Category Archives: purpose

keep going: a ramble about perseverance & trust

Posted on by January 28, 2025

The cars went up and down the highway, headlights and taillights flickering through the trees. Dusk hits lately around 4 pm, and on this side of the window, my journal was open to page 360-something. I wasn’t sure what to write but I wrote anyway, words about mundane things, hoping something would spark – a theme, an idea, an analogy, a memory of something funny or profound. Just kept the pen moving, pushing it across the lines, because something usually reveals itself.

keep going: a ramble about perseverance & trust

I started this journal toward the end of 2020 and there’s only fifteen or so pages left. Every page doesn’t have to be profound, just like every day of life doesn’t have to be filled with something wildly spectacular. The slow, quiet, routine days are where most of our living is done.

So this journal entry, like the day, was meat and potatoes: books I’m reading, the project I’m working on, what we were planning to do that evening. A headline or two of what’s going on in the world. Nothing exciting but the ink filled the page, and some of it was even legible, so that’s a plus.

It’s the little things, and our attention to them, that really do add up. Like yesterday, when I put a few extra minutes into cleaning the kitchen – did anyone notice the front of the dishwasher wasn’t as streaky? Or that the dust inside the oven was cleaned out? (How do ovens get dust inside them, anyway?) Or that the stovetop was clean? Probably not. (Which is why I’m writing about it so I can get credit, she smirked.)

Those small things are so encouraging to me though, whether anyone else notices them or not. I like clean spaces – just don’t look at my desk – and haven’t always had the margin to notice and take care of those details. I look back on that other season where the air was thick, the noise was loud, and there were so many demands that sometimes only the absolute top-of-the-top priorities, like meals and safety, were taken care of. I can now see how I put figurative blinders on in certain areas, willfully ignoring many peripherals, because there were already too many essentials. It’s amazing how many essentials become peripherals when you’re in survival mode.

I remember telling a friend, a fellow adoptive mom, that I felt like I had some sort of survivor’s guilt as we began to walk out of that other season and into this one. Vin started working with me from home and we could tackle the demands together. There was less chaos, more sleep, and time to process. The kids were bigger and the special needs were less volatile. I had survived, was surviving; we had all made it and were slowly working back toward equilibrium even though we had no idea what that actually looked like anymore because so many things had changed. How do you rest and let go after years of trauma and hypervigilance? How do you know it’s really safe?

I didn’t have to be so strong anymore, and I wasn’t sure that was actually forward progress.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

– 2 Corinthians 12:9a

I felt guilty because there was a sense of ease I hadn’t experienced in years, but many parts of myself and our family had died in the process of getting there. Yes, we survived – but so many other things didn’t.

It was like we had made a trade but had no say in the details of the transaction, and the deal didn’t seem fair. It was too good in some ways, too hard in others.

That was three journals and several years ago, and I still don’t understand it; I’m obviously still working my way through it.

In many ways it’s best to not look too close. When we look at those details it can quickly lead to a naval-gazing, toxic cocktail of blame and regret. We have to surrender the past, the decisions we made and others made, and trust that God knows what to do with them. He knows what to do with each of our hearts in all the dynamics of memories and current choices and loss and grief and ideas of how things should have been, and the distance between that and how they actually happened.

So many details are still being worked out. So if it doesn’t look like that yet, don’t linger; keep going. He’s going to show us how those years resulted in honor instead of dishonor; beauty, not regret; healing and growth in the place of trauma and immaturity. Gain instead of loss.

He’s doing it. We don’t have to understand how that’s possible anymore than we know the starting place or destination of all the cars on the highway. And this, too, is surrender.

Vin and I sat on the couch the other night looking at a list of dreams we made a little over three years ago. The challenge was to write a hundred of them but we only got to thirty, and upon review, we’ve accomplished five so far. Publish Risk the Ocean. Finish book #4 in series. Replace the Stagecoach. A few other items were no longer dreams and we crossed them out, then added some more. Healing for my hand. Find a great assisted living situation for Andrey. And after editing, the list had only grown to 36. So it appears we need to work a little harder on this dreaming thing.

