Like basically everything else with this pregnancy (and honestly life) it looks vastly different than I expected. I thought I would be posting a quirky, fun, heartwarming post about my perfect birth plan, natural delivery, and grace filled postpartum. And, it is about my birth plan (that went out the window), my delivery (not natural at all), and my grace filled postpartum (but actually most of the grace has been poured out on me not me doing the pouring).

I have lived two lives; the one I was actually there for and the other an interpretation of that life from all the church members on the other end of my daddy’s phone.

If a researcher came into our home in the future, long after we are gone, I hope they would say “the people who lived here loved God and loved people, they thought critically, gave graciously, celebrated well, lived authentically. This was a home of peace.”

We don’t often talk about women in the Bible. And, unfortunately, when we do, it is often just as supporting characters. But, God has always seen woman as more than that. Often it was women who were quietly keeping the faith when the whole world was going crazy, women who were doing the work of the Lord, women who were living their lives in-spite of incomprehensible hardship.

I am after a life lived open and free and joyful. I believe joy is the greatest weapon we have to fight the darkness back. Joy refuses defeat, it pushes ahead, it drives out fear, and to revel in beauty and create a brighter world, even if it is just around us. Here on this blog and in these newsletters you can join with me as I carefully untangle the messy parts of my life and learn which parts are to be embraced and which to be discarded. Which parts of me are true and real and authentic and which have been carefully constructed cages keeping me back from a life of a freedom and a life of joy.