After I took my three youngest to the apple orchard and farm — $53.00 in Honeycrisp apples later — I called my mom and told her, “It’s just so different now. When my first three were this age, we couldn’t go anywhere. Cannon was such a risk, such an unknown. Autism felt impossible. I was so limited when I had three under three the first time around. I almost feel like God is redeeming that entire season of motherhood with these three.”

I don’t think many other mothers will really understand that, and that’s ok.

But I guess I just wanted to say that I’m grateful.

Parenting is going to leave all of us speechless at some point: another school shooting that we have to explain, another poor example of once-trusted leadership, another death or sickness or fight that, one at a time, teach and show our children that the world is truly a fallen place.

In our home, some of the harder questions started coming about six months ago, when our 18-month old son surpassed our three-year-old son by a noticeable margin in speech and development. As that margin grew and grew, Harper noticed, too. “Mommy,” she asked matter-of-factly, “Jordi talks and Cannon doesn’t. Why?”

“Well Harper,” I started to explain, “Cannon learns differently than Jordi. Everyone in the whole world learns differently. Some people learn really fast and some people take a bit longer.” And in my typical ‘let’s be positive’ demeanor, I ended with the upside. “Cannon is learning some words though! He’s getting there.”

“Hmm,” she responded, as if that explanation would do for now. But I think we both felt the incompleteness.

It’s not that what I said was untrue – people do all learn at different paces and at different abilities, and it’s so important that Harper understands that at a young age. But why is everything so much harder for Cannon? The why question has had its way with me in the last two years. I’ve cried over it, gotten angry with it, and felt intensely defensive about it. But so much of that – the many things the world might tell me is the reason why Cannon struggles – is not really what I’m talking about.

I’m talking the big why - why does he have to struggle in ways that others his age do not? Why is there pain, disability, sickness, and death in the world at all? Harper may not have been asking at that philosophical level, but she will be soon, whether it be about her brother, her own sin, or something else that she sees, hears, or experiences.

After much searching and reading and praying and talking to people far wiser than me, hoping for an eloquent explanation, for words that would ease the tension I constantly felt, the answer is actually as simple as it has always been: it’s sin. It’s my sin and your sin and our sin, and the fact that at the Fall of Man in Genesis 3, evil came in to the world and everything has been hard since then (Romans 5:12). That is the why.

It turns out that it is as straightforward - and yet lived out as incredibly complicated - as that.

*****

One of the things I’ve learned in five years of parenthood is that children, with their near constant inquisitiveness and very pragmatic questions, actually become our best teachers. If we cannot explain something at the level a five-year-old can understand it, there’s a good chance we don’t have a good grasp on the topic at all. And this is most certainly what God has showed me in the last two years.

I knew about life in a fallen world. We've all seen and experienced the pain that comes from original sin. But I was having an exceptionally hard time finding the words to explain it. And that’s when we went back to the very basics of our faith, the big story of our rescue that God has been writing through all of history - the Biblical Narrative. These four commonly used points became so helpful – it gave me a language for what I have always known but could not find the words for. It reminded me that our small stories truly are written in the scope of God’s big story, and all of our lives can be understood within the arc of these truths.

The Biblical Narrative is the big story of the Bible – a (very short) summary of Genesis to Revelation – and it is a tool that can help you use gospel language with your kids every day. In our home, the conversations often begin with a question or hard topic that we have to explain to our children: Why did Granpda die? Why does my brother have a disability? Why did that friend leave me out? Why do we yell at one another? We frame all of these conversations by starting with creation: God’s perfect plan for the world and how in the beginning everything was good and at peace. Then we talk about the fall, and how sin entering the world changed everything. Sin is why life is hard, sin is why we can be terrible to one another, and sin is why we need a Savior. Then we bring in the good news that Jesus redeemed us, and that is why we can have hope in this world in spite of the sin in our hearts and the hard things that might happen to us. We end with restoration, because God’s Word tells us that the Holy Spirit is still very much at work in the hearts of men and women, boys and girls, all over the world, making us more like him all the time – using our gifts, our success, our weakness and our failures for his glory and pointing us to the day we are ultimately and forever restored in Him.

In his book Parenting, Paul David tripp said this: “Tell the story of the person and work of Jesus to your children again and again and again. Tell them how God could have condemned us all to our foolishness and its results, but instead how he sent his Son so that instead of being condemned, we’d be forgiven and rescued from ourselves. You simply cannot tell this story to your children enough. Talk about how God exercised his power to control history so that at just the right time Jesus would come and extend his sacrificial love to fools who didn’t even recognize his existence. Talk to them about how Wisdom came to rescue fools so that fools would become wise. Start telling this story when they are toddlers and don’t stop telling this story until your young adult children have left your home.” The Biblical Narrative cards are designed to help you do just that. I hope we can tuck them in our Bibles or tape them on our refrigerators, and find every opportunity possible to tell our kids, and tell ourselves in the process, our story of rescue, again and again and again.

