Our little woman repented of her sins and accepted Jesus as her personal Lord and Savior on Monday afternoon.

Monday was an unordinary day to begin with, because the little woman, her brother, and I were up half the night enduring a noisy thunderstorm (and I am definitely not Frauline Maria during a thunderstorm). My husband was supposed to go to a conference Monday, but when he found out about my 4 hours of notsleep, he sagaciously skipped the conference and came home to rescue his two adorable children from their bleary eyed mother who could no sooner sew clothes from drapes than build a rocket ship out of anything other than a refrigerator box.

Our topsy turvy day continued with a nap for Mama, followed by naps for both kids and Daddy. When the kids awoke, the little woman joined me at the kitchen table for conversation over a snack. I have no recollection of that conversation prior to her remark that only grown ups are Christians. I blame this memory lapse on the conversation that followed this remark, because it was the conversation that actually matters.

“No, sweetheart, kids can be Christians, too. You don’t have to wait to be a grown up to decide to be a Christian,” I gently corrected. “I was 5 years old when I decided to be a Christian.”

“You were 5 years old?!” the little woman exclaimed, her eyes alight with wonder.

We then talked about what it means to be a Christian, just like we have several times a week for the last few months. She talked about why Jesus came (to rescue us from our sins), that He died on the cross for our sins, and that He came back to life to give us clean hearts.

I asked her in a very non-pressuring tone if she wanted to be a Christian. The last thing on earth I ever want to do is pressure anyone to convert, because that would be a false conversion and the source of all manner of confusion. So, I asked her about becoming a Christian using the same tone I use to ask her if she wants to eat grapes.

“I’d like to think about it some more,” she answered in a speculative tone.

“All right. You can think about it for as long as you need to.”

She thought about it for a few minutes, while I busied myself in the kitchen, and then she came back to me and said, “Jesus hasn’t cleaned my heart, yet. I need for Him to clean my heart.”

“Yes, you’re right.”

“I want Him to clean it right now. I don’t want a dirty heart with all this sin in it.”

I asked her again if she was sure about doing it right now and if she wanted to think some more, and she said she wanted to ask Jesus to wash away her sin and live in her heart right now. So, we fetched Daddy, and we all prayed together as a family and Jesus cleaned Laura’s heart.

When we finished praying, giggles bubbled from her sweet little mouth as she grinned. She said that she felt the Holy Spirit come to live in her, and she was so excited to have Him there.

The entire experience was one of the most surreal moments of my life. I think about it, and I smile at the wonder of it all. Is it really so simple as a child confessing that her heart is dirty and that she needs Jesus to wash away all of that sin and to be her Rescuer, her Lord and Savior?

Yes. Yes it is.

My husband told me this morning that another couple we are friends with suffered a miscarriage.

Those horrible words rip my heart up every single time.

Since our Nathan went Home to Jesus in June of 2006, eight of our friends have suffered miscarriages or the death of a newborn. Eight couples in the last five and a half years. One of the couples has three beautiful children in Heaven. One of the couples has twins in Heaven. Eleven babies in five and a half years.

That we know of.

Not everyone shares their miscarriage. One of the few remaining wretched secrets of motherhood is miscarriage. When Nathan went Home, several older mothers in the church we were attending at the time came up to me and told me that they, too, had miscarried, but that they hadn’t anyone to talk about it with. They wanted me to know that I could talk with them. That I didn’t have to carry around this secret like it was something to be ashamed of. That miscarriage didn’t have to be — that it shouldn’t be — a secret anymore.

When Michelle Duggar miscarried her youngest daughter Jubilee Shalom last December, my heart broke for her. Jubilee was her second miscarriage. Her first was their second child, a 6-week old baby they named Caleb. When I read the news articles about the miscarriage, I read what I expected: lots of vitriol directed at a woman who has chosen to carry so many babies in her womb. There were people saying that she deserved this miscarriage because of the irresponsibility of bearing that many children. Anger at these hateful statements consumed me. I don’t understand the Duggars any more than I understand anyone else in this world, but I do understand this: they have a dead baby, just like me.

