“And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth… For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” 
John 1:14, 16

“What’s wrong, babe?” my husband gently asked me.

“Nothing.” (Lie. Nothing is almost always a lie.)

“Katie, I can see it all over you. Is something going on?”

“I don’t know. I’m just anxious,” I tell him, as I refuse to stop switching out the washer and dryer and make eye contact with him, like a passive-aggressive reminder that I work hard around here and I want him to notice that.

But he notices my heart. “Ok, what are you anxious about?”

And I know, I absolutely know what I am anxious about. I am anxious about being a mom. I am anxious about my son’s new hitting habit. I am anxious about the minefield of social media. I am anxious about the future. I am anxious about my writing, which I should probably quit. I am anxious that everyone hates me. I am anxious because there is so much to do, and never enough time. I am mad and anxious and my kids are hard and my work is crap and I feel politically and culturally homeless and everyone is yelling at each other and I hate conflict and I just feel so anxious! But that is not what I tell him. “I don’t know why I’m anxious.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.” Yes, I do. But I want him to work a little harder.

“Ok, babe. Well I love you, and I’m listening when you are ready.” And then he leaves the laundry room and I stand there with all of my self-justified reasons to be mad, and as I throw the last wet towel into the dryer and slam the door I feel it, the pang of conviction that always comes when I forget all of the most important things.

*****

Grace. It is one of those words heavy with meaning yet thrown around lightly like confetti and unfortunately, it’s impact rarely seems to last much longer. We take it so lightly, this grace thing. We say grace. We ask God for grace. We like grace. But we are also very selfish about grace. We demand it from others when we feel judged and we tend to withhold if from others when we feel wronged. If I am honest, sometimes it feels like I can tend to carry grace around more like a gun ready to defend myself than like a white flag ready to fall to my knees at the reality of how desperate I am without it.

And y’all, I am so very desperate for grace.

This day, this hour, this minute.

The greek work for grace is charis. Isn’t that beautiful? It means “that which affords joy, pleasure, delight, sweetness, charm, loveliness: grace of speech,” and my favorite, “the divine influence upon the heart and its reflection in life, including gratitude.”

…its reflection in life, including gratitude.

I have had a hard time feeling gratitude lately, and much less of a hard time throwing out all of the reasons why I don’t feel it. One needs thirty seconds or less on social media these days to see one or two or three thousand reasons our world does not feel grateful either.

But I realized something about myself a long time ago: when my heart is feeling this anxious, this scared, and this self-centered, it’s actually a sign that I have not been paying attention to Jesus, and a clear indication that I have mistaken myself for the rescuer when I am merely, humbly, and of no merit of my own, the rescued.

And things get real ugly when I get those two things confused.

If I am the rescuer than this all depends on me: my children have to make me look good in pictures and in person or I am failing. My writing has to be good and high on approval every time or it is not worth doing. My precious little boy who understands the world so differently than the rest of us has to learn how to function well and, God-willing, on his own someday, or I have dropped this beautiful special needs assignment God gave me. And must I even mention the social issues I care so deeply about, the women dancing in clubs and selling their bodies, the unborn children who don’t get to live and the children born who are not adequately cared for; the oil pipeline that is unjust and the leadership that makes me crazy and did I mention it all makes me feel homeless?

And really quickly I see nothing to be grateful for, and a big to-do list to be mourning over. Grace has no reflection in my life, and I have no gratitude. Because being a rescuer is hard and don’t people see how hard I am working?!

Don’t people see?

Oh, if you only knew how many of my issues start there.

And yet I know the heartbeat of my anxiety: I forgot that I was rescued, and in that rescue, given grace. And as so beautifully put in the gospel of John and then explained by Matthew Henry: “it is ‘even grace,’ so great a gift, so rich, so invaluable. We have received no less than grace; the goodwill of God toward us and the good work of God in us… All believers receive from Christ’s fullness; the best and greatest saints cannot live without him, and the weakest and most insignificant can live through him. Because we have nothing except what we have received, proud boasting is excluded; and because there is nothing we lack that we cannot receive, our perplexing fears are silenced.”

Nothing we have except what we have received. Nothing we lack that we cannot receive.

I am not a rescuer. I am rescued.

All of us, we are rescued. And that’s grace, even grace!

There is much good work to be done, but we do not do it as rescuers. We ought not to think that highly of ourselves. The good in us is not actually us, but Jesus, but grace. And all I can think to do in response to that is beg him for more of it.

Maybe I feel homeless because this world isn’t home. And I know I feel anxious because I tend to add myself to an equation that needs no addition. But today, may what I say, how I speak, and what I do start here: grace upon grace.

*****

“Hey babe, I’m sorry I used my heart as a reason to be frustrated at you. I just, I just feel anxious and I really do know why, but I don’t know what to do about it.”

And he responds so well. “Can I pray for you?”

I did not always receive that request well, not from my husband. I have spent a long time wanting to be heard and not prayed for, and far too often still default to that, we both do. But not when I know I am rescued, not when I see so clearly my need for grace.

“Yes, I would love that. I need it. Would you pray that every single minute of every single day, God would help me to remember that I’m rescued.” 

Hi. We’ve met, so we can spare a more formal introduction. You’ve been hanging around our house for a little over a year, but your presence was felt so sparingly those first few months I kept thinking you would go away. You didn’t, you pulled up a chair, picked a room in the house, and made yourself comfortable. You never did ask me how I felt about you being here but maybe that’s because you knew what I would say: I don’t understand who you are, please leave. That’s what every mama would say, right?

