I don’t know when I stopped being grateful. I don’t know when I stopped counting gifts and numbering graces. But I did and I am soul-sick for the lack of contentment in my heart. 

I walk to the edge of the parking lot and stare out into the woods, watching a small stream trickle down through the rain-drenched ground. A cardinal flits and lands on a branch, catches my eye with its red beak and I think of the lilies of the field, the birds of the air, and I know that I’m supposed to consider them but somehow I can’t quite remember why and what it is the birds of the air have to teach us. Was it something about worry and tomorrow? But I am consumed with tomorrow, it has become the place where all will be as it should be, and I have failed to abide in today with its fullness, full-well knowing that King David meant today when he spoke of his head being anointed with oil, his feast being prepared, his cup overflowing.

My cup overflows. Today. In this moment. Right now, right where I stand, drops of oil stream down my face from this present-day anointing. 

Instead I live as a petulant child patted on the head with a patronizing, “You poor thing. Maybe someday.” This is not my inheritance. Nor is it yours. We stand in the fullness of our inheritance now, in this present moment, sons and daughters, and that inheritance is available for our spending. 

But try spending something you don’t believe you have? It’s a constant sense of lack, an ever present deficit that wearies the soul and darkens the mind. 

Living in the red can make you see black. 

All things, dark and dreary, not enough, and up ahead, in our tomorrow, that’s where our abundance lies. And we’ll get there if we can just survive today. So we strain against the moorings, eager to launch into the treacherous waters of the sea without a second thought for the blessedness of our stay in this particular port of call, docked precisely where we need to be at the moment. To refuel. To unload. To rest from the battering of the ocean. 

We forget the danger awaiting us in the deep, remembering only the promise of adventure on the high seas. We forget just how much we will have needed this rest and refueling when we get there. We forget that the He who is faithful, the He who will do it? He is our He, He is our Father, He has called us sons and daughters, and if I am a daughter, then I am also an heir. 

And so I come nose to nose with this truth: waiting is part of my inheritance. Waiting is part of being a daughter. Because waiting is part of life. But because I live life as a daughter and an heir, then I get to live waiting as an heir. I get to live waiting within His glorious riches. I don’t have to live waiting barren, forsaken, hopeless. I can live waiting content.

Which means I can still occasionally strain against the moorings because I know my Father has good things out on the bounding main, and I am beside myself with excitement to get there and see what He’s up to. I can spend my breath thanking Him for the grace of the here and now, even as my heart whispers: Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders. Let me walk upon the waters, wherever You would call me…

In the meantime, I live waiting content, even if now and then you see my ropes snap taut. And I can know that one day, those cables will break. 

And He’ll send the tide in to carry me out.

Sometimes I feel like my life is this endless string of events that if they were compiled and made into a movie, it would require such a gross suspension of disbelief that no one in their right mind would be willing to watch it. 
At the end of last year, I began to pray and ask God for a word for 2016. Just one word. Last year, the word was “new.” And so many things were, in so many wonderful ways. This year, the word is “abundance.” And I’ve gotta tell ya, we’re 70 days in and that’s been a bit of a head scratcher. 

The year began with a quick trip to Tampa and then a sick little girl. A mid-month ER visit and then a snow day. After all of that, I wasn’t back at work two hours before the school nurse was calling me. But we pressed on, and I spent the next two weeks trying to catch up at work, with meetings and trips and projects aplenty. 

I had been desperate to get back into my routine after the holidays, and I was just sure I’d find my rhythm again after Tampa. But as January came to a close, it was obvious that nothing of the sort would be happening anytime soon.

February came in with a fever. Literally and again. More disruption of the routine. And then a flat tire that was really a ruined tire with one ginormous object lesson stuck in the sidewall. And then a fixed tire and a well kid but more trials by fire, more feeling like I’m marching straight into battle. 

Late February saw her sick again. This time, a diagnosis and antibiotics, but geez Louise if I’m not about ready to pull my hair out over germs and other things outside of my control. Also, routine? What routine? We haven’t seen one of those since October, at least. 

March began benignly enough. Well. At least, the first day or so of March was pretty normal. Mostly. Things kicked into gear – or should I say out of gear – last Friday, when my vehicle decided to roll out of my carport, down my driveway, across the street and into my neighbor’s yard, stopping roughly four feet from their front porch. Without me in it. I actually stood in their yard and watched as my previously barreling-toward-their-door SUV suddenly slowed and came to a stop, ever so gently bumping their little boy’s t-ball stand, causing the stand to teeter and knocking the bright green ball to the ground, where it bounced twice and quietly rolled behind my tire. I would have appreciated the irony if I had not been standing there, trembling and wild.

My nerves were shot and my throat was sore (did I mention how much I screamed as I chased my runaway vehicle?) for the rest of the night. I had planned to pass the weekend in relative ease at the lakehouse, and I certainly did give it my best effort, despite another completely bizarre event in the form of a random, unwanted email and one very euphemistically accurate bad penny. 

