the cost of living

Faint lines on your forehead that will only grow deeper with more hours of furrowed empathy and squinting at sunsets.
A leaner bank account and a heavier body because of regular, full meals with people you love (or are learning to love).
A headache at the end of a long day of eye contact and active listening.
Yawning at breakfast because you were someone’s 5am airport ride.
Awkward texts and long silences because sometimes, the most important words don’t come easy.
A heartbeat you can feel in your ears because you put your heart on the line and your desires on display.
The ache of seeing your very deepest longings come to fruition for someone else.
Foggy mornings blinking through puffy eyes because you held back an apology at 8pm only to have it all come spilling out at 11pm.
More miles on your car because you offered to meet halfway.
Grime under your fingernails and scrapes on your arms from helping your neighbor pull weeds.
Sounding and feeling dumb because you weren’t sure how to ask that question, but you asked it anyway.
Tangles in your hair because he wanted to drive 17 with the windows down.
Tabs and tabs of keto-friendly recipes pulled up on your laptop (you’re unsure about all of them).
Sore muscles from helping dear friends clean out their garage.
A kitchen full of crumbs and a sink full of dishes because of the community that happens in and out of your home.
Allergy medicine in your purse because you’re allergic to their dog, but you still want to see them.
Extra loads of laundry because they needed a place to sleep last night.
Stains on your favorite sweater because you sat down to paint with your friend’s babies.
The twinge of missing out because you needed to stay in and water your soul.
Late nights spent fighting, praying, dying to yourself, slamming doors, and waking up to the Gospel.

Yes, the ‘cost of living’ is high, and I don’t mean the sum of the wood and concrete and groceries and utilities that make up our material world. The cost of a communal, gritty, vibrant life. It is steep. I do not want to yearn for a cheap or protected or guarded sense of living — although I certainly do sometimes. At the end of it all, the cost of a fully-lived life is staggering. May it be so, for me and for you.

daily

A lot of people meet Jesus at camp. A retreat. A mission trip. A somewhere-far-away, every-meal-in-community, prayer-partners, matching-tshirts-and-late-night-games kind of place. My own young, small heart has reckoned with and encountered our very big God in these spaces. In my memory, He’s seems a bit more glittery there. Maybe He spoke a little more loudly, with greater emotion. The mirror we see in, perhaps, was not so dim. Or more likely, it was my own heart that was less cloudy, less jaded, less tired.

I prayed about this recently: “Jesus, real life is so very unlike camp. I know I don’t need to recreate those fleeting moments just to experience You. But I’m looking for You in the daily, and I’m having a hard time finding You. I need a better sense of Who You are in this humble, hard, precious daily. This is where I live — and I trust You’re here too. Aren’t You here too? So much of life is in this apartment, trying to be faithful, wiping away crumbs, living in a prone-to-melancholy-brain laboring over relationships and swirling adult cares—“
“With Me, that same Jesus,” He interrupts.

Wild. That same Jesus Who fills massive stadiums and powers global ministries sits on my Facebook marketplace couch. He, in all of His glory, enters into my smallest of moments, and delights to be there. He reminds me that He is gentle and lowly, and that I can find rest for my restless soul in Him. He tells me that He is the source of a living water that will satisfy my parched heart, which is tempted to try every other button on the soda fountain first. This is good, good news. My mind agrees. But my racing thoughts, my anxiousness, my over-functioning, will tell you that my body is skeptical.

Is it ironic that it’s easier for me to believe He is in the grandiose, and harder to believe He’s just as much a part of my mundane? Is it absurd that I see Him more clearly in the victories and the wins, and less so in the quiet, enduring prayers of waiting? Or is it just human of me? I’ll be the first to see myself reflected in the bewildered pharisees. Confused by a tender, long-suffering savior Who pierces the overlooked moments of our lives. More comfortable with striving for status than receiving untempered grace. How kind He is to constantly challenge my incomplete view of His full character. To my great relief and comfort, He is not Who I’m inclined to believe He should be.

