Author Archives: PearlS

Keep running the race.

I am not a runner, per say. An emboldened walker, is more like. I put the gentle leader on the dog, attach it to the leash, and sometimes break a ten-minute mile. Once in a while I amp up my pace and mileage because I’ve signed up for a race. I need to prove to my own body that I’m still in control. Likewise, I want it to reassure me–it’s still pumping blood, moving oxygen, responding with all vitality. In this way, I’m testing what is good and what is rubbish and where I need to consider pacing myself, when I need to rest, if I need better nourishment.

It’s fascinating to me that spiritual testing is really no different. An intimate conversation between our body and mind parallels the trials we are faced in the presence of God. He never wills that we break, only become stronger and more in tune with Himself. Do I need to take a different route? Should I challenge myself to do more hills, stretch my way of thinking? How do I increase my dependence on Him and focus less on myself? Is it time to get rid of old habits, overhaul my current alimentation?

I wonder about the stamina God is working to produce in my life. In a running race–for me, at least–there is a slog that hits about ¾ of the way through, where I wonder if I can finish strong. I’m never sure I am cut out for this. I probably shouldn’t have even signed up and paid the entry fee in the first place. Who do I think I am, this weekend warrior body who jogs with Taylor Swift in my ears and a mutt panting happily alongside me? The doubt creeps in, the weariness–always at three-quarters to the finish line. I shouldn’t be here. I didn’t train enough for this kind of thing.

Running with endurance has always intrigued me. I love its simplicity–nothing more than a body in forward motion–how easily it translates to faith over the long haul. Exercising those muscles built from pounding, pounding, pounding. Stress plus patience produces something amazing–resilience. It isn’t any wonder that after a person is in good physical shape they begin to look forward to the routine pounding just to assure themselves they are fit for the challenge. They don’t want to grow weary when it counts, so they commit themselves to the habitual burn. And they find there is a byproduct–endorphins. Pure joy in the sweat. Hope of overcoming. Signs of change.

There are things I have unknowingly signed up for in my own life that have turned into races. Stuff that depends on the continual exercise of faith even though it would be easier to lay on the couch and pretend like I’m not really in a race. Marriage, kids, work, school, mental health, community relationships. I need to stay in shape, need to keep my eyes on the prize, or I won’t be able to finish strong. I might not even finish at all if I avoid the training.

I was thinking about this the other night as I watched the BBC report from Idlib, Syria. I cannot relate to refugees there, folks who have spent a decade dodging bombs and trying to stay fed and warm. This winter has been one of the harshest for those poor people, parents watching as their babies freeze to death, nothing to shelter their heads or fill their bellies. Children collect trash to burn; mothers and fathers plead for help. I cannot even fathom the horror of it. It makes me physically sick.The world turns their back and ignores them, too busy buying up all the toilet paper and antibacterial soap for themselves.
We are lying if we are Me Too people. We are Me First people. Me, me, me.
I stay awake at night over the disparity of it.

But I am convinced we must stare it in the face, and we must stare it down closer to home, too. It is part of the pounding. We can’t let ourselves be comfortable with suffering; we must draw near to the source and partake in the pain if we plan on making it to the finish line. We are fooling ourselves to think we can remain unaffected and coast our way over injury and death. Our money, status, birthright, righteousness, face masks–whatever it is that we hope will save us in tragedy is a major stumbling block to our faith race. We must hone in on suffering; even welcome it. 

As a family, we have tried to intentionally move into such a space where suffering and the nitty-gritty of life splashes up on our own boots. We sponsor several children in other countries, and though I am convinced this is the most tangible way to reach beyond our borders, we know it isn’t the only thing we can do. 

We have moved to a community of rainbow-colored, blue-collared, English language learners, the elderly, the lonely. We plugged into our neighborhood and school and seek out opportunities to elevate others. Education, housing, encouragement. We look at our bank account and wonder how close we–the rich American neighbors–can scrape the bottom and stay in the race. 

