Oh, hey Lent devotional on the first day of Spring. #callingmeout
Our consumerism is rooted in a lack of faith. We are worried about what others think because we are not convinced that God delights in us (Psalm 149:4). We are anxious because we do not believe God will meet our needs (Matthew 6:32). We vie for attention because we do not think God rewards what is done in secret (Matthew 6:6). We compare ourselves to others because we forget that Jesus is our righteousness (1 Corinthians 1:30). A consumer is self-seeking because he is preoccupied with building his own kingdom in order to meet his own needs. During Lent, Jesus especially calls us to re-right our lives, to “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33)
Spring is here, officially. That’s what the calendar says, anyway. I want so badly for winter to be over – to emerge from all the caves we’ve been hiding inside. But when I read this paragraph this morning, I realized winter cannot be the scapegoat for a wayward heart.
I am a worried, anxious, attention-seeking, comparison complexing, self-seeking consumer. I can blame it on winter, but I would be wrong. Because I can lack faith in the middle of the best blooming Spring the same way I can lack faith in the wake of a forever winter.
This is the beauty of Lent, in the “re-righting” of our lives, God invites us to believe that He is full of miracles to overflow every season. Every season, miracles. Every season, faithfulness. Every season, provision. Every season, righteousness. Every season, abundance.
Every season, always joy.
I may not feel like pastel colors and singing in the rain, but God’s offer of abundance is not based on my feelings or my willingness to accept it. God’s offer of abundance is based on His goodness and I am missing out to believe in anything else. I am missing out because nothing else will fill me up and nothing else will give an overflow I can pour out in service to others.
The grace of God turns us into servants. Instead of demanding that we be served, we joyfully lay down our rights and seek to serve God and others.
I purposefully unplanned this day so I could enjoy the sunlight crawling up the windows and an entire New Yorker articlein one sitting, accompanied by the lazy folk sounds of Wild Child.
Six pages is a lot to read in one sitting, maybe too much, but not when it’s in The New Yorker and not when it is written by a witty, thoughtful ninety-three-year-old man. I hope I bump into him, but I am afraid we run in different circles and Central Park is not the most convenient place for me to hang out in the afternoon. Maybe I’ll write him anyway because, who knows?
I am one of those people who tries to boast an “old soul,” so maybe we would get along just fine. I could sit for hours and listen to his tales. I once wrote several stories for a local paper about an assisted living home. I sat down with real people who had lived real, lengthy lives and just listened. It was definitely my favorite work in “advertising,” because it didn’t feel like I was trying to convince anyone to buy anything. It felt like I was having coffee with Glenda and Bob and Ruth, because that’s what I did.
The sun is making it almost impossible to see my computer screen now, but I refuse to move from my spot by the window. The golden glow on my little clicking fingers is too wonderful a feeling to abandon quickly.
Sooner or later, I will crawl out from under this purple flowered afghan my Gram gave me because I have plans to meet a friend for coffee. I will face ordinary things like watering apartment plants and attempting laundry and cleaning a manageable corner of this living space. Sooner or later and in a few minutes, I will pull away from the screen and just sit a bit before this whole glorious Monday slips away in underwhelming presidential celebration.
But I’ll first let the sun play on my knuckles a little, teeny bit longer because I imagine these are the moments Roger Angell would tell me to appreciate.
The Atlantic did not have to be the one to tell me.
I did not, necessarily, need to read it from the pen of artists who have already ‘made it,’ but I suppose I believed it more easily. I was quick to let the words resonate – to make my solitude-seeking legitimate and unselfish and regular. Maybe it was just that title, “What Great Artists Need: Solitude” that made me first click through to the lengthy article. I want to be a great artist someday (everyday) and I will gladly take all pieces of free, expert advice.
And so Dorthe Nors tells me she learned about needing solitude from the creative genius of Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman. In addition to having a very interesting name, Bergman is known for directing somewhere around sixty films and documentaries. But Nors points to his writing in The Atlantic article.
All of it resonated, but some little bits are still haunting me almost two weeks later. Because I do battle with solitude. Every time I plan a party or agree to a coffee date there are moments (and sometimes many) when I want to cancel. I want to turn inside myself because it is easier and because I’m out of energy and because there is no way I can attempt all the creative things on my to-do list if I am never alone. Let’s be honest – forget creative… I won’t get to the practical things either like cleaning out the fridge or fixing our bathroom door so it closes or worrying about the baby mouse I have seen scurry across our kitchen floor twice.
