I tiptoed down the stairs moving slowly and deliberately. Every once in awhile I’d freeze, certain I heard footsteps approaching, then resume my movement down this deviant path.
I’d laid in bed for a long time thinking about this. I’d tried to convince myself that I shouldn’t do it, but the tug of curiosity outweighed reason, so I finally gave in to the temptation.
I approached the Christmas tree, it’s piney scent strong and full in the dark room. Christmas morning was still a week away, but the urgency to know what was wrapped under the tree was more than I could handle. Reaching over to the lamp on the table, I quickly flicked it on, then swiveled my head down the hall toward my parent’s room to see if they’d noticed.
When I was certain the house was still, I made my way to the large gift under the tree – the one with my name written on it. Very, very slowly I pulled back the taped sides, and I peeked beneath the wrapping to see what it was.
All these years later, I don’t actually remember what the gift was that I peeked at in the dark. I must have been eight or nine that year, and I was certain that I couldn’t wait all the way until Christmas morning to know what was in that mystery package.
One thing I do remember, though, is the disappointment. Not in the gift – I’m sure the gift was great. No, I was disappointed on Christmas morning because the thrill of opening the gift was gone. I’d peeked under the cloak of night, and with no one around to enjoy my delight, the magic of the moment disappeared.
If only I had waited.
“Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and latter rain. You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.” James 5: 7-8
I’ve been thinking a lot about waiting lately. Waiting is hard. It is as active as anything else we do in this lifetime.
Likewise, I’ve been wrestling through this idea of waiting when coupled with prayer. Both seem so easy, requiring little to no physical exertion, but paired together they can sometimes feel like an emotional marathon.
I don’t want to wait; I want to know right now. I want to see beneath the wrapping, just a tiny glimpse of the waiting gift. I want to assess if I’ll even like that gift with my name on it. I want, I want, I want…
Waiting on answered prayer makes me feel like the little girl lying in her bed, wondering and wishing she knew what was on the other side of Christmas morning. I cling tight to the hope and dream of seeing this desire of the heart answered while also wrestling fear that I will never see the other side of this waiting.
Sometimes I pray as though it is a magic potion, an incantation that will produce immediate results. Most often, these prayers that I pray are good prayers. They are in line with God’s character, and with His spoken desire for His people. I’m not praying for a new car or a better life. I’m praying for healing, for restoration, for reconciliation, for the fulfillment of His goodness here on earth.
But the waiting part? I’m afraid I’m still not very good at it.
There is a frustration that can creep up when waiting on an unanswered prayer. We speak our words of petition into the quiet sky and watch as those heart longings drift up into the void, and we wonder if it even means anything.
Maybe you, like me, are waiting for an answer to a deep, heartfelt plea. Can I offer you this encouragement?
Keep waiting. Don’t give up hope. Hope is Slow, after all, but it’s real.
And while you wait, watch for the little ways that the Lord is reminding you of His goodness. See the ways He’s showing you that He’s still at work, even if it feels so very silent.
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And whatever you do, try not to take matters into your own hands. Don’t look for a peek at the gift that’s waiting. It just may taint the glory of the surprise.
One of the recurring themes woven throughout the book I wrote with my friend, Wendy, is the idea that life ebbs and flows, and with each changing season we find ourselves facing new joys and new challenges.
When Wendy and I wrote Life Creative, I had just given birth to my fourth born, a cherubic little baby with gigantic princess eyes, and a precious disposition. Because my other three children were older, the newborn phase was completely different that fourth time around.
I actually had some space in my days thanks to school schedules, nap schedules, and a general rock star quality to life that year.
But alas, Wendy and I were on to something when we wrote the following words:
“As the ocean ebbs and flows with the pull of the tide, so do a mother’s days, pulling away for a time, then gathering back close to the shore of family life. It’s not always easy. In fact, it is anything but easy. Constantly riding the waves of change, high and low tide, looking for our rhythm. Sometimes this in-and-out pull happens gently, while other times we crash like the white-capped waves. And through it all we learn to practice our unique artistic gifts like a spiritual discipline. These are the moments when we learn to drop anchor.” Life Creative, 2016
Once gain, the ebb and flow of life has brought with it a new phase – one that has me feeling less like a rock star and more like a psychotic squirrel on crack.
