Day 10: Recent Tunes

I do not consider myself to be someone who has a very eclectic taste in music. I tend to regularly hover somewhere around the country/Christian/Top 40 genres and may on occasion stumble onto something else, but usually accidentally.  The most played song in my iTunes is "Confident" by Steffany Gretzinger, probably because I listened to it obsessively through a pretty rough patch of life. Songs ranking second, third, fifth and sixth in line all come from the Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe film score by Harry Gregson-Williams. It really is a fabulous score and worth a listen. (And if you're someone like me who naturally gravitates toward melancholy or sad music such as the Narnia film score, give Susan Cain's book Bittersweet a read. You will understand yourself better and you'll find out you're not as odd - or depressed - as you think.)

My latest mix of music hasn't strayed far from my usual tastes, so if you're looking for some new tunes or new-to-you tunes, check out what I've been listening to lately:

• "My Worth is Not in What I Own" by Keith and Kristyn Getty, featuring Darren Mulligan. A friend shared it with me in her Christmas newsletter and it's been on repeat some days.

• Film score from Persuasion by Stuart Earl. Netflix released a new version of the Jane Austen book Persuasion and it is delightful. I immediately noticed the score. It lasts all of 12 minutes, which is the only downside to it. It's too be beautiful to be so short.

• "In Reverence" by David Tolk. This shows up regularly on my Pandora station and it's a fave. And the fact that the album cover is of the Tetons might help. A perfectly sad, melancholy song that I enjoy so much.

• Pretty much anything by Mitchell Tenpenny. This guy has got some great stuff. See also "Truth About You" and "We Got History."

• Adam Doleac. He's up there with Mitchell. See also "Another" or "Coulda Loved You Longer."

• Jordan Davis. I LOVE HIS MUSIC. There are very few songs on any of his albums that I skip over, which is mark of a great album in my opinion. His next album comes out on February 17 and I am thoroughly looking forward to getting my hands on it. See also "Leaving New Orleans," "Detours," "Midnight Crisis," "Next Thing You Know," and "What My World Spins Around." And pretty much anything else he's got.

• "Whakaaria Mai (How Great Thou Art)" by Teeks and Hollie Smith. This is a lovely, lovely, lovely rendition of "How Great Thou Art." I discovered it while watching a documentary on Netflix.

• John Mark Pantana. Where the heck has this guy been hiding? I was at a church event and this guy's songs kept playing in the background. Very mellow, Jack Johnson vibe and I was immediately hooked. See also "Rooftop" and pretty much anything else of his.

Any recommendations of your own? Send 'em my way!

Day 9: What I Love Most About God

When I woke up this morning, I had a lot of things on my mind. My work schedule. Plans for the week. Tasks to get done around the house. Wondering if my outline submission for a separate writing project was any good (I knew it wasn't). Borrowed fears about things that may never come to pass. So many thoughts criss-crossed the labyrinth of my brain, firing one after another.

But do you know what thought didn't cross my mind this morning - or any other moment of the day?

I didn't wake up wondering if God was in a good mood today.

I didn't wake up wondering if today would finally be the day that God would wash his hands of me, fed up with my faltering, small faith, fed up with my lukewarm affection for his word and his presence. 

It's what I love most about him.

If someone were to ask you what you love most about God, what would you say?

It is this unchangingness, this immutability, that endears him most to me.

Because I know what I fickle soul I am. I know I am everything he is not. I know my own moods and my own ability to waver and waffle in my receptivity toward others. Yet God is not like that, never has been, never will be. He is not like me, like us. As Beth Moore once said, "Those who adore you can just as quickly abhor you." God's affections for me do not fluctuate so.

And that is a comfort to me. Because can you imagine if God changed? Can you imagine if he was moody, swinging from highs to lows, like some sort of manic? What chaos. I would never be able to trust a God who changed because how would I ever know when I was on his 'good side' or not? It would be a state of perpetual fear, never at ease, always on edge.  A.W. Tozer said in his book Knowledge of the Holy, one of my favorite pieces of literature I've ever read, 

In this world where men forget us, change their attitude toward us as their private interests dictate, and revise their opinion of us for the slightest cause, is it not a source of wondrous strength to know that the God with whom we have to do changes not? That His attitude toward us now is the same as it was in eternity past and will be in eternity to come?

