Cardboard Boxes and Comfort and Courage

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Cardboard Boxes and Comfort and Courage

This is the room that would break me, I just knew it. 

I’d been packing up to move with relatively little emotion, but that was because I had not yet ventured upstairs.

If the walls could show you a montage of the life we’ve lived in their midst, you’d see a younger me, showing her friends the room just at the top of the stairs: “This will be a nursery someday!” 

Then you’d see me a little older, sitting in this same room, crying, broken, because “someday” wasn’t today or the million yesterdays before. “Someday” felt like it would never come. 

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God Is Not Intimidated by Your Personality

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God Is Not Intimidated by Your Personality

To put it mildly, my husband is decisive and strong-willed. To put it metaphorically, sometimes getting him to see things my way is like pushing over a very big tree, only your arms are made out of noodles and you can’t find them. (Hidden noodle arms, you know. That’s a thing.) My husband is never afraid to say what he’s thinking, even if it’s harsh, and sometimes he skips the whole thinking part entirely and just jumps right to the saying part, and I’m sure you can guess how that goes.

Here’s a story to back me up: I’m in labor with our first (I’m talking days and days of BIG, BRUTAL contractions, no sleep, and SO MUCH freaking out). On the way to the hospital, my husband said, with completely sincerity, “My stomach hurts.” I was too weak FROM SIX PLUS DAYS OF INTENSE PAIN to stab him or even tell him I wanted to stab him, but everyone should know that I mentally stabbed him. And here’s the thing about Luke: he still stands by this statement, like, “What?! My stomach DID hurt.” You’ll never be able to convince him the statement was a bad idea, although I welcome your attempts, as noodle-armed as they may be.

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Stillness in a World of Hustle

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Stillness in a World of Hustle

I saw it on Pinterest and had a visceral reaction: “Good things come to those who hustle.”

It’s the rallying cry of the perfectionist, the list-maker, the big ball of stress. I am all of these things by nature. I need an A from everyone, and I will sacrifice sleep and sanity to get it. If I know I can’t get an A, well then, I better make people like me. In moments when I’ve lost the most control, when I battle the most anxiety and fear, I find myself telling joke after joke and story after story, desperate for the comfort of approving laughter, until eventually I get home and collapse in exhaustion, like an overworked circus clown, forever juggling juggling juggling on a unicycle. Hustle, man. Sometimes it looks like a list, and sometimes it looks like a red nose and face paint.

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Dusty Old Tooth Baggies

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Dusty Old Tooth Baggies

When my siblings and I were little and we lost a tooth, we would excitedly place the tooth under our pillow and drift off to sleep with dreams of the BIG GIANT one dollar bill that would take its place. Oh but Tooth Fairy, aren’t you an unjust little thing, because don’t think we didn’t know that Claire and Abby down the street got FIVE DOLLARS per tooth. What, are their teeth better than ours? NO, they eat just as much candy as we do, and you are probably not as sparkly as people say you are, so chomp on that with your huge collection of tiny child teeth, which BY THE WAY, is a terrifying and alienating hobby, but we look forward to your TLC show.

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The Weary World Rejoices

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Originally posted on my old blog in December 2015.

A father leaves, and a young girl cries. He was never supposed to do that.
Sirens blare and a young couple shakes in fear.
A husband speaks angrily, and a wife sits in silent hate.
A boy shuffles unseen through a crowded lunchroom.
A baby struggles to breathe.
A white-haired woman eats alone. The air feels heavy with hopelessness.

The stories pile up, brick by brick, and the earth begins to churn under the weight of it all.

Fathers are supposed to stay, and husbands are supposed to love, and tragedy is not supposed to touch us. Teenagers are supposed to have friends, and babies are supposed to have healthy lungs, and elderly women are supposed to be surrounded by dozens of younger voices asking for stories and wisdom and favorite recipes.

But sometimes fathers don’t stay. Sometimes husbands don’t love, and sometimes they do and their wives hate them anyway. Sometimes the worst thing we can imagine is exactly what has happened. So many “supposed tos” fail, and what can we do? It makes us grit our teeth. It makes us hate God. Where is God? Does He see us?

The stories pile up, brick by brick, and the earth begins to churn under the weight of it all.

The weary world.

A man and his wife, wandering outside.
Did they wonder why God did not provide?
Did she question as she endured the pain?
The once she held Him, gasp? Whisper His name?

Jesus.

The stories have been piling up, brick by brick, and the earth continues to churn under the weight of it all. We cannot carry it. We were never meant to.

But now—now, He is here! He is hope!

“The thrill of hope! The weary world rejoices!”

The provision we were craving, He is here. He is hope. The miracle of Emmanuel, God with us.

Babies always matter, oh how they matter, but this baby—this baby is love incarnate. He will make the way for all the others. 

We proclaim births on Instagram and 5x7 cardstock, but God proclaimed it in the sky: GOOD TIDINGS OF GREAT JOY. He has always known how to celebrate.

“You see, God was like a new daddy—he couldn’t keep the good news to himself. He’d been waiting all these long years for this moment, and now he wanted to tell everyone…He’s here! He’s come! Go and see him. My little Boy… This baby would be like that bright star shining in the sky that night. A Light to light up the whole world. Chasing away darkness. Helping people to see. And the darker the night got, the brighter the star would shine.” –Sally Lloyd-Jones, Jesus Storybook Bible

And though the world continues to churn, though fathers may leave and babies may gasp for breath, we can rejoice, even through tears, because look! Look how God provides! Look how He cares! He sent our redemption in the most unexpected of packages, and Mary cradled Him in her arms, held Him close. He grew into a man, loved us unto death, and conquered the thing we fear the most. He cradles us in His arms, holds us close. The weary world can finally rejoice.

“Joy is the affirmation of the thing that’s truer than any trouble, any affliction: the affirmation that love wins. Jesus is as good as we hope, it’s all worth it, and all will be redeemed.” –Sarah Bessey

“For all who wait
For all who hunger
For all who've prayed
For all who wander
Behold your King
Behold Messiah
Emmanuel, Emmanuel"

-“Light of the World,” Lauren Daigle