We write because we want to, not because we have to. We write for fun, for joy, for discovery.

We just write without worrying if it’s just write or not.

Won’t you join us?

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Please visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them.

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

::

Real…

GO

We sit in a circle and no one shines a spotlight. We just open our hands to listen. Sometimes to reach out to touch a knee or offer a tissue. Sometimes to wipe our own eyes at the wonder of what makes her brave; or how she’s telling your own story.

We listen. We discover what a powerful gift that is.

Stories are never really new, are they. Instead, they are the retelling of a thousand miles walked by women and mothers through the centuries. Thunderstorms come to us all. Never turn away a friend with an umbrella.

So we let it rain here – in this room 10 steps away from the sanctuary. This room with the orange chairs and table that’s always in the wrong place. We let it rain the real feelings of the week past and no one tries to stop it. Instead we listen and offer arms to shelter some of the storm.

Friends are a safe place.

Stories can pick different endings sometimes.

We write this middle part together. We read each other’s eyes. Mascara runs. But there is always a bowl of chocolates and someone quick to laugh.

This is how bones heal.

STOP

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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So I’m leading this thing I’m really excited about called (in) real life or (in)RL for snazzy short. And I’m loving it, and I’m feeling the love connected to all these awesome women from all over the world when God asks me in that whispery/naggy voice that shows up in the back of my head,

“who are your in real life people?”

Well, duh, I feel like saying –as I point at the Internet. Them God, check out how totally awesome they are and how we connect and isn’t our on line community just the coolest thing ever.

To which God replies, “your real life people – where are they?”

And I get uncomfortable goosebumps.

It occurs to me it’s been a while since I had some real life friends who lived, you know, in my zip code.

My Internet friends are wonderful and brilliant and encouraging and I love them so much I wish they lived next door. But they don’t. I try not to hold this against them.

And I ignore the God whisper/nag and go about my business.

Then my friend, Nester, writes about how to build an automatic friendship bench.

Then a Bible study leader’s kit shows up in my mailbox. It’s from Jennie Allen, it’s called STUCK, and it’s all about getting past our fake smiles to what’s aching underneath.

I ignore it.

I put it on the top shelf of the playroom toy rack.

I ignore it some more.

It falls down.

I use it to prop up my computer while I’m Skyping. Some days I alternate and use it as a footrest. {Sorry Jennie}

The God nagging gets louder.

The box stares at me.

Then a few Sundays later I find myself walking up to Laura after church. And I’m horrified to hear myself ask her if she’d be interested in a Bible study with me. She says yes.

I haven’t even opened the box yet. I have barely any idea what it’s about.

Other people want to join the study and advertise it. I want to hide and make sure only 4 people at the most show up. Thirteen arrive the first night. And it gets real right away.

Turns out I’m not the only one who was desperately unaware she was desperate for real life community.

So it’s great and awesome and I have long pep talks with myself about “keeping it real” and “leading from a place of honesty,” which is all good and well until the thing with the bratwursts happens.

Stupid bratwursts.

I’m getting ready for my Tuesday night Bible study of awesomeness, and I can see why God had been nagging at me for so long – because studying His word with people you actually get to hang with in person – well, it is powerful.

I’ve read the word, I’ve done the homework, I’ve prayed, and I’m ready to get my Bible study on.

But then Pete comes home for dinner with nothing but bratwursts. And for reasons that escape me this sets me grinding my teeth and muttering under my breath.

“Where are the mashed potatoes?” I ask. “Where are the sides or buns or anything else that would transform this into a meal?” Mutter mutter, grind grind, stomp stomp, hand slammed on counter, kids wide-eyed and confused.

He stays calm and sane.

I spiral into doom.

Because once I’m over the bratwurst crisis I’m faced with the “I’m-supposed-to-be-leading-Bible-study-in-this-foul-temper-tantrum” crisis.

Ugh. Woe is me. Woe-r is Pete.

