Suffering takes the wind out of you. It clouds your view of what’s true and what’s imagined. It leaves you in the dark, feeling your way forward in search of light.

Suffering has a way of making you feel like God has left you. Your head speaks a better word, but your heart can’t comprehend it. Your eyes see the carnage of the trial, even though your faith tells you this can’t mean he doesn’t care.

Where is God in these moments? How do you find him?

Live long enough and people will disappoint you. Maybe it’s a teacher you looked up to who spirals out of control. Or a parent who raised you turns away from the faith. In our current moment, many are reeling from disappointment from pastors, church leaders, or spiritual mentors. Where do you turn when people turn from you—or from God?

One of the scariest things in the early days of my diagnosis is that the pathology was unclear. Best case scenario, the cancer was contained. Worst case scenario, it had spread beyond what they could imagine. This fear was heightened by the fact that all the normal tests that catch cervical cancer failed to detect mine. I was diagnosed long after they usually diagnose women. And that terrified every medical professional I saw.

The consequences of sin might take our life, but they cannot take our souls.

Of all the lessons I’ve learned in the last year, this one shines the brightest. And I don’t know if this is a truth you need to hear for yourself, but there is no sin you’ve committed that his grace is not deeper still. “Our sins they are many, his mercy is more,” the song goes. It’s true. It’s wildly and gloriously true.

Sin is serious. Sin has consequences, sometimes deadly ones. But sin has a remedy. In him, it is finished. Shame has no place. There is no condemnation for those who trust in Christ—not now, not ever.

We went to church yesterday for the first time since early March. In many ways it was surreal. We are still in the early phase of the re-opening, so a lot is different. The most important things have remained the same, but a lot of the familiar is gone. Even with the familiar gone, it did us all a lot of good to be back after such a long time away. I can’t remember the last time I was so excited to do something!

“I want to go back to life before.”

This was the sentence I uttered to Daniel in the first couple of weeks after my sudden hysterectomy.

One day I was awaiting results from a routine exam. Within weeks I was longing for the days of routine, instead I was trying to process the words: “You have cancer.”

We have some trees in our front yard that Daniel pruned many months ago. After he took to them with the pruning shears, the trees were barely recognizable. Even our children were shocked at their nakedness. It was glaringly obvious that no sign of life was coming from those trees anytime soon.

“I think this will work,” he said.

It’s been a long season of revelation in our culture, one where everywhere you turn someone is being outed for behaving badly. Even within a matter of days, this post will be old news. And since I write most of my posts/articles over the course of months, this post is already dated. But sadly, new revelations are always coming to the surface about sin, abuse of power, and women being hurt. So in many ways, talking about how women are treated in our culture is an evergreen topic—from the Bible until today.

A year ago a friend looked me in the eye and said: “Make that appointment I’ll watch your kids.”

I had been referred to counseling months prior by my OB/GYN, but had cancelled two appointments already, once out of fear and once because I didn’t have childcare. She knew my struggle since bringing Ben home from the hospital. I knew my struggle. I have had post-partum depression after all of my births, but it took me until after Seth turned one for me to realize it. But this was another level of darkness.

Every year, as Mother’s Day rolls around, we are met with a number of posts ranging from honoring mothers to exhorting mothers to manage their expectations of the day. There are posts that acknowledge that the day is hard for many women. There are posts that work to be inclusive. I’ve even written a number of these types of posts over the years. 

Mother’s Day can be a tricky one for Christians. On the one hand, we want to honor the blessing of motherhood, both as mothers and as children of mothers. Every person was brought into the world by a mother, so we all have some stake in this day. But it also can be an incredibly painful day for many women, so for the Christian, the call to “weep with those who weep” rings truer than ever. 

We are working through John in our women’s bible study this year and this verse struck me a few weeks ago when I studied John 13. I taught on John 15-16 last Thursday, and it stayed with me even as I looked at those chapters to prepare to teach. Sometimes we can forget that Jesus was human. He had friends. He loved people. And he felt betrayal. 

I’ve struggled for a long time with fear over death. I now realize it all started when we lost our first child to miscarriage and death felt personal. For months after the loss I never wanted Daniel to leave our house. If God can take my baby, he can surely take my husband, I thought to myself. Of course, that is true, but I know now that grief makes you think irrational thoughts. Those were irrational thoughts. Those irrational thoughts have stayed with me through every other loss and every other threatened loss. 