Alone time is good to get things like your kitchen and your bathroom and your soul in order. Solitude should not always get the leftovers because many times it is where we do serious business with the demons in our lives. Nors writes,
“Solitude, I think, heightens artistic receptivity in a way that can be challenging and painful. When you sit there, alone and working, you get thrown back on yourself. Your life and your emotions, what you think and what you feel, are constantly being thrown back on you. And then the “too much humanity” feeling is even stronger: you can’t run away from yourself. You can’t run away from your emotions and your memory and the material you’re working on. Artistic solitude is a decision to turn and face these feelings, to sit with them for long periods of time.
It takes the courage to be there. You run into your own pettiness. Your own cowardice. You run into all kinds of ugly sides of yourself. But the things that you’ve experienced in your life become the writing that you do. And there’s no easy way to get to it, if you want to write literary fiction.
And that’s what Bergman and other Swedish writers have taught me—to stay in that painful zone, discipline myself through it to get where I want.”
This is what Swedish authors are teaching Nors and what Nors is teaching me. It does take courage to be alone – and not just for the baby mouse that needs to be caught in my kitchen. I am a petty person and cowardly and all kinds of ugly. If I’m never alone, I never really feel the weight of those things I am. Nors talks about something Bergman wrote in one of his journals, compiled in a book called Images,
“Here, in my solitude, I have the feeling that I contain too much humanity.”
It’s not even about creating the kind of literary fiction that will be remembered like Bergman and Nors. It’s about having the imprint of eternity on our souls… and knowing that the eternal imprint is never contained by a body or inside a day.
It’s a too much feeling that not all the words in all the world could explain. But it is a tension that doesn’t need explanation as much as it needs space.
Rest. Tension. Time. Space. Struggle.
All this, my solitude-seeking, could also be related to my search for Sabbath rest. Artist or not, we all need that.
It was a jumble of reasons that landed me in the middle of reflections on solitude and Sabbath as I read the lessons Dorthe Nors learned from Ingmar Bergman. But, I guess I get it. It is good to be with people, but it is good to be alone – to fight against the too much pushing free of my chest. It is good to do battle with the space between my silent face and an empty ceiling. It is good to sit with the painful, weighty bits of humanity inside that remind me I am weak and poor and ill-equipped for everything I try.
It is good to make space enough for a full swing of the only sword fashioned to win against such a mighty weight, such a mighty too much.
There is this thing in soccer called “chances created.” It’s a statistic that tracks how many times a soccer player has created chances for plays. I heard about it yesterday at church because our pastor’s favorite soccer player is known for his “chances created” statistic.
And this matters because the friends of the paralyzed man in Matthew 9:1-8 were about creating chances. They knew that carrying their friend to the door of the home where Jesus was preaching was not enough. The crowd craned their necks from all windows and doorways to see and hear the teaching; there was no way to get their friend to the front where Jesus stood.
Oh, sure, they could have turned back and no one would have asked why. But they were about creating chances – they were determined to get their friend to the feet of Jesus because they thought something unbelievable could happen.
There was no guarantee, just a chance to witness something beautiful.
And that belief was big enough to motivate their deconstructing a roof and their Macgyvering a lowering system to interrupt Jesus’ teaching with the presence of a disabled man.
The presence of Jesus was that important.
They created a chance for their paralyzed friend to meet Jesus because they believed it could change his life forever. Even just the chance was worth the sweat and trouble and questioning stares. Worth it.
Do I think getting uncomfortable and awkward and tired is worth the chances it creates for others to meet Jesus?
Good question.
Sometimes I waste time weighing out my options. I wonder if the invitations will be received well and if the conversation will be offensive. I wonder about future conversations and wonder if I will keep or lose friendships. I wonder about looking silly and feeling ashamed. I wonder about how much the other person even wants a chance to meet Jesus.
But these guys, they were relentless. And when their paralyzed friend finally got lowered down with the Bible times version of duct tape and WD 40, Jesus surprised everyone.
