It's the New Year. But Are You Still Stuck Waiting?

A superfit friend of mine climbed Mount Kilimanjaro last summer. After her trip, she came to our house for dinner. Chris and I had one million questions for her. How hard was it? How much additional training did she do? What was the best part? The worst?

Climbing Kilimanjaro is one of those things that sounds both awesome and terrible to me. I kind of want to do it and kind of really don’t.

She said the hardest part was not the physical difficulty, but, instead, how slowly you have to go. She’s used to fast, distance running and, here she was, going at a pace slow enough for the entire group - all of varied fitness levels - to stay together. It’s also important to go at a pace slow enough to let your body acclimate. The guides know what pace the group needs to be able to summit together.

On the last night - summit night! - you slow down even more. You take a rest step between each single step. There you are, just hours from the top, and the pace decreases! She said she cried privately behind her goggles as the pace slowed - the mental challenge far outweighing the physical.

I thought of my friend’s experience as the new year turned. By now, you’ve read enough about goal setting and having an intentional year and deciding where you want to be 365 days from now. These are all good things to do. We have our goals over here, for sure. I have high hopes for what 2019 could mean for our family.

But I’m reminding myself that sometimes life is meant to be lived more like her Kilimanjaro climb than it is a race. There are things to run hard and fast at, absolutely. But there are certain seasons - the waiting periods - that we can’t muscle through. You can’t make your body create a baby by goal setting. You can’t will yourself to be married through checklists. You can’t magically be in the future you’re yearning for with a new planner or more organized home.

We can just take the next best step right now - one foot in front of the other. And sometimes, when we’re so close to the summit, the pace might slow. The rest steps may come in the form of a heartbreaking miscarriage, a horrible breakup, a lost job or home. I don’t say this to make them sound trite or small, but, instead, to remind you that nothing is wasted. The Lord makes good out of even the deepest pain. Each one will be used in your life. Just like my friend’s rest steps were required to make it to the summit - and beyond - so these things will be needed to propel you to the future meant for you.

A friend of mine had a miscarriage before she had her last baby. I asked her about it and held back tears as she talked about mourning the precious life. Then she told me that, although it still hurts, she knows she’d never have the baby she has now if she’d held the other one in her arms. And I wouldn’t change anything about my life if it means I get to have Millie now, she told me with tears in her eyes.

I laid on the floor with McCoy recently and thought about the heartache Chris and I both experienced before him. The journeys we each walked - the good, the bad, the beautiful - every, single step - led us to him. I wouldn’t change anything - not the tears we cried, the heartbreak we experienced, the sometimes far-too-slow pace it took for us to get to him. Because each one led us here.

So make your goals, friends. Have high hopes for this year. Hard work will not be wasted. But while you go hard at those goals, trust in His timing, His pace. Allow yourself to rest in the goodness of His grace each day, believing that your time is coming.

Sending you love and solidarity this year.

When Life Calls for Trimming

On Sunday, my dad came over to help trim our trees. They’d gotten out of hand during the last few months and, to be honest, I hadn’t really noticed until he pointed it out. Once I looked more closely, I realized just how bad they gotten - wild and jungly, with branches going every direction. In a way, they made me smile. A nod to summer - the unruly season of freedom that it is.

It took us an hour and a half to trim the front yard. I noticed it’s a lot like plucking your eyebrows - one hair can illuminate just how many more there are to be pulled. And yet, each one provides immediate satisfaction.

I dragged two bags full of branches and leaves to the curb, and, as I turned around to walk toward the house, the sight took my breath away. I couldn’t believe how much better our yard looked. It wasn't until that moment that I realized just how unruly those summer bushes had become.

As we finished up the last tree, I realized certain seasons in our own lives call for trimming, too. It might come in the form of a relationship or a job. It might be the clutter in our homes or on our calendars. We might not even realize it until someone else points it out. It will most certainly require grace as we give ourselves permission to let it go. It might take some discipline - or even a little mourning - to say goodbye.

But when we take the time to prune we might find that we’re shocked at the beauty it leaves behind.

Finding Joy in the Process

“Can we get pumpkins yet?”

My mom must have answered this one hundred times when we were young. The moment the back-to-school dust settled, it became an omnipresent question. The new pencils were broken in. My September birthday had passed. Surely it must be time for Halloween. It felt like we waited an eternity for Indiana’s summer humidity to dissipate, the time between Labor Day and October dragging like the dog days they’re known to be.

And then, the blessed day would arrive! It was time to buy pumpkins!

Some years we’d make an event of it - going to the patch to find the perfect one, stocking up on candy corn and apples while we were at it. Other years we’d run to the local grocery store between soccer practices, grabbing the quick and easy pumpkins out front. My brother, Sam, always wanted the tall and skinny one, perhaps a nod to the thin, 6-foot-three man he’d become.

