dear you—take heart

I bought a t-shirt, and I’ve been living in it.
Take heart, I whisper to myself when I hear news reports.
Take heart, I murmer again when our rental application is declined.
Take heart, I sob when I hear back after a job interview and I’m not the chosen candidate.
Take heart, I breathe into her hair as my arms wrap around my daughter.
Take heart, I belt out in song in the car, when the sun is shining on a new day.

I know it’s not easy. I know you’re probably facing tough things too.
But taking heart is an active verb, a holding on with both hands.

I’ve (still) been reading through the Psalms. It’s my go-to when I don’t understand, when I don’t have the answers, when my prayers don’t seem to be heard.
Today I read Psalm 73.
Yes! I thought, Yes! The prosperous don’t seem to have any troubles. (v 5) There they are just enjoying life. They don’t have to worry about where they’re going to live, or what will happen if they don’t get a permanent job, or how they’ll pay the mechanic. Yes! Their hearts overflow with follies (v7) because they don’t seem to have anything important to worry about.
The Psalmists just seem to get how I feel. Yes I’m envious. Yes. It feels like I keep my heart clean all in vain! It feels like I keep believing and hoping all for nothing, every morning I’m rebuked—I’m told no to the house, the job. I’m stricken! Yes! (v14)

And always, in the Psalms, I’m given permission to feel.
To feel the envy. To feel stricken. To feel weary.
But then I’m reminded again and again to take heart. It’s not about the here and now.

“But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God” (v 17)

His counsel and wisdom are ours. He holds our hands, continually with us.
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.

So I take heart again. Two-handed.
I write lists of what I’m grateful for in the here and now.
I entrust the future to Him.
I do what I can, and breathe prayers as I let it go today and watch the daisies dance on my doorstep.
I bring the little I can, I say yes, I offer my portion, I laugh a little and it loosens the knots in my stomach.
I look around at this, here; look what He’s given me!
I lather on things that smell good; lotions and oils, and I mascara my eyelashes and brush my teeth twice a day, and string up some twinkling lights. I stay up too late reading, I bake bread, and sweep the floor, and hang the laundry. I take fresh sourdough to work and the smell of it fills the workroom; by morning tea it’s almost all gone, and I’ve shared what’s in my hand while I shelf books and make jokes and smile inside that I’m here.

I let go of what I can’t control, and then I take heart and take it hard and fast and refuse to let go.

Because whatever you’re holding tight for will come, and we can simultaneously take heart and let go and dance.
Because if it’s not this messy middle today, it’ll be a different one tomorrow.
Because today is filled with the answered prayers of yesterday so take heart, He’ll overcome again, and again.

And again I’m grateful and the gratitude is what keeps us from sinking.

xx

dear you—don’t try harder

I’ve almost finished Aundi Kolber’s Try Softer and, it’s been both unravelling and solidifying.
You see, I’m the epitome of someone who does what she refers to as ‘white-knuckling’.
Gritting my teeth and bearing it. Trying harder. Pleasing more. Sacrificing and laying down. Being ‘good’. Reading Try Softer has made me realise how unkind I’ve been to myself all these years. Like a stern schoolmaster, I’ve frowned at her, quietly tsk tsked and shaken my head. Expected too much. Pushed down and aside the hard stuff and quickly moved on, instead of gently and curiously letting it out, laying it down.

I sit here now feeling tender, with a mouth full of stitches. I had my second (and final) oral surgery of the year, to fix my receding bottom gum. The first was a graft of skin from the roof of my mouth, stitched to the bottom of my gum. It turned healthy and pink, and then came the surgery to lift that healthy gum over the exposed roots of my teeth.
I white-knuckled the first surgery months ago.
Quietly freaking out, but silent, refusing to ask for help. I should have asked for help.

Maybe you’ve been like that too? Smiling on the outside while ignoring, and white-knuckling through the deeper stuff. It’s been a hard year. And my enneagram-four-self wants to talk about it. Ask you if you’re okay. Tell you to be gentle and kind with yourself, too.

Each day I’ve been journaling and realising that my internal dialogue has been getting kinder. And it’s changing the way that I talk to myself daily, and it’s helping me to hear the Holy Spirit’s quiet whispers, which are, as it happens, just as gentle and kind.

And I’ve been drawn here to this blank page to write to myself. And to you.
Dear you.

