One Year

It was the second Sunday of December, 2015. There was a congregational meeting after church. I knew it would be difficult. The boys and I left before it started and went on to the place we would be having a fellowship lunch after the meeting. When everyone finally arrived, the mood was palpably somber. There was no way for me to get my husband alone and find a way to find out what had happened at the meeting, so I had to wait until later that afternoon to find out why all the conversations had been so stilted and awkward and heavy.

The meeting had originally been intended to vote on whether our church plant would join a certain denomination. But because of what had happened earlier that year when our pastor unexpectedly resigned, attendance had plummeted, and what everyone had discovered at the meeting was that the church didn't have enough money to meet the requirements to join the denomination. And so the meeting had a very different outcome than what we had anticipated. The congregation instead voted to hold a vote to dissolve the church plant.

Our family had already made the decision to leave the church at the end of January. Our thought behind the timing was that it wouldn't be right after Christmas, our boys would be back in school, and it would give us time to transition our family into a new church and hopefully give Christian some time to look for a new job. This decision meant that our timeline was reduced by a month, that his job would be over at the end of December, and we would need to find a new church as soon as possible.

It was an Advent season that gave us a bit of a taste of what it seems like the Bible intends for times of waiting to really feel like. Certain moments of joy and anticipation surrounding Christmas, but mostly overshadowed with sorrow and grief. Months of mourning the loss of our pastor and friend was culminating in the loss of our church and the experience of watching the church family we loved struggle to figure out what to do next.

It was the first Sunday in January when we visited Riverside Community Church for the first time. We did not have a long-term plan. This was a church where we knew the gospel was being preached, where we had a few relationships with people there, where we could be relatively anonymous and not have to share our story right away, and where our boys could find friends and be ministered to. We weren't interested in visiting a bunch of churches--we just didn't have the emotional energy. And so after that first Sunday, we never left. We cast our lot in with those people and at the time, said in our hearts with confidence, "This is where we will be until God calls us somewhere else." We had no idea how long that would be. Christian had already started interviewing at various churches around the country for a new pastoral position.

And so we waited. We did not know what we were waiting for or how long we would be waiting. As we got plugged into a small group and experienced the weekly preaching of the Word and corporate worship with other believers, I could feel some parts of me begin to be put back together. As we tried to get to know some of the other families there, even as we knew we might not be there much longer, I sensed God revealing to me through those people his grace and love and mercy and kindness. As I formed some deeper relationships and felt safe enough to share certain parts of what had happened at our previous church, I could almost physically feel my heart begin to heal. The pain was not gone, but it wasn't as fresh as it had been.

When Christian was offered and accepted a job as a pastor at the church in May, it seemed too good to be true. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. But the summer passed and he began his position, and the elders decided that while they saw Christian as qualified to be an elder at the church, they wanted to give the congregation time to get to know him and affirm him themselves.

And so Christian got to work, and we waited. For me it wasn't that I had some grand vision of Christian having a high-profile role as an elder at the church. But I had seen my husband fulfill the role of an elder for the past two years, and at our previous church, they kept holding ordination out like a carrot dangling from a stick. And once our pastor left, that all dissolved as well. Christian being called as an elder at Riverside would just be confirmation that yes, God had called him to this work of serving and shepherding God's people.

We waited four-and-a-half months, and then last night, at the last congregational meeting of the year, Riverside's members voted to affirm Christian as an elder. It was anticlimactic in the sense that Christian has been pastoring for the entire fall season. Nothing about the vote really changed anything in terms of his job description. But it was a signpost, a marker, an Ebenezer, if you will—that God has not abandoned us. Even as we tried to trace his plan last fall and failed every time, he was working and preparing Christian and our family for what would come. I could never have fathomed sitting in a room last night with 100 people who we have come to know and love, and think of the kindness and care they have shown us, and then have them affirm that they wanted Christian to be one of their shepherds. To know that we are in a safe place. Not a perfect place by any means, but a place where God is working in the hearts of his people. We have friendship and love and community. Our children are known and cared for.

I will build my house,

Whether storm or drought,

On the rock that does not move.

I will set my hope

In your love, O Lord,

And your faithfulness will prove...

You are steadfast, steadfast;

By the word, you spoke;

All the starry host

Are called out by name each night.

In your watchful care

I will rest secure

As you lead us with your light.

You are steadfast, steadfast.