Indeed, it is a wondrous strength, one I need to draw upon every day. Does the fact that he never changes mean I can do as I please, knowing that no matter what sins I commit, he will still love me? As the apostle Paul says in Romans 6:1-2, "What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?" 

By no means do I take advantage of this immutability of God and his grace! It is the source of my peace, but it is not to be abused, to be taken for granted (oh, but how often I do!) to be leveraged for my own selfish gain. Tozer goes on to say, 

What peace it brings to the Christian's heart to realize that our Heavenly Father never differs from Himself. In coming to Him at any time we need not wonder whether we shall find Him in a receptive mood. He is always receptive to misery and need, as well as to love and faith. He does not keep office hours not set aside periods when he will see no one. Neither does he change His mind about anything. Today, this moment, He feels toward His creatures, toward babies, toward the sick, the fallen, the sinful, exactly as He did when He sent His only-begotten Son into the world to die for mankind.

Great is his faithfulness, for there is no shadow of turning with him. That truth will ring true when I wake up tomorrow morning, and the morning after that, and every moment from here through all eternity.

"Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not / As Thou hast been, Thou forever will be."

Day 8: Wyoming 2022 - Greatest Hits

It's no secret how much I love Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I won't bother elaborating on that because you can read about my previous adventures elsewhere. I made the trek out there this past September for the fifth time and it's still as stunning as ever. This trip was a much slower pace and I had less of an itinerary planned. It was just my mom and me, so we were able to wander to and fro to places we had been to before and some we hadn't. So, without further ado, I present to you Wyoming 2022: The Greatest Hits:

• I didn't get mistaken for a boy on this trip! Unlike two out of the four previous trips. This feels like a victory. 

• I discovered the joys of a heated steering wheel. What wizardry is this?! We rented a Chrysler Pacifica, which didn't really jive with the whole rugged mountain terrain vibe I had hoped for, but when you have a heated steering wheel? Who cares! Soccer mom minivan it is!

• We went to Mammoth Hot Springs one day while up in Yellowstone. It felt like a ghost town, which was amazing. Normally I'm not a fan of the place because it always feels like such a cluster, but due to the historic flooding that had occurred earlier in the summer and damaged so much infrastructure,  a lot of lodging and restaurants were closed. 

• On my second trip out to Wyoming with my friend Kristen in 2016, she introduced me to some friends of hers, Donnie and Pat. They quickly became my friends. And then when I was out there again in 2019 with my mom and a family friend, we ran into Donnie and Pat by happenstance, out of the blue while waiting in line at a restaurant up in Mammoth. This time around, we intentionally reached out to them and made plans. Funny, delightful, lovely people.

• We tried to see a few things we hadn't before, one of which was Cody. We were staying in West Yellowstone so we drove allllll the way over to Cody one day, on the opposite side of the park, and poked around there for the day. Driving through Sylvan Pass is a bit of a white-knuckler for me, but we made it.

• After we spent a few days in Yellowstone, we headed south for Jackson. While on the way, we spotted a bald eagle and some other kind of bird duking it out in the skies above. They kept following the same river we were driving along, so we were able to just keep going and watch them as we drove. 

• We stopped at Colter Bay on the northern side of Grand Teton National Park and our eyes nearly popped out of our heads. We couldn't believe what we were seeing. The marina, normally filled with docked boats was completely empty - boats, water and all. It was shocking to witness. 

• We stayed in downtown Jackson, which was a first. Normally we stay out in the Wilson area, but AirBnB prices were getting ridiculous, so we opted for a hotel near the Town Square. So convenient. Loved it.

• Two rainbows marked our trip, one while out in the Buffalo Valley near Turpin Meadow Ranch and another directly at the base of the Tetons. 

• We, of course, milled around town and walked through art galleries, especially since it was the annual Fall Arts Festival. One thing that was a major bummer for us on this trip was that they did not host the Showcase of Homes. We LOVED this when we went in 2019 and had so hoped we could do it again. Alas, it was not to be. 

I don't know that I'll make it back to Wyoming in 2023, as I've got my sights set on somewhere new. We'll see if it captures my heart and imagination like Jackson Hole has, but this new place has a lot to live up to. Time will tell!

This was one of the many terrible selfies I took in 2015. This is also Colter Bay then...

...and Colter Bay in September 2022. I'm standing in almost the exact same spot. 
Now you know why our eyes nearly popped out of our heads.

I mean, c'mon.

While taking the Moose-Wilson Road, we joined the crowds to watch these two for a bit.

