Posts in category: Faith

The sheet my son holds is thin and weathered from the years.
It is an inherited page from my husband’s family.
The words and songs were his as a child and are our tradition now, and we claim them in this kitchen one more year.

He is 18 and he reads Isaiah while “Joy to the World” plays.

My daughter is on FaceTime from her college dorm room and we have her propped up at the end of the table.

This is our tradition and we have vowed to call each other every Sunday in advent if we can’t be together. The lighting of the advent candles together is something we have done since they were each babies.

We remember the anticipation that lasted hundreds of years.
The waiting, the expectation.
Knowing something is coming and asking over again:
When?
How long do we have to wait?

My son lights the hope candle:  the first Sunday of Advent message.  We are quiet and still.
It’s hard to sit in the quiet.

After he reads and we pray, we all open our eyes.
I glance at my daughter there on the screen, now almost 21. She shares a birthday with Jesus.
I see her as a toddler.

I remember how we sat together in a a wooden pew on Christmas Eve, she in a white furry coat, on the eve of her 3rd birthday. A brown basket of candles was passed and we each reached for one.  They were pure white, with circles attached to their bases to catch the drips.  The lights dimmed.  Flames were shared between us. We tipped towards each other, looking into each others’ eyes. “Silent Night”  began to be softly sung by the choir and we joined our voices.

This girl had leaned in close to me.
She had whispered:  “Is everyone going to sing Happy Birthday to ME?”

She thought the song was about her.

My eyes and cheeks had giggled softly, reined in only by the reverence of the moment.
I marveled at her.
“No, sweetie, we’re all singing Happy Birthday to Jesus.But we will sing to you very soon.”

I thought to myself:
“You are a miracle.
But HE is the biggest miracle. This is HIS song.”

She had reminded me that year.
It’s not about me.

“““““““““““

We get up from the kitchen table, the hope candle burning.

I squint and strain to remember again.

This light marking the first week of waiting, of Advent, the candle my son lights and the faded words on the page of our family paper?

None of it has to do with my present struggles.
And nothing bought in a store can make anything sing inside of me.
This moment and song and candle are about a hope that we cannot purchase or muster up. 
There is no need to scurry, nothing we need to DO today to receive hope.
We won’t miss anything by being still and silent and singing to Him.
And just maybe we will be found when we get lost in the light of His coming.

We are waiting for something meek and low in the dirty mess of a manger.
Someone that lays In the slivered wood.
The same wood that would become His cross.

—————–

Tonight, after we have extinguished the first candle,  I take the Nativity figures out of the box that has been stored in the attic for more than 300 days.
I place the figures one by one there on the tray in the family room.

I study the faces and remember the  place that surrounded  baby Jesus:

3  men with gifts.
A teenage homeless girl.
A frightened father.
A stable lined with hay with no walls to keep out the night or the dark or cold.
Messy animals.

The only things shining are Him and the star that marks His place.

It’s a reclaiming, remembering the season fresh.

“No, no”  I whisper.
This hope can’t be bought or found for a bargain.
And it cannot be barricaded.
He is coming.

And the song that is playing in the background now is not about me.
It’s not MY song.

It’s HIS.

Before the Foundation, family members were sleeping on the floor of this hospital, desiring to stay close to their loved ones who had suffered life-altering burns and wounds. Family members could now stay there, close to those they love.

I’m so honored to welcome my friend Jennifer Dukes Lee to this space today.  She is a fellow lover of Iowa sunsets and dirt roads.  Our paths first crossed several years ago on a writer’s retreat and God orchestrated many meet-ups since then which have included evenings at her Iowa farm catching fireflies with our girls and a trip to Haiti serving alongside each other.  

Jennifer’s authentic words have spoken into my own life on so many levels and I know you will be blessed by her words, her humor, and  her heart for Jesus. Here’s just a  little glimpse into her heart and the heart of her latest book which releases today:

We say that God has everything under control, but we aren’t always aware in the same way that a farmer is aware. That’s one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in my years as a farmer’s wife.