--Sandra McCracken

He Will Hold Me Fast

In the fall of last year, going to church felt like dying every Sunday. The empty chairs. The marathon effort to occupy my children during the service after our children's ministry dissolved. The weekly conversations about the past and about the uncertain future. My husband was in the middle of a severe struggle with depression, and I had only recently emerged from a very dark place myself.

When I fear my faith will fail,

Christ will hold me fast.

When the tempter would prevail,

He will hold me fast.

I could never keep my hold

Through life’s fearful path,

For my love is often cold;

He must hold me fast.

When we would sing this song in church, it was not a confident song of triumph. It was a trembling prayer, a hope that the words were true, that even as I felt I was losing hold and that my faith was failing, the story was not over.

Those He saves are His delight;

Christ will hold me fast.

Precious in His holy sight,

He will hold me fast.

He’ll not let my soul be lost;

His promises shall last.

Bought by Him at such a cost,

He will hold me fast.

There were more times than I could count where I felt like I was not being saved. At the worst of it, I felt like I had been completely deserted by the Lord. What had been the point of the 18 months we spent at this little church plant? Why would he take us there only to have it all end so traumatically and terribly? What kind of bow could someone put on the top of this thing that I could never possibly call a gift? I had no concept of how I could ever find joy in that trial.

For my life He bled and died;

Christ will hold me fast.

Justice has been satisfied;

He will hold me fast.

Raised with Him to endless life,

He will hold me fast;

Till our faith is turned to sight

When he comes at last.

This morning when we got out of the car to go into our new church at which the Lord has placed us, our 6-year-old said, "I miss Grace Fellowship. I liked it there. I was sad when... when it stopped." Even he didn't really have words to describe how it had all ended.

"It makes me sad, too, buddy," I said. "It still makes me sad to think about it. But I'm also thankful that the Lord didn't leave us alone, that he brought us to this new church, where there are people who love him and where we have a family."

"Yeah, and we didn't know Grayson there, remember, Stephen?" piped up our younger son, referring to one of their good friends.

And so we went inside and said hello to these new friends, this new family, these precious people who have done so much to help ease the pain of what we lost.

One of the last songs we sang was this one. I still can't sing it without crying, and I'm not sure I ever will be able to.

He will hold me fast;

He will hold me fast.

For my Savior loves me so;

He will hold me fast.

It's not a song that I can sing casually. I feel the cost of the words now—the knowledge that Christ holding us fast doesn't mean that the things we experience will hurt less than they do for people who don't know Jesus. I trembled still as I sang it, but out of gratitude to our gracious Savior. He has held us fast. It has been messy and traumatic and there are wounds inside me that are still a long way from being fully healed. He has kept hold of us as we have walked a very fearful and painful path, and in his great mercy he has given us a place to rest at our new church. Through a local congregation of his people he is providing for us financially, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It has been a safe place to mourn and grieve and begin to heal. He has and is holding us fast.

Changing Plans

There is something critical about remembering, about looking back, about facing the past with eyes wide open and then turning back to now, to see the whole journey and then the place where you are.

Though I've removed most of the old posts from this blog, the ones that I've kept are the ones that remind me of the path the Lord has had us on over the past 14 months. I think that my life will forever feel divided between the time before the summer of 2015 and the time after. The grief and pain of the circumstances have lessened, but our family and our life and our journey changed so drastically after that point that it will never not be a part of our story.

I see the ER visit last August, references to not sleeping, the anguish I felt during Advent last year, the uncertainty of the spring as Christian looked for a job, the thought that maybe we were ready to have another child.

There are many things I could mention now that are difficult, but all of those things have changed so much in what really has been such a short time. Mental health and clarity. Restful nights of sleep. Happy and joyful celebrations with our family. Christian's new job, doing what I think he was made to do. And this slowly building excitement about the new baby that will be joining our family in the spring, a long awaited addition that I wasn't sure would ever come, almost six years after our last baby.

This isn't the story I had written for our family when Christian and I were getting married. I knew it would involve ministry and probably close ties to our local church. I thought it might involve traveling overseas. I wanted it to include children, lots of them, and me joyfully delighting in giving them a classical education at home, because in my mind, that was what good parents did (and, I should say, many good parents do!).

And here I sit, in the second September in a row that I have felt almost completely incapacitated, although for entirely different reasons, and I wonder, Lord, will I ever learn not to rely on myself?

