I sat across from the man I love on the bed we’ve loved in since we were first married ten years before. I sat and smacked fist into palm and said it again and again and again, “But this can’t be what I’m supposed to do with my life.”

And there it was – the old frustration that stuck in the back of my throat and that I hadn’t been able to swallow down for two long years. Two years of two-hour commutes and long hours at the office and away from my kids. Away doing work that didn’t fit the me that lived inside my frustration; long hours aching with the wanting to be doing something else.

But I didn’t know what it was.

I just knew that there was something else. And it started with wanting to be able to encourage women.

So I sat across from the man who’s known me and loved me since that night we played baseball on the national mall and then walked the long way home back to 8^th street. He was as patient with me then as he is now.

He spoke to me of callings. He reminded me that every ounce of frustration I felt was part of what helped me translate my story into one that other women could relate to. And he told me that it was these broken, hard parts I was living that would feed my words.

I watched him in the glow of the two yellow bedside lamps and saw that he heard me. He got what it felt like to not be doing the something I thought I was made to do. But he showed me that without this struggle I wouldn’t be able to encourage women the way I felt called to. Without fighting the balance of motherhood and work and self and calling and commutes I wouldn’t understand where many other women need encouragement.

I spent a long time thinking about this. And months later I wrote about it to my friend, Holley:

So, I have been thinking about you today because I am at a conference discussing some groundbreaking work to bring justice to the poor and afflicted. For many years that is the kind of work I have been involved in also. But, I have consistently felt this call on my heart to speak into the lives of women. Young mothers and wives who feel that what they do isn’t important.

I don’t know many who would consider that a needy population group. But I sure do. I am them.

So, I blog. I write my heart out to this beautiful audience who need to be encouraged as I wish someone had done for me. Because young mothers and struggling women have great needs too. And while it’s not my job, it is my delight to be used by God to be part of the plan for meeting them.

I wrote it at 1am and I found that putting those words down filled me up – with joy, with purpose, but mostly with relief. My story is useful to others because of the frustration I’ve juggled. My story can encourage because I know how it feels to feel unimportant. My story translates the stories of many other women because it is so seemingly ordinary.

This thing – this something else – that I had been waiting for? Turned out it had been unfolding in my life all along. Right there in the commuter lane, in between making school snack packs and tucking kids into bed I’d been finding my voice.

And when I write about my every day ordinary mess, I am connected to the women I so desperately want to encourage. The women I want to wrap arms around and laugh with and say, “You’re doing far more than just OK, sister.”

God has made a way for me through the frustration and into the nooks and crannies of other people’s stories.  It has grown from my passion into my job. I can lay myself down right where I am, word by word, plank by plank, and build a bridge that connects us.

There is a Carpenter who shows me how.

And you? You who fume and flail and question the now that you’re living? Maybe we have this frustratingly perfect route in common.

Perhaps what is hardest about where you are right now will end up being the wood and nails and words that connect us.

Write it down. Build the bridge.

That many might walk across.

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Tomorrow I will share more about what my bridge looks like, but today – what about yours? What are the hard wood and nails you have to work with? It’s OK to be frustrated with them.

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Starts the day out with a gold ribbon ceremony for showing honor, courage, responsibility at school and all he can think about is the reprimand that ended his school day.

All praise clouded out by a finger shaken in his direction. His breath fogs up the glasses that hide his eyes as we walk home. From the minute he shuffles down the school’s steps I feel the itch in him that something is out of place.

I try to hear him above the school buses and kids racing home toward the weekend. I bend and duck awkward toward his eye level to try and lip read his sadness.

“School is stupid. I always do everything wrong.”

The bright little golden ribbon stuck to his red shirt says otherwise, but it’s hidden beneath his thick coat now and the dread at having done something wrong is pasted across his face instead.

“But what happened?” and I try to get him to go back to the beginning and tell it to me step by step. How could a day that started with me taking his picture next to the principal end with him this defeated?

