you have no idea

evidence of my poor kitchen management skills. please, no one ever hire me for that job! also: olivia! she exists now, and is even old enough to execute her own creative vision, as shown here.

I am pleased to announce that today, I won the race to be the first awake in my house. I woke up at 5:45 which is usually when my alarm goes off, but I turned it off last night because our evening ended in an argument. Never fun, but you know…if you are trying to live your life with someone else who is also very tired…the cards are sometimes stacked against you.

Happily, all is well now, but you know that emotional residue you wake up with when you go to bed after an argument. I was feeling all of that, not to mention a hint of dread for the day. I am actively recuperating from a period of burnout. It started with Christmas, then a very busy start to 2025, including an abundance of travel for John…yet even as I write this now, I can sense a beginning of a turning of the tides, a gracious reprieve of the acutely crispy way I had been feeling over the weekend. I have been very deliberate in this recovery, and Jesus has more than pulled his weight, I can see that. More on this to come at a different time (because societally, we do not speak openly and calmly about burnout enough, fueling its smolder) but for now, I’m just telling you where I was on the emotional map.

In light of all this, sitting in the quiet, I wanted to read my Bible.

And, I didn’t.

Reading the Bible is hard for me. It is intimidating to me by its mere size and scope; I know enough to know that I cannot interpret every historical nuance as I read, and thus, I am often “reading lost”, which is a thing my college professors told us to do in lit classes; specifically Shakespeare — if you have no idea what’s going on because the language is too obtuse, just read anyway. Maybe it will begin to make sense as you go.

I found that reading Shakespeare was a little easier to piece together than the Bible, though I have been reading the Bible longer than Shakespeare, and have done much deeper study of it and heard many more teachings on it. Not to mention I have experienced it as a word that is, as it proclaims itself to be, living and active.

This does not stop me from feeling a sense of intimidation, nor does it stop me from reading lost. But my favorite way to read the Bible these days is through the practice of Lectio Divina, which is a meditative, prayerful reading of the text. If you have not encountered this practice, I would invite you to search it out for yourself; for me, it has genuinely been a life-changing way to approach the Bible. I have a book with suggested texts for this way of reading, and I chose one at random. Yes, even though that feels a bit coarse…I know that God’s desire to meet with me cannot be thwarted by my coarseness.

I chose this passage, Matthew 24:42-51, and I read it in the Message translation:

You have no idea what day your Master will show up. But you do know this: You know that if the homeowner had known what time of night the burglar would arrive, he would have been there with his dogs to prevent the break-in. Be vigilant just like that. You have no idea when the Son of Man is going to show up.

Who here qualifies for the job of overseeing the kitchen? A person the Master can depend on to feed the workers on time each day. Someone the Master can drop in on unannounced and always find him doing his job. A God-blessed man or woman, I tell you. It won’t be long before the Master will put this person in charge of the whole operation.

But if that person only looks out for himself, and the minute the Master is away does what he pleases—abusing the help and throwing drunken parties for his friends—the Master is going to show up when he least expects it, and it won’t be pretty. He’ll end up in the dump with the hypocrites, out in the cold shivering, teeth chattering.

I was immediately struck by the phrase, “you have no idea when the Son of Man is going to show up.” Tone is really important, here. I didn’t read it as a belittling statement, or as one wielding fear to keep me in line. (both of which I’m sure could be interpreted, though neither strikes me as very Spirit-filled, personally).

I read this to be full of consolation. Consolation, because the idea of not knowing when Jesus is going to appear fills me with a sense of wonder and curiosity about when he might, and those are two qualities I am growing ever more dependent on. Wonder is an antidote to cynicism; it is a way of seeing the world that demands I am not in control, and being not in control is more of a gift to me now than it ever has been (though, I am still learning this…some of my hardest lessons are being won on this ground). Wonder invites; it does not coerce. It is adjacent to play, key to creativity, the posture that lifts my weary head up out of the minutiae.

Secondly, I read it as a challenge — but the kind of challenge that invites, not the kind that provokes. This is the challenge born of love I sense coming to me through these words: Can you remain in wonder today? Can you open your heart so fully to an expectation of me, that it will carry you through this ordinary day? It feels good to be challenged like this. Called up higher. Assured of a nascent competency that can be tested and reproved, so that I can become wiser, stronger, gentler, kinder. More like Jesus.

And isn’t that the thing I want the most? Isn’t that what my children most need from me? Isn’t that the best thing that I have to offer to anyone in my life, both a recurrent figure and one passing through…to embody love?

Yes…I believe it is.

So, even though I had no expectation of myself headed into that moment in scripture, God had something to say to me, and it was deeply consoling and radically challenging at the same time.

