Author: Caroline

When I'm not riding in the backseat of my Grandpa's restored vintage car "Mable," I'm doing other things like... rising to most adventure occasions my husband proposes / chasing our toddler around Brooklyn / enjoying neighbors, strangers, and friends / making countless trips to the laundromat / writing for various publications and for personal reflection / loving and serving our local church / cleaning the bathroom / hosting small and big crowds in our home / meeting up with a friend for coffee / thinking Vocation is my strange frenemy. Though I have worked and existed in many stations/places, I am convinced that each day has good work to be done and that I am equipped and prepared to do that good work. This blog explores the tension and the intersection of a constant vocational call - to good work, neighbor love, and living in the kingdom come. My favorite things are coffee and creating and laughing (preferably with company). I love to listen to sermons and read biographies and make tea before going to bed.

training is the best accountability

We’ve established I’m not a runner (see ‘lost in cornfield’ story).

But I do like to run. I like the the time it gives me to think and I like how all the jostling helps my loose marbles make some sense.

I set off for a run the other day and, as is usually the case, decided how long I would run based on my plans for the night. As I considered my route, I thought about why a runner trains. I remembered the first question people asked me after I finished Dam to Dam, “When’s your next race?” Everyone assumed I had become “one of those runners” who was always looking for the next race. I thought, “Sure, I’ll do it again.”

But as I mentally mapped out my route (that I’d determined should take me 45 minutes max), I realized why runners sign up for races.

signing up for a race is the best accountability for training for a race

I know it’s not rocket science, but it seemed pretty profound to me as the loose marbles starting making sense on Duff Avenue. The motivation for training comes from the goals for race day. Then race day happens. And then you sign up for another race. People have told me that you lose weeks of training in days and now I know it’s true. A whole lot of training and accomplishment and hard work amounts to little after a few days off.

And so, of course, I think about this Christian race we’re running. We stretch and train and beat our bodies into submission because we are training for something. And, I wonder if Paul felt the weight of “not having attained it” after every race he finished – every missionary journey and shipwreck and public sermon – he immediately signed up for another. His training built on training and there was never a time where he wasn’t preparing because there was never a time he wasn’t signed up for a race.

I wonder this because I can see the temptation after a race to wait, consider, and “rest” in a way that smacks excuses. When we finish something like a race, we feel accomplished and proud and (in some ways) as if we’ve arrived. When we believe it’s all about us, we will fall hard and fast clinging to the comfortable title of “accomplished” that seals our fate and renders us useless.

What a beautiful thing to always have the prize in front of us, to always strain towards what is ahead, to always have something worth training for even as we cross the finish line.

Training is the best accountability for runners and you only train when you are signed up for a race.
Today, I’m taking inventory.
Today, I’m making sure I’m signed up.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 0

a front row seat in the glorious theater

Darkness fell like a hush; the lights circled us as we circled the fire. The jumping glow splashed on our faces and warmed our autumn skin as we cupped black coffee in thankful hands. The sky speckled with stars and the creatures sang out their evening melodies.

And we sat in the front row in the glorious theater of God.

After reading Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas, we had all carried around conversations that couldn’t happen over the phone and couldn’t happen half-hearted. This night was set apart to try to understand someone from the great cloud of witnesses – to look at the life of someone who treasured the Lord in such a way that he was ruined for anything else.

And we sat in the front row in the glorious theater of God, right there in the backyard of an Iowa farmhouse.

The candles glowed in mason jars to light the path from the woodshop, where we enjoyed a bountiful spread of German delights, and inside I was a mess of emotion. A weighty, good mess of gratitude and purpose and joy and hope and pain and fear and defeat and doubt and sorrow. When despair seems simpler and right, stories of hope read more like fiction. But not last night… not when we remembered people whose lives were anchored by one thing, driven by one thing, delighted by one thing … and not when I looked around at the firelit faces of my friends, whose struggles on stormy seas are anchored deep down by the same greatest treasure.

The struggle is not to stay upright, but to rejoice in the anchor which holds us. Bonhoeffer’s life was not about making the message of Jesus look good or better or more intellectual than whatever religion his peers and countrymen presented. He was not about being interesting or popular or approachable, at least in the end. Bonhoeffer purposed to be about truth. He set out to know God and to draw others into a knowledge of God as it is revealed in the Word of God. His culture said a lot of things, burned a lot of books, and printed a lot of promotional materials for massive political campaigns… but Bonhoeffer had eyes to shake off the surface storms and cling to the hope that anchored and the only hope that would reveal the evil that had usurped the hearts of his countrymen.