Some of the dreams, though, I don’t want to define. I don’t want to name them because they’re still too fuzzy and I don’t want to shoot in the dark, committing something to paper that I’ll have to cross out later. I have books without titles, ideas without structure, colors but no outlines. Or maybe it’s the other way around. And I feel like answers in many areas are on the way, but meanwhile there’s this strong sense of plodding on steadfastly, determinedly, knowing that the Lord is leading and the answers will come in time. Maybe sooner than we think. So we continue to invest, and not bury, the talents, while we wait for clarity to come.

In the beginning of this season – I think it’s still this season, at least; the one where we transitioned out of dark chaos and into a lighter, brighter version of chaos – we unexpectedly got pregnant and had Kavanagh around the same time friends our age were becoming grandparents. That was about six years ago and we were feeling the full range of parenthood with an adult kid out of the house, a high schooler, three 13-year-olds, an elementary schooler, and the two littlest littles, toddler and infant. Never would I have guessed this would be my life twenty years earlier. Or ten years ago. Or five years ago.

But it’s so good. I mean, mostly, of course – not perfect, and there are plenty of things that are expletive-worthy at times (we call this “writing material” in our house) – but overall, it’s so good.

During that other season, I didn’t know things could be good again. And I’m so glad I made it through to this side. I wish I could’ve told myself how good it would be. So instead, if you’re in that dark, painful place, where you never thought you’d see yourself, I’ll tell you: Give it a few years, friend. Or, just give it a week. And then another, and another.

Keep pushing the pen and filling those pages.

You can do this. Cling to Jesus and keep going forward. So much good is on the other side of steadfastness.

Also last week – I think it was around the same day we were working on our list of dreams, but it was definitely the same day I was journaling without knowing what to write about – I had to take all the kids to an appointment. And even though most of our kids are older now I still don’t miss those days of a small child screaming in the back of the vehicle loud enough for other cars to hear as we drive past them on the Parks Highway.

I mean, it’s been ages since that last happened…I think it was last September? But there we were, running late from the wrestle over seatbelts and sliding sideways to a stop at the foot of the icy driveway where I informed my youngest passenger through gritted teeth NO YOU ARE NOT STAYING HOME AND ALSO NO I AM NOT SUDDENLY GETTING THE GAME YOU WHINED ABOUT NOT WANTING TO TAKE FOR THE LAST TWELVE MINUTES BECAUSE WE ARE LEAVING AND YOU ARE COMING TOO so help me.

Eight kids and twenty-four years later, do we get better at this? I hope so.

So we went down the highway amid screaming louder than the traffic, louder than TobyMac, and I prayed in tongues and considered my options. We could turn around and cancel the appointment, but that would be giving in. So we had to keep going.

One thing I have learned and can remind myself in these moments is that even when the noise doesn’t diminish, or the pain stays the same, or the situation doesn’t look any different, God is still working. He is doing. Prayer is changing things whether I see those changes instantly or not.

If we are praying, He is working. And He is working anyway, even when we’re too weak or distracted or exhausted or, or, or…because it’s not about our feelings.

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

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 8:22-26

The tantrum continued all the way into town and finally stopped in the parking lot. We completed our appointment, went back home, assigned consequences, and moved on with the day.

A couple hours later I was chatting with a friend on the phone.

“I have a word for you,” she said. “Keep going. I’m not sure what that means, but I clearly hear that for you.” She didn’t know I had said the same thing in different words in my journal earlier that day, or that I had pondered a 180 on the highway just a few hours ago.

Just keep pushing the pen across the paper, Love. The words will come. And now, as I type this, I’m on page 370 in the journal. Just a few pages to go before this one is filled, and I’ll need to start a new one.

How did I get to page 370? The same way we got to the new year, and the same way we got to every year before this one: We kept going.

We just keep pushing the pen, filling the pages in front of us. We trust, and wait, and persevere, whether anyone notices or not.

Want more posts like this, right to your inbox? Subscribe here.

taste and see, or run and hide

Posted on by December 9, 2024

While the boys tangled the tree in ribbon and bedecked it with shiny balls that would hopefully not shatter overnight from the cats’ meddling, I tucked my coffee behind the nativity set and rearranged Wodehouse books in the library.

“Do you know how many Wodehouse books we have?” I asked Vince, and he shook his head. Except for the passages I have read aloud to him while laughing so hard I gasped for air, he has never read Wodehouse.

taste and see, or run and hide: it's all about what we know | Shannon Guerra

“This stack here…” I pointed to a wobbly column over two feet high, and he began to laugh but stopped short when I continued, “and this stack here,” pointing to another stack behind the first one, which wasn’t as tall but probably kept the first column from collapsing, like a literary version of a flying buttress.