Rainbow #1 while driving along Highway 191, just north of Jackson.

Rainbow #2, sunset, driving back from Turpin Meadow Ranch, down along the Buffalo Fork

This was in the opposite direction of the rainbow.
No matter which way we turned, the view was incredible.

What is Yellowstone without bison?

And, of course, a jumping photo.

Day 7: Not Just Good vs. Bad

We were both sitting on the floor, me in tears, him in stunned silence. He never saw the end coming, and I saw no way around it. 

We dated last summer. I'll call him Jake for the sake of this one-sided conversation. Jake was a breath of fresh air and blew through my life like a cool summer breeze. He was the first man in my life ever to ask me out point blank after having just met me. I was stunned. It was disarming, almost disorienting, his boldness. On our first date, he unknowingly picked one of my favorite places to eat, showed up twenty minutes early, and he asked good questions. He was racking up points left and right. I was still feeling bewildered about the fact that a man had looked my way or even knew I existed. It had been a bit of a dating drought prior to him, so I was suffering from the whiplash of his sudden and eager presence in my life. 

We had some hurdles to cross - well, really, I had some hurdles to cross related to his past - but we had some good, long hard conversations about all of that before we decided to move forward with dating. 

Dating him was great. It was easy. It was effortless. It was fun. It was exciting. It was all the things that come with the start of a new relationship. 

And he treated me like gold. I have no doubt that man would have walked through fire for me, even after the short time we knew each other. We often joked, though, how he was a freight train hurtling a hundred miles an hour down the tracks while I was still sitting back at the station with my feet propped up, wondering which way to go. He said I checked every box on his list of things he wanted in a wife, and he was convinced I was everything he had ever prayed for in a woman, while I wasn't convinced of anything. All I knew was that I was willing to give this thing a shot and trust that God would make the way clear. But I was holding loosely to all of it. I desperately prayed for wisdom in those days and weeks surrounding that time (and still do regularly). I had latched onto Proverbs 2:11 just prior to Jake's appearance in my life, and it's a verse that carried me through, "Discretion will protect you, and understanding will guard you." I deeply desired to have both discretion and understanding, to be able to discern the when's and how's and what's of this relationship and to do it in accordance with God's will. 

So, we dated. Until we didn't.

Probably not even a full fourteen days into dating, I suddenly felt like I hit a brick wall emotionally. Overwhelming doubt and hesitation rose up within me. I couldn't shake the lack of peace that had taken over. I couldn't define it. I couldn't put my finger on it. There were no red flags about his character, his past, his present, nothing. So much about us seemed to line up. But there was still something making me pause, something undeniable. I began to wonder if I was crazy, asking God if this was just the swirling of my emotions or if this was something from the Holy Spirit, a certain kind of restraining that was beginning to hold me back from confidently moving forward. I got to the point where I knew I couldn't allow the relationship to continue, not in good conscience anyway. Yes, it would have been easy to just play along. The boy was so over the moon about me, so why not just ride this wave and enjoy it and take advantage of the feelings he had for me? For one, I'm not that kind of person, and two, I knew that he was in so deep emotionally, even this early on, that there's no way I could have allowed his emotions to grow even more for me. It wouldn't have been fair - or right. 

I thought long and hard, still desperately praying for that discernment, still wondering if I was crazy. Here was a perfectly good man who loved Jesus and was crazy about me. Why can't you just.make.this.work, Courtney? But it didn't matter from what I angle I came from, I was getting a very clear, albeit unexplainable, impression from the Holy Spirit that this relationship had to end.

So, I broke the boy's heart and ended things.   

"Why, Courtney?" he pled with me, tears in his eyes.

With tears in my own eyes, I told him I didn't have an answer to that question, at least not one that was going to make him feel better or make that moment less painful.

But I also told him that I didn't need to know why in order to be obedient to God. I didn't need this tangible, black-and-white, reasonable and rational list of explanations from God about why this relationship should or should not continue in order for me to still follow him. The Holy Spirit was revealing to me that we were not to continue dating - that was reason enough for me. I didn't need any further evidence. I've been in this thing with Jesus for too long and I've followed him down too many roads that didn't make sense before. This wasn't the first time God had asked me to do something that didn't humanly add up. I'm sure it won't be the last, and I'm not about to start demanding he make sense to me now in order for me to continue to be faithful.