Farming is putting yourself in a position to trust God. It’s a way of life in which you can’t miss the truth: God is God of the clock, God of the calendar, God of the weather, God of the to-do list. God alone knows when the rain will come, when the heat will rise, when it’s time for the seed to push up from the dark into the light.

A lot of people have romantic notions about farm life. But hard things lie beneath the idyllic overlay. There are grueling uncertainties, great losses, late nights, crazy markets, droughts, insects, disease, hailstorms, equipment that breaks down when you need it most, and tragically, despair that has led to a higher-than-average suicide rate nationally.

My husband Scott says he has no choice but to trust God. For years he’s gone around this farm saying, “God’s got it.” And when he says, “God’s got it,” he is talking himself into the truth. That’s a form of what I call active trust. Active trust is proactively believing God. Active trust is giving yourself the gift of future faith, in advance.

For my husband, active trust came out of necessity, rather than some superpious gene he inherited. He is a farmer, always at the mercy of God.

God’s got it = active trust.

In Western culture, it’s tempting to say “God’s got it” but not really live it. We’re more of a “you got this” culture.

You want to pursue your passion? You got this.
You want to start a business? You got this.
You want to start a new exercise program? You got this. You’ve definitely got it in you to do all of those things, but how often do you and I forget that what’s “in us” is the very Spirit of God?

We live in a culture where we’ve set ourselves up to play God. The first time that I found out my mammogram was abnormal, my immediate instinct was to run for the Google machine and ask it what “asymmetrical tissue” means.

For almost every possible scenario, we have a means of control available to us: a spray to control weeds, a cream to control wrinkles, a pill to control hunger. It’s no wonder we’ve been fooled into thinking we are the ones calling the shots. It’s hard to surrender our lives to God when we’ve got everything covered ourselves, isn’t it?

This, of course, leaves us feeling on the hook for everything. And suddenly we turn around, inspect our lives, and find that we are miles from God.

What do we want with our lives? What do we really want? When we strip all the faux self-sufficiency away, we can see it clearly. We want Jesus. We are hungry for the God who first stole our hearts. We want to do the things that God wants us to do. We want to partner with him, not boss him around. When we lay our heads down at night, we want to feel the incomparable satisfaction of knowing we spent our day in the center of his will. We want to be remembered as women who did exactly what God wanted us to do—rather than as overworked, weary women who lost their joy.

Nothing else on our to-do lists matters as much as knowing we were completely obedient to his. Nothing will give us more joy than giving our yes when God invites us to be a part of what he’s already doing, knowing it deep and true:

God’s got it.  

Adapted from It’s All Under Control: A Journey of Letting Go, Hanging On, and Finding a Peace You Almost Forgot Was Possible by Jennifer Dukes Lee, a brand new release from Tyndale House Publishers

Jennifer Dukes Lee is the wife of an Iowa farmer, mom to two girls, and an author. She loves queso and singing too loudly to songs with great harmony. Once upon a time, she didn’t believe in Jesus. Now, He’s her CEO. Jennifer’s newest book, It’s All Under Control, and a companion Bible study, are releasing today! This is a book for every woman who is hanging on tight and trying to get each day right―yet finding that life often feels out of control and chaotic.

www.jenniferdukeslee.com and on Facebook:  Jennifer Dukes Lee

I’m so excited to be a part of a huge giveaway to celebrate the release of It’s All Under Control. Jennifer and her publisher, Tyndale, are giving away 50 copies of the book in celebration of its release! Enter below to win. Giveaway ends September 30. Winners will be notified by Tyndale House Publishers. Email subscribers can click here to enter.  

It’s All Under Control 50 Book Giveaway

What A Depressed Friend Might Need Right Now

————————————————————-

Two weeks ago my daughter’s boyfriend bought her a Kate Spade wallet in NYC.  We had wandered around touching all the pretty things, basking in the happy glow that surrounds Kate Spade stores.  I had texted my friend Tracy a picture of the flagship store in NYC because I knew of her passion for bows and all things Kate.

Although Kate had sold her brand to Neiman Marcus in 2006 (the brand has had several owners since)  and was currently working on building other brands, she remained the iconic founder and figure behind the beloved brand.

