Category Archives: purpose

delivery: what comes after a season of weakness and waiting

Posted on by March 17, 2026

It began innocently enough. I was eating a quesadilla and getting some work done, the baby was sitting in my lap while tearing up a paper towel; we were both happy. And then I dipped my quesadilla in sour cream and typed a few sentences, not realizing until the next paragraph that little Finn had dipped his paper towel in the sour cream, too, and was painting the couch with it.

delivery: what comes after a season of weakness and waiting

Shortly after this Vince spent an evening steam cleaning the couches. The next day, while the cushions were propped against a wall to dry, Finn and I sat on a slightly damp and cushionless couch sharing a late lunch — and I’m sorry to admit it, but I was hungry and exhausted and had already been sick for weeks…and I fed him small pieces of chicken that he routinely dropped on the freshly cleaned couch. His greasy little fingers were all over the place and I did what any mama would do who’s been out of commission for weeks: I erased the evidence with a baby wipe and let my husband read the confession while proofreading this blog post.

It was – and still is, sort of – a harder, slower season with different priorities. Two days after the last post, I got sick and found out later that I had pneumonia. The last seven weeks have been a long haul of getting well again and every few days is a new phase of pain or relief. I don’t know why it took us five babies to figure this out, but a pregnant, nursing, or special needs mama takes longer to recharge and recover than normal because her battery is always on and running even when she’s asleep, plugged in and charging.

This week, the current phase is bruised ribs on one side and a cracked rib on the other. Reaching for things is difficult and moving hurts, and I slept til noon on Vin’s day off and was still exhausted five hours later and completely wiped by bedtime. Our routines are totally off. Homeschooling? I haven’t read aloud to the kids in almost two months. Housework? There’s a load of laundry in the washer from yesterday that wasn’t flipped and probably just needs to be washed again. Writing? I’m squeaking everything in under the wire and barely touching the projects without deadlines that I really want to work on. And gardening…let’s just forget about that because if you’re sick for weeks, your garden will magically transform into a giant chia pet.

I wasn’t feeling too sorry for myself until the week I was finally starting to feel better and then caught a cold. My lungs were finally clearing but suddenly I had a stuffy nose, full sinuses, sore throat, the works. Whiskey tango foxtr—I mean, what the heck?!

I cried. I probably said bad things. And I wondered when life would be normal again – when I would have energy to do things, when I could start reading that book to the kids that’s been on the shelf for two months now, when we would find the house that fits the list of priorities we’ve been praying for.

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It feels like it’s been a long season of waiting (but aren’t we always waiting for something?) and I dunno if you’re like me, but I don’t like to wait – I like to figure things out and check them off.  Everything is a riddle made to be answered. Puzzles should be put together, mysteries should be solved; and this is probably why I love Dickens so much because I love them, all of them, except when they describe the season of life you’re in. What are we doing, where are we going, how are we going to do any of it? No idea. Not a clue. Maybe a few vague ideas, but we are waiting for clarity, healing, and answers.

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

– 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17, ESV

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The season of weakness and waiting reminds me of those early months in pregnancy: not cooking, sleeping whenever possible, living in a grace-saturated survival mode until sometime during the second trimester, when you can see the world in color again. But that, at least, holds the promise of great gain in the birth ahead. And there’s no birth and delivery to look forward to in this labor.

That’s what you think, He says.

May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.

– 2 Thessalonians 3:5, ESV

But I don’t like waiting, don’t like surprises. Just tell me, or let me figure it out. Or at least tell me if I’m getting hot or cold. Give me some pieces that fit together. Tell me what to do.

So last Tuesday morning shook me up a little. The day after the rib cracked, the first day of a long school week with nothing exciting in the works — until I was in the middle of typical morning chaos, in the middle of an unexpected phone call with a dear friend who moved out of state two years ago, and the kids start yelling that someone’s at the door, and it’s my husband and that dear friend who had plotted with him for months to surprise me. And, holy moly: screaming, hollering, crying, the works. And I might’ve said a bad thing or two while throwing my phone on the table, but I don’t remember and you can’t hear it on the video Vince took so I think we’re okay.

Our expectations tend to keep our hand in the monkey trap, holding onto what’s holding us back. But maybe there’s something ahead we never saw coming. Something we never would’ve expected. And what if it’s…good? As in, really, really good?

Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times in every way. The Lord be with you all.

– 2 Thessalonians 3:16, ESV

Breakthroughs don’t begin with fanfare and fair warnings. I think — I hope, at least, from what we are experiencing now and have seen in the past — that they start with waiting and weakness. Our need beckons the breakthrough.

And we know He often brings answers to His people from His people. But lately He’s been telling us repeatedly, Don’t look to so-and-so for your solution. Don’t depend on such-and-such for your victory. When I bring your breakthrough, you won’t see it coming because you’ll be looking the other way. This will be a special delivery.

I want to surprise you, Love. Let Me.

praying shelter: how we bring safety to our streets

Posted on by June 24, 2022

News is everywhere. Facebook is alight with grief and opinions, the talk shows are full of hype and outrage, and the celebrity news anchors are still speechless but that hasn’t stopped them from sharing clichés and propaganda.

praying shelter: how we bring safety to our streets

And none of this is about health or safety. It’s about a lot of problems, but none of those are the root issue: What we have is a culture of fear and pride, people insecure in their identities and their mission. And as a result they are unsafe.

Unsafe. As in, they might be in danger, but also, they might be a danger to others. People who have forgotten they are the Beloved are afraid, and afraid people do stupid things.