“How many books did Wodehouse write?” he asked – envy, inspiration, and disbelief, all in one question.

“Seventy or eighty, I think…not counting his plays and stuff. We only have about half of them.”

(Only, she said, and then wasted thirty minutes searching the internet for the exact number – it’s 71, if you’re only counting novels – and then another ten minutes adding his three autobiographies to her wishlist.)

I’ve spent money on bad books before but I’m more careful now; I didn’t start collecting Wodehouse books until I knew they were worth it. Now, though, I have tasted and seen – or, laughed and choked on my coffee – and I know they are good.

“There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, ‘Do trousers matter?'”

“The mood will pass, sir.”

– P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters

A few days later, the other part of our book order arrived. I cut the shipping bag open with kitchen scissors and pulled out the used paperbacks.

“More Wodehouse!” I grinned.

“More Wodehouse,” Vin repeated, with far less enthusiasm. “Like, more cowbell.“

“Hey. If you read Wodehouse, you’d be excited too,” I told him.

She laughed — a bit louder than I could have wished in my frail state of health, but then she is always a woman who tends to bring plaster falling from the ceiling when amused.

― P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters

But he hasn’t tasted and seen yet. He’s only heard and marveled, off and on, as I’ve barely muffled hysterical laughter way too late at night, trying not to wake up the kids.

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 34:8-9

Vin is, however, grateful he married a thrifty woman who hates shopping, whose main addictions are classic lit and wool yarn, both of which can be found in practically new condition at secondhand stores. And they both give a good return, if stewarded well and not just hoarded.

“For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away.

– Matthew 25:14-15

So we segue to the parable of the talents, a story of a king who entrusts his servants with varying amounts of wealth to steward for him. And you know what happens: The master returns, and the ones who had five and two doubled their talents and were rewarded, but the one who had only one talent…well, let’s see what it says:

He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, “Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.”

– Matthew 25:24-25

Huh. He knew, so he was afraid, so he hid. Where have we heard that before?

Oh, right. Here, in the very beginning:

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

– Genesis 2:15-17

In the beginning there was a certain amount of knowing that we weren’t supposed to have, because it would usurp our trust of God and make us focus on the wrong things. We began with a holy fear of God, which is trust and surrender. But in knowing the wrong things, we moved into an unholy fear that chose to walk in anxiety and control, which is just us saying, I know better than You do.

But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

So the woman takes and eats the fruit, and she also gives some to her husband who was with her (side note: We can stop blaming the fall entirely on women, thanks), and he eats it, too.

They realize they’re…you know, nekkid. Fig leaves, loincloths, strategically placed locks of hair.

We pick up in verse 8:

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”

And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

– Genesis 3:8-10

Maybe it’s because when they did it their own way, they did it backwards. They didn’t taste and see; they saw and tasted – and then they knew something they were never intended to. They traded intimacy for exposure. They forfeited holy fear and got terror, shame, and separation instead.

We do this when we get things backwards, too. Recently I had a meeting coming up and I realized I was rehearsing information, asking myself possible questions and answers. I wondered if I was being too vulnerable, if I could trust this other person, if they would misunderstand my intentions.

Why am I nervous? I finally asked myself. Because I want this, and I don’t want to blow it.

Also, I felt exposed – like maybe I’d stepped forward where I should’ve held back; should’ve kept that talent under wraps where it would be safe, and do nothing.

Master, you gave me one book and I stuffed it under my mattress and did not read it, did not wrinkle the pages, did not bend the spine or dog-ear the corners, didn’t even take any notes. I did not get anything out of it, but also, look! It’s in pristine condition, so you won’t be mad at me for damaging it. Here you go. Thanks so much for the loan.

It’s the wrong kind of fear. That kind is the fear of man, and it’s all about impressing others, worrying about what someone else will think.

Surrender and honesty disarms it, though. So I asked myself these questions:

Do I want what I want, or do I want what He wants? Can I trust Him to know what I want better than I do, and know how to arrange it better than I could? Can I trust Him with the future, with relationships, with this conversation?

Do I trust Him to direct the situation and the timing? Do I trust Him to go ahead of me, and to give me the right words and wisdom?

