Tag: family

it was 1994

“… and then you put your legs up like this and be careful because my legs will swing around really fast. Now, put your knees up, balance, and jump.”

I was transported to my nine-year-old self in the middle of this manic Monday as Meredith swung upside down from the metal bar on the swing set. She took the tone of teacher as she swung with the seriousness of a backyard gold medalist.

I know that seriousness well. My grandpa knew it, too. My birthday gift was unlike any other 9-year-old I knew. It wouldn’t fit inside a gift bag and you can’t find one at a store. It was a custom-made, hand-crafted balance beam with a limited edition, special carpet cover.

It was beautiful and it sat in our backyard where I was Dominique Moceanu or Kerri Strug on summer afternoons. My performance always decided whether we got the gold or the silver medal. The air hung thick with pressure (and good Iowa summer heat) and the beam was more than inches off the grass. It felt like miles.

I positioned my socked toe in front and stretched my arms up high (everyone knew the judges gave points for style and I never wanted to lose any – that was the easy part). I twirled, jumped, steadied, and then positioned myself for the dismount. The dismount decided everything – everyone knew that, even my dad. The question would pound in my head through the whole backyard routine, “Can I stick the dismount?”

I would back up to the very edge of the beam and then start my swirling combination toward the other end, where I would flip end over end (in my mind) and always land with two feet nestled into the Iowa grass.

My arms would erupt from my sides and I would proudly stick out my chest, acknowledging the audience of trees and cattle and cats on all sides.

It was 1994 and I just clenched the victory with that landing in my stocking feet.
And it felt good.

Posted on by Caroline 0

you are not enough

What a funny word.
“Enough” means sufficient, even if it means barely squeaking by.

I wonder what happens when enough is a challenge. Are you man enough? Are you strong enough? Are you brave enough? Are you mom enough?

These questions issue a challenge to those places in us that can’t resist – those places in us that say, “I’ll show you…” in response. We might even get a little carried away in proving that we are, indeed, enough of whatever quality is in question. We might even, on the wild proving grounds of this challenge, reveal just how great is our need. Because when we start to think that our adequacy is found in what we do, we’re beat from the start.

We were never meant to rise to the challenge of enough. We were meant to see our not enough and recognize our need.
We were made to find our enough in Another who is always sufficient, always abundant, and always.

This little excerpt (thanks, Tim Challies) from John Piper’s book Pierced by God gives helpful perspective. I realize it’s a bit much for this morning, so if you don’t read the excerpt below, just know that you are not enough.

You will never be brave enough, strong enough, smart enough, or mom enough. You can’t reach down deep and muster up the willpower. It’s not in you. And it’s not failure to admit that – it’s just recognizing that you are not God. You are made to depend on God’s enough-ness (if you will) and bring Him glory.

We are not God. So by comparison to ultimate, absolute Reality, we are not much. Our existence is secondary and dependent on the absolute Reality of God. He is the only Given in the universe. We are derivative. …We were. He simply is. But we become, “I Am Who I Am” in His name (Exodus 3:14).

Nevertheless, because He made us with the highest creaturely purpose in mind—to enjoy and display the Creator’s glory—we may have a very substantial life that lasts forever. This is why we were made (“All things were created through Him and for Him”, Colossians 1:16). …This is why we eat and drink (“So whatever you do, do all to the glory of God”, 1 Cor. 10:31). …This is why we do good deeds, (“Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven”, Matthew 5:16).

That is why we exist—to display the glory of God. Human life is all about God. That is the meaning of being human. It is our created nature to make much of God. When we fulfill this reason for being, we have substance. There is weight and significance in our existence. Knowing, enjoying, and thus displaying the glory of God is a sharing in the glory of God. Not that we become God. But something of His greatness and beauty is on us as we realize this purpose for our being—to image-forth His excellence. This is our substance.

Not to fulfill this purpose for human existence is to be a mere shadow of the substance we were created to have. Not to display God’s worth by enjoying Him above all things is to be a mere echo of the music we were created to make.

This is a great tragedy. Humans are not meant to be mere shadows and echoes. We were to have God-like substance and make God-like music and have God-like impact. That is what it means to be created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). But when humans forsake their Maker and love other things more, they become like the things they love—small, insignificant, weightless, inconsequential, and God-diminishing.

Human life is all about God, isn’t it? So, why do we love being enough more than the One who is enough? Piper continues,

Listen to the way the Psalmist put it: “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but they do not speak; they have eyes but they do not see; they have ears but they do not hear, nor is there any breath in their mouths. Those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them” (Ps. 135:15-18: see also 115:4-8).