The other day, I read an article at Christianity Today’s women’s blog about Michelle Duggar’s miscarriage. My thoughts on the article are not as important to me as one of the comments I read. At the end of his/her comment, this commenter “A. Roddy” states:

“I am sorry for the Duggar’s loss but it should be a private affair.”

I am not a fan of reality television. I have watched the Duggars’ show on TLC many times, and I find them to be a sweet, encouraging, and loving family, but I am uncomfortable with reality TV. I question why anyone would want to be on reality TV, especially with their children. However, I also know that Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar have repeatedly stated that they believe the Lord has called them to make their TV show. I don’t know them personally, but I do know our God who asks His kids to do crazy things sometimes. I believe with all of my heart that one of the most important reasons why He wanted them on television was for this moment in their lives: this miscarriage, this public grieving of the death of their unborn child. Because what the Duggars’ experience has done is shine the bright light of Truth on an experience that so many mothers and fathers hide in shame. What the Duggars’ experience has done is push the miscarriage dialogue into the public square right where it should be, because keeping miscarriage hidden and “a private affair” does nothing more than reinforce the idiotic and cruel stigma that miscarriage is something to be ashamed of.

A couple of days ago, I read Michelle Duggar’s own words about the miscarriage. Clearly, this mother loves her youngest baby just as much as all the rest of her children. The closing statement of her letter struck me most deeply, though, especially knowing that Jubilee was their second miscarriage.

 “From now on, when I’m asked how many children I have, the answer will be 21, 19 here and 2 in heaven.”

Prior to the death of Jubilee, Michelle didn’t include Caleb in her child count. The show’s title “19 Kids and Counting” counted their children who were alive. Caleb wasn’t acknowledged. I know a lot of moms who miscarry who don’t count those babies. I even struggled with whether or not to count Nathan when asked how many children we have because of how people react to someone saying, “Yes, I have three children. One in Heaven and two here.”

But Nathan counts. Jubilee and Caleb count. And so do the eleven babies of our friends.

And they don’t count because we say they count. They count, because every baby – loved or unloved, wanted or unwanted, miscarried or aborted, live birth or still birth, infant death or elderly death – counts. No matter when or how a person dies, they count. If they are 87-years old dying of cancer, they count just as much as the 16-year old who dies in a car accident.

We all count.

We all matter.

We are all endlessly, recklessly, and devotedly loved by the One who declares that we ought to be.

Finishing a novel is always surreal. I write that as though I have finished writing dozens of novels, but perhaps someday when I have finished writing dozens of novels (ha!), it won’t seem so surreal anymore. I hope it does, though. I hope that every time I finish writing a book, I feel just as satisfied and bereft as I have with The Broken Road and On Every Barren Hill.

More than finishing a novel, beginning a novel is surreal.

I emptied out the binder I carry around drafts in and refilled it with blank notebook paper. Those empty pages are waiting for the next part of Lydia and Ethan’s story. I look at them, and I wonder, “Can I do this again? Am I crazy to continue this? I could just end it with the second book and move on to something else. Am I really ready to start writing The Mountains Be Shaken, or do I need to take a break from Lydia and tell someone else’s story for awhile?”

Do I want to go visit some other book friends? After all, I have a whole lot of them in Wayward Falls, Texas, and they are a bunch of loons down there in the Piney Woods. I do so much enjoy their eccentric company. Or, I could also try my hand at writing another biblical short story. I have three of those written and half of a fourth. If I wrote a handful more of those, then perhaps I could publish a little collection of them.

Then I think about where I left Lydia and Ethan at the end of On Every Barren Hill, and I just can’t stomach the thought of abandoning them there. I look at the rough outline I have for The Mountains Be Shaken, and I want to walk through that part of the journey now. I don’t want to outline anymore. I want to scratch out drafts and race to the end so we can leap into the victory of Led Forth in Peace.

So, here it begins…

Lydia shielded her eyes from the bright afternoon sunlight beating down on the road leading north to Montana Territory.

