Even here.

“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o’er wrought heart and bids it break.”
-William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Aaron and I took the entire month of December off of social media. The original purpose was a challenge from our pastor during Advent: turn down the noise and recapture the wonder of the season. But knowing our hope for another baby, it felt like something entirely different for me — it felt like quiet preparation and silent reflection. It felt like taking a step back to steep in gratitude once more before diving into something entirely new.

One month doesn’t seem like that much time. And yet it’s enough time to watch your grandma slip into eternity. It’s enough time to celebrate the hope of Christmas that we all so desperately needed this year. It’s enough time to wave goodbye to one year and usher in a brand new one. And it’s just enough time to find out you’re pregnant… and then, one morning, find that you aren’t anymore.

I figured I was probably pregnant based on how I had felt in the previous couple of weeks but I tried not to think too much about it. I didn’t want to be overconfident and then be let down. I took a test on Christmas Eve that initially showed up negative. I told Aaron about it and said, “I think it’s wrong.” And sure enough, over the next couple of hours, a faint second line started to appear. Since it took so long to appear, we decided to take another test the next morning. Christmas day. What a gift it would be to find out about our baby on Christmas! How fun!

So I took another test and we wrapped it up and it was our last gift to open that morning. And we opened it to see the one word that instantly instills massive hope with a twinge of healthy fear. Pregnant.

When we found out I was pregnant with Nixon, I tried not to get my hopes up. Pregnancy after loss just brings about a different kind of anxiety. But this time – pregnancy after the birth of your son – well, it felt safe to be excited. It didn’t feel like needlessly getting our hopes up. It felt like answered prayer and immediate joy. I cried tears of excitement this time. We told Nixon all about how he would be a big brother. We excitedly shared our news that evening at my family’s Christmas gathering.

But I was pregnant only long enough to call my doctor to make those initial appointments. I was pregnant just long enough to dream about whether Nixon would have a brother or a sister. I was pregnant long enough to make a million plans in this mama heart of mine. And then in a moment, just days after we found out, I knew it was over again.

My doctor had me come in for labs just to be sure, but I already knew. I knew what my body was doing. It had done this before. We’ve done this before, which is why it seemed so impossible now. My body was supposed to know how to do this already — how to hold on to a baby it was busy creating without my knowledge. I was supposed to be (I thought) past this hurdle. I know a lot of women who have had one miscarriage. But two or more? Well, our club is smaller.

I wasn’t quite as far along this time. Many women might not even know they were pregnant. And part of me wishes I would have never known. But I do know. I know because that one word showed up on that stupid little stick. I know because the second line showed up. I know because my doctor called and told me that while my numbers were consistent with a miscarriage (meaning lower than they should have been), I still had the numbers — the numbers that tell you another life was growing in your body. The numbers that tell you a human being was being formed in your body and now suddenly it wasn’t anymore.  

So here I am, deep in this grief I never wanted to experience again. Here I am with the same questions – why and now what? Here I am telling you about it so that you might not feel alone if this is your story as well. I’m here too. Wondering. Sad. Fighting off lies and clinging to shreds of hope. I find myself just wishing to be pregnant again — that there was somehow, some way losing the baby could be untrue. That I would wake up and find that the loss wasn’t real. I know I won’t feel this way forever — I know it will get better. But right now, right here, I’m in the grimy thick of emotions and hormones.

When my grandma died, I had a hard time with it. I still am to be honest. I still think about it and cannot believe she died — I tell Aaron as much every other day. I can’t believe she’s not here on earth anymore —that she’s not just down the road at her apartment, sitting in her blue recliner. But when she died, I heard a song on the radio and sent it to my family group text. I don’t know if you tie music so closely to moments like I do, but there are songs that have defined different periods of my life. There are certain songs I could hear and be transported back to an exact moment in time. The one I heard on the radio is called, “Hallelujah Even Here” by Lydia Laird. It felt like an anthem we could sing in the midst of loss. It felt like something to hold on to in those days. And at the time I had no idea I was about to experience loss on top of loss. In a year that felt like so much was already taken — I had no idea I still had more to lose.