I feel the knot in my own stomach and the hairs of defensiveness rising on the back of my neck. I want to make it right, by pointing out how wrong everyone else must have been.

But the wind’s cutting off any words I try to get out and he’s so hunched against the cold and his sadness that I don’t think he can hear me anyway. My forehead is as scrunched up as his posture and I can hear the frustration mounting in my mind as I push the stroller, focusing on the puddle, the ice patch, the path with the too-close cars.

It’s the cold; it bites through my frustration and makes me notice other things. The minivan parked around the corner, the hill home, the Friday evening pizza and a movie night.

And then it hits me – I’m the grown up. I’m the grown up and Jackson’s just six and soon he’ll be seven, eight, nine, ten. I am not actually going to be able to barricade all disappointment or misunderstanding out of his life.

But I can help put it in perspective.

He gets in the car and slumps into his car seat- staring out the window. I pump the heat, look back over my shoulder and describe to him how the day started. We walk through the ceremony again; the ribbon, the hard work and 30 accumulated mini gold tickets it took to get him there.

And then, after I’ve heard the outline of what went wrong in the afternoon I tell him that’s ok. Even though it’s a bummer when a day starts out great and ends with a bump, that’s part of growing up. That I know how it feels because it doesn’t stop when you’re a kid.

Grown ups make mistakes too and wish they could have do-overs and feel frustrated when the one small thing they got wrong clouds out the big thing they got right. And it’s up to us to choose which thing ends up being the story of our day.

I suggest we make his Friday story about the gold ribbon. Hot chocolate at home helps the decision go down. As does an adoring baby sister, a little brother and a movie night with dad.

And somewhere in the middle there’s a moment – a moment when I get to look into the eyes that I know are mine and tell him that I don’t need a gold ribbon to know he’s special.

That I’ve known since a summer afternoon in Kyiv, Ukraine when I whispered to God what I wanted for my birthday. Since I walked Kreshatik street with Peter and met Heike and Cliff, Bob and Colleen, and all the Skinner kids for cake and ice cream at the Golden Gate restaurant. Since I looked up at the sun with squinted eyes and knew that God had saved the best till last.

Since I asked and God answered and the answer was Jackson.

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I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of Him.
~1 Samuel 1:27.

No gold ribbon and no mess up can add or subtract from that gift.

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Not by a long shot.

Because she won’t remember. She won’t remember the first one when I rocked her through every night and ached from the tired and how much my heart wanted to eat her whole.  She won’t feel the knitted blanket I wrapped around her and the giraffe lovie I tucked under her left ear every night.

Eighteen years isn’t enough because she won’t remember the crawling and the climbing up on furniture and the gummy grins that are burned into our minds. She won’t know how her brothers fought to wrap arms around her and whistled at her from the next-door room, calling her as a puppy, like only big brothers can.

Eighteen years isn’t enough because she won’t remember one or two or three. She won’t know that she ate a whole can of black olives when all she had was the corner of one tooth. She won’t know that black beans were her favorite there for a short while.

Three and four and five and six will blink by for her even though I will feel them with every fiber of my memory.

She won’t.

Eighteen years isn’t enough because I won’t start to have outlines to her until she’s eight, nine, ten and even then she won’t know what my inside looks like because she’s still too young to care.

Eighteen is a lifetime for me and a smudge for her. Blurry moments of being mothered, being told no, feeling herself stretch against and away from me.

She will have hardly drawn the breath of living memory by eighteen.

I will have lived a hundred lifetimes of love for her by then.

Eighteen is too short to know a mother.

Eighteen is the deep well of knowing a daughter.

And forty two? Oh mom, I’m so sorry I was robbed of knowing the inside of you. Your Jo-ness. Your world of words and wants and dreams that weren’t all about providing for me.

But I am thirty seven and Zoe is only nine months and already I have more of her saved up than could be recorded in any library.

So I know now what I didn’t know then – we weren’t strangers. The memory lapses are one sided – you always knew me. Like I know the dimple in Zoe’s right cheek. And how she breathes out loudly through her nose when she’s processing a strong emotion. Or how she likes to pinch my neck as she falls asleep tucked into my chest.