Just as John Piper wrote in his blog this very morning, sometimes – many times – “I wake up feeling fragile. Vulnerable. It’s often vague. No single threat. No one weakness. Just an amorphous sense that something is going to go wrong and I will be responsible. It’s usually after a lot of criticism. Lots of expectations that have deadlines and that seem too big and too many.”

Today, I woke up feeling fragile. Days of celebrating Jesus and my birthday and my book have left me spent, yet here we are with another celebration before us….I look at this day, and I think, “Why did I plan to celebrate with them last? What was I thinking? Why didn’t we celebrate a week ago when I still had some reserves from which to draw? Jesus, help me.”

I texted Mom, asking for prayer. Then I clicked on the link to John Piper’s blog, and Abba smiled on me with radiant love. In Zechariah 2, Zechariah recounts a vision of a man measuring Jerusalem to determine how big the City of God is, but an angel stops him and tells him that the city and its surrounding villages will have no walls because the population is so great. Jerusalem will be physically vulnerable, because she is so full of life. But the Lord Himself will be the wall surrounding the city, and not only will He protect His beloved, He will also dwell with His people, bringing His glory to them.

My life cannot have walls around it. Constructing walls to keep people out would restrict my life to my detriment. There is simply too much life for Abba to permit me to pile brick upon brick, barricading myself so that I can live in a quiet hovel of solitude. Any wall that I construct would be poorly built anyway. I am no builder or craftsman. Thus, I am vulnerable. Fragile, as Piper says. I am exposed to the masses of people who pass in and out of my life, some of whom have very little other than ill will to offer. I am exposed to “livestock” – in the form of pets, I presume – that irritate me because, my corn, have I not already done enough for everyone else in the house and now he wants something from me, too (Selfishness thrives).

But, the God Most High who loves me does not leave me any more vulnerable than He left His beloved city. He is “a wall of fire” around me – an impenetrable shield of protection that consumes any that would seek to treat me in a way that He has not allowed. Will I suffer? The utter lack of peace and unity in modern Jerusalem attest to the fact that, yes, I will still suffer. Abba’s protection does not promise a life of ease, comfort, or prosperity. Abba’s protection promises that He will not permit anything or anyone to touch me unless He has permitted it to happen. Such as Nathan’s death. Should babies die in the womb? No! There is something inherently wrong with death and most especially with the death of a child, but Abba allowed that difficulty to pass through the gates of His fiery wall, because He knew the beauty that would come from Nathan’s short, profound life here on earth. So, yes, He protects me from much harm and turmoil, though He does permit pain to reach me for His redemptive purposes.

Abba’s fiery wall also keeps me in my proper place. He protects me from my own eagerness to run out into the hill country when I am not told to go, because I see the flames of His wall and I do not want to pass through His discipline yet again. I would rather stay put and wait for Him to lead me through the gate into the wilderness with His Spirit going before me as my Guide, going beside me as my Friend, and going beyond me as my Rearguard.

The joyous part? That Yahweh not only promises His protection, but also the immense pleasure of His presence. “…and I will be the glory within it,” He says. Abba will not only protect me from others and from myself, He will also dwell with me in His city. He will be my glory! Have you ever experienced Abba’s glory? I haven’t the words to describe it! The language of man cannot contain the magnificence of Abba, but this I know: once you have been swept up in His glory, you want nothing else for a good long while. You are wholly consumed by want of Him.

A half hour ago, I felt fragile. My heart and mind lingered on the edge of weeping at the mere thought of enduring the people entering my city, but I know now that the One who loves me most is a fiery wall and the joyous glory of my life. I can rest in His protective embrace. I can fall back into His arms and feel His heart beat, His chest rise and fall with the Breath of Life. I can feel His chin rest on the crown of my head and listen to Him whisper Truth. You are Mine, Beloved. You are Mine. Secure and wholly loved, no matter what comes. No matter what anyone thinks or doesn’t think. No matter who irritates you or pesters you or cuts you to the quick. You are Mine. Abide here with Me. You are safe, because I have you, Beloved, and I’m not letting go.

