my words

Hope is my very favorite word.  We can all do without many things, but none of us can do without hope.  When you have hope, you have confidence, anxious expectation, optimism, courage, faith.  You believe in something good, something more holy, something only God can do.  Hope is so beautifully sustaining, so motivating, so encouraging, so necessary.

Creativity is a gift.  It makes something so seemingly ordinary turn into something we can’t take our eyes off of.  It sees yellow and blue stripes where there once was a white wall.  It brings energy where there once was apathy.  Creativity fixes things, it brings joy, it offers a new chance at something we thought was done.

Composure is a blessing.  We want someone steady when we are scared.  We want to believe we can hold it together through hard seasons.  We want our faith to carry us through anything our doubt may throw at us.  Composure is assurance when all we want to do is unravel.  Composure is admirable, even enviable in those who carry themselves with it. 

Inspiration is life-giving.  It is a reminder that tomorrow holds all the potential we thought was lost today.  It makes us better.  When we cannot find one more thing within us to give away, a little inspiration fills the emptiness.  It renews and restores.  It happens in a vintage coffee shop, with a blanket and fascinating book, in a conversation, anywhere.  We can give it and receive it.  Inspiration makes change possible.   

Humility is the loftiest thing we could hope to attain.  It is gentle and quiet, it seeks others before itself, it remembers who He is when all we want to think about is who we are.  It serves without expectation and follows in the steps of the only perfect Man who ever lived.  It requires nothing but offers everything.  It is the most beautiful thing in the world. 

Love is the answer.  It is patient and kind.  It does not get jealous of others or act pretentious and entitled.  It does not remember what happened before, and it always keeps an eternal perspective.  It finds room for grace.  And more grace.  Love has lost interest in comparison and moves intimately close in compassion.  And it really is all we need. 

I will fall often.  I will see myself before I see you.  At times I will forget that God is really, really good.  And I will need forgiveness, from you, from myself, and from my Savior.  But when it is all said and done, I want to be known for those words.  Not my house or my clothes or my job or the size of my jeans.  But in the way I actually lived out my love for Jesus.  Those are my words.  What are yours?       

sunlight

On a dreary, weathered day in Wheaton my heart beats hard for the Arizona sun. Mere months ago I can remember yanking down the visor in my car to block the harshness that desert sun beams at odd hours close to sunset. I would drive around, in complete frustration that I was experiencing the 163^rd straight day of sunshine. When you live in Arizona, you think clouds are cool. You think rain boots are a fashion statement over any portion of practicality. You dream of ‘cozy’ days inside to drink tea and wear slippers because it’s… (gasp cued here) 55 degrees outside.

I was such a poser. I lived a sunny life slightly out of touch of reality and in a constant fairyland of unused defrosters, and untouched wiper blades.  But on a day like today in Illinois, I turn the lights on in the house at 3:30 p.m. and play my new favorite game online.  The game goes like this… www.pinterest.com, sign in, search ‘sun’… pin, pin, pin. Search ‘sunlight’… pin, pin, pin. Search ‘regret’. (Just kidding on the last one. )

In step with the weather today, I found out some sad things from friends that I know, received prayer requests for real pain and real hurt from others I don’t know, and took the time to glance at a few headlines of this wild world around me, and suddenly there was a pit in my stomach from the digestion of how dark, feeble, and how incredibly ruthless this world can seem.

Where is the hope? What does true deliverance from pain feel like? Can we really heal? How do we even begin to make sense of all this darkness? What is it that gives our human hearts relief from that achy, hungry feeling that this world really is… it?

Jesus is becoming more and more the beginning and the end in my life. He’s what makes me feel like nothing in a way that gives me grace-covered confidence. He increases in me when I get smaller. He heals parts of my heart that I neglected to label as broken. He makes new of my old, tireless tendencies, redeems what I don’t deem worth his time, and chuckles to himself when I squint my eyes to try to imagine just how good heaven might be.  