He looked past the paralyzed man’s obvious and most debilitating physical need. He looked past the years of struggle and got inside his heart… and what He saw needed forgiving. Whatever it was, we can all relate. We are all the paralyzed man, inside. We all need to get to the foot of Jesus so He can expose what is dark apart from any physical anxieties that knot us up on the outside.
So, this was the man’s chance at the feet of Jesus – his chance to experience something that would transform everything else about his mat-constrained life. And then Jesus healed this paralyzed man of sin. He forgave him for all the darkness hiding out in his heart. That was the magic and that was the mystery – the play that happened as a result of the chance created.
After the crowd backlashed and questioned, Jesus also healed the man’s physical body so that “you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” He is Lord over the spiritual and the physical. All of it, everything.
“There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!” – Abraham Kuyper
This is why we are chance creators.
Because God is the best at unearned surprises – the eternal and physical, the now and future, the simple and complex kinds. He is the best at surprises and we must be about creating chances for friends and neighbors and strangers to sit at His feet.
We don’t know what will happen, but it will never be bad.
God will always be glorified and it will always be worth it.
Definitely love your local church, but if you want to be encouraged by mine, listen to this sermon from Sunday by Vito!
Last night, I raced the river (chasing the current like I thought I could catch up) with a silly smile across my face. The trees had shaken off the snow from the mysterious Spring storm and I shared the path with bikers, runners, dogs, and the most adorable lady with a walker. I threw my smile at all of them, giggling at the children who roamed unaware of the etiquette I assume is standard on any city path (don’t walk directly towards someone running in your direction).
I raced the river and caught several times on the breeze what C.S. Lewis would describe as “joy.” It was an excitement that fluttered with a “heaven-like longing” that cannot be fully satisfied on earth, but even the presence of the longing overflowed in delight.
Dr. Jerry Root explains one of the central themes in Lewis’s writing, heavily influenced from his own experiences with Joy. He spoke reverently in “Surprised by Joy,” his autobiography, about the brief passing moments where he experienced an unexplainable bliss and then was left to figure out how to experience it again.
Well, anyway… as I raced the river last night I knew I wouldn’t catch it. I knew I could not really take in the beauty of the cool early evening in the way I wanted to, the way the evening wanted me to. I think that was part of the blissful moment – knowing there was too much beauty to take in, even if I drank in every scene as I ran on the path.
So, my joy bubbled out because it couldn’t be contained. The river, the overcast sky, the families, the bikers, the little old lady with her walker, and the children wandering out into the middle of the action – all these very simple and mundane threads in the fabric of a Sunday night, but every bit a reason to smile.
Sunday evenings are great medicine for Monday mornings, yes? The scenes are different, but there is joy hidden in this day – the sunshine, the birds, and that crazy owl that is trying to tell me a story. I’m on my way to a staff meeting, but I’ll first be dropping off these little love bundles for “every day in May” creative challenge.
We look at life differently when we step into worlds where anything is possible – where things are upside down because that’s how the storyteller is telling it. We don’t look for any other explanation because we don’t need one. The story unfolds and we sit on the edge of our seats (or whatever nook where fiction is best read) to follow the narrative.
I’m so tangled up with the characters of Marilynne Robinson‘s Gilead that I may already think of them as real people in my life – the way some people think about celebrities I suppose.
John Ames is a brilliant man, but the least presuming man I know. He is coming to the end of his life slowly and carrying very little resentment, at least that I can tell. He wants so badly for his young son to know things – things about his heritage and stories he was told as a boy. But John doesn’t just say things in the pages he hopes his son will one day read. This aging preacher admires existence by stringing words together and then invites his son into the wonder with him.
This is what the preacher’s writing is doing to me, anyway. I have so many things highlighted in my kindle edition that I could sit for hours and write the inspiration that comes from a few words, a phrase, a sentence, an analogy. He is genius in a way that isn’t self-promotional and my creativity kind of balks at that. He chooses words carefully, even though he knows that by the time his son reads the letters it will do him no good to sound impressive.
And do you see how brilliant Marilynne is as a storyteller? I am engaging directly with her characters, who I’ve decided are brilliant. When we can crawl inside the story and learn from the characters, the author has achieved a very fragile beauty. Her characters are teaching me, inspiring me, and creatively challenging me to look at the world differently – to see wonder in the way the light dances on the moon and to notice beauty in routine human exchanges.