I have put that song on blast in my ears every day since our baby left me. I have to sing it at the top of my lungs so that maybe the truth of it will osmosis into my bones and I’ll feel better somehow —that the sentiment will wrap me up and hold me close when I really don’t feel like it is well with my soul like she sings. I have to remind my heart of the truth every day so that I don’t sink to despair.

One thing I don’t remember feeling last time was wanting proof that it happened. I want some kind of proof to hold on to that this wasn’t just a dream – that this baby was real, that two weeks ago, I really was pregnant. Last time we had a doctor’s appointment and we bought a onesie and we had a few weeks with our baby. This time it happened too fast. Last time I hung on to my doctor’s notes that said the reason for my appointment was “loss of pregnancy” just so I could hold on to something. This time I don’t have anything. There are no markers on a woman to show just how many children she’s carried in her body — and how many she now carries in her heart.

But I’ll know. I’ll know in my heart and my mind. I’ll know in my soul that I have had three babies in my body. And God knows. I don’t know what he is doing here in this part of my story, but he knows I am walking this road again. It feels unfair and ridiculous, to be honest. I feel embarrassed and angry. I feel sad. But I know that this part of my story will be used just as each part always is – to grow me, to mold my heart, to fill me with compassion and empathy. To help me become who he wants me to be. He wastes not a single moment of our lives here if we’re willing to join in what he’s accomplishing. So I’ve asked and prayed that he use this too, in my life and in the lives of whoever needs to hear that they are not alone in this acute kind of grief — in the astonishing and bewildering hurt of a shattered dream.

In September I wrote about resting even in the storms because we know who holds our hearts. How often I come to you here with lessons I think I’ve already learned and then God turns around and walks me right back through them again. In Bible Study Fellowship, the weekly group I am part of, we are studying Genesis and the story we talked about just this week was Genesis 20 where Abraham and Sarah are back at the same place they were a few chapters before. They’re learning the same lesson again. And here I am rereading that post I wrote because it seems I need to know again. That post is for me now. To know that even when it feels bumpy —even through the choppy water and roar of the engine – even here, God is the strength of my heart. He is holding me up and pulling me in close. Even when it doesn’t feel like it – because to be honest, it doesn’t really feel like it. I don’t have a warm, fuzzy, oh-wow-God-is-so-near kind of feeling. I don’t see him. But I trust him. And that is what will propel me forward to sing ever louder, “Hallelujah even here.” Even here when I am devastated. Even here when I don’t know what’s next. He is worthy. Even here.  

__________

A friend texted me the very week I miscarried (unbeknownst to her) to ask about resources I had from the first time I miscarried. She wondered if I had anything to share that might be helpful for those experiencing this kind of loss. So I’m sharing here in case they might be helpful to you as well.

The Other Side of Grief with Angie Smith — on the Made for This podcast

Trusting God with Our Children: An Interview on Faithful Motherhood with Nancy Guthrie — on the Risen Motherhood podcast

Infertility, Miscarriage and Motherhood with Courtney Reissig — on the Risen Motherhood podcast

Rich and Dawnchere Wilkerson — Our Infertility Story

It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way by Lysa Terkeurst

Also, I put together this playlist that I’ve been listening to the last couple of weeks. Maybe music helps heal your heart and hold fast to hope the way it does mine.

Defining moments.

I was wearing a yellow shirt that I thought was super cute when I stood in a parking lot and got my heart broken. I never spoke to him again. I also got rid of that shirt.

My heart pounding in my ears was the only sound I could hear in the moments before Aaron asked me to marry him. I was all tears and adrenaline for the next half hour.

I was staring at my hands in my lap when my doctor told me we had to deliver the baby that day. I squeezed the Kleenex in my hand and cried and said okay.

Defining moments. It’s so interesting what our hearts and minds latch on to in those moments –the moments where there is a definitive before and after. When the world seems to shift ever so slightly —but just for you. For you, it’s all different. It feels different. For everyone else, it’s just a regular Wednesday.