This. This is beautiful, I thought.

I love how David Hall describes John Calvin’s thoughts on our seats in the glorious theater.

Calvin described this world, moved by God’s providence, as theatrum gloriae. For him, every aspect of life from work to worship and from art to technology bears the potential to glorify God (Institutes, 1.11.12). Creation is depicted as a platform for God’s glory (1.14.20) or a “dazzling theater” (1.5.8; 2.6.1), displaying God’s glorious works. Calvin viewed the first commandment as making it unlawful to steal “even a particle from this glory” (2.8.16). Such comments support Lloyd-Jones’ later claim that for Calvin “the great central and all-important truth was the sovereignty of God and God’s glory.” (“The Theater of God’s Glory” by David Hall at Ligonier Ministries)

I went away from the night knowing we hadn’t talked about everything, hadn’t appreciated history completely, hadn’t understood theology thoroughly… but oh so thankful that we showed up at the theater. I’m thankful I have others with whom I can behold the glory of God and I’m thankful for the support we give each other to be unapologetic about truth.

Today, I am still purposing to know God, find out what pleases Him, and delight to do those things. And today I am thankful for those I can share steps with along the way.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 2

sisters weekend surprises

It was my idea to not tell anyone where we were going and what we were doing this weekend. Apparently, Christina took that seriously. She dropped off the radar with her friends and agreed to meet me at a quaint B & B. I left a louder trail, I guess, and I can’t quite figure out why that is. I told someone we were having a “prayer retreat” and others that we were on a “getaway.” I guess I’m uncomfortable saying, “Oh, nothing much” when someone asks what I’m up to this weekend. I guess I have to say something and then even I’m surprised sometimes at what comes out.

Well, even if it wasn’t completely secret, the B & B getaway was full of amazing, delicious surprises! It made me count the sweet blessings of being stateside, where I can spend time with one of my favorite people. Though you may not understand it, I can guarantee you’d be rolling in laughter for one reason or another if you had been there.

  • On the way to pick up crafting materials at Hobby Lobby, we stopped at the gas station for a Founty (our sister-in-law Bethany has endeared us to call our favorite form of soda by this name). While making too big of a scene for a simple fountain soda, the attendant wanted to know what was the cause of all the laughter. We must have had a case of the Friday-afternoon-loopies because we giggled out a joke lamenting our single status. As we were leaving, the attendant said, “All I know is, somebody’s missing out!” We laughed our way into the car and then decided Daniel had been sent to speak deep truth into our silly lives.
  • At the Mexico-inspired B & B, we met Jaime and Daphne and their granddaughter who showed us to The Tabasco Room, where we would be staying. We were charmed instantly by Jaime’s grandfatherly way and his thick Spanish accent. His birthday was today and so we played the age guessing game over mexican shot glasses of Jose Cuervo last night (btw, 100% agave is apparently the only way to buy Tequila). He guessed we were 19 and 22 … and then attributed our youthfulness to innocence as we fumbled with comments about the smoothness of the liquor.
  • One of Jaime’s daughters said, “I’m sorry” when she heard our true ages because she is convinced, “it gets better after 30.” So, that is something to look forward to!
  • There was a couple celebrating their anniversary, a couple traveling back north from the State Fair, and a man in Ames on business. As we helped ourselves to some Mexican coffee, one of the men said, “You girls look like the Olympic sand volleyball team… just 6 inches shorter.” We looked at each other with eyebrows raised and said, “Yeah.. we’ll take that!”
  • One of the guests at the B & B was a farmer and he was pretty impressed with our ability to “talk shop” so much that he asked if we were in the business! We both felt pretty good about that.
  • One of the strangest surprises was the fact that no one thought we were sisters. We’ve never thought we looked especially alike, but people have always told us we do. So, it was weird when we had to keep explaining that we were related. But, maybe more weird was Christina’s realization that it could look any different and her hasty explanation even when it wasn’t warranted.