Because he is calm and rational and his wife is a loon. But lucky for me he is also easy to make up with – we do. And next thing I’m driving the white minivan down 495 and feeling all kinds of relief that I dodged that bullet – I mean, how awkward would it have been if anyone had known what just went down.

Enter a chuckle from sources unknown.

And in my head I hear Jennie Allen again, “We all have our issues. Most of us just wear a cute bob or smile to cover them up. We’re never as sweet as we appear…Pretense and pretending have never really been God’s thing.”

I want to pound my head on the steering wheel. Really – this is real life community? I’m going to have to fess up to the battle of the bratwurst if I want to lead this group?

Yes.

I did.

We were all able to laugh.

And then we were all able to share.

And then we were all able to cry.

It was a good start.

Because of Jennie Allen and friendship benches and God’s insistence that relationship is transformative when it happens in person.  And bratwursts, let’s not forget the bratwursts.

I don’t know when last you spent more than a Sunday morning with other women of faith. I don’t know when last you cried the ugly cry with someone sitting across the room from you rather than just on the other side of a screen or blog comment box.

But take it from someone who’s learning – they’re not the same.

Sweet, wonderful woman reading this, it’s so incredibly worth it to find your own zip code people. No matter how strange, awkward, backwards, or inconvenient the process is.

::

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Full to the brim. But with nowhere and no one to pour out into. I would wake up and get up and go to work and come home and make supper and love on my kids and my man and go to bed still feeling like my pitcher full hadn’t found the empty it needed.

It was a long frustrating two and a half years.

During that time I started blogging.

I started pouring out a few words a few nights a week and when I went to bed I discovered that I’d given away a little something.

After a while the words turned into a steady stream and some of them filled glasses at other tables. I was still working full time at a job that didn’t seem to fit me, but at nights I was pouring out the most satisfying encouragement into other women and discovering the wonder of being filled up by their words.

(in)courage was one of those places.

Holley and Stephanie invited me to write with them. To join them in their calling to encourage the hearts of women. To create a place where women could feel welcome, just as they are. Where we could all put our dirty, sandy feet up on the coffee table and tell our real, hard stories. A place where people would listen.

A place where women were brave enough to be vulnerable.

Pouring into (in)courage emptied me and left me feeling the most satisfied I can remember.

For nearly a year I wrote once a month for (in)courage. It gave me community, a place to dream, and the satisfaction of pouring out my ideas, creativity and passion for encouraging women.

Then in the summer of 2010 (in)courage and DaySpring invited me to join their team as the community manager for (in)courage and social media manager for DaySpring.

I jumped with both feet.

Since then I don’t remember ever feeling like my pitcher was an awkward accessory. It’s just that it’s not enough.

In June last year we felt the prickles of God telling us that one website couldn’t possibly pour out enough to fill up all the women coming looking for living water.

Instead He wanted to connect the women in real life community so they could pour love and encouragement and support and Jesus sisterhood right into one another’s parched cups. Without having to leave a blog comment. Without having to travel across the country to a conference. Without having to worry about baby sitters or days off work or plane tickets, hotel rooms or high heels.

He wanted to bring the conference right to the women He loves. We call it (in)real life or (in)RL.

This is me talking a bit about that dream. Click here if you can’t see the video.

You’re so invited you know. It’s this April 27 & 28 and only costs $10 to register and you get a free T-shirt and Simply Marvelous card pack with that.

On Friday afternoon we’ll kick things off with a community keynote {a lot like this awesome sauce trailer} that you can tune into from home.

And Saturday? Saturday’s the exciting one. Saturday’s the chance to step out and connect with local (in)courage friends you didn’t know lived nearby. There’ll be video content that meetups can tune into, which explore the topic of gritty, beautiful, messy, real life community together.

Can you imagine? Getting to connect beyond the blog box?

What a holy wonder.