Lord, would I believe You! Would I take You at your word. Grow my daily sense of “God with us.” I thank You that You met people in their mundane places — ancient wells and boats and tax booths and roadsides. You do not require our most glorious environments to reveal Your glory to us. You are already in my mundane — wake me up to Your presence here.

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Matthew 11:28-30

heavy

The days in year 25 have been fast, mostly. Filled to the brim, peppered with early mornings and lingering evenings, a little blurry if I try to think about them all at once. At the same time, there certainly have been moments of slowness. Many weeks were spent waiting for a variety of things, ranging in a great deal of significance: an apartment to rent, a cup of tea to brew, a package to arrive, a shower to get hot, a golden hour to descend, a steadfast prayer to be answered.

I’ll be honest — I’m walking into 26 with a heavy heart that’s split in two directions. One part, heavy in a dictionary-definition kind of way: fraught with a lead-like weariness that the past 365 days have heaped into my life. The other part, heavy in a much different fashion: a sweet, rich, honey-heavy retrospection that is tender and full. A gratitude so heavy that it leaves a few dents wherever I place it.

Heavy. Both the good and the bad have been intense this year. My breath has caught in my chest with great helplessness in the hallway of an ICU and great elation at a pool-side baptism. I’ve knelt to pray in deep desperation over my marriage and deep joy over the same marriage. My heart has pounded with anxiety during hard, blindsiding conversations and with vigor after completing workouts I didn’t think I’d be capable of.

Both the good and the bad have pulled my gaze towards the spiritual, the sacred, the God Who holds it all. Through the intensity, in the never-a-dull-moment unfurling of these days, I cannot help but long for something more than this little life on earth. It’s either been so hard that my heart needs something better to cling to, or so good that my heart needs to know that good things can last, somewhere.

It’s probably clear by now (lol) that emotions sit deeply with me. At my core, underneath corporate-girly or silly-babysitter or polished-daughter or whatever other emotional outfits I wear throughout the day, I am a wistful romantic trying to find a place to breathe where the air isn’t quite so noisy. Walking through life with a fistful of thoughtful seeds, looking for a beautiful and untroubled place to plant them.

25 was heavy, and I expect 26 will be too. In all the hard and good ways. Here’s to the fullness of emotion and the fullness of life and the way everlasting that exists well beyond the years I have here.

Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.

1 Corinthians 15:51-52

summer

Summer is a window stretched open. It spills over with morning light, the uneven chorus of neighborhood birdies, and a distant hum of a lawn mower. A bright stillness shaken together with the buzz of an unfurling day.

Summer is an aching lesson of both patience and urgency. Painstakingly waiting for the strawberries to ripen only to find that you have a short, small window of sweet. And truly, ain’t that a lot of life?

Summer is old things in new places. It’s the same conversations with different people, or it’s well-worn relationships in uncharted territory.

Summer is soaking up long sunsets that fade with a flair that feels settled, right, unrushed and unbothered. Summer is an evening who is not afraid to take up space — she lingers with confidence and does not scurry off at the first whiff of night. You’d like to be more like her.

Summer is big, cheesy television and big, cheesy meals with people you love.

Summer is sending brave texts.

Summer is a walk at 8pm, watching the world sigh with the relief that only a cool dusk and a kind God can bring.

Summer is a faithful bearing of a yoke that does not feel easy and light. In the midst of hot days, summer is a slow loss — a fistful of goodbyes. Of people, of places, of rhythms that won’t be the same. Summer is feeling your heart depart before the people do and wondering how to gracefully hang in the balance.

Summer is scripture in the morning, a creamy-sugary espresso in the afternoon, and bananagrams in the evening.

Summer is an unexpected move and an unexpected settling. Furnishing an apartment with a great deal of prayer and rearranging and second-hand finds.

Summer is a ripe watermelon that is delicious and refreshing and reminds you of the birthday you cut it up for, but takes up too much room in the fridge. An inconvenient savoring.