In the wake of the break-up, I kept coming back to one central lesson:

Discernment is not merely distinguishing between good and bad, right versus wrong, truth versus error. Sometimes discernment is also about distinguishing between what is good and what is right, what is good and what is best.

Sometimes what is good and what is best is separated only by a hair's breadth, but that hair's breadth still matters. As I kept praying for wisdom in the wake of the break-up, I was led to 1 Chronicles 17. David is now on the throne, Saul long since dead. David is standing in the palace one night and he says to Nathan the prophet, “Here I am, living in a house of cedar, while the ark of the covenant of the Lord is under a tent” (verse 1). David desires to build a temple for God and Nathan tells him to do as he wishes, for God is with him. 

But then that night, the word of God comes to Nathan, telling him to tell David that it's not for David to build God a temple. That dream will be for his son, Solomon, but not for David. 

The day eventually comes when Solomon does, in fact, build the temple, placing the ark of the covenant in it. At the dedication of the temple in 1 Kings 8, he says the following, looking back on his father's life:

My father David had it in his heart to build a temple for the Name of the Lord, the God of Israel. But the Lord said to my father David, ‘You did well to have it in your heart to build a temple for my Name. Nevertheless, you are not the one to build the temple, but your son, your own flesh and blood—he is the one who will build the temple for my Name.’

You did well, David, to have it in your heart this desire to build God a temple. 

Nevertheless, you're not the one. 

David's desire was good. But it wasn't right, it ultimately wasn't what God had in store, even though it made perfect sense to David, even though there was nothing saying otherwise that he shouldn't do it.

A hair's breadth between what is good and what is right.

Jake, you do well to desire marriage. You have it in your heart to pour out all that love you have stored up in that golden heart of yours. That is a good thing. But for reasons known only to God, it is not the right thing that it is with me. Yes, you treated me like a queen. Yes, on paper, everything we had - or dreamed of having - made perfect sense. And if any of my friends came along and asked if they could date you, I'd give my blessing. You're a good man, and what we had was good. 

Nevertheless, it wasn't right, and I'm not the one.

I trust that God in his infinite wisdom knows the reasons why that hair's breadth between what was good and what was right existed in our relationship. 

And that's enough for me. 

Day 6: Thoughts on Death and Dying

I signed my will today.

#Adulting.

It's an interesting process, this thing of deciding the parameters about how you wish to die (at least the parameters you may have some negligible control over), what happens to your possessions when you die, and what happens to your body when you die. Who will be my executor? Who do I trust to handle my finances? Who do I want the house to go to? Do I care how or where I'm buried? Do I want to donate my organs, and if so, which ones and for what purposes? Do I even need a living will? What's the difference between that and a DNR? Do I want to leave anything to charitable organizations I'm fond of or not? Do I have any specific instructions about how my funeral is to be handled?

It took me nearly four months to complete the paperwork from the time I first contacted my attorney until I signed off on everything today. I wanted time to think and process the implications of some of these decisions (and I also just put it on the back burner for awhile amid a busy work season). I could never know the contingencies of every choice, of course, but I could make some reasonable, prudent decisions along the way and I wanted to do my homework. Signing off on everything today didn't feel like some sort of monumental emotional moment - it was just something practical that needed to be dealt with.

But how often do we actually think about death? And I don't mean in a suicidal kind of way, I just mean it in a very matter-fact sort of way. How often do we think through our own mortality? And how often do we think through what we want to be true of our lives when we reach the end of it, whenever that end may be?

When I was a senior in college, I wrote my own obituary. I still have it. I've often had it tucked inside the cover of my Bible over the years. It wasn't an exercise in morbidity, I can assure you, and I wasn't depressed. It was an exercise done with clear eyes and a sound mind, mostly precipitated by the end of my college career and wondering what I was leaving behind me. If you have a living will, why not have a living obituary? (It was maybe also sparked by a scene from the movie Serendipity, to be honest.) I spoke not of worldly things I wanted to accomplish. I spoke instead of the kind of person I wanted to be, of what I wanted my life and my character to be marked by. But ultimately, I spoke of how I wanted Jesus to be my one magnificent obsession.

What struck me as I wrote that obituary nearly fifteen years ago was that I was writing based on the assumption that I would have decades of life ahead of me. But then the thought occurred to me - what if tomorrow, or next week, or next year, is the end? What if I don't have stretches of time to cultivate all these things I want to be true of my life? Would this obituary be true of me now? Am I seeking to move toward this kind of character today, rather than thinking that I'll somehow mysteriously arrive there at the end of my life?