I read just today that the last marketing campaign launched by the Kate Spade brand before her death was called “Where’s Kate?”   All videos have been pulled from the internet for obvious reasons, but the eerieness of it remains. Apparently it included an actress portraying Kate herself trying to be found by a detective.

Let that sink in.

The questions  that we have all  been collectively asking since Tuesday when we learned that she hung herself with a red scarf in her gorgeous NYC apartment are all a form of:

Where was Kate, really?

Where were her friends?

Where were the meds?

WHERE?

And we ask WHY:

Why didn’t she call someone?

Why didn’t we know about her private struggle?

Why didn’t someone see signs?

WHY?

A couple of days later we found ourselves asking the same questions about Anthony Bourdine.

The real question we need to be asking is:

Why don’t we talk about mental illness like we talk about cancer, diabetes and heart disease?

And also, we might want to refer to the fact that there are some questions that will never ever be answered in this lifetime.

I am familiar with the wrong questions.  When I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at the age of 29 I got doozies like these: “Were you a heavy smoker?” “Do you have a history of cancer in your family?” “Didn’t you FEEL something or have symptoms before that grapefruit-sized tumor was removed?”

No. No. No.

Rumors flew as far as Texas that the cancer had moved to my brain, that I was dying and would leave my daughter orphaned.

People will talk.  And they will scrutinize.  Especially when things are hard to believe and come seemingly  out of nowhere. It’s how we distance ourselves. It’s how we swallow the belief that “it could never happen to me or someone I love.”  So we stand at a distance and calculate the many clues to its happening and the ways OTHERS could have prevented it.

I’m not sure what we’ve done with the disease of mental illness.  We all seem to have a retrospective opinion when the monster called depression takes one of our own: Robin Williams, Kate Spade, a friend’s son. We want answers to impossible questions.  We want a finger to point. We want an explanation, a reason. A way that we could have prevented it, single-handedly and collectively.

It has got to be excruciatingly  painful for those close to Kate and anyone who has been lost to suicide and depression.  The way we want to make sense of it. The way we flounder with our questions and our near accusations. How we put hotlines and solutions up online. As if we can solve this.

Don’t you think they are asking all the same questions?

I’m not implying we don’t offer help and resources and medications and ALL the things.  Not just during a storm of awareness that celebrity deaths bring. But maybe these spotlight cases of what happens daily can bring us together to mourn a little bit together.  Can we hold out a hand?

Cancer is a disease too and it has very few rules that it follows. Just today I ran into an old friend at lunch who is one of the lead cancer researchers in the world. She spends every day all day trying to figure this thing out.

I have know women who were diagnosed on Friday and died on the following Tuesday.  Or those with cancer who sought all the treatments: the chemo, the homeopathic ways, yoga, wheatgrass, the clinical trials. And still they lost the earthly battle. Sometimes after years of public battles, but often in silent, steady ways that even those closest to them never knew.  I used to hear from these women at the ministry I co-founded. I became the “stranger on the airplane,” the ones women struggling with cancer could trust with all their insecurities. They would share the fears that would never be uttered to their spouses or children.

They suffered in literal silence while every resource surrounded them.

I had fought a similar, silent, deadly monster. And I know it could return.  It’s a precarious place to live.

Monsters like cancer and mental illness can strike silent and deadly at any time.  It’s time we call it what it is: a disease. Dis ease. Lack of ease. There is no easy treatment, cure, answer, prevention.

Can we do things that help?  Yes.

Do we have guarantees that it will not kill us?  No.

If someone with epilepsy has a seizure and loses consciousness in a matter of minutes then couldn’t it also be true that suicidal episodes are like this?  One moment the person is on the phone or laughing, and the next they are gone, eaten by the disease, with no clues at all?

Can we call mental illness what it is?  A monster. A liar. Capable of eating up perfectly good (and especially perfectly creative, brilliant, artistant, high-achieving people?)