Last year I was crippled by anxiety, depression, lack of sleep, and pure grief. This year it has been the trial of early pregnancy, which hit me like an eighteen-wheeler and left me breathless. I went from 60 to 0 in a day's time, or at least that's how it felt. All of my plans for the fall suddenly vaporized as I realized instead of what I thought I needed to do, I needed to focus my attention on things close to home and taking care of myself so that I could take care of my family.

This is life right now, and I'm learning to be content.

Safe

Freshly bathed, with clean pajamas and new socks, he curled up in my lap as we listened to his papa and my husband read about Moses' journey up Mount Sinai. "Is he going to get the Ten Commandments?" he interrupted. "Good thinking, Cohen," my husband said.

He smiled at his papa, swallowed up in that affirmation, and as I wrapped my arms around him, I felt an overwhelming sense of the Lord's pleasure, the Lord's provision, the Lord's kindness to our family. That these two beautiful boys would be ours, that we would be a family, and that he has sustained us over the past seven years, but most especially this last year.

It has been one week shy of a year since our pastor, my husband's boss, our friend suddenly and unexpectedly stopped being our pastor, my husband's boss, and our friend. These things were not our choice, but his, and it was more painful and traumatic than I've been able to put into words, even in a year of thinking and writing and processing.

It was a summer much like this one, with two active and energetic boys who wanted to swim and read and go to the $1 movies every week. We were doing Vacation Bible School and having playdates and spending time as a family, and then, on a Wednesday, everything stopped. More accurately, the world around us didn't stop, but the world from my perspective did. Suddenly everything was up in the air. Would my husband still have a job? Would the church survive this? Would we survive this?

And then the insomnia. Sleeplessness and zombification that nothing would fix.

"Those... months were like being dragged drunk through some malign carnival where the people on the rides were really screaming, the people lost in the mirror maze were really lost, and the denizens of Freak Alley looked at you with false smiles on their lips and terror in their eyes. Ralph began to see these things by the middle of May, and as June set in, he began to understand that the pitchmen along the medical midway had only quack remedies to sell, and the cheery quickstep of the calliope could no longer quite hide the fact that the tune spilling out oft the loudspeakers was 'The Funeral March.' It was a carnival, all right; the carnival of lost souls." - Stephen King, Insomnia

Even now, every night when I go to bed there is just a pinprick of a thought, Will I be able to sleep tonight? I have been able to sleep fine for the past several months, even without the aid of any kind of medicine, but the fear is always there. I can rationally tell myself that circumstances are different, that I am under the care of our family physician, that everything is alright now. But those thoughts are hard to focus on at 11 p.m. at night when fatigue starts to hit but my eyes stay open.

We are on the verge of moving into a new place in life, a new job for Christian, a new year of school for the boys, and I am feeling paralyzed. What will it be like? Will anxiety sneak its way in as we open the door to change? Can I be myself in a new place, when we suffered such trauma in the past as a result of others' opinions and disapproval?

I don't have a good conclusion to this chapter of our lives. I don't think that all the pages have even been turned. But how thankful I am for the small, whispering voice that says, The story is written, and I know how it will end, and when all is said and done, you will be safe.

Summer Begins

I'll be honest: I was dreading this summer. For the past nine months, I have taken solace in alone time, in doing things I've needed to do around our home, but doing it in silence. I've had time to work from home part time, and I've had time to read my Bible and pray throughout the day. I knew that on June 1, while some of those things would continue, my days were not going to look the same.

I resisted the urge to make a detailed schedule for every day. I have a basic routine, and I'm planning the day out ahead of time as much as I can in terms of getting work done and keeping the house semi-clean, but I have been praying that the Lord would help me be spontaneous. I made a list of priorities for this summer: continue spiritual disciplines, be present for Christian and the boys, care for our home, allow the boys plenty of time for physical activity, and seek to spend time with friends. Past that, I wanted everything else to be flexible.

Thursday morning a friend reached out to ask if anyone could help her with her boys. I had planned a trip to the library and rest time for the boys, but we quickly changed plans and welcomed her boys to the pool with us, where we played and ate lunch.

This morning I had planned to give the boys a hair cut and then run some errands, but a friend from church texted to see if we wanted to have a playdate. We finished the haircuts and headed to the park, and just did the other errands later in the day.

Friday we had 6 moms and 13 kids over to swim and eat a picnic lunch. I am an introvert, and large groups are not necessarily my forte, but the kids played and the moms talked and we finished the time with a box of popsicles.