When I read that obituary now, it brings tears to my eyes in a sad sort of way. They feel like words that were far too easily throw down on paper, where they existed merely in a theoretical or hypothetical state. Because to read these words today just makes me feel like a fraud of a Christian, and if I'm not careful, it's easy for me to descend into some sort of existential crisis. What do I know of following Jesus? What do I know of what it looks like to really love him? What do I know of loving God more than anything else? What do I know of passion, selflessness, humility and obedience? What do I know of multiplying the kingdom of God? What do I know of God's purpose for me in my own generation? These were all things I wrote about all those years ago, things I envisioned for my life, what I wanted to be true of my life when I reached the end of it, whether that was in one year, five years, or five decades. But there are moments when it's easy to give way to the notion that I'm not measuring up to this self-imposed benchmark I set all those years ago.

So, what am I to do? Drown in the abyss of perceived failures and all the ways my present-day self is letting down my college-aged self? 

No. No, instead I take up the words of the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:10:

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect.

His grace to me has not been without effect. The only living obituary that will ultimately matter is the one God writes. May he not merely make me into the kind of person I wrote about with my own words in my own obituary, but rather the kind of person of which he can say, "Well done, good and faithful servant." That's an obituary worth aiming for.   

Day 5: What The Pandemic Didn't Kill

Disclaimer: I know for some people this pandemic has been nothing short of traumatic. I have friends who have watched loved ones die agonizing deaths. I do not wish to diminish the weight of that grief and all the chaos this pandemic has wrought. The following is intended to be a light-hearted take - please read it as such.

The death toll for COVID is staggering. The economic fallout is massive. The way we live our lives has fundamentally shifted. COVID has killed a lot of people and it has killed a lot of events, customs, and rituals, some temporarily, some still have never rebounded. Sporting events. Concerts. Cookouts. Vacations. School. Restaurants. Hotels. Family gatherings. There isn't a corner of our world where death, in some way, shape, or form, has not touched it.

Except for one very unlikely place, much to my everlasting dismay. 

And that, my friends, is the "passing of the peace," also known as the "turn and greet your neighbor" moment at church.

For those of you unfamiliar with church settings, this is the point in a church service, usually fairly early on, when a person stands on stage, all cheery and bright and probably an extrovert, and instructs the congregation to pause and take a moment to say hi to your neighbor, give 'em a high five, give 'em a hug, wave, whatever. So, then everybody turns around and pretends to have a meaningful interaction while every introvert in the room wants to hit the 'abort' button.

I am like the Holy Spirit in Romans 8:26 with my "wordless groans" every time this moment rolls around in a church service. I may be wordless, but I quite literally groan nearly every single Sunday. Sometimes I have to make a pact with myself to stop groaning about it because even I get tired of hearing myself complain about my perpetual disdain for the tradition. Words truly cannot express how much I despise this moment. My friends certainly know how much I hate this moment, and even if you're not my friend but are sitting in my vicinity on a Sunday morning, you're probably going to know it soon enough. 

Why? Why do churches insist on this moment? I do not understand. It's painful. It's awkward. It's weird. It's forced. It's artificial. It's dreadful. 

It's annoying as hell. 

It's bad enough if you're introverted, but if you're introverted and new to the church?

Feel free to rapture your people, Jesus, and save me from this moment.

As Scot McKnight wrote in the foreword of Adam S. McHugh's book Introverts in the Church, "Who, for instance, designed the 'Pass the Peace' moment in the church tradition? Surely not an introvert."

Exactly.

What's even more bothersome at times is that no matter where I go in the world, the same thing happens. I can be in a church with a mud floor in the middle of nowhere Kenya, or in a cathedral in a bustling city in Russia, and what happens? Yep, those loathsome, dreaded words come pouring out of the leader's mouth, "Why don't we all turn and greet our neighbors? Tell 'em how glad you are to see them today!"

For the love of Pete. 

COVID, you killed so many things. How did you manage to not bring a swift end to this tradition? I had such high hopes that this pandemic would wipe out this little moment in our church gatherings. But noooo, it's still alive and well.  

Dear Lord, I beg of you, may the passing of the peace rest in peace. And soon. 

