I spent most of my morning scrubbing blood off my front door.

My husband and I moved in about two years ago, after touring nearly 50 houses. On the same day, we often found ourselves looking at two houses on opposite sides of the tracks: one in the affluent neighborhood, another in the part of town that you don’t walk around in at night. We felt the tension between wanting to live somewhere “nice” and “safe,” and wanting to live somewhere where our neighbors didn’t necessarily look, think, or live like us. We didn’t want to insulate ourselves from the realities of urban living by cloistering into a gated community. We wanted to rub shoulders with people from all walks of life. We purposely sought a place where we could move in and love people like Jesus would.

When we walked into the house on Chestnut St., we knew we’d found it. The house was beautiful, and the street had all the marks of an urban neighborhood in a fast-growing city—small, run-down rental houses worth $50k squatted next to new houses selling for nearly $1 million. Brand new BMWs shared the street with beat-up Nissans. Folks of all types meandered up and down the road—Black, white, old, young, people with dogs, people on bikes, people pushing carts. Looking around, we knew it would be a place where we could plant our family and love our neighbors.

Over the next two years, we began to learn about the neighborhood and its various quirks and challenges. We complained with our neighbors about the construction; we learned the names of the folks walking to the convenience store at the corner. We learned about the racial tension, the failed annexation attempts, poorly kept rental homes, and the drug-dealing neighbor up the street. Next to the drug house was an abandoned home that seemed porous with squatters recovering from a high. At times we’d had cop cars parked in our driveway, scouting out the drug house; more than once we’d heard gun shots at night.

Before we moved in, we had prayed that many people would come through our front door and experience the hope and healing of Jesus.

Then just yesterday, a man with a bloody arm came to my door.

This wasn’t the first time a neighbor had come to our door unannounced. A few weeks earlier, a neighbor named Miss Patsy knocked on our door while we were eating dinner. She was weeping about a fight she’d had with her sister. She’d clearly been drinking. “You were the only place I thought I could go,” she told us. We prayed for her, then gave her a ride to the corner store. A few days after that, she came by again, asking for a ride to her brother’s house. Again, she said, “You were the only ones I thought would help me.”

Then there’s Miss Annie, who knocks on my door anytime she’s had a fight with her neighbor. There’s Miss Becky, who knocked on my door after a zoning meeting, asking for more information about what we’d heard. There’s Willy, and the others who live in an encampment down by the creek, who have stopped at our door asking for food, or asking if they can cut our grass for a bit of money.

Yesterday, though, was different from those other times.

I was in the kitchen preparing dinner while our baby napped upstairs.

I heard thumping footsteps running up to our porch, and then loud banging on the door. The face of a tall Black man appeared in my window, frantic and shouting.

Terrified, I ran to the door and turned the deadbolt, thinking he was trying to break in.

“Help me! I’m bleeding to death! Help! Call 911!” he shouted. I made eye contact with him in the window, nodded, and ran over to get my phone.

Shaking, I called my husband—no answer—then the police.

“There’s a man banging on my door who says he’s bleeding.”

“He’s Black, tall, brown pants, and he’s got his shirt off, and it looks like it’s wrapped around his wrist.”

“He’s walking down the steps now toward my driveway. My husband just got home.”

“Wait, a car just pulled up. Silver Toyota Camry. A woman just got out.”

“The man just got into the car. The car drove away.”

Moments later, several police cars showed up, and when I opened my front door, there was blood splattered everywhere.

After giving our report to the officer, he told us to leave everything as it was so that a forensics team could take photos. The blood stains remained overnight, soaking into the wooden deck.

Scrubbing the blood on my wooden porch the next day, I wondered about the Israelites. Did they scrub the blood off their doorposts in the days following that Passover meal?

Or, maybe they left the blood there as a solemn reminder—not of the sacrificed lamb, but of the mercy they needed, and the firstborns that had been spared. For them, it was a symbol of life, not death.

Looking at the stubborn stains on my porch, I wondered if they could serve the same purpose for me.

The blood stains on my porch are not a reminder of the violence; they are a reminder of why we moved into this neighborhood in the first place: to love. They are a reminder that there are people right around the corner who are broken, hurting, looking for love and belonging, and sometimes, they get stabbed when they look for it in the wrong places.

There are bleeding people all up and down my street, even if they aren’t leaving stains on my porch. They are crying at my kitchen table, looking for their next meal, or ranting about their neighborly frustrations and fears. Their hearts are bleeding as badly as that man’s hand, and his blood stains remind me that there are so many people who need healing here. Including myself.

The blood stains remind me that I, more than any other, am deeply in need of mercy, deeply in need of another’s blood to cover my brokenness and sin. They remind me that the stain of my sin has been cleansed by Jesus because he gave his blood. Like the Israelites, the blood reminds me of the One who passes over us with His mercy.

Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing—from right here on Chestnut Street.

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A version of this essay published on Mockingbird.

I feigned celebration while internally seething with jealousy. While this well-rested new mom shared her news, I held onto my fussy two-month-old who had woken up several times in the night. I had been trying for a few weeks to get her to sleep longer stretches at night, with mixed success, but we were coming off of a few nights in a row of several middle-of-the-night interruptions. I was tired, grumpy, and at this point, I was desperate for a full night’s sleep. I wanted to buy that magic suit.

For those unfamiliar with the current products available in the baby-sleep world, the Baby Merlin’s Magic Sleepsuit is basically a puffy straight jacket for infants designed to prevent them from rolling over at night. Supposedly it helps babies transition from a swaddle and sleep better through the night. The alluring promise of good sleep for your baby (and you!) is nearly impossible to resist. I was tempted to give in.

And yet, something told me that putting my baby in a straight jacket would not be a great long-term solution. That something was my husband.

“There’s no way that’s good for her developmentally,” he argued. Sure, I agreed, but…nine hours of sleep?! That sounded glorious. Couldn’t her development be sacrificed just a bit?

The magic suit is one of many items of baby gear that moms say you must have, like the Hatch sound machine, the Snoo bassinet, the Frida snot-sucker, those magnetic-closure onesies, and the Baby Brezza automatic formula bottle maker. I don’t fault anyone for purchasing products that make life as a parent easier—we’re all just trying to keep it together, and anything that seems to promise ease, efficiency, and effortless care for your baby seems worth it, even despite a hefty price tag. But the promise of efficiency comes with unforeseen costs.

Parenting, I’ve learned so far, is full of messes. Messy diapers, messy spit-up, messy feelings, messy schedules. Nothing about having an infant is clean-cut or efficient, no matter how much I try to make it so. The mess is inevitable, but the baby-gear industry offers parents the false promise of a mess-free life, selling products and methods that magically eliminate the mess. We fall for it, and unintentionally, we lose the opportunity for connection.

Our baby was the first grandchild on my side, so naturally my parents were excited. They bought us baby clothes and toys and trinkets before we had even set up a registry. My husband and I love to cook, especially pancakes on Saturdays, so my mom thoughtfully bought us a silicone baby plate emblazoned with “Love You A Brunch.” It had suction cups on the bottom, so strong that it took me quite the effort to remove it from the table—rendering it impossible for a baby to cast onto the floor.

But as I examined it more thoughtfully, I wondered aloud to my husband: “Shouldn’t we just teach her not to throw her plate on the floor?”

Sure, suction cups keep the plate on the table for a meal, and save me from cleaning up the mess. But can suction cups teach my child how to sit politely at a table and eat with other people, to respectfully eat what she’s been given, and to take care of her home by keeping the floors clean?

The suction cups might provide a solution for the mess we want to avoid, but they cannot shape our children into responsible, respectful adults who can eat with others around a table. The magic suit might be a shortcut to a good night’s sleep, but it cannot replace the night-after-night’s work of teaching our baby to self-soothe, to fall asleep on her own, and to respect the others sleeping in our house.

These products, and many others, tempt me and many other sleep-deprived, exhausted parents away from the difficult, sanctifying work of raising our children, teaching them, and nurturing them. Suction-cup plates teach us that our children are messy inconveniences that need to be optimized and streamlined so we can get back to our lives. When we opt for the suction-cup plates, we may be depriving our children of the parenting they need—and ourselves of becoming the parents they need, because it’s actually the messiness of food on the floor and interrupted sleep that transform me into the mom that my daughter needs me to be.

The suction cup plate might save me the work of getting on my hands and knees to clean the mess off the floor, but that’s where I learn to serve one who is smaller and weaker than me. The magic suit might save me from an interrupted night’s sleep, but I lose out on the chance to climb out of bed and comfort my young child. It takes away the opportunity to look at that child and tell her I love her, tell her she’s safe, and teach her how to manage her little body as she learns how to sleep.

Holding my baby girl one night around 3 a.m., I realized that there is a finite number of these late night interruptions—which means there’s a finite number of times I get to hold her in my arms. She won’t always be this small and helpless. One day she will walk upstairs and get herself ready for bed. One day she will tuck herself into bed on her own. One day she will wake up in the middle of the night and roll over to go back to sleep. But I hope by then, she will have learned that there is always someone there she can call out to when she feels afraid and alone in the night.

Though she’s not yet eating at the table with us, one day she will—and I am sure she will make plenty of messes. When that day comes, I hope I delight in getting on the floor and picking up her mess, and then talking to her gently, teaching her how to eat with us at the table, inviting her to connect with us at our meal. In that, my prayer is that she will not only learn how to not make a mess; but more importantly, she will learn that when she makes a mess of things, she won’t be left alone to clean it up. And there’s grace for all the plates she will spill on the floor.

I hope I can be the first one to show her what Grace looks like, so she can meet Him one day and feel like she already knows Him.

Published on Mockingbird

My husband and I were ready and eager for a restful Friday night at home. It had been a long week and we were thankful to have time to slow down and connect. We cooked together, dancing in the kitchen, catching up and talking. We sat down and prayed, and took a deep breath. We settled into our meal and our stillness.

After we finished our dinner, we sat lingering at the table for a while. We were about to get up to prepare dessert when we heard a knock at the door. It was around 9pm—we weren't sure who would be coming over, unannounced. We opened the door and saw Andrew and Mackenzie, a brother-sister duo we know through our youth group at church.* Andrew is good friends with my husband and I had gotten to know Mackenzie a bit before she went off to college.

"Mackenzie is having an existential crisis," declared Andrew. I laughed, thinking he was joking—but when I looked at Mackenzie, I could see she was on the verge of falling apart. She burst into tears and fell into my arms. Consoling her as she wept, I guided her to the couch while my husband invited Andrew to sit down at the table.

Between sobs, Mackenzie tried to communicate what was happening. She was struggling with her relationship with her boyfriend, and thought they needed to break up. They’d started dating recently, and she had hoped their relationship would have blossomed more than it had. Instead, he only seemed to text her when he wanted a hook-up. She knew she wanted more than that, but she also was afraid of breaking it off. She wept because she wanted more from the boyfriend than he was giving, and craved depth and conversation.

