Image by Olivia Herrick Design
Things I’ve considered buying in the last week:
If you’re like me and need a reminder: upgrading your home won’t upgrade your happiness. Fill your camera roll with all of the things that make you feel grateful and then take some time scrolling that instead of Instagram.
On Thursday I noticed that one of the tulips had wilted after sitting in the sunny window all day. I took a photo because it felt like a visual representation of the spectrum of feelings people might have within the same situation. I left the flowers in the vase.
This morning I woke up and noticed that the wilted flower had perked back up. On the Saturday of Easter weekend, it was a welcomed reminder that just because a situation looks hopeless doesn’t mean that it is. God was quiet on Saturday, but on Sunday he silenced death forever.
If you feel tired and God seems silent, it won’t be this way forever. The promise of spring, the sureness of the sunrise, and the victory of Easter… they’re all reminders that we are rescued into resurrection.
Sometimes what we want isn’t what we get, and sometimes what we get is even better.
WHAT I WANTED: passion for work + ministry
HOW I THOUGHT IT WOULD HAPPEN: doing full time ministry; specifically by going on Young Life staff
WHAT GOD GAVE ME: passion for work + ministry… and really good friends
In late 2015 I was feeling burned out. I worked more than 40 hours each week and often felt drained on the nights Danny and I drove to Kings for Young Life events. I knew that I loved doing ministry through Young Life, and wasn’t feeling much purpose in my full time job, so I assumed that God might have been calling me to interview for Young Life staff so that my time and energy could go towards the thing I loved (ministry) rather than feeling like my life was split in two.
The interview process was several months long and throughout it I was praying and asking God for affirmation in this decision. I never really heard a clear yes or no, so I took the silence as a “yes” from God. After all, it was full-time ministry I was considering. How could God not approve of me choosing to do full-time ministry?
In the spring of 2016, I was offered a position on Young Life staff, and because I had been waiting on this offer for over six months, I accepted without hesitation. Taking the position meant leading at Loveland High School beginning in the fall, which was exciting. But, in the days to follow, I began to feel really uneasy about the decision I made. For the first time since beginning to pursue the idea of full-time ministry, I felt like God was asking me to reconsider. At first I was nervous that my apprehension about the position was rooted in fear, so I tried to ignore it. But the more time I spent talking to God about it, the more peace I felt in the fact that I needed to back away from the thing I thought would change everything (full-time ministry). Because I declined the position, nothing about my day-to-day life changed: I kept my job, Danny and I continued to lead at Kings High School as volunteers, and I felt drained doing both, but now with added feelings of confusion, embarrassment, and sadness.
About two months after declining the Young Life position, I met my current boss, Sam, and began interviewing for a position at High Five Salon. That’s another story, but in the summer of 2016, I completely changed career paths and started managing a hair salon. My job isn’t “full-time ministry,” but I have a better understanding that our life is ministry whether or not we get paid to do it. I have capacity to spend time with girls after school and can say with thankfulness that my job at High Five and Young Life ministry in Kings both fuel my passions.
God speaks incredible promises over you. His truth is always within arms length when you wake up in the morning. Actually, it’s even closer than that, but it’s easy to overlook. I wish it wasn’t. But the best news I’ve ever heard is that no matter how I feel towards God, he is constant in his love for me. I’m more loved by him right now than I’ve ever been and more loved right now than I’ll ever be, and I just get to agree to it. You just get to agree to it.
No matter your relationship status on a day like today, you have hope and love and worth spoken over you, and you just get to agree to it.
The most important Valentines Day I ever had was 10 years ago. It was my senior year and a friend from high school had a party on Saturday the 13th. The next morning I woke up face down, sitting at a kitchen table that wasn’t mine and wondered what I was doing. Like, big-picture ‘what am I doing?’ I was a pretty self-confident 18-year-old and I knew that whatever I had done and whoever I was the night before wasn’t who I wanted to be.
The summer before that, in 2009, I heard about Jesus in a way that felt real and meaningful for the first time. I would have told you that I started a relationship with Jesus that summer. But the truth is, he had chosen me long before that week in June, and it wasn’t until that February morning at a kitchen table that I really chose him. In that quiet moment I talked to him about the parts of my life where I had been ignoring him. You’re not really choosing Love until you let him choose where he’s going to lead you.
