my least favorite word

I can tell you with full assurance that I am better at writing than I am at living.  Sometimes I wrap up an entry and feel somewhat decent about what meaning it held for me and the meaning I hope you glean from it.  In spite of that momentary impact, it does not take me long to move on, to forget the momentum beginning in my heart, and to jump with two feet fully back in to the world writing takes me out of for a brief time.  I realize stating up front that I am a hypocrite in every way is not the best way to open this— shattering any credibility I may have built.  But it needed to be said.  I needed to say it to myself.  I am incapable of consistency- in my actions, thoughts, emotions, and disciplines.  What I tell you not to worry about, I will find myself worrying about the very same thing shortly after.  What I think is a silly argument you are having with your husband, I will have an even more ridiculous one within 48 hours- count on it.      

My mind can be a cacophony of thoughts.  And cacophony is my least favorite word, so that is not a good thing.  The whole word is ugly and sounds gross both as I say it and hear it.  And it really is tough to pull any positive meaning out of cacophony: loudness, harshness, disharmony, unmelodiousness.  When is any of that good?  Certainly not when you feel like it is happening in your life. 

I tend to want to blame all of this noise on the fact that I can just be too high-strung, energetic and opinionated, and that if I lighten up a bit the noise will settle.  But I don’t think that’s the answer.  To be perfectly honest, I have no answer.  I do have some ideas about where to find peace and I am betting they have to do with Jesus- but I would be totally lying and insincere if I ended this entry by pretending I know something will change simply by writing down what I think needs to change.

But I don’t think I am alone in this.  I think chances are if you are a living, breathing human being, you hear a lot of noise in your life.  Pray more.  Read your Bible today.  Get a workout in.  Are we being generous enough with our time and money? Don’t buy that magazine, you’ll only compare yourself to who is inside.  Did you call her back yet?  Oh, wow, that woman should not be wearing that skirt.  Shoot, the towels are still in the washing machine.  Why didn’t I volunteer for that?  Am I enough?  Does my life—my heart—make Jesus proud?  (That can be about thirty-five seconds in my brain, and this is without kids.  Please stay my friend when I actually do have one—it is likely to get real ugly then).

I wish I knew where all the noise comes from.  I wish I could control the switch that turns it on and off.  I wish the anxiety, guilt, and that paralyzing sense of feeling misunderstood that comes with it would just go away.  But life is not that simple.  This is the noise that echoes in our hearts all the time: should we have another child?  Did the doctor figure anything out?  Should I support my husband when to my core I disagree?  Did you hear about the accusation against the pastor?  Can we afford it?  Were you able to find a job? Is their marriage ok?  Should I be at home with my baby or continue working?

And what does God say in response: be still.  And in even the shortest moment of quiet you can manage, remember who I am.  I am before time and beyond it.  I formed the ground you stand on, the legs you walk on, and the arms you carry all of the things you love in.  I know your heart, your fears and your dreams more intimately than even you do.  And when things are the most confusing, just remember it is finished, everything you could not do, I did.  Your condemnation went to the cross with me, and I left it there.  Be still.  I want only your heart, you can’t bring me anything else more lovely.  And I’m waiting for you.    

I can only manage today and the noise I hear right now.  I won't be able to change the fact that every day will bring a new noise, and that I will continue to wrestle with the tension of it.  But I can be still.  And maybe all the quiet moments we slowly but surely carve out for our hearts will become the sweetest parts of our walk with Jesus, and maybe we will simply live our way into the melody that brings rest, not confusion.  Maybe the sum of a lifetime's worth of stillness is how we drown out the noise in order to hear the music God is playing: sounds of justice, of burdens being lifted, oppression being broken, slaves being set free, orphans given a home, the hungry being fed, hope being offered to the broken.  Those things we should listen for... I wonder if all the other noise would drown out if we did...

two words that changed everything

The other day I asked Austin what he thought of the name, Autumn. I think it’s just lovely due in large to the fact that its synonymous with fall. I haven’t gotten to experience the crisp bites of autumn air in it’s season’s entirety for years, so I get soft butterflies in my stomach when I can smell the changes and feel the shift in my bones. I’ve noticed the orangey hues are beginning to pop in our neighborhood’s oak trees, and today I slipped on my tan boots, more to look the part of fall than to participate in the practicality of it. It’s a glorious time of year, filled with a bittersweet feeling of what’s to come and a heavy heart of gratitude for the satisfyingly- sweaty summer months.

