Friday Favorites for August

August 28, 2015

Friday Favorites for August

For anyone who read the fabled Aesop as a kid . . .

Who knew we had Aesop to thank for expressions like “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched” and “Necessity is the mother of invention”? 19 Everyday Expressions That Came from Aesop

For anyone who loves to drink in a good book . . .

They’ve created a “drinkable book” for people in countries where it’s difficult to find uncontaminated water! Bug-Killing Book Pages Clean Murky Drinking Water

For anyone who loves a good “happy cry” . . .

My husband, Daniel, works with individuals with disabilities, and he recently shared this video with me. It captures people hearing their loved ones’ voices for the first time, and I promise you’ll need tissues. Deaf People Hear Sounds for the First Time

For anyone who appreciates the power of proper punctuation . . .

Good grammar may not save your life, but it just might save you a parking ticket: Missing Comma Gets Grammar Nerd out of Parking Ticket

For anyone who has wished for a do-over in a conversation . . .

This mom of a child with a disability has something to teach us all about how to handle insensitive questions. Instead of becoming defensive, what if we invited people in instead? What I Wish I’d Asked the Woman Who Questioned Our Use of a Handicapped Parking Spot

August 21, 2015

Dreams Are Made of Bricks and Love

Four Augusts ago, I walked down a grassy aisle, my eyes never wavering from the man with the blue eyes and the big heart and the contagious laugh. My pulse pounded with joy . . . and a healthy dose of fear. I had never said yes to something big, so unknown before.

Up to that point, I’d made some fairly significant decisions in my life. I’d accepted a job offer, I’d signed a mortgage, I’d joined a church. But if things went wrong and everything fell apart, those commitments could be undone. I could sell the house, quit the job, find a new church.

But this was different. This was forever—for as long as both shall live.

I didn’t know what lay ahead for us. We’d imagined together and planned together and dreamed about the future together, but there was no way to know what twists and turns were waiting down the road.

What would the next year hold? The next decade? The next however-many years God would grant us together? I wasn’t sure, but I knew this: whatever came, I wanted to embrace it by Daniel’s side.

I do. I will.

***

I might be the writer in the family, but Daniel is definitely the songwriter. Earlier this year he wrote a song called “Take That Picture,” and this line in the chorus makes me tear up every time:

These dreams, we made them up
And now they’re true

Four years into this marriage adventure, I see those words unfolding before my eyes, and in my heart. We’re starting to see the vows we made to each other on that dew-covered August morning sprout to life. We’re beginning to see our dreams take root in the soil of us—some of which we imagined and others we didn’t dare to hope for. And still others that are yet to bloom.

But dreams, we’re discovering, don’t just appear out of thin air. As my dad says, marriage is a miracle, but it’s one you work on.

Here’s what I know now that I didn’t quite grasp on my wedding day: Dreams aren’t fluffy wisps that simply materialize. They’re forged out of bricks and sweat and tears and laughter and the hard work of love.

A friend recently asked me for advice as she was weighing the pros and cons of a particular dating relationship. “There are some things about this guy that aren’t my mental image of the ‘ideal husband,’” she said. “Which things should I make sure change about him before I agree to take the relationship to the next level?”

I understood what she was getting at, and certainly there are nonnegotiables that should be weighed before making such a big commitment. But there was something backwards about that way of looking at things.

And so, as gently as I could, I said, “My sweet friend, you’re not saying yes to a package. You’re saying yes to a person.”

Getting married isn’t sealing in a particular set of circumstances and then crossing your fingers that certain things will never change—and that others will. It’s choosing that person. And then choosing them again, day after day, year after year.

Maybe an anniversary is a chance to step back and watch as the miracle of marriage, covered as it is in sweat and elbow grease, unfolds before our eyes.

So as we celebrate four years of the Daniel and Stephanie team, I want to thank Daniel for writing the words to this song. And I want to thank God for making them come true.

August 12, 2015

Nesting

The day after we unloaded a U-haul with all our earthly possessions and deposited everything at our new home, my father-in-law posed this question to Daniel and me: “Hey, do you guys have a chainsaw?”