In one of his letters, Ames wrote,
“I have been so full of admiration for existence that I have hardly been able to enjoy it properly.” (Gilead, p. 64)
What does being that full of admiration feel like and how does one know when proper enjoyment is just out of reach? Could it be that when we are enjoying fully we understand our enjoying to be a truer glimpse of what is to come (and that a proper enjoying will last forever)?
I know part of the beauty of Ames’s character is that he is near death and so finds freedom for transparency and for love in a way that we’ve constrained ourselves against (though we are all just as mortal).
Maybe there is a way to shake some of the constraint – to live a little less encumbered by this mortal life and thereby being freed to full admiration for its existence.
Normally, we speak about battling in combative terms.
I guess that makes sense. But sometimes I wonder if we forget why we are engaged in battle. Why do we wield the sword of the Spirit? Is it to conquer enemies, to show mastery, to be victorious, to make a name for ourselves, or to be king of the mountain?
Why do we put on the armor of God and train ourselves for the trenches? Why? Is the main objective in doing battle with the evil forces of the world to do battle with the evil forces of the world?
The glory of the Gospel story is not that we do battle for battle’s sake.
We do battle because God has asked us to dance.
Yes, God is asking us to step out with him on the cosmic dance floor where Satan is crushed underneath His feet. After describing the eternal dance of the Trinity, Tim Keller closes out chapter one of Jesus the King,
“[Christ] has gone before you into the heart of a very real battle, to draw you into the ultimate reality of the dance. What he has enjoyed from all eternity, he has come to offer to you. And sometimes when you’re in the deepest part of the battle, when you’re tempted and hurt and weak, you’ll hear in the depths of your being the same words Jesus heard: ‘This is my beloved child-you are my beloved child, whom I love; with you I’m well pleased.'”
If our excitement in training and armor wearing and sword wielding is about the battle, then we must ask the Lord to examine our hearts. Because the daily battling is not eternal. The temptations are not eternal. The struggle is not eternal.
The dance of our God is eternal – it existed before Adam’s lungs held air – and this perfect dance is what we are invited to, what we are rescued into, and what we are made for.
Now, let’s do Tuesday battle for dancing feet.
let LOVE fly like cRaZy
I highly recommend picking up a copy of Jesus the King (previously published as King’s Cross) by Tim Keller. It is a great book to go through with new believers or old believers who want to dive into the Gospel of Mark with new believing eyes.
If I haven’t lost you to the above links (I kind of wish I have, btw), then sit with me a minute as I reflect on what’s squeezing my heart today: the gospel of adoption. Jared Wilson writes in Gospel Deeps,
“Only in the complex depths of the triune godhead are wrath-owed enemies also love-won children.”
My pen painted marks all over this sentence on page 152, but it got real messy on the next page and I decided the next person to read this book might have a hard time being objective. I’m not sure how I can explain my thoughts without giving you a full paragraph, so here it is,
“God turns rebels into family. He does this in deep love before time began (Eph. 1:5), through meticulous sovereignty throughout the old covenant (Rom. 9:4), by abundant grace in the new covenant offering of Christ (Gal. 4:4-5), and with affectionate power in the Spirit’s ongoing mission (Gal. 4:6). He is still on the surface of the deep, calling out order from the formless void of our hearts. And in this wonder is another incomprehensible wonder, namely that the Spirit’s conversion of us godward is characterized as both adoption and rebirth.” (Jared Wilson, Gospel Deeps, p. 153)
Take a moment.
Maybe print off this paragraph so you can mark it up, too. Look up Ephesians and Romans and Galatians to test the assertions and hold on only to what is good (1 Thes. 5:21). What I am holding onto after reflecting is what is holding on to me: adoption papers.
I read it this morning and I can not shake it. I am adopted – a full-blown child with a new last name, an eternal inheritance, and a forever family – and I was at war with my Father when He signed the papers. He wanted me when I wanted nothing to do with him. While I was still a sinner (Romans 5:8), Christ chose me, loved me, and gave Himself up for me. I appreciate that Wilson uses the words “meticulous sovereignty” because I think it helps us picture just how intimately involved God is with the affairs of His people.
