Category: The Glorious Table

September 23, 2020 The Glorious Table

Preparing the Soil

peony bush

The spring before my wedding, I bought a peony plant. I’ve always loved peonies, and I dreamed of clipping the beautiful blooms from my own front yard to arrange in my bridal bouquet. It was a symbol of the hope and joy that was coming. As I nurtured and cared for the plant in preparation, it mirrored my own preparation for our wedding day. I was watering myself with the wisdom of those who had gone before, experiencing the necessary pruning and growing as I learned to be a fiancée and, soon, a wife.

Spring came and went. As summer approached, it became disappointingly obvious that my sweet peony bush was not going to flower that summer. After some research, I discovered this is typical. In fact, according to Gardeners.com, “Peonies rarely bloom the first year after planting. It often takes three years before you see an abundant display of flowers. But once the plants do start blooming, you can look forward to a lifetime of beautiful flowers.”

You see, the work you put into a peony bush does not yield immediate results. You must continue to care for and tend to it while trusting that the fruit of your labor will come. In the case of peonies,

“If a peony is well-situated and happy, it may bloom for 100 years or more with little or no attention. This means it’s worth spending some time up front, choosing the right planting location and preparing the soil. That said, there are many stories about forgotten peony plants found blooming in the woods against old cellar holes. But like all plants, peonies will be healthier, more vigorous and more floriferous if they have ideal growing conditions.”

Did you catch that? A well-situated peony will bloom for 100 years or more! Sure, they can bloom in an old cellar hole, but thriving peonies do so because time was spent preparing for the harvest up front.

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January 19, 2020 The Glorious Table

Are You Brave Enough?

I will never forget my very first night of CrossFit. I bought ten trial classes from Groupon in the heat of New Year’s resolution pressure. I considered going for about three weeks in a row before I worked up the nerve to pull in the parking lot. Even as I parked, I wondered if I was making a mistake. I was sure I didn’t belong there. Gym people seem to have their own language, and while they know exactly what a Russian twist is, I was still wondering if it was a type of croissant. They have a confidence that makes working out look effortless, but there’s no hiding my heavy breathing in a gym that small. I nearly threw up on my first night of CrossFit because I was determined to blend in, and I didn’t follow the trainer’s advice to do only half the reps for each exercise.

It wasn’t until two days later, when I couldn’t walk up my own stairs, that I started to think about how rarely we put ourselves into situations where we will likely fail. As a teacher, I regularly preach to my kids, “We can do hard things.” I stress the importance of a growth mindset and the idea that failure helps to stretch us and grow our minds. I started to think about how often we ask kids to show up and try their hardest in situations where they will likely be unsuccessful due to lack of skills and experience. Alternately, as adults, we curate our lives to guarantee success. We very rarely choose to participate in activities that are challenging or have the potential to bring failure, especially if that failure will happen publicly.

There is no doubt we want our kids to be brave. It’s what I want for my students. It’s what we all want for our children. Click here to read the rest at The Glorious Table—>

September 13, 2019 The Glorious Table

Holiness Over Happiness

In 2014, Victoria Osteen made a statement that quickly hit the internet. “God wants you to be happy” she asserted. I remember rolling my eyes at her cheapened prosperity gospel. It’s not that God wants us to be miserable, but Scripture doesn’t support the idea that his chief aim is our happiness. The entire concept seemed not only naïve to me but an illegitimate concern in the circles of faith where I was a participant.

Fast forward five years, and I realized that some of that thinking had been illuminated in my own life. I’d been believing the same false gospel Osteen preached. I’d bought the lie that, if my life as a Christian looked happy, people would know Jesus is good. If my marriage looked happy, people would know Jesus is good. And if my husband and I were happy foster parents, people would know Jesus is good.

This idea is not only unbiblical; it’s downright dangerous.

Some seasons of my life didn’t fit nicely into this logic. I wrestled with God during some hard and unhappy times, and I now see they were the beginning of the undoing of my wrong understanding. The first came when I was nineteen and spending a summer in Africa caring for orphans. During that trip, I journaled that my heart was both brimming with joy and breaking with loneliness while doing one of the best and hardest things I’ve ever done. But I felt the burden to present only the happy side of the story to my supporters and church back home. 

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January 24, 2019 The Glorious Table

Are You in Someone’s Corner?

someones-corner

“I’m standing on your balcony.”

That’s what Ms. Beverly used to say to me. To be honest, I never figured out when she coined that phrase or why, but I knew exactly what she meant. She had my back. She was praying for me. She’d be cheering for me. She was in my corner.

I’m not sure what granted me such a special place in Ms. Beverly’s heart, but she most certainly had a soft spot for me. She knew me as a small child, helping my parents plant our little church, but then she moved away. Almost a decade later, however, she returned amid my shaky teenage years and again became involved in our church. I like to think Jesus knew how much I would need her.

To tell you my relationship with the church suffered when I was a teenager would be an understatement. Undoubtedly, my greatest strength and, in turn, my greatest weakness is my passion. I am stubborn and hardheaded. When I get an idea, there’s no point in telling me I can’t follow through with it; that only fuels my fire.

When I’m running hard after Jesus and I’m in the lane of his will, this attribute of my personality is my greatest strength. In contrast, however, being all in has caused me to fall flat on my face more than a few times. I tend to either succeed big or mess up big. My teenage years were filled with primarily the latter. Ms. Beverly didn’t care. She was for me. Even when I risked it big, even when I messed up, I knew she would have a glimmer in her eye, still proud of my zeal.

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