Dear, n. regarded with deep affection.
similar: beloved, loved, darling, adored, cherished.

Because I think we could all learn to be kinder to ourselves.
So maybe I’ll write us a letter once a week. Maybe it will be once a month (I’m being kind to myself, released from expectations or pressures that no-one but me will judge me for failing at. See? Kinder already) or maybe it will be twice ever. Or maybe it’ll be tiny letters in the form of an Instagram caption. Whichever way it comes, I’m going to be writing to myself, and maybe you can read and breathe and slow for a second and say, Dear you.

Dear you,

I’m proud of the way you’ve faced the hard stuff.
Today you failed to parallel park, and then tried again and nailed it.
For the lovers of God may suffer adversity and stumble seven times, but they will continue to rise over and over again (Proverbs 24:16).
Rising doesn’t seem to get any easier does it? Each knock back, set back, step back, wobble and stumble feels like you’ll be off-balance for ever. The room spins, your hands grasp for something, anything to hold on to, just to feel steadier for a moment, just to recover your breath, just to wonder what the hell just happened?
Some of those moments feel like you’ll never recover from them.
The feeling of loss is palpable this year, across the globe.
From the loss of small freedoms, like sipping a coffee at your favourite cafes, to the loss of the people you loved. You’ve lost friends, lost control, lost your keys, your phone, your hope.
And in that spin, as you try to steady your feet, and find ground that isn’t shifting beneath you, you’ve been stilled by the strength of God. You’ve let Him do the reaching out, the holding on. You have stopped trying to make Him work the way you want, like a magic genie, like a buddah’s belly. You just let Him work in the spinning and still the dizziness.
And then you realise it’s a dance, and if you keep your eyes on Him, the room might still be spinning but there’s wind in your hair and strength holding you above the shifting ground and freedom in letting go instead of holding on, white-knuckled and exhausted.

Dear you. Even when the tears pool in your ears, and the kind dental assistant wipes them way, He’s steading you, and you will rise, over and over again.

Love, me.

Keep moving forward

My face is still red, hot from my run.
I’m buzzing with endorphins—the ones that come naturally from moving my body, from pushing through despite the stitch, and from my feet pounding (shuffling, maybe) the paths that wind around our seaside peninsula. Then there’s the happy knowing that I achieved a small goal, a determination to reach 5km again in my running. So my face is red hot, but I’m smiling and kissing my kids like a loon when I get home sweating.
I find myself singing aloud while I’m making my breakfast, and the smell of the sourdough baking has made me euphoric.
It’s a good morning.

It’s good because I chose it that way.
It’s good because it’s a contrast to others that haven’t been. The ones where I couldn’t wake up, where the covers were a weight and I cursed the sun for rising too soon.
It’s good because I know that wherever I am, and whatever is swirling around me, God promises to keep leading us forward.
It was this morning’s Psalm.
Psalm 28, and the very last verse.
“Keep protecting and cherishing your chosen ones; in you they will never fall. Like a shepherd going before us, keep leading us forward, forever carrying us in your arms.”

Keep leading us forward.
I think God is concerned with our stuckness. That if he can’t lead us forward, if we’re stuck, He’ll just carry us.
My prayer lately is that I am not stuck.
It’s easy to to fall into the trap of replay, of going over and over something in your mind, of being stuck in the refreshing of the same hurts or emotions or thought patterns.
Oh God don’t let me be stuck here.
He promises to lead us forward.
I think one of the keys to moving forward is to acknowledge where we’ve been stuck, what it is we’ve been stuck in—give it a name, give ourselves permission to feel it and then we can be lead forward.
Isaiah 48:18 says this:
Stop dwelling on the past.
Don’t even remember these former things.
I am doing something brand new, something unheard of.
Even now it sprouts and grows and matures.
Don’t you perceive it?

In Philippians 3:13 Paul writes about the importance of letting go:
“I don’t depend on my own strength to accomplish this; however I do have one compelling focus: I forget all of the past as I fasten my heart to the future instead.“

It’s easy these days to dwell. Isolation has forced is to slow down, and we can’t avoid ourselves. Even in our social connecting across platforms like Zoom or House Party or FaceTime, we’re faced with an image of ourselves right there in front of us too.