You see autism, you are still such a mystery. Where did you come from, and why did you chose to stay here? Because as soon as I thought it was you knocking at the door, I did everything possible to make you go away. Everything. Speech. Occupational. Behavioral. Then diet. Therapies and doctors and specialists and all manner of mom blogs and books. I bought essential oils, autism! But I never turned my eyes away from the red flags; I stared at them in the face and drove that sweet nineteen month old all over town looking for ways to take them down.

You never got the hint. Social cues aren’t your strength, though, so I should have expected that.

And how you got here remains a mystery. Oh sure, a lot of people have opinions about it, a fact that gives me anxiety to no end. There are so many opinions about you! Did you know, autism, that there are people who think I invited you over? That your presence here is because I did or did not do something that actually welcomed you in? And because you prefer to stay mysterious, you won’t help us clear up this confusion by just making your reasons known. But I know I can’t keep dwelling on that, on your reasons. I have to let you off the hook. Or maybe I should say that I have to let myself off the hook. You’re here, so let’s just get back to that.

You see, when I first noticed you, you looked more like a shy little boy who was still looking for his words. You were never angry, you ate really well—as far as eating like a toddler goes well—you slept all night, and you remained so elusive that everyone around us said, “No. That’s not autism. Autistic kids do this and that and not this and not that.” I have since learned that any sentence that starts with “Autistic kids do (or do not do)…” is a slippery slope to nowhere. You’re like a fingerprint, autism: you look so different on everyone.

And I know you are going to keep changing. You like to keep people on their toes, don’t you? Some days you’re in a great mood and some days you’re in a bad mood. Some days I hardly notice you and some days I cry from sun up to sun down. But that’s also childhood, so I guess you’re not such an outlier. Not yet anyway.

And still, you have changed everything for us, because you are on our minds all the time! I see a cute picture of my friends and their kids, and I am jealous that you make it so hard for my little guy to look at the camera. We go to friends’ homes for dinner and I cannot relax and enjoy a conversation because the moment you are out of sight I am worried you left the house with my child. The vacations and the parks and the places that you might enjoy but you might also very well turn in to an epic disaster. The therapies we drive to every day. The way you make me so nervous to check my mail and find another bill that I only do it once a week now. The way that friends ask, “how are you?” and I am certain they want to know something, anything besides, “Well, I’m still trying to figure out how to host this long-term guest named autism,” but I don’t have much else to say. The questions—oh the questions will kill me if I let them. The fact that you are so set on your choose-your-own-adventure ways that we will never be one step ahead of you, but making decisions as we see yours. That bugs me about you, autism, just so you know.

And then there is this: the fact that I just do not know if you were part of my sweet boy from the beginning, or if you, like an illness or disease, came later, separately. Is my little man autistic? Or does he have autism? People have cancer, they are not cancer. But I am not sure about you, not yet anyway. I guess we will have to keep getting to know one another.

And let’s just talk for a minute about that precious boy, because he is one of the greatest joys of my life. His smile will melt you, and if you’re lucky enough to get a great big pucker, well, you’re lucky. And he can run! Like, three miles ain’t no thing for this two and half year old. And he loves, loves, love to play hide and seek, and the belly laughs that come from him when we do are truly the sweetest sound in the world. And he snuggles. He snuggles better than anyone, folding up his legs and tucking in his arms and finding a place for his head right in the nook between my neck and chest. My little boy is part of my heart, and he always will be.

Autism, it is no secret that I didn’t want you around, and that I have now spent a year trying to learn—and many times failing in the most visible ways—how to accept your presence. But I am writing you this letter because I have decided not to be mad at you anymore. Because you are just, well, you’re just who you are. Being mad, feeling pity for myself, looking at my little boy as if he got robbed of a good life, those things are not grounded in any sort of hope and you, autism, you do not get to steal our hope. It's not in you anyway. And I am also leaving this near-constant state of being offended behind. You have welcomed yourself in to so many people’s lives, and everyone knows someone—or knows someone who knows someone—that has spent a lot of time with you. And because of the combination of your prevalence and utter mysteriousness, people always have a story, a book recommendation, an article, an experience, a reason. But they all mean well; they are just trying to help us find a matching finger print. And what would I prefer? That everyone say nothing? No. Of course not. You are the big white elephant in the room and you know me, I prefer to talk about elephants. You are just the only one that has ever made me cry so much as I do.

But it’s a new year and a new day and, my favorite of all, there are new mercies for all of us. Even you, autism. So, since you are here, let’s really get to know one another. I promise to be kind as we do. For purposes I may not know until heaven, God allowed our path to cross with yours. And while I do not trust myself with the weighty responsibilities of taking care of you, I do trust Him.

I trust Him.

So, let’s start fresh.

Hi, autism, my name is Katie. I’m a hard worker and a learner and I love my little boy more than I could possibly tell you. And I also believe this: God is good, all the time. You may have made my job a bit more complicated, but you did not change how much I love it. So I think you picked the right mom to get to know.