Think and tremble. You become like the man-made things that you trust: mute, blind, deaf. This is a shadow existence. It is an echo of what you were meant to be. It is an empty mime on the stage of history with much movement and no meaning.

Dear reader, be not shadows and echoes. Break free from the epidemic of the manward spirit of our age. Set your face like flint to see and know and enjoy and live in light of the Lord. “O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord” (Isaiah 2:5). In His light you will see Him and all things as they truly are. You will wake up from the slumbers of shadowland existence. You will crave and find substance. You will make God-like music with your life. Death will dispatch you to paradise. And what you leave behind will not be a mere shadow or echo, but a tribute on earth, written in heaven, to the triumphant grace of God.

In God, we find all our desire for enough so that our lives can be a tribute on earth to the triumphant grace of God. You are not enough, but in Him we have more than enough to

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 2

when faith is about living

I leaned up against the bed post and nestled in to reading position as I flipped the old, typed pages of a faded blue folder. These were weighty words – letters to my grandmother from friends and family shortly before she died. Some sent stories of college excursions and others talked about her hospitality. Nearly every entry spoke of her generosity and strong spirit. Many didn’t say it just like this, but when people looked at my grandma, they saw Jesus.

I didn’t mind getting weepy as I read about her nickname “Tillie the Toiler” in college and about her effortless way of putting others first. But it was toward the end of the simple, typed pages that my eye fell on an entry from my dad. At the top it read, “From Dick and Cindy Nichols, third child and his wife.” Though I’d been reading similar titles designating relationship to Grandma, this one shifted something inside and made her closer – more kindred.

I re-read the entry several times and my eyes fell on this sentence halfway through the last paragraph,

“I’m convinced that to live life to the fullest you must be able to face death confidently and with eternal assurance.”

Part of me felt my own convictions fall freshly into step with my dad’s, though I hadn’t ever heard him phrase it that way. I was seven when my grandma passed away, so my eyes were still inward and unable to see my dad’s pain and healing as he watched his mom wither and fade. But here, in these words, I found something beautiful like blooming Spring.

Though my flesh will fight it, my heart as a single woman is to serve the Lord and nothing else – but not as a regrettable sentence. I know with certainty both my supreme joy and greatest delight lie in this one passion. With eyes fixed on eternity, every moment of life has potential to be filled to abundance because Christ has overcome. This is all there is and somehow Grandma was able to keep it simple. With eternity figured out, she set about doing everything she could to bring the Kingdom to earth for those around her, knowing her reward was already stored up in forever communion with her Savior.

My dad shared a story about a pastor visiting Grandma in the hospital and saying, “It would be normal for you to ask God, ‘Why me?'” Grandma answered (predictably, according to my dad), “I have never asked God why – I never ask God why.”

When everyone expected her to cave… when everyone would readily excuse her for having little faith and a tired heart, Grandma kept her gaze steady on Jesus, the Author and Perfector of her faith. Jesus, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame and sat down at the right hand of God. With this kind of vision, Grandma understood that joy was possible to the very end, even when others expected her to run out. Christ filled her to overflowing every day she endured the painful decay of a mortal body. She knew she would sit down with her Savior soon and it gave her great joy to use every earthly moment sharing this blessed hope.

I’m not sure if it’s true, but my dad wrote,

“I don’t think you ever thought about death much; because of your faith there was never a need.”

She may not have thought about death much – the physical act of it with all the human details and baggage – but I know Grandma thought a lot about eternity. Her faith was not about escaping death. Her faith was about living.

She believed every moment could be lived abundantly on this side of heaven, spilling over into the lives of every person you touch.
She believed death was not the end, but the beginning of a life where her faith would be made sight and she would sit joyfully with Jesus.

These old, typed words on yellowed pages introduced me again to this woman and again to her Savior.
Oh, that I would live with this kind of faith.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 3

love, recorded

He met me at the front door of the restaurant with the familiar, lopsided smile. He took his hands out of his Wranglers to wrap me in a hug before walking to the booth he’d picked out. I sat down and slid across the bench and he cut me off mid-sentence (because I’d been talking since I spotted him), “Oh, wait… don’t say anything yet.”

Confused, I watched as he pulled out an old Sony recorder and placed it in the center of the table. He motioned for me to wait as he pushed the record button and watched for the red light to appear. “Okay, now you can talk. But, don’t lean in … just talk normal and it’ll pick you up.”