All five of us would carry our pumpkins on to the front porch when we got home, so proud of what we’d found. My mom would meet us there, armed with teeny, tiny carving knives and enough newspaper to wrap the entire porch.

My dad would cut holes in the top for us, making room for our little hands to dig out the insides. The goop! We’d call it. Inevitably, we’d tire halfway through, wondering if we still had to keep going. Is it clean enough yet? We’d ask, knowing full well we weren’t even close. Those babies had to whistle through the eye holes! Keep going! My mom would say.

At night, after showers and dinner, we’d all run out front as my parents lit the candles in each one. We’d stand there with wet hair, in our oversized t-shirts, admiring our glowing creations, proud that you couldn’t see a speck of goop through even the big mouth hole. It was the grand finale. Our hard work had paid off.

I thought about those moments on Sunday as I mowed our lawn. It was a normal weekend for us: cleaning the house, doing some yard work, drinking coffee, caring for McCoy. It struck me that I am going to mow our lawn, once or twice a week, forever. The task will never be done. Just like feeding McCoy, flossing my teeth and cleaning our house. These boomeranging practices - the ones you can check off on Monday, but inevitably return on Tuesday - are never going away. This is the maintenance life requires.

It can be tempting to wait for the grand finale moments; when all of the pumpkins are lit. But there is beauty in cleaning the goop. It’s where the growth happens and where we learn who we are. It is the messy, sticky, thick of it that shapes us.

I’m learning that if we find joy in even the nittiest and grittiest of tasks, we a’re more likely to be grateful across every area of our lives. I’m trying to rush through each day a little less, recognizing that this mundane - this goop - is what life is made of. If I can appreciate having a yard to mow, in and of itself, how much joy will it bring when our plants bloom next spring and our grass turns green again?

This year, our pumpkins rotted. I bought them too early. I suppose I should have consulted my mom. As I hosed the goop off of our front porch, I smiled. I watched it wash away, dripping into the grass, the water gently hitting the concrete. It felt soothing and gave me a simple satisfaction as the porch cleared. I prayed, then, that there will always be a yard to mow, little teeth to brush and ordinary moments reminding me just how beautiful life can be.

Do You Feel Behind on Life?

For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to be like my older sisters. They're fun and kind and never made me feel like the uncool tagalong. They even let me wear their clothes when they were in high school and I was nine, never mind the difference in our sizes. 

By second semester of senior year of college, I was ready to graduate; I felt like I had overcooked. Chris and I have talked a lot about why I was so eager to join the real world. Even though I loved college and my friends, seeing my sisters' adult lives left me chomping at the bit to get on with things. They made adulthood look good and I wanted to join them in that season. 

Years later, my sister, Courtney, told me she was pregnant with her fifth and final babe. I struggled with a little bit of jealousy, but, what I felt even more strongly was a mourning period. I always thought we'd have the chance to be pregnant together someday and, since I wasn't married at the time, I knew this dream was coming to an end. My sisters shared multiple pregnancies and their babies' newborn years. I felt like I did when I was nine: I wanted in on this. But borrowing their clothes wouldn't cut it this time. Although, for the record, I do still peruse their closets.

photo by Natalie Puls

I realized recently, as I watched them send their babes off to school again this fall, that there is a part of me that always believed I'd catch up with them. As I snuggled McCoy and scrolled through their precious first day photos, it hit me that this was not the case. Not because I'm behind or doing something wrong, but because I'm not supposed to. 

To be clear, I'm not supposed to catch them, but not just because they're older than me. It's because we're walking our own paths at our own paces. We are each living the lives that were designed for us. They got married much younger than I did and had babies in their 20s. Chris and I got married just a few months before my 30th birthday.

But number crunching doesn't do us any good - because that's not what learning to enjoy and embrace our lives is about. 

It can be just as easy to compare ourselves to younger siblings and friends. During my less-than-settled seasons, I've even found myself comparing my life to bloggers: she met her husband at 26 and started a family at 28 and had this business by 31!? What am I doing wrong?

I'm learning these days that if comparison is the thief of joy, the belief that we can catch one another is its mighty sidekick. Thinking we are "behind" in life only perpetuates an unnecessary cycle of competition and comparison.

Last fall, I had the chance to be pregnant with my sister, Ashley, and my sister-in-law, Abbey. Now we're sharing these sweet baby days, navigating each new phase together. I never dreamed I'd get to share these seasons with them.

The whole experience has reminded me of one of life's greatest truths: we never know how much good is coming down the road. But if we can learn to trust that our time is coming, we can sink into the present much more easily. 

So here's to today and tomorrow, the slow days and the fast ones, the abundant and the sparse. And to every season in between. May you rest in the joy and uniqueness of each season.