The envelope sat on my desk for three weeks before I opened it. I had seen the return address right when I pulled it out of the mailbox, The Department of Health and Social Services logo with the name of our assigned social worker from the Developmental Disabilities Administration.

Why I still flinch just a little bit when I see that logo in the mail, I do not know.

She had called me the week before to remind me of our son’s upcoming fourth birthday, and that his status with Early Intervention Services through DDA would officially be terminated unless I reapplied for eligibility.

“Was he ever officially diagnosed or were his delays compensated through services?” she asked.

“No ma’am, he was diagnosed with Autism-II in October of 2016.”

“Ok, he will remain eligible for DDA services then, as long as his diagnosis came from an appropriate specialist.”

“Yes, it did.” I responded. (He was also not very kind, that specialist, but I leave that part out).

“I will need a copy of all of his paperwork, and I am sending you the application packet for ages 4-21 today. I’ll need it back no later than 90 days before your son’s fourth birthday.”

“Thank you.” I said. I think I meant it as a question though. 

“You’re welcome, Mrs. Blackburn. Happy Holidays!”

Three weeks later, with a post-it note on the refrigerator daily reminding me to “Renew DDA for Cannon!” I was still ignoring it. The truth is, I don’t like going back. The diagnosis paperwork is 11 pages of hard for me, line after line of quantification and qualification of a sweet little boy that I think falls far short of capturing him, but to any objective observer is frustratingly accurate.

But I don’t love looking forward too much, either, and getting mail from the Developmental Disabilities Administration with flyers reminding me of our legal rights, tips for starting school, and programs around our city for those with developmental disabilities is exactly that – a monthly notice that will not let us forget Cannon’s future will be unchartered territory for all of us.

None of this is what I pictured four years ago, when we opened a gift on Christmas day and saw a little blue blanket inside. “It’s a boy!” we all yelled, followed by tears of joy and an immediate image of a big sister squeezing her little brother on the next Christmas card. And when life gives us a story that we’re not prepared to live out, our immediate reaction is to resist it. I think maybe that is why I cried for most of that first year, because when reality keeps running head first into a hard heart, it hurts. Reality needs a soft place to land and I would not, could not, give it one.

So God had to completely change what I couldn’t.

There is a popular tale among special needs parents called ‘Welcome to Holland’ – a metaphoric story about planning a trip to Italy, learning the Italian language and studying the maps of the cities you’ll visit, even getting on the flight to meet all of your friends there and then hearing upon arrival, “Welcome to Holland.”

Holland? But you’ve been planning to go to Italy. You got familiar with Italy. All of your friends are sharing beautiful pictures from Italy and you really want to be in Italy.

You want to hear your little boy sing in the preschool Christmas program with other three year olds, not fill out DDA paperwork.

You want to sign him up for Tiny Tots soccer, not a one-to-one aide for group settings.

There is a list 100 items long that you would rather be doing than the work in front of you, and I think it is ok to acknowledge that. It’s not, however, ok to stay there. 

God’s story of his chosen people is one story after another of someone not getting what they want, but getting something only God could do. Sarah wanted children in her youth, God gave her Isaac when she was 100 years old. Jeremiah wanted anything but the work of a prophet, God gave him words that would be cherished and studied by believers for the rest of earthly history. Paul wanted to go with Silas to Asia to share the gospel, God re-directed him to Greece and brought the gospel to Europe for the first time.

If I am learning anything from God’s narrative and history of redeeming a broken people in a broken world, it is that what we want is not always a great indicator of God’s perfect plan, for our lives and for His glory. And at some point we have to decide what gets our time, our energy, and our prayers: what we want, or what God is actually doing. How we answer that with our lives will change everything – perhaps most importantly it will change how you see what must be done. To borrow from Goethe, you’ll learn to love it. It may be impossible to see right now, but one day at a time, regardless of what you are carrying and even when it is so hard the tears far outweigh hope, you’ll still be so thankful God chose you for something you could never do on your own. 

Harper had quietly snuck down the stairs earlier than usual, and surprised me with her little voice at the office door. “Hi mommy.”

Startled, I turned around from my chair. “Hi love. Good morning! You’re up early, did you sleep well?”

“I think so,” she said as she rubbed her eyes. With her blanket and stuffy still in her hands, she came and sat on my lap, looking at all that was on the desk in front of us: my Bible, an open computer screen, an assortment of colored pens and stray pieces of paper with all manner of verses and quotes and ideas I’m still trying to organize. Taking it all in, she asked the simplest question. “Mommy, what are you doing?”

*****

“You have to take care of yourself first,” the speech therapist kindly, but firmly, told me. “There are support groups, and they can help you find qualified babysitters if you don’t have someone who can watch your kids while you get out.” She handed me the pamphlet for one of the local gatherings of special needs parents. "You'll be a better mom to all of your kids when you practice some good self care."