Mothering Zoe I have unwittingly stepped into the shoes of Jo and find there memories with deep, rich roots.

My daughter – she is growing me up into a mom and your daughter who remembers all eighteen years, starting at one.

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Download your copy here.

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Close your eyes and let go of what others wrote last year. Let go of the beautiful, sparkly words that weren’t yours and that you wish you could’ve produced.

Close your eyes and let the wishing and itching at what your house isn’t, seep out your pores.

Close your eyes and stop seeing the behavior of your kids reflected through the frustrated eyes of others.

Close your eyes and give up all the would-have, could-have, should-haves.

Just close your eyes and stop looking at the reflection of how you wish your life looked. Through someone else’s mirror.

When the shiny, shimmery image looks so perfect, so flawless, so pretty that you just wish you could step through the surface and live it, be certain instead that it’s a mirage. That from the inside it looks nothing like it appears in the reflection.

Be careful whom or what you use as a mirror.

When we lose ourselves in the reflections of other people’s lives, we lose ourselves.

Close your eyes so you can see yourself as you are and not as you compare to others. Because you have been artfully, carefully, and wonderfully woven together.  You are a unique. Nothing about you is facsimile. So stop looking for the copy.

Your flaws ache, yes. And what you don’t have is sometimes made worse by the perception of what you think she has. But she aches just as you do. I promise. We are all cracked in places though it may be hard to see with the eye.

So close them.

Stop reading what makes you itch with dissatisfaction. Stop watching what makes you wonder if better lives next door. Stop carrying a ruler around.

Sometimes we see much better with eyes closed.

Open your tired hands; let your fingers braille these thoughts into your new year:

God’s blessing makes life rich; nothing we do can improve on God.
Proverbs 10 verse 22: (The Message)

For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD.
“They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”
Jeremiah 29 verse 11: (New International version)

Open your eyes.

This is your true reflection.

Prompted by the inestimably comforting words of Madeline L’Engle. If you haven’t read “A Circle of Quiet,” I assure you, you should.

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Into the dark.

Into the night.

Into the ache and pain and wave after wave of labor.

Into the dirt between handfuls of straw clutched in desperate fists.

Into the bite of teeth clenched down and muscles baring down and midwives singing down the fear, the fever in her eyes, the first time for her and us and creation.

Into the moment, pulled headlong into the pushing and not knowing what the child would look like but recognizing his name before his face. Into the wonder, into the awe, into the sweat and tears and desperate crowning glory.

Into the night.

Into the day.

Into the past and present and future.

A thousand angel choirs, a Father-God diving toward earth, only Son clutched in His arms, desperately handing him over into the fragile flesh of humanity between the raucous jeers of the dark and the bated breath of the heavens.

Push and roll and ache and pray.

Donkey breath. Rooster. Tom cat.

Into the world.

Out of the dark.

“The people living in darkness have seen a great light;

on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.”

Into a new day.

~John 1:1-5, 14.

Words matter to me because they are the tools that God first used.

He spoke and worlds, waters, deserts, jacaranda trees, figs, watermelons, kangaroos, meerkats, and turtles came into being.

God spoke and painted the sky. God spoke and mapped the milky way. God spoke and roots drank deep from the soil.

God spoke.

The Word.

And on a dark night in Bethlehem God slipped into the wet and newborn skin of His own creation.

I write, because how can I not? Created as I am in His image. How can I not pick up the tools He gave me and speak a testimony into being. So, on Fridays we practice with our words – and in it I hear echoes of the making and remaking of truth and beauty and sacrifice. I hear baby cries and a mother’s sleepless nights.

I hear your hearts and I want to cup them here on the other side of the screen.

Your words are sacred. I don’t take them lightly. I see you sculpt your story into being with the abc’s of your life. Your value transcends how many read, comment or like what you write. Your words live beyond the reader. Your words live because you spoke them into being.

Your words live.