Our conversations drifted in and out of serious with a good dose of silly mixed in. No surprise there, I suppose, but a lot of refreshment. We have never really lived close enough for the kind of friendship that hangs out on the weekends. So, I’m trying to live in the moments where I do right now.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 0

rooting for you

After three years in a place that still claims part of my heart, the move stateside from Honduras was more than culture shock last June. My friends were scattered across the country, each member of my family was plugged in to community where they lived, and the mounting pile of rejection letters made the job market look as grim as everyone said.

I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t that.
Oh, I wasn’t upset or depressed, but the summer days turning into fall were, every one, a surprise. And every day I noticed someone rooting for me.

It happened when I would farm talk with my uncle as I rode in the tractor or when my mom would arrange a special outing or when my dad would come home with new ideas he’d been churning all day in the car. It happened when I visited my friends in Chicago or Michigan or California or Pennsylvania or New York and it happened when I reached for reception in my front yard to hear from far away kindred spirits.

It happened when I stepped in to the lives of others and they listened, encouraged, and prayed. And “rooting” still seems to be a great word for the way my family and friends support me. I’m living with my aunt and uncle and they have “rooting for you” down to an art form. I’ve watched them do it with so many people in their lives – listen, encourage, and then root like they’re going to get a kickback from others’ success.

So, I write a blog. I don’t make it a big deal, but I absolutely love doing it. I love thinking through the ideas while I run, being inspired while I’m driving, and sitting down to pound the keys into the shape of a blog post. I love it.

Though I do not hold it against people who aren’t avid blog readers (I get it, seriously), there is something very special about hearing your aunt or uncle say, “Well, you know Caroline blogs, right? You can get them sent straight to your email if you sign up!”

I’ve been kind of grafted in to my aunt and uncle’s family and they’ve become some of my loudest fans. They root with prayers, networking, career ideas, dinner parties, weekend plans, and late night life talks. They are rooting for me to run the race marked out for me with eyes fixed on the Author and Perfector of my faith.

I think that this is true community – rooting for others to win. And the rooting is not because we’re looking to benefit, but because we are so excited about what the Lord could do with someone’s life. I’ll tell you, being on the receiving end of the cheers is motivation enough to try and try again when success is slippery.

Posted on by Caroline 5

the human referral effect

Today, I put on my über hip (but less than hipster) tortoise shell glasses with the confidence of someone who needs corrective lenses and wears them with style. Just to be clear, I think glasses for fashion only is silly and a waste of money. If you do have to purchase glasses, then making it a fashion statement is a bonus. But why am I talking about fashion, which is so clearly out of my realm of expertise?

Because I bought my glasses online at Zenni Optical – which was WAY cooler than Factory Eyeglass Outlet, where my parents would take us to get glasses when we were growing up. Here’s the cold, hard fact: glasses are crazy expensive! You could pay up to $400 for glasses and that was $350 above my parents’ price range. You might assume I’ve really moved up in the world and am able to buy a $400 status symbol, but I haven’t. Actually, $400 glasses are about $375 above my price range and I’m now very thankful for those extra dollars my parents were able to spend on “any pair with the yellow sticker, sweetie.”

I heard about Zenni Optical from my friend Tina who heard about it from my sister, who googled cheap eyeglasses and then told everyone about her experience. It seems fake at first – almost like a really horrible practical joke because the price for a pair of sweet, hip lenses from their website is as low as $6.95. I know, I didn’t believe it either.

But then they arrived in the mail and you couldn’t pay me to NOT advertise for them. People would say, “Oh, your glasses are so cool!” and I’d always touch the corner, real studious like, and say with a shrug, “Oh, these? $12.00.”

No one believes me at first, but eventually I get them to write down the website and promise to look it up for themselves. At $12, you can afford to buy 2 or 3 pairs just in case one breaks. And, if you lose a pair, you just skip going to the theatre and you’ve evened things up for your wallet!

Zenni has since really snazzed up their website and have a feature where you can virtually try on glasses to see how they look on your face.

Wow.

I haven’t ordered a pair in several years, but I still get excited at the idea of someone else getting a good product for a good price.

And why all this about my glasses?

Because I read this article about the human referral effect in Forbes magazine that highlights another eyeglass outfitter who is committed to giving quality for a fair price. The author of the article, Alexander Taub (Iowa native, btw) talks about his Warby Parker purchase and the chain reaction of referrals that followed.