Summer is a special kind of fleeting that reminds you that the whole of life is a brevity. Though the days are long, at their finest the best they can do is point to an Eternal Day. A Day that won’t have goodbyes but a whole lot of sweetness — and certainly, enough room for the watermelon in the fridge.

twenty-five

It’s been a whole month here in year 25! I am tempted and most inclined to use this space to reflect, speculate, reminisce about the year behind me — how it was like a cup of tea, with much of it waiting for a wedded-future to fully brew, an equal balance of sweetness & bitterness all in one year-sized mug. Yes, I could write a whole lot about 24, but I sense God wants me to fix my gaze towards the unknowns (all of which He lovingly knows) of 25.

I have a small, gritty handful of nuanced hopes for this next year. Some are well-worn, enduring hopes from years prior, scribbled over again and again into new journals and new planners. Some are brand new, brought about by a new stage of life, still feeling foreign in my grasp. I’ll leave them here, praying them into being as I write them into being.

Contentment. How strong, and how elusive, this has felt at times. Blame it on social media, blame it on the whacky Bay Area, but really blame it on my own sinful ways — good golly how difficult it is to make contentment a natural posture of my heart. I pray that this year would be marked by a spirit of contentment. That I would deeply know the objective abundance of Jesus, and His ways, and His plans for me.

Creativity. I’m never sure what this exactly means for me, as someone who doesn’t have a strong streak of “hobby” in her. I write, but more so out of necessity than for creative joy (maybe I can marry the two better this year). I can’t really paint or sing or do typical “creative things”… but I do believe God wants His children to create. To put things into the world. For now, it’s just my written-out thoughts — but perhaps there is more here for me.

Adventure. I write this warily. The hardest parts of this year have knocked me about in a way that has dimmed some of the fire in my eyes. Risk, though bright and vital, has burned, at times. I’ve ventured into harrowing canyons while looking for still waters and green pastures. But like a child, I want to trust that my Father can still take me on grand adventures. If He nudges me to newness, I want to trust. I want to nurture a heart that gleefully stumbles along wherever God takes me, blissful because He is at the helm.

Self-forgetfulness. Tim Keller says it best: “Gospel-humility is not needing to think about myself. Not needing to connect things with myself. It is an end to thoughts such as, ‘I’m in this room with these people, does that make me look good? Do I want to be here?’ True gospel-humility means I stop connecting every experience, every conversation, with myself. In fact, I stop thinking about myself. The freedom of self-forgetfulness. The blessed rest that only self-forgetfulness brings.” 

Eternal-mindedness. Because if I really believe what I say I believe, Jesus could come back at any moment. And 99% of the things I obsess over will become as significant as a speck of dust. More often than not, a very real and very good response to the world is to just take a deep breath and keep running towards what will last, holding a loose grip on what will not.

Oh for grace to trust Him more!

childlike

Somehow, the months have passed through this new union — like a quaint train rumbling through the redwoods — and we are halfway into our first year of marriage.

The days have been sweet, they have been tough, and they have always been full. We tend to our growing family of houseplants, we forget to defrost the chicken, we are at the thrift store every other week. We watch the 49ers and the Bengals on Sundays and hope for at least one win between the two. We pray sleepy, honest prayers. We have cried over the heaviness of living in, at times, complex proximity, and at times, painful distance, to people we love.

God has been abundant with us — but He does not fill our buckets so we can hoard holy water. We are learning to pour out and show up, we are building fluency in asking for help and forgiving without flinching, we are growing thick skin and soft hearts. I feel more brave, more measured, and therefore more fruitful, alongside Max. This season has felt like unfurling a new corner of God’s grand blueprint for my heart, gazing at parts of His plans I’ve never seen before.