At the table, my husband was entertaining Andrew with card tricks in another room while I was deciphering Mackenzie’s tears. She sat there downcast, tears filling her eyes, her voice trembling. She knew this relationship wasn’t what she wanted. But deeper down, she was battling deep insecurities, feeling unworthy, unloveable, and afraid to be alone. I could see she was desperately lonely. She shared her heart, and I offered some encouragement, but mostly I was a shoulder to cry on. We prayed together, crying out to God in our mutual brokenness. It was sweet to be there and hold her and speak truth to her.

"Let's make some cookies," I said after she'd cleaned up her streaked mascara and started to calm down a bit. We got to work in the kitchen, making a giant cookie in a skillet—the best cure for an aching heart. After feasting on the warm gooey mess, we played some games. Our unexpected guests lingered and laughed—and loved. I was so delighted they showed up.

In The Gospel Comes with a House Key, Rosaria Butterfield paints a beautiful picture of radically ordinary hospitality. “Those who live out radically ordinary hospitality see their homes not as theirs at all but as God’s gift to use for the furtherance of his kingdom. They open doors,” writes Butterfield. I want our home to feel open, inviting, and welcoming to all, at any time. I pray for more chances like to welcome someone into our home in the midst of their existential crisis. And it doesn't hurt to have a giant warm cookie, either.

Butterfield is clear, however, that we are not only to be hosts; we are to be guests as well. Hospitality is a dance of both giving and receiving.

I’ve been the one on the other side of the door, knocking and hoping someone would answer. Just a few months before these unexpected visitors came by, I went out for a walk in our neighborhood one morning. We had recently moved in, and I was getting to know the area. When I arrived back home, the door was locked. Even worse, I had left my phone at home, and my husband was at the gym. Surely I hadn’t locked myself out. I checked again, no go. I went around to the back door, same story. I was locked out.

Ironically, this had happened to me the week before, except that time the back door had been open. I made a point to go to Lowe’s the next day to make an extra key we could hide away for such occasions … which was now sitting inside my locked house on the kitchen counter. I was stuck.

All other options exhausted, I walked over to my next-door neighbor’s house. Though I had met her a few times, we hadn’t gotten much past the driveway hellos. I climbed up the steps to her front porch and started knocking on her door. I knocked for an uncomfortably long time, standing there like a desperate door-to-door vacuum salesman. But I knew my options: knock on this door, or wait hopelessly on my porch until I was found. As I kept knocking, I started to calculate the distance it would take to walk to my nearest friend’s home, when finally my neighbor came to the door. My salvation was near!

I explained the situation sheepishly and asked if I could borrow her phone to call my husband. He didn’t answer (it was an unknown number for him) so I was out of luck. “I can give you a ride to meet him at the gym,” my neighbor kindly offered. She’d already opened her door, lent me her phone, and now she was offering to take me somewhere. This was the right door to knock on!

I hopped in her car, apologizing profusely and thanking her for her help. As we drove, I started asking her about her family, and our conversations soon traveled well beyond neighborly pleasantries. It was just a few minutes in the car, but by the end my new neighbor was more friend than stranger. She had truly opened the door for me in more ways than one.

I love to host friends, making elaborate meals and talking late into the night. I love when people drop by unexpectedly. I don’t, however, always love being the one in need. But when I was the one knocking on the door, I found that my neediness actually opened more doors into my neighbor’s life. Receiving her hospitality allowed us both to open up our lives to each other. Butterfield writes, “Hospitality is not about having the perfect house or the perfect meal; it's about opening our imperfect lives to others.” And I have seen that goes both ways. Sometimes, in the very same moment, you might be the host, offering hospitality, and the guest, receiving the gift. Doors aren’t meant to always be locked shut. If you knock on them, you might be surprised to find that they open too.

*Names have been changed.

Originally published on Mockingbird

It’s the time of year when our New Year’s resolutions slowly begin to unravel. It doesn’t usually happen all at once, of course. A cheat day here, a provoked outburst there, compounded by the multiplication of days and weeks, and what once felt possible eventually becomes fanciful. Even my best intentions can’t always hold up to the temptation of a Chick-fil-A milkshake.

Every new year is filled with hopeless optimism that I can truly change. At the beginning of this year, I took time to look back and reflect on all the ways that my life is different than it was just 365 days ago. I moved to a new state, I got a new job, I got engaged. Life has changed in some sizable ways, and yet I find myself wondering: did I really change at all?

As I assess the year gone, I find myself returning to the recent Christmas movie Spirited. Most Christmas movies are fluffy, predictable Hallmark rom coms that elevate the romance and magic of Christmas, but neglect the reality of embodied, messy, real-life people that often make life complicated. Spirited is a blessed exception — in a surprising twist, Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds pair up to make a non-ironic musical comedy filled with genuine Christmas cheer, packaged up in pristinely choreographed original dance numbers and a shocking amount of relatable humor. At the heart of the film was one question: “Can people really change?”

A modern parody of the classic A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Spirited follows Will Ferrell playing the Ghost of Christmas Present, who is responsible for “haunting” a preselected mortal every Christmas Eve, with the hopes of producing lasting change — preferably someone who can cause a ripple effect of goodness around them.

For reasons that remain obscured for most of the film, Ferrell’s character becomes fixated on Clint Briggs, a hot-shot social media consultant whose business is to produce division and controversy. Ferrell sees Clint as the ultimate “perp” whose redemption could produce global ripple effects — except Clint is deemed “Unredeemable” by the other spirits selecting a mortal to haunt. Yet Ferrell is determined to haunt Clint, and later we find out why: Ferrell, in fact, was Ebenezer Scrooge in his former life, the only other “Unredeemable” who has successfully been transformed by the haunting.

Along the way, Ferrell bumbles along, attempting to muster true character transformation for Clint, and they develop a funny sort of friendship, even though Ferrell feels that he’s failed his responsibility to redeem the unredeemable. Near the end of the movie, Clint definitively declares that people don’t truly change — yet moments later we watch as he throws himself in front of a bus to save Will Ferrell, thus indicating that he has, indeed, changed on a deeper level to become less self-centered and more sacrificial.

In the moment before the bus hits Clint, the scene is frozen, and Ferrell and Reynolds surprise us with one more finale number, serenading us that change doesn’t happen because of a one-night supernatural encounter, but rather if we “do a little good/Maybe give a little more/Work a little harder than we did the day before,” people can change.

Countless moments throughout last year I found myself saying, I just want to be better. Why can’t I be less selfish? Why can’t I be more disciplined? Why can’t I get my act together? Why do I keep doing things that hurt other people? Why can’t I do the things that I know are good for me? For all my attempts this year to become better, have I really changed?

What I found at the end of Spirited is a comforting image: we only really change when we die.

The final number in Spirited is sincere and genuine — just like each of us who attempt to work a little harder to be a little better than the day before. But the peppy choreography brings the movie to its climax just before it nosedives abruptly: immediately after the number, Clint is hit by a bus and thrown across the road, tragically ending his life.

As much as I’d like to buy into the song-and-dance that we can become a little bit better every day, it’s just an exhausting bunch of choreography to keep up with. What a relief to die to ourselves, die to the belief that we can really change if we just try a little harder, and instead, let the Holy Ghost do His haunting.

I’d like to propose that the Christmas-Carol-style haunting is not out-of-style. Though our culture would say that we should become one percent better every day, the only lasting transformation I’ve ever experienced in my life happened because of a one-time supernatural encounter, not with the Ghost of Christmas Past, but with the Incarnate Emmanuel God, who became flesh, and now dwells within me. Only through this daily holy haunting, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, does my heart truly turn from self-absorbed to self-giving, from hurting others to loving others, from enslaved to the law to freed by grace.

As I look at the coming year with all of its opportunities to change myself, optimize my life, and be better, I also see the many, many opportunities to fail to do so as well — so far, my life has been evidence of that. But in my failing, I won’t be haunted by the Ghost of Christmas Future. Our eternal God, our Everlasting Father, has drawn near to us, and promises us a better future, one where we have been glorified through our faith — and through our failings — and we’ve been made new.

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A version of this article was originally published on Mockingbird.

I stared at the boxes lining the walls of my garage, stacked up to the ceiling. They had been gathering cobwebs for months. Almost a year earlier, I had stashed all of the unsold CampKit boxes in a storage unit, but a few remained stacked in my garage, a daily reminder of what a wonderful dream it was—and how I had failed.

I started CampKit in April 2020. It began as a literal dream I had one night, and I woke excitedly to scribble it down. I called my friend Jordan to partner with me, and in less than six weeks, we developed an idea, started an LLC, and pulled together an entire product from design to content to materials. It was exhilarating and exciting to bring an idea to life and see it all come together so quickly. We got off to a strong start, watching the pre-orders pile up in our inbox, and feeling hopeful about selling out completely. We shipped out dozens of boxes on launch day and continued to ship out boxes throughout the summer.

But neither of us had really thought past the pandemic. We created CampKit in response to a need: Kids were unable to go to camp, so we would send camp home to them. What would happen when life returned to normal and kids started going back to camps?

Jordan and I played around with several product ideas, eventually launching a Thanksgiving-themed box in November, hoping to see if there was market interest in continued products that offered camp-at-home experiences. A handful sold, but we needed to figure out a long-term plan to keep the business viable.

In 2021, we held Zoom calls and created slide decks and assembled a steering committee to help us come up with some ideas. We did our best to keep the vision alive and create another amazing camp-at-home experience for kids, but our busier, pre-pandemic lives were calling, and our ideas weren’t gaining any momentum.

We were also dealing with a huge oversupply of inventory: we significantly overshot on our first run and assembled nearly double the number of boxes we sold.

For months, I wrestled with what to do. I needed a new approach, but honestly I was tired. In a last ditch attempt, I set up a booth at a homeschool expo in Atlanta, hoping to garner some interest. We sold a handful of boxes, but it did not prove to be a viable long-term option.

The evening after the expo, I went on a date. It was my second date with Josiah (who I am still dating, to my delight!). Unexpectedly, I began pouring out my heart about CampKit. I expressed my pride in and love for what we had created, and I shared my fear that it was all a waste. I felt like it had failed—like I had failed.

I felt as if I hadn’t done enough or tried hard enough to make it succeed. Had I fully committed to making CampKit thrive? Maybe if I had invested more in social media or online marketing or…? Maybe if I had quit my job to work on it full time…?

Walking with me as I talked, Josiah listened carefully to my woes. He asked questions, then let me talk. Finally, he asked me something that stumped me: “What if only one kid got to hear the Gospel because of CampKit? Would it be worth it?”

I stared at the ground as we walked. I wasn’t sure if I could honestly answer yes. I wanted to do something big and important. I wanted CampKit to be remembered by many. Would it be enough if just one kid heard the Gospel?