There’s a light that’s ridiculously harsher than the setting, Arizona sun. There's no blocking this light with a visor or a pair of Ray Bans. Jesus is the light of a world spun out in darkness. And whether it’s perceived through a ray of sunlight, a burning bush, or at the end of long tunnel, one thing is for certain,

“this light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.” John 1:5

undivided

Can you imagine a completely undivided life?

One in which the answers were always clear and easy.

The grey areas fell nicely into black and white.

The purposes and the resources aligned.

The tension and the solution were comfortable.

My will and His will were unmistakably the same.

Until then, I’m praying…

That my actions always come before my words

That my heart rejoices at redemption as much as it cries at injustice

That I celebrate before I complain

That I understand before I judge

That I listen more than I speak

That I seek until I find

That I love without comparison

That I serve without expectation

That I give as much as I take

That I live with intention

Inspired by grace

Sustained by hope

Forgiving

Laughing

Remembering 

 I have only one life that was never supposed to be about me

Until I can sit in your presence and understand your beauty

May my heart rest in knowing You are the same

Yesterday

Today

Forever


{Inspired by my friend Emily Wilkens, who uses her creativity, writing, and life for so much good in this world}


*Picture courtesy of Nancy Merkling

let us go

I can remember growing up tall. Before volleyball came into my life as a means to explain why on earth a girl would be so tall (it was my choice after all), I owned property in the back row of pictures, spent hours looking for cute shoes with no heel, and felt as if I was constantly in the way of other tweens trying desperately to steady the boat of the status-quo.  Lately, those feelings of being in the way have resurrected in my life, but in the vertical relationship I have with God as opposed to the vertical human he created me to be.

I am a friend who asks a lot of questions. If you know me, most likely you’ve been on the receiving end of these bullet passes that come with force and maybe even make your hands hurt a little bit. I have a tendency to skip past the line of ‘too personal’ to truly get to the bottom of the heart God has made. I know that hard questions lead to conversation worth having. And if friends are transparent (and brave) enough to answer these questions in truth, I see God in that person in a way that allow the prayers I pray later to flow with an effortless ease.  One of the questions I like to ask most is, ‘What is God teaching you and how is he moving in your life lately?’  It’s one of the most revealing and illuminating truths any friend could answer. 

These questions are great. They deepen friendships and bring life to new relationships. They’re great, you see, until they get turned on me.  When pressed with the question, ‘How’s God moving in your life these days, Kris?’ I panicked to come up with the last time I allowed God to do the moving.

I have gotten in the way of the things God has wanted to do. I’ve gotten in the way of things God has wanted to say through me, and I have gotten in the way of prompts I know God has wished I would pursue because I, in my very natural imperfection, have been scraping, trying and working to be the best little servant God could’ve ever asked for. It’s as if I know there’s a distant diving board high above the sky that I’m sure will catapult me into the pool of God’s presence. So I climb and climb and climb the ladder in eager hope of one day reaching the high board that will launch me into the cool, refreshing water of his love.  All along, the savior of the world, in his perfect strength, gentle whispers and humbled brilliance has been watching me climb this ladder from the platform of the pool, tenderly inviting me to jump in to the same water without the sting of a sky-high belly-flop.

There are profound words in Hebrews that speak such life into my soul “let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts, fully trusting him…”

There is nothing more, nothing less for us to do on our end. Sincerity of heart and a tank full of trust allow us to enter into the most beautiful, absolute place with God. Waters that burst life into our bellies and strike purpose into our spirits can only come from Jesus. Only from the one that has been right there every time the tall girl stepped in front.  He parts it, turns it into wine, washes feet with it, and takes one last, bitter drink of it before glory is upon him. He is the living water and his presence is our thirst.  Let us go. Right into it.