So in the name of fall I thought I’d share a pre-pumpkin, pre-turkey disclosure of what God has been doing in and through my own heart. Simplicity at it’s finest, but challenge at it’s most profound.

Two words. Thank (and) you.

Everybody has his or her ‘thing’ and mine is my back. It’s testy and moody and decides for itself when it’s going to rock a yoga class and when it’s necessary to wake me up in the middle of the night. Lately, there have been spasms and episodes that have taken me back to the pain I felt right before my back surgery in 2006. I get scared; not as much for the pain but for the process of the pain… the unknown, the setbacks, the yatta, yatta, yatta.

Because there are people out there that love me, I was able to get a massage this past weekend. It was then that it dawned on me that I have been living in a discontented, self-pity trap when it comes to my back. There is no room for God when I’m too busy picking at, fussing about, or criticizing what he created. So, I chose to do something radical. I chose to thank God for my back. I thanked him for the years I’ve been able to be active, I thanked him for doctors that have made it better, I thanked him for the pain that causes me to rest, and above all, I thanked him for my back's incredible limitation. ONLY in the limits of my back am I reminded I’m not invincible, I’m desperately broken and I’m unavoidably needy. I'm the desire of an invincible Lord, broken by my fallen nature and needy for his renewing mercy. All while I was lying there, prayers of thanks filled the room and brought a couple tears to my eyes, which, now that I think about it, probably deeply worried the technician.

I’m finding that with every passing thank you the discontentment I feel about myself, my relationships, and my life’s course, are gently being replaced with a pure and holy contentment for the life I’ve been trusted with, the people that surround me, and ultimately, the God that I pursue. This kind of contentment can only be found in gratitude and it can only last when I take the time to audibly, repeatedly say… thanks... that was a gift.

Often, I find myself being consumed by my past or feeling anxious for the future. And usually, when these thoughts are prevalent, God feels distant, my days seem to blend together and I second guess myself or my worth.  Freedom comes from finding something (anything!) to be sincerely thankful for in every moment. IE: the colorwheel of the flowers bunched together at Trader Joes, the book of Psalms, the work God's done through past wounds, Oreo cookies, quiet moments, or that crazy feeling of knowing I'm living and walking out an answered prayer. 

Thanksgiving is still yet to come, but thanks is giving me much to dwell on until then.  So, as I thank God for readers that somehow deem me worthy of being heard, I invite you to pray your first, second, or 7000^th prayer of thanksgiving to a God from whom all blessings flow.


For now, pass the pie.   

one conversation- two perspectives- one desire

“for to me, to live is Christ…”
philippians 1:21

{kristin}

Every once in awhile, a slight stroke of brilliance comes sweeping across our minds. It's rare, inspired, and often the result of living in the moment just long enough to hear clearly from heaven. It is even more of a rarity when we’re able to experience one of these dazzling breakthroughs in the presence of another human being. Having a partner in crime gives an instant sense of credibility, a shared longing to act, and a common dream tangible enough to recollect and put into motion.

I was able to have one of those moments a few months ago on the telephone with my best friend. One friend on the campus of Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, the other in her car driving north on the 101 in the middle of a scorching Phoenix day.  

As we glued our phones to our ears, we spoke of written words. Words we’ve read and the words we write ourselves. We spoke meaningfully and transparently about how we came upon this love of the written word. We agreed that writing makes us better, makes us feel like ourselves, makes us present, makes us real. And we began to discover the reason our writing makes us feel such powerful things is because it’s oozing, dripping and saturated in the good news of Jesus.

_________________________

{katie}

It is easy for life to feel routine, monotonous, and insignificant.  Way too easy.  If you’re not careful, weeks go by, then months, and then it is years before you notice everything that has happened around you—the changes in yourself, the changes in the people you love, the growth, the lessons learned.  And without ever intending to be, we are stuck in the trap of believing our life is trivial.  And it is a trap.