“Thank you,” I smiled back. As I glanced down at the information, all still too new and too raw for me to read without tears in my eyes, the theme was clear: We will not have it in us to raise a child with special needs alone. And the resolution to that was being offered right back to me: you have to take care of yourself first.

And you know what, more than a year later, I agree.

*****

When I look back at the first five years of my own motherhood, it’s marked with both incredible memories, and a sufficient amount of fear. I remember holding my 8-day old baby girl when the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting happened, and with so much of the nation, sat on the rocking chair sobbing uncontrollably at even the thought that something like that could happen to a classroom of kindergartners. Cannon was just over a year old when the Syrian refugee crisis finally grabbed our attention, with the image of a little boy’s body washed up on the shores of a Turkish beach. I was weeks away from giving birth to Jordi when the terrorists chose Paris as their target, and there have been countless others since then. I spent many nights awake and anxious and wondering what kind of a world I was raising children in. And all of this was before autism, which brought an entirely new set of anxieties and inconveniences.  

Being a mom has surprised me in so many ways - the highs of irreplaceable joy and lows of sleep-deprived fighting with whoever catches me off guard first. But it is not a stretch for me to say that the most surprising thing it it has shown me is how ugly my heart can be. When fear and frustration and exhaustion and the completely unexplainable descend on my home, the person that has showed up is not the one I am most proud to be. I’m irritable, impatient, arguing with my husband, and oh yes I did yell at my daughter for spilling three cups of water that she was bringing to me on a tray. To serve me. It still hurts to remember that convicting moment.  

So when it came to self-care, it was becoming painfully obvious that a little time away and a pedicure, while wonderful, were going to fall short.

The sirens were going off around me: the fear, the what-ifs, the “how do I talk to my children about this” and the diagnoses –  and it was only then that I started looking for safety.

What motherhood has taught me more than anything else can be summed up in one simple lesson, the same thing that pamphlet the therapist gave me said: I cannot do this alone. The problem with the solutions, with the ‘take care of yourself first’ mentality, is that it encourages escapes, not healing. As wonderful as escapes are (I don’t even need to tell you how much I love a good spa day), they make the surface look pretty, they don’t sustain you from day to day. There isn’t a wrinkle cream, injection, nail polish, aromatherapy, essential oil, or massage strong enough to do what my heart constantly needs: to be examined, and then healed.

God’s Word, however, has an exceptional way of doing both.

Time and life and motherhood and the reality that life is an unpredictable dance of truly beautiful and remarkably hard has taught me that self-care is less about what I do and more about who and what I am consistently with. When God’s Word is churning in my heart before the tasks of the day and three little people ask me to consistently adjust what I had in mind, everything changes. I’m humbled by this work, not inconvenienced by it. I’m heartbroken by the reality of sin and evil in a broken world, not paralyzed by it. I’m patient with autism, not bitter about it. I’m rejoicing about the work God saw fit to give us, not comparing it to the work he gave others.  And I remember that no matter what changes around us, we have “the promise of the unchangeable character of His purpose,” which is to make His name and glory known in all things and to all people. The way I live in this world, with every victory and every challenge, is either going to do that, or it's not. 

And more than anything, I want it to. 

So yes, I had better take care of myself first.

*****

When Harper asked me that simple question, “Mommy, what are you doing?” I thought about the many ways I could answer her: I’m studying the Bible, I’m writing, I’m praying, I'm asking God to show me who He is through this book He left us, or simply that I am just spending time with Jesus. All of those are good answers, and all things I think she would understand. But in that moment, I told her exactly what I was thinking.

“Mommy is just taking care of herself this morning, sweetie.”   

“Cannon, stop please!”

He keeps running, hard and fast down the dirt row lined with blueberry bushes.

“Cannon,” I raise my voice, “stop now!”

His little legs pick up their pace, as if my words are sideline encouragement from a proud mama rather than the desperate plea of a weary one that I mean them to be. But I follow up with one last effort: “Cannon Lee, STOP!”

At this point, I realize the futility and start running after him, leaving my other two children behind with my mom and friend, and hoping I can catch him before I can’t see what row his little head turned down. As soon as I turn the corner there he is, totally still and turned to face me with a big smile on his face. He had stopped, just like I told him to. 

“Cannon, mommy needs you to stay near me while we pick blueberries, ok?”

He tilts his head with his precious grin still beaming, his acknowledgement of my words even though we both know they were not understood. He was playing a game: a clear dirt path signaled to him the freedom to make his way down it the only way he knows how—running. He grabbed my hand and walked back to the group with me.

We got in line to grab our fruit picking baskets, and as we waited our turn I held tightly to his little hand as he pulled and pulled, willing us both back to the dirt path. This is fairly standard in unfamiliar places; Cannon’s little body is overcome with the urge to explore and understand and run around in every inch of new territory, and his little ears seem deaf to anything his own little mind is not telling him to do.

When it was our turn for the farm’s director to tell us how to properly secure our blueberries from the bush, she looked down at Cannon, who was reaching down for handfuls of bark with his free hand.

“Is this the one who was running?”