Those are the surprises that feed wonder. Those are the seeds I am gathering to sow now, thanks be to God.

going toward

photo via unsplash

I think that to some extent, all writing is about being known. The writer writes to gain a more thorough grasp of her own thoughts, and thus, of herself. The nature of writing in my experience of it is in drilling down deep enough that you can go no further. There may still be murkiness or doubt in the soil where you land — all things cannot be fully known — but it is the writer’s job to push to that furthest expanse, where it is only doubt that obscures, not stones left unturned.

This is identity.

Eventually, after the thoughts are known to the mind of the writer, there comes a second expression of this desire to be known — for the thoughts to be presented in such a way that others can know them, too. To share.

In this way, writing is ultimately an opportunity to give away ideas, to shape the thoughts of others. If art is to provoke thought, and to challenge ideas, writing is the same only perhaps at times it does these things with more specificity.

This is community.

I find that I actually do want to shape people’s thoughts, which I guess is why I feel the compulsion to write. I am a little bit surprised by this in myself, to be honest. I don’t think of myself as persuasive, nor do I like the idea of imposing anything on anyone. but I also sense that this motivation comes not solely from me, but from god dwelling in me — and the united goal between us, it seems, is not to command thinking so much as to be known…and, to be loved.

Most of what I feel a desire to make known is not thoughts I have hatched all by myself — they're more like a collaborative project between him and me. He teaches me to understand, and shows me the way to look at things differently and with radical, transformational hope. It’s a perspective, but a mysterious one and this is what I feel energized to create more points of access to.

This is narrative.

It is by no means a straightforward task.

I love this quote by Stuart Dybek: “I used to think that writing was about saying something, now I’ve learned it is about making something.”

I’m not here to say something, it’s true, I couldn't have always put a finger on it, but that really isn’t quite right. But making something…that is as much a part of me as there ever could be. Making things isn’t a choice, it’s only a measurement in direction, toward or away.

I have been away for some time — and now, it’s time to go toward — however strangely, pathetically, impractically.

for me, it is better to go toward making something in any stripe than it is to go away from it in a shadow of fear. fear brings out the worst in us, and for me right now that looks like being asleep : which is no way to be alive.

It is what we do and do not do that makes us

Negative space and positive, too.

questions with/out answers

whom shall I serve? how shall I spend my time? who best to spend it with? what do I pray for? what do I dream toward? do I have to pick only one? how do I know that I can keep going in one direction long enough to build something? how do I move from being like a fountain to becoming like a river? how do I start moving again when i’ve been at (what seems like) a very long standstill? how do I know the difference between steady treading and stagnation? how much of it is mine alone to figure out, how much is divine leading? who can tell me where to go / what to do next? can anyone? how will I know when it’s right? how do I know if it’s wrong? how do I lean in when I’m not sure which thing to lean into? how do I move from surviving to living again? how do I do the next right thing instead of just the next thing? what if I never learn to do things differently? what if balance is forever out of reach? what if all I ever do is dream and not act? will I matter ?

Yes, you will matter, and what’s more — you already do. Just take whatever step is before you to take today. Only today. Only one step. You can, and you will.

there are snakes in every river

took this photo of him on wed. he was so happy.

Has this ever happened to you? It’s a weird thing where you’re so deep in really focused thoughts -- the kind of thoughts where you’re untangling some things in your mind -- when something starts happening around you that seems so relevant to the thought that you begin to wonder if you’re imagining what you saw?

Know what I mean? Let me tell you what happened today. Maybe it’ll make sense within some context.

So, I took the morning off. I had our babysitter come to spend the morning with Arie so that I could take my books and head for the river. 

I knew I wanted to go back to the river because I took Arie there on Wednesday. We had been meeting some friends and for some reason, I was feeling really drawn to this specific stretch of the river, so we met there. It ended up being a positively glorious day -- no exaggeration. It was perfect. Sunny and warm but not humid; a total anomaly for Georgia in June. Arie was so happy and content to play on the riverbank for several hours, and I was enjoying being there with him so much. It was such a peaceful, restful morning for us both.

I had to figure that this recent fond memory was partly fueling my desire to get back there. But then I also noticed myself having thoughts like these: maybe we need to find a way to build a tiny little vacation house on the river somewhere. Or, maybe we should just sell our house and come live here on the river. I mean, not sure about you, but any time I am having thoughts about hypothetically considering picking up my life and moving it somewhere else, one of those imaginary indication lights flips on in my internal dashboard and I begin to wonder...what is going on with me?