Having built relationships with people who are poor and struggling, we are coming to humbly realize it is very little about what we have to offer. They, after all, are the elite runners. These are the examples we are to behold and lift up with dignity and respect. They are coaching us on how to run with endurance.
The farm laborers in Haiti with eleven kids. The ruddy-faced little girl in the mountains of Peru, raising guinea pigs and corn for her family to eat. The teenagers who take their little siblings to the park and share their Mountain Dew. The single dad with four boys in an apartment down the street. The newly immigrated, the brave kids who show up to school scared. The moms who let go of their child’s hand and jet off to work at the nail salon or dry cleaners. Teachers with a small salary, charged with the responsibility of educating kids who cannot understand the language or whose parents are in prison. Brothers and sisters starving in Syria.
Elite athletes, all of them. What have I to offer? No.

Me too–please, Lord, give us this privilege. Show us suffering and let us partake. Strengthen our feeble arms and weak knees (Hebrews 12:12).

How can these pro athletes teach me to keep my eyes on the prize? This is the value in holding their hand. What we offer is no answer to their trials–we alone have no balm for a weary soul. All we can do is encourage them to stay in the race because the prize at the end will be worth it. Our job is to keep talking about the Prize. To not grow weary in doing good, to not give up (Galatians 6:9). To not worry and fret like other people, people without hope (Ephesians 2:12).

We depend on one another to holler encouragement and ring cowbells. We do not just bump elbows, wave from afar, or ignore the fact there is a race going on. We have to link arms and push each other to the finish, and my weak self needs as much coaching as a person can get.

I wonder if we aren’t a bunch of bleeding hearts, worked up over the entertainment value of sob stories and various horrors regarding our planet and the people on it. Something to talk about over the water cooler, something to text our best friend about, something to turn into a meme. Something to scare us into doing nothing or hoarding security to ourselves. We need practical reminders we are in a race.
I have a smart watch that alerts me, when my heart rate dips, to Move! It buzzes and lights up and I immediately curse it. What right does it have to tell me to get moving? I still keep the darn thing strapped to my wrist. I think God’s Word is the same–we must keep it strapped to our heart, let it buzz our conscience, tell us to move.

We are racing to the end, people in front and people behind us.
Keep moving, feel the habitual burn. It is building resilience, hope, joy.

Mikiyas and the Cure

I can’t tell you how fast I tear open my mail in the mornings. My mailman is a late-arriver, and typically I don’t get my Monday mail until I’ve walked the kids to school on Tuesday morning.

Today I flipped through envelopes and found a letter from one of our dear sponsored kids in Ethiopia. His name is Mikiyas, and he is tall and gangly like my own boys. I love this kid. I love seeing pictures of him and wondering about every bit of his life. Does he feed his chickens before he heads off to school in the mornings? Does his grandma fix him a bowl of cereal and chide him to get out the door before he’s late? My heart longs to meet him before he is a man.

There was a picture inside, the first I’ve ever seen of his flashing white smile. He is standing in front of a bed with an orange and blue flowery bedspread. It has been pushed up against a corrugated tin wall. In front of Mikiyas is a load of grain–easily a hundred pounds of it–a jug of oil, and a brand new blanket wrapped in plastic.

I have noticed a trend over the past several years, one of indignance over a “white savior” mentality. I’ve really thought about this, because, of course, I am white. I wonder what part I play in perpetuating some sense of privilege and unfairness.  I truly love Mikiyas, but the fact is that I’ve been born into a place where my advantage is to his advantage, if I play the cards right.

I’ve also seen a trend just in the past few weeks over folks freaking out about coronavirus. I’ve thought about this, too, because there is a massive pile of Costco goods in my basement lying in preparation for the moment we might need forty pounds of rice, two gallons of maple syrup, and enough pancake mix to feed the neighborhood should we all be quarantined. 