Love,
Katie

When I was in elementary school, I remember so clearly dreaming about being in middle school: about what it would be like to have my own locker and what pictures and Teen Bop cutouts I would sneak in there. My private school teachers would be quick to confiscate and punish any visible heartthrobs taped up inside, but my friends and I had plans to be elusive and come on, was J.T.T. not worth that risk in 1997? My eleven-year old self could hardly imagine anything better than my own combination lock and the décor of my choosing and I thought “seventh grade, yes, seventh grade will be the year it’s really good.”

And seventh grade came and went and like many unsure-but-faking-it freshmen, I went in to high school dressed in my best with a little green Clinique eye make-up to accessorize. I watched in awe as the juniors and seniors held hands with their boyfriends and donned their car keys at lunch as they headed off campus or home for the day. “What would it be like to have a boyfriend and a car?!” I wondered on the daily. I had a significant case of acne and two baby teeth that held on until I was fourteen before they were finally pulled, so the boyfriend would have to wait a few years, but I still spent many a passing periods daydreaming about the possibilities of my social status and thought, “senior year, yes, senior year will be the year that it’s really good.”

And senior year came and went, with both a car—that I loved for fourteen years until a broken engine forced me to trade it in— and a boyfriend—that I thought-I-loved for fourteen months until a broken heart taught us both a valuable lesson in giving too much of yourself away too early. But with my sights set clearly on the warm desert of Arizona and a campus bigger and bursting with more energy than my little mind could handle, college became the next stop on my list of elusive check points. “I’ll finally learn how to do my hair and wear make-up! I’ll meet my future husband! I’ll be an All-American soccer player! College, yes, college will be the years that it’s really good.”

And my college years came and went, without a doubt some of the richest of my life, but I still didn’t know how to do my makeup like the sorority girls (lofty goal, I know, but I sure envied them strolling down Palm Walk in the center of campus), I never met the guy, and a dozen knee surgeries ended my soccer career far earlier than I was ready.

I think it’s clear where this is all going.

My life has always been a what’s next kind of life. The bright lights of college faded and I longed for graduate school to find more. Then many of my friends started getting married and a few started having babies and all of a sudden an invisible timer got switched on in my mind, one that not only anticipated the next season of life but rushed it. “Marriage, children, a home, yes, when I have those things, then that’s when it will be really good.”

And “those years” are where I find myself today, and they are really good. But this tendency to look ahead and not around is still a frequent visitor I entertain, wondering what it will be like when my body will be mine again, when my time will be a little more free, when my home will be a little less of a disaster, when our finances won’t be quite so tight. I look ahead and have a dangerous inclination to think “yes, those will be the years that it’s really good.”

Here is the problem I am finding: when I say “those will be the years that it’s really good,” I am not even sure what it is. What exactly is going to be really good? My social status, my makeup, my life? When I look back on all of those years I can see that I eventually got— in some way, shape, or form—everything I ever wanted. The soccer career did not shape out the way I planned, marriage is very different than planning a wedding, and being a mom has brought challenges I never even dreamed of undertaking. But almost all of what I looked forward to is now right in front of me. (I’m sure you’ll be relieved to know I even have a little bit of a clue about makeup, because Jesus loves me and sent friends to intervene on the ten-year run the green Clinique was making.)

So why on earth am I still looking forward?

I think it can only be because I have bought the lie today is not enough.

And that is what I know has to change. It, whatever it is, does not exist just beyond the grasp of what I’ve been given. This past year has truly taught me that the thing I am really longing for is heaven, and I will not ever find that here on earth. But the only thing that can satisfy our hearts until then is the pursuit of God’s glory, and I can most certainly find that today in all that I do: in the ways that I speak, in the posture of my heart, and in the delight I take in my actual life. Today is my good life.

So that is what this year is about for me: today. Beautiful today, with whatever it brings. This is the year I will stop seeing today as a placeholder for tomorrow, or next year, or when my kids can put their own shoes on or, God-willing, when my son might speak more. I have dreams about what I hope to build with all of my ‘todays’ and what I pray might happen in one of my coming ‘tomorrows’, but I cannot continue to hold these things at the expense of living my ‘todays,’ because I’m missing it, I’m missing the good life I’ve already been given. Today is what we have, and today has all we need to accomplish the purpose we were created for: glory. Not ours, but His.

So here is to today, this day, to the breathing and writing and loving and holding and giving we will do today. Lord, would you make it all worthy of the honor that will be all yours, someday.

"Above all, the great God with approval or disapproval beholds the transactions of this day; he sees what motives govern you and will proclaim them before the assembled universe. Oh solemn and affecting thought! The work before you is great and requires great searching of the heart, great self-diffidence and self-abasement. How necessary that you feel your dependence on God; you cannot perform any part of your work without his help. Under a sense of weakness go to Him for help...

Although the work is too great for you, yet let such considerations as these revive your desponding heart. Because the cause is good, better than life, you may well give up all for it... The campaign is short; the reward is great, and being found faithful, you will receive a crown of glory that fades not away."  -Lemuel Haynes, 1818

The lure of the blank calendar, it tempts me with possibilities every single year. This is the year I will be more, be different, be better, I think. And because I cannot resist the temptation offered by a package of new sharpie pens and a completely clean planner, I dive in to New Year’s dreaming and goal-setting and word-choosing like the best of them. I consider myself a connoisseur of list-making, actually: those of you who share in my joy of ‘checking boxes’ will understand that. And this year, perhaps more than any other, and I know with so many of you, I am desperate for new.