Nixon and I went to the library yesterday and after roaming the aisles of books back and forth, he noticed the cars driving by on the street outside the window. He toddled over and pressed his hands against the cool, wet glass and watched them pass by. He was wearing a camouflage beanie and a black shirt and I stared at him for a moment before joining him at the window. We watched the cars swish by in the rain and I thought how interesting it was that it seemed like just a regular day – traffic rolling by, the sounds of the library hummed in the background, a man read the newspaper at the table nearby. And yet as they all went on so normally, my life hangs on the edge of a before and after.

My grandma is about to meet Jesus. She’s mere hours from eternity. I hope my grandpa meets her at the gates the very moment she approaches. I hope they immediately sit down to enjoy the presence of Jesus and some dessert. Probably a cup of coffee also.

Meanwhile, here on earth, in this realm, it will feel a little more empty. A little less like normal. An extra reminder that we were not made for this world.

We went to visit her a few days ago. I held her hand and told her it was going to be okay. Told her I loved her and that her pink painted nails looked really pretty. It was a gift to be able to go see her. In these strange times we’re living in, many people don’t get to say goodbye so I’m thankful we had the chance. But it was hard to see her that way. Sick and weak.

“It’s never good. Death is not how it’s supposed to be,” my sister reminded earlier this week. It is an awful thing to watch the human body struggle and finally slip into eternity. But that’s what we’re all doing, essentially, just at different paces. On separate time tables.

I read one time that Americans don’t do well with death or grief. We don’t sit with it like we should so we don’t learn to accept it as a part of life. But I don’t want to accept it as part of life. I don’t think we’re supposed to. I mean, we have to, obviously, in one regard. We cannot outrun it. But this isn’t what it was meant to be. God didn’t create us for death. He created us for life. Everlasting, beautiful, abundant life. And that’s what I have to remind myself when I stand at the kitchen sink peeling carrots and realize my grandma will never do that again. She won’t eat again. She won’t pick out her clothes for the day. She won’t get up from the bed she is laying in. Not here she won’t.

But there. There in Heaven she will dine at the King’s banquet table. She will be dressed in the finest clothes as the Father invites her to his feast. The tears will be wiped from her eyes and her pain won’t even be a memory. It will be no more. She will be whole and healthy and full of life and love. That’s what I have to remember when I start to think about all that will be different when she leaves this body, this life.  

I read a quote from Charles Spurgeon, a Baptist preacher in the 1800’s, that said, “The Christian need not dread sickness, for he has nothing to lose, but everything to gain, by death.” My grandma has everything to gain when she takes her last breath. Everything. I believe it in my bones. It doesn’t make it easier to let her go now. It doesn’t make me hurt less. But I can hurt with hope. At least I want to. At least that’s what I will remind my heart in the coming days.

But it’s hard. And I feel sad and scared and that’s just the honest truth. I know Christians always say stuff like this – that we grieve with hope and that we know we’ll see them again, etc. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel wrecked right now. That I don’t mourn right now. That I don’t feel sad. Because I do. But thankfully, Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn.” Blessed. Because “They shall be comforted.” And I know this to be true as well. So I will throw myself again and again at the feet of Truth when my heart feels weary of this world as it does now. Because that’s the only thing I know how to do. 

I’m waiting for the phone call. The one where I hear she’s gone home. The anxiety of waiting to know has mounted all week in my heart and in my body physically. I haven’t felt well. It’s the waiting and the not knowing when the world will shift again, for me and my family alone. When it will tip ever so slightly toward eternity again. When there will be a distinct before and after and my mind will hang on to a weird memory of sight or smell or sound and it will all feel less normal.

But maybe it will feel a little more like it should – where we long for eternity and seeing her again. Maybe we’ll long a little more deeply and truly that His kingdom would come and all would be made whole –which is a perfect way to enter this Advent season. The word ‘advent’ is Latin and means ‘coming’. A reminder that we await his coming. Christ is coming. Eternity is coming. And we are longing, hoping, waiting for their arrival. For my family this season, we wait a little more expectantly, knowing who awaits us in glory. I just know she’ll serve us up the best dessert.