So I came back from the lakehouse, and I dug in for the week and I’ll be darned if everything hasn’t felt just a little bit off. 

This is the first week since December that my routine has been completely back to normal. No trips. No catastrophes. No meetings or speaking engagements. Just kid, life, work, Bible study. Normal. 

So naturally I’ve spent all day with smudged mascara and emotions as raw as hamburger meat. 

Then another email this afternoon, only this one I had been expecting…and more smudged mascara. More raw emotion. The lies hissed loud. And I knew I had this conscious choice to make: believe the lies, or recognize them as just that – lies. Falsehood. Ridiculous ridicule from the mouth of the accuser who sees my calling and my assignment and my tribe as a threat. Somehow, even in the midst of all this chaos, with this one final flaming arrow soaring toward my heart, the truth was running deeper still, a strong and rushing river with a current pulsing mightier than those winds could hope to batter my heart.

Because, see, what I haven’t told you about these 70 days is this: they have been overrun with grace and provision and richness. 

Abundance, you might call it. 

There are people who have brought the kid soup, sat with us at the ER, run errands for me, helped us get where we were going, gave us a reason to escape to north, north Arkansas, made us their Valentines, called just to check on us, called just to check in with us, spoke truth and love and strength and wisdom over us, came over and sat on the couch with us with knitting needles clacking away, came over and laughed over cheeseboard with us, read the Word with us and prayed for and with us. 

Last Friday, just before my vehicle decided to go on its terrifying little jaunt across the street, I told a trusted friend that I had this sudden and strange dark feeling, and he said: “Psalm 91. You will feel it, but it won’t come near.” I didn’t have a chance to read the psalm until late that night, after the business with the car. It stunned me when I did.

Psalm 91

Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High
 will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
 I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress,
 my God, in whom I trust.”

Surely he will save you
 from the fowler’s snare
 and from the deadly pestilence.
 He will cover you with his feathers,
 and under his wings you will find refuge;
 his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
 You will not fear the terror of night,
 nor the arrow that flies by day,
 nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,
 nor the plague that destroys at midday.
 A thousand may fall at your side,
    ten thousand at your right hand,
 but it will not come near you.
 You will only observe with your eyes
 and see the punishment of the wicked.

If you say, “The Lord is my refuge,”
 and you make the Most High your dwelling,
 no harm will overtake you,
 no disaster will come near your tent.
 For he will command his angels concerning you
 to guard you in all your ways;
they will lift you up in their hands,
 so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. You will tread on the lion and the cobra;
 you will trample the great lion and the serpent.

“Because he loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him;
 I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.
 He will call on me, and I will answer him;
 I will be with him in trouble,
 I will deliver him and honor him.
 With long life I will satisfy him
 and show him my salvation.”

Yes, it has been a rough 70 days. There’s been trouble. Arrows have flown left and right. The fowler’s snare has been set in just about every place my feet have landed and I have been flat-out weary of the constant attack. I have seen it, and I have felt it in my bones. But still, it has not come near. 

And what has come near instead?

Rescue. Protection. Answer. Deliverance. Life. 

He has shown me His salvation. 

Abundance, you might call it.

It’s been a good year. God has been more than faithful, He has been extravagant in His grace and mercy and favor and beauty. I’m looking forward to 2016, but first I want to remember 2015 well. 

The story of how I knew she was on her way is a hard and tender one that I don’t tell freely. And that’s odd for me because I love to tell stories – from how I switched the wires when I was installing a new circuit board on my oven two weeks ago to how the Lord spoke into my crazy once I finally learned that it was okay to just stinking be honest with Him because really, He can handle it.

But this isn’t just my story to tell. It involves her, my most precious person in the whole entire world, and I have this fierce protectiveness over it because of that. I want you to be worthy of hearing her story. I want to shield her from prying eyes and nosy Nellies. I’ve wanted that from the start. People can so dreadfully mishandle your heart when there’s a scoop to be had because a scoop means digging and that sort of digging is always such a ruthless act.

Still, the story started weighing on me somewhere around early December this year, and it won’t turn me loose. I can’t shake it. And that’s usually how I know it’s time to tell a story. I normally don’t shrink back, even though I’ve spent these last several weeks doing just that. But it’s time now.

Because today is the day, nine years ago, that I found out I was going to have a baby.

It had been a hard year. There was heartbreak, and then crazy amounts of grace and restoration. There had been this insanely free and joyful summer of days at the pool and nights out with friends and finally learning to believe that I was actually, truly loved by the Creator of the universe, that He called me daughter and Beloved. As autumn’s days shortened, though, the darkness slowly crept back in, and I was in serious danger of veering completely off course until I finally said to myself one night: this is enough, Andrea. No more. Get it together or you’ll be right back where you were.