A smile leaped across my face as I realized, “Oh! This is for Grandma!”

“Not so loud, it’ll record just at a normal volume. Now, let’s check and make sure.” His bronzed, carpenter-ruddy hands fumbled with the buttons as he looked down through bifocals with lips turned down in concentration. He rewinded, played and, sure enough, my voice came over the little speaker.

My sister and brother joined us shortly after and our lunch conversation filled with laughter thrown over shoulders (the Nichols children are famously loud laughers) and silent gestures to quiet the noise from utensils. The taste of joy was almost as delicious as the homegrown, Iowan food (have you ever had beef brisket on top of a bed of fresh lettuce, topped with bacon and cheddar?). Every so very often, I would watch my grandpa’s eyes wander back to that little light to make sure it was recording. (Later, my grandma made sure we knew that she would have much preferred our company to the can of soup and a day of church meetings).

My grandparents have always been the same age in my mind. When my grandma recently offered to clarify, I said I’d rather not know exactly. Sometimes, if I focus hard on their wrinkles, I can see they’ve deepened and grown in number. But most times, I am too focused on their eyes to notice how they wear their age in wrinkles.  Most times, we’re usually too caught up my grandpa’s “school bus stories” or my grandma’s detailed description of delivered baked goods and church meetings. I have never looked forward to “retirement” because my grandparents opted instead for a busy work/volunteer schedule that makes “not working” seem so boring.

Grandpa drives a school bus and his days are packed full of stories. He studies those kids in the mirror above the steering wheel and watches the little ones as they scamper up to the front doors of houses in rural Iowa. Every once in a while, he has to stop the bus to face a bully or, like the other day, to tell the little 4th grade girl, “No, we can’t turn around to rescue the little worm you found by the bus stop. You’ll find another one, I promise.”

One story I’ll never tire of telling is the love my grandparents have for each other. Simple, solid love that refuses to be complicated. Over coffee with my grandpa this past week, he told me about Grandma’s shortness of breath and trouble sleeping. I noticed the worry wrinkles as he talked about fluid in her lungs, the tenderness as he cleared his throat and fidgeted with the coffee cup. The next day my grandma was in the hospital and the diagnosis is official: congestive heart disease.

It means a lot of things – no salt, limited water, and heavy monitoring, but it doesn’t mean less joy. I can’t deny the days as they pass; can’t refuse that my grandparents have bodies that age. I can know that every physical breath is dependent on the Lord’s sovereign, steady hold.

We mustn’t fear the body’s weakness because we know the Maker’s strength.
We mustn’t fear what we see because the know the power in what we don’t.
We mustn’t fear age because we know what is timeless.
We mustn’t fear today because we know the Lord governs tomorrow.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 1

human eyes; heaven sight

This morning the ice clung to brown, lifeless branches.
And we are all dying.

This past weekend my mom sent an email my aunt wrote about my grandpa’s graceful, shuffling steps into this strange season of life. I’ve re-read these words so many times – grateful for the way they hug my soul. I know my dad and his seven siblings feel the weight of love and the weight of age in this man in a way I cannot, but as I read my aunt’s words my eyes were wet with something new.

She wrote,

Dad’s prayers were so personal and full of thanksgiving to His Savior, especially mentioned was the gift of Eternity and his family.  He didn’t want to walk this road, but it’s here, and he is going to walk it with grace and dignity to the best of his ability, and with his Savior’s and his family’s help.

Our bodies fail. They fall apart.
And we shuffle where we once skipped.
We shake where we once snapped with the energy of youth. We age.
Our eyes grow dim and our ears faint. Mortals.

But the stiffness of his joints has not crept to his heart.

Eternity looks just as glorious on the horizon with shuffled steps as it does with skips.
The promise of salvation is as bright with eyes of age as it is with the eyes of youth.

And with every sunset, one can turn to face the rest of the sky and see a glorious reflection. All the mysterious hues that explode before night falls, chasing after the golden orb, light up the rest of the blue expanse and color the clouds.

I’m witnessing this reflection as I watch my grandpa – human eyes with heaven sight.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.                                                    2 Corinthians 4:18

There is no way around it – we have human eyes confined to human bodies and human limits. But our sight – oh, our sight – is able to see clear through to heaven.

As Grandpa fixes his eyes on the unseen, we are blessed to watch the sky light up with the glory of his heavenly pursuit.

The ice will melt and the trees will bloom.
Let the winter come, for it is the only path to Spring.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy
with human eyes and heaven sight 

Posted on by Caroline 4

a short list, but a good list

What’s that you say?