When you're feeling "too old".

*I received a message on Instagram the other day that asked about singleness and waiting. I get these sometimes from the sweetest women who are just wondering how to wait and how to wait well. The following is my response to that message.*

In the summer of 2010, I signed a lease on a one bedroom apartment after moving out of the one I shared with my newly engaged sister. I use the word signed rather loosely because I felt like Ariel in “The Little Mermaid” when she signs her voice away to Ursula without looking at the paper.

Like, “Ughhh I don’t want to do this but I don’t see any other options.” I was 25 and most of my friends were married and buying houses and having babies. That September my best friend got married one weekend and the very next weekend I was a bridesmaid at my sister’s wedding – my younger sister, I might add, because if you’ve been in that position, you know that matters. (Isn’t the law of the universe that these kind of life events happen in birth order? Thank you.) So they were both putting together new homes with brand new wedding gifts, meanwhile my apartment was mostly empty and had mismatched furniture and hand-me-down dishes that weren’t even a complete set anymore. Devastated at my circumstances doesn’t really begin to cover it. Didn’t God know I wanted a husband? Didn’t he see me crying about this?

I grew up believing that I would be married at a young age because my mom was and my aunts were and my grandparents were and my sisters had no problem finding spouses so, duh, this was supposed to be a slam dunk. Except I turned 26 and 27 and 28 and 29 and still never had a steady boyfriend. I stood in the mirror on my 28th birthday and cried about my life, which is ridiculous now that I think about it, but at the time I felt alone. I think the holidays are especially difficult for single people or for people whose lives haven’t gone exactly as they dreamed. Christmas is a season of expectation and hope, but when your hopes have been dashed and you feel no reason to be expectant, it’s just another season to feel like God forgot about you because he’s busy blessing everyone else. Ouch.  

I know of a woman and have known her for a very long time. We’ll call her Karen. And from my very limited knowledge about her, Karen was never dating anyone and she was never married (that I know of). Well, turning into Karen was my worst nightmare. God forbid I turned 30 or 40 or 50 and was still single. I mean, that would just kill me, I was certain. I had no idea about Karen’s circumstances or if she chose to be single or anything like that. I just knew she wasn’t married and reaching the upper stages of her 40s and the color drained from my face at the thought of my story following that pattern. But at 29 and single, that’s the outcome I was starting to imagine.

One of the biggest lies I told myself in that season was that I was getting “too old.” I had a timetable I was on. If I didn’t get married in the next year, I wouldn’t be able to have all my kids by the time I was 30 and then I would be an old mom and my kid’s friends would probably confuse me for being his/her grandparent! And would my kids know their great grandparents like I knew mine? Not on this schedule, God! Come on!

We live in a culture that loves everything new and fresh – people, gadgets, relationships, etc. It’s like your engagement and wedding pictures getting 1,000 likes on Facebook but then the picture you post a few months after the wedding and everyone is over you like, “How many pictures do they need of each other? Ugh, we get it.” It’s like when you announce your first baby and everyone is so excited for you but by the time you announce the fourth people are like “Are they going for a Duggar situation or what?” It’s like 17 year olds modeling for a high-end line that absolutely no real life 17 year old children could afford to buy but then the 40 year olds who actually can afford it feel like they need to look like that 17 year old. If our culture loves anything it’s youthfulness. Magazines and movies and famous people (who apparently never age) tell us this, when in actuality they’re pumped full of Botox, and meanwhile make you feel like the three lines near your eyes are screaming that you’re 1,000 years old. Oh no! I’m aging! How dare I do that!

You know who loves to step into these lies about being “too old” and drop brilliant promises? God. He always uses the old and the weak and the outcast to accomplish his mission. He walks up to the ones thinking they’re “too old” and says, “You. Let’s do this.” To how many barren wombs did he give children? How many people did he raise from the dead? How many sick did he heal? How many outcasts did he pull from the dark fringes of society? How many situations did he enter where people were believing they were too old, too sick, too dead to be redeemed? The Bible is the story of redemption from lowly, unlikely places and with each new season we enter there is new mercy to endure and flourish and grow and learn. Culture would have us look back at our younger years but God asks us to keep our eyes fixed straight ahead to see the NEW thing he is going to do. That doesn’t mean I don’t use an eyecream here and there, but I’m not making an idol out of youthfulness either. God will step into the lies and speak promise, restoration, new life. He makes NEW where we think we’re old. He brings LIFE where we think there’s only death. There is absolutely no such thing as “too” anything for God to work together all the good he has for us.