Then Christmas came, and I found myself in a terrible fight with one of my sisters. To this day, I don’t remember the nature of the argument, but it was such a horrible row that it looked like Christmas might actually be cancelled. I was talking it over with my mom one night (read: trying to get her to take my side), and I just sobbed into the phone. I told her how alone I felt. I told her I didn’t have a person. Everyone else had a person. Mom had Charlie, my sisters had their husbands, my dad had Kelly, almost all of my friends were married, engaged or moving away, and I didn’t have anyone. I was all alone. The more I said it, the more my heart broke to hear those words said out loud, and I realized just how much of my hopeful joy had fled the scene and how dreadfully alone I felt.

My nephew Gramm was about about 17 months old, and if any one person was the light of my life right then, it was him. I can still remember how his face would light up when he’d see me, how his chubby little arms felt around my neck, how his precious giggle infected everyone around him in the same silly way my sister’s laugh does. My mom listened as I cried/yelled/almost-hyperventilated into the phone, and when I finally got calm enough to get a full sentence out, I told her, “Sometimes I think maybe I’m just destined to be alone. That I won’t get married, I won’t have kids of my own. I’ll just be Gramm’s really cool Aunt Andrea.” New sobs. Fresh wave of despair. But an odd sort of comfort, too. Being an aunt would never substitute for being a mother, but it was still an opportunity to love some pretty amazing kids. Deep down, I knew I’d take it. So that was that. I would be Gramm’s really cool Aunt Andrea.

Two weeks later, I was standing in the bathroom at work, staring at a pregnancy test that said “Pregnant.” I just stood there, waiting for the “Not” to fade in beside that big, heavy word, knowing that it wouldn’t. Part of me had known for weeks that it wouldn’t, but I had managed to bury the knowing and tell myself that it couldn’t be – it wouldn’t be. Hours later, I was asleep in one of the exam rooms at the clinic where my mother worked when she came in with the results of my blood test.

“Well. Do you want a boy or a girl?”

I spent the rest of the day in stunned silence, staring into space. My sister Holly, Gramm’s mom, knew. She called to check on me – or she might have come by, I don’t recall exactly – but my mother asked me not to tell anyone else at least until after the weekend. Not in an Emily Gilmore give-me-and-your-stepdad-time-to-flee-to-the-Hamptons-before-you-break-the-news kind of way. More as a way for me take some time to steady myself first before the onslaught.

Most of that day is hazy in my mind, with a handful of poignant moments that I think will always be part of my remembering. A few of those moments were things that my mother said to me. I’ve already mentioned a couple of them here. Later that day, though, Mom handed me a pregnancy journal that she had gone out and bought for me. She inscribed it with the words “It is God and God alone who is the Giver of Life.” I don’t recall if she wrote this next part in a card or if she said it, but either way, her words to me were: “Not alone anymore.” And I knew right then that I wasn’t.

And here we are, nine years later to the day, and I’m staring at my sleeping person. She’s wearing her Kermit the Frog sleeping mask from Miss Rebekah and she’s snuggled up next to me, pink manicured nails clutching her stuffed puppy dog named Spot, refusing to wake up because she’s so much like her mother it’s scary.

There’s so much more to the story, and I have no doubt I’ll find a way to more fully tell it someday, but what has stayed with me during this season is the remembering of how I went from being alone to being a mother, and how He overshadowed me with His grace in the process. How He gave me beauty for ashes and showed me even more of what it means to be the Beloved. And that is what I am.

I am my Beloved’s, and He is mine.

Not alone anymore.

My sisters, it’s time to come clean about this terrible thing I’ve been doing to so many of you for years now. It’s not just a terrible thing, it’s a dangerous thing. In fact, it is perhaps the single most dangerous thing I can do to you in our friendship because when I do it, I actually think I’m helping you.

Only here’s the thing: I’m not helping. I’m most likely missing your heart by a Texas mile, and I think it’s safe to say we’ve all had enough of it. We’ve had enough of saying it, and we’ve absolutely had enough of hearing it. Yet somehow we keep saying it, keep having it said to us. I’d hazard a guess that not one of us would have to think beyond last month’s conversations with each other to recall that dreadful moment when these words came tumbling out of someone’s mouth:

“I think you need to…”

I know for a fact I’ve said these words (or a cleverly subtle variation of them) to at least three of the women in my life over the last week, and if we’re really being honest, each poor soul has gotten more than an earful of what I think she needs to do/think/say/pray. So I make my confession in earnest: I’m guilty of doing this. I’m talking to me. But I’m also talking to you as my sisters and friends, as the women sitting across the table from each other.