What has been remarkable about these things has been the lack of anxiety I have felt. I was so anxious about being anxious this summer, but as I've been willing to lay down things that aren't urgent, and as I've opened us up to fellowship and flexibility, I have not found anxiety waiting for me there. I've found peace and refreshment.

It's still vital that I get up before the boys to drink my coffee and read my Bible. If I don't take care of my introverted and spiritual needs, I'm wasted by the end of the day.

I've also realized that because of the events of last summer that led to me being non-functional from the middle of July until school started, and which led to me counting down the days until school started because I felt that if it didn't come soon, I might suffocate... I have associated my boys with anxiety. Those days were so awful, and I was so not myself, but those were my last memories of being with my boys all day. It's not severe enough to be categorized as post-traumatic stress, but part of me wonders if there's some truth to that. I have a hard time remembering last summer before everything fell apart, although my husband tells me that I had the same dread about last summer, and yet, mid-June, I told him that things were good. I don't remember that. All I remember is the bad.

This summer I'm seeing the good. I'm just enjoying these two boys, seeing them as the blessings they've always been.

We are talking about deep things, and they are sharing with me the things they love. During the school year, Cohen especially talked little about what went on at school. But now that school is past, he's being much more descriptive about his friends and what he liked about school. 

I hope we can continue to live in these rhythms. To be spontaneous (which has always been a hard thing for me), to spend time with family and friends, to not be rushed.

Most of all, I'm thankful that I am loved by a God who knows better than me what I need. Where I thought I couldn't live without quiet, without alone time, he is showing me how to be refreshed by two of the people I love most. 

If They Can, Why Can't We?

Depression. Counseling. Anxiety. Therapy. Mental Health.

I think the attitude toward these words, toward these things, is changing, but even now, there is so much stigma attached to them. My impressions of these words for the first two-thirds of my life was that they were way "out there," that sure, some people had to deal with those things, but only in very serious situations.

I have been encouraged to see Christians begin to talk about these things out in the open. But what is even more interesting to me is to see non-Christians talk about them. Bunmi Laditan, the genius behind the Honest Toddler, writes openly and poignantly on her Facebook page about her battles with anxiety. From what she writes, it seems like she has made peace with her anxiety, at least to the extent that she can.

Even more recently, Kristen Bell, star of Frozen and my personal favorite, Veronica Mars, shared in a recent interview that she has struggled with anxiety and depression since her late teens. With the encouragement of her mother, who explained that mental health issues run strongly on the female side of her family, she began taking medication, which she says has helped tremendously.

I love how Bell compares her mental health issues to diabetes. Part of my own story is that taking medication truly changed my life. The fact that things changed so drastically once I had consistent amounts of an anti-depressant in my system proved to me that at least one component of my struggles was purely biological. It was not something I could choose to stop experiencing. More prayer, more Bible reading, more counseling was not going to fix it.

As I've watched this women talk openly in public spaces about these things, I've been encouraged to talk about it myself with other people. I'm not interested in trying to shock people with my transparency about my struggles. My goal instead is to say, "This has been very hard for me, but Jesus has carried me through and continues to carry me." Additionally, I want to be a safe place for other people to talk about what they're experiencing.

It's been amazing to me that sometimes, almost as soon as I utter the words "depression" or "anxiety," the person with whom I'm speaking blurts out, "I've struggled with that as well!" Instantly, a deep bond is formed between us, and it is no longer something to be ashamed of, but rather, something to talk about honestly.

I find it ironic that those who do not claim to believe the gospel are brave enough to share their struggles. They are not afraid to own their weakness.

So why are we? Why do we try to pretend like we have it all together? Even if you haven't ever been diagnosed with depression or anxiety, we are all guilty of building up a facade that looks good. We may even go so far as to use social media to reveal minor failings--I did just that on Sunday with a fail of a Mother's Day picture with my boys. But what if I were brave enough to admit that sometimes, when I'm with my boys and my anxiety is through the roof and they are continually talking so much so that my brain feels like it might explode, I will think about how all I want to do is run away from them and never see them again.

That is a momentary thought, and it passes, but I've had it more than once. And it's not the kind of thing you really want to post on Facebook or Instagram. It's ugly and dark.

But because of what Jesus has done, I can say it. I can say it to him, I can say it to Christian, and I can say it to trusted friends. Because that feeling is not the end of the story. Because of what Jesus has done, there is room to grow and grace to do it.

