Category: Christian Life

Things I Thought in the Now Yesterday

Leave a comment

I’m thinking Switchfoot this morning:

Hello, good-morning, how you been? Yesterday left my head kicked in.

Sunday my pastor preached about normal. About small. About reveling in it. About being here. Now.

Apparently I wasn’t the only mom who went home and scrawled “Revel in your smallness. –Dan” over the top of her weekly planner page.

Yesterday I was in the middle of smallness.

I can’t say I reveled, but at least I didn’t self-destruct, and I’m calling that a win.

In fact, I’m thinking being in the middle and not self-destructing is the whole goal. (For now.) It’s like holding a yoga pose. There’s nowhere you’re going, you’re just there and that is the whole goal. I think sometimes that’s what grace means. I mean the kind of grace that strengthens and equips. Living in the middle of grace means accepting things as they are, reveling in the reality that you are not necessarily doing it right but at least you’re aware of that.

I’m thinking that living in the middle of grace means submitting to the awareness that you (and everyone else) are in a jam, in a hard place, maybe even dancing around your freshly-minted golden calf (we read about that with our kids last night). Somehow in the middle of that dance you are still opening your heart to God: letting him tinge – temper – your mess with His love.

I’m thinking that’s better than trying to control it, anyway. Trying to fix it so it’s not broken anymore. And it’s better than accepting it, letting go and living – really mucking around – in the mess of your garbage and everyone else’s.

I’m thinking that it’s better than visualizing tomorrow, when you will no doubt be able to keep things a little more pulled together so you can feel better about yourself, or maybe a year from tomorrow, when you will all no doubt be so much more sanctified and wise that there won’t be a mess in the first place. THEN you can revel. THEN you can claim grace.

I’m thinking claiming grace (and hope) when your 4yo son quietly crawls across the floor and throws two tiny dirty socks at your legs with all the strength he can muster, instead of shutting him down, telling him that he can’t be angry, means figuring out the anger instead. “Are you angry at me?” “Yes.” “Listen. It’s OK to be angry. We need to figure out what to do about it. Throwing socks at mommy is unkind and disrespectful. You may not be angry in ways that are unkind and disrespectful. If you are angry you can say that, and I will listen. I will listen to you. You can tell me that you’re angry and I will listen. And I will help you figure it out and I will try to comfort you. But you may not be unkind and disrespectful.”

I’m thinking claiming grace (and hope) when your preschoolers fail a half-dozen times in a simple task that you know they need to muddle through without help (you know, so they can move past preschool) is entering their foolishness-zone a half-dozen times (and not less) to discipline and re-assign without giving up on them. Without indulging that sarcastic cynic in your head telling you that they will not get it, ever. After all, this is their now. If they are bad it, so are you. Grace and hope, not despair. Be here. Now.

I’m thinking claiming grace (and hope) when you are spitting mad at your kids for not listening to you is going to your room with an explanation over your shoulder: “I can’t hang out with you right now because you are being rude to me and I feel really mad. So when you are ready to tell Mommy you are sorry for treating me like that, you can come find me.” And then when they do come to find you, claiming grace (and hope) means recalling how much you love them and how lovely they are instead of handing over forgiveness like a compulsory tax.

I’m thinking claiming grace (and hope) when you recognize that your kids are up to their eyeballs in their own foolishness and sin patterns means recognizing, too, that what is needed is not so much training for them as patience for you. Being here, now, today, means that today I need to choose (and ask for) patience instead of coercing (and expecting) altered behavior. They will always be up to their eyeballs in this and so will I. This is now, after all. So yes, my 3yo needs to learn to mentally check in when she hears the sound of my voice and at least twitch a hint of acknowledgement. And yes, my 4yo needs to learn that he cannot respond “But” or “What!!?!” or “Why?” to every instruction. But today that is where they are so today what they need is for their earthly mother to see them as their heavenly Father sees her: “He remembers our frame.” He is nothing if not patient. My kids will discover that by its reflection in me. That my own need for patience even occurred to me above the noise of my “righteous” anger in the face of their shortcomings means I’m calling this a win.

I’m thinking claiming grace (and hope) when you are spitting mad at your kids for going ape-sh*t in the doctor’s office, for sassing you when you say simple things like “Can you push the door open for us?” is to decline to chat with them. “Mommy, what does that sign say?” Instead of bitterly engaging in casual conversation as if there isn’t disaster afoot, “Mommy is really angry right now and I know if I talk I’m going to say rude things, so instead I’m not going to say anything. You need to leave me alone. We can talk later.” I’m calling this one a huge win, because it kept me from saying something stupid and it modeled for them a way to acknowledge (and live in the middle of) their anger without using it as a weapon.