Not long ago, one of my precious friends had been hurt, and she asked me to pray for her. To this day, I’m not sure of the exact nature of the hurt, and I am glad of it. I don’t need to know. However, not having that information caused me to stumble upon this revelation: I love digging into your problem and telling you how I think it should be fixed. But it’s impossible to solve an equation with multiple unknown variables, so there I was, just itching to tell her what I think she should do next, and I flat could not do it because I didn’t have all the facts. I shot out some generic input that I thought might relate to her situation, and I sent along a couple verses that I thought might encourage (read: instruct) her.

I know that I prayed for her, but I can’t really recall what I said.

Fast forward to a couple weeks later, when my friend and I were discussing this issue again, and I actually told her how terribly tempted I was to try and fix this situation for her. What I didn’t mention was that I wanted to fix it by telling her what I thought she should do – even though I didn’t have the foggiest idea what she should do. Her response was to ask me to pray, and she even told me specifically how to pray.

How much energy had I spent wracking my brain for a solution when I could have been relentlessly bringing her needs to the Father in prayer? So I spent some time intently praying for her, thinking of her, and offering her no other input aside from my love and support. Days later, when she found freedom and joy in being able to move beyond the pain she had suffered, I had the privilege of witnessing her joy and rejoicing with her. And I was free to do all of those things because I wasn’t trying to fix her.

That’s right. At the heart of it all, that’s really what we’re doing. I’m not trying to fix your problem.

I’m trying to fix you.

And you’re trying to fix me. Because you love me. Because I love you. And because we all love a good redemption story, especially if we get to play a leading role. It’s that last bit that gets us into trouble. I can’t redeem you. You can’t redeem me. That’s not our job as women in community. Our job is to lift each other up, to support each other, to walk with each other.

To listen to each other.

I’m not suggesting that we should refrain from speaking Truth into each other’s lives. Not at all. In fact, one of my most favorite things about being in community with women is having the opportunity to share Truth with them from the Scripture that I think will encourage or comfort them. By all means, let’s keep doing that. I’m also not suggesting that we should ignore the Spirit’s prompting if we truly discern that we’ve been given a specific word for a sister. Some of the most encouraging things ever spoken to me have been prefaced with, “I believe the word God has for you here is…” Still, discernment is critical in this, and we ought to tremble at the thought of telling someone we’ve been given a word for them unless we truly have. (Likewise, we should be discerning on the receiving end of this.)

So, no. I’m not suggesting a gag order. What I am suggesting is that we should fight the urge that rises up in our chests and has us convinced that we have just the thing for whatever is ailing our sisters. I am the great physician of no one’s heart. Just look at how I’ve managed to butcher my own over the years. Lord have mercy if I try to perform surgery on yours.

Recently another sweet sister reminded me of the power of praying with someone in the middle of their pain. So many times we offer to pray for each other. And that’s great – we should keep doing that. But to pray with someone, right there in that moment? It’s a way of saying: “I’m in this with you. I will help you carry this hard and heavy and bewildering burden. I will speak for you when you feel strangled. When your confidence is shot and the throne of grace is miles away, I’ll approach both for you and with you. You are not alone and I believe there is a cure and I can’t give it to you but I will be here with you while you wait for it.”

So late last night when one of my dearest and oldest friends told me about this cavernous, deep grief that has her gasping for air in the middle of the Most Wonderful Time of the Year and my heart ached for her and for my own inability to make it all okay, I remembered…pray with her. So I did. It didn’t fix her. Her grief is still there today. It will likely be around for a long while. But she at least knows that she’s not alone. She knows that someone else sees her pain and cares and is for her. She knows someone is in her corner.

And isn’t that what we’re all really looking for from each other, what we’re silently begging each other to affirm? Tell me I’m okay. Tell me my need is not repulsive. Tell me I’m worth fighting for, fighting alongside, fighting on behalf of…tell me I’m not alone.

Because when you tell me I’m not alone, oh, how you remind me that He is near.

I saw an article over the weekend with a link to a video of young Christian men talking about what they’re looking for in a future wife. I didn’t have to watch the video to know its purpose or what the young men said. Essentially, it was meant to encourage young women to pursue holiness and purity in their lives because, well, husbands.

When I was growing up, we may not have had links to online videos, but we were handed the same checklist of virtues every Christian girl should possess in order to attract a good, godly husband. The checklist was chock full of great characteristics for any person – male or female – to possess. The checklist wasn’t the problem.

See, it’s not the suggestion that a woman should pursue virtuousness that troubles me. What I find so disturbing is the suggestion that this list of virtues is the gold standard for winning a good husband, and if you fall short, you’re flat out of luck.

Twenty minutes before I saw that article and the video that I didn’t need to watch to have already seen, I’d yelled swear words and laid on the car horn in a spectacular episode of Valentine’s Day traffic road rage. All with my 7 year-old in the car.

Yeah. Those guys on that video and that I grew up hearing about? That sort of behavior is not on their list.

