I want 10 mins to be nervous, to not know, to feel weird about transitions and why they happen so quickly lately, and for someone on the other side to just hug me and tell me that it's gonna be fine.

Learning the hard way.

There are things that never get old. Like blossoming flowers, the first snow fall, the smell of fall, the way the people in your life love you.

Sometimes, regular life, dulls the brilliance of these thing. The day in and day out normalcy leaves us feeling complacent about the little miracles that meet us with each day.

The struggle though is to not let commonplace get the last word.

It's been a rough couple of days.  Days that have been a culmination of stuffing feelings and change that is inevitable, and the idea that my life might looks significantly different in the moments to come, the idea that everyone is horribly human and that sometimes our humanness gets the best of us. I wonder where jesus is, and whether or not the church can change the world when so many shitty people are doing things in the name of Jesus.

and it kind of caught up with me. When i don't feel affirmed, when i feel like my work doesn't have meaning, when i feel like my friendship isn't t enough. I cry. I throw softballs as hard as i can.

Sometimes, though, people show up, and even the smallest things remind us how profoundly we're loved. I often spend a lot of time, doubting how loved i am. How if my life fell apart (again) i'd be alone.

So i spend a lot of time, feeling alone in case lonely is actually in my future.

But then things happens to prove me wrong. People show up at work with drinks and scones and let me cry as i hug them. They let me word vomit over  group texts, or they do the very brave thing of loving me when it the most frustrating.

The funny thing about me, is that when i let humaness get the best of me in a big loud way, Jesus sneeks in, quiet, unassuming, showing me in an ordinary way, that love does win, and it doesn't have to be big and flashy, it's constant. it's people. it's how relieved you feel when someone who you truth shows you in their own way that they are for you.

In metaphorical way of grabbing your hand and holding it until the tide goes out and you can feel you can get back on the horse  again.

In small ordinary ways, they re-write the failures, they help you spin your unlucky, hard stuff in a way that helps see how  Jesus is doing the hard work to reclaim and redeem your story in a way that shows you and the world that God holds all of us, safely and securely.

Today, I'm thankful for the people in my life who don't have to love me, who know how to show me that the world doesn't get to win, that they're in the trenches with me, if i stop long enough to look.

We're not related. Nope, we come from different places and decades, but if family is measured in love....well, then i guess we are.

Sometimes when i think about how much i rely on people to exist daily for literally everything. I feel ashamed, and guilty and like i'm weak.

But i think that the type of community that Jesus talks about. The type of community that we long for in our hearts, looks very clearly like that. The type of thing where we are so connected that the love and relationship and together is so normal to us, but so strange from the outside.

It's the kind of thing where other people don't understand it, but kind of want the exact same thing,

Isn't that want we all want? To belong somewhere, to love people in a way that makes you go out of your way to make sure they know, even in the smallest way, that you are so loved and cared for. That someone sees you, and believes in you.

and will literally and figuratively grab your hand.

It's a funny thing to walk out a haze of doubt, and fear and hurt, and know quite how to recover or do it right. how to make it right.
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The truth is, though, we can't make it right. Grace and forgiveness? that's not us. It's Jesus working in us and nothing we can get to on our own.

I'm overwhelmed by  grace and forgiveness that is extended to me. Too often.  i feel undeserving and guilty instead of grateful and thankful that love looks like this.

love looks like so many things i take for granted on the regular. I'm thankful for the eyes that eventually  see the truth, but all too often i see after i feel like i've done irreversible damage.

I don't know how to better understand grace, i'm just glad that it is offered to me as freely as a hello from a friend.

Is there life out there?

I will always be the first to say that it takes me a minute to learn big life things. It's a lot of learning the hard way, even after I've gotten wise words from people who have been there....i just forge my own trial, and everyone who loves me kind of shakes their head.

The older I get, though, the more I realize that my life kind of resembles country music lyrics.  My mama and daddy are usually right, broken hearts find a way to heal, beer is good, God is great, life's a dance and there really is something about your favorite pair of blue jeans.

I've spend hours upon hours trying to into words what it feels like to get the rug pulled out from under you. To get your heart broken in away that it changes the way you see life and people and Jesus. The kind of reset that requires bringing you to your knees in the most humble way. The heart bearing kind where you feel like it's hard to breathe.

I've been trying to find the words to explain what it feels when when the broken heart is yours and when it's someone you love. To have to watch as they struggle and break and know that you can't fix it.

That kind of hard gets into your guts, it give it everything it has you feel like you have nothing left to give. No fight left in you. And you don't.

We can't do life alone. We're not supposed to. Jesus has this way of showing up in the strangest ways at the strangest times.

I've talked about this being a season in my life, and in many of my people's lives, of becoming. The wilderness into the promise land, the arriving at a newer, better you.

