I don’t know why God gave me the eyes that he did. I see loveliness in the most ordinary of places and get caught up in the way the light flickers over a t-shirt, the way a tulip curves beyond it’s vase, the way glassware drying next to the sink gleams. I have an eye for the beauty in ordinary life, and that’s oftentimes what you’ll see represented on my blog.

While I want to be great and accomplish something incredible and make a book someone wants to read, I wonder if my life will instead look a bit like the gleaming glasses next to my sink. Very ordinary most every day, but, hopefully, extraordinary for the people I’m closest to. Perhaps my legacy will be the little bits of myself ordinary self that I’ve given to Jeremy and to Livia, to my family and to my church family. Whatever happens long after I’m gone, I know there will be a large number of files on this computer that show off the sweetness found in the ordinary. Because I think, many times, that the ordinary is actually extraordinary.

Case in point: salad in a jar. I made them yesterday with wonderful people from church, and this week I shall eat them. I think they’re lovely.

When she was little we practiced pew-sitting. We realized that it was a rare occasion that our squirrelly little one had to sit still next to us, and so we literally practiced on the 8-foot pew—picked up somewhere along my parents’ many moves across the country—now taking up space in our dining room.

When Livia was three each Sunday felt like a little bit of a crisis for me as a stay-at-home mom eager to receive rest and rejuvenation. Our church tragically burned down that summer, and I remember writing our pastors an email and begging for children’s church to be reinstated, you know, for the single moms who really needed a break (and me, PLEASE!). God bless those people who love crazy three year olds; for me it was, let’s say, a challenging time.

As it turns out, our daughter didn’t stay three forever. She grew in stature and in maturity, and sitting at church became easier and easier. We moved from those days of goldfish snacks and soft-sided toys to crayons and books, and then to listening fully to the sermon and participating in the service.

I will say this for church: it is one of my favorite spots of the week. There are myriad of spiritual reasons why I need church—why anyone does—and that is to get my heart re-routed to what God says is important. I have the memory of a gnat and forget day-to-day, if not moment-to-moment, who I am and Who God is. Worship on Sunday becomes a “reset” button for the rest of my week. But I’ve found a delightfully unexpected joy in the regular act of church worship, and it is the quiet action of sitting with my family, hearing God’s word.

Every Sunday we go to church. It’s what we do. In the early days of our marriage, Jeremy and I had lengthy discussions about why we went to church, and interestingly enough, our strong-headed natures (which caused lots of fireworks the first two years) kept us faithfully attending church. We were students, which meant we were really tired and always behind in some sort of classwork, but when one partner was lazy the other wasn’t. We went to church. That same stubborn determination continued when we had kids, only it was remarkably easy to make it to church for a period of years as we had moved to the same city block as our home church. It just gets embarrassing when you sleep through a service instead of rolling out of bed and down the block with the other parishioners.

So now we are in church every week because we need it. Because we love it. Because God does something different there when His children are gathered to worship Him. Because our souls get fed the spiritual food they crave. And because we are loved well by that rag-tag group of human beings, from every walk of life it seems, gathered together under one roof because we are each other’s family in Christ.

In the pew at Redeemer my little family is focused on the same topic for 90 minutes each week. The Holy Spirit moves in us differently, and we welcome the work He is doing. I get to reach out on one side and hold my husband’s arm. I can reach out on the other and pull my daughter to my side while singing choruses. (Note: she’s now moving farther and farther away from me in the pew. Y’all behind me can watch the Progression of the Teen Independence these next few years. Get yo popcorn.) We are a family, and we go to church together. I am not in control of Livia’s thoughts about church, and the way she’ll interact with God and His people in the future is not up to me. But I hope the truths she finds in our church—and in our home—will carry her forward in this life until she meets the Lord face to face.

