoughts, overwhelming the system.

We’re dealing with paradox and irony, things that do go to together even though they seem incongruent on the surface. The math adds up, but we need to pause and think about it differently because the questions aren’t what we expected.

We take a step back, and look at the big picture.

In these seasons, we have responsibilities on the front burner, concerns on the back burner, and other needs waiting on the counter for their turn. A faint sound of dripping that should probably be identified and dealt with. And sometimes, sirens in the distance.

Multiple things are happening simultaneously, but we’ve attempted to recognize priorities. We are also painfully aware of our own limitations, and our need for grace – for God to do (or help us do) the things we can’t naturally accomplish on our own.

Does this sound familiar?

Personally, I’m seeing a little progress because a few weeks ago I wrote“I have written thousands and thousands of words, but they’ve just sat in my documents. I could not trust myself to publish without drawing blood,” but this week I finally had three days in a row of desk time and I was able to start making sense of things. It’s not that I haven’t been writing; it’s that I’ve been writing too much without enough time to make anything coherent among the overwhelm of scrappy thoughts in all the different situations. It’s such a mess to untangle.

I got sassy with the Lord yesterday and said, “If You’re still talking to me, couldn’t You just make it simple and give me a whole post all at once, instead of these bits and pieces of fourteen different articles and topics?”

Instead of striking me with lightning – or sending me to my room, which honestly I would’ve loved – He said, Because you’re not living out one article or topic. You’re in the middle of many situations, and I’m speaking to you through all of them.

Sit with Me, and we’ll sort them out together.

And then He sent me to my room, and we started sorting.

He showed me the juxtaposition of taking classes when it seems like there’s less time than ever, and of living on the far side of Wasilla when so much of our life is centered across the Valley. Both situations seem so inefficient, such bad timing.

But the classes have been my therapeutic distraction; I can pour myself into them because it’s surprisingly easier to grasp Old Testament theology and the Intertestamental Period than all the feelings swarming me. And our physical distance away from everything has enforced a boundary that keeps us (me) from overdoing anything else right now.

Sometimes our “inefficient” limitations protect us, because they make us focus, and create boundaries we wouldn’t have enforced on our own.

A while back we were in relationship with someone who was in crisis, and I was so frustrated that we weren’t able to do more for them. We did what we could, though. And after several months, it turned out that person still hadn’t done what they could to improve their own situation. Had we done more – had we done what we wished we could’ve in the beginning – we would’ve been stuck in a complicated enabling relationship, rather than setting the simple boundaries we were already limited by.

That was a good (but hard) lesson, and perspective I needed.


My internet search history lately has been saturated with stages of dementia, long term care, in-home care, insurance claims, real estate, housing markets, assisted living facilities, guardianship, cost of vehicles. The details are new but the pattern is familiar and I know life is being upended again.

Since I think I know some of what’s coming, part of me wants to hold tightly to the small, sacred routines for dear life. Another part of me has had no choice but to let go and accept things – especially the long grief of dementia, where there is no long term solution, no long term plan, no long term anything. Time is flying, and in so many ways, in so many moments, we have already lost her.

We already miss her, who she really is.

Until this year her mind has been like a summer sky with small white clouds occasionally moving across and blotting out the light of the sun. Each year the sky has become cloudier; there have been fewer periods of sunlight. This summer the sunlight in the sky of my mother’s mind, when it shines at all, glimmers through cloud.

– Madeleine L’Engle, The Summer of the Great-Grandmother

Here, it is steady snowfall, a run-on sentence of the accumulated questions whose answers are no longer remembered.

When I realized I was crying every day, I tried to make sense of the grief. We are used to change, and we have been losing her for so long, so it’s not exactly the speed or overwhelm of the world spinning too fast. Those are hard, but they are at least a familiar kind of hard.

It’s more like the world suddenly stops – she forgets Kav’s name, or she looks at me vacantly and I wonder if she’s already gone – and the momentum stops, everything stops.

We don’t notice oxygen until we can’t breathe. We don’t notice the speed of the earth turning until the axis wobbles, and I feel nausea as the fluid within me reels.

Later at the computer, I am trying to type through tears and think, I do not have time for this, there is so much to do.

If I do not sit here and grieve, though, nothing else will happen. This is the slow work, the deep work, that has to be done. If I don’t do it here, now, I won’t be able to do what needs done later, at her house, with the family, cleaning her stovetop, kneeling at her chair, holding her hand, drinking tea out of my dad’s mug.

This is the place and time to process, and there is no checking it off the list because it just keeps coming, and I hate that.

A couple years ago I wrote about a different grief, when kids grow up and move out. Reading it hits differently right now:

We miss their presence when they leave. But also, as they’ve been longing to leave – which we remember and relate to and rejoice in with them – we realize that we’ve already been missing them because part of them has been gone for a long time. They’ve changed and emotionally moved on already in many ways. The grief has been sneaking up on us, slipping in and surprising us at random intervals for over a year now.


During those recent weeks when I couldn’t make heads or tails of things, I went to the memorial service of a pastor from our previous church. He had led our team of intercessors, and every Tuesday morning we prayed around the table together. His wisdom bled into several of my writings.