“Yes, this is him,” I replied with a smile. “He gets excited.”

“Hmm. Well, he’s not a very good listener is he? Young man, don’t pick that up.”

Cannon grabbed another handful.

“Young man, don’t touch that. We don’t do that.”

He continues to look at the ground, spotting his next grab.

“Excuse me,” she responded with irritation in her voice, “do you need to go inside the farm and learn to be obedient, young man?”

In moments like these, I usually just focus on Cannon, try to distract him from the behavior that he shouldn’t be doing and give him a positive one instead. I was short on options for those in the moment, so I did something I rarely do.

“Ma’am, he is autistic. I am not sure how much sense this all makes to him. Don’t worry, I will watch him very closely out here.”

“Oh.” A pause. “There was an 18-year-old like that out here yesterday. Her mother couldn’t do anything with her.”

'Like that?' Deep breath, mama, deep breath. Adding this to the list of unhelpful things people tend to say without really thinking about them.

A year ago, that comment would have made me break out in a sob right then and there. Six months ago, I would have been frustrated, stomped my way through the rest of our time and then vented about it to a few trusted friends, toying with the idea of writing a pithy “open letter to the rude farm owner,” but my husband would have talked me down from that place. But last week, I just smiled back, emotionally numb to her insensitivity because that’s really all it was, an insensitive comment from someone who doesn’t understand.

But today, a week later, what I wish I would have said is this:

A mom came out here with her 18 year old autistic daughter? Wow, how cool! You know, she’s a brave mama. Autism is so unpredictable and all we want for our kids is to be able to participate in great things like this, like picking blueberries on a beautiful summer day, so the fact that she came out here and tried, that’s amazing, and I’m sure it wasn’t easy for her. Yes, brave mama indeed. If you see her or anyone like her again, you should tell her that. Sounds like she’s doing a great job.

I missed the chance to say that last week, but I won’t next time.

Cannon has a defender much great than me, and that’s God. But God made me his mama and therefore his advocate, and I think I am finally strong enough to be just that. I don’t plan on arguing and I certainly don’t plan on crying; most comments come from ignorance, not maliciousness, and they are simply part of the journey of special needs—I think in particular a special need that on the outside doesn’t look like a special need. But I am so very ready to tell the next person who just doesn’t understand what she is seeing one very true thing:  we, special needs mamas, are a brave, brave crew.

*****

We brought home almost 4 pounds of blueberries that day, and even though the owner told me not to I kept sneaking Cannon a few as we picked. I believe in that boy, and I believe in the story God is writing in all of us, because His stories are always heading toward what is good, toward our forever home. They are not always easy, but always good. Moments like that just remind to not be afraid to tell it. 

It had been an off morning for Cannon since I got him out of bed. He wanted to be put down but he didn’t want to walk. He kept reaching back for something in his room but got fussy when I turned around to walk back in there. He knew what he needed but I didn’t. He had thoughts and feelings but no words for either of them, and both of us felt the frustration of it.

Cannon, just tell me what you need.

Mama, I want you to name what I need for me.

These are the moments that hurt the most.

We had just thirty minutes before we needed to be out the door and on the road to therapy, but my little man just was not having it. Didn’t want his milk, didn’t want his Thomas trains, certainly didn’t want his siblings all up in his space. It took both me and Alex to get his diaper changed and clothes on, sixty seconds of fending off flailing arms and legs that were not without a side glance and biting comment among the two of us. You hold his arms. I got him! Babe, don’t let his leg go. He’s strong! After the wrestling match Cannon went right back to his corner on the couch and buried his head in his blankets. Then he took his socks off, of course. More wrestling ensued.

These are the moments that hurt the most.

I looked at Alex and said, “He gets more upset when we hold him down, when we force it, so let’s just give him a minute.”

“Well we don’t really have another minute; he needs to get dressed.”

“I know, but...” And I have no further rebuttal. I don’t know what to do, neither does Alex. Autism stumps us a dozen times a day.

These are the moments that hurt the most. When for all of our effort we simply cannot figure out our precious boy, which frustrates and shames us enough to get irritated with one another, and we go back and forth between being ten minutes late but having a calm little boy; and teaching him that being on time is expected of us so he needs to get going, upset or not. The first half an hour of our day and we are nose to nose with the incessant reminders that his life, our life, is not ‘normal.’

Then Harper came over with an apple for Cannon. “Cannon loves apples. This will make him happy.” He threw it back at her, but she was undeterred. “Oh mom, I’ll give him his puzzle, Cannon loves puzzles!” She set it in front of him, and he did not throw it- a step in the right direction.

I patted her little head and said, “Sweet girl, I love your kindness toward Cannon! Is that Jesus in your heart? I think it is.” She proudly beams a smile.

And then right there on the corner of the couch, we prayed for Cannon. Well, Harper prayed for Cannon, with all the childlike faith and precious gratitude one should pray. “Dear God. I thank you for Cannon and I thank you for puzzles. Please help Cannon be happy today. Cannon will have a good day at school. Thank you for school. I pray for Cannon to eat his apple. Amen.”