Day 4: I (Almost) Bought a Zoo

I recently bought a house. My grandmother's house, specifically, which was my great-grandfather's before her. It came complete with a family of groundhogs, innumerable squirrels, a regular "committee" meeting of turkey vultures in a tree in my backyard, a stray mouse or two who made their way into my bedroom (who have since been evicted), and I swear a long-tailed weasel (who did not make it into my bedroom, thankfully). My dad thinks I've lost my mind, but I would bet money it was a weasel. I'm crazy, but not completely crazy. It was a weasel.

The original house, circa I don't know when. 
It has since had a complete second story
added on.

This house is nothing fancy. But it's mine. And it was my father's. And my grandmother's. And my great-grandfather's. My oldest brother and his girls lived here at various points in time, too, which also means a total of five generations of my family have lived in this house since my great-grandfather built it in 1949. It's never going to make the cover of Architectural Digest, but this nearly 75-year old, 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house has brought me to tears on more than one occasion. 

I never had dreams of being a homeowner. It wasn't something I felt particularly strong about and so I spent years renting. I didn't want the burden of a mortgage and the responsibility of maintaining a home. I bounced around from one apartment to the next, living in various parts of the city. I loved each of those spaces for very different reasons. The first apartment I ever rented was a whopping 350 sq. ft. My parents thought I was one step above living in a shoebox. After that one, I had a slight detour back to my parents' basement, but then ended up in a 1,200 sq. ft. condo. I felt like I was living in a mansion. What does one do with 1,200 sq. ft. of space?! Coming from the tiny 350 sq. ft. studio, I had basically no furniture, so it took me awhile to slowly buy up a table, chairs, couch, etc. In between the condo and my next apartment, I briefly looked at buying a home, the first time I had ever warmed up to the idea, but the process was incredibly stressful and nothing seemed right. I threw in the towel after two months of searching and decided to rent again. In my last apartment I could hear my neighbor's conversations through the walls verbatim. I felt like I had to take a vow of silence to live there because I didn't want anybody to hear my own conversations. 

That's finally what pushed me over the edge.

The opportunity to move into my grandmother's house first came about because she had significant health needs and was in assisted living. My father had always said he wouldn't ever sell it so long as she was alive. They asked if I wanted to rent it so that the house didn't sit empty. My apartment lease was ending and I reluctantly agreed to rent the house. Reluctantly because the location of it was in the complete opposite direction of where most of my life occurred - farther from work, farther from church, farther from the gym, farther from where several friends lived. 

But for the first time ever in my life, I wasn't going to be sharing walls with another human being.

Sign.me.up. 

I moved in about a year ago and two weeks later my grandmother passed. So, now the question became - did I want to buy the house? I clearly remember telling my parents a year prior, when the topic first came up of me renting, that I wouldn't ever be interested in buying the house. 

As they say, never say never.

Once I moved in and had a chance to get settled, I had time to warm up to the notion of owning a home. And quite frankly, the thought of moving again (I had moved four out of the previous five years) and possibly sharing walls with people again was so horrifying that my days of not wanting to own a home were rapidly vanishing into the distance. 

So, I bought the house. And it's menagerie of resident animals.

I've lost count of the number of times I've been on the verge of tears, reflecting on God's faithfulness in the timing of it all. How many years had I wandered from one apartment to the next, never ready to settle down? And when I was finally ready to consider buying a home, how many houses had I looked it, none of them seeming like they were the right fit for me? I was finally sick of carting my life around in boxes, feeling like I could never quite fully claim a space. 

But now - now the timing was right. The circumstances were right. The financing was right. All of it, came together at just the right time in my life.

And I am ever so grateful for these four walls. 

That are shared with no one else. 

"Observe the commands of the LORD your God, walking in his ways and revering him. For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land...When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down...then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God...You may say to yourself, 'My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.' But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives..." (Deuteronomy 8:6-7, 10-12, 14, 17-18).

Day 3: Winner of the Friendship Lottery

Me and my childhood best friend

When it comes to friends, I've won the lottery. I could easily tick off name after name after name of the men and women in my life who are just straight up exceptional human beings. They come from various stages of my life, from childhood to college to adulthood. They are married, married with kids, single, divorced. Some love Jesus, some are on the fence about Jesus, and some are just straight up suspicious of him. They are thoughtful, hilarious, serious, smart, introverted, extroverted, dedicated, sacrificial, giving, and everything else in between.