But really, i think it's about overcoming. The resilience you find when you know that people are praying for you, or will bring you coffee when you really need, who will hug you even when huggin' isn't there thing. People who get up on shaky ladders or spend all day with you because you don't to be alone. When they listen to you talk and cry about the same thing. When they offer advice that you don't take right away.

The come wade into the waters of your storm without a second thought.  The people that quietly remind you that not everyone sucks, that you're strong and brave and worth all the effort. They often the people who make getting out of bed a little less shitty. They can't change our circumstances but they can be reminders that Jesus is mighty. His love is strong and we are never alone.

It's often so hard, for me anyway, to see the forest through the trees. To find God's goodness in the trenches, but it's, more often than not, the very place where his the most obviously present.
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This has been the winter of our discontent for many of us. We've stared at the broken pieces our lives and wondered how they'd ever fit back together again. How our heart would ever pump hard and full.

and there are people that grab the pieces and start putting things together again. A beautiful mosaic fit together by the glue that is formed when you say to the important things. It's what love looks like. Messy, off centered, and sparkly flecks some so small you'd miss them if you didn't know what you're looking at.

It's what happens when you say yes to small things like packing boxes, or dinner, or just sitting and being okay with not knowing what to say. Its in those moments when we find out strength.

I've learned that spring is always right around the corner. The hurt get smaller, your heart beats stronger, your will eventually stand on your own feet again, and if you need to hold someones hand sometimes, it's okay.

I'm so thankful for the people who let me hold their hands when i'm scared or weak or broken. When i look back at my life, i will always be thankful for the times that i got my hands dirty for the people mattered. The times when i said yes when it mattered, even when it was awkward or scary.

Because i've met jesus in ways i would have never otherwise. To understand the feeling do being willing do to almost anything to make someone's pain go away. To want to make them see how much love is in the world....that kind of feeling....that doesn't come from anywhere else except the holy spirit.

We need reminders that God's near and most often they come in the form of people.

I'm redefining this season as one of becoming but also overcoming. Because Love Wins. every time.

I will  always be grateful to the people who have let me see them without their shell, and who haven't run away when i've lost my shit too many times to count.

this life is so hard, but after every winter comes spring...and it's good to know that there is life out there....beyond the brokenness you currently feel.  The things we're overcoming are writing such a beautifully complicated gut wrenching story about who God is and the restoration and love that's possible in even the deepest valleys.

a blast form the recent past.....

once upon these days....

this. house.

these. people.

the.way.it.smells. here.

fills.my.heart.

like.it's.overflowing.

and spilling love everywhere.

My body is a pen writing a chapter in a larger story.

A short story in a collection of others

Though, parts are hard to get through, others are sweet and funny

and full of the best things.

good fruit

i'm very proud of who we're becoming.

though my words will seem few,

 my words will be bold

full to the tippy top with love and passion

the characters real, mosaics of then and now,

 all racing towards something

a light, a finish line, the sun,

Sometimes we run together

and me and you all become an us 

and the us becomes a family 

in the most extraorindarily ordinary way

and we exist without effot until we don't

when the sun gets closer

we'll be able to look back, saying,

Once upon these days we did something

radical.

we let each other co-write our stories.



....and they lived happily ever after. 

A love letter to Minnesota

Here's what you need to know, I hit the "I just want to get out of this place" phase later in life. For me, it was after college. 

So, at 23, I packed up my stuff,  and my college roommate and I moved into a charming little house, in charming little Hastings in the summer of 2009. I knew exactly 2 people, and I didn't really have a plan except for not living at home anymore. 

Turns out, though, it's probably not the best way to plan your adult future. Also, I should point out that we were "house sitting" for people who were deployed in Iraq and were living there for a stupid cheap amount, not the best way to budget how adults really lived. 

But, it was lovely. We had a beautiful back yard (where we caught a woodchuck..or something)  with a fire pit, we had a back porch we used to sit in and talk about God and watch the rain. We'd drink coffee and teach ourselves how to play piano on a gorgeous grand piano that sat in the front window. 

It's here where i first met Sam and Julia, not know then how much they would be a part of my life. It's everything you'd ever want for your post college apartment, living with your best friend, and living the dream. 

Less than a year later, we'd pack our things again and move to St. Paul. In a perfect old apartment with crooked hardwood floors, and a great view a downtown, and the chime of the Cathedral bells. 