“Your uterus is no longer a safe place for these babies,” he said to me. 

And with that statement, we were quickly sent to the hospital. It was February 4, 2013. I had a round of steroids, settled in for a few day stay in ante-partum, and waited and prayed that all would be well when we delivered a few days later.

A little after midnight (on February 5) my nurse came in and said “is today your birthday?” 

In a moment that is sure to force any parent to eat humble pie, my son (unaware of my desire to keep up parenting appearances) threw his cup on the floor and stared me in the face. “I want more juice,” he said defiantly. 

“Well, you definitely aren’t having juice now,” I said.

After a conversation about the behavior, my friend looked at me with a sense of relief. “It’s comforting to know I’m not the only one whose kids act like that sometimes.” 

About a year ago I went for a run for the first time after hospital bed rest. After weeks of recovery from a c-section, I craved running. So I grabbed my running shoes and headed out the door. This might seem like a minor event, and it is in the grand scheme of things. People get back to running all the time after childbirth. I have before too. 

Except this time, I haven’t. 

The further removed I am from the events of last year, the more I see what happened as a gift. I wouldn’t call nearly dying, or nearly losing my infant, a gift. But the fruit that came from it is one. Like Joseph in Genesis, life in a broken world meant our suffering for evil, but God meant it for good (Gen. 50:20). He wastes nothing. It always serves his purposes—even in the darkness. 

One of those gifts is seeing the world through new eyes, particularly regarding platform building and the world of self-promotion (especially in Christian publishing). 

Eight years ago this month innocence was lost.

Like millions of parents who have gone before us, we rejoiced at the faint pink line that showed up on our positive pregnancy test in the early morning hours. We went to work as different people that day. We went hopeful. We went excited. We went with a smile on our faces, knowing we had a secret that no one else knew yet. I remember making my first OB appointment in my car while I was on my lunch break, lest anyone hear my conversation and know that I was pregnant. I wanted to tell people on my terms, in my way. 

I never got that chance.

When Daniel and I were first married we lived in an apartment that was infested with mice. What started as one little mouse running across the floor one evening turned into a full-blown colony of mice taking up residence in our apartment (and possibly the entire building). For months (even years) after the fact, I inspected every speck of dirt in our house for evidence of mouse droppings. Even when we were far removed from the mouse-infested apartment (living many states over), I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that we weren’t alone in our residence. 

oday is Ben’s birthday. This time last year we were anticipating his arrival. Today we are enjoying his happy presence. What a gift! Birthdays are such interesting days for moms (at least me). It’s the day of his birth, but so much of that day had to do with me and the effort it took to bring him into the world. While a birthday is the celebration of the person born, it also is intimately connected to the woman who bore the child.

The night before Ben’s birth, contractions had started up again. We were accustomed to the roller coaster ride that comes with being a high-risk patient. Every few days, Ben’s heart rate would do something (or my body would do something) that put everyone on high alert. I was used to contractions. I was 35 weeks and 6 days pregnant, so Braxton Hicks contractions are pretty standard at that gestation (especially with a fourth child). And in my mind, even painful Braxton Hicks felt like a slight pinch compared to the abruption pain from three weeks prior. So I didn’t think anything of them. My friends came to visit. They stayed through my routine evening monitoring, until my nurse came in and asked me if I was feeling the contractions.

Ben turns one in a little over a week, which means that nursing is coming to an end. Since he’s my last baby, I’ve been reflective and emotional about the idea of being done. But I’ve also been hopeful and excited. It’s a new stage in our parenting. Our kids are getting older. As with every stage, there are challenges, but there are so many fun things as well. So it’s very bittersweet.

When I weaned Seth I was very sentimental about it all. I cried. I talked about it all the time. I even wrote about it! It was a hard process for me emotionally and for him. We had such a sweet time together that first year. I loved nursing him so much that I couldn’t wait to nurse another baby.

This time around I am less sentimental.

Last year, on May 19, we celebrated Seth’s second birthday with a wonderful family day. I made cookies for his birthday dessert (because cookies are his favorite), ate pizza for dinner as a family (another one of his favorites), then packed my bags and headed out to teach at a local women’s retreat—my last speaking engagement before Ben’s birth.