There's Sandra, the unlikeliest of friends. She is proof that God has a sense of humor because she and I would probably never have chosen to be friends on our own. There's Ruth who is truly the most thoughtful person I know and has the memory of an elephant. I think I'm decent about remembering the details of people's lives, but she puts me to shame. There's Matt who is just an easy companion. Conversations come effortlessly with him. There's Kristen who is probably one of my funniest friends. Her storytelling coupled with her southern accent is pure gold. There's Laura. That girl was my saving grace in a really crazy season of life. There's Emily, my kindred spirit in so many ways, someone who can go deep intellectually and spiritually in a way that is so life-giving. And Derek, I'm not sure where I'd be without him. He's more of anchor than he'll probably ever know. 

I could go on and on, but that's just a glimpse. Sometimes I get overwhelmed when I think about the line-up of friends that I have because they are just so.freaking.amazing. Truly stunning people and I'm so honored to be their friend.

At the risk of stating the obvious, though, those friendships haven't happened by accident. If there is anything I have learned - and thankfully I learned this when I was young - friendships require effort and intentionality. I know I'm stating the obvious and I know that's no different than any other relationship, but it's easy to think that friendships are going to somehow be held together through passive means or happenstance. We get so busy and self-absorbed with our own lives as we get older - we get married, we have kids, our careers take over. And then we wonder what happened to so and so, realizing that people who were once confidants are now merely acquaintances simply because we just stopped trying to connect.

I inadvertently visited almost every friend I have living out of state this past year (and I certainly have plenty of friends in state that I visited also!). I drove down last February to South Carolina to see a friend of mine that I met through Bible Study Fellowship. I made the trek out to Missouri to visit college friends, making multiple stops in Illinois and Indiana along the way to catch an assortment of people I hadn't seen in awhile. I drove down to North Carolina to visit another college friend, stopped briefly in Winston-Salem on the way back to visit a friend I met during a post-college summer job, and then stopped again overnight in Virginia to stay with a former boss of mine from my grad school days. I drove out to DC to take my niece to an internship and reconnected with a sorority sister I hadn't seen in nine years. I flew out to San Diego here just in December to visit friends from church who recently moved out there.

Me and Hannah on the beach at Coronado Island

I don't say all that to pat myself on the back, but to say that I learned a long time ago that you have to show up in your friendships again and again and again. Because guess what? It's easy to make excuse after excuse, and it's easy to just stop trying. You have to decide at some point that people matter and that it's time to make them a priority, even if that is a select one or two friends. Now, I realize that I am single. And because of that, it affords me a lot of flexibility to just pick up and go. I don't have a husband and children to corral and coordinate. My job has great benefits that allow me time off when I want. So, yes, I'm aware of the caveats of my situation. 

But maintaining friendships doesn't always mean getting on a plane or driving 1,000 miles. Sometimes, yes, it may mean that, but more often than not, maintaining friendships means sending a text message and being curious about your friends' lives. It means asking questions. It means checking in. It means sending the occasional card. It means clearing your calendar, reaching out and asking if they want to get together for dinner. It means you keep showing up. Because as Bob Goff pointed out in his book Love Does, love is both sacrificial and present. 

So who do you need to text? Who do you need to call? Who do you need to get on a plane to go see, if the situation allows? Grand gestures are not required in order to maintain grand friendships, but grand friendships do require deliberate and sustained effort, effort that communicates "You matter to me." 

Day 2: Why I Still Say No to Social Media

One of the great ironies in my life is that, despite not having any personal social media accounts, I am the social media coordinator as part of my job. Also oddly enough, I volunteered myself for the task because, quite frankly, I thought I could do a better job than the person who was doing it at the time. That was three years ago. 

Once upon a time, though, I did have a personal social media account or two. Facebook for awhile, then Instagram. LinkedIn was in the mix for a brief period, too. 

Facebook was the first to go back sometime around January 2011. LinkedIn followed suit later that year. I opened an Instagram account in 2012 when I finally got a smartphone and was living in Kenya; posting pictures was an easy way to keep the family informed. I deleted it sometime after I got back to the States, but reopened it again in 2014 and then deleted it for good in 2015. For the work-related content, I use a co-worker's login info, so even though I need to manage social media pages for my job, I still don't use personal accounts to do so.

I don't miss any of them. In the twelve years since I first deleted my accounts, there's never been a moment when I have wavered and regretted shutting everything down. Not once. I'm honestly not sure what circumstances or amount of money would ever convince me to open personal accounts ever again. 