Christmas “spirit” got you down? Tired of overdone light displays and gaudy vests (and it’s not even December yet!)?

Here is a list for you, my friend. It’s SHORT so you are sure to make it to the end on this delightful Friday afternoon. This is about keeping the main thing the main thing (if you know what I mean).

  • You MUST pick up this Advent Jesse Tree Book! It’s free (no swiping necessary!) if you sign up to receive emails from Ann Voskamp’s site. She’s a pretty neat lady, so you should check her out even if you don’t dig the book. This resource will give you something to do with your family to prepare for the Christmas season and to remember well the glorious arrival of our Savior!
  • I know I talk about these guys a lot, but I really appreciate their music! If you are of the “Christmas music whenever you feel like it” camp, jump on the Sojourn Music bandwagon with me!
  • If you are all about a good deal (but would rather it be something to read then something to wear) then check out what Tim Challies is gathering for you at his blog. Leading up to Thanksgiving, he will post Black Friday deals and Cyber Monday deals for stuff you might actually buy! Check it out at his blog here.
  • I’m pretty excited at the challenge of making this another Advent Conspiracy Christmas at our house. There are some Ah-mazing ideas at their website about how to make it happen with you and yours! Here’s the video:
  • If you live anywhere near, around, close to, next to, or in the vicinity of Des Moines, Iowa – LISTEN UP. There is an AMAZING ministry that you might not know about called Freedom for Youth. You can support them by doing some Christmas shopping at their location (2301 Hickman Road, Des Moines, IA 50310) on December 3 and 10. Here’s a snippet from their website,
    “This holiday season, Freedom for Youth Ministries is hosting a Christmas Village at the Freedom Center. We will be featuring the teens & young adults handcrafted items such as art, woodworking, food and more! Come for a soup lunch or Christmas shop for unique and handmade gifts for family and friends! Freedom Blend Coffee is on sale during these 2 days!”

That’s the list, as promised, and still no overdone light displays or gaudy vests. #winning

let LOVE fly like crazy

Posted on by Caroline 0

I will sail my vessel

There is something about the view of rolling Iowa hills from the window of a tractor that makes singing along to the radio especially exciting. It’s like “singing in the shower” with an incredible view!

I’m not normally one to like country music (or at least admit it), but it does seem strangely fitting with this backdrop. I will say the songs that really get me come from my childhood. I’d wake up early (when it was my turn to help with the morning chores) and go outside before the world woke up. It’s funny, country was the only station that ever seemed to work out there in that barn. I listened to Paul Overstreet, George Strait, Alan Jackson, and… Garth Brooks.

The other day, we were farming my grandpa’s land and The River by Garth Brooks came on the local radio station.

I’ll go ahead and admit it – I rustled up my best twang and sang from a deep place in my chest about sailing my vessel until the river runs dry – following my dreams like a vessel on a river.

I wondered how many times my grandpa said, “Well, we’re just gonna keep on farming until the Lord tells us different.”

With eight kids, nobody would have questioned him if he’d given up and moved on to something with a bit more promise of provision. But, in all my growing up years, I never heard his kids wishing their childhood happened any different.

The Lord certainly guided his way as a father as much as a farmer (of course, he had a wife who wouldn’t let him forget it). Maybe my grandpa’s quiet time with the Lord happened when he rode his horse out behind the barn to check the fields. I know my grandma would do her Bible study in the station wagon in the garage, where the kids were told she would not (under any circumstances) be disturbed.

I don’t know how they did it.

There are so many stories. Maybe someday I’ll start gathering and assembling all the stories I’ve heard that had this beautiful backdrop. 

Maybe someday I’ll have stories of my own, like packing my family of 10 into a 4 door sedan for a road trip or setting a feast for dinner (even in hard times) and watching it come out, “just right.”

Maybe someday I can …

let LOVE fly like cRaZy
in a way that generations after will remember.

Posted on by Caroline 3

fathers be good to your daughters… and sons too

This is one of those “been-a-long-time-coming” posts.

I remember calling my dad’s cell phone randomly while working in Texas several years ago and just saying, “Thanks, dad. I know this may not make sense, but I just need to say thank you for doing what you do and being who you are.”

I was spending all my days with college age students at work and some nights with the junior high youth group girls. Over and over and over again I heard about broken homes, a spirit of distrust, and a very real longing from these girls to know their fathers and be known by them.

I’m a fixer by Nichols nature, but as I listened to these stories one thing was certain: this was out of my league.