For most of my life leading up to that Valentines Day, I tried to be good at everything so that a boy might finally love me. On the 13th, I made decisions I wish I wouldn’t have and ended up sleeping at a kitchen table, but early on the morning of the 14th, Love met me there. That morning changed a lot of things about the second half of my senior year, the college I would go to, the man I would marry, where we’d buy a house. That morning changed me and now my life revolves around Love.
I had meetings and doctors appointments and good conversations, but the most important thing I did this week was stand in a room full of teenagers and tell them that Jesus loves them. And maybe telling you that Jesus loves you through this blog post is up there, too. However long you’ve been searching for love, I hope it’s not much longer until you realize that Love has been searching for you.
Our world has done a funny job of turning love upside down into something that’s more like chasing the wind and coming up empty.
But the Love I know is more wild than the wildest wind and It blankets me in Its whirl. It finds me when I run off course and then It marks a new path and shows me the way. It doesn’t give up and It doesn’t get old. It’s forgiving and faultless, honoring and honest. The Love I know is restoring the very same world that turned It upside down.
I stopped chasing the wind when I realized Love had been chasing me all along.
Remember when you were ten-years-old and the only thing you wanted for Christmas was a snowboard and then you got it and never used it? Was that just me?
I was a fourth grader playing SSX Tricky on my PS2 dreaming about the day I’d finally own a real-life snowboard and how different my life would be when I did. It wasn’t long after I opened the snowboard for Christmas that I realized riding a real-life snowboard was way different than using one with a PS2 controller. And also I lived in Ohio, where snow was unpredictable and slopes like the video game’s courses didn’t exist.
Whether it’s our elementary wish lists or adulthood desires, we think we know exactly what we want. We decide what it will take to finally feel content. And sometimes, we get those things and realize they’re not as life-changing as we imagined they would be.
Other times we receive something we didn’t know we wanted and realize it’s just the thing we needed. I can think of three gifts that were completely unexpected and made me believe more deeply in the fact that I’m important to God and he loves me. So, I’ll share those stories with you and hope you believe more deeply that you’re important to God and he loves you a lot.
Here’s a little encouragement for each enneagram type and and and explanation of how you remind me of a part of the Christmas story. ✨ Merry Christmas, everyone!
You see the possibilities of the good that can come out of the chaos. In your healthiest seasons, you’re a driver of change motivated by redemption.
Jesus’s birth was our invitation into the greatest plot twist ever told. In the middle of chaos, baby Jesus—Prince of Peace— was born and the weary world rejoiced. His first cry, our thrill of hope, initiated the re-writing of eternity and the redemption of our story.
She will bear a son, and you will call him Jesus because he will rescue his people from their sins. -Matthew 1:21
You love generously and selflessly. When you’re able to get past your fear of being unwanted, you’re a deep well of affirmation and kindness that makes others believe they’re worthy of love without seeking anything in return.
Christmas is a celebration of the most costly gift we’ve ever been given; not because we’re deserving, but because God is the perfected version of generous love. For generations before Jesus’s birth, the Israelites awaited a powerful King, but didn’t expect he’d govern with grace and lead with love. The birth of Jesus cost everything for him (leaving his perfected heavenly throne) and is offered to us for free; all so we might believe we’re worthy of extravagant love.
This is how much God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. -John 3:16-17
People look to you to lead them because they trust you’ll do it with honor. You are a natural visionary and victor; and when you’re healthiest, you reflect the glory of God and shine it on others.
God is glorious and demands glory. He is the most high, the messiah, the alpha and omega. In Luke 2, the glory of God shone throughout the fields and invited the shepherds who were watching over their sheep into His story. Christmas is the magnificence of God’s majesty. Christmas is the very glory of God’s glory!
Christ whose glory fills the skies; Christ the everlasting light; Son of Righteousness arise triumph over these shades of night. -Advent Hymn, Christy Nockels
You live with purpose and intention because you see life through a lens that others just can’t and feel emotions that don’t have names. At your best, you see the beauty more than the broken and you let your feelings take up space without taking over who you are.
The Christmas story is wildly creative and intentional. Kings and shepherds surrounded Jesus at his birth, as though God was letting us know that all social circles had a place around him. Mary and Joseph gave birth to Jesus in a manger while they were traveling in Bethlehem; and in the midst of this temporary dwelling, an invitation to our eternal home was born. The intricacies all point to an intentional God who authored the entire story and wrote it in a way that can’t be ignored.