Marriage is hard. Let’s not pretend it’s a basketful of fuzzy kittens all the time. What happens when two very different people with their own preferences, visions, agendas, joys, personalities share a life? Sometimes it’s fireworks—both the scary and the pretty kind—and sometimes it’s drudgery. Usually it involves self-sacrifice. And many many times it is beauty and friendship and camaraderie that only comes after hard-fought battles. Why are the good things in life the ones we must fight for? The ones we must work hardest for? I’m not sure, but I do know that the sweetness of my union with this guy wouldn’t happen without a million “I love you’s” and another million “I’m sorry’s.” True love isn’t cheap, my friends, but it is absolutely worth the work. That falling-in-love stage lasts a hot minute, and the rest, the deeply good stuff, comes via grace. Grace given and grace received. Over and over and over again.

I peeled a post-it note off my bathroom mirror yesterday with more than a fair bit of sadness. Something I had been praying for, with great hope and expectation, did not happen. The friend’s name, in heavy Sharpie, and the request we had laid before God day in, day out, was a solid “no.” As I crumpled the little paper and threw it away I realized that “no” is an actual answer. And it threw me for a loop. All this time we had been praying for a “yes” and that’s a good and right thing to pray.

In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly. Psalm 5:3

It’s right to ask God for favor and to lay our hopes before Him. But the way I crumpled the post-it, the feeling I had in my heart was, Oh no, He didn’t answer this prayer. The reality is far different, however, and it’s one that I have to accept as an answer—though with different feeling. He answered, and right now the answer is “no.”

It’s hard to ask for our heart’s desires, to want those “yes’s” and to hear solid “no’s.” It doesn’t mean the prayer will never be answered the way we want it to, but it also doesn’t mean the post-it should be crumpled and chucked and the issue forgotten. I should have left it up on the mirror, and I should keep praying for my heart’s desire for this particular person. God alters hearts as well as everything else, not one area of this world functions apart from His control.

In the Lord’s hand the king’s heart is a stream of water that he channels toward all who please him. Proverbs 21:1

The Lord does whatever pleases him, in the heavens and on the earth, in the seas and all their depths. Psalm 135:6

The post-its are an idea stolen from a friend who is a faithful pray-er, and I want to be faithful in that arena in 2018 as well. I want to remember the needs of my friends and to hold them up to our Sovereign God on their behalf. My faith in God means that I trust His word, and His word tells me that He hears our cries.

The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:17-18

A new post-it will go up today, and that friend’s name will be recorded once more so my short memory and easily-distracted eyes will not forget her plight. We look for favor from the LORD, for the “yes” that brings joy, and until then we trust that God sees her need and will comfort and guide her in the “no.”

Running late to a doctor’s appointment, I still had a folder’s worth of new patient information to fill out. A personality quirk of mine is that I enjoy filling out forms, so I was buzzing along at a breakneck pace, answering questions that had obvious answers, until I hit the one that always throws me for a loop. Occupation. My pen hovered above the form, hesitant at even knowing the correct answer. Birthdate, spouse, medication amounts. Those things all have concrete answers, but this one? What did I feel like saying today?

Photographer. No, I’ve reduced my photography work back to the very infrequent photoshoot and am now shooting for the sheer pleasure of it because…

Student. Is taking one class per semester a reason to fill in the blank with this word? I mean, it is a graduate program so it takes up a substantial part of my thinking power each day, but no, this doesn’t work…

Writer. Nah. Writing, too, is now simply for fun. Or for school. But it’s not a paid endeavor. Hmm, are there any paid endeavors for me right now? No, I actually pay people to teach me stuff.

Church volunteer. Probably the truest description of my days, but it feels awfully weird to put that on a form for the doctor’s office.

SAHM.

Those four little letters put together do not make me feel awesome about life if I am honest. When I am dropping off a 7th grader for a large portion of the day, dare I call myself a Stay At Home Mom? It brings to mind bon bons and The Price is Right. Being a woman of leisure who buys only the cutest in athletic clothing, but rarely uses it to work out. It’s perusing Target more times than makes sense, being a lady who lunches, taking luxurious naps after all that exhausting work of shopping and eating.

Uh, wait a minute. I do take naps. Scratch that last one. I also really enjoy lunches. And Target. Okay, whatever.

My fight with the SAHM term is a real one because I find it to be reductionistic. The only word I really love out of the four is “mom.” I’m not really a “stay at home” person and now that I think of it, I might be a very strong-willed adult because, DON’T TELL ME TO STAY AT HOME THANKYOUVERYMUCH. Still, I feel like it reduces me to something I am not, to less than what I aspire to, to less than what I actually do and produce each day. So I will take back the SAHM label and explain a few things about it.