I spent the rest of the night – and the rest of last year – pondering that question. Would it all have been worth it for just one kid to experience the Gospel?

Standing there in my garage, looking at the stacks of boxes filled with my dream, I came back to that question. The boxes presented a daily reminder of a dying dream.

Suddenly I felt a compulsion to move all of the extra CampKit supplies from my garage to the storage unit. Perhaps it would feel cathartic – a release from the shame of failure.

In the countless times I’d visited the storage unit over the past year, I had never seen another person there. But as I began unloading, a car pulled up. A woman walked over to the door where I was unloading, then right up to the unit directly below mine.

“I guess we’re neighbors!” I said.

She looked at the scattered boxes and supplies. “I’m sorry if I’m in your way!” she said “I’ve just gotta put this one thing away.”

“Not at all!” I said. “Take your time.”

After closing up her unit, she looked around curiously and asked, “So what is all of this?”

“These are CampKits!” I replied. “It’s everything you need for a summer camp at home in a box. There’s Bible lessons, games, crafts, and all kinds of fun stuff inside.”

Her face lit up. “My son is 9, and he would love all of that. I work a lot, and his sister just got a job, so he’s often home alone with his grandma and is always looking for fun things to do.”

“So,” she asked, “how do I get one?”

I paused just long enough to feel the Holy Spirit nudge me.

“Honestly, you can just have one!” I climbed into my storage unit and grabbed a box from the stack.

She was thrilled. “My son is going to have so much fun with this!” she said.

If only one kid hears the Gospel…

As I kept packing up my storage unit, I reflected on that question again, and I remembered that Josiah had asked me another question: “What if the one kid who got to hear the Gospel was you? What if the whole experience of creating CampKit and watching it grow and die was about you experiencing the Gospel in a new way?”

I desperately wanted CampKit to succeed. God knew I needed CampKit to fail.

By the world’s standards, I had failed. My business didn’t grow. I lost money. It launched with a bang, and ended with a whimper. It left me with only a pile of useless inventory.

But my experience with CampKit redeemed my perspective on what success looks like in the Kingdom. It’s not measured by how many boxes were sold or how much revenue was generated or even how inventive or creative my ideas were. Success in the Kingdom is about simply being faithful to sow seeds, trusting God will make them grow.

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Published on Mockingbird

*Spoilers ahead for Minari

I've never had a garden but I've always admired people who grew their own vegetables. It's one thing to plant some daisies in your yard, and another entirely to tend to and cultivate a whole garden of produce. To be honest, I'd rather skip the whole charade and just buy my squash at the grocery store, but the avid growers say that their homegrown squash tastes different. I'd say that they are tasting their own hard work, sown into the soil with sweat and love and care. A garden is a veritable playground for people who love to see the literal fruit of their toil.

I recently saw the Oscar-nominated film Minari, in which a Korean-American family settles in the farmlands of Arkansas, led by patriarch Jacob. Fueled by tenacious hope and the American dream, Jacob desires to have a thriving farm, to provide for his family, and ultimately to prove his worth - to himself, his family, and the world.

Played poignantly by Steven Yeun, Jacob’s character is aptly named: his determination to succeed is reminiscent of the stubbornness of his Biblical namesake, Jacob. Both men wrestle for a blessing - but rather than wrestle with God, the Jacob of Minari wrestles with the physical land - and with his own internal fear of failure.

I can relate to Jacob. I recently started a new job, and honestly, I’m not entirely sure how I got hired for the position. I don’t have the experience or qualifications for the job, but somehow my boss saw potential in me. I’ve always been naturally good at things, and I figured I could be good at this job too. But a few weeks ago, I realized I have no idea what I’m doing. And I’m completely afraid of failing.

My instinct, like Jacob, is to toil. To work hard, to sow seeds, and to make things grow. And it’s not just about providing; it’s about proving. In a moment of vulnerability, Jacob tells his wife Monica, “[Our kids] need to see me succeed at something for once.” Jacob is desperate to prove himself, and he labors the land for literal evidence of his efforts. But this film reminded me that it’s not my own work that saves me; it’s the grace which grows like minari that will save me.

Minari, also known as water celery, is an edible plant native to east Asia. In the film, Monica’s mother, Grandma Soonja, arrives from Korea, bearing minari seeds and other Korean culinary staples. Though it doesn’t become clear until the end, minari plays a huge part in this small family’s life on the farm.

Grandma Soonja, played by the lovely Yuh-Jung You, is a true delight in this film. Her crass nature, foreign smell, and strange humor make her grandson David question whether she’s a “real grandma,” but by the end of the film, they have formed a loving bond. On one of their adventures to the creek in the woods behind their farm, Soonja plants the minari seeds she brought from Korea. She declares to young David: “Minari is truly the best. It grows anywhere, like weeds. So anyone can pick and eat it. Rich or poor, anyone can enjoy it and be healthy. Minari can be put in kimchi, put in stew, put in soup. It can be medicine if you are sick. Minari is wonderful, wonderful!”

The minari continues to grow beside the creek, silently and abundantly, throughout the film, demanding little attention but flourishing nonetheless. The small stream near it comes to be called the “minari creek,” and the family becomes dependent on it - at one point, their water is shut off, and David and his older sister Anne haul buckets of water from the creek for the family to use for washing and cooking.

All the while, Jacob continues to toil, trying desperately to save their crop from drought, and in the film’s devastating climactic scene, from fire. Returning from a trip to the city, the Yi family arrives to see their barn ablaze. Jacob runs into the burning barn, trying desperately to save the vegetables for which he has labored. Despite Monica’s bitterness toward her husband and his dream, she plunges into the smoky building alongside him. In the end, they emerge empty-handed from the collapsing building, and watch as their crop - their only source of hope - is reduced to ashes.

With their crop gone, I wondered what would save this family from complete starvation. I sometimes have the same feeling at my new job - without my skills to save me from failure, what is left to keep me afloat, to prove my worth? Then I remember: the minari growing faithfully beside the creek.

In the final scene, David and Jacob journey out to the creek together with a bucket. It’s the first time Jacob has even visited the minari creek, the very place sustaining his family, and the significance of that was not lost on me. Ironically, minari is the one plant that Jacob himself did not plant or tend, yet it’s the very thing that saves him.

Everything that the minari represents in this film can be summed up in a word: grace.

And I’ve learned that, like minari, grace grows wherever it’s planted. Grace is there for anyone to enjoy - rich or poor, it nourishes your soul. No wonder Soonja sings, “Wonderful, wonderful!” I’ve never tried minari, but I suppose I may need to - I want to see what grace tastes like.

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Published on Mockingbird

Before he married my sister, my brother-in-law Will fulfilled a dream of his: living out of a van. He drove his refurbished van across the country when my sister moved to Denver, and he slept in the back on his lofted bed. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was an adventure, and I admired him for chasing that dream.

Before that, I had never heard of anyone intentionally living out of a van. I thought campers and RVs were for retirees and cross-country vacationers. Refurbishing a van was a foreign concept a few years ago; but since the pandemic has limited air travel, RVs and vans have become an increasingly popular form of travel and recreation.

In Nomadland, a woman takes her refurbished van into the desert of the American west, chasing employment after the manufacturing plant she once worked at shuts down. As the movie unfolds, we discover that Fern is part of Amazon’s “camperforce,” a seasonal fleet of nomadic workers who staff Amazon’s warehouses through the winter holiday months. She spends the rest of the year driving through the desertscapes and rocky terrain of the Dakotas and Nevada, gathering with fellow van-dwellers and chasing various jobs in greasy diners or at RV campgrounds.

Throughout the film, Fern seems drawn toward the isolation and remoteness of the desert. She often opts for the seclusion of her van rather than the company of others or the comfort of a roof over her head. We learn at the beginning that her town of Empire, NV, has disappeared, essentially erased after the manufacturing plant at its center shuts down. The death of her husband is the final blow that sent her into the wilderness. In the wilderness, she seeks beauty, connection, and perhaps healing.

I too found myself in a wilderness a few months ago. Though I didn’t jump on the road in an RV, I was drawn into a season of spiritual isolation and remoteness. In the past I would have never opted for separation from friends and community during a time of spiritual confusion; yet there were places that I was going with the Lord that needed to be explored alone. Like Fern, I withdrew into myself, into that inner wilderness. I felt like the Lord was leading me into a desert - barren, empty, and desolate. Yet there was something He wanted me to hear.

I began exploring stories of the desert in the Bible, searching for comfort from the faithful generations who wandered the wilderness before me. A friend showed me this verse in Hosea, where God says of Israel, “Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her” (Hosea 2:14 NIV). It seems that God has a purpose for leading his people into the desert: He has something to say,

Yet Nomadland says a lot without saying much. For me, it felt like God was doing the same. But the desert wasn’t about what God was saying (He wasn’t saying all that much); it was more about how He was saying it. Hosea says He would speak “tenderly” or “kindly.” Another translation says, “to speak to her heart.”

A few months ago, my heart was wracked with disappointment and discouragement. The circumstances surrounding these feelings aren’t important; these feelings are universal to all of us. I thought what I needed was explanations, logic to make sense of all the sadness. But in the depths of despair, we don’t need explanations. We need comfort and tenderness. We need someone to speak to our heart.

What God spoke to me in that desert season was not a message of words, but of hope, and a vision of the path ahead. Knowing that the path behind was filled with sorrow, God helped me look back and still find grace, and look forward toward grace to come.

Something He spoke to my heart came from Jeremiah: “The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness” (Jeremiah 31:2-3). In Nomadland, Fern dwells among others who have survived the sword, both literal and proverbial - some have survived cancer or depression, others simply escaped the grind of the corporate world. In the desert, they all find grace.

Fern embraces the daily and even hourly graces she receives on the road, whether it’s the standing awestruck under the towering Redwood trees, sitting around a bonfire under a desert sky, or admiring a giant dinosaur statue. Even in the opening moments of the film, Fern finds grace as she sorts through her possessions in a storage container. From one box, she pulls out her husband’s old jacket, which she clutches tenderly and puts on, leaving the rest of her belongings behind. These small tokens, these moments of grace, serve as guideposts on her journey into the desert of her grief.

Fern’s journey is not unlike that of the Israelites, who left behind Egypt (another Empire) and followed God’s presence as a pillar of fire and cloud through a vast wilderness. There they experience the daily grace of manna falling from heaven, and the weekly grace of sabbath. One was about nourishing their bodies; the other was about nourishing their spirit. He led them, allured them into the wilderness, so He could speak tenderly to their hearts.

Now He invites you and me on the same journey. So hop in the van - the wilderness awaits.