At that point I wasn’t even sure where I could find two matching shoes, but even if I’d done a better job labeling the boxes, I was pretty sure the answer was no. We’d never had our own yard before, which meant we were pretty lacking in everything power-tool related. Besides, why would we need a chainsaw?

As it turned out, Daniel’s dad had identified a knotty pine tree that was encroaching on the driveway of our new house, and he was ready to take it down. The guys went outside to scope it out, only to return soon than I’d expected.

“No need for a chainsaw now,” Daniel said.

“Really? Why not?”

“Come here. I’ll show you.”

And there, in the lowest branch of the tree, was a dove perched on her nest.

“We can’t take down a tree with a nest in it,” Daniel said.

He was right. We’d spent the past 48 hours packing and unpacking, carrying unwieldy objects up and down stairs, and generally boycotting sleep to get everything settled. We were just beginning to realize how much work is involved in making a house a home. How could we have the heart to evict our feathered tenant?

So we let her stay.

We’ve been causing quite a commotion in the dove’s neighborhood ever since we moved in—hauling in boxes, revving up a borrowed lawnmower to cut the grass, cleaning long-neglected gutters. But Mama Bird just sits on her perch—not squawking at us, but not budging either.

I greet her each evening when I get home from work, walking past her home and into mine. She and I have a lot in common, I think. We’re both feathering our nests, trying to make them comfortable and hospitable and conducive to life.

This is the first home my husband and I have bought together, and there’s something special to be said for that. He moved into the condo I’d bought before we got married, and while that was practical and logical and right for that season, it never really felt like ours.

And what I’m learning as we settle into this place together is perhaps the same thing our nesting guest intuitively knows: It’s more about the ones in the nest than how perfect the nest itself is. Our nest is a little messy (there are boxes still to unpack and items flung rather haphazardly in closets), and it certainly isn’t Pinterest worthy, with its mismatched color schemes and kitchen tile that dates to circa 1987.

But that’s okay. I want this place to be a haven—a place where everyone who lives here can recharge and soak up grace and love and get ready to go into the big world. And I want it to be a place of hospitality—a place where everyone who walks through the door feels wrapped in warmth and welcome, a place where they get a taste of grace.

I want to remember that it’s not about the nest; it’s about the ones the nest is there to protect and nurture.

So we still have a knotty pine tree in our front yard—along with one wise bird who has a lot to teach me about feathering my nest.

Home is the nicest word there is.
Laura Ingalls Wilder

August 5, 2015

Announcing the Next Book Club Selection: The Girl on the Train

Thanks to everyone who participated in our last book discussion about Scary Close! You can read our thoughts about vulnerability and the kind of love that eats cereal together every morning here.

Congratulations to Kristy, the winner of the free book giveaway! (Kristy, I’ll send you a private message about getting the book to you.)

Our next book club selection is The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. Here’s the description from the back of the book:

Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. “Jess and Jason,” she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.

And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel offers what she knows to the police, and becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?

Compulsively readable, The Girl on the Train is an emotionally immersive, Hitchcockian thriller and an electrifying debut.

We will be discussing the book in September. Hope you’ll join us!

July 28, 2015

Book Club Discussion: Scary Close

Thanks to everyone who participated in our book discussion about Scary Close this month! I’d love to hear your thoughts about this book.

My recap: Scary Close is one of the best books I’ve read about vulnerability and relationships and the special brand of courage it takes to let another person look inside your soul. I put it right next to Daring Greatly on the bookshelf of my brain.

Discussion #1: Vulnerability is hard

It’s mystifying and maddening how the one thing we want most (to know and be known) is also one of the scariest things we can do as human beings. Donald Miller says, “I hardly knew who I was myself, much less how to be fully known.”

Do you think you have to know yourself first to be known by others? Why or why not?

Discussion #2: Sorting out the truth about yourself

When Donald Miller is reflecting on his childhood, he says, “I realized in running and hiding I’d sided with the other kids, I’d learned to believe there was something wrong with me. And it wasn’t true.”

Are there any lies you’ve believed about yourself since you were a child that you’re coming to realize aren’t true? What has helped you see the truth?

Discussion #3: Real love

I appreciated watching Donald Miller come to understand what deep, lasting love looks like. It isn’t always glamorous or flashy—in fact, he calls it “that long, boring love that happens when a couple quietly eats cereal together while they read the paper.”