In fact, I’ve spent more years living the antithesis than I’ve spent living their ideal. Which means I also spent more than a few years believing I’d lost my chance at having a good husband, at deserving a godly man and a blessed marriage. I used to believe that my singleness was proof-positive that my love life was utterly beyond redemption.

I don’t believe that anymore.

What I’ve come to believe and know is this: I am worthy of a good man (because Jesus), and if I never end up with said good man, I can still live life whole. Complete. Fulfilled. Joyful. (Also because Jesus.)

So it breaks my heart and raises my ire that we continue to teach our daughters that they have to become the kind of girl a godly man will want to marry. Sure, there’s a heap of well-meaning behind that message, but here’s the translation:

Only the best girls get the best men. Oh, and by the way, being the best girl is impossible but you’re sure gonna try and maybe by some miracle you’ll end up with a good man anyway and you’ll learn to live with the fact that you’ll never quite measure up for him. And if you don’t end up with a good man, well, you know why. Sinner.

It seems ridiculous, but when you really break it down, it’s the message we’re sending.

But the message I wish I’d grown up with? The truth I’m desperate for my daughter to hear?

You are loved. You have value. You are counted worthy in Christ, whose blood speaks a better word than the blood of the very first sacrifice and that is the Word that counts. No word of any mortal man – and no checklist for that matter – can define your worth. You are pursued by the Creator of the universe and He loves you with a fiery everlasting love and any man who steps in line to capture your heart is laying foot on ground where angels fear to tread.

You have a calling. You have a destiny. It may include a husband, it may not. Your calling is dependent upon the power of the Holy Spirit at work in you and not on any external set of circumstances, 2-carat bridal sets included.

You are beautiful. You will become even more beautiful as your story unfolds. Some of this beauty you’ll earn the hard way – by passing through fire and handing over what’s left of your dreams, your hope and your dignity in unrecognizable piles of ashes and somehow having your soot-covered hands cleansed and your head anointed and your face uplifted and finding yourself and your story more beautiful than it ever was before you chose wrongly or someone wounded you or life just happened.

But most of all…very, very, very utmost-most of all, there is Someone who’s already said what He’s looking for in a woman – in every single one of us.

He wants the women who are captives. He wants the women who are broken-hearted. He wants the women who have been stripped of their dignity. He wants the women seeking, the women wandering, the women serving, the women struggling. He wants to free us, to heal us, to comfort us, to restore our dignity, to lead us and show Himself to us.

Yes, He wants us all – and He wants all of us.

And this is where we see just how intensely He cares about our character and the state of our hearts. This is when we have the joyful privilege of beginning to see the women He created us to be. He wants us to seek Him and know His Word and as He refines us He wants our faces to reflect His glory for His glory.

And that is your purpose, daughter. That is why you were made in His image, the most beautiful image of all images: for His glory.

Let yourself be wooed by the Father. Hear and believe that the King is enthralled by your beauty. Seek His face. Run to Him for shelter. Walk with Him because He is oh, so worthy, and you need Him oh, so much. Delight yourself in Him. And yes, He will give you the desires of your heart, but daughter, you haven’t even begun to imagine what those desires will become once He has become your delight.

Can we teach our daughters these truths? Can we live them ourselves? It’s not too late for them, for our daughters. And hear me when I say this, married friends and single, hear me pleadingly say this:

It’s not too late for us.

Hear and believe that the King – the King eternal, the Lord, mighty in power – He is enthralled by your beauty. You come to Him in rags and He clothes you in salvation. You come to Him barren and rejected and He covers you with a robe of righteousness as resplendent as any bride’s jewels and when He looks upon you He is not just mildly impressed, He is enthralled.

Hear, sisters. Hear and believe, and in our believing let us show our daughters just how much they are worth.

I was standing at the Robert Is Here farm and fruit stand in Florida City after a lovely visit to the Everglades National Park when I pulled my phone out of my purse and noticed I had a missed call. From a 1-800 number. And they left a voicemail. If you’re just three hours from boarding a plane, a voicemail from a 1-800 number is a pretty bad omen. Sure enough, an automated voice ever so casually told me that my flight home had been cancelled, but – hey, good news, traveler! – they had taken the liberty of re-booking me on a flight tomorrow morning.

My daughter would be waking up tomorrow morning, 1200 miles from here, and I had promised her I would be there when she woke up. I’m pretty serious about keeping my promises to her.

Five minutes before, I was picking out a banana and wondering how in the world one would even begin to make key lime honey and thinking about how odd it was that I was looking at palm trees while most everyone else I know was freezing their rears. Blame it on the low blood sugar or my tired brain, but after getting that voicemail I knew only one thing: a flight home tomorrow morning is unacceptable. I have to get home tonight. Only I didn’t have the foggiest idea where to start in somehow getting myself home on schedule.