One of the brightest threads that have been woven through these first 6 months has been “childlikeness”. My philosophy of home, my sense of family, is finding new roots in soft, rich soil. Trustworthy, steady, secure soil. I’m learning to dig my hands into the sweet earth and not be afraid of what I will find. Here, there is room for me to rest like a child rests. Laugh like a child laughs. Dream like a child dreams. I don’t have to swirl desperate roots through a winding underground labyrinth, nor do I have to hover in shallow ground. I’m able to grow truly, deeply, freely, here. In a strange sense, in my most “mature” stage of life to-date, I feel more like a child than I ever have.

And it seems it’s out of that childlikeness that I can truly be my best brand of adult. The deeper the breaths of quiet safety I can breathe in at home, the better breaths I breathe out in the rest of the world.

It has been an imperfect and humbling, beautiful and tender 6 months of togetherness. I type this at our kitchen table, staring at fresh-cut peonies in a vase we saved from our wedding (in our frugal spirit, we thrifted about 80 vases and painted them with baking soda and acrylics to make them look like terracotta, in this very kitchen, about a year ago). A lot has changed since our flurry of wedding planning — and life today is both absolutely what I imagined and more different than I could dream.

As with most blog posts these days, there’s no good summarizing sentence. I’m just really grateful, and really learning a lot, and really earnestly seeking to bring pieces of New Earth to this weary place. I get glimpses sometimes — I’ve seen sunbursts of God’s kingdom in my marriage — and it’s the sweetest adventure I’ve jumped, stumbled, and vowed into.

holy ground

76 days of marriage. Equal parts new and familiar, comforting and bewildering. Marveling — it truly is a sacred gift. Wrestling — it immediately pulls you into new depths of selflessness. Breathing a 10-months-in-the-making sigh of relief because wedding planning is *over* and I don’t have to look at our 19-tab spreadsheet ever again (praise God, seriously).

As unsavory as it may sound, the overwhelming and very un-fairytale-esque feeling that has surfaced in my heart is that is that marriage for the sake of marriage is… overhyped. In the church and out of the church. And this is coming from the enneagram-4-girly who romanticizes everything, who is moved in her spirit seeing a sunbeam spill across the kitchen floor, who has been dreaming of her forever guy since she first streamed every Taylor Swift lyric video available on YouTube in 2009.

I don’t mean to say marriage is inconsequential, unimportant, or some kind of casual endeavor. It genuinely feels like the most significant and life-altering decision I’ll ever make, aside from following Jesus. And it is full of joy and fun and the preciousness of being known in every way.

We’re just constantly finding ourselves in a state of restlessness, asking the question, ”What are we married for?” We know the God of the universe did not call us together just to take cute photos and have a beautiful home and plan vacations and build a family and find new restaurants (although none of those things are bad). He’s wooing us to commit to a sacrificial and ever-sanctifying life together, discerning how our union uniquely positions us to point a tired world towards a good, good eternity.

At the end of our days, we know these things to be true — but there’s an honest part of us that thought maybe marriage was some blissful kind of satisfaction in and of itself. And it is bliss, it is satisfying, to be sure. But marriage is spurring a renovation of my heart’s infrastructure — ripping up floorboards and tearing down wallpaper — whereas the world expected us to just settle into a cozy married nook that exists for itself.

The title “wife” still feels big and mature and way above my pay grade, but if I dare to put it on, I’m finding that being a wife is leaving my heart hungry for something beyond a pleasant, fun, comfortable marriage. The larger thought here is that my heart is hungry for something beyond a pleasant, fun, comfortable life — and now, by God’s grace, Max and I get to be partners forever, deciding how to pursue that big beyond.

I took a lot of words to essentially say: marriage is a gift, but it’s not the Giver. It is a good thing, but it’s not the Best Thing. It points to God. It isn’t God. There is a sweet freedom in loosening my grip on my expectations of marriage, and tightening my grip on my expectations of the God who created it.

You can replace the word “marriage” with pretty much anything — a dream job, a graduation, a financial achievement, a possession finally acquired, a child to raise. All wildly wonderful. All not enough.

My prayer today is that my heart, my marriage, would not lose its sense of restlessness. It feels like holy ground.