I often explain away my haphazard housekeeping by saying I am a “creative” person. For some reason “creative” people are off the hook when it comes to keeping things orderly. People will just say, “Oh, she’s artsy… you know, abstract” and that’s supposed to mean you shouldn’t expect that girl to have her life together. Maybe this makes God’s meticulous sovereignty even MORE amazing – creativity came from Him, but He is concerned with the littlest details of existence. From the broad strokes of orange-pink-purple sky to the number of raindrops in a storm, He is authoring all the beauty and also meticulously involved in orchestrating every atomic detail.
His powerful sovereignty runs like a thread throughout the old testament, reveals God’s love in Christ’s sacrifice, and weaves through the present to declare God’s glory. At the end of the paragraph I copied above, Wilson says that our conversion is characterized by both adoption and rebirth.
This. This is what is squeezing my heart today. God declares that we are His by what I imagine would be some divine paperwork and a holy signature dipped in Christ’s blood, but then He makes us His children as He sanctifies us every day. He is not an absent father, because even adoptive fathers can be absent. Instead, God declares us (His enemies) beloved children and then commits to making us more beautiful – to look more like the image of His perfect Son (Romans 8:29).
I see so many children in my work and they do not hide their fears. When parents have to leave (it doesn’t matter what the legal papers say), fear swims out of their eyes and clings in their hands. They get desperate and throw tantrums and ask impossible questions.
Today, I have been thinking about God declaring me His child and making me His child. My status is sealed in the work of Christ on my behalf, but my Father reminds me daily of His love efforts. He is relentless as He reminds me of His faithfulness that drives out fear. He is meticulous. And I need Him.
I need my Father to do more than sign papers that say I have access to forever with Him. I need Him to walk with me. I need Him to hold me up. I need Him to be strong for me. I need Him to be courage for me. I need Him to be hope for me. I need Him to be compassion for me. I need Him to be understanding for me. I need Him to teach me, correct me, rebuke me, love me, humble me, and chase me.
I need all these things in Him because I am empty otherwise. My need is not self-centered (though I suppose it can get twisted), but instead a declaration of my emptiness alone. The depth of my need would make me fearful if I didn’t know that his Fatherhood is more than abundant. His on-going, faithful adoption is a signature He writes on my heart every moment of today. The grace He has given will supply all my needs according to His riches in glory, so that His name would be praised and His perfect Fatherhood would be blessed!
The beautiful thing about singing, “Lord, I need You” is in knowing His response. When we say, “Lord, I need You,” God responds with, “I know. I am faithful to give Myself.” We can safely cry out our need for refuge while knowing we are safe inside the very refuge we seek.
I think my belly just smiled (is that where our souls are, in our bellies?) because I’m chasing this around in circles.
As we are praying our need of God, we believe His faithfulness in being what we need.
The horrors of 3801 Lancaster (the place where Kermit Gosnell (see The Atlantic article) destroyed the lives of so many women and babies), lead us to pray, “Lord, we need You.” And I think He is saying, “I know. I am faithful to give Myself.”
There is not a depth that can reach the deeps of the excellencies of Christ.
Not a friendship or a family or a lover or an ocean avenue view; not a single created thing can plumb the depths of His glory or compare to the riches of His grace.
There have been times when I’ve wondered if I lack a very womanly and essential thing. I’ve wondered why I am not more emotional or more dramatic or more anticipatory about love in this life. I have wondered and worried why I am not wooed by the chick flick storyline, waiting for my world to shift when a dapper young man spills his drink on me downtown. I have wondered why I am not a hopeless romantic.
I have, up to this point, credited the amazing men in my life as largely responsible for my (mostly) reasonable approach to relationships. They still get kudos, but I realized recently why there is a steadiness in my step that is anchored as deep as the unplumbable depths: Christ.
I’m not trying to explain the pinterest-popular slogan, “a woman should get lost in Christ so a man has to seek Christ to find her” or some other version of the same idea. What I mean is… I am just content to be lost.
I do not need to be found by anyone else because the depths of Christ’s love are too deep! They go on and on and on forever. I am not singing with Beyoncé, “all you women, who independent throw your hands up at me,” so hear me out before you point and question my biblical view of complementarianism.