You can see my promise even in the winter ‘cause You’re the God of greatness even in a manger. For all I know of seasons is that You take Your time. You could have saved us in a second; instead You sent a child. -Seasons, Hillsong
You are naturally curious, which motivates you to investigate new ideas and gather up information. When you’re healthiest, you trust friends + family with your space and are excited to share with them your wealth of knowledge.
There’s no story marked by wonder like the first Noel. A virgin giving birth to the son of God; a heavenly host of angels sending invitations to shepherds in a field; a long-awaited King ushering in his Kingdom in a barn. I hope we never become numb to how absolutely wild it is or take for granted that it’s part of our story, too.
Oh the mystery who could fathom God would leave his Holy throne for a manger, for a sinner, for us all to be his own. -This is Jesus, We Are Messengers
You make people feel safe because they trust you. You deeply care about authenticity, and at your best you use it to remind people of your loyalty and their worth.
Emmanuel means God with us. For hundreds of years, prophets foretold a savior King, a Messiah, a leader who would restore the nation of Israel. A baby born in a dark barn isn’t what we dream up when thinking of comforting Christmas scenes, and it probably wasn’t what the Israelites dreamed up when they envisioned their Messiah King. But, this baby— Emmanuel— is the comfort we’re all longing for and the savior they all waited for.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining ‘til he appeared and the soul felt its worth. -Oh Holy Night
You are full of contagious joy that makes other people more free to be themselves. When you’re healthiest, your joy isn’t a mask used to ignore emotional pain, but a genuine outward expression of the spirit inside of you.
The shepherds and kings followed stars and calls of angels to meet this long awaited baby in Bethlehem. Talk about a spontaneous trip. But in their willingness to drop everything and go, they had an up-close encounter with God in the flesh. Can you imagine the celebration that must have ensued after Mary gave birth? Horses neighing, shepherds cheering, wise men crying. Jesus: the true and best jubilee – joy has arrived and is offered to us all!
But the angel said to him, “fear not, for I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.” -Luke 2:10
You have a heart that longs for restoration and hope. When you’re healthiest, this manifests its way into a posture of vulnerability. You can care for the people you love and be free of a perceived need to protect yourself from appearing weak or needy.
Long before Jesus entered the scene while the Israelites hoped for a reconciler, they practiced animal sacrifice in order to atone their sins and make right with a perfect God. Before sheep were sent to the temple to be killed, their feet would be covered in scraps of cloth in order to not get muddy on the walk + track mud into the temple. It’s no coincidence that Jesus was wrapped in the same scraps of cloth when he was born while shepherds looked over him. Jesus— the lamb of God— is our greatest hope and our final atonement!
Christmas means not just hope for the world, despite all its unending problems, but hope for you and me, despite all our unending failings. -Tim Keller
For the people you love, you are the safe place in a crowded room. At your best, you are able to create deep connections without fear of future rejection or dissension in the relationship.
Christmas is the ushering in of peace on earth. Micah, a prophet, told of a baby who would be born from the clan of Judah in Bethlehem 700 years before Jesus’s birth. Micah claimed this baby would be different; he prophesied that “he will be our peace” (Micah 5:5). In Luke 2, a choir of angels appears to shepherds to let them know that the time is now: the baby who Micah talked about is here and he brings “peace on earth to all who know him.” When Jesus was born he was crowned Prince of Peace, and that’s the Christmas gospel.
And his people will dwell secure, for he will be great to the ends of the earth. And he will be their peace. -Micah 5:5
Few things get me more jazzed than hosting + decorating. But I don’t want to get to Christmas and realize that I spent my time + energy on those things without making space for Jesus to show up.
Whether it was an inn or a house or a hostel that didn’t have enough room for Mary + Joseph, it could have been filled with the right people and the best food and still missed the miracle.
It’s less about your body than you think.
You wonder if you’re worthy and when you fear that you’re not, your body takes the blame. That’s what this is about: you wanting to be loved. But standing in front of the mirror and picking apart who you are based on what you look like only withholds the very thing you really want.
What if you rewrote the script and made it less about your body? Instead, make lists of the people who care about you, the places you find joy, the times you’ve felt strong. Maybe then your script will feel more like a love letter. Maybe then you’ll look in the mirror at a body that no longer determines your worth, but envelops it. 💌
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