Let it be.

And as her simple yet beautiful words landed on all of us, I realized something she is still much too young to: God has called us all to this. He has given all of us this. And we will all be different, better, much more dependent on Jesus because of this ‘not normal’ journey. I think those can be the best kind of journey—it all depends on how we look at it. And wether we are truly, unashamedly, from our heads to our toes, thankful for puzzles and apples and school.

Cannon did move toward that puzzle. I’m not sure if he wanted it the whole time, or if it got his mind off of what he could not tell us, but he was happy, and we got his socks back on.

“Look Harper, your prayer helped him!” Another proud smile. I’m learning to believe in prayer right alongside my four-year-old.

These are the moments I love the most, when something like this reminds you that your life is perfectly, most intentionally, being lived out exactly how God wants it to.  

Hard and beautiful. Hurting and healing. The worst and the best. A moment my heart wants to feel pity and then explodes with gratitude immediately after. Impossibly, but absolutely, both.

Sometimes, life is just both.

Soli Deo Gloria. 

It’s crazy out there, isn’t it? The banter and the name calling, the rhetorical one-upping, and the utter loss of respectful modes of communication from the top down. I feel like I am watching a street fight with wide eyes, every so often hearing my own voice chime in with a “yes, good hit!” and then immediately feeling ashamed for condoning violence at all. It is so much easier to just hide away, to close the browser, turn off the news, and just stop talking about all these things: these leaders and laws and marches and 'who exactly are we keeping away and why?'. But history does not have a strong record of happy endings when too many people look away.

Today, I have three little babies right in front of me. They are so innocent, so blissfully unaware of the rhetoric informing the world they are growing up in. But not for long. They see my despondent demeanor, they catch moments of conversations that don’t yet make sense but plant words and emotions they grapple with. They do not know what they do not know yet, but the puzzle pieces are collecting and putting together a scene of history that is, and will be, theirs. If for no one else but them, I want to lean in to conversations. In fact, I have to. Truthfully, I’m not sure how to put all of these puzzle pieces together either. 

I cannot and will not attempt to explain executive orders. I am far too unfamiliar with government structures and systems to speak to them. If I am honest, I could not even name the members of my local city council, so making generalizations about our government feels unfair. I have many questions and many concerns, and a gut-level reaction that is waving a red flag at what is happening on a policy level, but I do not feel informed enough to speak to them, not yet.

I am also just a mom. I stay home with my kids and teach a little bit and find the fringe hours to put together words but I am not a lawyer, a lobbyist, a government employee, a journalist, economist, historian or anyone else who has the background and context to understand both immigration and law.  

But on the other hand, I am a mom! Full stop. And I think that qualifies me for a whole lot. It makes me both a stakeholder and an influencer, and it also means I get a say in all of this and how I let the conversations 'out there'  take on life in our home. And the problem I see right in front of me, the thing that this mom can do something about today, is fear.

I am also crazy about Jesus, so I start there, with what I know about him and how he felt about people, and about fear.

 And he was pretty clear on both of those things.

Jesus had immense, palpable compassion for people; for his followers who often had such trouble actually understanding him, and for the lost who often could not recognize him. He came with truth and never shied away from it, but his gospel was not one of self-preservation. And he spoke about fear often, never once saying that it was acceptable to live with but always reminding us that there was really only one thing to be afraid of: our own sin.

I do not say this lightly, but I think we sorely misunderstand following Jesus if we believe faith in him is in any way about self-preservation. And I think we thwart efforts for the gospel to move forward when we let fear get too big. Because when we are scared, we get a little too pushy about the boundaries of our self-preservation and we tend to start drawing the lines of our safety further and further away. But logic tells us what happens when we decide our lives need to take up more space: someone else loses theirs.

But this is where I, just a mom, come in. This is when I choose the true gospel of grace by faith, centered on a man who willingly lost his life to save mine; not the American gospel of save yourself, centered on an ideology that our lives are more valuable because they are privileged, or that this life is all that we have.

Grace by faith remembers the sovereignty of God and falls to our knees at the reality of who we are without Jesus. It declares and reminds our hearts every single day that God is either fully in control or not at all, even when we have no possible way of understanding all his reasons. Grace by faith says the way to true life is found in laying ours down, and quite possibly losing it, keeping true fear in a proper perspective. Grace by faith says his glory is far more important than my security. Grace by faith remembers that we have a breath of time to know Jesus in this world and an eternity to finally enjoy him forever.

I do not take safety for granted. I want to feel safe, and I want my kids to feel safe. Of course I do. And I think we are allowed that. We make decisions every day to draw those lines of safety in places that allow our hearts to rest, and those are all a little bit different for each of us. We pick schools, foods, locations, cars, and a hundred other things for our children based on what we believe is safest.