I’m thinking claiming grace (and hope) when you are in the middle of self-imposed silence on the drive home from the doctor’s office and your 3yo calls out “Mommy, look!” means making room in your heart for your second thought when your first thought is “OMG I SAID SHUT UP” but your second thought is “I bet she just saw the mums in front of that store and she’s excited to share that special moment with me.”

I’m calling this a win because in the instant she interrupted the silence I was mad and wanted to shut her down: “Do you not care that I said not to talk to me?” I wanted to show her only the angry side, as if I wanted her to believe (perhaps as if I believed myself) that there was no other side. For an instant I labeled myself and my forever-relationship with my daughter: “She is going to learn not to risk intimacy with me for fear of what she’ll find. If I’m going to have angry days like this we’re doomed to live a life shaped by my sin.” But in the next instant I knew I had a better option, and I’m thinking this is claiming grace: (Caged, a little grumpy. Terse): “What, Merry?” “Look! Those are mums over there!” (As fully cheerful and enthusiastic as sharing my love of horticulture with my kids makes me): “Yeah! That’s so cool! Thanks, baby. I’m so glad you showed that to me.” That was all and then we were silent again, and I was still angry. But I knew that the silence held not only their sin and mine, but our best attempt to hold that pose with grace and a tinge of confident hope, too:

I’m thinking claiming grace means recognizing that sin, in Christ’s economy, does not mean despair. You can be angry and still love each other truly, wholly. My kids can feel the weight of my angry refusal to talk to them without concluding that our future is doomed to vengeful distance and cautious calculations. In other words, sin, tempered with grace (and hope), doesn’t have to be poisonous. There is an antidote. This is big news for me.

Switchfoot: I’m learning to breathe. Learning to crawl. Learning that you and you alone can break my fall.

Last night I let him break my fall. After we got home from the doctor I called on my husband to speak some sanity: “You guys have had a terrible day. That is done. We are going to have a happy day together starting now.” (Talk about hope.) And then I parked my kids for quiet time and I retreated to their 100% filthy room with some good music and a spray bottle of Murphy’s. All alone with a little sanity spoken by JJ Heller I cleaned and organized, not to enact my anger – “What a mess my kids are” (I’ve done that) – but to say “I love them.” I didn’t run away and shut them out. I didn’t despair. I didn’t change the subject. I chose hope and claimed grace and made something in our world for us to delight in together.

I doubt they’ll be much better at listening to me today than they were yesterday but I am remembering that I love them and that happiness (like, for example, a tidy room) is our grace-earned privilege anyway.

I call this reveling in smallness.

There and Back Again: Thinking about Home

2 Comments

Dear Baby,

Pretty soon you will have a name (you do already, but that’s our secret…) and you will get your monthly missives here just like your big brother and big sister. But today I am thinking about you, thinking how one month from this very hour we will be holding you for the first time. I am thinking about you because this week is a landmark for our family – one which we have worked hard for, almost since we first heard of you.

When your brother and your sister were where you are now I used to write to them. With Jacob I wrote often. It was my therapy. Pregnancy is distracting for a first-time mom. With Meredith I wrote a few times, but not so much because I needed it for me. I just wanted to say things to her. With you… Well, little boy, I thought I’d write to you, too. And I did, once. This is what I wrote:

28 Sep 14, 7:00 a.m. Dear Baby,

I am pretty sure you are real because of this headache that intruded through my sleep all night and hasn’t left with the morning. I am pretty sure you are real because of the gassy belly and the sleepy fatigue and the Stupid Factor. I melted my favorite plastic lid all over bread dough on Saturday. I am pretty sure you are real even though the early-response pregnancy test I took yesterday was negative. I’ll try again in a few more days, especially if this headache doesn’t give it a rest. I hope I’m right and I just have to say for now: I love you.

Love,
Mommy

And that was all. I was surprised just now to find that I’d never gone back to that document to say more along the way. I’ve thought a lot and perhaps those things will all seep into these first letters I write you this summer as we get to know each other.