Desperate: having an urgent need; eager, impatient, fraught, forlorn. It sounds a bit dramatic when I put it like that, but in some ways it is an accurate representation of my heart.

__________

Just after Thanksgiving my little family drove to the base of Mt. Spokane and cut down our own Christmas Tree for the first time. It was cold and damp and gray outside, and I had to grab Cannon by the hood of his jacket no less than five times before he took himself for a jaunt into the woods, but we absolutely loved it. There was a bonfire and candy canes and the smell of fresh pine everywhere. We found the perfect tree for the corner of our living room, cut it down and then watched the staff get it ready to travel home.

Just before they wrapped our tree, a young man placed the base in a small box-looking machine, stepped back and turned it on. With wide eyes and a bit of confusion, Harper watched this machine shake our tree relentlessly, buzzing and humming as thousands of little pine needles fell to the ground around it.

“What is he doing, mommy?”

“Oh Harper, that machine is actually helping our tree. It’s going to make all the pine needles that aren’t healthy fall off, so that what we take home is a beautiful, strong tree!”

“Why is it so loud?”

“Well, it has to shake pretty hard to do its job. But once it is done, our tree will be fresh and ready to decorate!”

“Oh,” she said in relief, believing me when I told her what was happening to our tree was good, even though it looked intense.

I think I know a little bit how that tree felt, because this has been the year God took my faith, gently held it out for me to look at, and gave it a good, hard, much-needed shaking.      

And as much as I want to run to something new, something with potential rather than memories I cannot change, I know that God didn’t do all that shaking just for me to move on even though I so want to. I want to move on. I want to stop crying and feeling fragile when I pride myself on being faithful. I want to get back to genuine joy. I even want to write about something different, something that isn't born from the curveball life threw at us this year. I want to stop feeling like I am putting one foot in front of the other simply doing what I am supposed to do and start feeling like I am running my race with the energy and purpose a Christ-follower should have.

But sometimes, it’s not as easy as that. Sometimes, we just need to slow down, then take a good look at all the things that fell off of our heart during the shaking: the pride, the self-sufficiency, the correlation between my works and my blessings that I absolutely believed existed. The life that I wanted was also one that I thought was honoring God; but it was, in all honestly, equally honoring to me. And that life, with those motivations, that is what is left on the ground right around me.

__________

For 30 years, I have had a strong faith in Jesus, one I believe is grounded in as much logic as faith can have, but made true only by the work of the Holy Spirit in me. My belief in Jesus has, for as long as I can remember, been real and deep and even meaning-making for me. It is how I have always seen the world and three decades and many naysayers offering perspectives to the contrary later, I still cannot make sense of the world any other way but His. And yet, my faith has been the faith of someone on the balcony, not the faith of someone traveling down the road.

Sure, I’ve given my thoughts, offered my opinions on the best way to get there- wherever the destination might have been- even shared truths meant to motivate and encourage travelers. But I’ve done it from the balcony. I have talked about God being good, but it’s been from a personal place where it was really easy to believe that. I've never been one to ignore the pain and plight of so much of the world, but I never had to bring that pain and plight home. This year, I have, and I feel a whole lot more like a traveler. I still talk about God being good, but I have to watch a little boy hurt himself in my care and actually believe it; we have to face a very unpredictable and very unnerving future and say "but God, you are still good."

The balcony was not a bad place to be, but being a traveler is what finally shook all that wasn’t real off of my faith.

A year ago I would have offered you a little bit of Jesus and a little bit of me.

Today I know I have nothing to offer, I'm just sharing what I’m learning as I travel.

__________
 

A few days ago I went to leave a message for a group of friends about why I could not commit to something, and without warning the tears just started falling. It is in moments like these that I realize I might not be done being shaken. When my friend asks at gymnastics class how we are, or when a phone call across the country to my best friend goes from easy catching up to deep sorrow about a hard week in seconds. My unbelief gives me away in moments like this. I am shamefully prideful and still, at times, feel paper thin. I never know when I will be able to talk about our life and Cannon’s journey in a manner of fact way or when I won’t be able to get a sentence out before I’m choking up. But I do know this: we are not moving on from this year as much as we are moving in to what this year taught us. And in the midst of a complicated diagnosis that very much complicated our life, that lesson can be summed up pretty easily: God is faithful forever, perfect in love, and sovereign over us. 

My prayer is that I would walk in to a New Year knowing that my faith may have been shaken, but my soul isn't stirred. Jesus won it long ago and he will keep it until the end. I'll fail a thousand more times at doing this life well, but He won't. Maybe I'm not desperate for new so much as I am desperate for Him. 

I fell hard on the ice last week. Real hard. It happened in an instant: I was getting babies out of their car seats to go watch a preschool Christmas concert and in no time at all I was on the ground of the parking lot with a one-year-old cocooned to my chest, unaware of the fall at all. But if my instinctual reaction was to protect Jordi, something else had to give, and since no hands were available to break my fall it was just a tailbone and solid ice. The pain quickly shot up my back and down my right leg, but an entourage of parents and grandparents ready to see their four-year-olds under the spotlight were all sympathetically “ohhh” and “ouchhh”-ing from a few feet away, so I had to act like this was no big deal. But it was. I smiled my way through the concert and then finally let myself feel how much it hurt when we got home, and as I laid on my back unable to roll up to my tailbone at all, I realized that this was basically a perfect metaphor for what life can feel like: I fell, it hurt, and I cannot carry all of this anymore.