But what I am determined not to do is draw a boundary line of safety so big that I can no longer reach anyone with the gospel. Or a line so big it hurts another mama’s chance at safety for her babies. Or a line so big I get comfortable in a home I was never meant to be all that comfortable in, but rather create a home I am willing to risk losing in order to gain the one I was actually created for. Only grace by faith can help me keep those lines in the right place.

I am just a mom, but I am the mom who is going to teach my three about fear, so that makes me, and all of us just moms, pretty damn important. My kids are either going to learn to be afraid of everyone and everything- of entire people groups, of turbans and accents and different shades of skin- or they are going to learn that we are all sinners in need of a savior, and that we are only to be afraid of what can kill the soul, not the body. I’m determined to teach them the latter, for one simple reason: that is what Jesus taught us. 

So today, this mama chooses faith, and actually counts my life as nothing compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus. Because I want the life I have been given to matter. I want to do what I see Jesus commanding us to do.

I am just a mom, but I think I have the most important job in the world right now.

For someone contemplative by nature, December and its reflective character feel like a welcoming living room, a place that says “Hi, come on in and stay a while with your thoughts, your lessons, your happiest memories and your most meaningful changes.” December and I are basically best friends, because do you know me? Stay here with my thoughts?! I will, thank you.

But I must start with obvious: it’s been a hard year. I had three babies age three and under in my home, so, while that's been an enormous blessing, I wouldn't call it easy. We spent the majority of the year keeping bellies full and noses wiped and then navigating the new world of “the spectrum.” But what made it hard wasn’t just all the things. Everyone has things. What made it hard was that motherhood shook my life up in a way I didn’t see coming and couldn’t see through to the next step. I am so heavily type A that this messed with all my feelings, and a lot of my closest people saw edges rubbed embarrassingly raw (I basically want a do-over for May through August).

What made it hard was me.

But what made it great was grace. While I wouldn’t say I’m speaking from the wisdom of the other side—I’m still very much in the thick of all the beautiful work God has given me— I will say that real grace, healing grace, is more beautiful than I ever imagined it would be.

So yes, it's been a hard year. I feel like so many of us could say that. But the last twelve months have also held a whole lot of good, because God still weaves common graces into our everyday lives. And I think the next twelve will be full of good, too. But because it’s the most wonderful time of the year to think about all the good, and because December says I can, that’s what I’m doing now. In no particular order of value, these were some of the good things…

Our new home. I love it so much I can’t stand it. Four bedrooms all on the same level, a working gas fireplace and a writing room. It’s nothing extravagant but far more than we deserve. I hope this space brings God glory for years to come.

The Open Door Sisterhood retreat. Three gorgeous fall days days nestled in the mountains at a lakeside home, listening to women dream and problem solve, filling one another’s hearts with all the spurring on we need to get back to our lives and back to our God-given work. Heaven on earth. It really was.

The Magic of Motherhood. It really happened. The Coffee + Crumbs team wrote a book! It won’t be out until April of next year, but isn’t it pretty (you have to click to see it)?! We poured our hearts in to this project, and I learned a lot about myself both as a mom and a writer along the way. We hope you love it and nod along with it, because we’re all in this motherhood thing together. 

Five-year anniversary. The first time I left all three littles alone with grandparents was for our five-year anniversary getaway. But before you picture beaches and bikinis and coffee on the veranda, think more along the lines of a local hotel, sweat pants and  milkshakes at Fatburger, sparkling cider in bed and a movie before 9:00pm. It was so Alex and me, and it was perfect. We're so basic.

Cannon saying “set-da!” I wrote about this moment a few months ago, but it still is one of the highlights of my year. He says it all the time now, because anything that involves movement delights him to no end. But I’ll never forget the work it took to pull those words out of him, and I’ll never forget what it felt like to hear him. To many more of those moments- let it be, Lord.  

The books. The Holiness of God, None Like Him, She Reads Truth, The Life We Never Expected. Game changers, y’all. I read a lot of good ones this year, but these are keepers and recommenders and re-readers.

The hot chocolate recipe. OK. Lean in friends, because I have the yummiest easiest best most decadent treat for you. Pour 1 cup of milk in a pan over medium heat. Add 2 tablespoons of raw cacao powder and 2 tablespoons of sugar. Simmer until just barely bubbling. (I had some heavy cream in my refrigerator so I got really crazy and threw a splash in, but you don’t really need it—my diet simply doesn’t start until next year. Maybe the year after.) Carefully pour it in a mug and make sure you’re alone or your kids will steal it. Trust, y’all. Winter goodness in a cup.

A book proposal. Against all odds, and certainly against my ability to manufacture the margin in my life to make it happen, I started writing a book. The book proposal was sent out in the world for review and covered in prayer that if God wants it to land somewhere, it will. But if I know anything it is this: God doesn’t need my words; His will more than suffice. But if I know a second thing it is this: obedience and hard work feel good and right just because they are good and right; the process is good and right. The end result? Well, I always say I write words like I would blow dandelions to the wind: go where you will, words… where God wills.