Your corner

Jeremiah 5:27-29

There is a small—maybe large, actually— chance that what I am about to write will come off as judgmental, pretentious, irrational and maybe even completely dismissible.  I hope not, as the truth is that everything welling up in my heart and mind is coming genuinely from conviction and an unbearable sense of hypocrisy in my own life… by that I mean I have been doing everything I will talk about not doing anymore.  I am pretty ashamed of my “Christian” lifestyle—bordering on disgusted.  But I wasn’t always.  Up until maybe a year or two ago I was on the other side of this: I read Irresistible Revolution and thought Shaine Claiborne was a total hippie, biting the hand that feeds him and complaining about Americans—specifically the American church— when we are clearly the best country in the world.  (P.S. I still believe this is an amazing country, and I am thankful every day for what I have been given being born and raised right here in this land of the free).  I also picked up Francis Chan and David Platt, and spent a good few days convicted before I forgot completely the quotes I had just written in my journal.  So I get it, the tension that exists when you hear or read something that challenges our way of life, the American Dream we have been born and raised to pursue in any untethered way we choose.  

And then came Jen Hatmaker.  And she is really messing me up—in all the best ways.  (I should clarify that it is God who is messing me up—but he is speaking directly through an incredible writer, and for her words I am immeasurably grateful).  I read Interrupted shortly before Thanksgiving, and last week finished 7 in about twenty-four hours (not bragging- you will, too, it is that good).  It is not that her voice is brand new, or that she is saying something we have never heard before.  In fact, all she is really doing is reading God’s word and doing what it actually says to do.  Why this feels so novel to me I cannot tell you.  Believers in Christ living like he did.  Has that not always been the point? 

Of course it has.  Then why am I so far from it?  

I could attempt to walk you through my thought processes over the last few days and weeks, but you’d give up reading after a few sentences.  Everything is incoherent in my own mind; getting it all on paper would be a futile endeavor.  I will, however, share a few of the baby steps I am going to take toward acting justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly.

Step 1: Distinguish want versus need, then eliminate want. 
Conviction:     Annual U.S. spending on cosmetics: $8 billion 

Basic education for all global citizens: $6 billion

Yes, this all belongs to one person.  No, it's not all of it.

I am part of this in a terrible way.  I love makeup, all makeup.  But I am (detrimentally) partial to MAC and Laura Mercier (the evidence is in the picture).  At $14 per eye color and probably $25 each for the face stuff, I have roughly $1100.00 in makeup collected over the last few years.  And I didn’t even count the lip gloss or the brushes.  O.M.G. I could have eliminated 90% of this and still had enough to put on my face every day AND have the options to change eye colors every now and then.  For the sake of everyone who sees me on a daily basis, I want to clearly say that I am NOT going to stop wearing make-up.  But I can, and must, tone it down.  I really can only close my eyes and sigh with disbelief at the thought of what 90% of $1100.00 could do for someone hurting, hungry, cold, or alone.

And for the love of Pete, I have two degrees in education!  I believe to the core of my being that the best way to stop the poverty cycle is to get a good teacher in every town and city in the world.  I quoted Wendy Kopp (Teach for America founder), Jonathan Kozol (big education inequality researcher), John Dewey (amazing educational philosopher) and Paulo Friere (who is just pretty cool) in my thesis on the importance of education.  I consider my viewpoints to be right in line with all of these amazing thinkers and doers of high quality education around the world.  “Teach kids to read, teach kids to think, teach kids to create!” has been my mantra throughout my education and now in my profession.  This is one of those places where I probably sound totally pretentious, and I am so sorry.  I say all of this only so that you have a really clear picture of the hypocrisy $1100.00 of makeup really is.        

Step 2: Pay attention to my world.
Conviction:          “If God loves the world, then how might any person of faith be excused for not loving it or justified in destroying it?  Our calling is not contingent on results or the state of the planet.  Our calling simply depends on our identity as God’s response-able human image-bearers.”