Can we get mad enough at the DISEASE

Can we have enough dis-ease about this to stop pointing fingers at family members who “must have known” and coworkers “should have said something.”

Because I believe that when those close to the ones we have lost say there was “ no indication in the last few days,” they mean it.

Just like there was no indication that an ovarian tumor the size of a grapefruit was growing on my left ovary.

Silently, quietly.

And don’t think I don’t live in a place where I know it can come back again. It came silently once before. Today, if you didn’t know about that time in my life, you might wonder why a tear streaks down my cheek in the waiting room of the doctor’s office. It’s a routine visit, after all, and needles are only used to draw blood to test my hormone and cholesterol levels. My reaction might make you think that I have too much anxiety. I am being ridiculous. I am overreacting.

You would be wrong. I am reacting to my truth and my pain and my history and my present fears.I know a teeny-tiny bit about how it feels to have history with a disease that threatens to define me. But my scars don’t show on the outside. I can hide them and wear the painful truth on the inside. I can cover it all with clothing and makeup and a smile.

I want to remember what it felt like to be offered platitudes, explanations, theories, and even cold-hard facts during my own season of intense pain.

So I feebly try to do the thing that my best friend did during my horrible bout with cancer.

She didn’t have cancer and she didn’t understand, but she grabbed my hand and she squeezed it hard.

She picked me up in her car and drove me to get my favorite meal. She looked me straight in the eye and didn’t look away or try to manufacture words. She showed me the ministry of presence.

And her presence was the one thing I desperately needed in the midst of the strongest identity crisis and most intense pain of my life.

And so I offer here the ministry of my presence. Maybe we can sit and you could tell me some of the battles, of the loss, the fear, and the stories that have injured you and that make up the patchwork of your life. And maybe I could tell you mine.

You will not try to pick up and walk in my cancer shoes, and I would not try to put on yours.

Dear friend with depressive episodes or anxiety that claws at your life,

I don’t know what darkness you have faced as a little girl or just yesterday. What black hole you felt down deep inside with no way out. But I do know that that pain floods like a dam that has been broken when given the right set of circumstances.

So I quietly acknowledge these recent losses are rightfully painful for you even more so than for me.  And I kneel with you and cry at the wreckage.

Of course I want you to know we are here, that someone is always there.  And that hotlines exist. I’ll post resources below because they are real with real people and real love behind them.

I offer no words~ only my hand.

I love you.  I will not stop showing up, reaching out a hand, telling you over and over that you are loved. I will look straight into the monster’s eyes, sitting next to you.  It’s all I know to do.

1 Corinthians 13:12:  “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”

P. S. and Resources:

If you are in the dark right now, you can call someone for help:  HOTLINE:  1 (800) 273-TALK (8255)

I reached out to a dear friend who I know has had a long battle with depression and bipolor disease.  I wanted to better understand.

Here is what she shared with me when I asked what this disease feels like, and what I as a friend can DO for her. (Maybe ask someone in your life?)

“Depression is a chronic and sometimes debilitating dis-ease.  We live afraid of ourselves, just like your fear of cancer returning. A depressed person can be okay and then not okay. Suddenly.  Without warning.  Often others don’t see it coming because WE don’t see it coming.  Suicidal ideations are an unpredictable and ravenous beast.  And even the meds aren’t always armor enough. In the darkness we will not believe your words.  We feel utterly, terrifyingly alone.  The people I do get brave enough to reach out to when I think I might be in danger are the people who are here all the time.  The people who ask all the time.  The people who listen all the time. Who know how to hear the subtle spiraling in my words or my slow isolation or mention of too many naps.  And sadly, on the worst days, my brain might even forget them.  It won’t always be enough.  No matter how much you love us.  But love anyway.  Risk anyway.  On the chance that it will be enough.”