It took a long time for me to understand all of this but God got a stranglehold on my heart one day when I was sitting on the floor in my very own kitchen. I wrote about the conversation one time. God came to me and asked why I was striving - why I wanted more than him. He offered me himself, pure, unconditional love and I was essentially saying no. I was saying it wasn’t enough. You’re not enough, God. I don’t want only you. I believed that having a husband meant my life would really start. I believed that having that prayer answered meant I would never long for anything again. The deepest longing in my soul was marriage, but in all that space of singleness God was teaching me that my desire should be for him above all else.

I realized after that conversation with God that even if I ended up to be Karen, if Karen loved Jesus with her whole heart and poured out her life to him alone, then I should be grateful for that opportunity. Even if I was 50 and alone, God would sustain me. He would be enough. He was writing my story. I finally believed that. A husband would not satisfy that longing in my soul. A house or a baby or any of my dreams fulfilled would not satisfy that place in my heart. I think it’s Jim Carrey who said one time, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer.” There’s only one who can fill that space.

I know that being single is hard when you have dreams of being married and starting a family. I know that it is. I’ve been there. I’m not going to give you a list of things to do or say or feel. Your singleness is entirely your own and feeling grateful will come in waves and lulls like it does for all of us, no matter what we’re waiting on. So I can’t tell you how to spend this season of singleness except that you might hold fast to God. Be as near to him as you possibly can, even when you don’t feel like it, even when you don’t feel it in your heart and you don’t feel him speaking or moving. Put him first. We always say, “Put those you love first,” well make him first! Spend time with him, get close to his heart, abide in him. That’s the best thing any of us can really do no matter our season of life. It’s the only place to find true rest, comfort, healing, hope. Stick close to the heart of Jesus and he will fill you, hold you, sustain you and continue to shape you into the woman he wants you to be. 

In the meantime, you will feel every single range of emotions - thankful for your singleness and anger about it, maybe even in the same day! You will probably feel sadness and you will feel a sense of freedom. You will feel hope and you will feel deep doubt. And you’re allowed to feel every single one of those things. But remember to dwell in the truth, not the doubt. Drink from the well of life, not the one of striving and hopelessness. Rest in his promises. He is faithful.

I signed the lease on my single-life apartment seven more times before God moved me on to a new season. And you know what I did when I had to turn in my notice? I CRIED. I cried about leaving that apartment. I was so sad to end the season that, when it started, I cried about starting! How fickle is my heart! We don’t even really know what it is we want because when we get it, we move on to the next thing we want! And we can always, at any point in our lives, get sucked into the lie that we are “too old” or “too” something. I fight against it even now as I think about wanting to be a mom. At this point, at my age, a pregnancy is nearly considered geriatric - and that’s not my word, that’s medical terminology. Translation: I’m going to be an “old mom”. Ah! My worst fear! But you know what? I know my Jesus well enough now to know that he has this all worked out. I’m not behind. I am not late to the party. I am perfectly where he has placed me in this moment. And I can rest! I can rest.

I want you to rest, too. You are not behind. You are not late. God did not forget about you. He has not missed that all your friends are now married and you feel like you’re the only single one left. Each time I felt like I was in that position, he swooped in and gave me sweet friends in my same season. And I mean every single time. Be grateful for those people. Be grateful for what he has given you rather than upset about the one thing he has not. God’s will for all of us, regardless of where we’re at in life, is just one thing, “REJOICE always, PRAY without ceasing, GIVE thanks in ALL circumstances, for THIS is the will of God in Christ Jesus for YOU.”

