Stillness in a Small World

February 2017 began an immense moment of stillness in my life.

I don’t know about you all, but social media hit a sore spot for me this year. I stopped liking it so much when I witnessed a lot of people abusing the power of their own opinion. I liked it more when it felt like opportunities to love others well. I quickly felt drawn away when the opposite was much more evident.

Then, when I found out I was pregnant, it felt even more important to rest from all the interaction.

I like being an introvert. I like contemplating before I speak, listening, not being the loudest voice. I like being a follower, too. Give me instructions and a task, and I will do it well without asking too many questions. I like resting from conversation.

There’s a lot of influence one can have on the Internet, and when wielded well, produces fruit that only God can create. It’s true everywhere.

When we let God direct steps and only do what He asks and go where He is, there is fruit.

I had a moment while looking at social media when I realized, this season isn’t meant for this platform. It was one of those things, a know-that you know-that you know-thing that comes with peace. You know you shouldn’t do so-and-so simply because it resonates all the way to the pit of your heart.

God’s peace is like that.

This year will be my last year of pregnancy, ever. As far as I know. As far as I’m hoping, if I’m honest. This is the last summer I have with my boys before all-day school starts for the first time. This year will be the hiatus before God catapults us into life after pregnancy.

And I’m excited for it. Expectant. And feeling the need to be more still. Not giving the Internet my best, but just allowing the energy I’ve got (which is not much these days) for the attention of my kids, my husband, my work. Not my influence on the Internet. Just my influence right here, my Gospel work on the ground.

This isn’t an end to anything. It’s just a good moment to rest.

As I’m praying in these days, I’m saying a lot of things like, Father, whatever You want from me. Where You are is where I need to be. Also, does this mean more naps?

Maybe you need someone to tell you that it’s okay. The world will keep spinning even if you’ve gotta step off the ride for a little bit. And your world will not shatter. At least, that’s what we’re all hoping, right? I’m looking to trust a God who holds little worlds like mine in the palm of His hand.

Run, Girl

“Stay in your lane.”

My friend and I have a thing. We’re always telling each other, “I love running in my lane next to you,” because more often than not, we are always running towards similar, God-driven goals, surrounded by our families, both made up of three boys a piece.

Running next to someone who cheers you on is the. best.

But, staying in your lane is hard.

When I found out I was pregnant with our new nugget, I was ready to check out. I was ready to give into cravings, nap, and allow myself the best reason ever to stop trying so hard.

You know what I did instead? I poked my head out of my lane. I started looking around, and I lost focus entirely.

There are deep waters when we start walking out in faith, and when we act like Peter and look away from God for only a moment, we quickly sink. I was sinking quickly.

Before I continue this story, let me reiterate just how important I think it is to acknowledge that falling, losing faith, getting out of our lane is okay. It happens. It’s like looking at our mess of a home and saying, “This place is a mess.” Sometimes it just is. I think it’s foolish to pretend we have to be together at all times. If that were the case, what need do I have for a Savior?

So I was sinking. I was looking at all the other moms. I was not looking forward to what people were going to offer up as a response to me having a fourth baby. I was looking at the stuff in my life and feeling like it was all wrong. Every bit of it. Who stepped out in faith and decided this was a good idea?

Oh right, that was me.

Standing in deep waters, sinking, and knowing that I was not staying in my lane was so irritating. So, as the normal human that I am, I ignored it.

I wrote last week about how I started reading the Bible twice a day and how it changed my life. You think I’m over exaggerating, and I’m good with you thinking that. But I can’t take credit for God’s redemption in my sinking state. I have to give glory to a Father who looked at me and lovingly said, “Girl, what are you doing? Just get over here. I’ve got you.”

Just get over here.

Running my race, I’ve found, means I gotta quit being concerned about how “it” all appears, and just be present and available to all my people and all my community.

It’s conflicting when you see other people living full, God-dreamed-up-lives on social media, and guys, I tried that. It doesn’t work for me.

What works for me? Down in the dirt with my sisters who I see week in and week out, sending texts to the women I love and reminding them I’m praying for them, working from a place of foundational truth, loving people with a “get to” and never a “have to”.

So I sank a little. God said, “Just get over here,” and He put me back in my lane. It isn’t detrimental to lose sight of what God gives you; rather, I’d say it’s unavoidable. But it’s all right. He’s right there. He’s looking at you, saying, “Just get over here. Come back to me. Let’s regroup. I’ve got you.”

Run, girl. Maybe I’ll be running next to you soon enough.