“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” — John 10:10.

night

Being engaged has felt like a blurry, busy, upending, joyous, chaotic night in between two vastly different days.

As I marveled at the glittery ring on my finger for the first time, I realized the sun was setting on a lot of things. It was overwhelming, really, watching dusk envelop so much of my life. My methods of decision-making, my relationship with my family, my attitude towards money, my concept of home, my appetite for risk, my own sense of self — all changing. All having a curtain-call of their own. Me, alone in the audience, clapping after each one takes a final bow, feeling the weight of my bittersweet applause. Bidding them all an awkward and sad — but hopeful — goodbye, knowing I’ll encounter different versions of each on the other side of marriage.

And so the sun slowly, slowly, and then quickly, quickly set. My old self shimmered just behind the horizon and then blipped away. I have spent much time these past few months growing accustomed to this brief, unfamiliar night: this season of engagement. This transitional time has been illuminated by moonlight — beautiful, but lacking sharpness — pointing to a new sunrise coming very soon. Gently pushing me to trust my gut and take another step, even if the path is not well-lit. This bizarre and holy night has taught me so much about who I am, and who I am not. It has taught me about who God is, and His slow, tender, eternal plans. It is hard to make sense of things here, in the night — but I believe that the seeds planted in the dark are taking root in rich soil. They will flower into something good that will flourish in the glow of a new day.

The sky is growing lighter now. I can see more concrete shapes where there were once shadows. The strange, beautiful and wild sunrise that is ushering in this new day — this new marriage — is starting to hover at the horizon. I don’t know all that the day will bring. It will be unfamiliar, bright, and likely blinding at times. I expect that it will be sweeter than I can imagine, and more difficult than I can anticipate. Better, richer, and more complex than I can dream.

I am grateful for the night, I am hopeful for the day. God accomplishes His purposes in both.

depth

Always — there’s an anxious ocean at the shores of my heart. It is deep and blue and swirling, occasionally teetering upon a hurricane, but most days, the fretful waves are quiet. For better or for worse (usually for worse), my brain is bent towards over-processing, worst-case-scenarios, nervous what-ifs, dancing to a tune that sings don’t get your hopes too high.

This ocean is there, it’s there, it’s there, always there, and I wonder if it will ever dry up. I tenderly hold a tension in both hands: praying the ocean away, while acknowledging that this deep blue thorn-in-my-side might be a part of my fractured nature that doesn’t evaporate this side of heaven. It is not really the ocean that concerns me — it’s the crumbly coastline that is my heart, my soul, my response to it. How I decide to live in proximity to this stubborn sea.

Sometimes — my heart succumbs, my world gets too heavy, and my shores sink below sea level, allowing the frigid waves of anxiety to spill in. As the water starts to pool around my ankles, I frantically try to build dams. I grasp for splintered drift wood and try my best. The ocean has little mercy.

So the tides rise and rise, and eventually I’ve sunk. I’m at the bottom of the ocean now, it’s dark, and I feel wildly alone. Sometimes I’ll spend so much time here, at the sea floor, that I begin to adapt to this pressurized, silent place where the sun doesn’t quite reach. I start to move, think, dream differently down here. I go through the motions, I lose all creativity, I isolate, I am insecure more than I am anything else. I settle in to the new way of life that this murky world demands.

Always — God’s pursuing grace finds me here. A small sunbeam flickers against my squinting eyes and I’m pulled up towards shore. The weight of water that I grew so accustomed to lifts, I breathe new air — new mercies — and I’m on land again. Joy gets a grip on me and I laugh, and I remember that days have plenty capacity to be sweet.

But I must learn how to live on land again. My old way of living, down in the ocean, has rendered me a strange specimen on this redemptive shore. I’m about as bizarre as an angler fish that washed up at the Boardwalk.