I know that right now he is positioning you and placing you and preparing you for exactly what he has for you. You are his. Stick close to him. He’ll lead you to a spacious place and grant you far more than you could ever ask or imagine. I believe it for you. I believe it for all of us.

Bold.

Aaron and I watched the movie Blood Diamond not too long ago. It’s fairly old now – like ten years old – so I’m late to the party on caring about this, or knowing about this, but I’m usually about five years behind the curve on most things - like puberty and marriage and knowing the proper pronunciation of pho. Anyway, this movie is about diamonds being mined in Sierra Leone and smuggled into Liberia to be sold. It takes place in 1999, when rebels were trying to take over the country. They were ravaging villages and kidnapping children and forcibly using them as soldiers and diamond miners. I can’t recap the entire story for you here, but bring tissues if you plan to watch. As the story progressed, I looked at the diamond ring on my finger and suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of guilt. I had no idea this was even an issue. I mean, I vaguely remember advertising a while ago where people were really quick to say their diamonds were “conflict-free” but I never really knew what that meant. I didn’t even know to ask about that when Aaron and I went ring shopping.

The first thing I did the next morning was call the place where we bought my engagement and wedding ring. I told Aaron after the movie was over that I was going to call and he said, “What if they can’t assure you that it is?” and I said, “Well, then we’ll sell it.” I wasn’t going to wear a child’s blood-soaked work on my finger. I understand that this was just a movie and not necessarily portraying facts with 100% accuracy, but even still, the whole thing was heartbreaking. The movie finished and I laid on the couch thinking, “The world is a terrible place.”

Every day there’s something new to warrant our sadness and outrage. But what are we supposed to do in all of these crises? How do we help in this midst of all the terror and tragedy in the world? Donate twenty dollars and hope to feel better? Write about it on social media? Share an article? Create a hashtag and pat ourselves on the back? Offer thoughts and prayers and move on two seconds later to our own problems? And, we do have our own problems. We're addicted to drugs and I'm not just talking about our smartphones. We're lost in a connected world, lonely and competing and not measuring up. We're drowning out the noise with all manner of prescriptions and vices. Our students are taking guns and killing their classmates for attention because they figure they can't get our attention any other way. 

I watched a documentary recently about Cyntoia Brown. At 16, she was convicted of first degree murder for killing a man she thought was going to rape or kill her and there’s much more the story, including the fact that this man picked her up as a prostitute and her “boyfriend” is the one who sent her out to go make him some money. Gross. But in one of the interviews she said these boys she was with – these guys who she let take advantage of her and harm her –  she said they were all just seeking affirmation. They all wanted someone to tell them they were worth something. They all had wounded pride and they were building themselves back up through money, girls, sex, and power. They wanted approval. And dang it, isn’t that what we’re all seeking though possibly through different means? We're all just crying for attention. Validation. Affirmation. Tell me I'm important!

So dear Jesus, what do we do? What do we do that would be helpful in this chaos? What do we do that would matter? And the only answer that comes to me immediately is, “Share the gospel.” Share the gospel. Okay, yeah, but what else? Nothing else. I’m not even doing that. I could be doing that much, but I’m not. So that’s the only thing to do. That’s the most important thing we can be doing right now in the midst of all the fighting and pain. Share the gospel. Be the gospel. To our neighbors and friends. To our siblings. In our own homes - to our spouses and children. Especially to our children, who will go out in their schools and either spread darkness or light. Since there’s power in the name of Jesus, then just say it, speak it, bring it to the most ordinary places you go every single day. I don’t want to get so caught up in my life that I forget that I'm here to bring the gospel. "Your kingdom come, your will be done," if that's our prayer then we have to be the ones to bring the kingdom near. 