Yes, yes, all yes. I have tasted and seen and I know He is good.

So suddenly the pressure is off, and there’s just joy and freedom. Just pleasant conversation and curiosity of what God does through it. The vulnerability doesn’t feel like exposure; it feels like faith that’s spelled risk, and it brings a return.

This is the talent surrendered that grows and multiplies, rather than runs and hides.

I used to know someone who was hurting and fighting and angry most of the time. Now I realize she literally just didn’t know what she was missing. She had not tasted and seen, so she ran and hid. What she knew made her feel exposed, and fear manifested as anger, so she rejected everything associated with God. I knew you to be a hard man…but she missed experiencing Him as the one who laughs and heals and walks in the garden, the one who made mercy triumph over judgment.

We only fight against goodness because we don’t realize how good it is. When we have no concept of real peace or freedom or joy, we think rebellion is better.

It’s changing the way I pray, because she – and everyone – needs to know His goodness. Because if they really knew His goodness, they’d recognize His love for them, and His worthiness of their love.

And their own desire would drive them to Him.

We all need to taste and see. We handle things (and relationships) differently when we know what (and whom) we’re dealing with.

We’re good at following our desires. Where we get it wrong is when our desires are out of alignment, fearful because we know so little, because ignorance breeds fear.

But once we know, there’s freedom and joy and peace, and we bear much fruit, reaping a harvest.

We know what we’re getting into, and we can’t get enough of it.

Want more posts like this? Subscribe here.

‘What ho!’ I said.
‘What ho!’ said Motty.
‘What ho! What ho!’
‘What ho! What ho! What ho!’
After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.

– P.G. Wodehouse, My Man Jeeves

language of freedom: how we end the hostilities

Posted on by November 14, 2024

Like many of you, we’ve felt relief and encouragement over the last week or so of events…on the national scale, at least. At the state level, Alaska’s elections are still a dumpster fire of delay and obvious corruption. And we’re not alone. *friendly wave and fist bump to Arizona*

language of freedom: how we end the hostilities | Shannon Guerra

So it’s a relief, but it’s not over. And the following day, when nationwide results were confirmed, Vin said, “It’s like we’ve made it through Dunkirk, or Brooklyn Heights, or the Battle of Antietam.”

I looked at him and shook my head. He’s a nerd who’s read books on all the major wars and lots of the minor ones, but history isn’t my wheelhouse.

I have, however, read The Lord of the Rings…five times.

“Tell me in a language I understand,” I said. “You mean it’s like after the battle of Helm’s Deep, but Pelennor Fields and the Black Gate are still ahead.”

“Exactly.”

See? It helps to have a common language.

So we’ve won a really important battle, but not the whole war. The work is just beginning. All the cliches.

Because even when you get the results you want in an election, it’s not the end of the fight.

Even if four years brings amazing promises fulfilled, it doesn’t do much good if at the end of them we don’t have a culture that values life and truth, because it will swing back again into another morph of madness, trying to legislate and control lives rather than maintaining minimal government and protecting freedom.

At the root of it, the battle for freedom takes place in hearts – because hearts that don’t value purity, sanity, wisdom, and wholeness will never be free, and they will never really care about the freedom of others, either.

“This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.”

– JFK (January 14, 1963, State of the Union Address)

Great men make good times; good times create weak men; weak men create hard times; hard times create great men. There are exceptions, of course. Patterns are important because they can serve as warnings to watch for, but they are not destiny.

If we want to break the cycle, we have to stop creating weak men, and I don’t think the way to do that is to intentionally shoot ourselves in the foot by creating failure and hard times.

We have to create Kingdom culture, deep and wide.

But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. 

But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

– 2 Corinthians 3:14-17

We move wide, laterally and in the present, by healing the generations who don’t really know who they are, who are fear-filled and enraged as a result of their own ignorance, deceived by everything spoon-fed to them in the media.

Many of them have had just enough religion and churchianity to swing far to one side, hating God and anything that smacks of Him, or to the other side, checking off boxes and claiming to be Christian without bearing any fruit that indicates a relationship with Jesus. Some of them film their mental breakdowns on TikTok (what level of broken narcissism thinks people will be interested in that?) and demand acceptance from everyone while refusing to treat others with basic respect. These are the adults who haven’t grown up, many of whom experienced trauma in their childhood and instead of healing through it, stopped maturing at that age. This is why we have middle-aged and older people who still act like six-year-olds.