Choosing to stay at home with Livia when she arrived was the greatest pleasure in terms of choices. Before she came, I dreamed of becoming a mother and I was dreamy about what my life might look like as a parent. I could not wait for the gift of a child, and I anticipated our adventures with excitement. It was absolutely what I wanted to do with my life and I was eager to quit working in order to be home full time. Though real life was a thousand times harder than my idealistic dreams, every time I considered going back into paid employment I reaffirmed my desire to parent Livia instead. I felt completely confident in my choice to feed her each meal of her day, to be the one to hold her hands while she learned to walk, to listen to her babbles and then words and then lengthy conversations. It wasn’t that my job was easy—no, the monotonous “at home” work of baby-rearing can be brain-numbing at times and then utterly exhausting at others. Rather, it’s what I wanted to do. I did not want for Livia to spend much time in a daycare; I wanted to be the adult around her for a majority of her waking hours.

The truth is this: I still want to be the adult around her for the majority of her waking hours.

For numerous reasons, it’s important that Livia is educated by other adults, but when she is not at school, I still want to be the person closest to her. I can feel the years squeezing away from us now. Everyone has said these teenage years fly by, and so far they are right. I feel hugely sentimental about my time with Livia—at least when I’m reflecting upon it while she’s away from me. It’s easy to feel the warmth of parenting when we’re in good moments—reading together, cuddling, talking talking talking, driving around town—and much harder when we rub up against personality differences or hard, stressful days. But still, I choose this kid. I’ve got one kid, and that one is enormously special to me.

So there it is. My pen hovers over the line, I curse the way “occupation” hitches me up, and then I quickly scribble “SAHM” and this time I think I threw in a “/student” to make me feel better about the direction of my life. Will anyone at the office even care who or what I am? Will their eyes rest on that line for more than 2 seconds before moving on to type insurance information into their desktop computer? I doubt it. My existential crisis means nothing to them, and so much to me.

I stepped outside to my back deck this morning to soak up some sunshine and warm up from the air conditioning inside. It’s my private little oasis, a bit of a secret garden now as our Rose of Sharon bushes have lost their minds and grown into gargantuan shapes. They are blooming—fabulous purple trumpets open up into pink blooms that feed everything from bumblebees to hummingbirds to hummingbird moths. The roses—hibiscus really—cover one corner and a healthy green maple towers over me on the other side. In between are succulents and cherry tomatoes, sedum and a butterfly bush and a few pots of herbs. And in between those items are WEBS. It is spider season, my friends, and I was only slightly ashamed of letting my small dog take down the first few for me with his clueless waltz onto the deck. I left the webs alone that were situated in corners away from my seat in the sun. From my viewpoint I watched them in the spiders in their homes, now a bit more wobbly in the morning, and hoped they’d catch all manner of little critters. All around me buzzed this incredible world. My deck. My sweet oasis in the sun. Though I’ve just returned from a lodge with a fabulous long deck overlooking apple trees and a deeply shaded wood, I have this privilege of coming home to a vibrant scene all my own.

There’s not a thing around us that wasn’t made, fashioned, orchestrated by our Creator God. From the spider’s ability to build intricate webs to the unfolding of the tiny flowers that face the sun on my front steps, creation has been designed by God. He put all the scientific forces into play, and when I open my eyes and really look, I see how fabulous this world is. What’s even more stunning to me is that God made human beings and that he considers them more important than these little bits of flora and fauna I’ve been enjoying this morning.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the starts, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
You have made them a little lower than the angels
and crowned them with glory and honor.
You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
you put everything under their feet:
all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild,
the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas. 
Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
– from Psalm 8

A group of teens from church just returned from a trip to Guatemala. And though I’m sure they were surrounded by impressive scenery on their travels, they left the comforts of home for people, for the LOVE of people. God honors this work and wants us pouring out our lives for people. If he esteemed us so much, crowning us with honor and glory simply because we’re made in His image, then surely we need to mimic that. We need to care. On Sunday I was so impressed by the hearts of the girls who shared their thoughts about the Guatemala trip. Sure, this was their mountaintop experience (something many of us growing up in the church experienced after going to youth camps) but it was a significant one because God taught them something through it all. He graciously showed him how much He loves his people and that it’s worth giving up your money, your time, your security to care for others.