But this time of quieting our souls and really living with ourselves can be just what we need to acknowledge what it is we might need to let go of.
And it might be painful.
I may have run 5 kilometers, but during the last two I had a sharp stitch in my ribs. I wanted to give up and walk but I didn’t. I stuck my chest out, I breathed more deeply through the pain, I grimaced and tried to stretch out my ribs, my lungs but the pain continued.
So I kept my eyes ahead. I pressed forward, fastening my heart to the finish line.
Because even through the pain He promises to carry us. Forward.

Keep moving. xx

More than enough

Read: Psalm 23, The Passion Translation

We’re all sitting here at the end of Easter Sunday somewhat stunned.
That was weird wasn’t it?
Whatever our traditions at Easter would usually entail, today wasn’t it.
And we tried hard to keep some semblance of normality, despite that we wouldn’t be gathering for lunch with our people, or doing egg hunts with cousins, or gathering to worship in our church buildings. We hid chocolate eggs and put on our new pyjamas and smiled and said happy Easter, and curled up to watch sermons online.

But if you’re anything like me, you refreshed Instagram 643,768 times, switched to Facebook twice that many, and scrolled, not really seeing anything, not really engaging, but hiding there in a social media stupor.
I couldn’t put my phone down today.

I already knew this weekend would look different—months ago, we knew that Daniel would be working, so we planned our Easter celebrations for Good Friday, and we egg-hunted and ate hot cross buns and gorged on too much chocolate already—but no one predicted just how different today would look.

This Easter we’re choosing to celebrate the joy of answered prayers—that we’re not where we were this time last year.
We’re celebrating the new spaces we’ve walked into, and the redemption of old hopes and dormant dreams. There is so much good, and I choose often to keep my eyes on that.

But even though I had hot cross buns rising ready for the oven, and even though I was busy shaping sourdough early, and even though I got to see some of my favourite neighbour-bestie-family faces while I pinched rosemary from their front garden… it was an uncomfortable Easter. It was the first in our entire marriage that we hadn’t spent together as a family. It was knowing I couldn’t visit my parents, because of travel restrictions. It was not being able to gather, either in worship or in friendship.
I was distracted, and unfocused and scattered.
I tried reading, picking up and put down my current novel. I picked up and put down my phone a bazillion times, wandered aimlessly starting things and then walked away forgetting what I was doing, and starting something else.

And all day I kept going back to the day’s Psalm.
I hadn’t realised that after the tumultuous prophecy of the cross in Psalm 22, that it was this one we’d be lead to; one of the most famous and well-known Psalms.
The Lord is my shepherd.
My Passion Translation Bible tells me that the translated word here for ‘shepherd’ is ra’ah which is also the Hebrew word for best friend.
The Lord is my best friend,
I always have more than enough.

I needed this Psalm today.
I needed it like I needed a quiet walk to gather my thoughts.
I needed it like I needed a tight squeeze from a close friend.
I needed it like I needed a hot cross bun straight from the oven, lathered in butter.


He knows what we need.
He knew today would be lonely the Lord is my best friend (vs 1), I’ll never be lonely, for you are near (vs 4).
He knew my mind couldn’t settle, He offers a resting place for me (vs 2).
He knew what the world would look like today, why would I fear the future? Your goodness and love pursue me (vs 6).

So on this strange Easter Sunday I’m grateful.
I’m grateful for the Word that became flesh, so that I could find the aliveness of God.
I’m grateful for the expression of Him across the earth, for creativity and beauty, and friendship and grace.
And for a God who does not remain silent, and for a cross that has the last word.

xx

Sun-dried sheets, and the foot of the cross

Read: Psalm 21 The Passion Translation

I hadn’t ever used fabric softener until about a year ago. I discovered it was the reason behind a friend’s clothes, that always smelled so good. And I love smells.
I light double wick candles that crackle and send the warm aroma of patchouli and sandalwood into the room. I drip peppermint and bergamot essential oil into diffusers.
I spray little concoctions of witch hazel and lavender over our pillows before bed.
The smell of fresh baked sourdough makes me giddy, and the scent of a new book, or the Eucalyptus on a dewy morning. Scent makes the world come alive.

So, I splurged on that 900ml bottle of sweet-smelling fabric softener, and each time I carry a basket of wet laundry to the washing line I breathe in deep at it’s goodness.