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There’s a painfully awkward dinner scene in one of my favorite movies, When Harry Met Sally. After a brief uncomfortable silence, Harry looks up after several moments of loudly chewing his salad and says, “It is so nice when you can sit with someone and not have to talk.” Sally gives him a smirk in response, clearly not returning the sentiment. I am a lot like Sally in this. I prefer talking over quiet. Many would say I have a “loud personality” - or at least, I always have a lot to say. They wouldn’t be wrong.

For years, this characterized my relationship with God. I loved the parts of Scripture where God was speaking through prophets or making huge displays of power. I heard the story about Elijah and how God was not in the wind or the fire or the earthquake, but in the “soft whisper of a voice” (1 Kings 19:12 GNT) - but for me, I always felt like God and I had an agreement, that He would speak loudly to me, burning-bush style.

And I always had a lot to say to God. I filled journals and journals with prayers, and spent hours of my “quiet time” not being very quiet at all - listening to podcasts, worship music, or talking with someone about a passage of Scripture. I always preferred it this way, and it had been working for me for most of life.

Up until recently. As we’re all aware, 2020 (The-Year-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named) was a doozy. Curveball after curveball was thrown - none of us were prepared for what hit us. Whether it was a global pandemic or a personal family crisis, political unrest or isolation and fear, we all endured some serious gut punches last year.

After a series of unexpected personal devastations last year, I was left with a stewing bitterness at the Lord; I had so many questions, and I wanted answers. Why did these things happen to me? How could He allow this pain? What was it all for?

Instead of answers, I was met with silence.

All the typical ways I connected with God weren’t “working” - no worship song or devotional. No conversation with a spiritual mentor, Scripture passage, or sermon. Not even journaling or my attempts to pray. I felt like I was shouting into the proverbial earthquake and the fire and the wind, waiting for the gentle whisper, instead, getting nothing.

Desperate to try anything to connect with God, I signed up for a silent retreat at a Jesuit retreat center in my city. I had heard about it from a few friends, and had always wanted to try it. I figured, if God was being silent, I would give Him the silent treatment, and see how that worked.

Upon arrival, I checked in and received my orientation packet for the three-night retreat - the only items on the schedule being breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and a brief meeting each day with a spiritual director. Except during the meeting with the director, you were expected to be silent at all times. At mealtimes in my assigned seat, I sat across from a fellow retreatant with whom I never spoke, exchanging only smiles and head nods. My dorm-style room where I stayed was simply furnished, with a bed, a chair, a lamp, and a simple bathroom. Around the property, there was a hiking trail, a library, and several indoor and outdoor sitting areas. And there was silence. Lots of silence.

In the recent film Sound of Metal, Ruben Stone is a heavy metal drummer and former heroin addict who loses his hearing (spoilers ahead). He finds support at a program for deaf addicts, and goes through the uncomfortable experience of learning to be deaf. Upon his arrival, the manager of this deaf community, Joe, gives him a challenge: sit in a room alone in silence.

This proves to be very difficult for Ruben, and boy, do I relate. Entering the retreat, I thought the hardest part of the retreat would be the prohibition of speaking. But it’s actually easy to be quiet; the challenge is truly embracing silence. I became so aware of my desire (read: addiction) to fill the silence - to listen to music, watch a TV show or scroll my phone - anything to distract from the silence.

Yet all of those distractions were taken from me. I spent literal hours sitting alone, quietly. Just waiting. At first, I went to God in prayer, asking Him all the questions I had. I pored over Scripture passages waiting for something to click. I wanted this retreat to be a spiritual chiropractic adjustment, getting my spiritual spine back in line so I could start living my faith again the way it used to be.

Similarly, in the film, Ruben is constantly battling with the reality of his deafness, and seeks to restore his hearing. He sells everything he has to get an expensive operation that will restore his hearing - yet when he tells Joe the news, instead of sharing in the joy, Joe is disappointed. He asks Ruben through sign language, “All these mornings you’ve been sitting in my study, sitting: have you had any moments of stillness? ... for me, those moments of stillness: that place, that’s the kingdom of God. And that place will never abandon you.”

The whole time I was at the silent retreat, I was waiting for God to say something - to speak like He did to the prophets, to shake the ground and light a bush on fire, to speak like He has to me before - and all this time, God was waiting for me to be quiet. To just be with Him. To sit and enjoy His presence. They say the sign of a good relationship is being able to sit quietly together - and yet in all my sitting at the retreat, I had never found that rest. Sure, I was quiet - not speaking - and I was sitting - not moving - but yet my heart and mind were still as noisy and busy as ever.

When God went silent, I kept filling the space with more noise - more of my own thoughts, prayers, and anxieties. But when I finally responded to God’s silence with my own, I got a glimmer of what He may have been trying to show me all along: that His silence is not a punishment, it’s a gift. A precious gift in the world where so many other voices are constantly vying for my attention; in a world where words are constantly manipulated and misunderstood. In the silence of God, the truth of God broke through louder than ever before: Emmanuel. God with you.

Sound of Metal makes a moving declaration that there is a difference between silence and stillness. In its final scene, Ruben makes peace with the silence, finally finding stillness in it. The last morning of my retreat, I found a bench on the walking trail and sat. I was quiet. I was silent. I was still. And I found the Kingdom of God there.

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I got a Facebook account in 2008. It was before the age of selfies and smartphones, Snapchat and Instagram. Then, it truly was a social network - simply a tool for connecting, and everything was fairly innocuous. I was in eighth grade, and my friends and I posted albums containing way too many pictures of our sleepovers and vacations. We wrote inside jokes on each other's "walls." Things got really interesting when Facebook added the private messenger and the like button.

That was twelve years ago - saying that makes me feel old - and now there are dozens of options for social media. What was once a tool for connecting now feels like a Pharaoh demanding more time and energy every day from its users. Make sure you post often, but not too much. Make sure you use the right hashtags, but not too many. Make sure you use a filter, but look authentic. It's a delicate balance we're all constantly trying to strike. Every platform has its own law we have to obey, or else we get punished by the algorithm. And it seems like while we're trying to figure these platforms out, they've already got us figured out.

The recent Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma presents us with this reality and forces us to question it. The film brings to light how much these platforms know about us, what they do with the data, and how it's changing us as individuals and as a society. It's a fascinating, if troubling, look at the influence that social media has on our lives. And it's enough to make anyone want to quit all of it for good.

The most troubling aspect of these platforms is the mysterious algorithms that dictate how they function. The film features several former Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest executives - the ones responsible for creating these algorithms - speaking about them like in a sci-fi film where the scientist has lost control of his own invention. In the documentary, the algorithm is personified as a trio of nefarious characters looking to manipulate our behavior for profit.

These algorithms were created to offer us content (read: ads) on our feeds that appeal to our interests, and the more we use the platforms, the more information they have about us - and the more they seem to know us. They know our likes and dislikes, our habits and idiosyncrasies. It seems like it knows exactly what we're looking for. Everyone's had an experience where they talk about something, and minutes later it's featured as an ad on their feed. Many believe their devices are listening to them but mostly, we're just remarkably predictable to these algorithms.

The thing is, these algorithms don't really know us, as individuals. They are just good at knowing people like us. We are just data to them. When an ad appears for a particular clothing brand or skincare routine, it's not because it's really listening to us. Rather, the algorithm guesses that we are similar to other people who have liked that thing, based on our past behavior. They don't know us as individuals as much as they know people like us.

But humans are so much more complex than that. While the law of social media tries to figure us out and make us meet its demands, the Gospel frees us from the churning machine of algorithms. While the algorithm demands we fall to its whims, we serve a God who truly knows us - and not because He's been monitoring our online behavior, or trying to figure us out. God knows us because He made us. This familiar scripture comes to mind: "For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb." (Psalm 139:13)

He knows us better than we know ourselves - and better than an algorithm thinks it knows us. While I can't escape the algorithm's watchful eye online, offline I take comfort in knowing that wherever I go, I can't escape God's presence. These words from the psalmist offer comfort when our every online move is monitored and monetized:

"O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether." (Psalm 139:1-4)

What's better, God knows us simply for the joy of knowing us. Unlike the algorithm, which knows us to use us, exploit us, or demand something of us, God knows us simply because we are worth knowing. And in exchange for knowing us, He gives us boundless grace and mercy rather than demand another click, another scroll, another tap. God knows us and loves that we reflect an image of God that only we can uniquely reflect. Pretty sure the algorithm can't pick up on that.

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“The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness;
when Israel sought for rest, the Lord appeared from far away.”

Jeremiah 31:2-3

Before I came back to Gainesville from camp this summer, the Lord prepared me for a wilderness season. I knew there would be some wandering - some fogginess - but He promised to lead me through it. And He asked me to trust Him for each day.

I didn’t understand that He was leading me on a journey into a deeper dependence, like the Israelites in Exodus; He was preparing to teach me about manna and shabbat. And it started at the dentist.

If you’ve been reading my blog, you may be familiar with my relationship to the dentist. I go every six months because I have a bad track record for cavities. My next cleaning was scheduled for this week, and I was anxious because, for the first time in my life, I don’t have insurance coverage, I don’t have a consistent paycheck, and I don’t have any prospects of a full-time job on the horizon. I was going to have to pay for this dentist appointment out of pocket.

I moved some money around in my budget and went to the dentist, and asked them to give me the bare minimum cleaning at the lowest cost. As they did my cleaning and exam, they found a potential issue that may need treatment. My heart sank - I knew I didn’t have the money at the moment to pay for a treatment. I was anxious about paying this bill, and was not prepared for another. I told them I would come back and deal with it later, knowing this was not a good long-term strategy.

As I paid my bill for the cleaning, the receptionist told me there was a credit on my account, so the bill that day was only $14. I’d been expecting closer to $200. Instead it was fourteen dollars. I declared (out loud) in the dentist office, “Thank you Lord!” (not the first time either - He’s shown me His grace more than once in a dentist office) and paid my bill.

Walking out, I heard the Lord say, “I promised I would provide the manna for each day. That’s why I’m teaching you to live only in today. You can’t enjoy manna for tomorrow or next week. I’m asking you to trust my provision day by day.”

Yet He had so much more to teach me about manna and shabbat.

In this season, my relationship with work has changed drastically. I’ve always loved working, and I’m notorious for having a side hustle (or three...). In the past, I haven’t worked because I needed the money to pay bills - I just genuinely enjoyed doing the work and having some extra disposable income. It was a fun outlet for me.

Now work causes me anxiety. I feel a need to be constantly working, because if I’m not working, I won’t get paid (such is the reality for hourly wage workers). So every hour that I have available, I’m finding ways to work. I’m picking up hours everywhere I could, taking babysitting jobs, working long days. It feels like work is a necessity, instead of an outlet.

Finally the pace caught up with me; I hadn’t been resting at all, and the weight of the stress, busyness, and a few days ago, the anxiety caused me to collapse, emotionally and spiritually. I crashed and burned, worn out and exhausted.