Response-able.  Ouch, that is a punch in the gut.  This world has been placed in our care, we are responsible for it.  Also response-able, but I have been failing miserably in this area.  You all probably know that plastic, once it is created, never goes away.  Let me write that one more time for emphasis: plastic never, ever, in a hundred thousand years, goes away.  Our groceries bags?  Here with us forever.  Water bottles?  Lifetime guarantee.  Most baby toys, most parts of a cell phone, most parts of a computer, the $1 Old Navy flip flop sandals—oh and my 4 pairs of Haivianas count too; unless Jesus comes back, all of these will far outlive us… and our kids, and our grandchildren, and great-grandchildren… you get the point.  I think many of us (myself included) just refuse to let our minds think about what happens to all of these things once we are done with them.  We put them in the garbage can, set it on the curb on Tuesday mornings and they are out of our way and out of our lives.  Sort of.  Then we read that plastic molecules are now being found in our fish, in our ground water, in our blood.  Researchers are finding cancers in Pacific Islanders that they have never seen there before.  Why?  Well, although there may be no direct medical, provable link, the fish that make up the majority of these Islanders diets are eating 6 times as much plastic as they are plankton (Does this give you any hint of where a lot of our garbage goes?)

Totally staged picture.  But at least I really have the cups.

Now I know we need plastic, and taken as a whole plastic does a lot of great things for us.  IV tubes, incubators, sanitary packaging, and yes, even the things I scorned earlier like bottled water and cell phones—absolutely life-changing and life-saving innovations!  But those things aside, I think we can all do better.  Let me take my Starbucks habit.  I buy a grande iced coffee at Starbucks… well, often (I already divulged my makeup budget, I am not even going there with Starbucks because I am afraid you will hate me).  If I use and then discard a plastic cup every time I am there, my contribution to the fish problem above is going to be measurable.  Enter the re-usable cups, one courtesy of my friend Emily, and the other courtesy of mom.  I have 2 now.  Absolutely zero excuses to not use these for years.  If I throw away/recycle one more Starbucks cup that did not even need to come off the stack in the first place, you have permission to take away my gold card. 

Step 3: Remember WHO all this matters to.
Conviction:          I’ll answer for my choices… It won’t work to say, “But the church…” or “But they…” or “What about them…” for how we managed our money, our share of the earth.  The “my vote doesn’t really count so why bother?” attitude our generation loves won’t fly when it’s all said and done…  This life is a breath.  Heaven is coming fast, and we live in that thin space where faith and obedience have relevance.  We have this one life to offer; there is no second chance, no Plan B for the good news.  We got one shot at living to expand the kingdom, fighting for justice.  We’ll stand before Jesus once, and none of our luxuries will accompany us.  We’ll have one moment to say, “This is how I lived.”
-Jen Hatmaker

I am about the furthest thing from perfect.  Buying less than I want, using the earth’s resources more responsibly, and any other “step” I can come up with to make me feel like I am doing a better job of being a Christian will be worthless in God’s eyes if he doesn’t have my heart.  But I think I can humbly say for the first time in long time, He has it.  The things I talk about above are an outcome of conviction, not an attempt to get there.  I can see now how the life that I am living, as noise and clutter and stress and everything I dull it with in this world are cleared away, is not how I want to keep living.  No, the cross demands more.  I can (easily) do more.

God is so, so good.  He is forgiving and patient and abundantly kind to his children.  But He is no push-over, either.  He wants hearts and souls back, and get this: we are actually part of his plan for doing that.  Our lifestyles matter to Him and they matter to a watching world. 

From the most humble and repentant hearts, maybe we can say, “Let’s all do more.”  In whatever corner of the world God has put you in, be Jesus in your corner.  