So I started to ask myself: what is it about this river? Why here? Why now? I know that humans generally feel drawn to water because it is in some way soothing to us. I started to consider how this river is different from other bodies of water. For one thing, this water is headed somewhere. It has a direction. Not like the ocean, which moves in a life-sustaining, routine way. Not like a lake, which sort of just hangs out and invites you to come, relax, stay awhile. Not at all like a fountain, which shoots water out in a hundred directions only to be sucked up and spat out, again and again.

I feel just like a fountain, I realize, and yet I want to be like a river.

I know all of this sounds really kind of silly but right as I’m thinking, yes, I want to be just like this river, let me embody this river -- just then, I spied a snake, swimming upstream, right toward the rock I was sitting on by the riverbank.

As a rule, I do not like snakes. Word on the street is that some people apparently do like snakes, but I do not. And this snake had some really peculiar timing, if you ask me.

Right as the river is imparting some of its very treasured secrets to me, this goes and happens. I was very disturbed by that snake. Probably, in very large part because not two days ago I was letting my son frolic in the shallows of these same waters (against my better judgement, but I let it happen in the name of fun) and I could not help but feel very scared for what could have (but did not) happen to him, and consequently began to criticize myself for my carelessness.

But even aside from that, I’m thinking, okay...so the moment I start to think that I want to be just like this river, a venomous snake goes and swims up it. What is that about?!

You know, some would say that I was reading too much into it. This is the part where I even began to wonder if I had really seen the snake at all. The timing just seemed too weird to me; maybe I was just making it up as some kind of strange self-sabotage. But no -- I know that I’m not reading too much into it. And I know what I saw. I’d spent the whole morning on the riverbank, enjoying it while admittedly also struggling to settle into a period of rest. As I finally reached a place of rest and began to let my guard down to receive what this moment had for me, I was spooked by a perceived threat. No, the snake did not slither up beside me (but it did disappear below the rock I was sitting on so I did not stick around to see what would happen next. No, I for sure bolted). I turned, again, to curiosity. What am I really afraid of, I started to wonder. 

And that’s when it hit me: it’s not that I feared a snakebite so much as the inconvenience that would come along with it. I was all alone. If I were to be bitten by a snake in that setting, I would have had to urgently seek help from a stranger, and get the help, and all of that would slow me down from getting on with my day. It’s the same reason I fear getting into a car accident. Or being surprised by an illness. Same reason I get annoyed when Arie moves at the pace of a toddler. I am so afraid of, resistant to, in constant avoidance of, being slowed down.

...WHY??

This is something I still don’t have a full answer to. But my hunch is, I don’t want to miss out on making something of myself. I fear wasting my time, and therefore my life. Because like everyone, I’m afraid to die, and I’m still young enough that that fear is heavily cloaked and disguised as other things like, well, the fear of having to stop.

All of this confronted me at the very same moment: I see that my soul is longing for a direction, that my greatest fear is of time lost trying to steadily go in that direction, that I’m holding an invitation to flow, to powerfully move forward, to carve paths through vast landscapes, and that I’m scared to accept the invitation because there might be (there will be) some snakes to overcome.

At the end of the day, this is what I know. The risk of engaging the river, snakes and all, is worth it. I’m scared that I won’t know how to be different; that I will always be agitated at being slowed to some degree. But it’s worth a shot; it’s better than sitting on the riverbank forever and wondering. And I am not willing to let my fears of what might happen stop me from submerging into all of the goodness that certainly will come, even amidst hardship, the risk is worth it. There are snakes in every river, but every river has somewhere to go.

fruit on the hard days

even tough days have highlights — we stopped to take selfies by this colorful wall near our house.

Today was....uhhhhhm, it was hard. It has always been really challenging for me to hold his needs and my needs at the same time. Especially because, if I’m going to be real with you, I am just now at a point in my life where I am getting acquainted with my own needs.

Hmm, you might be thinking, like I often do, not the best timing, to awaken to your own needs right at the moment you have a person depending on you to meet a majority of their needs. Not. Great.

Or isn’t it?

Maybe if not for this seemingly poor timing, I wouldn’t have been led to so firmly believe that the best thing I can do for him is to tend to my own soul. (Sincere thanks to my therapist and the Holy Spirit for this guidance). Maybe I wouldn’t be so aware of the opportunity given me to model for him how to care for his own soul by demonstrating proper tending to my own. Maybe there is actually so much purpose in this timing, I begin to think.

And I’m sure that there is, I know that there is. But even so, this doesn’t affect immediate change on days like today, which are so difficult precisely because I can see just how much my soul needs tending to and exactly because I feel ill-equipped to meet it. Nothing makes you feel more boxed in than knowing exactly what you need to do and feeling powerless to do it. 