We are scared people, and easily spooked. We worry about overextending ourselves, giving too much, giving too little, appearing overly sensitive, appearing properly concerned. We think a lot about how our actions are perceived, whom we’ve offended, how seriously we are taken. On the flip end, we think it is our absolute responsibility to prepare for the worst. We frantically drive to the store and fight over that last loaf of bread, the last jug of milk. We–who have hardly ever missed a meal in our lives–worry there might not be enough. 

We live in a nation of plenty, but confronted with potential, visible danger, we brood over the scarcity of things and our absolute, complete reliance on the local grocer. We are all incredibly self-obsessed.

Every time I fly on an airplane and am lucky enough to score a window seat, I slide up the shade and peer down at the earth below. Usually I’m flying across Kansas. It’s amazing to be high above it all. I look down and the towns are maybe an inch long, a cluster of trees and buildings the size of Monopoly pieces. Nearer to Kansas City, there are bigger homes–little Monopoly motel-sized buildings–arranged in circles, sometimes with a small blue square, a pool, in the back. From a 10,000 foot perspective, all of humanity is made up of clusters, people huddling together in itty bitty communities with hundreds of miles until the next town, connected via tiny floss roads. Rivers twist like veins, farmers’ crops are small squares with perfect circles inside. 

I don’t think about individuals, because it’s impossible to see a human being from this high up. I don’t think about the “white saviors” below me, living in their tiny mansions. I don’t think about the street people, the hungry folks sitting on the curbs, or the illiterate kids in impoverished schools, soon to go home to cold, empty houses.

I actually think about how big God must be, how infinite. How patient and loving He must be to plant us like seeds in the dirt, little imitations of Himself. Glory on the ground, when we let Him use us.  And yet the fears that bubble up in our pea-sized minds threaten to drown us and our whole world. The worries that we aren’t doing things exactly right, or this notion of inequality…Boy, is gravity an equalizer. Humanity links us all.

The coronavirus is singlehandedly causing a financial crisis before it has barely landed in the U.S. We queue up at Costco, our carts stacked full, fearing the worst. Fearing death.

Overnight, a tornado popped up out of nowhere and wrecked parts of Tennessee. According to the news, 180 people were either killed or hurt and sent to the hospital last night. They had no warning. 

And there is Mikiyas, smiling. One of the worst locust swarms in recent East African history is methodically stripping all the crops and threatening food security in Ethiopia, and there is Mikiyas grinning in his tin house, enough to make a fool of my preoccupations.

We live day to day, just like Mikayas, but the difference is this: Mikiyas knows it. We refuse to recognize it. We don’t like our lips to confess that life is fragile. We don’t want to acknowledge diseases that cannot be stopped, a world that is filled with famine and disaster.

We’d rather live like gods, pretending our Monopoly-sized houses are sturdier than his little tin home. Costco will save us, and if not her, our local hospitals and well-spoken politicians.

It is funny how we rely on other people to tell us how to feel. I am thankful for the frequent letters in the mail that remind me how to think.
Mikiyas smiles, he flashes glory.
And I remember the God who loves and takes care of him is the God who loves and takes care of me.

Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air: they do not sow or reap or gather into barns–and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?    Matt. 6:25-26

We will not fear, though the earth gives way…        Psalm 46:2

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Is child sponsorship for you? Yes, yes, a million yeses! Open your mind to what the Lord is doing in the world by building relationships with kids in need. Go to Compassion or World Vision and check it out.

the business of staying married.

We each got our ballot in the mail last week. I sat and immediately filled in the circle. Next to me, my husband calmly ripped his ballot into shreds and tossed it in the trash. “There’s not a name on that list I can vote for and still sleep well at night.”
I laughed as I relayed this scenario to my friend later. You know you must really love someone to disagree with them, or even cancel out one another’s vote!

I can’t say I’ve always felt this way.