That’s exactly when the Lord drew me back to Exodus again. Exodus is my favorite book of the Bible - there is so much foreshadowing of the Gospel. I usually reread it in seasons when I need to be reminded of God's power, God's provision, God's plan, or God's promises. The story of Exodus displays all of these beautifully - and I honestly have needed a reminder of all of them lately.

The Lord led me to read Exodus 16, right after the Israelites have crossed through the Red Sea and left Egypt behind. They've been freed from slavery and are now on their way to the promised land, yet God decides to take them through the wilderness. He's taking them on a journey into deeper dependence.

Not long after they've begun their journey, the Israelites start complaining about their hunger - they miss the food of Egypt, forgetting the slavery that they had just escaped.

So God rains down a mysterious sustenance from the sky - the Israelites say, "Manna?" asking "What is it?" It's light and sweet, and everyone eats their fill. But the Lord commands them to gather only what they need for each day. To trust in the provision each morning.

Except for the sixth day. The Lord commands them, "You must gather food for six days, but on the seventh day, the day of rest, there will be none" (v.26). The Lord gives them enough for two days, and in this way, God establishes the Sabbath as holy.

In the wilderness, the Lord gives His chosen people two forms of sustenance: the manna would be their physical sustenance; the shabbat would be their spiritual sustenance.

As I read that familiar passage, the Lord showed me the relationship between gathering manna and keeping shabbat. I noticed that the first time we ever see the word “Sabbath” is in Exodus 16 - and God established it as holy even before He even declared it as the fourth of the Ten Commandments.

God showed me that just as I can trust in His daily provision of manna, I must also trust in His weekly provision of shabbat. I must trust enough in the daily manna that I can believe shabbat is true and possible. It is a true act of faith, to shabbat, stop, cease, rest. It is faith that God will sustain you with manna beyond what you are capable of gathering for yourself. But shabbat is also the only thing that will nourish your spirit. This is the deep lesson I am learning.

As I reflected on all this in a true act of shabbat, I wrote the poem/prayer below. I hope it allows you to meditate and reflect as well. I pray that you will trust in His manna and His shabbat - it will nourish your body and soul.

It was in the wilderness that God first established the Sabbath.

He provides manna for the Israelites and says to gather only for each day,
except on the sixth day each week, to gather extra, for the Sabbath to be kept holy.

In the wilderness, he gave them Sabbath.
Rest.

I have forgotten, Lord, that my true rest is in you.
I have forgotten that life and joy come from you, Jesus.

I have forgotten what it feels like to rest in your goodness,
to carelessly and wastefully enjoy your grace and your presence.

I have been toiling while I serve a God who provides manna for every day.

I have given into fear of not having enough
when you are God who sees,
and God who provides.

You give me all I need and more.

You are the joy and life I’m missing.

I find it in the wilderness.
in your holy Sabbath.

Someone once told me about this Korean sauna - he was absolutely obsessed with it. It was a place where one could disappear for hours and hours and emerge refreshed, restored and pampered. It piqued my interest, and after a while, I scheduled a day to go with a friend. I knew very little about what to expect, except for there being an area of this sauna where full nudity was required.

My friend and I pulled into a shopping center boasting a small noodle cafe on the corner, but the strip was overwhelmingly taken up by the spa. We found the grand entrance to the side and walked in, greeted by a man at the front desk. We had absolutely no idea what we were doing, and he kindly explained the full experience. We would receive a set of clothes (eerily resembling orange prison jumpsuits), a locker key, and a towel, all for the entrance fee of $30. We were able to make additional purchases of massages, food, or other spa treatments once inside. We received our bundles and headed into the locker room.

Immediately we were assaulted by the steamy texture of the locker room air. We found our way through the maze to our assigned lockers and began shedding our shoes. As I began to undress I noticed there were women from all different races and ethnicities and sizes and shapes - truly, there was no common thread among the spa-goers except for the complete lack of clothing.

I can’t say that I’m very comfortable with nudity, or the more Biblical term, ‘nakedness’ (which makes it sound more icky, in my opinion). I grew up in a very conservative home, and modesty was prized. Our bodies were meant to be covered at all times, save for with our chosen partner in marriage. Yet I found myself in a Korean spa locker room, stripping down to my birthday suit in front of dozens of complete strangers. My first instinct was to keep myself covered. But I quickly discovered that the towel provided was no larger than a kitchen hand towel - which doesn’t cover much ground. I suddenly had a keen understanding of the dilemma of Adam and Eve - were there any fig leaves around?

The next option was to just embrace it. It seemed like everyone else in the locker room had absolutely no problems walking around in the buff, or at least they were very skilled at hiding their discomfort. It seemed that for everyone else, this was a perfectly normal occasion. I tried to go along with it - fake it til you make it, I guess.

The first step in the locker room was to enter the spa room, where you were presented with several large pools to choose from, all varying temperatures, as well as a hot sauna and a dry sauna. In one corner there were several cushioned tables arranged like a hospital ward, where patrons were laying on their bare bodies, getting scrubbed from head to toe by one of the Korean women. I consulted the signage to find that one offering at the spa was a “body shampoo” and immediately decided that I must partake. When at the Korean spa, do as the spa-goers do.

I put my name on the list for a “body shampoo,” and then my friend and I decided to explore the other areas of the spa. We learned that the provided orange outfit was to be worn in the shared areas of the spa, like the food court and the group sauna rooms, so we donned our cotton t-shirts and baggy pants and entered the shared area.

Milling around a large room were a few dozen other patrons, men and women alike, some chatting, some reading, some dozing lazily on the benches, some eating from the food court, some listening to music. We got some dumplings at the food court and sat to eat while taking in the fantastic opportunity for people watching. There were no windows inside, and I hadn’t seen a clock on any walls. Everyone was dressed the same, so it was like being in a strange dystopian future, except everyone is actually happy and relaxed instead of secretly planning a rebellion. We weren’t sure why there were people literally napping inside some of the sauna rooms, until after we had checked out a few of them and found ourselves nodding off in the sweaty, warm embrace of the clay sauna room. This was a strange, bizarre place, completely disconnected from the outside world, where it was easy to lose track of time and leave behind many of the social norms we cling to, specifically about nudity and sleeping in public spaces.

Finally it was my turn for the body shampoo. I reentered the locker room to disrobe myself, and then found myself face-up on a squishy pink table, looking up at a Korean woman who seemed mildly disinterested in my naked body on her table. Before I could really settle in, she was dumping warm water on me in bucket-fulls, and then she began scrubbing me with scratchy washcloth-mittens on both of her hands. I had not in recent memory been bathed by another human, and the sensation was unsettling but also soothing.

Laying there naked, I couldn’t help but wonder how many bodies this woman had scrubbed, and all the skin and fat and love handles she had seen and caressed (well, more like pumiced). She seemed completely unfazed by the sight of my nudity, and as she scrubbed I began to see the dead skin flaking off as she exfoliated my entire body. It was actually pretty gross - I couldn’t believe the layers upon layers of dirt and dead skin that she was scraping off my body. Before I could get too horrified, she covered my eyes with a towel, so I could only get quick peeks and glimpses of her at work.

We didn’t talk much, but I felt her constantly moving and working, scrubbing away, peeling the layers of skin off. The scrubbing wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t completely agonizing either. It was just uncomfortable - the back and forth of the scratchy rag scraping over my raw skin. Occasionally, she would grunt out a command, telling me to turn on my side, or flip to my stomach. So I just listened and obeyed.

As she finished off my backside, I had a revelation: that aggressive scrub-down was a better lesson in sanctification than any other I’ve heard. Listen, sanctification is a one Person job. Lots of people might tell you that you need to stop watching TikTok or wearing leggings or voting a certain way to be holy, but laying on that table, I understood it perfectly: becoming holy is laying down and letting Jesus scrub off the dead parts of us to present us new, scrubbed down and washed clean, before the throne of God. In that process, God often graciously shields us from seeing the ugliest parts of ourselves, yet God Himself is never fazed by our nakedness, or our sin. We’re the ones walking around trying to cover it all up with kitchen towels while He’s just waiting for us to lay down and get clean.

Although it felt like a human car wash, I walked out of that locker room glowing. I felt refreshed and renewed - which, I guess, is exactly the point of going to a spa. I think a lot of people approach faith like they are signing up for a military boot camp instead of going to a Korean spa, and that’s why we’re all so exhausted all the time by faith. At the spa, our only job is to lie still, listen, and obey when it’s time to move. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a deep tissue massage appointment.

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Published on Mockingbird

I know most people got rid of their DVD players a decade ago, but I’m old school - I still have a stack of CDs in my car, and sometimes I prefer watching an old DVD over Netflix. One night my roommate and I went to Redbox and picked out a movie, set ourselves up with popcorn in the living room, and settled in for the movie to start, only to find that the DVD player wasn’t working. We turned it off and back on and switched the plug-ins, but after a while, we decided to join the 21st century and rent the movie on Amazon Prime. After we finished the movie, I unplugged the old DVD player and decided it was time to retire it. I put it on my list to go out and buy a new one.

The next day I was talking to my dad and I off-handedly mentioned that my DVD player had broken. A few days after that, two packages and a bigger box showed up on my doorstep. I couldn’t recall ordering anything but sometimes I forget. I opened the first package, and inside was Beauty and the Beast (my favorite of the Disney princess movies) on DVD. “That’s weird,” I thought. “Why would someone send me this?” I knew immediately I hadn’t ordered it. My DVD player was broken.

I opened the second package, and there were three more DVDs of Disney classics. “How strange!” I thought. “Maybe this is supposed to be a gift for someone,” I thought. As I pulled out the scissors to open the bigger box, I realized I already knew what was inside the box. I turned to my roommate, who was watching the unboxing, and said, “I bet you five thousand dollars this is a DVD player.” There it was, a shiny new DVD player inside the box.

The funny thing is - there was not a single note in any of the packages. But I knew who they were from - my dad had sent them all. My dad is a gift-giver. When I was a kid, he would go on trips and bring home keychains, candies, and toys from wherever he had been. He would send my mom flowers when he was gone, and he always picked out the best Christmas and birthday gifts. My dad has a super generous heart, and since I’ve lived on my own, I’ve received a few different unmarked packages with gifts inside. Once I mentioned that I missed his homemade beef jerky, a week later I got a food dehydrator and some seasoning packets in the mail. Another time I got a box of five pints of ice cream from my favorite ice cream place - no birthday or holiday, just because. That’s just who my dad is.

Once, Jesus asked his friends, “Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will you give him a serpent?” I don’t think I’d ever ask my dad for a fish, but you get the idea. We know that our dads want to take care of us. They want to give us the things we need - but I love that, like my dad, God’s gifts aren’t always that practical. Sure, there are plenty of things I physically need, but instead, I get five pints of ice cream. Why? Because of extravagant, over-the-top love.