For more reasons than I can say, Kristin is my best friend.  But if you had heard the conversation we recently had, well, it would just be even more obvious why.  We were talking about writing: about the highs and the lows (there are lots), about why we do it (which is an invaluable question I think we should consistently ask ourselves), about how the delete button is always following closely behind insincerity (because it just doesn’t work to fake it), and about what it does to our soul to be real, and to create something that expresses what we really mean.  And then Kristin adds this:

{You know, Kate, I’ve been thinking a lot about what our writing is and what it means, and it’s like everything always comes back to the gospel.  All we write about has this way of landing back on Jesus; and, just how everything in our lives makes the most sense when we talk about it through that lens.  And that’s exactly how it should be} 

Kristin hit the heart of everything with that statement.  That is exactly what we want our writing to be about: how every day, everything that happens is a part of what God always intended, a reflection of what it means to live in light of the gospel.  There are no meaningless relationships, no unimportant jobs, no pointless discussions.  The good things are gifts to be treasured.  The people we love are but glimpses of what it means to be loved by a Savior.  And the painful moments are longings for our true home. 

_________________________

{kristin}

The gospel is more than 4 laws. It’s more than a one-time prayer. It’s more than church, than memorization. It’s even more than good news. It’s the unshakable foundation of our every move and the electric source of our every thought.  Suddenly, when we shine the light of Jesus on our everyday thoughts and musings, colors are more vibrant, people look more like miracles, and a life we once classified as mundane spins and twists into fruitful motion.

Katie and I refuse the mundane. And that’s because beyond our simple commonalties, we share a deep-sea, sky-high love of Jesus Christ. We believe in his power and choose to see him in all things. He doesn’t promise it’ll be easy or flowing in prosperity, but he does promise perfect love and endless grace, and that’s what we want to rest in.  

We write imperfectly to showcase a perfect God.

_________________________

{katie}

Life is a lot of things, but it is never trivial.  And as much as anything, that is what we want to remind you of when we write.  God is a good, good God.  And the world is full of reflections of this goodness in so many places: early morning quiet, a baby’s laugh, a genuine friendship, a good pizza, the ocean, the first flowers after a long winter, a cozy blanket and just-can’t-put-it-down-book, the hand of your soul mate, sunsets… But all of us know there are plenty of hard things, too: sickness, injustice, scary doctor appointments, arguments, corrupt leaders, poverty, earthquakes, divorce, losing a job—or a leg, or a loved one… And it is all real.

So we write about what is real, and about how everything begins and ends with the Gospel.  And it is our most sincere prayer that you find in our words some evidence that your life matters so deeply, and that for everyone, our joy, our hope, our saving grace, and the deepest longings of our hearts are met in a man named Jesus.        

_________________________

lesson plans

I think I was born wanting to be a teacher.  I once (or twice, maybe more) set up a classroom with my stuffed animals and dolls, then read Little House on the Prairie out loud to them.  In high school I created pretend lesson plans for The House on Mango Street, not as a class assignment but just because I was on a long airplane ride home and could not sleep.  I declared my major as English Education no more than three weeks in to my college career, and I never looked back, never changed my mind, never stopped dreaming of the classroom I would call my own.  True story: I shopped for posters for my future classroom at 17 years old.  My mom still has them.

I loved college partly because I absolutely loved what I was learning.  If I was not taking classes on how to be a teacher, I was reading and writing about the very things I might someday teach: Twain and Stein and Shakespeare and Chaucer, prepositions and adverbs and gerunds and antonyms.  I learned as much from Huck Finn and Scout Finch as I did from Dr. Blassingame and Dr. Kelleher—and I could not wait to introduce my own students to characters who they would relate to more than me.  I was so set on being a teacher, so taken by the idea of impacting lives and imparting knowledge.  In a lot of ways, I still am.

But somewhere along the way, I began only wanting to be the teacher and neglected the learner, as it became more important to me to know the answer—and get credit for it— than to really listen to the question.  My husband gently pointed this out to me yesterday.  As we discussed a really great sermon we had just heard at church, I stepped right in and interrupted his thoughts on what he was learning with my interpretation of them.  He was not asking me for my analysis, he really was not even asking for my opinion.  But for some reason I cannot justify or explain, I felt compelled to give him both of those things.  And I do this much.too.often.  (side note: marry someone who will do this for you- let you know when you are not as right as you think you are, but still love you more than life)

I really don’t love being around people who don’t know what they don’t know.  But I can be that person.  I have always admired people who can answer my questions with a deeper question.  But I seem to answer others with my version of the right answer.  I respect the characteristic of humility more than any other in people.  But I have a tendency to be over-impressed with how hard I am trying to be humble myself. 

As much as I have always wanted to be a teacher, and still want to be, my deepest, strongest desire right now is to be a learner…

I want to learn how to sit across the table from you and hear how hard your relationship is without saying, “Have you read this, or done that, or been to this…”

I want to learn what you are most passionate about, what the dream of your life is, and I want to marvel at it and get excited about it with you, not comment on it and certainly not criticize it behind your back.