Oh say yes – come and join us – nearly 500 women are already planning on meeting up in 250 cities all over the world! You can find the (in)courage meetup that’s closest to you right over here. And if you’re feeling brave, why not grab a girlfriend and host one yourself?

(in)real life. It’s what we’re made for, after all.

Messy, wonderful, redemptive community. All you have to do is pick up a pitcher.

And if I haven’t convinced you, tune into Bonnie’s place tomorrow – all 30 of us from (in)courage are gonna take turns sharing this month why we’d love to have you join us for (in)RL this April!

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.

::

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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Unlikely and wonderful. She has that pink ribbon just barely clinging to her few whispy baby hairs and still smells of the parmesan chicken she smeared all over the place during lunch.

Baggers and shoppers, grandmas and tired looking dads all smile at her.

She gums back at them, flashing two bottom teeth and we try to find Pete and the boys in the bedding aisle. I’ve been promising Jackson a down pillow for months and today we brave the Saturday crazy to find them. Somehow cowboy boots make it into the cart too.

And she watches it all and clings with tiny fingers to the front of the stroller tray and I wheel her around pillow pets and fish bowls. Fast, hurried but not lost. She knows I’m right behind her, the impetus in this rush.

When we’re slowing to look for the right toothpaste a woman tells me how beautiful her eyes are. I thank her and can’t help myself from agreeing. Beautiful and deep blue echoes of her grandpa’s – yes, I know.

And then we’re away.

With so much more I could say.

Her blue eyes are only the beginning I want to tell them. Her blue eyes are just the window into the wonder that is this daughter of mine. I could tell you, Walmart lady, of the early mornings when we just lie and look at each other – this baby girl who has my eyes.

We lie in bed and she lets one of her hands lazily trace the outline of my mouth, my eyebrow, my ear. We look and I see the echo of myself. I see the beginning. She pokes and pulls and I scrunch up eyelids and smile despite the insistence of tiny nails.

Then there are the days when she just crawls around the house in my tracks. Crawls and laughs and calls out to me and I talk back to her – we chat, my ten month old daughter and I. She is interested in me. As interested in me as I am in her. There is a smile that comes slowly and ends in dimples when I sneak up at her from behind corners.

Give us laundry or dishes or books or naptime and we share secrets.

There is a womanhood that connects us as powerful as any umbilical cord.

Tenderly.

Right there in the pinto beans aisle.

::

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We write because we want to, not because we have to. We write for fun, for joy, for discovery.

We just write without worrying if it’s just write or not.

Won’t you join us?

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Go a little overboard encouraging the writer who linked up before you.

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

::

Tender…

GO

I love to watch him love her.

It’s a new twist in this parenting road and so sweet. So he gets up in the middle of the night and coos at her special. So unexpected. So different and also still the same.

We take turns making her laugh.

And when she peeks over the edge of the bathtub and giggles coy at him broken places in me heal. There is a whole book in that sentence. I read it in his eyes. She is never tired of him and he – even when tired – always has time for her.

Last night we all three lie in bed and there is her hand on his cheek and her other hand on mine. We are whole and beautiful and even in the dark I can see her two new teeth grin.

Sometimes cliches are no less true for being cliche.

We love because he first loved us. I watch this true with him and her. Bible truth takes deep breaths and sleeps in the crook of his arm.

STOP

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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We might worry that our words unfurl and flutter away from our small corner of the night into the vast cosmos of the Internet. We might tilt our heads and look way, way back at the stars twinkling from so high and think, “I will never burn as bright or share as powerful, or tell a truth that sears the collective mind the way they do.”

And then we look down at our scuffed carpets and feet and hear the voice that mutters, “Why even bother?”

May I sit down next to you? May I sit crisscross apple sauce on that pock marked carpet and whisper into your ear?

Small, my friend is exactly the right size.

Small is understanding ourselves in true relation to the God who made us.

Small is being able to write fearless, without worry about big criticism.

Small is fitting into our own shoes.

Small is how the Savior fit into our skin.

…but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness. ~Philipians 2:7.