 

How To: Be Who You Always Wanted to Be

I used to have my entire life planned out on paper.

One of my best friends and I would spend entire sleepovers dreaming up our futures. We would talk about it for hours: the man we would marry, the job we would have, where we would live, how many kids we would have, the size of our homes and how we would decorate. Really riveting stuff.

I remember writing out every detail on a piece of paper and keeping it for really long time.

I was going to be a fashion magazine editor in New York. I would marry a husband that had blonde hair and have a couple kids, and I would live in a beautifully curated house with my beautiful, picturesque life.

Let’s have a moment of silence (or laughter) for how clearly opposite things turned out.

I was a teenager. I had no idea what I wanted, let alone what God wanted for me. What He gave me was the best life. The hallelujah life. The one where I see God in every single detail.

What I really wanted, if we clear away the details, was to be a writer, to be loved, and to love myself.

It took me a long time to figure out the difference between who I wanted to be, who I was, and who I was meant to become.

I tend to over-complicate things, and I think this category of Identity and Purpose was always one of those things. I spent time overthinking. I spent time dreaming about the “one day”, totally ignoring the present. I thought that I needed all my ducks to be in perfectly straight rows before I was anything close to the woman I knew I was meant to be.

I think that’s where we start: simplifying. Simplifying where the problem lies, and simplifying the solution.

The problem? It isn’t you.

The problem is that we’re forgetting what we need. We’re forgetting what God says about us. We’re believing that we are the issue, we’ve been the problem since the beginning, and there is much to fix within us.

You need to redeem your thinking.

Quit thinking you need a plan, a goal setting book, a better situation. Great tools, but not necessary. You know what you need and have? The most powerful Truth: the Bible. Start reading it. Get it in your head. Read it to be in it. Read it to be closer to God. I really think it’s that simple.

The woman I am and the woman I want to be are one in the same. Do you believe that’s true of yourself? God is not a far-off guy. He’s as close as the Bible in our hands, the prayers that go through our heads, and the praise that echoes around us.

Press into the simplicity of doing what we know to do:

Read. Your Bible will change your life.

Pray. Talk to Him. Shut up and listen. Allow Him in every part of your day.

Praise. All day, every day, He should get the glory. For everything. If He isn’t, change something.

God doesn’t see how much we fall short. He sees us through the blood of His Son. He sees a good, worthy, lovable woman. He sees someone who has everything she needs right in front of her.

How Obedience Began to Change My Life

A few months ago I sat with a bunch of women at Bible study thinking about what God was telling me. Those months in the fall taught me so much about God and the way He works.

You know what God asked me to do? He asked me to read the Bible twice a day, not just once. Which, NBD, right? Except I couldn’t do it. I was convinced I couldn’t because I had a hard enough time reading it once.

Regardless, I shared this with a few people. I didn’t want it to seem like a pompous thing to do, something to just show I’m “holier than thou” or that I have “it” all together. I just knew what God had said. And I knew I wasn’t following through.

Obedience, for me, has always seemed like an easy thing. I obey rules really well. I obeyed my parents as a kid. And for the most part, I was obedient when it came to God. I wasn’t breaking any major ten commandments, at least. But can I be real? A huge part of me recoiled at the thought of being obedient to anyone but myself.

I am an adult, after all.

A lot of us have heard the story about how God prunes in order to produce more fruit. We consider pruning a holy thing. However holy and biblical it is, it hurts. Like hell. I imagine it being like ripping bark off the side of the tree. Of course, we don’t think it really hurts the tree because the tree doesn’t recoil from us. But the thought of doing that to my soul, ripping something from it that has been attached there for some time, hurts.

So He prunes, sometimes when we don’t want Him to. But it’s necessary. Otherwise, we’re left without the fruit He longs for our lives to produce.

Looking back at obedience, I quickly realized that I was not being obedient to God day to day. I was sidling by, enjoying my life, ignoring the pressing of the Spirit and the pruning He wanted to do. That was easier.

The first time I knew I was supposed to begin this new reading regimen was six months ago. I put it off. I neglected the Bible altogether. My disobedience grew larger in scale, all because I was simply afraid I wasn’t capable.

How silly.

When we let God prune, when we let Him tenderly pull away the parts that don’t help us,  things happen. Life changes. And we change.

I let Him prune.

Now, I know that God calls us all differently. For me, it was the simple task of reading twice a day. Not with a notebook in hand. Not with an agenda. Not even with the task of analyzing and solidifying my theology. Simply to be closer to Him. To connect with Him at the beginning and end of every day.