I am questioning the encouragement we give women to get lost in Christ as a means to an earthly end in a man. I was running around Gray’s Lake recently, considering my contentedness and questioning my relationship readiness when I realized,
“my heart will never not be His”
I remember my dad gave me a locket when I was thirteen. We were in San Diego on the “girl trip” that my sister and I took individually with him to mark our “coming of age.” It is as embarrassing as it sounds (well, more embarrassing was the camping trip I blushed my way through with my mom to listen to all of Dr. Dobson’s tape series on sexuality). The “Dad and me” version in San Diego was embarrassing (isn’t everything at 13?), but it was so very special. It was rare to have occasion to fly anywhere, but his being on the board of directors on the little rural electric cooperative made it possible for my sister and me to accompany him to (what we thought was) paradise.
He had left the details of our coming of age to the “tapes” (as us kids now call them), and instead over a nice dinner one night gave me a heart shaped locket. I don’t remember the exact speech, but I’m sure he labored over every letter. What I remember is something like this,
“Caroline, your mother and I love you very much. But God loves you more. This locket is a symbol to show that He will keep your heart safe until He sees fit to share it with someone else.”
I’m embarrassed to say gold was not my color as a junior high girl. The locket sat in a little chintzy heart shaped porcelain container on my shelf for years. But, that night when my dad shared his and God’s love for me, I started to understand what it meant to have a heart that is guarded and protected. I had trusted Jesus as my Savior at a young age and junior high was the first refining fire I blazed through, so knowing my heart was held in the hands of my Maker could not have been better news.
Though I can’t say high school and college were without drama, I rarely shouted girl power anthems with windows down and fists pumping the air. I think deep down I knew and believed that God had my heart and that was the safest place for it to be. I was secure, protected, loved, and cherished – even if those weren’t the words I would use to express it.
Now, running along Gray’s Lake in the too-bitter chill of Spring, I have peace that my heart will never not be His. Even when I do get married, my love for Christ and Christ’s love for me is the only and best anchor for my soul.
Marriage is one of the most beautiful pictures of God’s love, but it will always only be that: a picture. God’s love is the only thing that can reach the unplumbable depths and secure my spirit with an anchor that won’t disappoint.
My heart will never not be His and I trust Him to share or not share it.
If you seek God looking for an answer, you will end up with an idol. If you seek God looking for God, you will always find Him and you will always be satisfied.
The truths of Jeremiah 29:13-14 and Deuteronomy 4:29 are trustworthy words and the above is my paraphrase when I’m tempted to look for an answer instead.
You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile. (Jeremiah 29:13-14 ESV)
But from there you will seek the LORD your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul.
(Deuteronomy 4:29 ESV)
These are trustworthy words because the Lord breathed them into being for our benefit. He draws us near so that we can be held, grasped, and secured in the sweet joy of His presence. He draws us near so we can enjoy Him – and He can always be found.
I’m learning what it means for the resurrection to break into my brain space that I had reserved for other things. It’s like a lot of little earthquakes. The sand shifts and the mountains crumble and only the firm foundation remains. And like a lot of little earthquakes, the lesser things look less appealing as my feet run to stand on what will remain.
In grace, God breaks the power of lesser affections so that I can stand with joy on what remains.
As I seek the Lord as my first and greatest affection (and not just for answers), these words out of Counsel from the Cross by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Dennis Johnson are especially savory,
“He has contracted to place himself in covenant relationship with us and to make us his own.
Yes, his love for us is a contractual agreement, but it is so much more than cold, lifeless obligation. He has generously determined to satiate our souls with happiness. He has chosen to betroth us to himself: ‘I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness’ (Hosea 2:19-20).”
When God breaks the power of my lesser affections, He determines to satiate my soul with happiness. He has chosen to betroth me to Himself. Wow.
I’m not sure what it feels like to have my soul satiated with happiness, but I want to feel it. I want to be fully satisfied with the kind of happiness my soul can feel. And today I know this happiness is real – as real as my coffee and my distractions and my fears and the giggles I can’t control.
The happiness God offers will remain when all the little earthquakes shake out the lesser affections.
MUSINGS IN THE MIDST 