For now, though, about that landmark: This week we are moving into our new house. This is uniquely momentous for us because it feels not just like changing homes but like achieving home. I have not felt as though we have had “home” for several months now. We bounce back and forth between two up-ended dwellings. On almost every level, we’ve suspended those things that we think of as “life” since Christmas when we began renovating a house for us to live in. We thought it would take less time, absorb us less drastically, be completed sooner and more completely. So as I’ve carted pillows and blankets back and forth, and sometimes the sleeping toddlers that belong to them, too; as I’ve fed my family hummus and crackers on paper napkins and washed them up with baby wipes for who knows how many meals; as I’ve missed the days of setting a table to welcome friends to it and the rhythm of waking to the same basic human necessities every morning, working a few hours and sitting down satisfied by 10:00 to read story books with the house in order, clean and peaceful…. As I’ve done all of this I’ve been waiting. Working and waiting, like a marathon that isn’t over yet. Maybe like a marathon that isn’t over yet and that keeps having its mileage reset. Maybe like a marathon that you run when you’re pregnant, which is inadvisable, to say the least.

I’ve been waiting for home, waiting for you, waiting for that magical moment when where we belong and how we live looks like what we love again. When I don’t clarify every sentence to Jacob & Meredith with an adjective: “Old house? or New house?” This week we get to move into our new house. We will tape plastic over the stairway leading to the incomplete basement and we will adjust to life at home, and to the beautiful reality that we actually have “home” again. I don’t think I would ever be able to verbalize how deeply I am craving that peace and calm and beauty. Maybe someday you will have a wife and she will be pregnant and then you can imagine what it is we did the year you were born and how it would’ve felt and then maybe you’ll know.

One day this spring a house on Nancy Street triggered a long train of thought for me. I was walking with Meredith in the stroller, carrying lunch from our “Old House” to our “New House” to share with Daddy & Jacob. At Merry’s request, I was singing, and it was her song: Shall We Gather At the River. As I admired this one house and imagined the pride its owners take in the work they’ve done to make it lovely (I know about this work now) I was singing “Soon we’ll reach the shining river. Soon our pilgrimage will cease.”

I’d never heard those words quite so loudly before. For many years I’ve thought of the nature of the Christian life as pilgrimage. As journey, to be perfectly cliche. I published an album of piano music five years ago and it was subtitled “Meditations of Hopeful Christian Pilgrim.” Pilgrimage is all I know of life. Not being there yet. It’s the way we experience God. The way we experience reality. It is about longing and waiting and trudging. In the best days, hoping. It is a good concept, and I think it’s easy to think it’s all there is.

But there’s this thing called “Home” too. It’s that thing that gripped my imagination as a deeply struggling college student just before Daddy & I met. I held tight to it: “There shall I find a settled rest while others go and come. No more a stranger or a guest, but like a child at home.” Those words were my mantra for a long time and I pressed so much out of that elusive idea of “home” and what it could possibly mean. I was only beginning to learn it then, mostly learning that I didn’t know, and I suspect I’m still only beginning.

The reality is, there is a destination for this pilgrimage – a reality we are hoping towards. Pilgrimage, as good and noble as it is, as much as we name it a good thing and define our Christian experience by it – it will be done someday. It will cease.

I get lost in my head thinking about that.

Pilgrimage, done. Home, attained.

I have no category for that.

But maybe now I do, now on the eve of rooting ourselves into this new space and re-establishing the life we’ve suspended for so many months. I can see how attaining home and retiring pilgrimage is just what a soul most wants. I haven’t stopped pondering this in these crazy months, and last night as Jacob & Meredith & I took our first walk in our new neighborhood, leaving the house with bike and stroller just long enough to wander a few blocks and wander back, that purposeless activity we call “taking a walk…” As we walked I thought of Bilbo & Frodo and There And Back Again and how I want my children to experience these things – both pilgrimage and home.

This week we are going home, not just going home, but attaining home. Achieving it. Creating it. And I’m thankful that it’s becoming a reality before you arrive. Next month we’ll bring you home and hopefully the chaos that we’ve experienced since we first heard your heartbeat will be a story to tell – our history, but not our present anymore. But that story is another story for another month.

I love you.