Jesus goes on, “As bad as you are, you know how to give good things to your children. How much more, then, will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (Luke 11:13 GNT). I think a lot of us are afraid to ask God for things because we think that if we ask for a DVD player, He’ll make us feel bad for wanting to watch movies and ship us a box of Bibles instead. Or He would tell me to not waste my time making beef jerky when I could be feeding the homeless. But that’s not at all how Jesus talks about His Father.

The best part is, sometimes God gives gifts even before we turn to Him and ask in faith. I never asked my dad for the DVD player - it just showed up at my door. And the crazy thing is, I haven’t done anything particularly special lately to deserve this gift. A gift is way more about the giver’s heart than the receiver’s worthiness.

When I opened the third box, I already knew what it was and who it was from. Because I know who my dad is. I know his character, and I know his love. And I know he loves to give good gifts.

I think God is a lot like that. God is constantly sending us little gifts in small packages (or big boxes!) and most of the time, there’s no card that says, “Hey you! This is from God! He loves you!” But the more we get to know the heart of God, the more that we know what gifts from Him look like. And conversely, the more we receive gifts from God, the more we learn about who God is.

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As I drove to Starbucks, I contemplated that image. I thought about how fog makes it difficult to see the whole path, but you can usually see your feet, and at least a few steps ahead - just enough to keep going forward. I thought about how the only thing that clears the fog is the sun rising - which you can’t control - and if you try to light my way through the fog, it only makes it harder to see. And I thought about how in Exodus, God’s presence led God’s people through the wilderness as a pillar of cloud - God’s presence dwelt in the fog.

In the abstract, the image of fog is no big deal; in reality, it’s incredibly uncomfortable - and at times, terrifying and frustrating. I’ve been back home in Gainesville, GA for almost a week, and the metaphorical fog seems to have settled in - I have no idea what lays before me. I can see just a few steps on the path ahead, but everything beyond it seems uncertain. I left my job of three years, and my original plans got derailed (#covid). Throw in a few more unexpected life events, and I find myself asking, “What are you doing, Lord? And what am I supposed to do?”

This post is unlike the other blogs I’ve written, but I’m compelled to write this because I imagine many other people are feeling the same sense of uncertainty. I keep asking the Lord, “Where do you want me to be?” and God keeps asking me back, “Where are your feet right now?” When I focus on investing in the present moment, rather than trying to figure out where the path leads, I find that I live a much more fruitful Kingdom life. God keeps reminding me that God’s word is a light unto my feet - so I need to dig in deep, and God’s word will illuminate each step. I don’t need to see the whole path. I simply need to keep taking the next step, even in the fog.

On my last morning at camp, I wrote this poem in my journal, which sums up my thoughts well:

The fog has returned with the morning
But this time it doesn't scare me
Because I know the fog doesn't change the landscape
It simply obscures what’s always been there
So don’t squint harder to see through it
But trust the One who is on the other side
And also within
And also beside
And take steps forward
Despite uncertainty
Clinging to truth:

The sun rises in the morning
The fog will not stay
The road before you is laid
The God of Jacob makes a way.

I was cursed with bad teeth. Something about bad enamel, or bad teeth-genes...I don’t really know. But all I know is, I’ve always had bad teeth. In elementary school I got fillings in my front teeth. In middle school I got fillings in my molars, which were then layered with braces for the majority of my pubescent years. Once my teeth were straightened out, I thought things would be better. Wrong. As an adult, I’ve had over a dozen cavities filled. I’m thankful for a straight smile, as it will slow down the process of tooth decay, but I still go to the dentist twice a year, and I anticipate each visit with dread.

Before you go making accusations about my poor oral hygiene, let me defend myself. In truth, I have a sweet tooth. That’s my downfall. But I don’t eat more sugar than the average person. I probably have one treat a day. I don’t drink soda, I rarely drink coffee. I never chew gum. I don’t eat hard candy often (hurts my soft teeth). I brush twice a day and floss every night. I wear my retainers like a good orthodontic patient. I drink water to rinse my mouth after every meal to avoid plaque build-up. And still, nearly every time I go to the dentist, I have a cavity.

I’ve gotten so many cavities filled, I’ve become an expert at it by now. When another cavity comes around, I know the drill (pun intended). I schedule my appointment for an early morning (to get it over with) and bring sunglasses (to shield from the awful fluorescent lights) and headphones (to listen to loud, angry music to drown out the drilling). I eat a big breakfast before I go (since I can’t eat for at least 2 hours after the fillings) and brush my teeth thoroughly before going (don’t want to aggravate the issue any more). When I get there, I lay down in the chair, don my headphones and sunglasses, and the dentist gets to work. Last time I went, the hygienist said, “Wow, you came prepared!” and smirking I told her, “I’ve done this before a few times.”

I’ve become familiar with the dentist’s chair, and as I sit there and talk with the dentist, they pelt me with questions that might explain my cavity-ridden mouth. Do you drink soda? No. Do you drink sports drinks? No. Do you brush your teeth twice a day? Yes. Do you floss every night? Yes. With every question, they think they’ve found the cause, and therefore can offer a cure. But I stump them. My teeth are just rotting, and there’s not much I can do to fix it.

The worst people are the people who complain about going to the dentist but have never had a cavity in their life. And the worst part is, they don’t floss. Only desperate people actually floss. The non-flossing, cavity-free people are the worst kind. They don’t have to do anything, and during their once-a-decade dentist appointment, the dentist lets them off scot-free, not a single imperfection, not a single bit of rot. Perfect teeth. And they didn’t even try. There I am, sitting a chair away, at the dentist for the second time that year, glaring at my dentist for telling me about another cavity. And I actually DO floss. How unfair is that?

Typically, we believe that hard work pays off. The more you do, the more reward you get. But for some reason, that’s not working out for me at the dentist. No matter how hard I try, I still get cavities. And some people don’t try at all, and they have perfect teeth.

As unpleasant as my visits often are, I’ve learned something about the Kingdom sitting in that dentist’s chair. In the Kingdom, everything is upside-down. It’s not about working really hard in the Kingdom; it’s more about letting the work be done for you.

Though it’s grueling to sit in that chair and get my cavities filled, I know that I’m in good hands at the dentist. I might have white pearly teeth that look good on the outside, but the dentist knows when he takes a closer look that they are rotting away. I know he can see things going on in my teeth that I can never see, and definitely can’t fix on my own. As much as I dread going, I know that sitting in that chair twice a year is good for me, because the dentist is going to help reverse the effects of decay.

I know some people who avoid going to the dentist because they are so afraid of what the dentist might find. So they go about their lives, letting their teeth rot away, avoiding the very person who can help fix it. The deal is, just like our teeth, our hearts are decaying from the inside out, no matter how hard we try. And unlike teeth, we can’t just floss away the plaque or rely on good teeth-genes to get us by. We need someone to fill the cavities in our hearts.

My friend Karen talks about how God is a great heart surgeon, but we’re not always great at laying on the operating table. In heart surgery, you don’t try to help the surgeon, pointing out where to slice you open or what instrument to use. No, you just sit there and lay still. I’ve learned that well at the dentist. If I just lay still, and let the dentist do his work, I’ll walk away with less pain and better teeth in the end.

The author of Hebrews knows the same is true about the throne of God - instead of fearing it, the author tells us that we can “approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:16 NIV). So whether you’re a chronic flosser with lots of cavities, or you’ve got perfect pearly whites, we can all approach the throne of grace without fear, knowing we’re in good hands. Now, sit back and say ah!

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There was one time we went exploring the woods and stumbled upon an old Chevy truck, rusted out, tires buried in the dirt. It almost looked like it was growing up from the ground, so old that it seemed rooted down into the earth like the giant oak trees nearby. As a kid, that rusty Chevy was magical. How did it get here? Who was the owner? How long had it been here? Where was it going when it stopped here?

After that first sighting of the Chevy, my sister and I would play down at the creek, and sometimes we would talk about going to look for the truck again. We certainly couldn’t retrace the steps we had taken the first time we found the truck, and whenever we tried to explore, the woods seemed to grow and grow. The woods were big and mysterious, with no defined paths or routes. Even so, a few times, we ventured out with the intention of finding the truck, but we would never find it.

Yet there were some days we would decide to simply go explore again, follow the creek to our neighbor’s house, with no thoughts of the rusted Chevy in our minds. And those would always be the times we would find it. Somehow in our wandering, we would stumble again upon the magical truck, and elated, we would revel in the mystery of it, wondering where it would take us if we sat in the cab and started to drive.

There’s something magical about the woods, no matter where they are. “The Woods” is less a description of a forested space and more like its own magical place, somewhere in the middle of Earth and whatever’s beyond. C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia captures this well. Reading the stories, I notice a theme: when the children end up in Narnia, they never really go looking for it, but rather they stumble upon it, often because they go on some other exploratory adventure. After their first trip through Narnia, the old professor who acts as their guardian advises them, “But don't go trying to use the same route twice. Indeed, don't try to get [to Narnia] at all. It'll happen when you're not looking for it.”

I think about when I was kid, the times we would find the truck and the times when we wouldn’t. The days we went looking for it were the days we could never find it. But the days we would find it, we were enraptured by what was all around us - it was like we couldn’t help but see magical things everywhere we looked. We would point out the snaking ivy around the trees, or watch the dancing shadows of leaves on the forest ground, or we would listen to the birds calling one another. And in the midst of our enchantment, we would look up and see the truck. It’s like we had been transported to it simply by our wonder at the woods around us.

There’s this tiny little parable in the Gospel of Matthew, only one verse long, where Jesus compares the Kingdom of Heaven to a treasure hidden in a field. It doesn’t appear in the other Gospels, so Matthew must have caught onto something special. It says, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matthew 13:44 ESV).

I wonder what that man was doing that day he found the treasure. Whose field was he in? Why was he digging in the first place? Did he know there was treasure there? The story doesn’t give us much detail, but I like to think maybe he’d heard about a treasure, and today was a day to go exploring. Or maybe he was a worker in that field, faithfully laboring, and he stumbled upon the treasure on that fateful day.

I think this parable is less about the treasure, and more about the man. Jesus doesn’t mention to us what kind of treasure it might be - but a treasure’s value is in the eye of its beholder. A truck in the woods is just a rusty old truck until a curious kid finds it. The treasure in the parable had value because of the seeking, because of the digging, and because of the finding. The treasure in the field was valuable because the man sold everything he had for it.

I began to understand what the professor in Narnia said once I began to understand more about the Kingdom - the Kingdom isn’t something that’s hidden that we have to go digging up. The Kingdom is all around us. Sometimes it is buried like treasure in a field, but I bet that man was seeing the Kingdom all around him as he went to that field, and all the while as he dug. And I bet when he dug it up, he was filled with curiosity and brimming with questions, so many that he just had to have that treasure - he sold everything he had to own it. It makes me wonder, if I dug up the Kingdom and it looked like a rusty old Chevy - which is a treasure, to a child - would I sell everything I have to buy that plot in the woods?