My heart has always battled bouts of this urge to quit. Always. I ran for student council president in eight grade and lost and then never, ever tried again, even though I always wanted to. But trying again and losing was basically the worst thing my fourteen-year-old mind could imagine happening so it was never worth the risk. It took me six solid years of writing before I ever called myself a writer, because for most of those six years I operated on a fast-moving pendulum of “I want to write forever!” to “I should quit, no one like these words anyway,” and the poles of those feelings could knock back and forth on the daily.

Because here is the thing: trying feels vulnerable, and what if you try and fail? The people pleaser in me feels the slightest bit of shame at even the thought.

And last week, perhaps more than I have ever felt the urge to quit, I really wanted to. I was at the end of what I could handle, the joy I should have in the faces of my babies felt more like a grudge, the words I put to paper felt meaningless, and my body physically craved a sleep so deep that I could just have a break from thinking about all that is in front of me right now.

The narrative reel of my mind spun on storylines like:

Years of therapy produces no real results for autistic child.

Strong-willed teenage daughter rebels from parents.

Mom writes about trusting God in hard circumstances but cannot actually trust him when life is the hardest.

The theme was clear: what if I try so hard at all of these things God has given me, and ultimately, I fail?

When that question creeps in, I resort to doing what I have done so many times before: I decided I simply cannot try so hard, because that gives my heart an illusion of being a little bit more protected.

But here is what I know: that is the wrong narrative to begin with, and that is fear. Because God has given us work to do. It’s hard work, sometimes it is downright painful work, but it is good work. It’s parenting for the long haul and accepting that even when we steward these little hearts to the best of our ability, we are merely planting and only God makes things grow; it is repairing what the world would absolutely deem a hopeless marriage even when you would be justified in walking away from it; it is doing what you know God has given you to do: writing, creating, serving, making music, caring and pouring in to someone even when it feels like none of it matters. Remember that the world uses a very different metrics system than Jesus, and if it is this work that we want to quit, these good endeavors that God can truly get all the glory for, I think it is really the Holy Spirit pushing at the seams of our heart saying, “Pay attention to me, because if you’re trying to do this on your own you will want to quit.”

(And sometimes that nudge is less gentle and you actually fall on your arse, which is apparently what my heart needed to pay attention.)

Life is not so pretty and clean-cut that I can pretend a well-written sentiment will be enough to get me through the hardest things. I know myself well enough to be certain that I will want to quit again, because there will be long seasons that do not produce fruit and there will be efforts met with no applause and there will always be fear competing with faith.

And there will always, always be Jesus.

The target of our lives is not moving. It is sure, and it is steady, because our aim is the glory of God. It is not elusive, and it is not just beyond what I can manage. It’s there. My job is simply to reorient my steps to that end, and not to the gains I hope for in this world because those are the things that are moving. Following Jesus has always been modeled by laying down our lives and our gains for something better, for Him.

Perhaps my favorite prayer in all of scripture comes from the plea of a desperate father, crying out to Jesus and saying, “I believe; help my unbelief!” Those words might be all we can find, but when we want to quit, they are also all that we need.

Lord, I do believe. Help my unbelief! Help me Jesus, to not want the kind of faith that believes you are only good if our circumstances change, but to believe that you are good because you never change. 

Three sets of little hands surround you. One pulling at the neck line of your shirt with the force of a baby determined to show he is hungry. The other voraciously throwing tissue paper out of packages that weren’t hers to open, but who can tell a four-year-old a present is not hers to open? And the third, the middle child, unsure of what to make of the colors and the noise and all the new things around him, a few feet off to the side with his hands covering his ears.

Deep breath, mama. This is it. This is the kind of Christmas morning you did not even know you had been dreaming about.

You may have been picturing table settings and matching pajamas and sipping hot cocoa by the fireplace, but you had to move all the beautifully set silverware out of reach of the toddler’s seat, the baby spit up on the striped jammies, and the fireplace is too hot to be safely nearby it. You may have thought this morning would be different than all the other mornings, that the toddlers would fight a little bit less and that patience would float through the air right alongside the sound of Bing Crosby and land magically on everyone, all of us dreaming of our white Christmas and living the stuff of perfect Holiday cards.

But you’re a mama. And it is a special morning in so many ways. But it is the same morning in so many others. Hungry bellies and urgent requests for more milk and grandma upped the ante by giving the four-year-old a candy cane before breakfast. It’s Christmas!, she says. And of course it is, so you will handle the fallout of the sugar crash just like you have a hundred times before.

For a moment, you may be tempted to gaze out the frosted window and long for the years ahead, when the kids are all self-sufficient enough to get their own milk and dexterous enough to not spill on their pajamas and—dare I say— compliant enough to smile for a picture in front of the fireplace. You may close your eyes and think of the Holiday season when you are not refereeing whose turn it is to open the next gift and not pulling ribbon out of the baby’s mouth. You may wonder when it will get easier to manage the beautiful chaos of a Christmas morning celebration, a day when those family dinners with turkey and rolls and candles on the table—real, lit candles on the table!—will actually happen.  You may be tempted to think that these years and these holidays that don’t feel altogether like the holidays, are just fillers for the perfection ahead.