For those who know the gospel, for those who understand that there is a Savior we all desperately need, the only reason we wouldn’t share it is because we don’t think it’s true – we don’t think it’s what people really need or want. Or we do, but we’re too scared that they’ll think we’re dumb and we don’t want to be dumb – we want to be cool! We want to be liked. We want followers and retweets and shares. I know I’m guilty. I’m guilty of thinking, “How do I say this in a way that Christians will understand and non-Christians won’t hate it?’ which is just another way to say, “How do I make Jesus cool enough for everyone?” But I can’t. I can’t do it. He doesn’t need help being cool. He just needs you to speak his name. His word is living and active and he can do what you can’t. Only he can change hearts. Only he can change minds. Only he can calm war-torn nations and ravaged cities and shredded hearts. He’s the only one who can make a real difference in any of it. He can take that twenty dollars you donated and change lives. He can take that hashtag and make it impact the entire country. He can take your start-up and let it influence the world’s most powerful leaders if he wanted to. He just wants to use you to do it, start it, write it, say it, bring his name into the conversation. 

I read an 1873 sermon on the Beatitudes by Charles Spurgeon and he said, “The sight of a vast concourse of people ought always to move us to pity, for it represents a mass of ignorance, sorrow, sin, and necessity, far too great for us to estimate.” Essentially that any crowded room should bring us great sorrow and urgency because within that room are souls, hungry and lost – souls searching and waiting for an answer to their hurt. They don’t look like it on the outside, and they certainly wouldn’t say it, but the gnawing in their hearts is real if they’d only admit as much.

In a sermon a couple of years ago, Matt Chandler said that people who have been Christians for a long time can start to walk around with this attitude of, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, Jesus." And it helped me realize that I lived a lot of my twenties where I said, through my thoughts and actions, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, Jesus," and waved him off like he was just a side item at the cafeteria of my life – something I could throw in the backseat and let him ride along as long as he was quiet. He could stay because I was going to need him at the gates of Heaven someday, but other than that he was an afterthought. He was second to anything I was doing. I mean, not always, but especially when it came to dating. I adamantly would not allow him in that corner of my life because I felt like he already failed me there. Because of the lies I believed in that arena, I’ve been shamefully timid, but not anymore. I yanked Jesus out of the back and put him behind the wheel. Now I want to embolden people to share the gospel and speak the name of Jesus. I want people to come out of the darkness and live with hope and faith and I’m a little afraid to suddenly step up and say all of this because I know I pretended it wasn’t the answer - that maybe it was just the answer for me and not necessarily other people. But it’s the only answer to everything going on in the world right now. It’s the only answer.

I called the store where we bought my engagement ring. The woman I talked to assured me that because of the Kimberley Process, implemented in 2002, they were confident that the diamonds they sold were conflict-free. I breathed out a little, knowing this bit of information, although at the end of the movie, they note that even with the Kimberley Process, conflict diamonds still enter the diamond trade. But a lot of bad stuff happens, regardless of the rules and regulations in place to stop it, so we just have to do our best to make sure we’re not participating. There will always be sin. There will always be terrible things happening in the world. And that’s why the gospel is so important. Only it can step into the darkest places. It can change the darkest heart. It can stop sin and sadness and hatred and violence in its tracks.  Only it can give the validation and affirmation we're all so desperately seeking. And maybe people will say, "That's nice for you, but Jesus isn't for me. Keep that to yourself." Well, I'll be bold here and just tell you, you're wrong. Jesus is for everyone, and if you don't think so, then you haven't understood him correctly. If you think, "Well, I just don't believe that," that doesn't make it any less true. Pray for the faith to believe.

I just finished a Beth Moore study, but I read a lot of her tweets and follow her on Instagram, so I don’t know where I read this, but somewhere, plain and simple, she wrote, “May Jesus be obvious.” The cry of her life is, “May Jesus be obvious.” Amen. Can that be the banner over our lives? Since that’s what the world needs more than anything, can we just stand up and boldly live it? Stop living halfway. Stop rationalizing sin and start getting honest. Can we share the gospel? Can we contribute our little piece to this larger story by just living and being the very picture of love in the midst of seemingly insurmountable hurt? Look for lonely people. Show love. Share the gospel. And make Jesus obvious.

For the record, I don’t think the world is a terrible place. It’s a terribly broken place, but there’s a lot of Light too. And we need more people bold enough to speak up about it. 

“Therefore having such a hope, we use great boldness in our speech…”
2 Corinthians 3:12