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The other day, I went out for a walk around my neighborhood to enjoy the nice weather and get some exercise. Like many of us, my daily walk is one thing keeping me sane and bringing me joy. It’s also been a really good opportunity to meet the neighbors that I always intended on knowing but never “had time” to meet.

On one walk, I met Joyce, a lovely elderly woman who was on her porch contemplating a trip to the mailbox. I brought her her mail, and we chatted a bit about the crazy times we’re living in. It seems that quarantine life is the great equalizer.

Another time, I walked past a neighbor who was letting their pet turtle out - I didn’t stop to ask more questions, which I regret - and later on I said hello to a lovely caregiver as she was finishing her shift taking care of an elderly woman.

These walks reconnect me to the world, remind me that I’m not alone in this weird time of isolation, and show me that there is so much beauty to behold. The season of spring isn’t holding back despite the lockdowns - everything is growing and blooming. We’ve been forced to sit back, slow down, and watch the world grow - and remember that it keeps growing even when we aren’t doing anything.

On one particular walk, I stopped in the front yard of a friend who lives nearby to catch up and chat. We work together and we were talking about the challenges of working from home, and all the changes that would certainly be coming in the future for our organization. I stood in the sun until I began to burn, and then moved to the shade of their dogwood tree to continue the conversation, unaware as time passed. There is something so sweet about not being rushed through an interaction because there is really no other place to be at that moment. I watched as their children played, and enjoyed a few laughs from a good social distance.

As we chatted, I looked down at my watch and realized it was 5:15. Without thinking, I said, “I’m sorry, I have to go! I have to be home for dinner!”

I live in a house with two friends, who moved in at the end of last year. We get along well but we’ve admittedly spent a lot more time together than we originally bargained for. When the shelter-in-place orders were instated, we agreed as a house to hunker down and stay at home to do our part to slow the spread - which meant our social interactions were suddenly limited to the only two other humans we lived with.

In an effort to save some money and avoid the “kitchen choreography” of three different people cooking three different meals in the kitchen at the same time, we decided to have a few days a week of house meals together. We began planning out our weeks and settled on making tacos on Tuesday (complete with margaritas).

And that was the Tuesday I was out for a walk. At 5:15, I began walking briskly back to my house to get there in time for dinner at 5:30. As I walked, I realized that it had been years, maybe a decade, since I’d said, “I have to be home for dinner!” I hadn’t said that phrase since I lived with my parents and my schedule was still dictated by family gatherings around the table. We’d wait for my dad to get home from work so we could escape from our homework or come inside to wash our hands and settle at the table, give thanks, and break bread together.

I have to be home for dinner. Coming out of my mouth, it tasted nostalgic - like late summer evenings playing tag with the neighbor kids until the sun started to go down. The world has slowed down, and it’s even brought me back to my childhood - where time goes fast and slow all at the same time, where the only concerns you have are playing and eating.

But then I grew up. I moved away to college, and got used to living my own life on my own schedule. And then I moved to Georgia for my first job and bought a home. I cook all my own meals and I can eat whenever I want, whenever I want. I can have leftovers at 9pm or pick up Chinese takeout on the way home from work. I could eat popcorn for dinner (guilty!) or ice cream for lunch (also guilty!).

But that Tuesday, I had to be home for dinner. Someone was waiting for me, to share a meal with me, to linger at the table with me, to wash the dishes with me at the end of the night. There were people preparing a meal for me, and waiting to start until I had arrived. That was a really sweet feeling.

It reminds me of a story Jesus told about a huge banquet in Luke 14. In the story, a king throws a huge feast for his son, and sends out his servants to bring all the guests to the table. I can imagine the table laid out, bursting with delicious foods, empty plates ready to be filled. But the guests wouldn’t come! Most of them were making excuses - chores they had to do, or things they had to take care of. The table was set, the food was ready, but they wouldn’t come in time for dinner. And they were missing out on a feast of a lifetime.

I think the feast is less about the meal (though our tacos were pretty amazing) and a lot more about the company. I had to be home for dinner, not to be fed, but to be with. In a way, the feast we’re invited to is a lot like the moments under the dogwood tree, chatting with my neighbor, the moments where you don’t pay attention to the time and just enjoy the company.

In this lockdown, I’ve had a lot of those moments, and they remind me of being a kid. As a kid, I didn’t pay attention to what time it was. I just played, and laughed. And I knew I had to be home for dinner. I think that’s the feast we’re invited into with Jesus. We’re invited to become like a child, play in His kingdom, and come home in time for dinner.

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Unprecedented. It’s a word we’ve all heard a lot lately, and a very fitting one to describe the time that we are living through. A global shutdown of this scale has never been seen, and will likely never happen again in our lifetimes; yet as I’ve reflected on this time, I’ve been reminded of another lockdown I experienced, one of a very different kind, yet marked by the same feelings of uncertainty, fear, and anxiety.

On April 15, 2013, I was watching the Boston Marathon for the first time as a freshman in college. On that day, the streets across the city were closed off, and people flooded the streets to cheer from the sidelines. I spent the morning watching the race with two friends. The cheering and clapping from bystanders provided a peppy cadence for the dozens and dozens of runners that passed us every second. It was invigorating to witness these humans accomplishing a huge feat of athleticism and endurance.

After a few hours of watching and cheering, my friends and I decided to go home for the afternoon. When I got back to my dorm, it was empty. Many of my other friends were watching at other parts of the race, and some were volunteering at a water station at the early miles in the race. As I got back to my room, I received a text from an old friend from high school that I hadn’t talked to in several months; it read: “Are you okay??” Shortly after another text came in from my mom: “Are you safe?!” I was so confused. What was happening? I immediately checked Google and Twitter to see what was happening. There were a few tweets about a bomb at the Boston Marathon, but very little information about what happened or where. I tried to text a few people to figure out what was going on. Then my cell service cut out. I could do nothing.

The time passed so slowly before anyone else from my dorm got home. As the hours passed by, some friends from my dorm arrived back, bringing with them little bits of information that we pieced together: that someone had set off a homemade bomb at the finish line; that city had cut the cell service because the bomb had been set off by a cell phone signal, and they were attempting to prevent a further attack; that dozens were injured, and some were dead; that the suspected bomber was on the run and hadn’t been captured.

Fear and stillness settled over the city for the next few days; the city was put on a complete lockdown while the police were on a manhunt for the bomber. For three days we stayed in our dorm rooms, streaming news channels on our laptops, eating vending machine snacks, scrolling Twitter, trying to pass the time and hold onto hope.

Though this specific moment in history is unprecedented, the feelings of uncertainty and fear have been felt throughout human history, in events big and small. I’m reminded of the disciples, locked in a room for three days after Jesus was crucified. I imagine they sat in fear and uncertainty, with little knowledge of what was happening in the outside world, and no clear plan for what to do next. I love how Jesus came through their locked doors and entered into their fear with them.

In the end, the disciples sat there and did nothing, and that was what saved them.

In the Boston marathon bombing, doing nothing is what saved us. We did nothing, so the heroes could do the saving.

In this quarantine, doing nothing is what will save us. We sit at home and wait.

In the Gospel, doing nothing saves us.

Like the disciples were, and like I was in Boston seven years ago, we are physically holed up in our houses, waiting for the metaphorical break of dawn that will indicate that this nightmare is over. But in the midst of the night, doing nothing is what saves us. That’s how the Gospel works. We’re supposed to sit and do nothing because Christ does it all. He’s the hero of the story. Anytime we try to do something, we get in the way of His saving work - the same way I would have gotten in the way if I had tried to help the police, or if I go to the hospital and scrub up to try and help the healthcare professionals. They would all tell me to just go home, and do nothing.

At this point, most of us have been under some form of lockdown or quarantine for several weeks. We should be getting good at this whole “doing nothing” thing. It’s offensive to our entrepreneurial, go-getter spirit. We want to start nonprofits and donation funds and social media campaigns. We want to help. Don’t make me just sit here at home - let me do something! But when the world is in its most fragile state, doing nothing challenges us to place our faith in the One who entered this fragile world to heal it.

As followers of Jesus, we can even turn trusting into a thing we have to do to save us. If we just trust harder, deeper, it will save us. But look at the disciples - they were so scared they locked the doors and shut the world out. Their hope was gone. I don’t see much evidence of trusting in their fretful waiting. And still Jesus appeared to them, busting through their locked doors and into their fearful hearts. It wasn’t their trusting that saved them or caused for Jesus to return to them - it was them doing nothing, and Jesus doing everything.

On the third day, the disciples were released from their lockdown and assured of their hope. And in Boston, it was on the third day of our lockdown that the suspect was found and captured by police. The moment we knew he had been caught, the atmosphere had tangibly shifted - you could almost hear the collective breath of relief across the city. That night, we celebrated. People poured into the streets and began walking toward the Boston Commons, a large park in the middle of downtown. We walked over two miles along the streets, cheering with strangers, giving high fives, crying with relief. A collective spirit of celebration, pride, and unity had swept us up into a powerful moment, and a bond was forged that day that would be difficult to break. We all knew that Boston would never be the same after this event.

It may be several more weeks before it happens, but I’m eagerly awaiting the moment of celebration when this virus has passed us by. In that instance, I hope we surround the nurses and doctors and other healthcare heroes with the same applause and cheers that we did for the police officers that day. Until then, my prayer is that we trust that doing nothing is what will save us in the end. I pray that we believe that Jesus actually can save us without our help.

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Today marks the end of the season of Lent, a 40-day event in the Christian liturgical calendar that leads up to Good Friday, when we grieve Jesus’ death on a cross, and Easter, when we celebrate His resurrection. The purpose of Lent is to practice repentance as we reflect on the brokenness and mortality of humanity, as well as practice the discipline of fasting, where we choose to refrain from certain luxuries, such as alcohol, television, social media, sugar, or other pleasures of the flesh. The period of forty days remembers the story of the temptation of Jesus and his forty days in the wilderness (chronicled in Matthew 4, Mark 1, and Luke 4).

This year for Lent, I gave up dessert. Most people know I have a severe sweet tooth, and if I were allowed, I would eat ice cream every day. For me, eating sweet things had become somewhat of an addictive habit, and I would eat dessert after a stressful day the way that some would come home and drink a few beers or smoke a few cigarettes to relax. When I was stressed, I would crave sugar. I would “reward myself” for hard days with a DQ Blizzard or I would find a reason to “celebrate” something with a baked treat. It had become something I would look to for relief, release, and comfort. So I chose to give it up for Lent.

I didn’t realize that I would be forced to give up so much more than that.