Jesus. He’s always the best thing. My hope in him has never been more sure. My longing to know him more has never been stronger. He is the one who turned this year into something good.

As I look toward the last few weeks of the year, I am more grateful than ever for so many things— for my marriage and my precious little ones, for my amazing church and irreplaceable friends, and those of you who keep coming back to this space and keep telling me these words are worth toiling over, you’re near the top of the list, too. I hope you know that. This is all for Jesus. If it ever becomes about anything else, I trust you’ll tell me to put my eyes back on eternity, ok?

Let’s walk out this life keeping closest to the one who is able to keep us from stumbling, and let’s savor and practice gratitude for all the good. It’s practice for heaven, when all will be good. No, when all will be perfect.  

Good Friday. It is a day that, for followers of Jesus, is a bit of a misnomer. It is good, in the sense that it was the day our Savior turned over every right of his own to give them to us. It is good because we know that it is followed by the most miraculous event mankind has ever known: the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. It is good because without this day, there is no hope for humanity.

But in reality, this day was painful, it was scary, is was full of fear and it was, for a short time, a moment that darkness won.

The day began with betrayal. Judas, one of Jesus’ closest friends and followers, sold the love and trust built over three years for thirty pieces of silver and a brief moment of recognition from the people in power.

Next came an arrest, and a barrage of false accusations toward a man who refused to defend himself. When cursed, he took it. When insulted, he remained silent. When asked to give an answer as to whether or not he was the Son of God, his only response was, “You have said so.” No arguing. No throwing three years of miracles and testimonies back in his accusers face. Just the greatest display of humility the world has ever seen.

Then came the abuse. The whip. The crown of thorns. The spit and the mockery. And while his body was beaten so was his soul, as no one emerged from the angry crowd to defend him but instead gathered a collective strength to ask that a notorious prisoner be released rather than him.

In the midst of all of this was the pain and confusion of those who gave their lives to follow him. Mary, his mother, watched each drop of blood spill from his body. Peter, a loyal friend and follower, lost himself in doubt and fear and anxiety and three times denied ever knowing him at all. The rest of his small tribe of eleven may have been somewhere in the chaos of the crowd, but none emerged as defender, no one spoke up as an advocate.

Then came the darkness. For three hours in the middle of the afternoon, there was darkness over all the land before the moment that the agonizing cry of Jesus made an echo for eternity: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The sin and struggle of the whole world laid squarely on a man who deserved none of it, satisfying the justice of God, providing every man in history an answer for the condition of his heart.

Death won the day on Good Friday. It won with fear, it won with doubt, and it won with a brief moment of wondering, “where is our Savior now?”

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about how to talk to my kids about Easter. We picked out a cute dress for Harper and polo shirts for Cannon and Jordi. We will have an Easter egg hunt with Grandma and brunch with our family. We will tell the story to Harper with the help of our “Resurrection Eggs” and try to keep the tiny silver cup and crown of thorns out of Cannon’s mouth as we do. For now, these things will suffice. They will mark Easter as a special day in their little minds, and we will pray with growing fervor that the weighty truth of this beautiful holiday lands heavy in their hearts as they grow.

But cute dresses and colorful plastic eggs will not always be enough. Our best attempts at helping our kids make sense of these three days in history will always fall short if we don’t face the truth: we live in a world that feels a lot like Good Friday. The fear in our lives today is real; we are reading stories of innocent lives taken by bombs and guns and we cannot help but wonder where next, God, and who next? How long shall the wicked triumph? The doubt in our lives is real; we are both hearing and living stories of pain and injustice and a life far from that of Eden, and we wonder if our faith is big enough to get through it all. We are watching political rhetoric fall to the lowest level of dignity, if it even has any of that left. We see divisiveness at every turn even among our own families and communities, and a lot of us, we wonder all the time, “where is our Savior now?”

So much of life is a Good Friday kind of feeling.

Mary, Peter, the disciples, and many of the people who put their faith in a man who mystified the first-century world, they spent three days thinking the story ended on Friday. They saw their Rabbi, their friend, put to a torturous death. They had watched with terror and shame as an innocent man was brutally executed and I can only imagine that their grief clouded any ability to know what to do next.

But Sunday came. And we know that on Sunday, two women went to the most guarded tomb in history and found it empty. Empty. A boulder, Roman soldiers, weapons, and law on the side of the accusers, and the once-dead defendant walked out on his own, met the two awe-struck women on the road, and greeted them. 

We know that Jesus then met his disciples on a mountain in Galilee, and before instructing them to tell this very story to the whole world, he promised, “I am with you always...”

We know that the Holy Spirit descended on the small church of believers not many days from that promise, and under the power of that Spirit the first believers spread the gospel of Jesus throughout the ancient world. We gather in churches today, two thousand years later, thanks to the conviction of those brave men and women.