In every case, every 12-year-old and every almost-20-something, I searched for words and came up speechless. Now, several years later, the stories are piling up like postcards from similar destinations: despair, loneliness, anger, betrayal, pain, and sometimes hope. Those are the ones I like best – the hope ones. The others are ones that make my heart hurt. Those destinations are hard to explain, but they seem to keep arriving at my doorstep.

Tonight, during our Bible study on God’s design for women, my heart broke again for all the girls in my life who have a hard time picturing God as a loving Father. If a father is someone who is silent and distant… or two-faced and secretive… or always offering empty promises, then it is hard to picture God’s role as our Father much differently.

Oh, this hurts! In the French film Amélie, the little girl’s father is a doctor and her mother is a headmistress. They are each particular about different things, but neither very particular about showing affection to their one daughter. One scene read almost exactly like one of my sad story postcards. Amélie, who looks about 5, sits like a statue while her father takes her heartbeat. Her face is emotionless, but the narrator informs us that she, like every girl, wants nothing more than to be hugged by her dad. Since he keeps his distance, she longs and treasures this yearly checkup – where he always finds her heart rate abnormally fast (due to her excitement in being near him).

Almost daily, I am reminded that I have no answers. Nothing I can say today from my mind or heart will hold up tomorrow and will certainly not pass through the many worlds separating me from the home lives of the girls who are so precious to me. I know of only one thing that is true always and it’s the unchanging Word of the Lord. I know without that infallible Word, all of my words will fall flat.

As long as I’m on the subject… there are a few things I wish Dads knew. John Mayer’s song, “Daughters,” scratches the surface of the longing a daughter feels to be loved by her dad, but (not surprisingly) it isn’t strong enough.

Fathers, be good to your daughters
daughters will love like you do

It was simple enough to capture the attention of a whole crowd of daughters who wished for what this nebulously suggests, but I wish this song spelled out specifics.

Fathers:

  1. Be transparent about your first and greatest Love. For many daughters, your faith is a secret. You might go to church or you might have a Bible, but your ideas and convictions are as hidden and elusive as treasure on a child’s treasure map. It’s okay to be somewhere in the growing stages of your faith – in fact, it’s refreshing for us daughters to know you haven’t “arrived” yet. When your daughter can see you admit you need God, her heart and tenderness toward you will grow, but more importantly you will have pointed her gaze to the Father that never fails.
  2. Love your wife. One of the greatest ways you can love your daughter is to love and serve your wife. When they see you honoring, protecting, partnering, laughing, enjoying, and living in a way that reflects God’s design, they will be confident as you lead the family AND you will give them an excellent example of a husband. (This is especially important in those years where you cannot relate to your daughter. When nothing makes sense, love your wife well and I promise your daughter will see it!)
  3. Choose to be around. Your daughter will feel special that you’ve decided the best place for you to be in that moment is with them.
  4. Get personal. Some of my favorite memories with my dad are simple ones that we shared while we did chores together on the farm or as we drove out to a football game or prepared our animals for county fair. Every discussion doesn’t have to be deep, but if you open up first then you’ll gain your daughter’s trust and she’ll likely reciprocate (even if it’s not right away).
  5. Encourage, praise, love the God-honoring things your daughter does and push her in those things to be excellent. I’ll never forget my dad’s insistence that I study that little spelling book in preparation for the elementary spelling bees. My dad still types on the computer with his pointer fingers and English wasn’t his strongest high school subject, but when he found out I could put letters together in the right order, he was going to make sure I did it excellently. Those little things (though I assure you I didn’t love them at the time) made his love for me so obvious.
  6. Be gentle. Your daughter will appreciate well-placed words and respectable silences.
  7. Be good to your sons, too. Your daughters are smart. They will see the way you are leading and guiding your sons. Right now they are probably making mental notes in their heart about whether their dream man will act like the father and brothers in their lives. Many hold desperately on to the hope that it can be different. If they have to rely on Hollywood, they will be hoping for something unhealthy and unrealistic. But she’s got a front row seat for what a man should look like, so show her!

I don’t know where all this came from, but it is so my heart to encourage men to be men as God created them. I just read this blogpost the other day and it’s a slightly different tangent, but with the same bottom line – that men would be true men.

let LOVE fly like crazy

Posted on by Caroline 4

life: worth doing right

Film poster for Amistad (1997 film) - Copyrigh...
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“If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”
Thanks, mom.