But mama, wrap your hands around your warm mug and lean in closely, because there is good news for all of us. Perfection has only ever, and for always, existed in the baby we celebrate this season. It was never our job to create a holiday so magical for our children that we can capture it in filtered pictures. Quite the opposite, actually. Our job has always been to live a life so honest for our children that they see how much we need that perfect baby, our King Jesus. That’s who we sing for. That’s who we stay up late wrapping gifts and putting postage stamps on cards for. That perfect, His perfection, is what we hold up, because our perfection will never get past chaos. And if these years of little faces and loud voices and the constant need for hypervigilance around the ornaments teach us anything, it’s that where we are right now is good, because Jesus is always good. Perfect, in fact.

So breathe in that evergreen scent and savor it. Then go grab the baby, because he’s got a low Fircrest branch in his hands and the glass turtle doves are dangerously close.

Merry Christmas mamas. Bless the mess, and praise the Savior who came to clean it.  

*A short excerpt of this essay was featured in the 2016 Pursuit Holiday Magazine

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.  

Last week marked an almost-forgotten memory for Alex and me. Not because it wasn’t special, it was. And not because we aren’t sentimental people, we are. This memory has just been a little bit buried by the here and now. Six years ago, Alex got down on one knee (during a college football game, because he loves me) and asked me to be his bride. We immediately drove to the mall for “engagement pictures” in the photo booth and did not let go of one another’s hands for the next five hours.

Every newly engaged gal knows what follows next: I stared at my ring at every opportunity. Hands on the steering wheel- look at my ring! On the elliptical- look at my ring! Typing on the computer- look at my ring! It was simple and modest, but I walked around for weeks just knowing that everyone around me must have noticed the new addition to my left hand, and all that it meant for me. I no longer had to pretend that I was buying bridal magazines for a friend. I could actually google wedding venues in the clear view of another person. I could plan, plan, plan and since I had basically been doing so secretly for about six years, this came very naturally. I was in love. We were in love. All we saw was love.

Still, Alex and I were blessed with very wise people around us during our engagement, so we were not living completely in fantasy land. We knew marriage would be hard. We knew we had to prepare more for a lifetime than for a party. We knew keeping God at the center of our lives was the only way to begin our life together. We knew.

But we also didn’t, because we had no idea what it would look like for all of those things to be true.

*****

Becoming parents will change a marriage in profound ways, because the love – and money and space and time— that was divided between two people must be not only be shifted around, but it actually has to grow to make room for a third, or fourth or fifth or sixth person. It’s simple math, really (or is it physics? I’m a words girl, I don’t know). If two things fit comfortably in a set space, when we add more we either have to redefine comfort or find a bigger space; but it’s hard for everything to stay the same without constantly running in to one another.

When Alex and I watched our son develop (I should say not develop) and land in the category of special needs, we were, in essence, handed something that takes up a whole lot of space.     

I can tell you that things get tense easily. So easily it’s scary. We started running in to one another before we knew how to adjust our space. There would be days early on where I thought Cannon was having a great day— good eye contact, looking up at the sound of his name, signing for more— and as I would share my optimism with Alex, if he did not match it, if he didn’t see the same things and feel what I felt, we would instantly be at each other. I would accuse him of being negative and pessimistic, and he would accuse me of not letting him feel what he needed to. And then the roles would reverse a thousand times: I would be feeling so low about Cannon’s progress and Alex would be feeling great about it; then I would think him ignorant and he would think me cynical. A long period of silent treatment usually followed these moments, as we both at different times felt like we had vulnerably shared that we were hopeful only to feel like our hope was batted away by one another.

And when two people can’t hope for something together, it gets all kinds of hard. Doesn’t so much of our pain come from misplaced hope?

But those conversations were, and still are, only the minor players. Permission to speak freely? Forgive the overgeneralization, but I think in general men don’t need to be happy to want to have sex. Women, however, often do. When a mama is just flat out low for months at a time, the bedroom is not exactly the most happening place. And that matters in marriage. It matters so much. Then there’s the budgets that need a major overhaul, the suddenly limited supply of babysitters because not just anyone can handle a little boy who can’t communicate his needs, and the fact that autism is just always on our freaking minds because it has to be: does he want raisins? Are the doors locked? Why is he crying? Are you taking him to therapy today? If we go to the birthday party do you want to shadow Cannon? Is he kicking his crib or hitting his head?

It all just takes up a lot of space.

There’s the general thought floating around out there that 80% of marriages with an autistic child end in divorce. Well, that’s not really true, but special needs absolutely puts a unique stress on marriage. We know it, because we have seen a hundred tiny splinters turn in to actual wedges between us in the last year. Every marriage has those splinters, a special needs marriage just has different ones—maybe more of them, but I don’t know that for sure. We all need guards in our marriages and we all need Jesus. Still, Alex and I looked at the very real evidence that many special needs children end up being raised by single parents at a time, and we said, “No. We do this together. Very imperfectly, but always together.” I don’t know how we could ever do it apart.

We don’t have a formula for navigating our marriage on this journey, but we have one thing that we believe has made all the difference: a burning desire for God’s glory. And that’s really it, that is our answer. So we start there and we end there. Alex led the way on this—this man has put more scripture in his heart and mind in the last six months than in our entire marriage. It’s his oxygen. When he is playing with the kids he constantly stops and says “guys, look at the clouds, did you know the Heavens declare the glory of God!” Sometimes Cannon will look up and sometimes he won’t, but I can tell you it is impossible not to feel held and provided for when you are saying out loud that even “the sky declares His handiwork!” Your eyes immediately find your son and you think “Yes, Cannon, your life declares the glory of God and the way he made you proclaims his handiwork!” God’s word instantly changes the way we see this struggle— as if we are in those moments not fighting it but letting God do what he will in it.