We rented a truck and drove 700 miles in one day. I moved my bed out of parents house. I stared at my empty childhood bedroom and hug my entirely family goodbye....not really realizing the importance of that...the fact that they were all there.  It should not a be a surprise, i'm horrible at goodbyes. We all laughed about how i should not be the one to drive the moving truck...because...well...i was kind of terrible driving in my younger days.....We got 40 miles out Green Bay when I lost my shit. All the tears...I'm a repressed human...i know, i should be in therapy. I've heard it a million times. But... my roommate grabbed my hand, promised that everything was going to be great and if it wasn't....we could always go home....

and what's the exact when i let my heart be in two places. We moved in. So many beautiful people who did not know me very well...but would soon become some of the people closest to my heart....helped us move boxes, and boxes, and boxes of  our things. It took four of us and my neck nearly broken to get a king sized mattress up those tiny stairs and into our tiny-ish apartment. 

Decorated in hand me downs sprinkled with new things from Target and Ikea...we were on our way. 

And what a way it was. I fell in love with St. Paul.  A city whose heart beat, is in sync with mine. A city who wraps me up in her quaint and quiet charm and makes me fall in love with life again and again. 

Our tiny apartment was full of mischief and love and most of the time at there was at least one other person there that didn't actually live there. And we loved it. Outside our back window was a parking lot where Hans parked cars for events at excel. He was the first person we met, we offered him the rest of our dominos pizza that we walked all the way downtown to get. (side note: we had no idea what we were doing) 

Pizza Luce delivered to us. Two kids who need to feel loved and a safe place to land, landed on our couches. We held meetings, small groups, and birthday parties there. Boys broke our hearts, we were the best of friends and the worst of enemies and nothing could prepare us for the transition that lay ahead. The roads we had to pave on our own.

Then, 3 years later, I packed up my stuff again. It's hard to stay good-bye to something that you loved so much. It's even harder to do with with the pieces of our heart in your hands.  But the thing that Minnesota does is give me people who love me far beyond what i deserve.  So, while my heart and life were in pieces, there were people helping me put the pieces back together. 

And about year later, I moved out of St. Paul and into the grove. It's been a whirlwind. I don't understand love or grace or why people who offer it so freely to me, Especially since this last year and half has been the hardest....and I've been the worst version of myself...and even i don't love it. 

I'll never understand. I don't have words for what i feel about this place, and this time and how much it means to me. Brad used to say " you're a good thing" but one time he said " You're a good thing, go where you feel the most love" and that's right here. It's the scariest, most heart exposing love i have ever known this side of the Mississippi, and i don't understand why at all. I just know that i get little glimpses of who Jesus is, and what he wants this world to look like, here. 

I've needed glimpses of Jesus lately. He feels far away and like we are speaking totally different languages. So, today, when I realized that it had been 5 years....i saw the years like a flipbook, a playlist of memories, and i was completely overwhelmed. 

My roots are firmly planted in the Wisconsin ground, But, the branches, Minnesota, belong to you. They are stretching out and growing leaves, i don't know what direction their go, but i'm so thankful for them. If you cut the rings open, they tell a special kind of love story. 

The kind of love story you can only tell when people have loved you as much like Jesus as we can possibly fathom this side of heaven. 

This has been a rambly mess, but tonight as i sat with two of my small girls, who just happen to be best friends. I was, again, over come with thankfulness. For being able to understand what it's like to have a best friend who loves you in a way no one else does. 

Minnesota the most important thing you've given me is my people, and a deep appreciation for community and standing in the gap for the people you love. 

How very special to be "worth it" for an incredible group of humans. 

I literally have to wake up in 5 hours, and i'm the dummy still trying to make sense of what my heart is telling my head to say. 

Thank you for loving me. I don't have words. No, i suppose they'll come much later, they almost always do. 

I really like reading about celeb best friends, but they are by far, my favorite duo.

Tell me how to live on the edge of my seat, and teach me how to stand on my own two feet....

Once upon a time, these women were all strangers. Once upon a time, they were in high school while I was still playing hopscotch and kickball. Once upon a time they could have been my babysitters. They're moms, wives, best friends, sisters. And I'm lucky enough to call them my people. 

They're sassy, they're funny, they're strong. They've paved the way for me. They taught me how to cook, how to love Jesus, how to make sure life is full of joy, how to be strong in the midst of intense personal crisis....how to forgive the people who have hurt you....i get weepy thinking about how much i love them. 

And they let me play grown ups with them. These women who have lives that have ebbed and flowed and are full of more moxie and overcoming than I could ever hope to have. 

I have no idea how we all came to be. Africa, maybe. A mission trip i didn't even go on where God broke my heart for a country I've never been to and for a group of women who i feel so fortunate to call pals. 

 It's weird to feel so grateful to know people. Like so happy that how ever I've haphazardly run my life, has lead me to this table.  Where dirty dishes and empty wine bottles lead to full hearts and renewed faith in humanity. 

So today, i'm thankful for me people. The one's who let me into their life and let me share their friends. The ones who just come from good stock, and love funny and good wine as much as I do. 

Here's to the table. For the way it has changed us, for the roots that have been planted, and for being one more place that feels like home and its where i most want time to stand still.