Think of a person in your life who loves you, a person who believes in you and stands up for you and defends you (even when s/he has to defend you from yourself). A person who reminds you that you are DOING IT. A person who makes you feel beautiful when you thought you were merely the world’s biggest barnacle.

Think of that person. The person who tells you, “You know when you were cleaning poop out of the bathtub the other day? Yeah, I thought you had never looked sexier.”

(And if you don’t have a person like that, then I will be that person for you. Go back through this blog and read and you will see that I am here for you in that way — to tell you that you CAN do it, that you’re not failing even though you might be struggling, that you can be alive and awake in this world, that you are already worthy.)

OK, are you thinking of her? Are you thinking of him? Do you have that person in mind?

Here’s my challenge for all of us on this Monday:

How can we begin to see ourselves the same way that person sees us?

Let’s do something revolutionary together. Let’s decide to be SOULDIERS — radical defenders of our own soul.

What does it mean to you to “radically defend your own soul?” What does that look like in your life today?

“He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.” Psalm 18:19

In 2004, when I was living in the Middle East, just months after Steve and I were married, God opened a door for me. I was a 27-year-old newlywed, and I was on my ear a bit. Just not sure what was next, where I was headed, who I was becoming. We were returning to the States in a matter of weeks, and God opened the door—a tiny little miraculous crack—for me to become a writer.

Over the next few years, and until Found Art: Discovering Beauty in Foreign Places released in 2009, that door creaked and squeaked open more and more. Little by little. Nothing was blown off the hinges. Nothing was thrown wide open. One miraculous inch at a time.

In the meantime, I’ve been working on a second book. I’ve mentioned it here a time or two. Just working away. Honing ideas. Allowing our conversations to shape things. Revising. Rethinking. Rewriting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

Well, the door that God is opening in my life has opened a bit further, and I have NEWS. After a long time and a lot of hard work (not to mention the tireless efforts of my amazing agent, Chris), my second book has found a publishing home!

I’m thrilled to be starting a relationship with the staff at Revell and feel very grateful that they believe in me and in this project.

The working title of the book is BREATHING ROOM. It is my personal manifesto on having the courage to be a companion to ourselves.

You know I’ve been writing about this very thing for the last few years—how we can become a friend to ourselves instead of an enemy, how we can create a culture of honor instead of hostility, how we can learn to believe in ourselves again (or maybe for the first time).

I am inspired by the truth of Psalm 18 – “He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me” (NIV). I am experiencing a great work of transformation in my own life. FROM believing all the small-living lies TO allowing Christ to usher me out into the spacious place, the wide open field, the broad place, the expanse (as other translations refer to this place).

I long for the spacious place. I long to live from freedom. I have an inkling of a whisper of a flicker of a hunch that YOU are longing to find and live from this broad place, too. You are longing for some Christ-saturated breathing room.

I believe we can run and run and run in search of that breathing room. We can try to manufacture it, force it, strive for it, manipulate it, and create all kinds of false versions of it. AND IT WILL ALL CRUMBLE IN, leaving us gasping. And most of us, in our moments of struggle and desperation, will turn on ourselves.

But what if we could stop punishing ourselves, stop blaming, stop harassing, stop pinging . . . and ask God for the courage to offer ourselves the broad grace that he’s bathed us in. What then? Is it possible that only after we have found a home within ourselves can we become fully alive and awake in the world?

I believe you and I can live differently—not following the road map of “You have to” and “If you don’t” and “This is the only way.” I believe we can live from the broad place. I believe we can find breathing room.

Please continue with me on this journey!!! And if you know of others who need to hear this message, please invite them along, too!

I will spend the next handful of months writing, writing, writing. And then the book will release next year. Of course, I will keep you posted on all the details as they unfold.

AND, if there are particular conversations or ideas or moments that I’ve written about or talked about in the last few years that have REALLY resonated with you, please let me know so I can be sure those thoughts are included in the book.