I’ve called myself a Christian my whole life, but hardly acted like one till after I was thirty years old. Even those naive years didn’t really count for much because I was like a baby whose legs weren’t strong enough to hold my own weight. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe anything, but I didn’t realize there was a battle. I didn’t know I was just a redshirt player watching from the sidelines. 

Faith without action is useless. Thinking judiciously seemed to me action enough.  At one point I remember telling Jesus I already knew plenty, knew basically everything He wanted me to know. I casually suggested he could try to further enlighten me, but I probably already got the point of this salvation business and He could move on to bigger fools, like, say, my husband.

Wow, what a jerk I was! In His mercy, I suffered. By His grace, he humbled me. I sat on the sidelines with a chip on my shoulder for a very long time. The Lord didn’t twist my arm till I screamed uncle, except in a way He did, beating me at my own passive-aggressive game by waiting it out. Silent treatment, I think. He let the enemy whisper lies, let me believe them for a few years. Depression and hopelessness settled in, cemented me in despair. Then He waited for me to lift up my eyes to look for where His help would come from. And Jesus pulled me out of the slimy pit.

I only have sincere admiration for people who want out of slimy pits. People who really, truly, cannot claw their own way out of the mess they’ve made. I thought my religiosity had made me flawless, especially in my marriage. I was the one who set up impossible standards and waited for Joe to fail miserably, then I’d look up to heaven and say, see? Tsk, tsk, what are we going to do with this man?

I hate admitting this–It is the worst possible thing to have done to a person, to elevate myself above them, especially above someone who loves me, who chose me. But for years what assuaged my guilt was this idea that I would always be the better person. Let fools be fools, I thought. He can be an idiot; in the end I’ll be right.

But I was wrong. Pride will make you bitter. Bitterness will fossilize your soul. It’ll harden your heart to stone to where you won’t know the difference between pity and mercy.

Self-righteousness might be the toughest sin to conquer, in my opinion, because it is so tied to identity, and every kind, helpful piece of advice or well-weighed word feels like an attack on one’s person. Perfectionism is the queen of lost causes. She accuses everyone else while ignoring the stains and rips on her gown.
I was a hopeless fool in my marriage. I was miserable. It didn’t even matter if I was technically in the right–I was ruining my own life by sticking my foot out for my husband to trip over it.

I am not the first person to have held out a measuring stick and waited for my spouse to hit the mark. I’m not the only person who has discovered I was incompatible with my partner–a big whoopsie, since we promised each other forever–and wondered how “irreconcilable differences” could be spun in a positive light if I ever ended up divorced.

I’m not the last person who will get married super young and sail right past premarital counseling, winking at the therapist–chill out, we’re in love!–then landing in the no-man’s land of indifference and sleeping in separate rooms.

That’s the good news, or at least it is comforting to some–I’m not the first, and I’m not the last. We blockheads are normal and a common lot, it turns out.

There is something I seem to keep pointing out in these blog posts, and I intend to be very sincere about it. The only thing, the only hope I had was for Jesus to pull me out of the pit I was in. I didn’t even know to ask for help, because I didn’t know I needed it. All I knew is something would have to come to an end. I thought it was my marriage, but I knew enough of what God thinks about marriage to be wary of greener pastures. So this is what I began to pray:

God, change Joe, or change me.

(I was pretty definite He needed to change Joe, but that was parenthetical, of course.)

But change me, if it’s me who needs to be changed, I added.

I was dubious, but my heart was burdened with pain, and I think this is what tipped the odds in my favor–God saw the wretch I was and had mercy on me.

He changed me.

Now, He might have changed Joe, too, but I won’t speak for him. All I know is, He answered my prayer. There was life at the end of the tunnel, and I’m so glad we made it through.

Here are the four things I can confidently pass on to anyone who is facing a crisis of self-righteousness like me:

Take responsibility for yourself.