I grew up angry at these eight words because hard work was always the guilty result of this catchy little phrase. It appeared when we discussed our 4-H livestock projects and how little we had worked with them (if you are not from the country, you wouldn’t understand leading a cow around by a halter in your yard). It wedged into conversations about refinishing projects and youth group commitments and grades in school. Many a conversation ended with a knowing, stern look from either Mom or Dad and these words, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”

Now, working with youth, I wish more parents used this guilt trip method to motivate their kids. I realize guilt should not mainly motivate us to do things ‘right,’ but guilt is not the lesson that has stayed with me these 25 years. The lesson is about worth.

Last night I watched one of my favorite movies – Steven Spielberg‘s “Amistad.” In one of the last scenes, the attorney speaks on behalf of the Africans being prosecuted for insurrection on the slave ship where they were so inhumanely transported in the slave trade en route to Spain.

John Quincy Adams, played by Anthony Hopkins, says these words in front of the Supreme Court (7 out of 9 of which are Southern slave owners),

“Yea, this is no mere property case, gentlemen. I put it to you thus: This is the most important case ever to come before this court. Because what it, in fact, concerns is the very nature of man.”

At this point in the movie, something very human in me connects with the John Quincy Adams leaning against the polished hardwood handrail. I want to shout, as his quiet words seem to do so well, “Yes, gentlemen, what are WE WORTH? What is man worth?” Is our nature – the nature of man – carry some inherent value or is rather something to discard?

I can tell you what I felt about our worth as I watched one of the captured Africans, Cinque, struggle against the chains that bruised his wrists and neck.

We were not made for this.

In Genesis, when God breathed life into the man He’d formed from the dust of the earth, He was intentional. His ways are perfect, so I refuse to believe any part of His creation process was not done “right.” Every piece and particle, from the smallest micro-organism to the most complicated systems in the human body, God designed us exactly right.

In His image we were made (Genesis 1:26-28), male and female He created us in His image. I can’t help but think my parents’ old adage came from a deeper understanding of God’s own very intentionality in our design. If creation was worth doing at all (and, I’ll admit, sometimes I wonder), then God would be the only One able to do it right. I really believe the ‘nature of man’ is a question of beginnings, which (not so ironically) is what the word “genesis” means.

Our genesis (beginning) is bound up in the intentional mind of a sovereign God, whose purposes are forever, beautifully… right.

I say all of this because I am pondering what it means to live life. I made up a word last week when I was trying to process the biography of Bonhoeffer because I was grasping at dictionaries to find a description for his approach to living out theology. I came up with vivology, after a quick greek/latin roots and suffixes search.

The question bouncing about in my head lately has been, “How do I live right?” Because, I know live is worth living (God’s intentional, perfect design)… so it must be worth doing right.

What are your thoughts?

———————————————————————————————————-

Today, I’m doing my best to

let LOVE FLY like cRaZY.

Posted on by Caroline 1

beginning again

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Wow. It’s hard to know how to begin. I didn’t write all summer, but I don’t feel bad about that. I never really do. There’s something about taking a break to live life and let the words drift in and out on the wind instead of flow from my fingertips. I spent some time putting pen to paper, but I even let that just be for a while.

What I DID do was enjoy the people who stood right in front of me. What a beautiful blessing it is to have community that builds us up, gives us new energy, and reminds us of the One who is responsible for anything good in this life.

I spent quiet mornings at the farm, drinking in newness of day. I passed time on the patio with my grandparents, listening to updates about neighbors and the bird family that just grew by three.

I ran the quaint streets of Atlantic and ate at my favorite Mexican restaurant. I played competitive nertz games with people who make joy bubble out in every direction and stayed up until 4 am debating politics and Christian living.

I barbecued homegrown steak with my parents on the East porch and talked about old times and the upcoming year. I spent beautiful time at my family reunion and then road-tripped for weddings in Chicago.

I picked up the biography of Bonhoeffer by Metaxas and rediscovered the biography of John Calvin. I watched some of my closest friends decide to love someone forever and I celebrated family every chance I got.

My summer was at the same time full and spaced out. It was a double-spaced, ten page paper on the most interesting topic imaginable and it never felt rushed.

And so, with that little prelude, I walk into this year with fresh eyes. All my excitement is bound up in the sincere decision to trust God in all things. In his grace, He makes every good work abound. If I could borrow a phrase from Mark Driscoll, I hope this year sees me working to the “glory of God and good of all people,” knowing that God is moving regardless.

If you are still confused about this outlook, the soundtrack to Peter Pan captures it pretty well.

and, as always, I’m setting out to

let love fly like crazy

Posted on by Caroline 0