My cherubic baby has morphed into a wily toddler overnight, still with the gigantic princess eyes, of course. Only now those eyes of hers stare at you with a mischievous gleam, which can be quite unnerving at 3:00 in the morning.
She’s discovered that she can climb from her crib, and with this discovery a whole new world has opened up that she didn’t know existed. It’s also revealed something about her that my husband and I didn’t know until now:
Our daughter is a ninja.
She has an ability to pull herself out of bed and walk out of her room in absolute silence, so stealthy that when we wake to find her by our bed, or turn the corner to find her standing completely still in the dark, we nearly jump out of skin.
This new phase has turned an already crazy phase of life into a crazy and unpredictable phase of life.
Between our sports/homeschool/middle school/church/travel/ninja-toddler schedule, I have less time than ever before in which to work.
For many years, this little corner of the internet was the place where I worked out how I saw the world. It was my place to share thoughts, share funny stories, share heartaches, and to keep a record of our crazy life.
But the world has changed, blogging has changed, and my season of life has changed, and I need to be more careful with my quiet moments, which I’m mining out like gold right now.
Many of you who get these posts delivered directly to your mailbox signed up for this thanks to one of my book launches last year. Some of you are fiction lovers and are likely confused by the writer girl with her ninja toddler.
Others are creatives who, like me, have precious few quiet moments in your day, and you need to be judicious with where you spend those. So what to do with the writer girl and her ninja toddler?
I want to serve you all in this space, and to meet you where it’s most beneficial. In order to do that, I would love to hear directly from you.
Could you take a minute to fill out this brief survey? This is my way of making sure that the emails you receive from me are beneficial and helpful to you.
We were standing in a pizza shop in the middle of Red Square, the heart of Moscow beating steadily outside the dirty windows.
I nibbled at the crust, politely smiling every time Sergei, our translator and guide, looked at me, his eyes filled with hopeful anticipation that this visit to a very “American” style restaurant was satisfactory to my fifteen year old palate.
In truth, the cheese tasted funny, and the sauce was sharp on my tongue. But of course, I ate the whole slice because that was the right thing to do. And I smiled and nodded enthusiastically when he asked if it was good.
More than anything, I was just glad to be in the warmth of the restaurant. It was cold outside, the bitter kind of cold that makes your teeth hurt and your bones tremble. We’d spent the morning walking through Red Square, gawking at St. Basil’s cathedral, purchasing watches and pins with Soviet emblems on them from young boys on street corners, and swallowing up the culture of a city that until three years before had been locked behind something called the Iron Curtain.
I didn’t understand much about history back then. I was twelve years old when Reagan demanded that a wall be torn down, when the Soviet Union collapsed and people regaled freedom from far off streets.
Not yet a teenager in a world without social media meant that the news was relegated to the nighttime hours when I was in bed. Sometimes I caught snippets of world events as they passed between my parents and their grown up friends, but I didn’t pay attention.
I didn’t care.
Earlier that afternoon, I filed in a line past the body of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, spread out beneath an oxygenated glass case. The room was completely dark except for the spotlight over the former head of the Soviet Union, his body pressed flat against the table as though he’d been steam rolled.
I had no clue who he was, having been given only a brief history lesson minutes before stepping into the room. And so the moment was lost on me, but the memory is still there, and I have more appreciation for that experience now as an adult than I did back then.
After Lenin’s Tomb, we made our way to the pizza place, hungry and cold, and ready for a break. That’s when Sergei taught me about empathy.
There were no chairs in this restaurant – only high top tables where three or four could stand at a time. I stood next to Sergei, smitten with his loose command of the English language and his wry wit. As we finished eating, a man stumbled to our table, dirty and mumbling something in the language that I didn’t yet understand.
Sergei asked him a question and the man nodded. He glanced at me, then back at Sergei, his hands clasped tightly in front of his chest. Sergei jutted his head toward the last uneaten pizza on our table and the man snatched it up, then turned and left, his mouth chewing furiously as he disappeared into the frigid crowd outside.
I looked at Sergei in confusion. The number one lesson reiterated to all of us since we landed was never to give food or money to people begging on the streets.
“Why was it okay to give something to that man, but not to the other people who have asked for help?” I asked him. Sergei paused, his gaze traveling to the door where the man had just disappeared.
