To Honor the Time You Have, Show Up

If I’m honest, there’s so much about this time in which we live that I do not want. I do not want to live in a time when selfishness overrides our love for others, when global pandemics rearrange our lives, or with unlimited, unfettered technology that impacts every square inch of the way we live.

Yes, I do see good in this world, but sometimes the pull of the darkness is strong. My emotions and my mind reel and loop over and over again, yearning for peace, answers, and resolution. I long for a break from the constant strain of all that makes this world groan.

And yet, I know this truth: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?” (Rom. 8:35). It’s gospel that I have to preach to my own heart every day.

Amidst it all, an ever-increasing sense of my own mortality sits with me. As I wake, as I stretch…….join me for the rest @ https://theglorioustable.com/2020/07/devotional-honor-the-the-time-you-have-show-up/

The Real Blessing

in ABUNDANCE· GRACE· GRIEF & LOSS· MOTHERHOOD

I saw it in so many eyes, and it made me cringe. Pity. They pitied me, my husband, and our son. They pitied the life we had because it wasn’t normal or typical. They saw how our toddler struggled to (not) walk and (not) talk because of a genetic disorder. My sensitive, overly-raw mama heart, fresh off a diagnosis, just couldn’t take the pity. I felt sorry enough for myself. I couldn’t take someone else feeling sorry for us, too.

When life turns in an unexpected direction, seems somehow less-than, and our hearts turn all soggy, it’s natural to grieve, to feel sorry for ourselves, and to push away others’ good, if misguided, intentions. I did it for a very, very long time.

Threaded through my grief was the idea…..[join me @ The Glorious Table to read the rest]

His Presence, His Perspective

On a cold evening in late February, after a long day of teaching, I opened a letter from our son’s school. I assumed it would be another routine letter about this or that school event or meeting. What I found instead was a truancy letter.

Our family doesn’t get truancy letters! Except we just had. The embarrassment crept up my neck and flushed my cheeks red. How could we let this happen? The letter indicated that we would be expected to attend a meeting to come up with an “attendance plan,” and if we failed to cooperate, there could be legal implications.

My embarrassment gave way to irritation. Didn’t they know….Join me at The Glorious Table for the rest of the story. 

Happy 7th Birthday, Lucas!

Dear Lucas,

I’ll start with a confession. I didn’t write your annual birthday post last year, and so tonight, as you rest in your bed (cause I know you’re not sleeping from all the excitement!) waiting for the clock to turn 6:10 a.m. (the time you’ve declared we all must start our day and the first order of business is opening presents), your daddy reminded me that we just couldn’t let that happen again this year!

You know your coming into the world story almost by heart now. It used to be that I got to tell the story to you, but now, you recite it back, hardly missing a single detail. Even though you were supposed to be a May baby, you just couldn’t wait. And on April 28, 2013, at about 2:30 in the morning, you wiggled just enough to break my water. The doctor on call told me to wait about six hours to come in, unless active labor started sooner. I didn’t sleep another wink! And at 9:31 a.m., the chubbiest baby boy landed in our lives.

Early on, you earned the nickname Joy to the World and more recently, the title of Loudest Person We Know. But, buddy, don’t ever let anyone tell you that’s a bad thing to be. Some people never learn to live out loud, but you bub, you are full of all the good things in life without any reservation.

Some of my favorite things with you are reading books together (mostly you reading them to me), you learning how to build things with daddy, swinging with Ansley and Reed out back, your love of cheeseburgers, and your absolute pure delight when someone sends you a letter in the mail.

You are an artist and a thinker. You are a lego warrior and short story writer. You love knowing and being known. You are passionate and kind. You are a leader and a helper. You are fully you!

Tomorrow we’ll eat grits for breakfast, hot dogs for lunch, and hamburgers for dinner, per your request. We’ll have a vanilla cake with rainbow sprinkles and rainbow popsicles. You’ll get to play your favorite video game (Lego Jurassic Park), binge read your newly acquired Judy Moody books, and proudly wear your new watch (among other gifts).

We’re excited to celebrate you and love that you are ours. No one I know with greater passion or zest for life. Happiest of birthdays to you!

Love always, Mama (and Daddy)

Rising Again

I recently succumbed to the flu, and for several days, all I could do was stay horizontal on my couch or bed while the aches, fever, and general dis-ease ran its course through my body. Any time I become that sick, I inevitably reach the point of wondering if I will ever feel normal, right, and good again. As much as I enjoyed binge-watching Call the Midwife, I longed to return to health and normalcy.

 

Have you ever reached a point, emotionally or spiritually, where, like me with the flu, you wondered if you would recover?

Saved you a seat over at The Glorious Table with the rest of the story.