The enemy seeks to kill, steal, and destroy and his primary weapon is fear.

But his other weapon is distraction.

The enemy attacks, distracts, tries to keep us from praying on the offense against his schemes – and sometimes it works. But if we are alert and aware, we can use it to divert our focus to something more powerful, like going from simply praying against an attack to praying for the hearts of the attackers. For repentance.

We stop hacking at the branches and start attacking the root, because two can play that game and God has already won it. We can do more than thwart enemy plans; we can also cause his players to defect to our side.

We can let people know they are safe. We can let them know they are loved. We can remind them they are the Beloved.

I don’t mean this in the vapid, politically-correct kind of way that throws around the word “love” like the latest trendy hashtag and we can’t disagree on anything without calling it hate. We can and should disagree. We can and should hold firm to our deepest beliefs even if it offends people. And we should be safe to do so. We should be loved and loving whether we agree or not.

This is not rocket science. This is maturity.

We can’t make everyone feel safe and loved. But we can pray against fear, pride, and insecurity. We can pray for people to have mature identities instead of just impassioned knee-jerk ignorance.

We can pray safety into our streets like there’s no tomorrow. Because for some tonight, there’s no tomorrow.

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We can pray deep and wide: deeply and often for our neighborhoods and our families, and wide and scattered over the intersections and businesses of our cities. In His authority we can cover these places with safety.

We can pray for government buildings, sidewalks, and bus stops. We can pray security into people as we pray over their homes, their workplaces, their driving routes.

Because all of these lives matter. Yours and mine and theirs.

We can pray shelter over each other, flinging it wide, everywhere we go.

totally normal: what these small days are for

Posted on by March 17, 2026

“Would you like to hold my baby?” Chamberlain uses an exaggerated, high-pitched English accent whenever she plays this game, and holds a doll out to me. “His naaame is Jeeeesus.”

“Oh, sure – are you Mary?” She nods. Because Mary was British, don’t you know.

Afton looks at the doll. “That’s a pretty small baby. Is it a runt?”

“What is a r-r-r-runt?” she asks, rolling her Rs.

“The smallest animal in a litter. You know, like Knightley.”

“Ooooohhoho, noooo!” She laughs overdramatically, like the Queen of Hearts. “My baby isn’t a r-r-r-runt, he’s a human!”

It was a normal day. You know, the kind that begins with a cat stepping in your coffee cup (with hot coffee in it) and ends with a different cat stepping on a freshly painted windowsill and leaving oil-based tracks on the kitchen counter. But the rest of it was normal. Except for three moose running through our backyard at a gallop, and after that, Cham asked if albino moose poop white nuggets.

So, like I said — besides all that, totally normal.

Totally normal, chugging down the highway as the new TobyMac song comes on the radio. We stop at the light and the Stagecoach is bouncing in time to the music. I look in the rearview mirror and Reagan is happy-flapping, grinning like a character from Wallace and Gromit.

Totally normal later in the day, purging a bin of hoarded pajamas in five different sizes, and our six-year-old is in tears because the size 4 pair of mouse jammies can’t be given away because – ready for this? – it would make the mouse sad. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, I convinced her that the mouse is afraid of the cats on her other clothes.

Boom — donated those jammies. Hashtag winning.

Totally normal that evening, walking back to my car from the library and remembering that I have no phone, I left it on the charger at home. I  start imagining all sorts of terrible scenarios involving abduction and the police having to trace my whereabouts via a breadcrumb trail of ripped-out pages of the books I’ve borrowed – a history of folk art, a Nigella Lawson cookbook, a bunch of children’s sewing patterns, and the latest Mitford novel. All those years of studying criminal justice in college, and this is all I have to show for it.

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All of our days are normal here. Yours too? Nothing too exciting, and we honestly kind of want to keep it that way because, well, we’ve had too much of the one kind of excitement to last a good long while, thankyouverymuch, and we really don’t want to take the risk of that happening again.

These small days run together in a stream, flowing past us. And I wonder if they bring us closer to…what? The house we’re looking for? The breakthroughs we’re praying for? The goals and deadlines we’ve been working toward for years?

It’s easy to feel hemmed in and restless. We’re antsy for the next chapter, the ocean that’s deep and wide that we hope to eventually drop anchor in. And don’t even talk to me about mom-guilt, enjoying these days because they go so fast – moms already know this. The baby is ten months old and has four teeth already, and I’m pretty sure he’ll be driving tomorrow.

We plug through these oh-so-normal days, sitting in one place watching the river go by, and we maybe have the deep but not the wide – and sometimes we feel small and insignificant, and wonder where we are going…or if we are going anywhere at all.

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
He is like a tree planted by water,
that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes,
for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of drought,
for it does not cease to bear fruit.

– Jeremiah 17:7-8, ESV

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We wonder if maybe we haven’t had breakthrough because we’re doing it wrong. Or because we’re not ready. Or because we’re not good enough, not big enough, not important enough for anything more than totally normal.

But maybe it’s none of those things. Because you’re not too small, or insignificant. You’re not a runt, you’re a human.

Maybe we’ve become resigned to our situation. Maybe we’re not desperate to hear from Him anymore because we’ve given up. Maybe we’ve gotten impatient with the process and we’re not trusting Him to finish.

Maybe we see this stream of days as an obstacle we can’t cross. But maybe it was actually intended to be our provision, our foundation – and eventually, the road that takes us to the ocean faster than our own feet could carry us.