Do you think love is built mostly in small moments or big moments, or both?

Discussion #4: The upside of vulnerability

My favorite part of this book is the way it honestly describes the hard parts of vulnerability but also beautifully depicts the redemptive parts of sharing your true self with another person: “My flaws were the ways through which I would receive grace. We don’t think of our flaws as the glue that binds us to the people we love, but they are.”

Are there people in your life who see you as you are, flaws and all? How have these people given you glimpses of God’s grace?

Rating

I would give this book five stars (out of five). In my opinion, this is Donald Miller’s best and most honest book, and I’ve been forcing it on just about everyone I know.

How would you rate this book?

Remember: I’ll be giving away a free book to one lucky commenter! Respond by Friday to be eligible.

July 22, 2015

A Place to Call Home

My husband, Daniel, and I just bought our first house together, which means I’ve been thinking a lot about home lately.

When we started the adventure of scoping out open houses and looking at realtor.com and making our list of would-likes and must-haves, it felt rather daunting. We knew a house is just a bunch of lumber and drywall, but it seemed so much weightier than that. It felt like where we lived said something about our future, our hopes and dreams, our very identity. That’s a lot of pressure for a piece of real estate.

My friend Brooke told me about this quote she heard somewhere: “Our homes are characters in our stories” (more on that here). And my apologies for the terrible pun, but that sentiment really hit home for me. We weren’t just finding a place to put our stuff or go to sleep at night; we were finding a spot that would become a key part of our story for the next undetermined number of years.

If there’s anyone who knows about longing for home, it’s Brooke. Last summer she and her family packed up their essential belongings, rented out their house, and bought a mobile home so they could embark on a yearlong, 48-state tour of the country. Her home has been on wheels for the past year, meaning that in some ways her home is always with her, and in some ways she’s never home. She knows what it’s like to have roots and to tear them up, how freedom is the other side of loneliness, and how home is both the place and the people.

I think God hardwired us to long for home—to want to put pieces of ourselves into the soil of a place, to make memories there, to let the love and the laughter soak so deeply into the walls that they are heavy with moments and days and years.

But here’s something else I’m learning: our desire for an earthly home is never going to be enough to fill the longing in our souls. Even if we manage to find the perfect paint swatches, line the walls with just the right decorations, and fix all the leaky faucets, it won’t be enough. That longing for a haven, a place to truly belong—that only comes when we make ourselves at home in Christ.

I’ve always loved this psalm, but it makes more sense to me now:

Lord, through all the generations
you have been our home!
—Psalm 90:1

It seems appropriate that this psalm was written by Moses, the wanderer. The guy who grew up with a family not his own and in a country not his own, the guy who spent forty years exiled in the desert, the guy who led his people to a Promised Land he never got to enter. I have a hunch this nomad never really had a place to put his feet up and get comfortable in.

But still, he found home. He learned the lesson we all need, whether we’re putting down roots or pulling them up: When you make your dwelling in God, you will always find home.

***

You never know where you’re going if you’re going by faith. If you’re going by faith, you’re always a stranger in this world, because your home is God.
—John Ortberg

Question for today: What’s something you wished you’d known when you moved into a new home? What’s something you learned from moving to a new place?

In honor of my recent move, I’m giving away a copy of Home Is Where My People Are by the talented and charming Sophie Hudson! It’s a wonderful book about the unexpected places and people that make up home, and what God teaches us along the way. To be eligible, tell me about your moving experience in the comment section below. I’ll give a free copy to one randomly selected commenter.

July 2, 2015

10 Quotes for Editors

This month I’m celebrating a dozen years as an editor at Tyndale House. In honor of my work anniversary, I’ve been reflecting on privilege it is to wake up each morning and do what I do. Every day people entrust to me one of their most precious possessions: their stories.

As an editor, I am invited into that rare sacred space between the writer and the reader, between the idea and the written word, between private musings and public declarations.

When people think of editor types, they often conjure up images of dour-faced schoolmarms with red pens poised. And while I admit that I delight in a well-placed semicolon or a properly punctuated possessive, there’s more to editing than the rules of grammar.