I want to learn what you are most afraid of, what makes you anxious or wakes you up at night, and I want to pray with you, not tell you that story of how one time I was afraid of the same thing and it all turned out ok so you will be just fine, too. 

I want to learn more about my real-self, about the things that I am ok at and the (many) areas I need refining.  And I want to learn how to embrace those things so that I am always aware of how little I can do on my own.

I want to learn more about God, His story, and my place in it.  I want to remember to use pencil as I write down the theories of my life, knowing that I will inevitably have to erase many things I thought I knew and tried to tell you were correct.  

If God has a lesson plan for us every day, it might be to teach us something like this:  “You are more sinful and flawed than you ever dared believe.  You are more accepted and loved than you ever dared hope.”  (thanks, Tim Keller).  What a beautiful, humbling and yet hopeful paradox.  Let’s learn to live in that today.  

receive and repeat

Like any outpouring of creativity, writing has its ways of creeping into each fiber of my thinking.  It’s hilarious when ‘my Monday’ comes around how everything in front of me turns into a writing prompt.  A woman’s shoes in the airport spark questions of why on earth we put ourselves through such pain just to walk somewhere. Suddenly, parallels engulf my mind in ways that are as much profound as they are over-thought and well, a little nerdy. Nevertheless, when I finally sit down at my computer (this time my PC courtesy of Arizona FCA) and begin to pick and squeeze at each thought I’ve thought in the past two weeks, there’s always an inevitable, unavoidable topic that circles my mind like seagulls right before they go in for food. Whether I decide to write on the topic or auto-archive it in the back of my mind usually predicts the ease, flow and honesty of the words that follow.

All of that to say, I’ve been wanting to write on a certain thought for the short end of two months. And it can be wrapped up with a silky bow in one word… receive.

I’ve gotten to be a part of a sports camp in Flagstaff for the past seven years (minus the one year I was in St. Lucia on a mission’s trip. Judge all you want, we ‘suffered’ for the Lord on those sandy beaches.) Each summer, athletes and coaches at the top of their game give up a weekend, along with some fireworks, to retreat the heat and breathe in some pine air. I’ve had some form of leadership role at each camp I’ve attended, so if I wasn’t scurrying around as a huddle leader, chasing my boy-crazy, teenage girl campers, I was making sure the new huddle leaders were caffeinated and encouraged enough to keep up with their own boy-crazy teenage campers.   Quite often, those same campers have a first-time interaction with the perfect, loving God of the universe. Soon, they're gladly trading in their boy-crazy for grace-crazy. It’s that intangible, yet recognizable transformation that happens within the soul of a young person that keeps me coming back for more. That, and the wicked cafeteria food.

This past year as I stood in the back of the large room where we have our evening program, I witnessed several strong, grown, athletic boys walking up to receive Christ for the first time. I was captivated by the reckless power and encapsulated freedom receiving allows.  That’s when it hit me. The love I’m able to give out, the love God is able to spill out through me, depends utterly and exclusively on the love I’m willing to receive.  God was moving in hearts, adopting sons and daughters, and shifting all of eternity before my very eyes, and this time, I decided to stop watching and start participating. He had invited me to do so countless times before, but I had politely declined because I needed to be responsible, or I was somehow ‘good’ on the amount of grace and love I had already gotten that day. Um… what? How hardened my heart has become towards grace because I received my ‘get out of jail free card’ 15 years ago, and how tragic to think that the author of salvation wrote this story only to be read or received once.

 Today, I am certain that in order to fully experience and know God I don’t just want to, but NEED to receive his son in an irresponsible, off-the-to-do-list, brought-to-tears kind of way. Every day. Every way. Every single avenue or outlet possible.  I will always have a first time I received Christ, but how radically different would my life look if the last time I received his gift was two days ago? Two hours ago? Two minutes ago? Imagine the available love, the freeing grace, the restored hope and the unshaken faith I would not only live in, but gleefully hand out along the way.

So next time you see, hear, or taste something so good it makes you close your eyes to make it last a little longer, view that moment as an open invitation to receive God’s outpouring love. Every good and pleasant thing is from him, and further, an invite to experience the miracle of grace all over again. What invaluable instruments we could be if we had the courage to truly rest in it. Relish in it. Re-open it. Receive it. And repeat it.

to-do lists

I am about to write about something that I often cannot do.  And while we all know people who certainly live this out a little better than others, I think it is safe to say we all fall short most of the time.  It’s about loving people.  And not merely loving them because we feel like we have to, but really, wholeheartedly loving people. 