Love,
Mommy

IMG_8011

The Boy with Dirt on Him

1 Comment

My three-year old son found a flyer on the arm of our couch when he came downstairs from his quiet time this afternoon. I’d just finished a day of meetings for a new chapter of a non-profit we are investing ourselves in. Staring back at my son was a beautiful face of a boy not much older than himself. He couldn’t read the words on the flyer: “I need help.” But he read the face. I was in the kitchen and heard him remark, “This boy has dirt on him. And he sounds like he is sad.” Leave it to a three-year-old to hear the sound of a face. I asked him “Do you think we should help him if he is sad?” I was a little surprised when he responded “No, we shouldn’t” in his signature full-sentence way. “But if we don’t help him, who do you think could help him?” I replied. “His mom,” he nodded, looking at me out from under his big eyelids like he was thinking, “Mom. Obviously.”

My sweet boy doesn’t understand yet that sometimes it is more complicated than this. It made me so thankful in that moment that my kids know it’s obvious that if you’re sad, Mom can fix it. But that’s not all I want them to know. I want them to grow up living like the kingdom of heaven, and in the kingdom of heaven (here on earth) sometimes there is sadness that moms can’t fix. There are widows and orphans, and one thoughtful friend of mine suggested that single moms are the widows of our culture. These single moms, so often without a support network or a safety net of any sort, often find themselves in crisis. These orphans-of-a-fashion often have dirt on them and sound like they are sad. Jesus calls us to give ourselves to them, and I want my kids to grow up thinking that this is what Christians do. (“Mom. Obviously.”) Christians love the unloved and show mercy to the down-trodden.

Today was a whirlwind. I got up at 5:30 to prepare for a day that had been months in the making, a day when we’d finally pick up some momentum with the beginning of our town’s very own chapter of Safe Families for Children. Today I gathered a dozen people from almost a dozen churches and listened as the director of the Indianapolis chapter captured their imaginations – even their affections – for this work that she and I both care so much about. I went into this day with some misgivings and fears of my own. But from the first moments, it unfolded with that kind of perfection that God demonstrates in those times when nothing less will get the job done. To begin with, I got out of the shower and turned to Pandora to give me a few moments of worship and peace while I got ready for the day. Five songs in a row stunned me with the tender perfection of God’s watching over me, but the first one captured every bit of what my soul has looked like these last couple months as I’ve begun this work. I got out of bed this morning expecting by the end of it I may’ve come clean with the director overseeing our work that I wanted to take a step (or three) back. Twenty minutes later God might as well have looked me in the eye and said, “This is my work, and I gave it to you, and I will do it.” I’ve prayed the last few weeks that someone would come forward and catch my vision and say “Here, honey, you have your hands full enough. Let me.” The irony is, that’s what I felt God saying. But by the end of the day, half a dozen others had said as much themselves. But I had to hear it from God first to re-orient my heart: I can do this, because it is not my work.

My heart is so proud. My mind is so unfocused.
I see the things You do through me as great things I have done.
And now You gently break me, then lovingly You take me
And hold me as my father and mold me as my maker.

I ask you: “How many times will you pick me up,
When I keep on letting you down?
And each time I will fall short of Your glory,
How far will forgiveness abound?”
And You answer: “My child, I love you.
And as long as you’re seeking My face,
You’ll walk in the power of My daily sufficient grace.”

At times I may grow weak and feel a bit discouraged,
Knowing that someone, somewhere could do a better job.
For who am I to serve You? I know I don’t deserve You.
And that’s the part that burns in my heart and keeps me hanging on.

You are so patient with me, Lord.

As I walk with You, I’m learning what Your grace really means.
The price that I could never pay was paid at Calvary.
So, instead of trying to repay You, I’m learning to simply obey You
By giving up my life to you For all that You’ve given to me.

–Laura Story, “Grace”

The day unfolded from there with perfection. I told my husband tonight that it was like for months I labored in this garden, doubting, discouraged, lonely, even anxious. I was beginning to think nothing was going to poke through from the seeds I was planting and watering and watching and picking at obsessively, and perhaps it was time to try again another year. And then, today. Today the seeds sprouted and grew seven feet tall before my wondering eyes. If my work was to plant a garden here in this town, I feel like my work is done.

It’s not done, though, and there is now as much to do as there is when your garden is full of seven-foot-tall plants. But now I have a team that God has built, saying “Tell us what to do!” So we begin together. I reflected on the sheer energy and enormous number of man-hours that went into this day. Not only the scores of preliminary hours of the last few months of my life, but the dozen other people that gathered today and the two babysitters who took care of my kids and the “bestie” who met me in town to drive my second car back home since I’d left it parked there in my haste to move from one meeting to the next this morning. So many people pouring out their time and their love and we haven’t even really launched this work. We haven’t cleaned any of that dirt off that little boy or made him any less sad or even met him. But already, it takes an army of us.