“Because he really needed it,” he finally answered.
“How did you know?” I asked.
Sergei shrugged. He took a sip of the lukewarm soda from his paper cup marked PEPSI, a much appreciated and consumed capitalist influence in the former Soviet state.
“I just knew,” he said. “He had Russian eyes.”
It’s been twenty-two years since that day in the Red Square cafe, but I think about that moment frequently. I remember the day when the man with Russian eyes approached one of his own and was met with compassion.
We’ve entered a new year. We survived the skepticism, cynicism, and anger of 2016, and though nothing has really changed from last week to this week, there’s a freshness in the air. It’s like the warmth of that pizza parlor in Red Square.
Now is our chance to take in the world around us and look at it through the lens of compassion – to assess the needs surrounding us, and offer empathy and compassion a little more freely.
Perhaps we should have been doing that the whole time, but the heat of the moment left us disoriented and confused. So here we are on the other side, the next four years looming before us on the horizon. How will we respond? What will we say?
I don’t have any resolutions this year – no one word challenges like in year’s past. Only a desire to look at the world through a lens of empathy and compassion, to look people in the eye, even if I don’t agree with them, and to try harder to hear them.
I long to step back into that moment in the pizza parlor when a gift was given because one young man took the time to look into the eyes of another and recognize need.
I am still on a bit of a blogging hiatus. I’ve been writing quite a bit, but for reasons I cannot explain, I haven’t been able to string together a decent post here…on my own site.
*sigh*
Truthfully, I miss blogging. I miss the days of yore when I could sit down and punch out a funny story in less than an hour. I think there will be time for that again some day.
Or maybe there won’t.
I’m not entirely sure just yet. But I do know one thing, I am as addicted to the written word as I ever was before. In fact, I’ve made it a point to spend more time reading these last couple of months.
I needed to lose myself in story again to remember why I loved it so much.
I’ve also been working on my second book. With very few moments to spare in my days, the down time I’ve had has been spent developing new characters. The process is a slow one, but my plan is to finish the manuscript by early summer.
*fingers crossed*
In the meantime, here are a few of my book recommendations for you all! Give the gift of story this Christmas (and, in some cases, your gift may just benefit others in need).
Come on, now. You didn’t think I’d compile a list of books and not include my own, did you? *wink*
I received a lovely review of my novel this week. I’m grateful for every review that comes through, but truth be told I love reviews from men just a little more. If I can win over a male reader with my writing, then I feel like I’ve accomplished something.
“This is the best historical novel I have read this year. It was moving, powerful, amazing. I have been on a mission trip to Ukraine and the people there remember the horrors of WWII. Thank you for telling their stories so eloquently.” Doc Kirby
My second book released in September, and this is the perfect gift for the creative moms in your life. Wendy and I have had so many sweet compliments about this book, and I am equally proud of it.
Susie Finkbeiner’s historical fiction novel set in the 1930’s Oklahoma was a beautiful, heart wrenching story. I had never heard of the Dust Bowl, and after reading her book I did a little research and was fascinated to learn more about this devastating time in our nation’s history.
You’ll get lost in the compelling characters that Finkbeiner has created, and what’s better is that the sequel, A Trail of Crumbs, releases in just a couple of months. I had the privilege of reading the second installment in her series early, and I can tell you it is as well written and researched as the first book.
I’m about a quarter of the way into this book, and I couldn’t love it more. As the mother of two daughters, I love stories of strong women who leave a big impact. Eric Metaxes, the author of Bonhoeffer (one of my favorite biographies) brings the stories of some of the greatest female leaders to life in this book.
From Susanna Wesley to Corrie ten Boom, Mother Teresa to Joan of Arc, Metaxes gives readers a glimpse into the lasting impact of these strong women.
This book is a gem. It isn’t a new book, and many of you may have read it before, but I never had so I was thrilled when it was on the list of books for Landon’s literature class this fall.
The Tale of Despereaux is pure magic from beginning to end. Kate DiCamillo is a master at bringing story to life, portraying deep lessons through the most lovable of characters. The kids and I read The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane last year and loved that story just as much.
I met Liane Moriarty this past September at the #ReadSavannah event in Savannah, Georgia. She was witty, gracious, and generous with her time as she promoted her new bestseller, Truly Madly Guilty.