But also we move deep, vertically and into the future, by intentionally raising great children who become great men and women, regardless of their circumstances. We teach them the language of freedom. And this means we need to nurture our families and marriages and communities, and be better spouses and parents and friends, and humbly work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.

Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

– 2 Corinthians 3:5-6

We need to raise kids who are aware of issues because we took the time to talk to them about them, rather than relegating hard discussions to someone else. That means spending time with them, talking with them, explaining why we do the things we do (and why we don’t do the things we don’t). It means taking responsibility for our kids’ education – and thus their values – rather than abdicating such a vital mission to vague institutions with minimal accountability and transparency. No matter what, we are the primary teacher, caregiver, attention-giver, and disciplinarian of our kids. At the end of the day – and preferably, throughout the day – we are the ones they come to, answer to, and seek refuge in.

I admit this isn’t the easiest thing in the world. As I type this, a kid is doing a chore a few feet behind me. And if she tells me one more time that she’s done when she’s not done, she’s just tired of doing it, I might throw this copy of The Fourth Turning out the window.

(Or down the hallway. Windows are expensive and it’s nine degrees outside. And also, it might scare the chickens.)

Many of our daily conversations with our kids center around food – growing it, raising it, buying it, eating it – and other choices we make about our health; these topics were never discussed in our own childhoods rife with dye-saturated sugar cereals that were thought to be canceled out by Flintstone vitamins. So to be honest, I’m probably more excited about the “MAHA” aspect of this recent victory than anything else, because we’ve prayed about this stuff for years and wondered if anything would ever be done about them. The economy and borders and “health services” have always been on the forefront, but true healthy living, not so much.

Not to lessen the importance of other spheres, but if everything else is addressed while our food supply is still tainted and healthy farming is still under attack and Big Pharma still profits from perpetuating sickness rather than healing people, we haven’t accomplished much. If our food and water are still allowed to be poisoned, are we really free at all?

Purity in food, purity in the gospel…I know, they don’t really seem related, but haven’t we seen enough corruption in both, and the debilitating effects of compromise? Impurity in any sphere does not produce a free people. It breeds slavery.

And that could be said for many facets of culture – for example, it doesn’t do any good to shift a society toward more constitutional beliefs if those who claim to be conservative are still addicted to porn and misogyny, if our civilization is still a dumpster fire of moral corruption. We need holistic solutions, not pet projects. We need Kingdom culture – because freedom is the common language, though we’ve been confused, distracted, and dissuaded by many counterfeits.

Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.

– Proverbs 14:34

No matter how good our intentions, our message will be poisoned if we compromise to the fear of man and the obsession of ourselves. If we’re centered on ourselves, whether in shame or insecurity or self pity on the one side or in arrogance and pride and presumption on the other, it’s vanity. If we’re consumed with the image in the mirror, what people will think of us…it doesn’t matter if we’re staring at ourselves out of things to complain about or things to be proud of; either way, it’s vanity. And vanity, like fear of man (are they really that different?) is idolatry.

And that’s slavery, too. We create a multitude of problems when we read someone else’s actions and words through the lens of our own insecurities.

But a truly free people, unhindered by the idolatry of vanity and fear of man, speak a language of boldness and authenticity that can’t help but draw people to freedom. Insecurities are disarmed; fearful control loses its grip. We don’t need the phony attractions of red dye or smoke machines or pretend identities when Holy Spirit is given reign to move through us.

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

– 2 Corinthians 3:18

As I’m praying about this, I realize there’s good news in the midst of insanity: People who will film their screaming breakdowns for anyone to see are also people who, once redeemed, will not be hindered by fear of man when it comes to worshiping Jesus.

And in that sense, those of us who have been following Jesus have something to consider.

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.

And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.

– Ephesians 2:13-18

Our current culture looks at us and shakes their heads because we’ve known something they don’t, but we haven’t always communicated it in the best way. Freedom is not portrayed in tiny increments as we attempt (and fail) to make truth palatable to the masses by compromise. So it’s not that we need to water things down to become more relevant; it’s that we need to purify our message so it reveals freedom.

And freedom is its own draw. If we can give people a taste of it, we’ll win the next battle, too – and we’ll win it together.