They breathe and teach and whisper back to you the truths you need to learn.

“The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”

He still does. On Fridays, on Tuesdays on ordinary every days. The word lives with us and within us and we are the living story He came to write.

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Won’t you join me?

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Most important: visit, comment, encourage the person before you.

OK, are you ready? Give me your best five minutes on Connected.

Subscribers, you can just click here to come over and play along.
{Next Friday is nearly Christmas eve, so it will be quiet around here. Let’s spend our words in real life instead.}

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But the radio sings of winter. It plays song after song of worship that sounds knee deep in snow. And sometimes we stand in the living room with arms up to the sun and let the words of a small town in Bethlehem wash over us.

“Fall on your knees
oh hear the angel voices”

I can hear it. The echoes still ringing through the sky from over two thousand years ago.

And when I stand in church with the music echoing through me, with the memory of my short temper from last night and the two boys this morning who got into a fight over who would give the donation box they’d filled to Ms. Dee, the baby who suffered a hair tourniquet and an allergic reaction to eggs in one week, and the moments of beauty in the midst of all this chaos that make me cry, I know there is a God who was a baby and understands me from the inside out.

Literally.

The weather, the bickering kids, the moments of love so profound for this family my insides ache from it.

Immanuel.

The God who moved into the neighborhood.

It’s OK to be bring the whole of who I am to Him.

Because He came a long way – on purpose – to meet me.

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It’s grand, really. The ability to interact with anyone, no matter what their job, their celebrity status, or their following. Social media gives everyone a seat at the table to join the global, cross-cultural, happening-in real-time, world changing conversation.

The question is, what do you say when you pull up a chair?

Here are my tips for making the most of your online interactions.

1. Talk to me, don’t pitch to me

The beauty of social media {twitter, Facebook, Google+, Blogs, Websites, you name it} is that it gives us new ways to connect. New ways to communicate. But the age old rules of good conversation still apply – be a good listener. Don’t dominate the conversation. Enjoy the person you’re connecting with for more than what they can do for you.

It’s not about how many retweets, likes, or comments you can rack up in a day. Try to resist the temptation to keep score.

Sure, I enjoy the ripple effects of conversations online that can be multiplied across twitter streams and countries, but I try not to let that be my end game. May what I share be more than a cleverly crafted pitch to solicit feedback. May it be intended to bless. May it be a reflection of the bigger story being written in my life. May I talk to you, listen to you, and respond to you as you – and not as a statistic.

The most effective pitches start out as genuine conversations anyway.

2. Find your online voice

You don’t need to sound like me or Michael Hyatt or Seth Godin or the (in)courage writers or my funny, brilliant friend, the Nester. Bring who you are offline into your online conversations. Be you – with your unique story and message and sense of humor. And if your blog has a specific topic/niche/angle/audience, well then, let your online voice speak to those conversations.

Be great and comfortable at being you.

3. Understand your gifts

What you talk about online will naturally emerge from what you’re interested in – what you’re gifted at. So it’s always worth spending some time exploring your gifts. Are you a natural encourager, a champion of the poor, a mama, a homeschooler, an artist, a designer, a writer?

Find what you love, what you know, and what you’re innately good at. Focus your conversation around those topics and you’ll already be that much more comfortable in your online skin.

4. Beware your “inner” voice

If we’re not careful, twitter, Facebook, Instagram and a whole host of social media can become a running stream of our own internal monologues. How there’s nothing like a crawling baby to show you the state of your carpets, there’s nothing like social media to show you the state of your thoughts.

Be careful; guard your online conversation from deteriorating into a grocery list of all the things that annoy you.

This shouldn’t just apply to our online voices. But social media magnifies what was once a whine to a single friend into a megaphone for all the petty annoyances of our day multiplied to the hundreds who are following us on line.

Keep tabs on your twitter stream and Facebook updates. Go back and read a full day’s worth. If they play like a bad country song then consider editing your internal voice.