Can I tell you what changed?

Everything.

I wake up and read. I get out of bed, and I don’t spend so much time being frustrated with my kids. I listen to them. I say “thank you” more often and mean it. I think about what I’m reading, not forget it. I read it before I go to sleep and skip over skimming Instagram. And I sleep better than I have in a few months.

He becomes part of my every waking thought. And peace floods in when I close my eyes every night.

When I noted how He was changing me, I laughed. I said to Him, “What took ME so long? Lord, You are good. Almighty, You are God. Jesus, thank You for bringing me closer while you prune.”

Sometimes we forget that God continues to change us, mold us, prune us, even after we’ve been saved. We forget there is still work to be done in us, too. Not just the world around.

Unfiltered Talks with the Lord

I gave up my filter this week.

Sometimes prayer works that way. Instead of praying what I really feel, I give sweet, filtered, mild words to the Lord. I don’t get mouthy. I get ashamed.

It’s how I am. I am an even-keel person. I like evenness. I like knowing that everyone likes each other, and I like to keep it that way. It almost always takes me a moment to give up my filter.

It started Easter morning.

Easter is a holy day. Celebrating the resurrection of a King is not a mild thing. But I woke up that morning not feeling even a little bit tender about it. As if the holiness of what Christ had done had worn off.

I walked into church hardly recognizing any faces in the crowd because there were so many people. I sat in almost the same seat. It was any other Sunday.

And it could’ve been. But I didn’t want that. I wanted God to get the glory. I wanted the praise from lips actually be the praise, not just words that I say to blend in. I don’t want to say things mildly to a God who shattered His Son’s life for the blood in my own veins. No filter.

I quieted my restlessness. And I closed my eyes, and I prayed, “Father show up. I’m welcoming you in.” And you know what He said? He said, “I’m already here. I’m invading every space around you. And I’ve never left.”

He’s not a mild God.

This continued into Monday. My boys were bringing out my anger, and I was trying to fold laundry, and I had already reached my end by 9:30 AM. I sat in my kids’ bedroom, and I got so mouthy with God that I probably shouldn’t repeat what I said. Except one thing: I had the nerve to tell God I thought I was failing my kids. And you know what He said? He said, “No. You don’t fail, because I don’t fail.”

Tuesday morning I read in 1 Kings about a guy who was king over Israel for a mere seven days. He died by setting the royal palace aflame around him, killed by his own sin and fire. It was a story that seemed to teach me nothing because it’s hardly relatable, and you know what God said? He said, “I love you so much. Hallelujah you aren’t destined for a death of flames and sin.”

God is not surprised by me. More often than not, I’m surprised by Him.

I’m working on my conversation with the Father this week. An ongoing, continuous conversing that isn’t filtered. There isn’t anything I can hide from Him, anyways.

God is not surprised by me.

Gracious Space & Honest Thoughts

For the first time ever, I felt like I needed to do it all. And if I couldn’t do it all, then I should probably give up.

This time last year, I was excited about the headway I was making in my life. I set goals that I accomplished over time, which was exciting after a long season of pregnancy and babies. I found myself again, and I liked her a lot.

This year, I’m back on the pregnancy wagon. And I love this part: knowing that within the year, we’ll have something new and important to add to our life, the excitement of finding out if it’s a boy or girl, still being able to fit into my normal clothes (for now). This part feels easy. But I know the difficult parts are coming.

I’m not sure that anyone ever told me that I had to do everything. It’s more that I’m convinced that only I can do what needs to be done. Success starts to look like, Admire me in my crazed chaos.

So I stepped away for a moment.

I have a deep love for social media, but I also have a tiring striving for “posting well and with intention”. It starts to feel like a forced rhythm, and it hurts even worse when my kids start to notice. So I decided to let it go for a bit. I didn’t want to care about the way life appears, and rather dive in deep with playing soccer with my son and tickling my toddler until we’re both exhausted from laughing.

I also didn’t want to write. I didn’t want to deliver some kind of joyful sermon or word that would go out and make waves when all I wanted was for God to just be near. I’ve needed Him badly in recent weeks. Not because of hardship; simply because I longed to just rest in His goodness, like I snuggle up to my husband after a hard day.

Snuggling up to God meant not putting so much pressure on myself to be whoever I appear to everyone else, but just be His girl, the one who is tired at 2:30 PM every afternoon and asks for forgiveness from her kids and looks in the mirror everyday at her growing belly wondering whose actual crazy idea it was to have four kids (mine). I just want to be His. Not some perfect idea of a woman, because I’m not her. I like the me that isn’t so scared to be vulnerable with herself and the God who loves her.