The Latin term for Lent is “Quadragesima,” which is developed from the Latin “quadraginta,” meaning “fortieth.” Interestingly, and perhaps ironically, that Latin term is also the root for the word “quarantine,” which has become a common part of our language these days. The collective quarantine has brought a plethora of cancellations and losses of varying degrees, from postponed weddings and cancelled trips to missed birthdays and weekly gatherings. But one thing that we’ve all been forced to give up for Lent (and likely beyond it) is our individualism.

Individualism by definition is the “social theory favoring freedom of action for individuals over collective or state control.” In Western cultures, we love individualism. In the US, our entire government system (though it’s very broken) is built on the concept that every citizen has the right to choose how they live, eat, work, worship, spend their money, spend their time - we have authority over our own lives. The motto of Western culture is, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul,” as William Earnest Henley wrote.

When COVID-19 began to spread, and countries around the world began to shut things down, I felt like my autonomy and freedom was being taken away. I didn’t want anyone to tell me how to live, where I could go, or if I could travel. I wanted to do what I wanted to do. I lived in denial of the suggested guidelines to stay home and avoid gathering with people. At first, I thought it was just because I’m an extrovert - I did not like the idea of being stuck at my house seeing no one from the outside world. When the stay-at-home orders went into effect in my town, I was looking for all the loopholes - how could I still keep living the way that I wanted to live without completely breaking the rules (just bending them)? I found ways to justify going to friend’s houses (if I’m going to their house to eat a meal with them, that counts as an essential activity, right?) and maintain my general routine.

But my disdain for the “new normal” went deeper than that: the isolation guidelines and the stay-at-home orders brushed against my deep-seated cultural value of individualism.

In my individualistic worldview, I was ignoring the reality that my actions affect other people, to a larger degree than I ever realized. My choice to visit a friend’s house could set off a ripple effect that I could never have foreseen. Staying at home became the most loving thing I could do for the people around me - and if I call myself a follower of Jesus, isn’t the greatest command to love our neighbors as ourselves?

My prayer in this time has become, ‘Lord, heal me of my individualism,’ because my individualism has gotten in the way of my ability to obey the greatest command to love my neighbor.

In that, staying at home isn’t about living in fear; it’s about denying our value for individualism, and putting others before ourselves. It’s doing what Paul encourages the Philippian church to do, telling them to “look out for one another's interests, not just for your own” (Philippians 2:4 GNT). It’s choosing to sacrifice our individualistic tendencies for the sake of the collective. For our Western culture, it’s the ultimate Lenten sacrifice we could make - and it’s going to extend beyond the forty day period of Lent.

The irony is that healing us of our individualism in this time requires disconnection from community; it requires we spend time in solitude. Yet in solitude we can take a deep dive, to look at our hearts and examine our intentions; we can get in the presence of the Lord, remember we are dust, confess and repent, and ask to be cleansed - which is exactly the heart of Lent. As we collectively continue this season of quarantine, may we take the opportunity to get before the Lord in a continued posture of Lent, even after the official season has ended. And trust me, starting tomorrow, I’ll be doing that with a Blizzard in hand.

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It’s no secret to basically anyone who knows me that I am not a morning person. No matter how many different schemes or habits or alarm clocks I have tried, I have never successfully established a morning routine. I am 100% a night owl - that’s when I have the most energy and when I feel the most awake and engaged.

In the research I have done about it, I have found contradictory studies about being a “morning person” - some studies say that some of us are born as night owls; other studies say you can choose to become a morning person. Regardless, this recent article from The Atlantic, aptly titled, “The False Promise of the Morning Routine,” exposes the seculosity of our obsession with morning routines:

...something sinister seems to be going on if you feel that you have to wake up 30 minutes earlier than usual to improve your well-being, so that you can also work 60 hours a week, cook dinner, run errands, and spend time with your family. In a culture obsessed with self-optimization, “we are being sold on the need to upgrade all parts of ourselves, all at once, including parts that we did not previously know needed upgrading,” Alexandra Schwartz wrote in The New Yorker last year.”

Something sinister seems to be going on, indeed! If I may so accuse, we have built a religion around morning routines - or more accurately, their productiveness. Search #morningroutine on Instagram, and a slew of images will assault you with your lack of productivity. There is always some other person doing more with their mornings than you do - someone who runs farther, reads more, meditates longer, eats healthier, snoozes less.

The article's writer Marina Koren, searches for inspiration to boost her morning routine, but, she writes, “I end up feeling terrible instead, and wondering what’s so great about the saintliness our culture seems to ascribe to early-bird achievers.”

I relate deeply to this sentiment. For a long time, I thought being a night person made me a bad Christian. All the really good Christian people I knew arose early each morning to pray and read Scripture. Whenever I tried that, I never got much farther than, “Dear God, thank you for this day, and thank you for creating pillows…” before I was back under my covers snoozing.

It seemed like morning was the holiest time of day - I mean, Jesus was a morning person. He was always getting up before the sun was up to pray in a solitary place. While getting out of bed by 7am for me seems like a feat of grand proportions, by that time the really good Christians are sipping fair-trade coffee while having their ‘quiet time,’ having already been awake for 3 hours and having already prayed for every person they know...twice. And having already run 17 miles too, while listening to a sermon podcast.

I have always felt shame about my lack of morning energy. And it’s not just praying or doing something spiritual. It’s anything that happens before 8 am. I am notoriously late for breakfast appointments. I have rarely been successful at getting up for a morning workout. If I’m lucky, I may have time to cook a real breakfast instead of a granola bar. I’ve tried putting my alarm across the room to make me get out of bed, yet I always return faithfully to my pillow after shutting off my alarm. The worst part is, I’m not a snooze-button addict - in my sleepy state, I unconsciously turn off my alarms completely, leaving me to rely fully on a divine intervention to wake me up in time for work (hey, maybe my morning routine is more spiritual than I thought?).

Yet there is hope beyond the alarm clock for us “morning-challenged people,” as Koren calls us. The Gospel declares that I don’t have to prove my worth or value by achieving some divine level of productivity before the sun comes up. Grace covers for my snoozing, and promises that my failure to arise early in the morning doesn’t exclude me from communing with our Creator. He made morning, and He made evening, and called them both good - simply because He made them good, with no consideration of what we choose to make of them.

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My parents recently moved to Orlando, and on a recent visit to their new house, I went to Disney World with two friends who had never been before. We went to Magic Kingdom on the Fourth of July, when everybody else in the world decides it's a good idea to celebrate our freedom in a place that is acutely American: overpriced fast food, tempting and repulsive at the same time; assaulting displays of plush dolls and apparel screaming for purchase on every corner; and the subtle yet powerful message that you are the hero of the story (I’m a princess too!)

For their first time at Disney, I wanted my friends to see all the magic, wonder, and wallet-emptying glory of the Kingdom that our friend Walt built for us. I made a plan and mapped out our route. We reserved Fastpasses and packed lunches in a cooler. We hit the park hard at 8am, ready to dodge stroller-pushing parents and weave through families wearing matching shirts with their names on them. Move, Brenda! I've got a Flying Carpet to catch!

I was eager to share with my friends the nostalgia of the Mad Tea Party ride, and how my dad would always spin the teacup a million miles an hour, or at least it felt like that as a seven-year-old. I wanted them to feel the magic of meeting a real life princess, and stand in awe like I did when I had met Belle. I hoped that they would see the grandiosity of a parade down Main Street, or maybe even get to join in the parade, like my family had one time when my parents had accidentally led us toward the parade starting point while searching for the park exit, where a Disney cast member kindly invited us to don tutus and dance in the parade.

What I remembered most as a child was the magic of the rides, the beauty of the princesses, the glow of the fireworks. Yet what I'll remember most as an adult is the waiting. Out of the fifteen hour day we had, we probably spent about ten hours waiting. Waiting in line to scan our tickets at the entrance. Waiting in line for the Dumbo ride. Waiting in line for our third ice cream of the day. Waiting in line to meet Princess Jasmine and Aladdin surrounded by adorable little girls dressed as miniature Jasmines. Waiting in line for the monorail, the final ride of the day, to take us back to the parking lot.

I don't have any memories of waiting in line as a kid, but I cannot understand how my parents kept us so entertained in line before the age of smartphones. I watched the people around me in line and how they decided to use their waiting time. Many, kids and adults alike, succumbed to the addictive pull of the smartphone. Some were playing charades or other games. Some were chatting, some were eating snacks from Ziploc baggies.

While we waited, my friends and I sang the songs we remembered from our childhood and reminisced about the movies we loved. We told stories about childhood, and about adulthood, and about growing up. And when the delirium of exhaustion set in at about 11:30pm in the line for the Snow White ride, we sat on the ground and laughed at the utter absurdity of this magical place and how there could possibly still be so many people in line.

Disney World is both a perfectly crafted world meant to feel like an escape from life, and also a really good example of what life is actually like. We go to Disney World because we want to be swept away by the magic, to remember what it's like to be a kid and have a permanent "Wow!" on your lips. But when we go to Disney World, we don’t escape the world; life follows us, and kids have meltdowns and we fight about money and our feet hurt and we get sunburn and we don't even think Belle looks like the real Belle.

That's exactly why Disney World is like life. We spend much of life waiting for the high moments - the drop at Splash Mountain, the highest point on the Flying Carpets, the fastest turns on Space Mountain - while most of life is furnished with ordinary moments, ordinary times, and ordinary waiting. We can’t escape those times, but we can fill them with ordinary goodness.

In general I'm not good at waiting in lines - I got that from my dad, who wouldn’t wait in a line longer than 30 minutes even if they told him they were handing out checks for a million dollars. But I'm also not great at waiting in life. I live in the fast lane, and I’m speeding at least ten over. I like to experience lots of things and move quickly. And if there is something I want in life that isn’t happening quick enough (according to my agenda), move over, everyone, because I won’t be waiting much longer. I relate most to the character of the persistent widow in one of Jesus’s parables, who would just not stop bugging the judge until she got what she wanted. If I’m waiting, I’m working.

Yet my obsessive pursuit of the fast-paced life is counter to the very life we’re called to live in the Kingdom of God. In the Kingdom, things are upside down: the high moments are actually the ones that are seemingly unmemorable. The quiet sun peeking in through the blinds to greet you before a busy day. The soft silence on the couch with a friend as they grieve a loss. The day-in-day-out faithfulness of doing the work in front of you while you await the fulfillment of a promise or dream.

The theme of waiting is all over the Bible; arguably, it's the story of the longest wait ever. It’s a story of people like us waiting for God to free them, and it’s a story of God waiting for the right time to send the One who would free us all. And the long-awaited hero of the Bible is so much better than we could dream up or imagine. Better than Aladdin, Ariel, or any other hero. He doesn’t give out autographs and strike a pose for a picture; instead He offers a healing touch, and a gentle word of belonging and love. And beyond anything else, He is so worth the wait. And in my experience at Disney, the longer the wait, the better the ride.

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