Things you can DO for someone in your life with depression:

1. Pray with and for her.  Plant scripture and truth about who she is.
2. Buy your friend suffering from depression a package of classes at the swankiest yoga studio (or gym)  in town and offer to pick her up and take her.
3. Buy her a massage, a weighted therapy blanket, or a body brush for dry brushing.
4. Ask her if she’s having trouble affording her therapist.
5. Offer to go for a walk.
6. Ask if she needs physical touch.  Hold her hand or stroke her hair or give her a scalp massage.
7. Ask if you can clean her room.  Put fresh sheets on her bed. Make it smell nice.  Put out fresh flowers and send her to take a nap.  Wake her to a warm meal.
8. Bring smoothie packs.  It’s hard to eat when you’re depressed.  Drinkable nutrition helps.
9. Invite her to your home. She may need a change of scenery but noisy public places can feel terrifying.
10. Love.  Consistently.

When I was fifteen years old I was in the passenger seat during a terrible car accident. I don’t remember much from that day or the days that followed. I sustained the most injury out of the 4 teens in that Oldsmobile on that Friday night of my sophomore year of high school. Firefighters with jaws of life removed the crumpled metal and freed my leg. All the toes in my right foot were crushed, and my face hit the dashboard with great force. Scars from the stitches surrounding my mouth are still visible these 30 years later.

My right leg was broken.

I hobbled on crutches for several months after ER surgeons repaired my toes.  My face was a mess but I was young and resilient. I eventually healed, with a few scars to show for the ordeal.

I remember feeling beaten up and pretty un-beautiful during a time in high school that looks and fashion were important.

My friends had new clothes and a few had new cars the January when I hobbled in after the school doors reopened.  All I had were some new scars and a new pair of crutches.

I felt cheated that new year. Broken and bruised during a time that everyone appeared rested and put-together.

But something that I didn’t expect and that I didn’t understand at the time happened a few months later, close to my 16th birthday.

After the large cast was removed I noticed that the exact place where my bone had been broken on my right leg was raised. The doctors called it a calcium deposit.

I called it ugly.

But the truth was that my body had overcompensated in trying to rebuild what had been broken. It was stronger now. This raised area on my leg never went away. It has stayed as a reminder of a hard season.

My leg aches sometimes when the weather changes, but it’s a part of me now. A tangible reminder that it’s in the broken places that have been healed that we can claim strength.

That the strong, jagged place of mine reminds me that our jagged places tell a story.

And when we are broken we have a few options for dealing with it.  Most of us prefer to hide.

Especially when everyone else seems to be having beautiful beginnings. When their new year’s resolutions are shiny and fresh perspectives are plentiful. When we feel like we are the only one in a broken marriage, a broken relationship, traveling a broken road limping toward hope of healing.

Every January I’m reminded a bit of my brokenness. The tree branches are bare and the road feels kind of lonely in quiet new ways. My resolutions seem shallow.

But January also reminds me of a story I heard once about a cathedral that was built over a century ago. The architect ordered fresco paintings for the walls and several large mirrors to line the ceiling. When the mirrors were delivered and unwrapped it was discovered that they were all broken into jagged pieces. The construction team was discouraged and went about the work of carefully getting the broken mirrors into the trash. But when the architect returned and learned of their condition, he ordered the pieces retrieved from the garbage. And then he ordered them to be broken further.

The tiny mirrored pieces were painstakingly adhered to the ceiling. Each reflected at a different angle and it became a breathtaking display of light.

I believe that’s what God does with our broken hearts, our broken pasts, our broken lives.  Maybe January is not a place of wholeness at all.  Maybe it’s a place to fully accept our brokenness.  A time to see the hurts and to believe again that God removes, orders, and lines the heavens with their beautiful reflection. Perhaps so  we can see our brokenness is strong and beautiful after His repair.

I have come to understand that God is not afraid of broken places.

He can make them prisms of light reflecting grace and glory. If we surrender and we are still, He will cast his mercy and beauty, which insulates us to heal.

Sometimes in the soft and broken filtering light of a new year.

Hello 2018.  You came in downright cold today in most places here in the U.S.  Friends have messaged me all day of -20 degree temperatures in the Midwest.

I found it hard to leave yoga pants and my favorite sweatshirt and opted to stay cozy in said comfort wear all day and organize my office.  (By the way, if you EVER see me attempt to purchase a journal or notebook of any kind in 2018 please STOP me…I counted 14 when I purged today.  Yes, those are just the ones that are unused.)  I’m pretty sure I purchase one every single time I see one I like.  It’s a problem.