This morning we were in a rush to get out the door and both of the boys were talking at the same time. I felt my chest getting tight and just knew I was going to lose it at one or both of them. But almost as if someone else were controlling me, I put my hand on one of their shoulders and said quietly, "Hold on, sweetie, until your brother is finished talking."

Medication and counseling and pursuing spiritual disciplines have been vital to trudging out of the darkness I was in for many months. But Jesus can take me further than any of those things ever can. And because I know that he can and I know he will continue to do so, I will keep talking about those hard things. Truly, we're the only ones who should feel the most courage to do so.d

On Being a Good Mom

Mother's Day is a polarizing holiday. There are those who lean into it and are sensitive toward those who are mothers as well as toward those who would long to be mothers. There are those who almost refuse to recognize it out of principle. There are those who attempt to include all women, even those who never plan on being a mother, under the umbrella of celebration.

Facebook is replete with temporary profile pictures, grown children with their mothers who are now grandmothers, young children with their young mothers, and everything in between. There is the opportunity to reflect not only on what your own mother was to you, but also on those other women who throughout your life have mothered you apart from blood or family ties.

And so I write this, aware that I will eventually exclude most every kind of mom or not-mom except for the kind who are living in the same place that I am: a mom with children still at home.

My boys are now 5 and 6, stair steps with just 15 months between. They share the same hair color, the same eye color, and are often mistaken for twins. Sometimes I catch a glance of them doing something and think, "I can't believe they're mine." When I let them out of the car for school in the morning and see them walking up the sidewalk together, backpacks and lunchboxes in hand, it sometimes feels like time is slipping away, and I remember cold winters with the younger one in a carrier on my chest and the older one holding my hand as we walked around the block ad nauseum, trying to make long days pass a bit faster.

Five years ago on Mother's Day, I was coming home from the children's hospital with my week-old baby, then free of the threat of jaundice, and welcoming my fifteen-month-old who wasn't walking yet. Two children in diapers, one mobile, but unable to get himself into the car alone. I'm surprised I didn't lose more weight in those first few months.

That same year, because of Cohen's early birth and the timing that placed his arrival square in the middle of Christian's final seminary exams of the semester, I looked Christian in the eye and said, "I can't have any more babies right now." We still thought we had at least 3 years left of seminary, and I felt extraordinarily overwhelmed.

Now we are in a beautiful stage where everyone can handle bathroom issues alone, everyone knows how to get dressed, and everyone can walk safely from one place to another. We've come a long way.

But it doesn't mean things are easy. If anything, in some ways, they are harder. The options for dealing with a two-year-old throwing a tantrum are relatively simple. The consequences for a six-year-old who lies willingly are more complex. There are expectations built up over time, and there are experiences that start to dictate to children how they think things should be. Just today, my parents were taking the boys to see a movie, which is a rare treat in our home, and my older son cried because it wasn't the same movie theater we went to in November. "There are some things worth crying about," I said for the one-hundredth time, "but this is not one of them."

I do not feel like more of an expert on parenting than I did when Stephen was born just 10 months after Christian and I got married. If anything, I feel more unsure of the best way to handle certain things. And so it is always a struggle when a fellow mom shares her current struggle, and asks me what I think she should do.

I have learned that what works for my kids might not work for your kids.
I have learned that discipline is best done not by a rigidly responding to every infraction, but by looking into your child's heart and seeing what is really there.
I have learned that you can put your kids on a schedule or you can let them sleep in the bed with you, and they can still turn out alright.

And yet what I keep hearing and seeing on the Internet and in the lives of my friends is the harrowing question, "Am I a good mom?"

We all know there are moms who are moms only because they give birth to children. From even before their children are born, they do not care for them. But they are moms. And then there are moms who seem to have it all together. I think most of us feel that there is a spectrum, and we are somewhere on it, but daily we slide back and forth between one end or the other. "Well, I didn't yell at my kids today, but I did feed them goldfish for all three meals."

I hear friends confessing something they did or didn't do in regards to their children, and what they are really asking me is if I think they are good moms.

I have spent the last 6+ years striving to be a good mom, and I know that if I asked on Facebook whether or not anyone there thinks I am a good mom, there would be a resounding affirmation that yes, Chelsey, you are a good mom.

But what happens when we ask God that question?

"Lord, am I a good mom?"

Jesus is not interested in puffing up our self-esteem or giving us fluffy reasons to feel good about ourselves. That may not feel like love to us, but it is, because love means telling the truth.