The ways I adapted to that anxious sea — shutting people out, assuming God won’t come through, white-knuckling every decision because no one can be trusted, allowing the day to whisk me into an uninspiring flurry of tasks — these behaviors have no place here in the sun. I try to pull on garments of rest, joy, peace… but all these good things feel like an old pair of jeans I can’t quite fit into anymore. I’m where I’m supposed to be, here on land, but I feel awkward and foreign. Truly, a fish out of water.

So God holds my hand, and He often places the other one in the sweet grasp of a friend, and I slowly learn how to dwell here again. I trade my old water-logged thoughts for living, breathing, vibrant, grounded ones.

Always — if I just leave enough space for God to move and mold, I can avoid all this. I can stop sinking into the sea, and instead watch Him fashion Everests where there were once Death Valleys. The ocean may never recede, but the topography of my soul sure can change. I’m learning. I’m grateful to learn, here in this funny little coastal town that is my heart.

engaged!

Two months of being engaged, of having a fiancé and being a fiancée (and Googling the difference between the two), of marveling at the most beautiful piece of jewelry I’ll ever own sitting on my finger, of peeling back the curtain to let the light of loving someone forever pour in. A sweet, chaotic season full of brand-new emotions and questions I’ve never had to reckon with. It seems no one has written an instruction manual on What to Do When Your Prom Date Proposes to You 6 Years Later. Maybe I’ll take a whirl at writing something like that one day, after our love stretches into more grey and golden years. Until then, here’s some thoughts on being engaged, 2 months in.

Chapter 1: God is kind. The sweet sureness of God outweighs the uncertainty that engagement brings. Maybe some people truly feel ready and sure when it comes to a dramatic life change like this — I’m not one of them. My heart will always be waking up in cold sweats, wondering how on earth this is all happening, feeling like I’m braving the ocean with a pool noodle. When I stack the uncertainty and the anxiety up, the pile looks pretty tall until I shift my gaze over to the mountain of God’s love. His tender care sings to me a song that unwinds the anxious knots in my soul, and shows me that I don’t have to be intimidated by my own bewilderment. His nearness is more true than my fretfulness.

Chapter 2: Jehovah Jireh — The Lord Provides. There is no shortage of things to obsess over as you plan a wedding: florals and napkin textures and floating candles and hairpieces, oh my! Quite frankly, I am already jaded. A question I keep asking my heart is, “What is my enough?” The worship of perfection in wedding planning is a manifestation of a much deeper, gnarlier heart condition. A heart that is never satisfied, tirelessly pursuing the next tier of excellence and beauty.

“What is my enough?”

Our culture — colored in with shades of rise-and-grind, self-improvement, climbing the career ladder — tells us that there never is an “enough”. There will always be something better around the corner (or so they say) if we work a little harder and dig a little deeper. It has become immediately clear that I need to combat this narrative with a hefty dose of the Gospel. It is the living water my soul is desperate for. Jesus is the “enough.” Always. I am secure in Him, He provides every good and beautiful thing, and it is okay to close the spreadsheet tabs and leave vendor emails on read. He is absolutely in control — that is more true than even my most confident plans.

Chapter 3: The heart of God is a celebratory, feasting one. He is a God of delight! He wants His kiddos to have so much fun. He cares about the tacos and the photos and the DJ. It is honoring to our covenant to indulge and create a day where communal joy will abound.

Chapter 4: Don’t settle. Y’all, Max is the best partner I could ever dream up. He challenges, encourages, sanctifies me in both his strengths and his weaknesses. He is a precious gift from God. We can laugh about the worst-case scenarios and get teary-eyed over how wildly sacred and special our life together will be. Don’t settle. Life is really, really hard. Have a good teammate.

Chapter 5: Always Learning. There is so much more to learn about myself, my relationship with Max, and my relationship with God. It feels exponential these days. Being engaged has shown me more about my hopes and fears and baggage and expectations and insecurities and joys than anything else. This is a uniquely special and sanctifying season. Sometimes it feels like medicine, sometimes it feels like a spoonful of sugar. It is all rich.

God writes beautiful stories. He really does.