But I regress.

We have kept the bottom cuttings from our Christmas tree for the past seven years.  You know, the part you cut off so that water can seep up better through the trunk? Yeah, we keep them.  We take a sharpie and write the year right there.  Then we line them up on our mantel as Christmas decorations, resting in the garland by the stockings.  They are a reminder.

We have to look back before we look forward.

Best of 2017:

Publishing a book.

You can read most of the details HERE.  It was such joy to celebrate with Tammy at a few book signings and to talk 1:1 with others about the message of “A God Of All Seasons.” From copies being placed in a cancer center ministering to those undergoing chemo in Iowa to the woman who shared with me that she has used it as a daily devotional in the days after losing a loved one, God has moved powerfully.  Sometimes I  just had to get out of the way of who I thought the message might reach.

(Good news:  The Kindle version of A God Of All Seasons is just $2.99 right now.  Maybe a good way to start off your mornings this January? You can download it HERE.

Practicing A Season of Intention

During the month of November Tammy and I did series of Facebook Live videos.  (We went LIVE EVERY day, ya’ll!!) We intentionally took a few moments  to notice the small, to realize where God was speaking in our season.  It was a joy to connect with others in this way and really stretched us to open our bibles every single morning, to look for the God moments, even in the hard winters.   If you missed these I have linked each live video below.  Just click on the link that interests you or watch the whole series in January, a little bit at at time.

A Season of Intention Day One:  An Introduction

What The Heck Does It Mean to Be Intentional?

Beauty in Smallness

Letting Go Of Expectations

When You Feel Lost

Community and Why We Need Each Other

The Compass Leading Us Home: What To Do When All Seems Lost

Thanksgiving and How To Really Be Ready

When You Feel Poor In Spirit

These Are a Few Of Our Favorite Things

What The Black Sheep Knows: When You Feel Left Out

The Story Inside You: What letter are YOU writing to the world? On vulnerability and coming out of hiding.

As God Sees Us. (Stop beating yourself up: on self-forgiveness and God’s view of us.)

Be Intentional of Your Surroundings. (With special guest Jen Sandbulte)

Be Still and Know

Knowing Which Exit To Take

Friday Faves: Take Two!

On Obedience. When God says go, speak,share, act… do it!

The Full Circle Of Obedience

A Day of Preparation

Friday Faves:  Take Three!

A Gift For You and How To Give Yourself a Break

Words that heal.  How can we give encouragement to someone else?

How To Prepare For Winter

Our Final Message and a Giveaway!

A Follow Up Message To A Season Of Intention

Hallway Moments

This post really struck a chord.  I penned it straight from my heart on December 10th and it clearly resonated.  If you are living in “Hallway Moments” right now, this one’s for you.  I see you.  God sees you.  You can interact with the original post HERE.

Today is “D Day”: Diagnosis Day.

Twenty years ago TODAY we heard the words “Malignant.” It was December 10, 1997.

I had survived a four hour surgery. I was eight months pregnant and our daughter was still alive there inside me. The large tumor had been removed that was lodged right beside her. Twenty-nine staples lined my body which matched my age.

At twenty nine I had ovarian cancer. I was still pregnant.

A long road was ahead.

I don’t remember much about that day. I do recall begging my mom from that bed in the ICU to tell me the truth about what they had found. I slipped in and out of consciousness, struggling with what I would later understand to be pulmonary edema, fighting contractions, and complications from the surgery from the many medications that were pumping through my body. My life and my daughter’s life were precarious.

This man carried the weight of my cancer diagnosis and the worry. He spent much of his time in the hallway. My mom and his parents did too.

We all walked hallways. The in-between places.

He paced the hallways between the NICU and the cancer floor. He fought for me and for our family and he hasn’t stopped fighting.