And the truth is that none of us are good moms.

You can feed your child 100% organic food, but it doesn't make you a good mom.

You can homeschool your children from birth through high school, but it doesn't make you a good mom.

You can read to your children every night before bed, but it doesn't make you a good mom.

And if you are already doing those things, then don't stop doing them. There are a thousand good things we do each day for the sake of our children that we should all keep doing. But they don't determine whether or not we are good moms.

The gospel says that none of us are good anythings, but that recognizing that is the first step of following Jesus. If I comprehend the fact that I am not a good mom, then I am desperate to find someone who is good, who does know what I should do—someone who can help me.

Jesus came for the neglectful moms and the helicopter moms. Jesus came for the healthy moms and the junk food moms. Jesus came for the working moms and the stay-at-home moms. Jesus came for the public school moms and the homeschool moms. Because none of those moms are good, and all of us need Jesus.

This Mother's Day, I hope you can be thankful for the children God has given you, even when being their mom feels like a burden. And I also hope that you can find true freedom in the gospel of Jesus Christ. May you continue to love your children well, all the while knowing that the only reason you can do anything is because of the love that has already been poured out in your heart by our God, who both mothers and fathers us with tenderness and compassion.

School Guilt

The guilty I felt in the first few weeks of the school year threatened to undo me. I would tell myself all the things I had told other people: "We're taking it year by year..." "If it's not going well, I'll be the first one to pull them out..." "I'm totally pro-homeschooling, but we decided to send the boys to public school..."

I was trying to convince other people as much as I was trying to convince myself. On one hand, after the trauma of the summer, I couldn't imagine them being home all day. I felt I had dragged us all over the finish line that marked the end of the summer. I had no strength left, and even if I had been planning to homeschool them, I don't know how I would have managed lesson planning or buying curriculum. From every angle anyone could see, public school made sense.

And here we are, just a few weeks away from the end of the school year. Cohen will be in kindergarten next year after blazing his way through 4K. He is starting to read, he can write his full name, and he loves his best friend, Cole. Stephen has ended the year with his teacher describing him as a caring friend and humble leader in his class. There were ups and downs, but overall, it has been a wonderful year, one that I could not have foreseen in late August.

I thought they could survive, and that they would have to in order for me to have the space I needed to rest and recover from severe anxiety and depression. But they have done more than survive. They have thrived. When I spend time with them at school, I see the relationships they have made with other students, with their teachers, with the rest of the staff. They have a community at their school, and they love being there.

That doesn't even take into account the many blessings I've experienced because they were there. I've been able to go on field trips with them and meet other parents. For reasons that I still don't understand, they allowed me to organize the school talent show, for which Stephen was the Master of Ceremonies, a role he took extremely seriously (Cohen, on the other hand, showed his own talent during the show: being completely unable to stay still for more than 2 seconds).

I have gotten to know the principal, both of the boys' teachers, and other parents. I have had the opportunity to attempt to show appreciation and love for the boys' teachers, who serve daily in what I know is often a thankless job.

The guilt, I think, is gone. What I thought was Plan Z, the thing we were doing because I just wasn't equipped to handle any other scenario, has worked for the good of both boys, for me, for Christian, and I hope for those with whom we've interacted.

It's almost like there is a God who promised to work all things together for good for his people, a God who never lies and always keeps his promises.

We Get to Stay

We have been living in limbo, in transition, in a valley--the metaphors and analogies abound--for months now. I wouldn't let myself think about the future, because it seemed too ominous. I would have a great conversation with another parent at my boys' school, but then I would think--will we even be here next year? At church, I found myself opening up to other women despite my best efforts to guard what little of myself was left, but when I did, I was received with warmth and grace. And yet even those graces felt poisoned with anxiety. This was a wonderful church, but the chances of being able to stay there were so slim.

Being a pastor is a high calling. My husband feels the weight of it, and I do as well. I have felt no greater joy than seeing him use his gifts in pastoral ministry to shepherd God's people, and yet that is also where we have experienced some of our deepest sorrows. The other difficult part about being married to a pastor is that your job determines your community. If my husband could not pastor at our current church, then we would have to find another church where he could. And so while trying to heal and recover and rest, we have been facing the prospect of having to leave. As an old friend said to me a few days ago, "You have had to leave too many churches."

If the church is the true community of saints that God says it is, then it's not surprising that it feels a bit like death when you have to leave one local community for another. You are still within the "family," but the comfort and familiarity is gone, and in a sense, you have to start over.