It’s humbling, this work that God gives us. He gives it to us not to fix a person or save a life even, though of course that is what we are eager to see as a result of loving in Jesus’ name. He gives it to us because this is what the kingdom of heaven looks like, and we are the kingdom of heaven. It is his work, because it is his world that he wants to be this way – brokenness met by his body. So we say yes, and we busy ourselves like so many worker-bees, doing the monumental business of babysitting each other’s kids and sitting over noodles. And God is pleased. We plant and we water and suddenly there it is: a plant.

If you have never heard of Safe Families for Children, you should start here and here.

Wind the Clock Back

2 Comments

Have you ever reached a place where you just want to wind the clock back and have a big do-over? Maybe you only want to wind it back five minutes because you just snapped at your kids. Maybe you’re wishing for a month or two or maybe a lifetime. Sometimes regret or disappointment just wash over you. But you would never think to ask God for that because you know it’s not realistic. You know he binds up broken things and strengthens feeble things and forgives all kinds of things, but God hasn’t been in the business of winding clocks back lately.

I was driving to pick up my husband from school this morning and had the kids’ Big Picture Story Bible CD playing on the stereo. The simple words felt profound: “The hours passed very slowly. Jesus’ friends cried. They had thought he was the king. But now their hearts were filled with sorrow, and their minds were filled with fear. ‘What happened?’ ‘Why did Jesus have to die?’ ‘Wasn’t Jesus God’s forever king?’ The questions kept coming until the next day turned into night. As Jesus’ followers tried to sleep, they thought, ‘We will be sad forever.'”

I am guessing that Jesus’ friends were wishing to wind the clocks back after he’d been laid in the tomb. I doubt it occurred to them to ask, any more than it occurs to us. Dead people don’t come to life again. You move on. But then suddenly there was Jesus, standing there with them. “The sadness they had felt was gone. Their hearts were glad again. Jesus was alive. Jesus really was alive. Jesus was risen from the dead.” You could say he wound the clock back, but it’d be more accurate to say he did far more than that, since in conquering death once he conquered it permanently, and now we live in this world where we don’t need clocks to go back because in having Christ, and in him the power of the resurrection, we have enough.

I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places…

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. –Ephesians

On Gardens and Generosity

1 Comment

I’ve always been enchanted with gardening, and I can remember happy moments out with the house before the rest of my family was awake when I was just a kid living in Tennessee. I can remember my crop of sweet banana peppers and deep purple beans, sneaking a sun-warmed tomato from Mom’s buses, and gathering a bouquet of day lilies and sweet peas from hill by the alley. I always thought it’d be something I’d enjoy, but I never got serious about it until college, when for two years I had the privilege of living with a professor and his wife on two acres of immaculate, British-style garden and lawn. They had it all, and they worked full time for it. I helped them, and I learned to love the work and the sweat and the bug-bites and scrubbing it all out from under your fingernails at the end. Now I’m dipping my toes in myself and have enjoyed even more than I expected the process of creating a beautiful space on my porch and in the raised bed I’ve cultivated in our community courtyard.

One of the main reasons I love gardening so much is the spiritual aspect of it, and the things I’ve learned during the hours of pulling weeds, mowing grass, turning soil, watering faithfully before the sun gets hot. As I grew to appreciate the disciplines, the slow and steady labor, the patience and faithfulness and consistency required, the importance of weeding out what shouldn’t be growing and nurturing what should, I realized how dearly I wanted my children to grow up in a garden, learning the same lessons and pondering the analogies to our own lives. I am so thankful to be at the beginning of this journey and seeing it become a reality as Jacob “helps,” burying his chubby little paws in the irresistible dirt, splashing in the watering can, even learning to drag the house around. It’s not just that I want him to know where his food really comes from and how good it can taste, I want him to stop and think about how we cultivate ourselves, too, and what happens with a weed in your heart when you don’t get to the root but just tear off the leaves.