It was a great weekend of rest, fellowship with other like-minded women, and studying God’s word together. I also had a nagging side ache that only intensified as I spoke throughout the day on Saturday. I chalked it up to a pulled muscle or just general third trimester achiness, traveled home that afternoon, and spent the evening resting.

The pain only intensified.

“I don’t want to die,” I said to my friend last summer, hooked up to a baby heart rate monitor and overwhelmed by the constant intrusion that is life in a hospital room.

Not wanting my baby to die was a given. I’ve faced those fears with every pregnancy. My worst fears were realized twice. But never had I also been hit with my own mortality. Pregnancy is safe and routine in America—until it isn’t.

I’ve said before that the only thing I could read during our hard days in the hospital this past summer were the psalms (and a few other things). I read them every single day, journaling, thinking, praying. In the psalms I had a language for what I was feeling. I had a language for my fears. But in the psalms, I more importantly had a language for who God is in spite of those fears and feelings. The psalms showed me God, even when everything was uncertain. My hope in spending my days in the psalms was not only that I would be sustained in the moment of waiting for Ben's birth, but that I would also be sustained if (or when) the dark moment came to deliver Ben unexpectedly.

That moment did come, but my mind went blank.

One year ago next month my book, Glory in the Ordinary, was released. It feels like an eternity has passed in a way that I didn't with my first book. In large part, I think it’s owing to all that happened the weeks leading up to Ben’s delivery (and the weeks following). Our plans for the book launch didn’t include three weeks of bed rest, a premature delivery, or a hard recovery. But God’s did, and it completely changed how I viewed the book as a result.

The end of the year is the time for list making. I’ve read (and been encouraged by) many lists of books, blog posts, and favorite things. I’ve even created those lists in years past. But instead I am going to share the three things that the Lord used to sustain me this year. As I’ve shared before, this is the year that took us through the ringer in so many ways. Ben’s arrival into the world was traumatic (a word I don’t use lightly) and hard on our family in ways we are still processing. But even in the difficulty we have been encouraged by the Lord through people and through his word. I know that many don’t come to the end of the year with the mental or emotional bandwidth to take in a lot of lists and book ideas. Life is just too relentless, so if you find yourself in the midst of a difficult year, I pray these resources encourage you too.

I have either been pregnant, nursing, or grieving a lost baby for the past seven Christmases. Whenever December rolls around I find myself reflective about the incarnation and what it meant for Mary. I find myself encouraged by what it means for the effects of this broken world, especially the pain I’ve experienced in childbearing.

One of my favorite Christmas songs has always been “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” I love the words. I love how it tells the tale of expectant longing for Christ’s first coming, and drives us to long for the second. But I also love it because it’s in a minor key. I have a soft spot for songs in a minor key. I grew up loving music for many reasons—one of them is how music is evocative. Music makes us feel. And as one who feels deeply and also tends towards melancholy, a minor key suits me.

One year ago this week I thought I was beginning to miscarry a baby. I had all the signs of miscarriage. So when I sat down on that ultrasound table it was with 100% certainty that I thought I would hear “there is no heartbeat.” I didn’t even pray for a heartbeat. Instead I prayed for grace to face another miscarriage again, to pass another dead baby—again.

But God had other plans for this baby. These plans were far beyond what I would have dreamed up. In many ways, these plans would have been my worst nightmare.

He had plans for this baby that I feared was dead.

“We are all just limping towards the finish line,” Daniel said to me a few weeks ago after we were talking about the great loss a friend had endured.

If you live long enough, you will find that this world is a dark and scary place. Very few Christians make it to glory without first walking through some deep valleys. Year after year, God breaks us and strips us of all self-sufficiency. He humbles us and brings us low. He gives and he takes away, and we beg for the grace to bless his name in the midst of it all.

We are a people of second chances. Even when it’s hard, we are prone to forgive those who sin against us, hoping that maybe they will treat us differently the next time. We give our children chance after chance after chance to obey (or try again next time). We give those who break the law second chances to live life differently. Second chances, in many ways, are built into our souls. We want them for ourselves and we grant them to others.