He was in his eighties when he died, twelve years younger than my grandma. I could not help sitting through his service with her on my mind.

Even though the denominations are different, in many ways that church took me back to my roots because the atmosphere was so similar to Grandma’s church that I grew up in. We sang hymns in both places, including the one that opened Dr. Don’s memorial:

What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear.
What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer.
O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear,
all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.

– Joseph Scriven, 1855

Person after person came up to honor this man, and they were still going when I had to leave early for another event at our church that evening. A couple people mentioned this quote of his:

The definition of true humility is to be known for who you really are.

– Dr. Don Brendtro

Doesn’t that change how we see authenticity, relationships, boundaries, and humility?

We feel helpless and without words sometimes, stuck in our own limitations and bound by the time it takes all the tears to flow out of us. But God is working in all of our weakness, making us who we really are, and teaching us to be honest about it with those around us.

We’ve had enough of society telling us to fake it until we make it. We are building a Kingdom of people who live humbly and honestly, even when life is a mess of griefs and burdens.

We are not performing; we are becoming.

There are reasons for the irony of our seasons. Protection is in place, timing is at play. And even though I’m scouring real estate listings more often than some people check their social media feeds (cough), I understand why the answer is still “Wait, not yet.” God has a curriculum for our lives, and we do not plan it.

Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments.

He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

– Deuteronomy 8:2-3

I have seen Him move us in perfect timing, when that perfect timing took years longer than I wanted. He moved us to the perfect place, when that perfect place was rejected by us at first because it didn’t fit what we thought we wanted and needed.

He gave it to us anyway, and we are aching a little at the prospect of leaving it, whenever that time comes.

Sometimes He is preparing us in ways that look like the opposite of preparation. Sometimes He is protecting us (and others) through our inability, our lack of proximity, or other boundaries we never would’ve enforced on our own.

That doesn’t mean we’re not called to those abilities or proximities, or that we won’t get there eventually.

It means He’s taking us the long way, and it’s for our good.



P.S. You can read our March ministry and family update here.

we, who are many: how we treat the body exposes who we are

I now have a crown. Not the fun fancy kind, but the tooth kind.

It was a two-hour deal, so I set up the next module in a course I’m taking and plugged in my headphones, hoping I could focus on a teaching about Ephesians while I (mostly) ignored what the dentist was doing.

we, who are many: how we treat the body exposes who we are

After the first hour, phase one was done, and I removed my headphones as the dentist explained that we needed to wait a bit before finishing. They left me to my own devices until the next round.

My lecture had about twenty minutes left, so I started to put my headphones back in but realized I could no longer feel one side of my face.

Is this thing in, or not? I jabbed the headphone around, feeling nothing. My ear…is this my ear? Eventually I gave up and just used the other side.

It’s so weird though, not feeling your own body.

And later it was worse. As the numbness was wearing off, I felt a faint tingle and then a strong itch on my chin, but scratching it did absolutely nothing. No sensation there whatsoever, except the itch. I knew I couldn’t keep scratching; it didn’t do any good and I couldn’t trust myself not to draw blood.

All the restless, agitated feelings, and no idea what to do about them. This is a picture of life for some of us lately.

In that situation, I did all the things I could think of: essential oils, cold pack, held the mug of hot tea against my chin, prayed in tongues, wriggled my nose and made faces, whatever might distract me from the agony of an itch that couldn’t be scratched.

In other life situations, I have researched and studied, scoured listings and options, and prayed and prayed and prayed. Have had dozens, maybe a hundred conversations about recent events and life changing moves. And I have written thousands and thousands of words, but they’ve just sat in my documents. I could not trust myself to publish without drawing blood.

This is an odd season for us (maybe for you, too) where so many Big Things are happening, and some of them seem to be converging while others make no obvious sense at all. Emotions, thoughts, questions, and prayer flood into a bottleneck that has made it hard to write publicly because I don’t know where to start. Each thread seems so entangled with so many others. And many of them are none of the internet’s business.

(Ahh, the internet: That modern Colosseum where even Christians go to be entertained by the bleeding of their brothers and sisters.)

So I’ve sat at this computer for weeks trying to find a single theme among it all, among multiple documents and about twice as many subjects: Relationships. Community. Maturity. Honesty. Boundaries. Biblical literacy. Preparation. Willingness. Sacrifice.

Sometimes we just need to sit and wait until the numbness wears off. Until the debris settles, until the itch goes away.

Can we discipline ourselves to manage the frustration of not knowing what exactly to do, instead of thoughtlessly drawing blood? Because this is a major part of how we care for the body.

O our God, will you not execute judgment upon [our enemies]? For we are powerless against this great multitude that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.

– 2 Chronicles 20:12

Really, isn’t that good for us? I don’t want human answers, I need God’s perspective. We need Kingdom solutions.

So can we wait and trust, and not default to the insecurity of self-protection mode until we hear His answer? Can we worship Him instead of our own entitlement and comfort?

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

For as in one body we have many members and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.

– Romans 12:3-5

Here’s a word that some of us need to hear: God does not speak in knee-jerk responses. He doesn’t speak through trite cuts and condescension.