I did not want to start over.

If I had ever been tempted to think that God rewards us with good things for our faith, for our perseverance, for our obedience, then the last nine months should be able to provide testimony for the contrary. I have doubted his goodness. I have feared his lack of provision. I have imagined that he looks at me in anger, in displeasure. I have not always grounded myself in the truth of his Word, and instead have frequently let anxiety completely consume me.

And yet he overwhelmingly, abundantly showered blessing on us.

It was a two-word text as I ran on Wednesday morning. I turned off my music, stopped running, and sat on the curb of someone's house as I tried to convince myself it was true. It didn't seem like it could be. Was it a dream? But time and more texts confirmed the truth of it.

In my mind, it wasn't, "Oh, good, now we don't have to worry about how to pay our bills in four months," or even "Oh, good, Christian won't have to work at Chick-fil-a much longer." Mostly it was just "We get to stay. We get to stay. We get to stay."

We get to stay. This gospel-loving community of saints that embraced us and welcomed us when we were broken and raw and reeling from the events of the last half of last year was not just our temporary family. We get to stay.

Eight Months Later, It Might Be Hope

Many years ago, before my husband and I were even married, we went to a concert of a musician who I had never seen perform before. Her name was Sara Groves, and the only two songs that I remember from that night are one she wrote for her sons that I sang to my own boys in tears once I understood what the words to her song actually meant, and another song she wrote for a friend who had been in a long season of depression. At the time I don't know that I would have said I had ever been depressed, although looking back now, I can pinpoint specific periods of time when I was most definitely struggling with depression, but I didn't know what to call it. And yet the words to this song spoke to me.

As I tried to put into words what I was feeling yesterday, this song came to mind, and as I refreshed my memory as to the words of the song, it felt like the most perfect way to explain.

You do your work the best that you can;
You put one foot in front of the other.
Life comes in waves and makes its demands;
You hold on as well as you're able.

You've been here for a long, long time...

Hope has a way of turning its face to you
Just when you least expect it:
You walk in a room; you look out a window,
And something there leaves you breathless.
You say to yourself,
"It's been a while since I felt this,
But it feels like it might be hope."

It's hard to recall what blew out the flame;
It's been dark since you can remember.
You talk it all through to find it a name
As days go on by without number.

You've been here for a long, long time...

Hope has a way of turning its face to you
Just when you least expect it:
You walk in a room; you look out a window,
And something there leaves you breathless.
You say to yourself,
"It's been a while since I felt this,
But it feels like it might be hope."

Suddenly the thought of weaning off the anti-depressant I've been taking for 7 months didn't feel overwhelming or terrifying. Suddenly I felt like I was willing to try not taking the medication I've been using to help me sleep. Suddenly the conversation about having more children, which up until this point had felt absolutely beyond what I could even comprehend, was a conversation I wanted to have.

Nothing big changed between Monday and Tuesday. I have been doing what I have been trying to do for the last eight months: Just keep swimming. My husband is still looking for a full-time job at a church. We are still living off his severance package from our old church. Our future still looks very fuzzy from our perspective. And yet, overnight, everything got brighter and I felt like a veil had been removed from my eyes. 

I was overwhelmed with gratitude for the staff at the boys' school who so graciously encouraged Stephen when he got knocked out of the spelling bee. I was thankful for my mom, who is always there to talk to me on the phone. I praised the Lord for our new church home, where we are being discipled and loved and cared for. I thanked Jesus for mental clarity, for the ability to resist the temptation to be overtaken by anxiety. It has not been too long for me to remember drowning in anxiety, and feeling the onset of it and then being able to fight it by God's grace is not something I am taking for granted. I texted a friend to thank her for pushing me to go back to a Bible study I have been gone from for over a year, to thank her for not letting me isolate myself.

These things were true before yesterday, but I just couldn't see how beautiful they are. I could objectively see them as blessings, but they didn't feel in my heart like blessings. I know that the Christian life is not based on our feelings, and for that I am ultimately thankful, but God created us as emotional beings, and so we can't completely divide our faith from our feelings. We must always respond in obedient faith to our feelings, even when our feelings seem more real than Jesus. But every once in a while, like on this particular Tuesday, God graces us with the beauty that is the unification of our faith and our feelings. We believe, and we feel, and both of them are appropriate.

It's been a while since I felt this, but it feels like it might be hope.