Daily we are finding that when we believe in the perfect ending of this story, God’s story, the same things take a much different shape. Our hope is reoriented to the only thing that can sustain it, the gospel. Autism, while it may make us weary many days, doesn’t loosen our grip on one another, it forces us to grip the cross like our life depends on it—because it does. But friends, I promise you, when we are grabbing hold of Jesus through the access we have to him in his word, He holds us. And then we don’t have to stay in the place of “why would God let Cannon go through this?” because we know: it’s for his glory.

*****

My faith in Jesus, and my marriage to Alex, is not the same as it was six years ago when I was blissfully unaware of the nuances of marriage and parenting and thought picking colors was preparing us for big decisions later on. Today, I realize that I know so much less about anything but desire so much more of Jesus, and that is because God gave us the blessing of our sweet boy. Autism woke me up to God’s redemptive plan, and it forever changed the way I hope my marriage reflects God’s glory. And while I will always have days that I want someone to listen to how hard this can be, or feel bad that it costs so much money, or have sympathy because school and vacations and holidays are always going to look different for us, what I want my life to say far more than anything else is this: “Come and see what God has done: he is awesome in his deeds toward the children of man… Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell you what he has done for my soul.”

Alex, I'm so  grateful we get to do this together.

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

Colossians 1:15-17

By him. Through him. For him.

Six words that are becoming a lifeline to my anxious, wandering heart these days.

Right in front of me, I see so much that makes me want to run. I see a stack of insurance paperwork that has officially overgrown the paperclip. I see a scatterplot data sheet where I track every single SIB (self-injurious behavior) my sweet boy resorts to out of frustration so that we can nail down antecedents and coping mechanisms.

I see a handful of dear friends absolutely distraught at the outcome of our democratic process and another handful hesitantly relieved. I see our communities existing on far ends of a spectrum that no man-made bridge can bring together, and I see fingers pointing at one another across the aisles of our churches, not just our political leanings. But I see many people somewhere in the middle, knowing that from the day we demanded a king* our fate was sealed: a sinner would always be our political leader, no matter the banner they carried in to that position.

But it’s a mess, so much of it. Life can be a mess. Autism is brutal and politicians operate and execute on half-truths, at best. And I have to be honest, some days my mind runs anxiously away with the headlines: the ones in my own home and the ones we are screaming at one another.

But by him. Through him. For him.

All things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities— by him, through him, and for him.

It’s a truth that stands forever. But dang, it does beg some hard questions from us. When I look at my Cannon, I don’t get the luxury of basking in God’s goodness because circumstances are good. No. Autism is so, so hard. Instead, we have to confront questions like this: is it really possible that something like autism could exist for God’s purposes? Would a loving God really allow a child to have a handicap that he will carry with him through adulthood, or is this just a flaw in the system?

And as followers of Jesus, we don’t get the luxury of looking around the world and at our own nation and putting hashtag blessed on every picture of the flag. No. People are hurting and scared and imagining a future in this very country they believe their own children are not welcome in. Instead we have to ask if we truly believe that God knew before he divided darkness and light who would be the head of the free world all these millennia later. Would He allow corruption and power hungry men and women in places of great decision-making power? Would he allow a nation to fall? Would he sustain a nation through turmoil and blame shifting? Was the election of 2016 just a mistake while God was looking away?

By him, through him, for him.

There is no flaw in God’s system. And the only time in all of history he ever looked away was when the sin of the world landed on his precious son; a pain so great for a Father who so perfectly loved his son that even He had to turn his face away**.

So how do we make sense of all the mess?

We remember by him, through him, for him.

We go back to the truth that God’s purpose is not to bless us. That’s not popular, but it’s true. God’s purpose is his glory. His glory is our good. Our good is being made more like Jesus through the sanctifying work that is raising a child with special needs or loving a neighbor who makes us crazy or actually praying for a leader who arouses nothing but animosity in our hearts.

The hard part is not looking around at the messes we all live in and being angry; the hard part is being hopeful, in having an absolute expectation of coming good; it’s loving and listening well and showing up and standing on God’s word because it is the truest thing about who we are and what we are even doing here. The hard part is being so undone with gratitude that the world wonders how we could be so joyful when something so big invades our lives. Jesus holds all things together, even the things that look broken by autism and irrevocably damaged by leadership. If our hope was only here, of course those things would shake us. But if our hope is truly in God’s kingdom, we are not shaken because He is never shaken.

God will get the glory for every big and little story of history, even this inch of it that we occupy. We can be sure that even when we don’t understand, all things are headed toward a glorious end.

By him, through him, for him.

Six words. Such amazing grace captured in just six words.

*1 Samuel 8:1-22

**Matthew 27:46

The kitchen windows of our home face west, offering an afternoon sun shine that is warm and bright on our backyard view, and on the toddlers giggling their way down the slide and crashing the toy car into the fence. It also means that in the hours before dinner each day, the natural light flowing through my home is radiant. Everything glows with the warmth of sunshine, and my kitchen table becomes a welcome spot to take in the golden hues that our view to the west offers.