Sometimes an editor’s job is to find the pulse of a manuscript and resuscitate it. Sometimes an editor’s job is to hold the author’s hand and coax her through the final chapter. Sometimes the editor’s job is to recognize a thing of beauty and then get out of the way.

Whether you’re an editor or a comma queen or just someone who appreciates the process of words coming to life, I thought you might enjoy these quotes about editing I’ve been collecting over the years.

***

I have rewritten—often several times—every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.
—Vladimir Nabokov

So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.
—Dr. Seuss

“The editor is always right.” The corollary is that no writer will take all of his or her editor’s advice; for all have sinned and fallen short of editorial perfection. Put another way, to write is human, to edit is divine.
—Stephen King

I really think that the great difficulty in bringing [a manuscript] into final shape is the old one of not being able to see the forest for the trees. There are such a great number of trees. We must somehow bring the underlying scheme or pattern of the book into emphasis, so that the reader will be able to see the forest in spite of the many trees.
—Maxwell Perkins

Every editor becomes a de facto therapist, whether or not he engages in the therapeutic as well as the editorial process. His author presents a set of symptoms as clearly as a patient visiting a doctor.
—Betsy Lerner

But the work had told upon the Editor. Work of that sort carries its penalties with it. Success means absorption, and absorption spells softening of the brain.
—P. G. Wodehouse

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
—Douglas Adams

Half my life is an act of revision.
—John Irving

I can’t write five words but that I change seven.
—Dorothy Parker

An editor’s job is to heal the sick, not to raise the dead.
—Virginia Muir (the first editor at Tyndale House Publishers)

***

In honor of this occasion, I’m giving away one free book published by Tyndale House Publishers. To be eligible to win, write a comment with one of your favorite quotes (editing related or not). I’ll be selecting the winner on Monday!

June 24, 2015

How Do You Say Goodbye to a Place?

I sat on the bottom step in my living room last week, looking around at my-house-that-wasn’t-really-my-house anymore. The U-haul was parked at the end of the driveway, filled with every earthly possession my husband and I own. Everything had been packed. Every surface had been cleaned. There was nothing left to do but wait for the closing.

As I sat there, memories of the past decade flashed through my mind. I knew it was time to leave my condo and move into our new home—the first place my husband and I picked out together. But a wave of nostalgia swept over me now that it was time to say good-bye to this place—this place that had played such a significant part in my story.

I longed for some way to mark the moment, for some tangible closure, but I wasn’t sure what that would even look like. How do you say good-bye to a place that had been the staging ground for so much life?

I tried to imagine handing over the keys to my home of eleven years. I didn’t know much about the buyer—only that her name was Veronica, and what her signature looked like. Then the thought came to me, out of the blue: write her a note.

I hesitated, certain she’d think I was crazy. Then again, I’d never have to see her again, right? So I pulled out a yellow pad of paper and a blue felt-tip marker—the only writing implements I could find that weren’t packed away.

Dear Veronica,

Welcome home! I bought this condo when I was twenty-five, wide-eyed and terrified by the ream of papers I was signing without really understanding all the fine print. I was doing this on my own, and I never imagined I’d buy a place by myself. But it turned out to be the perfect spot for me—home to fondue parties with friends, Easter brunches with family crammed into the living room, and slumber parties with my sister. This is where I grew brave and grew up. It’s where I learned to paint a room and cook a lasagna and plant tulip bulbs.

And then something unexpected and delightful happened—I got married, and my husband moved in, along with his three bikes, four guitars, and a dozen houseplants. It’s the place we came back to after our honeymoon, the first home we lived in together. The walls are filled with four years of laughter and words and music, with growing pains and good memories from our newlywed days.

I heard someone say once that your home is a character in your story, and I think that’s true. I don’t know how long you’ll stay here or how your story will unfold, but I pray that this home will be a wonderful character in the story of your life too.

So here’s my benediction, over you and this house: May God bless each moment you spend here, and may he bless each person who walks through these doors.

Stephanie

Then I put the yellow sheet on the counter, right under the spare set of keys, feeling relieved that she wouldn’t read this note until she moved in and I was several cities away.

What I failed to account for was that the walk-through. Meaning she read the note right before I saw her at the closing.

When I entered the huge conference room, I realized my tactical error immediately. I also realized that this was not the place for sappy notes. The room was filled with serious-faced lawyers and professional-looking loan officers and a bunch of other people who looked distinctly unsentimental.