I call it loving well. 

And by well, I mean unconditionally, selflessly, purely, joyfully, all the time.

Being showered, covered, filled with love the past few weeks has made me think deeply about loving well.  Mostly, I am seeing the ways I don’t do it and thinking about how much I want it to be one of the things that defines my life, what I want to be known for as much as anything else I accomplish.  Nothing is more life-giving than loving someone, and it is worth doing with intention and genuineness.  As I sit here in a cozy Starbucks in Banff, Canada (because where else would I write?) I am thinking about where I am missing the mark, and I know there are a handful of things I can do to love better.  This list is certainly not all-inclusive, and those of you who know me well could probably—no, definitely— add to it.  But I am blessed with gracious friends and family who love me even though they have all the information necessary to not.  Thank you for that.  For now, here is my “Love well to-do list”:

Listen before I speak.  As much as I may think I understand a situation, I probably don’t.  Human beings are layers and layers of complexity and emotion, and often times I give myself permission to label someone and the situation they are in without their consent.  I use my education, my experience, or worse, my so-called “spiritual-ness” to justify my opinion, and I am finding that this is more damaging than it is helpful.  More often than not, people do not need a diagnosis, they need to be heard, to be reminded that God is good, to be sincerely prayed for, to be cared about.  I think that most of the time, people don’t even want my words as much as they want my ears, but my desire to sound like I have a solution usually trumps their desire to be understood.  Lord, give me a heart that listens before you give me a mouth that speaks. 

Read Galatians 6:14 every day.  As for me, may I never boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Because of the cross, my interest in this world has been crucified, and the world’s interest in me also has died.  The problem is that I want things to boast about… I actually want you to tell me that you like how Kristin and I write and that my hair looked nice and that I am smart and pretty good at my job and will make a good mom some day.  As much as I wish I wasn’t, I am interested in those things.  But I am finding that they bring me more bondage than they do freedom, and I cannot love you well when I am depending on you to tell me good things about myself.  Don’t get me wrong, complimenting, praising and pointing out beautiful things about each other are good, necessary things, and we must keep encouraging in order to love well.  But I know that your applause won’t sustain my joy for very long, and as soon as it stops I am out of love to give you.  My source of joy has to be the cross, every day, all the time, in any circumstance, because the cross is really the only perfect example of loving well.

Celebrate everything.  Sometimes I am reluctant to join others in their joy.  Why?  The options are pride, judgment or jealousy, and all of those are very ugly qualities in someone.  When great things happen to others, I want to be the first to celebrate with them.  And not just by clicking “like” on facebook, but with a phone call that says with sincerity “I am so happy for you!”  There have been times when I was so blinded by my own myopic thoughts that I have missed a chance to love someone well.  At certain times in my life, whether is has been an outfit, a job, an engagement, a house, or a baby…  if I wanted it and someone else got it, I did not truly celebrate with them.  I may have done something on the surface, but my heart was more envious than happy.  There is no love in pity parties, but there is more love than we know what to do with in celebrations.  Whether it is a big thing or a small thing, I want to celebrate all that is good with no thought of myself.  I want to love others by adding my joy to theirs. 

Write down my prayers for others.  In my opinion, “I’m praying for you” is one of the most over-said and under-done phrases in the world.  And it’s because it is such a powerful phrase that is way too easy to say.  When I tell someone I am praying for them, there is a part of me that feels like my work is done.  “There, I did the Christ-like thing to do and threw out the prayer card, now… on to my life’s concerns.”  But then I have moments when I remember that life is much too hard for trite offerings to pray.  If I am not actually going to stop and pray, I should be ashamed of myself for even saying it.  For me, the discipline of praying for others comes in my journal, in actually putting words to paper and offering those thoughts to the One who knew them before I did.  Praying for others reminds me that at any given moment when I feel my life is tougher than anyone understands, a hundred hard things are happening to people I love, and they need me to not say I will pray, but just pray.  They will pray for me when I need it, too.  Prayer, real prayer, is loving someone well.   