When I first started deleting accounts it was essentially because I could see the writing on the wall - me and social media just weren't going to mix from an emotional and mental health standpoint. I spent way too much time wondering if anybody liked my posts, commented, or followed me. It was unhealthy and I could see what it was doing to my self-esteem and self-worth. I was becoming obsessed with checking notifications, and the good Lord gave me enough sense and self-awareness to see that it just wasn't going to end well for me if I stuck around. It is the same reason I likely won't ever do online dating. If someone told me I had to choose between online dating or being single for the rest of my life, I'd tell 'em I would gladly go to my grave single without question. Burial plot for one? Yes, please.

So, goodbye social media. To this day, I still believe it is one of the smartest things I have ever done in my life. 

I recently revisited the reasons why I kissed social media goodbye when I read the book Stolen Focus by Johann Hari. I highly recommend it. I rarely buy books anymore, but instead make use of the public library (more to come this month on my love of libraries). But this one - this one was so good that once I finished it, I went and bought my own copy because I wanted to re-read it and mark it up. There were so many insights and aha! moments about how my own brain and my attention have been hijacked by technology and the environment in which we live. It was profound to me what he wrote about and it affirmed my inclinations to avoid social media. (I also read Jaron Lanier's book Ten Reasons to Delete Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, which is a little bit more of a rant, but he provides some interesting points to consider nonetheless. The Social Dilemma is also worth a watch.)

Hari interviewed James Williams, a former Google strategist, and one day Williams "addressed an audience of hundreds of leading tech designers and asked them a simple question: 'How many of you want to live in the world you are designing?' There was silence in the room. People looked around them. Nobody put up their hand" (123).

Yeah, I don't particularly want to live in the world they're designing either. I'm not here to say that social media is the devil, but I think it's getting harder and harder to argue in favor of its benefits over the harm it's doing. 

So, if you ever ask me if we can be friends on Facebook, the answer is no, the same as it was over twelve years ago. 

But real-life friend requests are definitely still acceptable.

Day 1: Challies' Challenge

If you've followed this blog for a period of time, you probably have noticed that my writing has been - how shall I put it? - woefully infrequent in recent years. The line of demarcation was somewhere between 2017 and 2018. Late 2017 was when I had my epic mental health crisis, so I don't know if that's what flipped the switch or what, but I just have not been motivated to write as much in recent years. That's not to say that I haven't had a long list of things to write about rolling around in my head, though. I've had a note in my phone for years now of article titles, one-liners, random sentences and such, things I would mull over and think I should write about - and then just didn't. I think in some ways I just got lazy. I stopped putting forth the effort to create or do the hard work of thinking and crafting a story. Writing started to feel like a chore, something that I should do out of some sort of weird misplaced obligation. Obviously, no one is holding a gun to my head and insisting I write, but some part of me knows deep down it's what I need to be doing. 

After I had mustered up the energy to submit a piece to Gospel-Centered Discipleship this past September, it led me down a rabbit trail to a Tim Challies* article called "Six Reasons For You to Consider Writing." I read it once, thought it had some good insights, and then moved on. But then for some reason, I came back to it again later, reading it more slowly the second time around.

And then this single line nearly jumped up and bit me: "Try to write something every day for a week or a month and just see what happens."

Write every day? For a month? Something in me sparked when I read that line. Like a match had been struck and finally that fire of motivation I had been lacking the last five years had been lit. It was the first time I had felt energized about the prospect of writing in such a long time. I think I had forgotten what that felt like.

So, here's my goal for the month of January**:

I'm going to write every day. 

If I manage to do that (but let's manage expectations here, people), I will have written more in one month than I have in the last five years combined. The pieces won't be polished. They won't necessarily be all connected, coherent or cohesive. But that's not the point. The point is for me to exercise some discipline and finally give words to all the things that have rolled around in my head for years. It's a way of battling my own apathy and complacency. 

So, Tim Challies, challenge accepted. 

Wish me luck.

*Not that Tim Challies is ever going to read this blog, but I owe him a personal thank you. After we released my article on GCD, Tim got a hold of it and then shared it via his social media and his daily email newsletter. That share landed me #1 on this list. I might have mildly freaked out both when I first got notice that Tim shared my article, but also when I found out about The List. Tears may or may not have been involved. So, Tim, thanks for reading my work and thinking it was good enough to share with the masses. I'm still a little dumbfounded that anybody noticed it.

**I might regret this.