   

I leave with you now with a little more Hatmaker greatness…

I’m just beginning to embrace the liberation that only exists at the bottom, where I have nothing to defend, nothing to protect.  Where it doesn’t matter if I’m right or esteemed or positioned well.  I wonder if that’s the freedom Jesus meant when he said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3).  In order for Jesus’ kingdom to come, my kingdom will have to go, and for the first time I think I’m ok with that.

things that remain

How many “Best of 2011” lists have you already read?  I think I am going on at least five or six now, but I love them- can’t get enough of them actually!  Best books, best recipes, best weddings, best weight-loss stories, best vacation destinations, best movies… I am having a blast comparing the things I read, saw, and did with what others are saying are the best things you could have read, saw, and done in the last 365 days.  The verdict: I am woefully behind in the arts, incredibly non-creative with a dinner menu, and hardly a trailblazing critic when it comes to movies.  I think I can live with that, and as I am a big fan of resolutions, I’ll try much harder in 2012 to check off a few more of the New York Times bestsellers.

I think that we all love the feeling of a clean slate, and bringing in a new year gives everyone the chance to have one.  But it also marks a clear turn in the timeline of our lives, and those are the points that make it easy and worthwhile to stop and reflect on what we have and have not accomplished.  Since most of us put our lives on autopilot and just go, go, go on with the pursuit of a life that makes us feel good about who we are, the built in calendar changes are pretty great and pretty necessary.  I wish I spent time re-capping and re-vamping like I do at the New Year much more often, actually. 

As I look back at 2011 and dream about 2012, I am so, so grateful.  (Side note: can I recommend that everyone start a blog?  By looking back at a year’s worth of writing, I am reminded of wonderful moments, convicting seasons, lessons learned and what an amazing best friend I have in Kristin Stockfisch- who I get to write with.  It is both humbling and gratifying to see the highs and lows of your year as you have honestly written them.  So start chronicling your journey, it is so worth it.)  The sweetest moment of 2011 was, by far, communion at our wedding.  One of my best childhood friends, Kevin, prayed for us, and his beautiful wife, Trisha, sang “Oh the Blood of Jesus” while Alex and I took communion from my college pastor and mentor, Mike Sanfratello.  Behind me were four amazing and wonderful friends: Kristin, Emily, Aubree and Lauren; and watching us make this covenant were so many of our friends and family.  I wish I could relive the perfect peace of the moment, it was as right as anything in my life has ever been.  A glimpse of heaven in this world.

To celebrate a year past and dream about a year to come, Alex and I did something different this New Years eve, a tradition we hope lives on in our marriage and with our family every year of our lives: the prayer jar.  Each of us wrote down twelve prayers for 2012, and one at a time we shared the prayers with each other then put them safely in the jar.  These are the things we have given to Jesus, the things we are praying big for this year, and the things I have no doubt God will take care of in his perfect ways.  After praying together we ate fresh-out-of-the-oven brownies and had a two-person toast with sparkling cider.  So wonderfully and perfectly us. 

While we have all been given the gift of a new year, we all only have one lifetime to live fully the sum of all of these amazing years.  There will always be things to celebrate and moments worth remembering in fine detail.  But what I am most struck with today, in my somewhat rare state of intentional reflection, is that we were all created with the very same purpose for our lives.  Uniquely gifted, specially talented, placed in different circumstances, and blessed with wonderfully different passions… but one divine purpose: to live like Jesus did.  The standard has been set for us, and we have everything we need (which if we are really honest, we don't need very much) to love and honor the very person who paved the way for our hearts to be after God’s.  I want that to be the one resolution I actually keep this year.  And I will make more than my fair share of mistakes along the way: I will argue with my husband, I will judge other people, I will make poor stewardship decisions, I will trust in my own abilities much more than I ever should, I will fail to make time with Jesus a priority, and I will probably be less than fully honest at times, too.  But I know I can do the one thing God is asking me to, and that is trust him. 

Whatever your year looks like, I hope and pray that it is in the sweet spot of God’s will.  May this year be one of living by grace through faith, of finding joy in each day, of getting out of our comfort zones and meeting Jesus there, and fighting hard through the noise of this world to find moments of perfect peace.  With all the newness of this time of year, may we remember that only two things will always remain: God’s word and God’s people—invest your life in those things.