Sometimes when I walk outside and the breeze is blowing the drying laundry, I catch it’s scent for a moment and it makes me smile.

Today I washed our sheets.
I walked through the tunnel made by them hanging in the morning sunshine, and breathed in deeply, enveloped in the white linen, smiling like a madwoman who hasn’t left the house much lately. And you know, God has burning bushes anywhere we’re curious enough to look at a more closely, and today that bush was my white sheets drying in the sunshine.

And maybe it was because it’s Good Friday, and the thoughts of the day were lingering in my mind, but the words to that old hymn came to mind as I moved my way through the sheets, and pegged down their corners; what can wash away my sin, nothing but the blood of Jesus… oh, precious is the flow, that makes me white as snow…
And I stopped, smelling the vanilla and coconut, reminded that even my best efforts of goodness will never be good enough, but Jesus will always be, and the white of the sheets was stark.

And today of course I’m reading Psalm 21 and while it is maybe about an earthly king, I look past that and see the King that went willingly to the cross.
I see the One who laid down the royal crown of gold (Psalm 21:3) and let his glory garments be stripped from Him, baring it all for all of us, and all of our imperfections.

And this, from Sacred Rhythms by Christine Sine, on suffering; “… God uses it to bring us to a recognition of our own brokenness. We can’t find true health and wholeness unless we suffer pain and admit we need the healing and redemption Christ offers…”

So tonight, after a day of sunshine, and a wash in the ocean, I’m climbing into white sun-dried sheets that smell like vanilla, and I’m letting the suffering of this Friday sink in. I’m letting the weight of an upside down world feel heavy without trying to move on too quickly. I’m remembering that it’s okay to cry out, ‘My God, my God, why have you deserted me?’ and sit here in darkness and loneliness for a moment.
Because if the Psalms are teaching me anything these days, it’s that it’s okay to sit with emotion, and to not rush to quickly from it’s grasp.
We can sit at the foot of the cross, and cry for the people we miss, for the lack, for the missing, for the broken and for the unanswered in our lives. We can let the melancholy settle in our bones, as people of the Cross.
And as those people, in the shroud of darkness of Good Friday, we can still carry embers of hope.
Hope that the partial will be complete.
Hope that the lack will be fulfilled.
Hope that the broken will be redeemed.
Hope that Sunday will come.

xx

A song of trust

Read: Psalm 20 The Passion Translation

We’ve had this album and this album on repeat for weeks. We’re all singing it under our breath, or out loud.

The shower is my singing place.
Our house is small, and we share a tiny bathroom with the five of us, and I’m sure my family laughs as they hear my voice rising from it’s echos. My imperfections and my tunes off-key and my made-up lyrics.
Sometimes that nightly shower is the first time since the morning quiet that I’ve been able to stop. The place where, finally, I don’t have an audience of children, and I don’t have to hold it together. The mask falls with that hot water, and that which I’ve held in can be released.
It’s a private place to cry.
When the tears turn to praises and the turmoil turns to trust, and it all happens in the shower, as the praise rises with the steam and the tears rise with them because I know He hears and bottles each one.
And there is a synchronicity that comes in the midst of doing both.
Because He promises supernatural help, and as we sing in the midst of the battle, that deliverance comes.
My natural isn’t enough. In fact my natural often makes a mess of things, but as this Psalm promises, by His mighty hand miracles will manifest through his saving strength.

Do we really know His saving strength?
What do you do when it falls apart?
Do we sing a song of trust? A trust that God will give you every desire of your heart and carry out your every plan as you go to battle.
It’s right there in this Psalm. It’s a promise.
Whatever battle we’re facing, He’ll bring victory.
And sometimes the weapon we need to pick up is our song.
Singing, for me, is a vulnerability. It’s one thing to hide my voice in a sea of them, but when it’s my voice alone standing up, reaching out without even an echo—that feels risky.
But in those battle seasons I’m learning to voice my prayers, my sorries, my thoughts, even if they’re met at first with silence.
Even if the shower is the only place I have to cry.
Even when the lyrics don’t rise to my lips in victory, I know that as I sing, as I speak, as I share, as I fill the silence, that the victory comes.
As King David sang this Psalm, His song of trust, I’ll sing too:

May we find connection in our isolation.
May He remember us as He paints the moon, and let us see Him in the dancing sunshine through our kitchen windows.
May he quieten us in our frazzled and worried doing, and busy trying.
May we know the God who fights for us, and feel the courage of that knowing settle in our bones, so we don’t rush frantic to fix what only He can.
May we see the manifestation of miracles, however small, in our every day.

xx

Stories in the sky: how He speaks

Read: Psalm 19, The Passion Translation

It’s dark, because summer has slipped away. Even the birds are quiet still. Daniel is up first with his alarm, but I don’t hear him until I’m jolted from a dream by my body clock, and hear the clink of his spoon and bowl in the kitchen. Already I know that he’s dressed, and eating porridge. The next sound I’ll hear is the coffee machine growl to life.

I squint at the time. 5:44. I can’t keep my eyes open yet so I close them and roll over to a cool part of my pillow. He grinds and pours one shot, then the second, and I know he’s using our favourite mugs. He’ll put a lid on his to take with him when he leaves. I think vaguely that I hope the coffee machine doesn’t wake the kids, but there’s no noise from the bedrooms.

I pull myself up to sitting, and flick on the bedside lamp. I lean over to pull open the blinds too, even though it’s too dark to see anything outside. My Bible is open on my knees when he brings in the coffee to set on the bedside table, but I’m scrolling Facebook now.
A goodbye kiss, the click of the front door, his car starting and the garage door lifting.
I’m reading a New York Times article about Wuhan on my phone, Psalm 19 is waiting.

Then a text from Daniel, “Go look at the moon.” I hesitate, the bed is warm and maybe I can see it from the window? “It’s at the end of the street” comes another text.
I tiptoe past the cat flayed in the kitchen doorway and out onto dewy lawn.
There’s the moon, setting at the end of the street, and ginormous. Beautiful.
There’s me in my undies in the darkness, staring at the lightening sky and luminescent moon.

Then, back to the still-warm spot in my sheets, and the still-open Bible I begin to read my next Psalm. Nineteen.
God’s Story in the Skies
God’s splendor is a tale that is told;
his testament is written in the stars.
Space itself speaks his story every day
through the marvels of the heavens.
His truth is on tour in the starry vault of the sky,
showing his skill in creation’s craftsmanship.
Each day gushes out its message to the next,
night with night whispering its knowledge to all.

Suddenly I’m overwhelmed by the knowledge of this God who sees me.
He’d painted that giant moon there just for me, because He knew I’d stand there in awe, and minutes later I’d read about Him speaking through the skies.
He spoke through the moon, through the cold dew on the grass, through the streaks of pink in the cloud, straight to my heart; a reminder of his sheer magnitude, yet this personal painting of the skies, just for me.

I felt it in my chest, this inexplicable knowledge that God orchestrates my days, my hours and minutes. That nothing is a surprise to Him, nothing is missed by Him—and that He’s there, painting the skies just waiting for me to tiptoe out, lift my eyes and read His story.

“The rarest treasures of life are found in his truth.”

I’m so grateful for this rare treasure today.

xx

Grace is a shield

Read: Psalm 18. The Passion Translation.

In the church communities I’ve been a part of, Lent isn’t something that is observed or taught. I discovered it only a handful of years ago after coming across Alicia Britt Chole on Instagram, and the book she wrote; 40 Days of Decrease.
I’ve picked it up each year since, for Lent—enjoying the sacredness of this long-held practice from other Christian traditions—using it as a framework of setting aside this period of time to journey towards the Cross. Towards Easter. In the slow, and often painful walk toward the joy of Sunday. Each day of the forty, Dr Chole encourages a different kind of fast: today, fast regret, or today, fast rationalism.

This year I’m learning to daily fast perfectionism. I’ve laid down my ideals of ‘getting it right’, of ‘doing it properly’ and in all of it finding a God who gives so much more grace than I have ever been able to give myself.

What a God you are! Your path for me has been perfect!
All your promises have proven true.
What a secure shelter for all those who turn to hide themselves in you!
You’re the wrap-around God giving grace to me. Ps 18:30

That word used in this verse is ‘shield’ and in the Hebrew literally means ‘to wrap around in protection’.
God Himself is our protection.
And grace is a shield.

Grace shields me from the shame of not getting it right.
Grace protects me from the fear of not being good enough.
Grace covers me with the reassurance that God stretches heaven’s curtain open and comes to my defense (18:9), that He will reach down into my darkness to rescue me (18:16) that His love broke open the way, and he brings me into a a beautiful broad place (18:19).