I was in Miami for work, and a group of us had ventured out to the Everglades National Park after the meetings ended. There were gators and great blue herons and anhingas and the aforementioned fruit stand. But I was tired. This meeting had taken it out of me.

I sit on the Board of Directors of the Association of Real Estate License Law Officials (ARELLO). The Miami meeting was our annual Leadership Symposium, when we meet to talk about where we are, where we’re headed, what we need to do, etc. In the space of 48 hours, we go from big picture, vision-casting conversation to updates on the day-to-day workings of the organization and planning next steps for our projects. It’s a bit of a whirlwind, actually.

Back up to about 90 minutes before the ominous flight cancellation voicemail, when we’re in the Everglades. As we were walking along the water’s edge – you know, where the gators live – I was thinking about how badly I wanted to get home. How much I missed Olivia, and how weary I was. Then I realized: I’m in the Everglades. Seeing alligators. And not freezing my rear like everyone else back home. How about maybe I enjoy these last few moments in Florida instead of wishing my time away while I’m in this really neat place?

I resolved to do as much. And I think I did alright. Right up until that fruit stand voicemail.

All I could do was stand there, staring at my friends, trying to figure out what to do next. This is when it’s a good time to be traveling with regulators. Jeanne ordered everyone to the car. I called American Airlines. MiChell patted my arm and told me it was going to be okay. Kevin and Richard helped navigate our way back to the hotel. And Jeanne drove like a bat outta.

“This is what you’re going to do,” Jeanne said. “We’re going to the hotel. You’re going to fly upstairs and grab your bags. Then I’m taking you to the airport, and you’re going to talk to a ticket agent, and you’re going to cry, and they’re going to find a way to get you home tonight.”

If you’ve ever been to Miami and tried to get from any point A to any point B, you know that their traffic can be absolutely horrendous. We didn’t hit a stitch of it the whole way back to the hotel. I did as Jeanne said – flew upstairs, grabbed my bags, and we loaded up for the airport. I thought about the scene in Home Alone when Kevin’s mom is trading her first class tickets, money and jewelry for an elderly couple’s seat on the next flight home, and I took a mental inventory of anything I had on me just in case it might come to that. It was not an impressive list.

As soon as I saw the American Airlines ticket counter, my heart sank. The line was incredibly long and it was not moving quickly. I tried to tell myself that these people weren’t all other passengers trying to renegotiate cancelled flights, but that I’d just arrived at a peak check-in time. Then I heard two women talking to each other about their cancelled flights. Then a woman yelling at a ticket agent in Spanish. Then a woman just past her, sobbing at another ticket agent, mascara streaking down her face. And the rest of the people – the ones who didn’t look angry or frustrated – they just looked tired.

I didn’t want to be angry. I didn’t want to be frustrated. And I was tired, but I didn’t want to look it.

I had this crazy idea: what if, instead of standing here worrying about what’s going to happen when I get to the ticket counter and absorbing the frustration all around me, I made a gratitude list instead? After all, today had been pretty spectacular in some spots. So I got out my journal, right there in the ticket counter line, and I wrote, to name a few…

-Jeanne and MiChell hustling me to the airport
-no traffic all day
-grace that is greater
-comfy jeans
-karaoke in the Uber! JOURNEY! (you’d have had to be there…)
-“I ate shrimp pancreas for you.” (see above)
­-all these people hopeful to get home or fly away

It was easy to be grateful in the Everglades surrounded by beautiful birds and mysterious reptiles and tall green grass swaying in the breeze. It’s not as easy to be grateful in the middle of a dingy, stale-air airport full of harassed and helpless travelers and even more harassed employees. But the thing I just keep finding about gratitude is that once you start thinking of gifts, it’s actually hard to stop. The list above isn’t all I wrote, and I absolutely could have written more.

Finally, it was my turn to talk to a ticket agent. Her name was Raquel, and she was kind. At first, she told me there simply weren’t any options. The problem was the weather in Chicago, and I would have to wait until tomorrow morning to leave. I started to walk away, then I stopped. I told her I had promised my daughter I would be home tonight. I had to get home tonight. Was there any way she could get me home tonight? She looked at me, thinking, and then she said, “Let me try one more thing.” That thing didn’t work, but it did lead us to a new solution: Memphis. She could put me on a nonstop flight to Memphis. And I could rent a car from there.

Four hours later, I was flying (read: obeying the speed limit) down I-40, headed to my daughter. Headed home. My NPR podcasts were keeping me awake, and – again – in a place where you just expect terrible traffic, there wasn’t a stitch of it. No wrecks, no construction backups. I pulled into the driveway at 11:00 pm last night, on the nose. Forty minutes sooner than I was scheduled to arrive at the Little Rock airport on my original flight home. I was tired, but I was grateful. The day had gone just as it was supposed to go, and it had really been beautiful.