Another spiritual lesson caught my attention this afternoon while I was sitting in church. There is an elderly couple that brings an exuberant bouquet of fresh cut flowers to grace the front of the sanctuary every Sunday, from their own garden. I am always amazed at just how lovely and dramatic it is – larger than life. Clearly they spare no expense. I thought of the disappointing peas I harvested too late this week and how I’d not availed myself of that blessing when it was the right moment, and rather than growing better, it lost its value. There is a truth about basil pesto: the more you make, the more you’ll have to look forward to. The plant thrives on giving itself. I’ve been smitten by perennial wildflowers lately and have spent my free moments perusing books from the library, determined to form a plan to leave some of that beauty behind when I leave this property. That was the composition of the bouquet at church this Sunday, all lilies, and more of them than you’d believe. It occurred to me that to leave them be instead of choosing to bring them to share wouldn’t give you an advantage. They are there for the having, and they’re not there for long. I thought of taking some cuttings from the hydrangea across the yard for my table at the beginning of this week, but my procrastination was rewarded by ongoing drought and a shriveled plant. I missed my chance.

That burst of color at the front of the church got me thinking about generosity. Generosity is a temporal thing. It is the act of giving what we have, now, instead of saving it for later. Generosity happens when we don’t think about what it might be nice to have then, it thinks about what it possesses now and how it can be enjoyed to its fullest potential. Generosity might wear you out, but you do it. It might empty you, but you give it. Because right now you are not worn and you are not empty, and later there will be later’s strength and resources to offer up. Saving today’s for tomorrow is a waste. Tomorrow you will have Wednesday Grace.

Happy Birthday to Me

Leave a comment

or Real Life Is All about Re-Allocation.

For my birthday, Jacob gave me an uninterrupted night of sleep and a 5:30 wake-up time, which means instead of going back to bed after feeding him, I’m up for the morning and setting out to break blogger rules by posting a whole handful of things I’ve been musing lately.

For my birthday, Mike’s giving me a required doctoral organ recital he must attend at 5:00 p.m., and a sweet family I’ve just met is giving me childcare, which means I’m actually going on a date with my sweetie tonight for the first time since we moved to Indiana. Ohmygoodness.

Anyway.

Last year I knew I was an adult when I spent my birthday money on groceries for the week.

That’s kid stuff.

THIS YEAR I know I’m an adult because I gave myself my birthday money and then spent it on last month’s groceries. All I wanted for my birthday was a $0 balance on our credit cards, groaning under the weight of a cross-country move and a summer of unemployment. So we wrote ourselves a check from our investment account and paid down our credit cards.

Oh, and did I mention I got a beautiful Yamaha piano for my birthday too? Yeah, that was money in our investment account, too. We had to scrape things around from here to there and back again to come up with that cash, which meant we waited several weeks to go get the piano after we’d set our hearts on it. A little Craigslist beauty in the hills north of Kentucky, bought almost-new from a university for a young daughter and barely touched for 18 years. Ours now, and looks brand new. Glitch after glitch forced us to wait till this week to get it, and some more birthday money I happen to know is on its way is going toward a tuning on Monday. I can hardly wait. Giddy doesn’t begin to describe it. Deep joy and anticipation, more like. I feel my soul seeping back into me, just contemplating the hymns I’ll play on that thing again.

What I’m learning at the outset of this adventure called Being an Adult is that real life is all about re-allocation. I’ve learned a big important lesson about wealth this year. I’d say we have it. But as I was struggling to balance numbers on my spreadsheet late this summer I’d keep having to close the books till the pit in my stomach settled. The numbers in the investment account, gift from a generous grandma, which in our dreams we’d earmarked for part of a down payment on a house someday, were getting smaller and smaller. I wrestled with feeling guilty that it was nearly gone, feeling despair that we’d gone and spent so much.

I prayed.

Sometimes.

Not very often.

And then one day it hit me: Wealth is not numbers on a page and a chunk of cash is merely a representation of wealth, not wealth itself. Meaningless, really, without our assignment of personal value to it. The thing I realized is that we’re still very much in possession of most of what we’ve spent this summer: A few essential pieces of furniture making our new home comfortable, functional, beautiful, and welcoming to our friends. A pipe organ. A beautiful piano. Those things are worth more in personal value than what we spent on them, and the truth is that both of the musical instruments, if we sold them for their real value, would give us a 200% return-on-investment. At least.

God has been generous to us and looking at numbers on a page to assess how we’re doing is childishness. I’ve got what I wanted for my birthday and more besides: A few minutes rocking my sleeping boy, a date night with the love of my life, the most beautiful Yamaha piano I could’ve imagined owning, and, well, an almost-zero balance on those credit cards. Sure, none of it is new wealth, but in re-allocating it I’d say we’ve made ourselves richer.

We grasped onto this verse when we read it about 6 weeks before we were married and it has shaped our thinking:

By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches. –Proverbs 24:3-4, ESV