 

Finding Your Way Home

“There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there. The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place,” ~G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Many people spend some portion of their adult lives trying to get back home spiritually. We sense we’ve lost our way or God seems distant or perhaps we even lose our faith altogether.

My own faith came to an abrupt flatline on July 20, 2007, when a baby my family had prayed for and rejoiced over died. Her mother, my sister, had picked out the name Zoey (which means life) months before she died as a result of a cord entanglement at 36 weeks’ gestation. My sister’s trauma—and by extension, our family’s—was too monumental for me to process. My heart shut down.

Loss, trauma, betrayal . . . join me at The Glorious Table for the rest.

Our Stories are Meant to be Told

I love when I’m asked how my husband Ben and I met because most people are a little surprised by our unconventional meeting at Starbucks one night in 2008. I made a last-minute decision to go out with friends for coffee (and avoid working on my graduate thesis), and he had an atypical evening off from worship practice. He also decided to come to Starbucks, but for a solo night of coffee and reading.

While Ben was a total stranger to me, he was an old college friend of Evie, who had talked me into tagging along that night. When they recognized each other, they struck up a conversation. If you ask Ben to tell the story, he says it was nice to see Evie but he also started debating between the books he brought to read and the intriguing mystery woman at the patio table with his old college friend.

Ultimately, one evening of conversation at Starbucks and a summer’s worth of late-night hangouts and conversations turned into five months of dating, five more engaged, and a May 2009 wedding. Our story usually makes people….[join me over @ The Glorious Table for the rest of the story]

Radical Acceptance and the Fullness of Joy

January is no longer a time when I lament who I haven’t yet become. Instead, I am choosing radical acceptance both for who I am and who I am becoming.

I have not gotten here quickly or easily; rather, this is a hard-earned, always evolving lens through which I’m learning to frame my story. I’m inviting you into my own story, praying that you too, will find the extravagant, freeing, radically accepting love of Jesus as the defining story in your life.

When my husband Ben and I married in May 2009, we wrote this line into our vows: I love the person you are, and I promise to love the person you’re becoming. For some inexplicable reason, this pledge made perfect sense to vow to my husband, but it would be nearly a decade before I realized how desperately I needed to apply this God-given truth to myself.

I grew up with relative self-confidence, as I was well-loved, well-adjusted, and had plenty of friends and good grades to boot. I never anticipated….[join me @ The Glorious Table for the rest of the story]

Choosing Intimacy at Christmas

In the very beginning of his Gospel, John writes:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1: 1-5 NIV)

My husband, a Greek scholar (read: nerd), and I were mulling over John’s words recently and he pointed out the seemingly innocuous phrase “was with” to me. As a fellow nerd, just one confined to a different language (English), I saw a simple past tense verb (was) and a preposition (with) repeated twice. Though the repetition put me on alert, I didn’t recognize the significance of those two simple words. Ben explained that the phrase in Greek has no direct or adequate translation into English, but the idea of “toward” exists in the original language. He went on to paint this verbal picture of two beings face-to-face (facing towards one another) in a close, intimate encounter.

Jesus was face-to-face with God.

Then, I understood. John is underscoring for his readers the intimacy of Jesus the Son with God the Father. Their intimacy models the relationship God seeks with us.

But intimacy is hard….Join me over at The Glorious Table for the rest of the story.

 

Feeling Known around the Table

Recently, a pastor I know quoted this Jon Acuff wisdom, which seems pertinent in anticipation of all the upcoming family gatherings this time of year: “We fear that if people truly knew us, they wouldn’t love us, but the truth is if people really knew us, they could truly love us.”

For many of us, the irony of the holidays may be that we gather with people who seem like they should know us best and yet we often feel disconnected from or misunderstood by them. How many tables will you sit around this holiday season that dredge up a bit of that anxiety? I imagine that, for most of us, how we feel depends on the table.

Last fall I sat around my mom’s kitchen table, sharing a meal with extended family members who were visiting. I remember wearing long sleeves to that meal. Why would I remember such a small detail? Because even into late fall, we experience summer-like heat in South Carolina, and I should not have been wearing long sleeves on a day like that.

Except I was trying to hide a freshly minted forearm tattoo I had received just a few months earlier. I was afraid of the reaction this bold, elaborate ink would elicit from my family. I was anxious about the judgment or the stares or the questions that might come.

I was afraid that if I was truly known, in all of my tattooed glory, I would be less lovable.

How many of us will sit around tables this season, laden with holiday feasting, and yet starve our hearts of the love we desperately need? We fear that if these people only knew the real us, they would withdraw their love. The assumptions we make about others’ responses can keep us from the life-giving nourishment of being known.

Read the rest over @ The Glorious Table