But this same light that I love and look forward to each day, it also makes me just a little bit crazy. The brightness that gently illuminates my home shows me every mark of filth in the room. Each fingerprint on the stainless steel refrigerator seems to grow, a dead give away that the toddlers have been attempting to help themselves to chocolate milk. Soft water rings dance around the counter, reminding me of all the places I set down my drink without a coaster. And every inch of un-dusted table space appears seemingly out of nowhere; the more I wipe it off, the more I find. A home that felt somewhat clean in the muted air of the early hours suddenly feels impossibly dirty as the light shines on it. I love the gift of the sun’s rays. I savor them each and every afternoon that the weather is kind enough to let them in. Still, I simply cannot clean my home enough to handle their revealing power.  

I think that my heart looks a lot like my kitchen on a sunny afternoon.

__________

Jesus is an alluring figure. As he walked the streets of the Holy Land people could not help but be drawn to him. Who was this man healing the sick and speaking of a kingdom yet to come; of a Father not here in the world but watching from a throne in heaven? All who came near him saw themselves differently; no one could be so close to Perfection itself without feeling their hearts react to its presence. But the reactions to Him were not universal; they were, and are, indicators of just how much of a dirty home one is willing to show others.

The proud and self-sufficient crowd recoiled in pride that this man was offering the goodness they thought they could achieve on their own. They approached him first with passive aggressive debates, and then with hostile false accusations of wrongdoing. When Jesus’ words revealed in their hearts a pride that they could not stand to be found out, their defense was anger. The light shined on their filth, and they accused the light of lying.

But the humble and desperate groups saw Jesus differently. They found in his presence a longing for what he offered, even at the cost of admitting that they had no ability to manufacture it themselves. Instead of holding up their own worth, with trembling in their voice they said things like the centurion did in Matthew 8 (v. 8): “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed.” Their response was one of meekness; a state of gratitude and wonder— not to be confused with weakness, though the world might give them the same connotation. When the light of Jesus shined on them, they saw their filth and instead of hiding it, they begged Jesus to clean it, offering to him genuine responses and sentiments of “I am not worthy. You are, though.”

Our lives are not so different from the masses that met Jesus. We, too, will encounter this man in our lives, and the closer we get, the more dirt we will see. Living our lives at a distance from Jesus, sin looks like innocent, fun, short-lived moments of indulgence that don’t really hurt anyone. It is easy to disconnect our daily comings and goings from scripture and settle in to a life of self-sufficiency. But when we press in to him, when we meet him in the pages of our Bibles, our sin looks like what it really is: damaging, painful, and with often long-term consequences for our lives and others. And more importantly, our sin is what keeps us from Jesus, both now and eternally. The light reveals what is really there; that is its primary function. And the closer we get to it, the more clearly we can see. Even places deep in our heart that we thought were worth offering to the Lord, the seemingly righteous acts we want to be proud of, in the light of a perfect Jesus we see they are actually thick with dust bunnies that we cannot, for all of our effort, get clean enough.

We have two options when in the presence of such revealing light: we can do what the Pharisees did, close all the window shades in the room, insist that we worked very hard to clean up on our own, and stand proudly behind our dimly lit lives. We may know that by doing so we are refusing to enjoy all the warmth that the light has to offer, and that anyone we invite in will only see a sterile version of our hearts. But we do not step into the freedom playing in the sunlight offers because the thought of being truly seen for the mess that we are is terrifying. We all default to wanting praise, to desiring the applause of men, and to being built up by others for all that we have accomplished. It takes a great amount of humility to hold this truth: we can work our entire lives to build a reputation or make ourselves presentable, but outside of the glory it brings Jesus it is of no lasting value and offers us no advantage, no high ranking, no more approval than anyone in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Or, we can respond with gratitude. We can look at all that is revealed and say, “open the windows even more and clean this all, Lord! I want the freedom to be seen as a sinner so that I can enjoy my Savior.” We don’t have to dwell on all that we cannot achieve on our own or on all the places we have failed to present ourselves right before God. There will always be rooms we cannot get clean enough, because no one could keep the law, and no one is righteous on her own. But Jesus says this: “My Father is not looking at the dirt you missed; he’s looking at me.” Jesus is the only example of perfect that the world has ever known. And his perfection is a threat to the proud, to those who do not want to admit their insufficiency and see the very real impacts of sin. But to the humble, Jesus is the answer to our insufficiency, the welcome reprieve from the façade of keeping up the appearance of a clean life when we know deep down the dirt that’s really there. He is the only peace in the chaos. He is the only joy in our sorrow. He is the only thing that makes real sense in a world that we will always feel just a little bit out of place in. He is the only One that calm our hearts when they ask, "Is this really all there is?" 

No, friend. This is far from all there is. 

__________

Each sunny afternoon as I both bask in the sunshine and shake my head a bit at the true state of my home, I’m learning in those moments that where I decide to look makes all the difference, and I want to look at the light. Constantly thinking of myself, and how I can attempt to hide the dust in my heart, keeps me busied with the wrong things; the futile building of a moment of recognition today when the joy of eternity is the only thing that will sustain me. And if someone were to walk in to my home, my prayer is that as I guide them to the back of the house, I would not apologetically interject my disclaimers of “Please excuse the dirty counters,” or “I haven’t had a chance to wipe down the refrigerator yet!” But rather, I would point straight out the windows and say, “How beautiful is that light!”