He did not protect himself at the expense of others. A bruised reed He will not break, and He will not rashly re-victimize the wounded.

When we do these things, we’re not acting like Him. We’re acting like someone who has no feeling for the body.

But Jesus knows how the body feels, because it is His body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.”

If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

– 1 Corinthians 12:21, 26-27

How do we care for the body when we know it’s vulnerable, and we’re in danger of drawing blood? Sometimes we are walking razor blades around people who are raw and wounded.

We cannot take someone who has shriveled into the fetal position and pry them open with a crowbar, however much we want to see them open up and live.

We cannot force someone to be who they truly are, to instantly overcome grief, trauma, aging, abuse, or disability. We cannot just tell them to do more and try harder and be like us, because they are not like us.

Or, maybe they are, but we don’t like to admit it. We’d rather think we’re smarter, tougher, stronger, better, more whole, more righteous. But what that really exposes is self-righteousness toward the broken.

We want to feel good about being benevolent, as long as it doesn’t cost us too much.

If we really want to be the Body, though, it will cost us everything. Time. Ease. Misunderstandings. Our sleep schedule. Our preconceived notions. And for sure, our pride.


Can we shift to boundaries for a minute? Because here we have tension and paradox: In one sense, we need to draw close to the hurting, and face all the awkward discomfort of doing so. But also, when the wounded are actively wounding others, we draw a line. Here, and no further.

In the Old Testament, I’ve worked my way to the middle of Joshua. Past the exciting parts, now it’s all about geography, territories, and boundaries.

Like so:

And their south boundary ran from the end of the Dead Sea, from the bay that faces southward; it goes out southward of the ascent of Akrabbim, passes along to Zin, and goes up south of Kadesh-barnea, along by Hezron, up to Addar, makes a turn to Karka…

– Joshua 15:2-3

Did you skim? If you did, you probably missed it. No shame, I’ve read this a couple dozen times and missed it, too.

But here’s what I noticed this time: Boundaries are detailed. They have nuance. Go up here, then follow along that ridge there, and make a turn to Karka…

We don’t just draw arbitrary lines or make categorical swaths of judgment. We don’t treat people according to templates and formulas. We must see people individually to see them rightly. If we don’t see individuals, we’re not looking at all.

When someone hurts us, we walk in love and forgiveness and we persist in keeping our heart for the other person. But we put space between us. Our pastor illustrated this recently in a way I’ll never forget.

“I’m not holding it against you,” he said, taking a step back. Another offense comes, and he repeated, “I’m not holding it against you,” taking another step back. If trust erodes, the space widens. We want the best for that person and we don’t delight in their misery, but there’s a boundary between us, and we can increase or decrease that space as needed.

Until we can see the Holy of Holies in each other and both treat each other with the honor that recognizes the sacred image bearer in each of us, that space will not diminish.


Sometimes people have a hard time acting like themselves because they don’t know – or they forgot – who they are. And if they don’t know themselves, they’re going to have a hard time treating others appropriately, too.

The grandmother with dementia. The young adult with brain injury. The insecure coworker. The grumpy teen who’s unsure of everything and everyone. The friend not acting like themselves lately.

I don’t know what causes it all. Too many things: Scar tissue. Numbness. Hardness. Parts of the body not responding the way they’re supposed to, because they’ve lost feeling in different areas.

Dear Christian, this is where we have to practice tender nuance with our fellow believers.

Boundaries with patience. A soft word that turns away wrath. A sense of humor that laughs without degrading.

We have to choose to see the Holy of Holies in the one who’s not acting like themselves and who they’re meant to be, however they’re behaving or reacting or surviving in this moment, in this season, at this age. We’re not in denial; they are. And it’s imperative that we don’t join them in that denial.

Beloved, did you forget you were made in His image? Worship is still happening day and night in the Temple. I wish you would sing again.

We cannot force it to happen. We have to be willing to wait, listen, abide, and admit our unknowing, while holding to the core of who we are:

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

— Jesus, in John 13:35

What about the weak, or the wounded, or the difficult? What about the ones who think differently than us, or challenge us? What about the one who can’t remember what season it is, or the one who claps during the wrong part of the church service, or the one who inconveniences our carefully polished image?

Can’t we just love those ones from a distance, and still pat ourselves on the back?

No.

On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect, whereas our more respectable members do not need this.

But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another.

— 1 Corinthians 12:22-25

How the body cares for each other is our message. This is who we are.

It may not be a flattering assessment. We need to check to see if we have feeling in all the right places.

Because loving the Body should cost us something, since it cost Him everything to add us to it.



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P.S. Related:

  • If you’re dealing with a lot of conflict lately, my friend Katie is doing a fabulous series on navigating difficult conversations. I especially loved this post and this post.
  • Want more on caring for the Body? I have more posts here  (or audio), here (or audio), and here (or audio), to start.
  • Also! Our monthly ministry/family update comes out next week. Subscribe at Copperlight Wood’s new Substack to get it. It’s totally free but there’s an option to upgrade to a paid subscription for those who like to support our work that way (automatic monthly giving, no checks, easy peasy). Thanks!