House on the Rock

My finite mind feels too small and too incapable to even begin to grasp the magnitude of the gospel. In moments of extreme pride, extreme selfishness, and overwhelming indifference to sin, I realize that I am once again dismissive of the reality that I was died for by a perfect person sent in the likeness of sinful flesh. But as I try to comprehend what has been deemed incomprehensible love, it is only helpful to try to understand the betrayal that Jesus endured so that I might eternally abide with him.  As I put it into terms I can somewhat understand, I think about shattered marriages. There are very few things in life that cause me to hurt for another human like the stories of broken vows due to a cheating spouse. The pain causes me to feel deep pity and compassion for the person abandoned, swelling with a ruthless hatred of the force that could dare to divide such a lasting covenant. I would think that there is very little that compares to the feeling of the person who was sup...

I woke up today, or last night, rather, feeling as though i’d been asleep for hours. Eyes glued shut, I found myself wrestling through whether or not it was worth going to war with insomnia and trying to fall back asleep or just resigning myself to abide with the dawn, dragging myself out of shelter and into the weary arctic world because my roommate can only sleep with the window open. When I finally decided it best to check the time and make an informed decision, I was disturbed to find the tall white numbers on my phone flashing 10:46, meaning I had been asleep for just over an hour and a half. So now what? Do I battle this tension for the next eight hours or pray I can fall back asleep before the Keurig roars like a train engine and my  roommate shakes her Oatmilk coffee creamer to the tune of a filled-to-the-brim barf bag sloshing on a plane? It’s a sound I’ll probably never forget, sharing the same 10x10 basement rug with two girls from college who fall asleep before the sun...

  Twenty-two this year, with a few habits I’ve let go and a few I’m still clinging to. Things I thought would be gone by now: nail-biting, people pleasing, sometimes having an imaginative car-ride concert where I am singing backup for Taylor Swift, not missing a single “oh oh oh” because it's the same one I’ve been singing since Fifteen was released, and I was ten then and fifteen felt so far away, but now it’s even farther behind me than it once was ahead. When I was ten, twenty-two felt like the year I would have it all together. The year I would graduate college, get married, move out of my parents house and into my own, start my own job, maybe write a book, certainly have life all figured out. And some of that will quite likely occur, while some of that I pray happens soon. But there’s something about twenty-two that feels like the walking in between: It’s the planning for a wedding but also calling my mom to ask whether styrofoam can be microwaved. It’s the buying a car but pa...