Small is the size of every new beginning. Create without a measuring stick. And after a while you might forget the size of your voice.

–you’re so caught up in the scope of what you ache to say.

::

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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.

::::

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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For fun, for love of the sound of words, for play, for delight, for joy and celebration at the art of communication.

For only five short, bold, beautiful minutes. Unscripted and unedited. We just write without worrying if it’s just right or not.

Won’t you join us?

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: comment and encourage the person who linked up before you.

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

Vivid…

GO

Sometimes you have to see the world in black and white before you can appreciate it in color. You need friends who will tell you Jesus truth and lay down their hearts and confess truth to you in stark yes and no to understand why a promise is rainbow colored.

You need to see your world through someone else’s lens and hear their voice repeat back verses and blessings you’ve heard before, just forgotten to remember. Friendship comes to you in silhouette outlines against the dark night sky and you receive it like a warm bowl of beef stew and steaming hot corn bread. You eat and swallow and see.

Vividly.

Sometimes it’s only when someone else colors in the picture with a perspective you’d been blind to that the image takes shape. Color develops in the dark. Rooms of our minds must process what we thought we’d learned.

We must learn it again.

Before we can offer it to anyone else.

Such truth is never framed. It is a living art and we must find ways to step outside the frame.

STOP

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Her brother yells, “Wa-hoo!” with accompanying right-hand fist pump when a surprise unfolds, there’s ice cream in a cone for dessert, or we agree to let him watch Pingu.

His brother at the age of six still hugs like a baby monkey – face scrunched up behind his glasses; arms and legs wrapped vice-like around the middle. He hugs and it’s the best kind of Heimlich for dislodging worry.

I am working on the discipline of seeing my children.

Not how cute they are, or how badly behaved, or how snazzily dressed. But to see them with attention to personality detail.

“To love a [child] well, we must become a student of him. To see him, we must observe him, consider him, perceive him, and learn him. This involves lots of listening, patience, and attentiveness.

The nature of seeing combines three elements:

1. a curiosity about who he is
2. an appreciation for who he is
3. a vision for who he will become”

~ Wild Things, The Art of Nurturing Boys

I squint one eye and tilt the kaleidoscope of their lives up to the light.

There are quirks more significant than the freckle at the base of Jackson’s neck worth noticing. Now that I’m looking for them, I see. How he is quick to defend me, quick to notice someone who is hurt on their insides. He is Jesus introspective and sees heaven in the simplest answers. This boy who is six and seems like he’s going on twelve – how hard I have to work to catch up and listen to all that he doesn’t say.

Micah – my warrior with the aching heart – I am learning to see him through the prism of how much I like him. Because understanding him is a braille like experience that takes tender fingers reaching out to read him. I must hug him and hold him and stroke his forehead in order to see his heart. Tender wrapped in layers of short temperedness. I need to peel back ever so gently to expose the mass of feelings that beat in him.

To give these boys weight in the world I must show that I am interested in the gravity that pulls them to me. That I don’t take it for granted. That I will study it with the white heat of interest that any scientist brings to his research.

I tell myself this on the nights when I’ve been anything but interested. On the nights when I’ve been tired and irritable and unwilling to coax meaning out of their own short tempers. When we’ve barked at one another and gone to bed blind. I lie and replay the film strip of everything I did wrong and was too stubborn to do right.

Some bedtimes are like that.

But then morning comes with grace and we all try again.

Even when I forget I must still remember over and over again that my tone will set the beat and the background and the melody for their day. Because as much as I want to see them first, they will always echo me. They see how I live more than they hear what I say.

So on my busy days – on the days when laptop and phone and Skype and IM all scream for my attention – I will make moments for mute. I will notice though the chaos that spins around me. I will notice the things my boys don’t say. And I will work hard to put it into words for them.

The mother-gift – interpreting for our children. And promising them we understand.

No. Maybe it’s just promising that we will do the hard work of understanding.

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