Send real mail.  This one is simple, and who honestly does not like getting real mail?  There is something about hand written notes that makes us feel a little extra cared for, because whoever wrote it took more than two minutes, thought it was important enough to pay 44 cents for a stamp, and loved me enough to want me to have that moment of happiness when I grabbed her letter from the pile.  I want to do the best job I can of reminding people that I think they are pretty great, and every so often I want it to be a little more than a text.  I want to give others something to put in their drawer and pull out at the right moment, when they need a reminder that they are loved.  I have kept almost every letter ever written to me since third grade, because the words in them still make my heart happy.  Sometimes loving well is the simplest gesture with the biggest impact. 

I am an unbelievably blessed girl, well beyond what my life deserves.  I am more thankful for a God who is merciful and friends with exclusive memories than I can say.  But it is one of the most genuine desires of my heart to love others better than I do.  I have freely been given love, and I want to give it just as freely.  I’ll start with my list, but I can only hope over a lifetime it’s not a list but Christ in me doing all the loving.  

my best friend's wedding

This past weekend my best friend got married. There’s something magical, delightful and gleefully fulfilling about getting to witness a union so shaped and molded by God’s hands that it could be labeled a masterpiece before ‘I do’s’ are even spoken.  Maybe it was the sunflowers bursting out of our bouquets, the gentle breeze that danced Katie’s veil in rhythmic motion, or the giddy, school-kid love of two people desperate to share life together. Whatever ‘it’ was, it was good. It was a little slice of heaven wrapped in each embrace and every banana cupcake. It was a taste of eternal in toasted, sparkling champagne. It was a glimpse of everlasting as guests of every age danced and laughed well into the night. We celebrated love and believed deeply in its force and freedom because of the bride and groom in front of us.

Katie glowed with an effortless kind of ease. She smiled bigger than I had ever seen her smile before and cherished her day in pure beauty and grace. Although there were countless memories written in permanent marker in my mind, there were those special, extraordinary moments that, if captured on film, would launch Kodak’s marketing department into ‘kodak moment’ advertising nirvana well into the next decade.  Still, as I sorted through the snapshots of Katie walking with her dad, Alex dancing with Katie’s four-foot-nine little Nanni, Emily tearing (as in cry) up during our speech, and my sister tearing (as in bust a move) up the dance floor, there was one incredibly special moment that I will hold captive as I look back on this weekend for the rest of my life.

If you know Katie Blackburn at all, chances are you’ve gotten Starbucks with her. That’s what she does, and what other people do with Katie. So the fact that I got to go with my best friend to Starbucks the morning of her wedding may not seem like such a big deal. But, I have to thank our venti soy chai latte and our grande iced coffee with sugar-free vanilla and room for being the means to the conversation that got to take place that morning. We sat in the Pleasanton Starbucks between one young man ferociously typing on his computer (perhaps a Berkley law student) and another older gentleman enjoying his morning paper as much as his morning scone. Two girls in their twenties, giddy with anticipation of what the day would bring, sat and chatted for a bit. We talked through the day, finalized some last-minute planning, and ended each new thought with… “Wow…I can’t believe it’s here.”

 Katie would well up with a few tears and then explain herself and her tears in a way that deemed them silly or inappropriate.  For the record, the only thing silly when it comes to crying in front of Kristin Stockfisch is an explanation of tears. If one only knew the water works produced by this 6 ft blonde, no future friend (or complete stranger for that matter) would ever feel the need to explain his/her flooded emotion. So on her wedding day, I got to cry a little with my friend. Not because she was scared, anxious, or unprepared but because she was grateful. Katie sat in her pj’s with her hair up and her flip flops on and cried because in God’s rich grace and renewing mercy she sat overwhelmed by his love. She shook her head looked off in the distance and just couldn’t feel like she deserved the love she felt from her family, her friends, and ultimately her groom-to-be.

There are a lot of things I love about my friend. But on August 13^th I got to look her in the eye and tell her how much I love her humility. If only I could approach every day with the kind of undeserving reverence that Katie had that morning, I might finally understand what this grace thing is all about. It’s only in the moments when we feel significantly low in the face of a perfect God that he pours out his undying love on us in a way that takes us higher than any substitute this world might offer. Katie soaked in a heavenly dose of God’s grace that day and it humbled my heart to get to with her.

So Katie, thanks for making the real thing the real thing on a day that is supposed to be centered around ‘you.’ Thanks for crying because of how undeservedly grateful you felt, and thanks for reminding me that the shadow of the cross is the only place where we can be equally moved and rested in the presence of saving grace.

To your forever love as Mrs. Blackburn,

cheers.