But then I saw Veronica hanging back, motioning for me to come closer. She looked just as wide-eyed as I’d been in her shoes eleven years ago. “Thanks for the note,” she whispered. And I saw that her eyes were brimming with tears.

“Congratulations,” I whispered back.

As I learned in snippets during our paper-signing marathon, she was me—a decade ago. Twenty-five. Single. An eighth-grade teacher.

At the end of the closing, I handed her the keys, and I sensed that something inside me had settled. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first, and then it hit me: closure. This was full circle—the closing of a chapter for me as a new one started for her.

I smiled at her and then took Daniel’s hand. It was time to introduce ourselves to the new character in our story.

Happy house to you, Veronica. Happy house.

June 19, 2015

How to Wait Well

In the course of any life, I think, there are seasons of waiting. As much as we want to fast-forward to that thing we’re anticipating, we find ourselves faced with factors we can’t control, leaving us helpless against a clock we can’t set or predict.

It’s a vulnerable place to find yourself at the mercy of a calendar that’s not your own.

Maybe you’ve been looking for a job for so long that the taste of rejection is more familiar than your morning coffee. You send yet another résumé into cyberspace, and you wait . . . and wait some more.

Or maybe you’ve watched as all your friends have found love, and you find yourself alone . . . still waiting to be chosen, pursued.

Maybe you’ve been longing for a child—one from your own body or one from across the globe. You’ve jumped through all the hoops, and now there’s nothing left to do but wait.

Or maybe there’s something else you’re waiting for: for your house to sell, for the medical test results to come in, for a relationship to be reconciled, for deliverance from whatever demon has been plaguing you.

We all wait—there’s no avoiding it, no matter our life stage. Even if we get the thing we’ve been waiting for, it only means graduating to a new phase of waiting we hadn’t anticipated. So the question isn’t if we will wait; it’s how we will wait.

As I look back on various seasons of waiting in my life, I realize my waiting style leaves something to be desired. I’ve waited like a child in line at the grocery store: impatient, antsy, so focused on the line that I couldn’t appreciate anything else around me. I’ve waited like a robot, deciding it was too painful to admit my desires and hopes, so I tried to shut down my heart.

But the psalmist provides another alterative when it comes to how to wait: We can wait on God the way a handmaiden waits on her mistress:

As the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, until he has mercy upon us.
Psalm 123:2

What would it look like, I wonder, to be that attentive to God in my waiting? What if, instead of being so focused on my circumstances or my worries or my fears, I was focused on every little move God was making?

What if I was intent not just on what God would do for me during the waiting as on what I could do for God?

I don’t just want to wait for him. I want to wait on him.

***

The waiting itself is beneficial to us: it tries faith, exercises patience, trains submission, and endears the blessing when it comes. The Lord’s people have always been a waiting people.
Charles Spurgeon

June 5, 2015

Friday Favorites for June

Happy Friday! Here are a few of my favorite things recently. Hope you enjoy!

For personality-type fans . . .

I admit it: I’m a personality-type junkie, so I found this description of the worst-case scenarios for various personality types fascinating. I’m an INFJ (but the description of ISFJ is pretty spot on for me too). The Definition of Hell for Each Myers-Briggs Personality Type

For anyone who wants the inside scoop on authors’ snacking habits . . .

Did you know that Agatha Christie drank heavy cream—without coffee!—while she wrote? Or that Emily Dickinson made homemade bread each morning? 9 Famous Authors’ Favorite Workday Snacks

For anyone who wonders what it’s like to get old alongside someone else . . .

What if you could fast-forward in time and see what it would be like to get old together with another person? This video simulates the experience: Young Couple Gets Increasingly Aged with Make-up and Revealed to Each Other

For Scribble aficionados . . .

In case you’re wondering, onesie, shizzle, hashtag, and cakehole are now legitimate on the Scrabble board: Go Forth and Pwn for Shizzle Say Scrabble Word List Guardians

For anyone making a big decision . . .

Summer seems to be a time of big decisions: graduations, weddings, moves, and the like. This article offers a practical checklist for when you’re facing a tough choice: http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life/4-questions-ask-when-making-big-decision