It’s easy to think of life in terms of seasons, but I also think it becomes an easy out for participating in the life we’re given.

In years and pregnancies past, I nestled into gracious rest, which was good for me then. Good until I realized I wasn’t participating in my life outside of my house. So I “got back out there” and let God work in my life, willingly choosing to serve and love in ways that I had stifled.

And if I’m being honest, I’m scared of what gracious rest could do to me this time. I’m scared of losing whatever momentum I’ve gained thus far. Isn’t that for real? What woman hasn’t thought that?

But God. But God! He changes things. He changes my fearful idea of gracious rest into a principle that will protect me from stress. He changes my fear from needing to do everything to being humble and accepting of help. Pregnancy is a whole humbling 9 months + 3 months postpartum, at least. It is a glaring reminder of my important need for a God who always has room for me to snuggle close.

I don’t know exactly how the year will look, how my goals will change, how I will do anything of great magnitude, let alone mop my floor. But God. Stepping away doesn’t mean giving up, letting go of perfection doesn’t mean I’m unfit for whatever.

It just means I’m willing to let the world continue turning while I rest in a gracious space with the Father.

Candid Motherhood

I was one of those women who silently judged moms in grocery stores.

I would walk through the store with my cart and hear a child a few aisles over throwing a fit over something. And I vowed to myself that I would never have children like that. “Get your act together, Mom over there. What even is your deal,” said me, the woman without children who only had herself to worry about.

I was also one of those women who looked at big families and though to myself, “DO YOU EVEN KNOW HOW THIS HAPPENS.” Yeah. I thought that in my head.

I was a naive girl back before marriage, children, and parenting.

Skip a few days from then to now, and I giggle at the thoughts that used to go through my head.

I am the mom with the kid who throws a fit because I can’t buy the freaking crackers with Captain America on them. I am the mom with three kids AND a pregnant belly. Younger me would be so appalled. (Not that I care.)

I like to speak candidly about motherhood because I think we don’t speak so candidly to ourselves. I’m often speaking to myself in my own head as if I’m the only who struggles, and look over there at that mom with her perfect children! You’re sucking today, Janelle! I am not so kind to myself.

I wanted to speak candidly to me and to you. Because I am quickly becoming the mom I made fun of in my head, and I want to be sure I’m setting the stage for the girls coming up behind me and doing proud the women who have made way before me.

When I found out I was pregnant for the fifth time, I was truly overjoyed. I sat on the toilet for about five minutes smiling my face off.

It wasn’t until a few weeks later when we started to share the news with people we loved that I got insecure. And dang it, I hate insecurity. It’s such a rude, unwelcome feeling. But it’s part of being human, and it’s been hitting me in waves.

I was picking up balloons at the store for our pregnancy photo, and the lady filling the balloons asked me what they were for.

“We’re doing a pregnancy announcement.”
“Oh, that’s so wonderful! Is this your first?”
“Nope! It’s not…”
“How many do you have?”
“Three boys. So this is our fourth.”
Pause. She looked at me, surprised.
“Oh!”

It wasn’t dramatic. She was so kind, and we talked for a long time about life and kids before I left. But I wonder sometimes what people think of us. Of me. If they look at my kids and think, “Girlfriend, someone needs to get fixed so you stop procreating.” (For the record, my kids are adorable, so I don’t know how anyone could look at them and think that.) I know that most people don’t think those things. But I irritatingly think that they do. I’m pretty sure you can consider it the downfall of being a woman: creating fake scenarios in your head.

I’m also not afraid to admit that I am all for faking it until you make it. I apply it to the fact that my hair is greasy and gross, but you know what? I can still rock nasty hair. It’s all about what’s going on in my own head.

This applies to my mothering. I don’t know what I’m doing. THERE! The secret is out. But I know I’m still good. I’m still worthy in the eyes of the Lord, and no opinion except God’s matters to me. He already tells me He loves me, He makes me whole, that my purpose is found in Him.

And I look at the photo we took of my three boys and that empty little chair, and I think, “Lord You have a mighty work to do.” And I trust Him to do it. I am fully aware that this looks crazy, that I’m going to struggle, and that I might not figure out motherhood from now until that baby arrives.

But it’s good. I’m good.

Virtual hugs all around, okay? Your kid will throw fits. Someone will look at you like you are legitimately a crazy person. And someone will think about how they might not want what you have. So what? God gave you these things. God gave me my people. I’m gonna steward them well.