What I know now (and what I did not know a year ago -- thanks be to God for that growth) is that this means I need to ask for more help. I’m still very much working on the step between knowing I need help and actually getting help. That step is disproportionately huge if you ask me. Plus I come from a long line of very resourceful DIYers and this lineage is wonderful in many ways except for in this one way: asking for help is so dang hard. 

And yet...

I can’t help but to pause and reflect, and even rejoice, because I know that this is just another area rife with opportunities to be stretched and grown, to do things before I feel ready to do them. Just like a year ago when I was pushed further than I wanted to go, because of that, I’m more adaptable now. I am deeply, truly grateful for that...especially now that I can see the harvest of that labor with my own eyes. It’s so much easier to keep hoping when our hope has borne some fruit. 

Thanks be to God for fruit, thanks be to God for memories of it on the hard days.

May I, and you, reap a big ol’ harvest one day from the field called “getting the help you need, when you need it”. I am an unlikely candidate but then, I always have been -- it’s all grace + more grace.

seven poems in eight days

I broke my poem streak yesterday because I accidentally fell asleep last night at 8:30. As I was falling asleep, I remember thinking about how I needed to write a new poem (!) and how I needed to pick up the toys in the backyard (!!) in case it rained (it did not). But I didn’t do either of those things. I just slept, and I imagine that’s just what I needed to do right then. But I’ve been a little grumpy today, and now as I reflect, I think this small failure could be part of the reason why. I feel like I let myself down.

Sometimes it’s hard to honor all the different needs we have. This is one of my central struggles as a mom -- how do I take care of this person’s needs when I feel like my own needs are already more than I can hold? Different chat for a different time...but the short answer there is, grace + more grace. Also failure. lol but serious.

Plus, I kind of had a feeling that when I decided to do seven poems in seven days, it wouldn’t go to plan. The reason I even assigned myself these poems is that I want to grow to be more in-stride with this part of my identity I am learning to claim, as a writer. It is common practice with writers to write every single day, and as far as I can tell, the reason is that you can’t wait until you feel like writing. I know from my own experience that if I only wrote when I felt like it, I’d hardly ever do it. In fact, I don’t write predominantly because I want to, but because when I don’t write, I’m much worse off than when I do. It’s actually a huge pain either to stop what I’m doing to write, or if I’m not doing something else, to let go of the possibility of something else more exciting happening by starting to write.

So I need the pressure. I need a project, and I need a deadline.

I missed my deadline yesterday, and while I feel like I let myself down a little, I also can appreciate that I needed some extra sleep. It helps to admit feeling disappointed, because that allows me to forgive myself and let it go. With all this on my mind, I kept having this thought today -- sometimes what matters more than how I show up, is that I show up at all. I’m showing up late this time, and perhaps grumpy. But I’m here.

Today’s poem is inspired by the way I see God’s posture toward me -- the expectation that I come as I am, however I am. What can I do besides that, anyway?

a perfect parent

spoilers ahead: the perfect parent I’ve written about is not me.

I love these pull-back-the-curtain moments that God gives to us sometimes. Usually after a hard moment. Often it’s while I’m driving, often while listening to music. 

We were driving to the airport to watch the planes come and go, as is our custom in the late afternoon, listening to Christy Nockels’ lullaby album.

The songs are supposed to be for him. But I benefit from listening to them about 500x more than he does, I think.

“You have what it takes...not by power, not by might, but the Spirit of God, who’s living inside...you have what it takes”, she sings.

Right. I do have what it takes, and what I have and what it takes have all been given to me. Probably the reason why I forgot — because what it takes to do this, to raise a toddler (for the first time) in the middle of (my first ever) global pandemic when I’m also questioning what the purpose and direction of my own life is meant to be...it’s a lot. More than I can wrap my mind around. And what it requires of me is more than I could ever generate on my own. 

But. God.

Nevertheless I am so tired of being so needed and so needy and also somehow lonely all the time. It struck me the other week that one of the things I hate about this season is that I constantly feel like a narcissist. I feel like I’m only ever aware of my needs and can only focus on getting those met, and I hate it.

Then another song came on. This one I sing to Arie before he goes to sleep sometimes, and lately he’s been requesting it by name, which I love. I guess because it makes me feel like he likes it, too, and it’s not just me meeting one of my own needs again. And in a moment, I processed why I’d chosen this song to sing to him: because it’s the most beautiful lullaby I have ever heard. And then, the spirit uttered: “I am choosing the most beautiful song I know to sing over you. And I already am to you exactly the parent that you aspire to be to him.”

And he is. And he does it perfectly. And he supplies me with the grace I need to do even a measure of it all.