I WANT YOU TO KNOW YOU’RE NOT ALONE. That’s why I write. That’s why I will keep writing. And I will trust that as God sees fit, he will continue to open doors in my life inch by magnificent inch.

AMEN.

“She who does not find grace in herself dies slowly.”
-Pablo Neruda

What if we just decided to believe that we’re not doing life wrong?

In 2006, our lives intersected with a woman named Maya. She was a stranger to us, but we met her in an incredibly vulnerable moment, and that tends to connect people in a way that is transcendent.

Steve was sent by the Navy to be with her right after she was notified that her husband, Marc, had been killed in Ramadie. He was the first SEAL killed in Iraq. I see now that part of the shock of this loss then and even still today is because these men—the men in his platoon and task unit—were believed to be indestructible. Hero-gods. Then Marc was lost. Then others.

Steve escorted Maya back to San Diego and sat beside her at Marc’s funeral and memorial service. I sat a few rows back at both services, trying to breathe. Feeling like there weren’t enough words in the world to assuage one second of this loss.

Huge pictures of this gorgeous young man. Uniforms everywhere. Bagpipes. A 25 year old widow.

In the last almost-7 years since we met Maya, we’ve seen her now and then. We saw her recently at a building dedication at the SEAL complex where a huge facility has been named in Marc’s honor. She was radiant and gracious, as always.

Every year, since 2006, on this day in May, I think of Maya. I think of the extraordinary courage required to endure the grief she has endured.

Loss is not nameless and faceless. Loss is the most personal and intimate of human experiences.

If you’ve watched someone mourn or if you have mourned a grief this primal, then you know.

Today, our country honors those who have raised their hand and gone forward for the fight. We honor those who believe the cause is worth the cost. We honor those who have given, ultimately.

But I, quietly in my heart, honor those who have walked the worn path of grief. Those who have endured the loss in the most personal way. Those who sent off their person and didn’t get them back. I honor the ones left to pick up the pieces. The ones who are still here, remembering.

The Scriptures say that those who mourn are blessed because they will be comforted. God, be near the brokenhearted.

Today, I remember the mourners. They are my heroes.

I was driving Luke and Lane to preschool with Elle along for the ride. About 11 seconds after we pulled out of the driveway, Lane announced that she wanted a doll to take with her to school. No doll in the car. I determined that we were already on our way and that she would have to play with the dolls in her classroom.

Commence Lane losing. Her. Mind. Bashing the seat in front of her with both heels. High pitched screams that would make you think one of her arms spontaneously detached.

I ripped the steering wheel over and stopped the car on the steepest hill between our house and their school. I stomped the e-brake, threw my door open, and flew out my door, preparing to give Lane some godly wisdom about her choices. The incline of the street brought my door screaming back and the corner caught me right in the back of the calf. Like a gun shot. Mom down.

Bent over in the middle of the street, trying to catch my breath, sweating, spewing unsavory sentiments, I felt practically rabid.

I limped around and opened her door, breathless, and commenced a conversation with Lane between my pained panting. Trying to get words out while I groaned.

By this point, Lane was perfectly calm and looking at me like how I imagine she will look at me when she’s 15. (Geesh, Mom, you are so lame.) Which, in fact, I was. Rendered lame by that {expletive of your choice} door.

All three of my kids looked at me as if I was the one who had lost my mind. Even Elle had taken her fingers out of her mouth at was staring at me aghast.

And then Luke says what everyone is already thinking: “Mommy, you’re kind of scary.”

Forgoing the lecture, I closed their door, limped back to my side of the car and waited by my door for a minute. Breathing. Breathing. Breathing. In these situations, that’s just about all a person can do.

Then I climbed back in the car, released the brake and kept on driving. Because, after all, we still had to get to preschool.

If your day today is feeling like this in any way—like you’re only a few hours in and you’ve already taken a car door corner to the calf—just know that you’re not alone.

Let’s all take a few moments and B.R.E.A.T.H.E.

Amen.