Humility and Dependence

It was New Year's Eve 2014 and I sat on the steps going out to the parking lot from our apartment building. I had just finished telling my mom about the current trial we were facing at church, and when we finally ended the call, I released it all in tears instead of words. I was angry at people for not doing what I thought they should do. I was angry at the Lord for the way he had ordained things to happen. I was discontent with where our family was living. And as the hours in that day ticked away into a new year, I felt a gentle trail of thought weave through my mind: Lord, humble me. I knew that the answer to all of that anger and discontentment was humility. And so I prayed that 2015 would be a year in which the Lord taught me what it looked like to be humble.

As the months wore on I began to grow somewhat uncomfortable with what I felt the Lord was doing. For some reason I thought if I were truly humble maybe life wouldn't bother me so much. I would be content no matter what. The opposite was happening. Everything was hard. People disappointed me. I didn't feel like I was succeeding at all at being the kind of mom I wanted to be. And every once in a while I would think, "Am I being humble?" and I never really knew if I was or not.

Things happened, then more things happened. Then one night I was laying on a hospital bed in a sparse room with background sounds of mentally disabled men yelling at the staff in the nurses' station and for the first time in my life I felt that I was completely powerless to do anything. I couldn't leave the hospital by myself because my mom had driven me there and then they had sent her home until the morning. I couldn't even leave the room without permission. I couldn't call anyone because they had taken my purse. I was completely alone, and I couldn't do anything to fix it.

I had ended up there after three weeks of barely sleeping, which had exacerbated the growing anxiety produced by stressful events earlier in the summer. In an attempt to survive the weekend until I could go see my family doctor, I went to urgent care and asked them for something to help me sleep. I can't remember now what they gave me, but it sent me into an hours-long panic attack during which I truly thought I was going to die. It was the middle of the night and my mom came and took me to the hospital while Christian stayed with the boys.

In that room, by myself, I stared at the ceiling and tried to feel that Jesus was near me. I talked to him because there was nothing else to do. And I didn't hear him talking back to me (which would have been interesting, by the way, because the nurses who kept coming to check on me frequently asked me if I had heard voices) and I didn't feel any sort of spiritual emotions within me. But I knew I wasn't alone. I couldn't have lived, I don't think, if I had thought I was alone, because it had come to the point where I didn't think anyone could understand what it was like to want desperately to sleep but not be able to, to feel myself having a nervous breakdown and not be able to stop it, to not even feel able to be with my children for any length of time. But somehow, even though everything else in my mind was warring against me with lies and untruths, I knew that the one thing I could be sure about was that Jesus understood.

I wasn't thinking about whether or not I was humble that night. All I was thinking was, "JESUS, HELP ME!" I felt the full depth of my need for him, and I knew there was nothing I could do to help myself.

By God's grace, that night was an anomaly. Through counseling, medication, prayer, and faithful friends and family, I am in a much better place than I was back then. As this year drew to a close, though, I thought back on my goal of seeking humility last year. And it was then that I realized that I don't think God answers prayers for humility by making us more aware of whether or not we are being humble. Maybe for those who only have a moderate struggle with pride and self-reliance, he does work that way. But for me, it took knocking my feet out from under me until I could see my heart for what it is and feel how completely helpless I am without Jesus. That wasn't what I thought I was praying for on the last day of 2014. But that was how he answered it.

As 2016 starts, I have felt the word dependence ringing in my ears, and I am hesitantly praying that the Lord would change my heart to truly depend on him for everything I need. At first I was afraid to even think about this, because so far the way the Lord has answered my prayers for sanctification has been incredibly painful. But as we entered this year without a church and without a steady source of income, I realized that the Lord is already answering that prayer. We literally started 2016 in a position of forced dependence on the Lord. If anything changes, it will only be because of him.

I cannot pretend to understand the ways of the Lord, and I have stopped trying. The position he desires for us to take in relation to him is not one of equals, two partners discussing the right and wrong way to do things. He is the Father, and I am the child, and just as a child does not always like what his father chooses, the child of a truly loving father does not despair in his lack of understanding. He trusts not in the actions of the father but in the heart that he knows the father has toward him.

Here is my prayer for 2016: Lord, make me humbly dependent on you. I am afraid of what might happen when I pray this, because I feel numb and vulnerable and empty. But if you are the God you say you are, you know what I need before I need it. Give me the grace to trust you even when I don't understand.