But then this morning, I woke up and started thinking of everything I had to do – the unpacking, the grocery shopping, the facing of a house I was certain I’d left a bit of a mess – and I bid my serenity adieu. I’ve been cranky all day (I may or may not have been a total horse’s rear when I was dropping off the rental car in Little Rock over something that was not nearly as big a deal as I made it out to be), and earlier I found myself wondering: how did I go from yesterday and all that grace to today and all this barking?

I think it’s all in the lists we make. I wrote about this about a week ago, after reading what Ann Voskamp wrote about lists. Yesterday, I’d made gratitude lists. This morning, I’d made my to-do list. A tired, travel-worn, brain-fried me made an impossible to-do list, knew it was impossible, and attempted it anyway. And I was mad at everybody because of it.

When we are hard on ourselves, we are just that: hard.

Right now, I’m sitting on my bed, hair still wet from the shower, with clothes piled all about and dinner waiting to be made, and I’m putting that list down. I’ll get what’s necessary done tonight. There’s a weekend ahead of me to do the rest. And what’s necessary?

Dinner.
Snuggling.
Resting.

And maybe calling that rental car place and apologizing for being such an intolerable pill this morning…

As this year has drawn to a close, I’ve had a hard time thinking back over 2014 with anything besides regret and disappointment. Regret over decisions I’d made and disappointment that I haven’t finally gotten this life thing down. I mean, wasn’t this the year I was supposed to finally do that?

It’s no wonder that as soon as we cleared Christmas, I started gearing up for 2015 (read: getting ready to make 2014 eat. my. dust). So when the email from Ann Voskamp where she wrote about going into the New Year without fear hit my inbox, my first thought was: I am sooo one step ahead of you, sister. I don’t even need to read this.

Except I wasn’t. And I did.

Ann wrote about her daughter’s piano recital and the adjudicator’s words that I’ve had taped to my computer monitor for a while now, the grace-filled echo of something my mother told me when I first started playing piano these 30 years ago. Ann wrote about the lists we play in our heads at year-end, how the list of our failures is the wrong list to be playing, that we ought to instead be playing our gratitude lists.

It sounds so simple – this gratitude list – and sometimes I think we regard gratitude as such, and ourselves so ever-loving above it. Lord, save us from our ignorant pride that keeps us from Your joy.

I thought about the list I’ve been playing, largely in the minor key, this sad, broken refrain, and I thought: wouldn’t it be nice to head into the new year with a list of 2014’s gifts instead? So instead of telling you how much I failed at life this year, could I maybe tell you how much grace filled these days? Some of them will be big heaping piles of obvious grace. Some of them will be seemingly insignificant smatterings here and there. But the more I’ve made my list, the more I’ve realized: this year has been a year of grace. Not mine, of course. But His. And so I begin.

January 2014 – The (Almost Entirely) Free Remodel. House flood and homeowner’s insurance means new floors and bathroom cabinetry that I love and got to pick out myself. And now I also know I can survive a major home renovation.

February 2014 – It’s a Girl! My baby niece was born, safe and sound,
making 9 lovely nieces and nephews – 10 grandkids in all from these four
girls.

 March 2014 – #bostonbaby. Olivia and I got to spend a week in Boston
seeing my sister and her brood – including the baby niece. Upon arrival, I
plopped down in the living room comfy chair. Sharla handed me Baby P
and we snuggled and snoozed as the afternoon sun warmed the room and children wandered in and out, cousins playing together so naturally after almost three years of not seeing each other. Baby P and I, we stayed right there until dark. Never have I been able to be in Boston so soon after one of Sharla’s babies was born to hold and know them in their newness. It was easily the sweetest moment of our trip.

April 2014 – WOO. I spent four days away from it all and I got to know these seven women who have made my life rich in a way I didn’t even know it was poor. You know, in the church, we call each other ‘sisters’ in the sense that if we’re both believers, we’re sisters. But these women – these women are my sisters. As in, I’ll fight a bear for any one of them. A real freaking bear. It’s eight months now we’ve been on this journey together, and I still marvel at this gift, this grace.

May 2014 – The Anchor. There was this thing that I kind of had a feeling was happening, and it was an unpleasant thing. So I asked myself, what would I do if this thing actually happened? Would it destroy me? The answer was no. It would hurt, but it wouldn’t destroy me. In fact, I have watched far worse become my good. But as I was thinking this through, the Spirit said to my heart: In every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the veil. And I knew I’d be okay, no matter what.

June 2014 – We Made It. In early June, I spent several days in Omaha with colleagues from across the country finishing a revision project we began three years ago. It was a long, hard work, and there were times when I think we all wanted to burn those 200 pages we were revising. But we finished, and we finished well. Two weeks later, I sat in the movie theater watching How to Train Your Dragon 2 with Olivia, and I thought back to when we saw the first movie three years ago, and how we’ve been watching the TV series ever since, and how amazing it was that we’ve made it safely through all those days in between, with all their twists and turns and crazy. And I cried.