Trust me, I know how easy and how fair it feels to play the victim. Nothing feels better than finding people who agree with yourself. When we are hurt, we go off looking for the first person who can tell us how right we are and how much the other party has wronged us. They pat our backs and rub our shoulders and tell us they support us. In our hurt, we avoid anyone who might suggest the problem lies with us. We fool ourselves into thinking everything that has happened to us is at fault, when actually the root of our problems lies with who we are. We are sin-prone, self-motivated, and ready to argue. This is the first thing we have to acknowledge if we truly want to get down to business. A good friend–a great friend–will remind us we aren’t perfect, either.


Open your Bible.       

I know. It’s basically the only thing I ever say. But if you don’t trust anything else, believe me when I tell you God’s Word has the power to renew your mind. It is living and active and  “judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart”–Hebrews 4:12.

James says the Word is like a mirror–a person might look into it and be made completely aware of our own flaws and imperfections. If we continue to look into the Word, we might be found both guilty and forgiven. We might gain the courage to address our own faulty reasoning. With truth looking us in the eye, we recognize our own failings and gently rebuke ourselves. We see the person we struggle with not as an enemy, but as someone God loves. We are empowered to forgive.

Take captive every thought.

When I feel hurt, the quickest things that come to my mind are rapid fire defensive moves, angry words that will cut deep, and hot tears that make my rage feel indulgent and righteous. I’ve learned not to let these things spew forth, but even as I’ve retreated and let these thoughts wash over me, I have realized it’s the thoughts themselves that are poison to me. It took me awhile before I knew of a better way of nipping the reactive stage in the bud. You could call it a mind game, except it is spiritually powerful and applicable to every situation I can think of where words are involved.

Take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ. (2 Cor. 10:5)

We are the mind police, forcing our thoughts to fall on their knees before Christ. 

Get alone, move your body, and pray.

Truth be told, there isn’t a difference between psychology and spirituality. The mind controls the man. We are spirit people living in flesh bodies, struggling with our own thoughts and feelings. The truest, oldest way to align ourselves is still to get out and get moving. Put the body to work and kill the pity party. Stop offering your opinion. Stop defending yourself. Distance yourself physically and emotionally (it’s hard to cry or fight while you’re jogging) until you have created space enough to think and talk to Jesus. Cast your cares on Him for He cares for you. (1 Peter 5:7)

Now let me tell you about my favorite person on this planet.

He is not perfect. One of his most annoying traits is how he throws things away like it’s his business, even things I think are useful, like an empty plastic dish detergent bucket specifically used to hold plastic bags in the pantry. He cannot, for the life of him, make himself care about a dirty toilet, or missing trim, or milk-splattered kitchen walls. He scoffs at honey-do lists. He doesn’t think kids need to sleep in pajamas and he doesn’t care if kids wear socks outside in the grass. He loves TV and laying on the couch and he dreams mostly about hunting and football. He doesn’t take an interest in my hobbies and he rarely reads anything I’ve written.


But he has never once told me I look anything but beautiful. He’s never once missed a day of work unless he was sick, and he’s never once complained about his job or pointed out that I haven’t carried any financial responsibility for over a decade. Never once has he brought up the state of our unkempt home, the lack of folded, clean laundry, our kid-trashed family car. He doesn’t even complain about warmed up hotdogs for supper. He encourages me to relax, he encourages me to get away and take a break when I need one. 

I gave him a short leash and he gave me a long one, and for years I thought I had the upper hand. I was wrong. Love doesn’t keep score. I try not to anymore, either.

#killyourdreams

I met Tim Challies the other night.

I sort of knew who he was–that blogger guy with the pencil-sketched face header. He was around way back when people first thought they had something to say on the internet. If you look at the bottom of his blog today, it boasts a 5,000-plus daily blog posting streak. He hasn’t skipped a day in over thirteen years or so.