My girls have favourite blankets, and now that the weather is cooling, these blankets are wrapped tightly around their shoulders throughout the day. They can’t do much with their hands when their arms are swaddled within the thick layers, but they forgo those things to be wrapped in warmth and comfort.
Grace, wrap-around grace, is just like this. A thick, warm layer of it that enfolds us. All the parts of us. So the parts that feel like they need to do more, or be more are simply stilled by that enfolding, encompassing grace.

And this is a comfort in this season. Because the general rhetoric is loudly saying we should use this time of isolation to do more, to be more; to get better and fitter and launch online businesses and grow followings and online gatherings and to leap lightly and easily into our new pivoted lives and truthfully? All of it leaves me feeling exhausted and overwhelmed.
I can’t keep up with the Zoom calls, and I don’t want to sit in front of a screen any more than what is a necessity and for the first time ever I’m craving a normal, everyday phone call so I don’t have to have perfect hair.
So when I read Psalm 18 in the still-dark morning today I took a great big exhale of relief that even the tree branches swayed beyond my windows.

I’m not fighting the wrapping up of all of the parts of me.
I’ll sit here, perched high and out of reach (18:48), far from the grasp of shame or performance or striving.
What would happen if we just let grace wrap us up tight?
What if we let Him lead us into that beautiful broad place?
It’s right here that there’s room for everyone. Here, the table is wide and there’s a blanket of grace to wrap around each of us, even if our hair is dirty and our skin is blemished.

So today, grace is a shield, protecting me from the lie of perfection, and ushering me into a place of beauty, vulnerability and gratitude for who I am, and who God is to me. I’m wrapping it around me like my favourite blanket, and it’s holding my arms close and I sigh with relief as it envelopes me. As He envelopes me. There’s no need for perfect here.

What do you need the shield of God’s wrap-around grace to cover and protect you from today?

xx

Soul-glow: plodding through the Psalms

April is here. It’s cooler, and the afternoon sun is milder. I’m making breads and soups and I’ve pulled out the wooly throws for the couch to tuck my feet under.
The suddenly crisp mornings have me reaching for knits and socks that have been tucked away since last year.
The sun takes longer to rise, and my first sip of coffee is had in the grey dark, with my bedside lamp as the only illumination.
That, and the Word of God.
The Psalms have been lighting my path these days.
I’m suddenly carrying a lot of emotion. We all are.
We’ve found ourselves in the middle of a continuing outward crisis. Our lives have changed—our kids are home, we’ve lost jobs and holidays and the ability to visit family and friends. Our communities of faith are online, and our worship is hands outstretched awkwardly in our living rooms, a chorus of voices missing.
And it’s a lot. It’s a lot to carry, and we’re carrying it and moving forward and teaching our kids, and cleaning our homes and working remotely, and amen-ing to sermons from our laptops.
I’m here knuckles-deep in bread dough and unrolling a yoga mat and finding ways to ground my heels into a ground that’s shifting.

And in this rocking, surging uncertainty, the Psalms are steadying and sure.
Their writers show us how to ride the highs and lows of tides of emotions, and reveal a God that is constant in the midst.
You will answer me God, I know you always will. (Psalm 17:6)
You’ll answer me when I’m overwhelmed by a uni assignment.
You’ll answer me when I’m missing my friend.
You’ll answer me when I brace myself to glance at our bank account.
Protect me from harm; keep an eye on me like you would a child reflected in the twinkling of your eye. Yes, hide me within the shelter of your embrace, under your outstretched wings. (Psalm 17:8)
This comfort, to know as we carry weight, and carry on that His eye is on us.
You will answer me God, I know you always will. Maybe not in this moment when I ask, maybe not tomorrow. But we’re held in the twinkle of His eye; He sees and hears and knows and there’s the embrace to wrap us in when it’s all too much, and we can hide right there for as long as we need.
So we plod towards Good Friday, our Lenten journeys near the end and the palms of Sunday trampled and losing their green. The mild April sun casting its glow, and our glowing souls in the knowing that the King still comes in the midst of uncertainty: you will answer me God, I know you always will.

xx

* Committing to sharing my journaled thoughts here each day this week, and writing that here for accountability.