Just as there are women, men, and children in Guatemala who reflect the character of God, they are also here in Lincoln, Nebraska. They are in your town. As wealthy as we are here in America, we cannot be blinded to the hungry, the hurting, the lonely, the sick. If you’re a Christian, then you are called to love your brothers and sisters wherever God has placed you. Never be lulled into thinking that everyone around you is fine, that everyone in your city is fed, clothed, and nourished. It’s our job to care for others. Let’s continue to see people as the glorious creatures they are—creatures made in the image of God and esteemed by Him. Continue working for their good and by doing so you serve God.

I composed the rant in my head as I drove through the rain-splattered streets of Lincoln this morning. I AM OFFENDED, I wanted to cry. I am tired of being offended! And to let you all know just how strongly I feel on the topic, I was prepared to write a post explaining my position and drawing a line in the sand so you know precisely where I stand on this VERY crucial subject of… essential oils. Oh yes, I had a title and everything: The Luxury of Essential Oils.

But then more happened. The ache I’ve been feeling in my soul—the restlessness, the sadness, the weight and burden—was comforted as I listened to my very own words that I gave to a friend yesterday: Read Job.

I’ve read Job before. I have various themes—important ones—in mind and I cherish the book. But you see, the word of God is active. As stagnant as we know books to be, the Bible is not that book. It’s alive and powerful, it has the ability to cut right through your spirit and bring godly truths to mind. What was true when it was written so many years ago is still true now. You have to have spiritual eyes to see the spiritual truths, but if you are listening, the word of God will always speak. And it did so this morning.

I opened the pages of my Bible to Job and the scene was laid before me. You’ve got Job and his wife and all his children right there on earth and they all really enjoyed one another. They feasted and celebrated. Job’s sons and daughters and families liked to be together, to drink wine and spend time in each other’s presence. Life was good, the family was prosperous. Happy times. And then you’ve got another scene presented, only this one is in the heavenly realms. The curtains are pulled back on a picture we humans are simply not privy to and it kind of astounded me. (Sidenote: our daughter has had unsavory dreams lately, so we’ve been talking a lot about the spiritual realm over the last few days. Do ghosts exist as we think of them? I’m not sure, but I do know that angels and demons are at play all the time; this the bible is quite clear about. Followers of Jesus are on the winning side ultimately, but there is always a spiritual battle waging around us.) As it turns out, angels have meetings with God! WHAT. I don’t know if these are like your once-a-week staff meetings or if it’s more like a yearly gathering of the angelic army, but it happens. In Job we’re told it happens. And what’s even crazier is that Satan can just show up. So he does. He shows up and he talks with God in his conniving destructive way. But it’s important to know that Satan is bound by God, ruled by God’s authority, and it’s only by God’s permission that Satan can do any work whatsoever.

Satan is allowed to attack Job. And within a few verses Job is reduced to a mess of a man. He has lost all his wealth. His children have perished. His body is covered, head to toe, with sores and his soul is in utter despair.

He does not curse God.

Instead he worships. He is facedown in the dirt, reduced to mere shreds of the life he enjoyed moments before, and he blesses the name of the Lord.

The book continues and is an utterly fascinating tale of beloved friends with misguided words, Job’s grief and despair, and the God who sustains life from the first of days to the last. It’s a book worthy of your time.

So… essential oils? Well, I’ve lost my fire on the topic. But here is what I long for, friends. I long for the ability to dialogue about things we might feel strongly convicted about. As I walk into Job’s life and start seeing what God allowed to happen to him, and as I begin to read the kind-but-dead-wrong words of his friends, I think it’s important that we listen to one another’s stories. We need more of that, don’t we? When a sister is struggling, will you simply sit silently with her in the ashes for a week as Job’s friend’s did? When she says she’s in pain—emotional or physical—will you hold off from recommending an oil to cure her ills? Will you pause and simply hear what’s going on and will you pray for her?