Bottom line: we like to point people in the direction of something wonderful… and not just the possibility of something wonderful, but the guarantee of something wonderful.

I love this idea.
I love that humanity is a fan of guaranteed wonderful things and that we want other people to have guaranteed wonderful things too.
I love that the human referral effect happens and that it happens so often and that Forbes magazine is taking notice.

What I wonder is if eyeglasses are the only thing we should be sending down this highly effective human pipeline. I wonder if this human referral effect is being extremely under utilized.

I wonder what would be the best thing for humans to refer to one another?

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 4

a delight that purifies, protects, and perseveres

After reading this post by Tony Reinke at Desiring God, this excerpt from Robert Murray McCheyne’s letter is rumbling around in my soul,

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jer. 17:9. Learn much of the Lord Jesus. For every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ. He is altogether lovely. Such infinite majesty, and yet such meekness and grace, and all for sinners, even the chief! Live much in the smiles of God. Bask in his beams. Feel his all-seeing eye settled on you in love, and repose in his almighty arms . . . Let your soul be filled with a heart-ravishing sense of the sweetness and excellency of Christ and all that is in Him. Let the Holy Spirit fill every chamber of your heart; and so there will be no room for folly, or the world, or Satan, or the flesh.“

He is altogether lovely.

Oh, and how grateful I am that we can know this love! How ready I am to “live much in the smiles of God” and “bask in his beams.” This kind of delight in the Lord not only purifies, but it also protects and perseveres.

When all our delight is found in the One whose love and joy can never be exhausted, we are always safe and always secure. We are swept up into celebration and nestled into the friendliest nook – in the cleft of the Rock. When all our delight is found in Christ, we dance as David – unashamed and giddy with praise in front of the Lord. When all our delight is in the Lord, all our despair and defeat are drowned out.

And, you’ve never seen such perseverance as Christ-drenched delight. Christ, the image of the invisible God who holds all things together and in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell (Colossians 1), has made a way for me through the blood of the cross. I can never run far enough to forget this delight – this deep gladness of rescue and this gift of new life. The delight chases me with thunderstorms and children’s smiles and the taste of a homemade, family dinner.

This delight pushes out from every corner of my soul and expands it, leaving no room for sin or folly or Satan. This delight perseveres to consume a life, even the life where wickedness once reigned.

This delight that purifies, protects, and perseveres is as steadfast as a one hundred-year-old oak tree. Today, I’m resting in its shade with thanks enough for one hundred years.

Even with all its mysterious jumble of branches, it still looks so inviting.
Posted on by Caroline 0

like wrestling a jellyfish

We were sitting around a crowded table at the youth offices with plastic plates piled with Abbey’s ciabatta pesto creation and various other potluck offerings. Our Bibles and devotionals and journals were all spread open in the mix of things and we were talking about how Jesus learned things. He studied the Scriptures and realized what it was He was supposed to do. As he learned, he obeyed by submitting to what was prophesied about Him. Jesus learned things.

Doesn’t that sound crazy?

It could have been all the banana bread baking or the fumes of a newly refinished gym floor a few doors down, but as the realization settled in, we wrestled. We tried to make sense of Jesus being human – learning things from the Lord and learning things about life that he didn’t know before. We wrestled through the possibility of another human obeying perfectly and submitting to the Father’s will. Yes, we know it’s not possible. We know that Jesus fulfilled the law. But, we thought about it. We wrestled.

And that’s when I looked around and saw that we were thinking of things, imagining things, wrestling with things that made our minds hurt a little bit. It kind of just came out,

Sometimes, when we seek hard after the Lord in Scripture … sometimes it’s like wrestling a jellyfish.

They looked back at me blankly while the picture played in their minds. I probably should have, but I didn’t take it back, because I really do think that our searching sometimes feels slippery and even that sometimes we are surprised by what we find. Sometimes answers seem illusive or strange and sometimes they sting. But, we’re drawn into that wrestling match because there’s something incredibly beautiful about knowing more of something so wonderful.

Yes, the analogy breaks down, as all analogies do.