2. Lose another 20 lbs.

3. Date my husband. We have a great marriage. I will not delude myself by picking it apart and tearing us down like I have such a tendency to do with myself. There is so much good and right between us, and I want this next year to enjoy our marriage even more than last year. He really is my favorite person ever, and I’d like to date him again.

4. Spend more intentional, individual time with the kids, doing activities they enjoy.

5. Write to our World Vision kid twice a month, even if it’s just a brief note.

6. Discipline our finances, so we can save and give more.

7. Say an “I am” truth to myself while looking in the mirror every day. I am Abba’s child. I am righteous in His sight by the blood of Christ. I am redeemed…

Then we had children, and that 1/3 disappeared. I am now with people 3/3rds of the time.

And I am drowning in a sea of extroverted, active people who want to go and do and talk and laugh and run and play and skip and jump and and and and all day every day after day after endless day.

I just want to crawl into a cave and hide for a very, very long time.

I read a couple of missionary blogs on a regular basis. I read about the difficulties of missionary life in third world countries, of raising children, of not having enough funding for very important projects, etc. I read about the lack of consistent electricity and air conditioning, the frustrations and dangers of corrupt governments, the lack of medical resources and all of these other mind-numbing frustrations that make these Jesus lovers grow and stretch in the most uncomfortable of ways.

On occasion, when I read these blogs and others that promote foreign missions, I see this pervasive idea that God doesn’t want His people to get comfortable in their circumstances. If you’re comfortable, then you’re not growing. Maybe you should go into the foreign mission field so you’ll be uncomfortable and start growing. Or, you should just live like you’re in the foreign mission field where you live and deny yourself all of the benefits of first world living since it’s evil to enjoy the luxurious life of the first world.

Okay, so maybe that last part is a bit of an exaggeration, but you have felt that way, too, after reading some of those articles. The point these missionaries are trying to make is a valid one: being comfortable and insisting on staying that way is a great way to ensure that God can do very little to sanctify you.

The truth is, I am a missionary in a foreign country. Every single morning when my eyes open to the sounds of my husband, children, and dog, I wake up in a land foreign to my way of being. I have to crawl out of myself and walk into this mission field He has given me.

I have to think outwardly instead of inwardly. I have to touch others dozens upon dozens of times throughout the day. I have to listen to voices pour so many words into my ears that they feel bloody by the time dusk arrives. I have to negotiate and mediate problem after problem. I have to come up with menus, activities, and craft projects when I don’t like to cook (or really even eat), I dislike busybusy activities, and craft projects make me want to barf up the bile in my liver.

Yes, I may live in the luxurious United States where material crap reproduces faster than rats, but this place is a wasteland spiritually. I look around at our culture, and I see such poverty of soul, heart, and mind. I see people who desperately try to fill up their lives with garbage, so they can avoid the thoughts in their minds and the whispers in their hearts. I see people who are avoiding everything that I so deeply cherish: stillness, quiet, contemplation, learning, meditation, prayer, writing.

I look in my own home and I see these three beautiful people who God wired so differently from me, and I yearn to understand why they desire to be with each other and with me as much as they do. Why do they want to go somewhere every day? Why do they want to play with friends every day? Why do they even want to see me all day, every day?

Uncomfortable. Yes, indeed, I am uncomfortable in this lot that He gave me. Some days, I kick and fight and scream and say all manner of ungodly words about how uncomfortable this sanctifying place is. But, it’s where He put me. And He never places anyone anywhere by mistake.

Someday, maybe I won’t long for a cave to hide in anymore. Until then, I’m on foreign soil amongst a people I don’t fully understand, trying to make some sense of this craziness He calls sacrificial, uncomfortable love.

Available Now!

This morning, my lifelong dream came true! I woke up to discover my first novel for sale at Amazon!

The folks at Lighthouse submitted the files to Amazon earlier this week, and the quick fingered Amazon folks set it all up several days sooner than expected.

Several of my blog readers have read early versions of The Broken Road. If you are one of those beloved readers of mine, will you please go on over to Amazon and review the book for me? Most folks won’t pay for a book by an unknown author unless it has good reviews (I’m assuming you will say it’s good…if you didn’t like it, please don’t review it!). And don’t mention that you know me. That will make you sound biased.