I survived ovarian cancer. Barely. Our daughter Shelby was born 15 days after cancer was removed from my body, at 6:14 Christmas morning. Don’t ask her if she dislikes having her birthday on Christmas. She’ll tell you she shares a birthday with Jesus. We all understand the miraculous nature of it all.

Each year on D Day I have a range of emotions. I feel deeply blessed, incredibly awed that I even get another year on this planet, and I also relive the sadness, the despair, the “unfairness” of it all.

This morning I looped my arm around my son in church, him standing much taller than me. I can hardly believe he was born 2 ½ years after my diagnosis. The biggest miracle of all. I nearly doubled over with gratitude.

Today I remembered this specific memory:

A year after my diagnosis, when my hair was just beginning to grow back and our daughter was learning to take her first wobbly steps I asked my husband a weighty question.

“I never saw you, your parents or my mom cry in my room during that really scary time. I mean, samples were being sent to Johns Hopkins and twenty-three people were in the room when Shelby was born and I just kept thinking everything was fine because you were all so strong.”

I have never forgotten his response.

“You weren’t in the hallway. There were a lot of tears and hugs in the hallway.”

THE HALLWAY.

We all know hallways, yes?

The places between the now and and the not yet. The shuffling about in confusion. The questioning of everything, including God. I was in the room, battling in my own way but so many others were in the hallway.

I almost didn’t post about my “D Day” today. I figured maybe it was time to just keep all my melancholy emotions to myself. But then I thought of you- ALL of you in hallways this holiday season.

Those of you pacing, struggling, hurting, and questioning in hallways. Hospital hallways, yes, but also maybe just in caverns of pain and loss. Maybe with empty chairs around your table.

If you are in a hallway this year I just want you to know that today, on my personal D Day, I see you. I don’t know what the thing is that brought you here. But I do know that God is tender enough to have come to this world in the most vulnerable of moments, in the most unexpected, broken, forgotten place that He could have showed up.

He will show up in your hallway.

——————————————————————————————-

Looking Forward to 2018:

I pick a “Word of the Year” and have for the past 5 years.  This is simply a word to center around, to intentionally seek, study, and incorporate into my life.  This year the word found ME.  I’ve been asked to speak at a few places around the country in 2018.  Something you may not know about me is that I was painfully shy as a child.  Deeply introverted and a strong feeler, I was nearly mute during school days until the 2nd grade.  Speaking was hard for me.  It takes a certain kind of brave to speak.  Writing has always been easier, safer.  I have spoken a lot over the years on behalf of cancer patients, as a keynote many times, and I love speaking as a teacher in my roles as a professor over the years.  I know HOW to speak, I just haven’t in awhile.  But now I sense God widening my message and calling me to muster a braver voice.  So my word for 2017 is SPEAK.  To me this means speak love, speak truth, speak for justice.  It is the opposite of being quiet and holding it in, which I am exponentially better at doing.

I have another book in the works.  It’s just an outline now with about enough content for six chapters, but it’s a message I feel very passionate about and a goal to publish it this summer.  I also have a collaborative project I am re-visiting with my co author Tammy. This all makes me giddy.  (After all, I am the girl who spent every day after school at the library…my library card was (and still is) my most prized possession.  I’m a girl of words. And now my office is clean, so I’m off to a good start in meeting my word counts daily.

I started my own communications company which launches, well….NOW.  Yep, I did.  I will still be contracting with Vi Bella Jewelry, (yay for a first client!) but I’m hanging out my own shingle, helping others with marketing through strategy and storytelling. I’m thrilled to be in discussions with several entrepreneurs.  You can catch a glimpse of what’s in the works HERE.  (Much more on this soon.)

Phew, thanks for staying to the end.  This recap isn’t nearly comprehensive, but more of a wrap-up of my author/entrepenuer goals and memories. Later this week I’ll be sharing a post about my MUST-HAVES for 2018.  You’ll want to make sure you are subscribed to my email list so you don’t miss that!  Sign up HERE.

I look forward to walking through 2018 with you.  Because no matter what the calendar day, month, or year says, God IS a God of all seasons.  And we are his beloveds.

Happy New Year!~

Amy

(Blue Jean Girl)