But, until someone gives me a good reason not to, I’ll keep wrestling the jellyfish as I seek to know more about my Savior, to find out what pleases Him, and then delight to do those things.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 0

what it means to cling

It’s a strange unsteady that catches me today – grieving the evil and glorying in the God who overcomes. I can’t see how anyone who puts thought to theological matters can be any less than always emotional – either deeply despairing or deeply delighting. It is both despair and delight at once that stretch me and today I read these words that remind me of the tension,

“In all your longing to love as Christ loved, you sometimes forget that true love for one thing will, or at least it should, produce a hatred for whatever stands against it.” (from Note to Self by Joe Thorn)

I do forget. I forget that loving as Christ means hating what stands in opposition. “Hate” sounds unpopular. It sounds… mean. But when I forget to develop a healthy hate for my sin, I make friends with destruction. When I forget to develop a healthy hate for the sin in others, I lead friends to destruction.

And in all this, I am finding what it means to cling.

In the strange unsteady that rocks my boat today, I am learning to cling like my life depends on my grip. My desperate hold is always rewarded by the unfaltering strong arms of my Redeemer, who reminds me my life depends on His strength.

O, Heart Bereaved and Lonely
Words by Fanny Crosby

1. O heart bereaved and lonely,
Whose brightest dreams have fled
Whose hopes like summer roses,
Are withered crushed and dead
Though link by link be broken,
And tears unseen may fall
Look up amid thy sorrow,
To Him who knows it all

2. O cling to thy Redeemer,
Thy Savior, Brother, Friend
Believe and trust His promise,
To keep you till the end
O watch and wait with patience,
And question all you will
His arms of love and mercy,
Are round about thee still

3. Look up, the clouds are breaking,
The storm will soon be o’er
And thou shall reach the haven,
Where sorrows are no more
Look up, be not discouraged;
Trust on, whate’er befall
Remember, O remember,
Thy Savior knows it all

Posted on by Caroline 4

making me nervous

In a few weeks, I’ll sit around a table of delicious German food with some of my closest friends to discuss a true story of transformation, tragedy, and terror. We’re going to discuss a book about a life – the life of a man who would not tolerate a theology that would wipe out a race of people. Reading the book, Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas, a few years ago was terrifying. I had walked inside the gates at Auschwitz in Poland and seen the incinerators; I had stood in the tower and looked across the field of long buildings built for suffering and death.

The account of this brilliant German man with the right pedigree and the right education and the right friends is ugly in its revealing of everything wrong about the world… about the human condition… about everything culture slowly and slyly considers “right” without question.

But book clubs with biographies are meant to focus on the past, to stir up nostalgia or pride or gratitude that terrible times had such wonderful people to overcome them. So why is The New York Times making me nervous today? Why do I think Bonhoeffer’s words would ring as poignant today, in our much progressed culture of tolerance?

Why does today seem so terrible?

I have to read the news in waves – a little bit here, a bit there… some in the morning and some over lunch. Because it feels ominous. A sliver of a column on the front page was dedicated to the continuing conflict in Syria while a lion and her cubs enjoyed a photo and feature further down on the page. Zoos are having trouble deciding what to do when babies “don’t fit the plan.” I guess those babies were part of, “All the news that’s fit to print” in a more prominent sense than the failure of any diplomatic, peaceful measures by Annan in the battered and bruised country of Syria.

This probably reads like a jumbled jigsaw puzzle and that’s because it is. I know I’ve got a hope secure and I know I’ve got to share this message, but is this world making anyone else nervous? When I sit around that table in a few weeks, enjoying good German food with kindred spirits, I have a feeling they’ll know exactly what I mean.

Posted on by Caroline 3

turning up the stones of my own discontent

Today feels like all my hidden sorrows have huddled to make aching war on my lower back. It’s just one of those days where the question, “Oh, how long?” seems to be the only appropriate thing to say, followed by a decided and desperate, “You won’t let me go.”

Isn’t it strange how you start to think the world is falling apart when your body aches / your brother will have face surgery / national politics looks to spin out of control / there might not be enough food this winter for the breadbasket / you’re still trying to figure out how to let love fly like crazy / the song in your soul sounds a little sickly?

No, I guess I don’t think that’s strange at all. Maybe the world is falling apart.

I better start singing this line, “You, You won’t let me go.” And then I better sing it again.

Posted on by Caroline 3