Today we are so quick to judge. We’re so quick to want to proclaim ourselves as Remedies, Healers, and Wizards. We’re sure that we know the right candidate, the right health care options, and the right oils to make that pain go away. We’re fast to make assumptions. We know for sure that guy reached for the gun instead of holding his hands up. We’re the Judge and the Jury. We’re so wise that we’re the Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches wrapped into one.

Or maybe not.

Last night before bed I jabbed two needles into my thighs and administered a drug I hope will allow me to walk without too much discomfort. Will you sit with me in my story? Will you come watch and see what God is doing with me and will you encourage me to proclaim “blessed be the Lord”? I hope so. And I hope I will come sit with you as you swath yourself with lemon oil and perhaps touch your toes with a poultice made from healing herbs in your back garden. Let’s sit together. Let’s love one another and sit together and praise God with whatever strength we can muster.

Jeremy and I walked into the party—together—and within minutes three women that had watched me grow up had asked me if we were dating. I don’t remember exactly what I told them, but I insisted that we weren’t. Earlier in the day our church’s College & Career group was painting part of the basement of Covenant Presbyterian Church, and Jeremy had overheard me talking about the gathering later that day. He kindly offered to go with me, you know, if I wanted him to. To be honest, the entire falling-in-love thing that was happening was so foreign to me that I didn’t know what to think of it all. But I wasn’t lying to my friends at church. We weren’t dating at that party! However I’m pretty sure we were by the end of the night.

I laugh now thinking of the events of Fall and Winter 1996. The main event being Jeremy. While I remember hints and flashes of my first semester at UNL, I very much remember that all my extracurricular activities involved leading youth group. Which meant lots and lots and lots of time alongside Mr. Tredway. Every week involved one plan night and one youth group night. And then there were all these events where Jeremy mysteriously ended up by my side. Fall Fest. Nursery Duty. Afternoons at the park. Little did I know that I had him at “hello” and that he was already smitten.

I think about the night of the party that we went to together-but-not-together. [Sidenote: 2017 Jeremy is singing in his office right now; it’s distracting me from 1996 Jeremy.] I remember going to a friend’s house where they were watching Fargo and we caught the ending. Jeremy then told me he was enamored with me as we were driving down Highway 2, and in the next breath told me he’d be going to Covenant Seminary and encouraged me to follow my interest of going to Covenant College. My brain was stuck on “enamored” and did that mean what I thought it meant? There was a conversation with my dad to lay out reassurances and intentions, the seven-year age gap between us being an issue to address. There was a 19th birthday party where Jeremy pretty much told my family he loved me, though really it was Mom’s Freudian slip that set up that perfect situation. There was hugging in the snow at the Lied Center and then months of making this fella wait to kiss me.

These memories are only the beginning. In the almost 22 years since we began to be a “we” there’s been miles of life lived. In the past few days we’ve been saying with disbelief, “Can you believe we’ve been married 19 years already?” It seems impossible in some moments and very possible in others. From the dreamy head-in-the-clouds feelings to the love we share today, it’s been a crazy road. We’ve survived our fiery first years of marriage, great temptations, and heartaches galore. We’ve witnessed sin and forgiveness on scales we couldn’t have imagined and the scars we bear have become testaments to a very big God whose grace and gentle care knows no bounds. We’ve built up a marriage we thought we wanted only to see it torn down and replaced with a firm foundation in Christ. As two polar opposite personality types who once couldn’t answer the question, “What DO you two have in common?” we now enjoy a life that has exploded outside the bounds of what was once thought comfortable and enjoyable. We have this amazing privilege of being better together, of exploring the world from very different viewpoints only to encourage the other to becoming stronger in areas of strength as well as weakness. Though not quick enough, we are quicker to both ask for forgiveness and to give it. Aside from the natural skinniness of our twenties, I don’t believe there’s anything we’d go back in time to reclaim because the way we feel about each other today is infinitely superior to the budding love we knew back in 1996.