Be deliberate about what you share. Make it count. If you wouldn’t stand behind a microphone and announce it to an auditorium of strangers in real life, perhaps it’s not the best use of your online voice either.

5. Beware your motivation

Are you tweeting for attention? Are you blogging for comments? Are you Facebooking for likes? Because none of these things can fill the hungry, desperate need for attention we all have.

Only when we understand ourselves in the context of the God who made us, rejoices in us and celebrates us will we feel satisfied.

I am convinced of it.

6. Be generous

For every few things you put out there about yourself, consider sharing something about someone else. Passing on a link, recommending a book, commenting on a blog post.

Just ask Klout – not only is this good advice for building community, friendships, and real relationship, apparently it’s also good for building social media score.

7. Don’t talk just to talk

Great conversation has a beginning a middle and an end. If you’re me, it also has hot chocolate and muffins thrown into the mix. The madness about social media conversations is that they can continue indefinitely.

But here’s the thing – you will stop enjoying the online conversations if you let social media dictate when they end. It’s up to you to close your laptop and rest. Rest from the swirling, whirling world of engaging with a thousand strangers. Rest and be present with your family and the friends who come over for coffee.

Rest and talk to the God who created our need for companionship.

Rest and find words worth contributing to the conversation when you’re online again.

This will look different for each of us. But it’s no less essential for all of us. I work in social media so from 9 to 5 you’ll find me on twitter or Facebook or blogging for (in)courage. But on the weekends all online conversations are on hold for me. This twitter-free space is sacred to me. It fills me up. And makes me me miss the social media conversation rather than resent it.

I promise, you don’t have to be on line all the time to join the conversation.

And when you start to feel stretched, when you’re updating your status simply because you’re worried you haven’t said anything recently, that’s time probably better spent reading a good book, going to the park or picking up the phone and calling a friend.

Because the best conversations come face-to-face and rarely require the enter key.

Sometimes they don’t even require words.

Related Post: What I learned from almost two months almost unplugged

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Photos thanks to Emily Dawn Deidra and Ann.

I like to build things.

My son, he builds with wood and hammer and nails so rusted they speak of being long forgotten in the yard. He drags his dad’s yellow and gray tool box outside and uses its contents so lovingly that it’s hard to complain when he forgets to bring it back inside.

I like to build things too.

I build with words. I build with a keyboard. I build with thin strands of friendship strung across the globe.

You can call it social media. I call it conversation. And I think it’s one of the most powerful tools we have to date to live out that greatest of commands:

The world tell us social media is about building our platform, our brand, our followers, our name. To get while the getting’s good. That it’s a land grab and grabbing requires a finger in every network, a post every day, a PhD in SEO, and  herculean competition for attention.

Exhausting. The worrying that wherever one woman succeeds there’s that much less land for the women coming up behind.

What if instead social media was a way to build a bridge?

To lay ourselves down, plank by plank, word by word, and offer a way for women to walk out of their fears, their loneliness, their desperate belief that they are the only ones to have failed at parenting or marriage or decorating or educating their children and discover that they are not alone.

I’ve made four international moves in the last decade and they’ve taught me three things: 1. that every city is full of people who will cry over my boxes by the time I leave, 2. that the metro makes sense in any language, and 3. that people are people are people no matter which side of the road they drive on.

My dad is a doctor and he tells anyone considering medicine, “If you don’t like people, it’s not for you.”

Social media is the same. It runs on relationships. And if you’re in it for you more than you’re in it for them, it will never pay off.

I find this applies across the board – no matter our zip code, our faith, our niche, or our culture.

We have to be willing to hammer out our stories and share them for free. And I’m not talking about ads vs. no ads on our sites. I’m talking about what we expect in return from our readers. Are we in it for what we have to give them or what we hope to get from them?

What if we cared less about our stats and more about the wonder of encouraging someone who lives half a world away from us but is comforted by what we’re going through?

What if we served ourselves as love offering to those starving for encouragement.

What if the best translation of the Gospel is your life?

How are you spending your social media currency?

What if it looked like this?

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