Now, it’s time to find my head again and tend to the little ones who don’t understand why their mama is bouncing off the walls but who are enjoying it just the same.

My husband and I have been averaging about 5-7 hours of sleep most nights for the last three months. That alone will make a person sick. He’s excellent about tending to the kids at night when one of them wake up (mostly because I sleep with ear plugs and don’t hear them…), and then he is up most nights when he is at the fire station tending to the emergencies of strangers. I just struggle with insomnia and don’t want to take medication for it.

•  •  •

This morning, I finished reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I will admit that I am joining the droves of white women who enjoyed the book. Stockett tells a compelling story, and I actually enjoyed the way she wrote it, too. So often, I don’t enjoy modern fiction, because the writers try so dadgum hard to sound smart and not contrived, which ends up making them sound dumb and contrived.

Before I read the book, I read several reviews from black women who despised the novel. I went into the book with their opinions at the forefront of my mind, and I must admit that I can see why they despised the novel. These women have some valid points. Having read a sliver of what is widely deemed some of the best African American fiction during my years in college (Sula is one of the greatest books I’ve ever read), I can easily see where The Help falls short of fully communicating what it meant to be a black woman in the South during the Jim Crow era.

Of course a white woman wouldn’t be able to communicate that fully, but I wish we all could agree that what Kathryn Stockett did with The Help is a good thing. I know plenty of white women who would not read Sula or Beloved, not because those books were written by a black woman, but because they are difficult books to read. They are both literary masterpieces that take a level of concentration, analysis, and commitment that a lot of people just don’t have for a variety of valid and understandable reasons.

The Help, in contrast, is an easy book to read. Almost any middle schooler could read and understand it without a problem. Thus, more people will read the story of Aibileen, Minny, and Skeeter and come away with at least a little better understanding  of the Jim Crow era in Jackson, Mississippi.

That is a good thing.

•  •  •

I stare at the outline for the third book in my series, wondering if I want to do something different with it.  The first two novels are both told from the perspective of an omniscient narrator. A year or more ago, I started wondering if I could write the third book in first person from varying characters’ viewpoints. I just don’t know if that’s what I’m supposed to do.

People will say it’s unorthodox to write the first two novels in a series as an omniscient narrator and the third in first person.

Well, Faulkner killed off Quentin Compson in one book, and in a later short story (chronologically in the Yoknapatawpha County timeline), Quentin is alive and well. If he can make people undead and write chapters that say nothing more than, “My mother is a fish” and be heralded as the greatest Southern fiction writer of the 20th century, then I reckon can write the third book in first person.

If that’s what I’m supposed to do.

We’ll see what happens.

Still, autumn is here. Pecan, sweet gum, and oak leaves are no longer green. We see every shade of yellow and a few pockets of red and even fewer pockets of orange coloring the trees. In every grove, brittle ocher shaded leaves droop from dead limbs that will crack and fall when a winter storm arrives in January. A winter rainstorm we all pray comes. So many dying and dead trees everywhere you look. The tall, old granddaddy trees finally succumbing to the drought. So few little ones sprouting up in the next generation. Texas will bear the marks of this drought for many years to come.

I know how a drought leaves scars, because I can see my own scars that came during the drought months that folded on top of each other to become drought years. The first 5 2/3 years of our marriage was one long, painful drought for me. So many days wandering in the wild, desperate for the spring rains to come. Only, when spring came, the drought persisted. Occasionally, a good soaking rain would fall, and I would feel better for a while. I lived off of those periodic rains far longer than I ever thought possible.

Through it all, I knew Abba steadfastly remained at my side. I knew He was the Rain-Giver, the Sustainer, the One Who somehow kept me from giving up entirely. At times, I resented Him for the long, weary drought. But then He would remind me of the beauty that came out of it: the three precious children who came from three difficult pregnancies, the wisdom of painful experiences, the joy of new, profound friendships, the deepened love of a marriage resolutely fighting against the evil one who so desperately wants to destroy it, the security of abiding in Him in the darkness of fear, anxiety, and mental illness, the ebenezer stones that mark where He has brought me over the past 5 2/3 years.