I experience my world through feelings, and as a Feeler, I’ve had these gloriously wonderful moments recently where I look at Jeremy and Livia and praise God thinking, “My life is so beautiful! How is this my life?!” And because I am a Feeler sometimes it’ll only take one more step of discomfort before I remember the hard parts, too. There are always hard parts.

I couldn’t have explained to 1996 Rebecca what 2017 Rebecca would be thinking and feeling and seeing and learning. It’s all been a journey best taken day by day. The grace that was afforded to me—to us—was a daily grace. And for that we are thankful and we are humbled.

Jeremy Tredway, I’m so grateful for our lives together. God is good. Happy 19, my love.

Earlier today I was ready for the DPP to be over. Like… Okay, we’ve had twenty days and I am done. There are no more things to shoot. If I have to shoot a closeup of my toaster then I am beyond all saving. I saw the light vanishing on the western horizon and went to grab my camera thinking I could salvage something from the Christmas lights hanging in the dining room. I took my shots and moved on to another task. And then the sun began to set. And crazy vibrant colors filled the sky. I caught it, and my heart just filled with the beauty from my back deck.

I’m finding that our march towards December 25 feels just like the DPP. I’m kind of slogging towards it. My semester ended last week and I feel fairly worn out in body and spirit. I want to rally but my pep is low. Still, there are these moments of amazing glory like what I experienced in the sunset tonight. I found such a moment reading the story of Jesus’ birth in the Gospel of Luke this morning. After a semester of studying the world of the New Testament, Luke’s words jumped at me from the page.

We read about shepherds so often at Christmastime, but this morning I tried to imagine the scene in more detail. First one angel visits the shepherds and the glory of the Lord was intense! The humble shepherds were afraid, as is frequently noted in the Bible when a human comes face to face with these supernatural beings. What happened next must have absolutely shattered their minds. A whole host of angels lights up the sky and praises God with these words, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” (Luke 2:14). Angels are made to praise God, and for a brief moment those shepherds are privy to what hardly any human has seen. They witness the worship of the Almighty God by the ones who are allowed to worship Him day and night, always. No wonder the shepherds then head over to Bethlehem fast to see this Savior! What a sight to witness.

We’re made to worship. Sometimes we get a little drum of worship in our hearts, a little stirring that makes us feel small. For me, it’s the Tunnel Walk just before a Husker game—there’s nothing like seeing that in person and feeling the amazing excitement from the crowd. It’s overwhelming. At other times I feel that sense of worship during a really good concert. My heart and mind both swell with joy. I can sense that same joy, only a thousand times greater and more powerful, when the shepherds personally witness all those angels worshipping God in the skies that day. Every week when we sing songs of worship to our Creator at church, we join with those angels, and all the saints that come before us and behind us, in worship of the One most deserving it.

Today I get a small glimpse of glory in a sunset, but one day I’m gonna get the real deal and I’ll be joining those angels for all eternity. Slogging through the present, even as I move towards something as great at Christmas Day, I’m reminded that I’m made for something much greater.

Today was my dad’s last day at Chick-fil-A as he’s moving back into a position in his chosen field. Though based on the comments I’ve received from friends and strangers alike, you may have thought hospitality was his field! Anyone who has been around Dad in a hospital environment or church nursery knows that he’s the Chief Baby Whisperer. He’ll grab your baby and willingly walk the halls while you worship or run to the restroom or, say, eat your chicken sandwich in peace for a minute. It’s been a joy to watch my dad’s smile light up the restaurant and I’ve heard time and time again that he’s shown grace to parents and children alike within that space. I’ve heard of his sweet care for a little one with Down’s Syndrome and of his humility in cleaning up those common-yet-unfortunate playplace pee accidents. Many of my girlfriends have met and hugged my dad at Chick-fil-A and another friend, upon meeting my mom and learning the Mayor was my dad, looked at me and said, “Now you completely make sense!” (which was perhaps the greatest compliment I’ve ever received).

So as David Lawton moves back to the realm of nursing, we all suspect that his care and hospitality will simply move locations. I’ve learned so many things from my dad, but perhaps most important is knowing that his heart, which loves God first, reflects that love to others wherever he serves. May God bless this new journey, Dad! We’re proud of you.