The people who were the most afraid on Good Friday became the most courageous after Sunday. The very same man whom they were afraid for their lives to speak up for became the savior they couldn’t stop talking about. Their fear turned to courage because of Sunday, because of an empty grave, because of an impossible truth: He is not here, He is risen!

The whole earth is groaning, longing for Eden again. It is easy for fear and doubt and wonder to cripple our faith, like they did the evening of Good Friday.

But friends, we also have Sunday.   

As I try to tell these truths to my children, I realize anew how powerful they are to me.

Because soon the little faces in front of me will be older, and I know at some point life will start to feel the Good Friday kind of hard to them, too. But I will tell them that we serve a good, good, Father. We know that he is trustworthy, and we know that his holiness is our hope. I will tell them that our lives are as short as a breath, but that we can tell a beautiful story of redemptive work in the time we are given. I will tell them that if this story we tell on Easter is true, then it changes everything. And if it is not true, not even the Easter egg hunt is worth it. And I will tell them that when it seems like death has won the day, remember that Jesus Christ won the world. Even when life feels heavy like Friday, we can live with the joy and boldness of Sunday. What amazing grace!

And then, because we never outgrow our need to be reminded that our faith is only in that selfless act on the cross, I will tell myself those very same things.

the official mug shot.

The whirlwind of the morning was starting to wear me down. In a mere thirty minutes my un-showered self and my tribe of three were supposed to be out the door, in the car, and on our way to church. Dad was volunteering at church that morning, so he was already gone, but we were going to show up kind and well-behaved and on time, ready with our “so good to see you!” smiles because, for the love, it was church! And church is for Jesus, so our good behavior counts extra there.

(No, it doesn’t.)

(But if I’m real honest I tend to act like it does, like if I can appear really “together” in God’s house then I don’t have to be quite as “together” outside of it.)

(But that’s another story. Let’s get back to this one.)

And then I saw it. The pink. Permanent pink, I should add. It was on the couch. It was on the table. It was on the walls tracking from the playroom up the stairs. Y’all, it was on my daughter’s English muffin, which traced it right back to the source.

“Harper, what’s on your hands?”

“Oh, mommy, I was just making cards for you!”

“Ok, well can I see your hands?”

Shyly, slowly, with the trepidation of a dozen excuses that she couldn’t quite find at the tip of her tongue, she turned her hands over.

Busted.

Ten fingers, perfectly dipped in a pink embossing stamp pad that mommy thought she had put high enough on the shelf. But is anything ever too high for a three-year-old? No. They have ninja like qualities we don’t even know about, and they are stealth enough to open the once out of reach goods as far out of eyesight as they can get from mommy, too.

But church, CHURCH! We are supposed to go to church now! And church is for Jesus, three-year-old! And that means we should act like him, dang it!

(You know where this is going, yes?)

I have to parent no more than one hour every morning before hypocrisy slaps me in the face.

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time lately with John Piper’s words. And as always, they are compelling—as beautifully crafted as they are powerfully convicting. One of the lessons that I’ve been working out in my heart is what Piper calls “a single, all-embracing, all-transforming passion: to glorify God by enjoying and displaying his excellence.” Enjoy God. Show Him to others. Piper says it is our aim to “joyfully magnify Christ—to make Him look great in all that we do.”

Here’s the thing, I read those words just two hours before the great ink-down in our house. And when I looked around at the pink that may or may not come off of the various surfaces ten little fingers had left it, I wanted to be mad. I wanted to yell. I wanted to shame my little three-year-old into a behavior that would make my morning easier, especially because we were going to church. I mean, didn’t she know that?!

But those words… enjoy God, show Him to others. The mirror of my own reproof spun right around, and all I could think of was my own heart. The correction from the Lord felt something like this:

Katie, don’t you dare enjoy Me just in the church lobby.

Or to earn favor among friends.

Or to scratch and claw for influence.

Or to be seen or heard or applauded.

Enjoy Me because I am God. Show Me to others because I am good.

And really, before you worry one bit about how your Christianity is displayed on the outside, know that I care so much more how it is displayed in your home. Show Me to your babies. Tell them how gracious I am, and live out what loving-kindness actually looks like. Discipline because you love them, but love them as you discipline.

This is your work today. These three faces, one with pink ink staining her fingers, are my sweet gift to you. Be glad in me so you can help them to be glad in Me, too. The hope of both of your lives is faith in Me. 

There are a lot of days that I feel like I am drowning in little people. And responsibilities. And dreams. And so many- mostly good- things. But I know that it is in those moments when it’s most important to ask Jesus to help me make Him look great in all I do. All I do. A deep breath, a prayer, and a gentle correction, then the whole trajectory of our morning is different. The role of mama was not given to me because I am good enough for it; it was given to me because God knew he was going to show me more of Himself in this way. And he is, every single day. My inadequacies- and they are many- remind me each hour that I need his grace, and that it will be enough.

“God made me a mother because he jealously and rightly desires praise for his own name, and this is how he saw fit to do it. God aims to glorify himself through our family, and we get to be carried along by his grace.” –Gloria Furman