My drought is over now. Abba sent the rains, and He continues to send them. He has washed my mind clean, restored my vision, and renewed my spirit. Over the past four months, as He took me through the psalms of David one at a time, He told me all the way through that it was over. We were not there anymore. We are here now, and here is very good.

When I started to read the psalms of David in late July, I originally intended to read the book of Hebrews instead. I had just finished a very long 6-month study of Jeremiah, and I made up my mind that the next book I needed to study was Hebrews. I began reading, and every day the study fell flat and I heard nothing from Abba. I felt confused, anxious, and, honestly, stupid. Then, one day, I closed my Bible and said, “This isn’t working.”

“That is because you didn’t ask Me what I want you to read.”

Duh.

I asked, and He sent me back to the Old Testament for a sojourn with Him and His beloved shepherd-king.

You have no idea what He brought me through in these last few months as we read psalm after psalm together. I can hardly explain it, and I am a writer. Sometimes, what Abba does is far too much to put into the meager vocabulary of words we possess here on this side of eternity. When I finished reading the David psalms, finished copying them, praying them, meditating on them, I was so disappointed to be done with them. I looked at my journal and said, “Is that really it? Do I have to leave his psalms now?”

Abba didn’t answer me that day.  So, the next morning, I started back at the beginning of David’s psalms and started reviewing them again, a few at a time. Day by day, I skimmed through the same psalms and recorded favorite verses, sometimes annotating in my journal, sometimes not. I couldn’t let them go. I wanted to climb into the psalms and live there forever.

And then, just before we reached Psalm 27, Abba brought a gentleman to our Bible study class who recited the entire book of James to us. He not only recited it, he shared it as though the words sprung from his very soul. As though God had written the words on his heart. That if a surgeon cut open his left ventricle, there would be James saying, “Consider it pure joy…”. As this Brother of mine poured James onto my heart and mind like oil anointing the shepherd-king’s head, I knew what Abba wanted next.

I have been memorizing Psalm 27 for the last week. I am just over halfway through, and I am so delighted by it. I can’t wait to do memory work! It thrills me, because every time I recite the words, I bask in the warm, comforting glow of His Truth. The psalm is better than any pint of ice cream, any soft blanket, any good story, or cathartic cry. This place where He and I are sojourning together – this here – is so very good.

I have only attempted to memorize Scripture one other time in my life.  You may even remember my failed attempt during my third pregnancy, because I blogged about it for a short time before I finally gave up. Overwhelmed by my first year of teaching and that nefarious malady called “pregnancy brain,” I finally realized that the goal I had set before me was too much at the time and quit.

Now that I am out of the drought and back in fertile land where rain falls and life grows, I am soaking up Psalm 27 easily, albeit unhurriedly. I would rather not be hasty about it. Enjoying the slow, daily memorization of one verse suits me well. It nourishes me unlike my normal routine of studying of Scripture. This purposed dwelling in one psalm forces me to stop filling up on knowledge at the heels of the Rescuer I am desperate to follow and start dining on wisdom at the table of our Father I just want to be with.

With Him. Not for Him. Not after Him. Not near Him.

With Him.

Yes, here is a very, very good place to be.

The Lord is my light and my salvation-
whom should I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life-
of whom should I be afraid?
When evildoers came against me to devour my flesh,
my foes and my enemies stumbled and fell.
Though an army deploy against me,
my heart is not afraid;
though war break out against me,
still I am confident.
I have asked one thing from the Lord;
it is what I desire:
to dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
gazing on the beauty of the Lord
and seeking Him in His temple.
For He will conceal me in His shelter
in the day of adversity;
He will hide me under the cover of His tent;
He will set me high on a rock.
Then my head will be high
above my enemies around me;
I will offer sacrifices in His tent with shouts of joy.
I will sing and make music to the Lord.
Lord, hear my voice when I call;
be gracious to me and answer me.
In Your behalf my heart says, “Seek My face.”
Lord, I will seek Your face.

-David, the Shepherd-King of Israel, Psalm 27:1-8, HCSB