Challies was in town to give his talk on families, technology, and the dangers of porn. I didn’t go to the event to watch him speak. Honestly, I just wanted to know how he felt about writing these days. I wanted to know what he thought about major publishers, marketing, reviewing and endorsing books and the like. So after the crowd dwindled, I wiped my sweaty hands on my pants and reached out to shake his hand. He’s a published author with Zondervan. I guess that’s why I felt nervous. It wasn’t like I expected to pitch my book to him–I mostly wanted to hear if he thought this dream life of writing and publishing lived up to the picture I’d painted in my mind.

And you know what he said? After you write the first book, the publisher doesn’t really care about what you want to write. They want you to write what they want you to write.

Much of this blog writing business has me feeling like Will Smith in the movie I Am Legend. I’m just running out to the harbor to turn my radio to all its frequencies and see if anyone else is out there. Does anyone else see, feel, hear, struggle with the things I do? And if I hear only crickets and crackles, I shove my radio back in my coat and rush back to the fortress of my mind where it’s safe and locked down.

I always text a good friend and inform her the post is up and I’ve stuck my head back in the sand where it belongs. Ashamed? No. Terrified? Yes. Hopeful? Absolutely.

I hate it. I love it. Everything about it scares me and makes me feel more exposed than I’ve ever felt. Sometimes I’ll re-read what I’ve written and feel like a huge jerk. I’m a broken vessel, and everybody knows it. I’m writing a manuscript–I guess you could call it that–on Silence in the age of Loud, and so everything I post online feels like a bit of a betrayal. Who in their right mind has the right to write on keeping their mouth shut? Probably not me. But still I was thinking I’d build a platform, and that’d make it all ok.

The other night, Challies spoke about the dangers of pornography, the accessibility of it, the necessity for parents to open their eyes and make a plan to combat it. All I could think about was that pornography has no grip on me. It holds no interest.

However, if I replaced the word pornography with the word attention, and specifically, social media, I’d have to admit it: I’m addicted. No eye has their fill of seeing, and no ear their fill of hearing. (Eccl. 1:8) 

Guilty as charged. I keep coming back. I want to score that book deal.

Challies said people go to the internet to compare themselves to other people. If a person stacks up better than their opponent, they leave feeling proud. If they don’t measure up, they leave feeling envious. Both are a recipe for bitterness. Neither one is something to brag about.

For most addicts, they get to the point of life or death before they decide to cut themselves free. I’d say it is a good test to separate oneself from the temptation before it becomes a full-on habit to spend hours and hours online. Is it any different than porn, this compulsion to keep satisfying the eye which is never satisfied? When did this little tool for keeping in touch become such a hot magnet in my hands? Where did I get this notion that if I don’t promote myself, no one will?

I quit Instagram a few weeks ago. I hadn’t been a regular, but it was enough to make me feel jealous, forever reading the quotes and pictures of people (good people!) and wishing that one literary agent would take an interest in me. It is a false notion that any online “community” will offer me what I need when what I want deep down is to be satisfied with what I’ve already got. I’ve freed up an hour a day just by deleting the app off my phone. 

It’s funny, because we are all the same. Me, you. Just little bitty people who think we could possibly find satisfaction in something under the sun, forever fooling ourselves into thinking we aren’t addicts of one thing or another.

I’ve been teaching little kids for years now, and I keep coming back to the sermon on the mount where Jesus said we are to be salt and light. We are to live lives that make others thirsty to know Jesus, and we are to be little beacons that point in His direction. But other people will never see the need for the salt shaker or the flashlight if we are all addicted to bumping around in the dark, content with our made-up lives.
I’ve found that the one thing that makes me walk away from social media is the fact that it never fully satisfies. I leave, still thirsty. Only Jesus can quench it.
And this is what I’ve come to realize about the book-writing dream, the one I sort of bashedly half-confessed to Tim Challies: it has to die. Not that the writing isn’t important, but because the finding myself within the publishing process will never be realized. Just like Instagram–it must become dead to me. We’ve got to cut ourselves free of the things that trip us up from running the race, the one where Jesus is ultimately glorified, and not ourselves.
Hashtag, killyourdreams, folks.
Please keep reminding me, too.