July 2014 – Dream      Car. In mid-July, I paid off my beloved Highlander. And it was totaled exactly 15 minutes later. The accident was very scary. It was on the interstate, and a car that should have collided with Olivia’s side of the car somehow missed us entirely, leaving her completely unharmed. After the accident, I started looking for a new ride. One afternoon, I was half-praying, half-snoozing, and I made a list of everything I wanted our new car to have. And at the top of the list: PAID FOR. I refused to go into debt for another car when I’d just paid mine off. Three days later, my snoozy half-prayer was answered. Her name is Stella, and she’s our pimp ride.

August 2014 – The Anchor Held. That thing I’d had this feeling was happening back in May – I found out I was right, it was happening. Mere minutes after I found out, a sweet friend sent me a text. She said she just felt like she needed to remind me that God’s love is an anchor for our souls. That’s right – she said anchor. And right then, right at that moment, I started to feel like myself again – alive. Free. Whole. Anchored.

September 2014 – Fishing. From fishing off the bridge at my dad’s place to hanging out on Nimrod with my stepdad to the absolutely lovely weekend we spent on Bull Shoals with the Keltons where Olivia learned to fish and I learned what it’s like to burst with pure, unadulterated pride over this crazy natural ability you had no idea your child possessed and to not even care that, in the meantime, she is out-fishing you, it was a great month for fishing.

 October 2014 – These Magic Moments. My sister’s birthday
party firepit, going to the shooting range with my stepdad and almost losing
my shoulder – but not my aim, hot air balloon night at MacArthur park with
Rachel, Robin, Ava and Livi, finally getting a sleepover on the schedule with
Holly’s sweet kiddos, Bekah coming to the State Fair with me and Livi and
making sure we had a ton of fun, and singing John Prine by the Maumelle
River.

November 2014 – NoLa and Thanks. Went to New Orleans for work, wore an evening gown and sparkly earrings, walked the French Quarter, saw the St. Louis Cathedral, ate beignets. Came home and faced something scary and dark and gross, and my sweet Ines walked right up into it with me just so I would know I wasn’t alone.

December 2014 – WOO Take 2. I went back, this time as part of the leading team, and got to experience it all again, only this time with my heart a little more whole than it had been earlier this year, and I saw new things in myself – some good and some that make me wince at my still-brokenness. But over it all, grace. So much grace.

There have been lunches and dinners and sleepovers and lakehouse weekends and text messages and phone calls and that one time that I may or may not have slept out in the freezing cold with my amazing friend who may or may not be from Nicaragua. And in all of those moments, grace. Through all of these twelve months, grace. I have been loved well. By my Father and by the people He has let me love and be loved by.

So I’m done calling 2014 a disaster. I’m done mourning what I failed to do this year. Instead, I’m raising my Ebenezer. I am saying: here by Thy great help I’ve come. With never-ceasing mercy streams, His goodness has once again bound my wandering heart to Him.

And, oh, to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be.

I wrote this almost exactly two months ago. I didn’t post it at the time – I just had this feeling that it wasn’t the right time. That rarely happens – I usually write knowing full well that I intend to post what I’m writing. If it is possible for these words to be even truer now than they were then, they are. And they are absolutely more necessary. He is so good to go before us.

It would be really easy to tell yourself right now that you’ve failed.

You’d be wrong.

Sure, you may have stumbled along the way, but you kept moving. And when the time came to turn a corner, you were brave. You took the hard left. You didn’t want to at first, and you could’ve at least delayed some of this pain by staying put. But if there’s one thing you’ve learned on this journey, beloved, it’s that there’s a spacious place right around that corner. There’s healing for that hurt. There’s Truth for those lies.

You tried to do this well and honestly, and you tried to believe the best, and yes, now you’ve seen the worst, and it has wounded you. It has threatened to send you staggering with regret and pain and anger, but here you are, still standing and with a measure of peace in your heart. Because He will not suffer your foot to be moved.

He that keeps you does not sleep for watching over you.

Dear one, you turned that scary corner and He is your guard by night and by day and you can believe the best about Him because every last word of it is true.

He is faithful and kind and loving and honest and He is in earnest when He says He adores you. He is near and He is accessible and He is longing for you to come near.

And He can be trusted.

So wrap up safe in those arms that don’t fail and rest in the knowing – He can be trusted.

Rejoice in the fact that your enemy has not been allowed to be victorious. Revel in the knowledge that your Father has been sending steady-stream comfort.

Rest in the knowing – He can be trusted.

Silence the lies and feast on Truth: you are wholly and dearly loved, you are chosen, you are destined for something beautiful, you are safe, you are His.

You are His.

Is there any truth more wonderful? Any pain that dares surpass the soul-deep comfort of uttering those three little words?

You are His.

And He can be trusted.