I just sobbed, and let myself be held, because that’s what my perfect parent knew I needed in that moment. The loneliness washed away, and I felt like I was wrapped in the lovingest arms in all the world.

This is an excerpt from an archive, written on September 25, 2020.

Current Fave Arie Things

playing in a mountain of packing paper — yes, we’re moving again ! more on that another time.

Hello there — and happy new year !

Had to come back around with some of my favorite things Arie is doing / saying of late…he’s growing so fast + I have to memorialize these little ways of being somehow before they change ! So here’s a list of things from this nearly-two-and-a-half boy :

• Is proudly able to zip / unzip his own jammies

• Lots of contrasting statements: “that’s not the sun, that’s the MOON!”

• Closely related to, lots of “no, I not” statements

• Most favorite food in the entire universe is applesauce

• Insists upon having the last word at bedtime. “Arie say love you! Arie say night night! Arie say g’night and love you!”

• Loves babies. Believes in expressing this in high-pitched, squealy tones.

• Dislikes being whispered to. In the event that his dad or I whispers anything to him, or speaks at a low volume, he just looks at us and says, “loud.”

• Now prefers to read books to us at bedtime instead of the other way around.

• Still head over heels for dinosaurs, planes, trains, animals of all shapes and sizes.

• Very into “Memo” the Fish right now, also Secret Life of Pets 2. His favorite character is the farm turkey, who has about 1:25 total airtime

• In the habit of calling the car “the movie”

• Whenever he hears his dad cough from his home office, he says, “excuse you, Daddy”. He also blesses us when we sneeze, dear boy.

Thank you for indulging me in these lists ! They really are for me more than anything else, but if you are an Arie fan, I hope you enjoy them a little, too :)

Happy weekend !

“I am gratitude for…”

a love story.

In second grade, my class had a weekly journaling assignment. Every Friday morning, we’d lift the tops of our miniature desks and pull out our pencils and composition notebooks, and for fifteen minutes or so, we’d spend time keeping a gratitude journal.

I can picture with perfect clarity my best friend’s dull-pencil cursive across the wide-ruled page: “I am gratitude for...I am gratitude for...I am gratitude for...” Kid grammar is the best, is it not?

I still recite this in my head sometimes whenever I am going through the motions of saying my many gratitudes aloud to myself in my head.

What I love about the counting of blessings is that it is its own warm up exercise. Many days, despite the piles and heaps of things I have to be grateful for, I don’t want to talk about that. I only want to think about what I don’t have, what isn’t right.

But, when I begin to count, even if begrudgingly, if I can continue for long enough, the ice invariably begins to melt. I can start to hear the dissonance of my complaining echoing off the walls of this inner hallowed space, where never in this lifetime will everything be right, but where “all things work together for the good of those who love Him”. (romans 8:28)

I don’t do this every day, like I “should”. But I am learning to live with what I am more than who I ought to be, while inviting the good giver of grace to bridge the gaps I will always leave. And he never says no.

So, with that — I am gratitude for this beautiful, healthy boy. I am gratitude for the freedoms I am afforded by Christ and also in this nation — Lord, have mercy on me to properly employ them, with liberty and justice for all. I am gratitude for the breath I am drawing, the beauty of this day, and the warm slippers on my feet. I am gratitude for the community that encircles me — how richly blessed I am to be in the company of others.

His love endures forever, thanks be to God. amen.

sending love to you this morning !

xo,

mal

the slow road to transformation

The road to transformation is as slow as I wish it were fast. It’s as arduous as I wish it were easy.

It’s painful at times, when I wish it never was.

It requires my attention, my participation, and the truth is...I’d rather sleep through it.

As I’ve ridden the wave of emotion this election week, I’ve met with this reality. The slow, dark underbelly of what it takes to change from one way of being into another, more magnificent way.

I’ve come face to face and toe to toe with my own deluded expectation of what transformation requires. I have to admit, I want it to be a clean, quick spritz that I can absorb as I head on my way, transformed.

But…this is not the way. Transformation cannot be applied, as I have been sorely made to remember this week.

Transformation is a water that must be waded into. For how long, you don’t know. Will it be cold, can you reach the bottom? Will you swim it? Float in it? Build a raft to navigate it? And when do you get to come back out, back home? Do you ever even come back…or does that miss the point? None of this is disclosed. All that is known, is that on the other side, from wherever and whenever it emerges, what was once unremarkable will become unspeakably beautiful.

So, it seems probably worth it.

I want transformation for our people, our nation. I want it so badly. And I need it so very much in my own stubborn heart.

Come, Holy Spirit, come.