I enjoyed the book (though admittedly, I liked Big Little Lies better). This is a book of secrets, connections, and the common event that changed multiple lives. It’s a page turner from beginning to end.
I love a good memoir, and my friend Edie did not disappoint with this beautiful book in which she shared the beauty and brokenness of her youth. You will be encouraged, blessed, and moved by Edie’s poignant prose, beautiful storytelling, and big love for all the pretty things.
Tia has been reading this book in her literature class, and she and I both love it. It’s a tough read for the younger kids, but the language is rich. At times, I’ve read out loud to her, and other times she’s read it herself.
Be warned, the book is sad. Tia and I both have wiped our eyes several times while reading.
Every reader needs a bookmark to hold her place, and adorable bookmarks make reading all the more fun. I’ve fallen in love with Carrot Top Paper Shop in recent months. Her prints of literary heroines are too cute, and she has bookmarks to match!
Buy a bookmark for the book lover in your life. They make perfect stocking stuffers!
Not only are they the classics we all know and love, but they are gorgeous, making bookshelves as visually appealing as they are emotionally appealing.
These would be a wonderful collection to wrap up under the tree as a family gift. Or you could just send the entire box set to me if you want. I won’t argue.
*awkward smiley face*
This is my personal Tep Ten list of perfect gifts for the bookworm. What about you? What would you add to this list?
I do not have quiet children. I have the loud, gregarious type of children who enjoy being seen and heard, some of them more than others. And the more the noise ramps up, the more this mama feels like she is losing it.
It’s not just their voices, though. They’re into music now, so there’s always music playing in the background, which I love. I always dreamed of having a house filled with music and laughter. Only, and I’m revealing my age here, their music is loud and…dare I say annoying?
And it isn’t so much laughter that’s floating through the halls of my home as it is a mixture of bickering, posturing to be heard, and the telling of silly jokes that I think are supposed to be funny, but 99% of the time I don’t get the punchline.
I think maybe I am the punchline.
It’s been an intense season around here. No one told method launching two books in three months would leave me feeling poured out in ways I didn’t know possible. I hesitate to say anything because it sounds like I’m complaining.
For the record, I am not complaining.
If I were to list the number of blessings to come out of the last five months, this blog post would turn into a short novella. It’s been a wild, but extremely exciting ride, culminating in the release of the books, both of which I am immensely proud.
I’m also immensely tired.
I’ve felt all poured out the last couple of weeks. I sit down to write, and the words feel stuck. They can’t seem to make it from my fingers to the page, which is a problem when you make your living as a writer.
I think I just need some time. I need time to be with my family and not feel rushed.
I need time to exercise, coaxing my loose muscles back into shape.
I need time to let my neck heal, since I somehow seem to have injured it with all this rigorous book launching. (It’s ridiculous, I know. But I refuse to say my neck hurts because I’m getting old. I’m sticking with the whole “writing injury” thing.)
There’s this sense of angst that settles in my heart when I consider taking a break. Part of the business of writing requires that you build an audience. Know your people and talk to them. Publishers like that.
The truth is I like it, too. I like sharing my life with readers, and in turn I like them sharing their lives with me. But it’s time for me to give myself a little space.
I’ll be taking a blogging break. I just need to give myself the freedom to step back, not completely. I’ll still be sharing on Instagram, and on Facebook, and occasionally on Twitter. I would love to have you follow me in one of those spaces.
But I’m going to let this space breath for a little while. Because here’s the thing:
I’m working on a new book.
I’m really excited about it. I love the characters already, and I’m fleshing out the details. I’m ready to start diving in, but I need to give myself a break in other places in order to let my brain process. So I’ll be quiet in this space for awhile, but I do hope you’ll stay connected.
Because this journey is so much more fun with community.
If you haven’t picked up your copy of Like a River From Its Course, grab one today! Did you know the book made the CBA Bestseller list this month? It’s up there alongside Beth Moore and Francine Rivers, and WHAT THE WHAT?!
But alas, Wendy and I were on to something when we wrote the following words:
She’s discovered that she can climb from her crib, and with this discovery a whole new world has opened up that she didn’t know existed. It’s also revealed something about her that my husband and I didn’t know until now:
