I am on a fast road to becoming more of an introvert than I already was. I don’t know if it’s the fact that I filled up a whole book with my own talk and now anyone, from strangers to neighbors can walk into any Barnes and Noble in the country and read it or if it is just part of getting older. But I am slowly beginning to hold my cards closer to my chest as the years are rolling on by.

I’m not saying that’s a bad or good thing, I’m just saying it’s true. I’m thankful for the friends who know me well. I’m craving simple moments with my husband. Silence and solitude are top on my list of things that keep me sane. My neighbor told me about a book that I can’t wait to read – Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking. The title alone gave me freedom. It just released last week and is in the top 5 on Amazon so maybe some of you have read it or at least heard of it?

Some other books I’m reading? I’m on the last chapter of One Thousand Gifts. I know it’s been out for a year but I’ve read it with slow, thoughtful intention and now I don’t want it to end. I finished Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak, a small book about learning to listen to your own design as you consider vocation. I’m also reading Sacred Rhythms by Ruth Haley Barton. All of these books together are changing how I think in a good way. They are all hardcovers and I have taken the book jacket off all of them because I have a hate relationship with book jackets.

Here is my family last month. I have precious few photos of all of us together because I’m usually the one behind the camera. Our family albums are filled with my husband looking like a single dad – poor man raising all those children alone. I’m sure his wife was a lovely creature, God rest her soul. Lucky for me, my sister-in-law always insists I get in the pictures when she’s around so I have just enough photos to prove that I am, indeed, not dead or missing.

The twins are in second grade now, all loose teeth and long legs. Our son will start kindergarten in the fall and then a week after that they will all be driving and getting married because that is just the way things go. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

This spring I will be slash have been speaking at some events and retreats, perhaps adding to the introversion that is going on. The idea of standing on stages and talking makes me want to spend equal time hiding under tables, silent. But I am beginning to embrace the beauty and relevance of speaking out loud the messages that have come in the quiet. There is a different kind of aliveness that happens in those settings. It definitely keeps me dependent and small.

We are currently (as in, today) picking out covers for my second book, the one for teen girls. It is between two beautiful covers and I can’t choose so when I’m done with this post I’m going to print them out, put them both on my mantel, blindfold myself and pin the tail on the cover. I can’t wait to share the winner with you. It’s a great problem to have, two beautiful covers. It could easily be two awful covers and it isn’t. I really love Revell.

Speaking of mantel, remember my mantel before we moved in? Well there it is, in all it’s unpainted, dark paneling glory. I changed some things around this weekend. I took an hour and painted the wall of the mantel white and hung my black and white pictures.

Yes, that is the same house. If you are curious and haven’t been around here much, you can read more about how we knocked down the living room wall wall and painted the dark paneling. This mantel has been through a lot of change over the four years since we moved in. I predict more change in the future. But for now, we’ll let her rest.

I’m considering starting a little newsletter of sorts for anyone interested – just a free not-very-often update on the state of things. It will be a place to tell you of upcoming events, to share some things I may not share on the blog, to maybe offer downloadable photos, to perhaps ask for prayer. See I am very decisive on what this would be. With all the chattering email and other fun online-y things, I can’t imagine that would be something anyone would sign up for which is why I haven’t done it. But I am discovering sometimes I have things I want to tell you about but the blog doesn’t always seem like the best way to do it. Perhaps you have a better idea? I’m all ears. And that is not a joke about how much my ears stick out. Just so you know.

They said that the crew was dressed all in khakis and fancy shirts in the early day, and at dusk we saw them in their black ties. We could hear all the excitement from where we stood as the yacht slowly made her way around the smaller boats, and I nearly expected Jay Gatsby to walk right out onto the deck and nod to the crowd with a smirk and a white-coat wave.

She moved slow, heavy, regal. And I wished I was there, part of the buzz and glitz and mystery. But not really. Because as I lazy-looped my arm through The Man’s and we meandered our way back to our beach house, I realized that this life I live is someone else’s boat – they look and long and wish for this. And so do I, until I remember I have it. That glamour life doesn’t really exist, and the ones who chase it discover quick, It isn’t really there. Whoever named the boat knew that. This tangible life is never enough, not really.

It’s been four months since I first saw Never Enough floating slow in the harbor, and every time I see a movie star on the cover of a magazine or daydream about jumping on a plane to Paris, I think about her and about how she may have been the biggest yacht in our harbor, but she’s not the biggest yacht in the world, not by far. When you strive to be the biggest and best, the smartest and wisest and most interesting, your goal will always be frustrated with bigger and better, smarter and wiser, and much more interesting. And so there is an innocent comfort and safety in humility, in receiving what this day gives, and in knowing that none of it originates with me.

I didn’t have a post planned for today because being gone all weekend with over 150 teenagers sucks every living, loving, inspiring cell out of my body and I’m left only with enough attention for mind-numbing television and a couple of Oreos. So I had nothing to say, and I went to bed but then 30 minutes later the dog threw up and the next thing I knew I was outside in my jammies hosing out the dog crate in the pouring down rain at dark-forty-five and I thought to myself that maybe I was due for writing a post that wasn’t all that living or loving or inspiring but just had some of life where it sits right now.

Here is a photo a student took during lunch on Saturday after she made me hand over my camera so she could capture us. So he wrapped his arms around me between bites of camp food on plates partitioned up and we posed for her shot compliantly and it wasn’t until later when I dumped all 200 photos onto my laptop that I realized how thankful I was to her for doing it. I still get a little fluttery in the head when he does that and maybe even a little cheek-flushed. I wasn’t crazy about our wedding photos which is one reason why I think I so love taking photos of brides – I want to give them the gift that I missed out on. And so that is why I think this photo makes me happy and brings tears a little. There are so few of us together.

I am one of those weird people who liked high school, and these girls remind me why. Because it was fun. Because you could act like a fool with your girlfriends and laugh until you couldn’t breathe. Because you would think to bring an old prom dress on a retreat just so you could prance around in your red sequence and knee high socks for no reason except that you can. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t relive those days for any amount of food or money, but I’m happy to hang out with our students and watch them live theirs. And maybe even sometimes have a little breathless laughter right along with them.

While cleaning out the closets in preparation for the yard sale, my son found a small box with this stuff in it. They used to be mine, those red-headed sisters with the green outfits on, that white-haired teacher sitting in the desk, that small doll with the big head in the background, a blonde Dora before her time. I know I should get rid of them, but I can’t. Don’t say it.

31 Days starts this week and it comes at a good time for me. For the month of October, I’ll be posting everyday, something about grace. I need graciousness these days. I need to remember gentle and compassion and patience and love. I need to hold onto those things, especially this week in the midst of a new and more intimate awareness of suffering and life-fighting and fear in the lives of some of those most dear. It really is all grace, each breath.

Because of 31 Days of Grace in October, tomorrow will be the last Tuesdays Unwrapped for a while, so I look forward to having you here in the morning with your stories and photos and glimpses of gifts in the midst of your everyday ordinary. And thank you for listening to me share mine.

Amy is a friend of mine in real life, so this post today is extra special. She is one of those beautiful, genuine girls who you hope to be even a little bit like. She has three adorable little ones and lives with them and her carpenter husband just two minutes from my house. Trust me, you want to know Amy. Her blog is just the right  mix of honest, deep, fun, and house-y. Visit her at Playing Sublimely and you’ll see just what I mean. But first, listen as she tells her story . . .

Love. I’ve always thought it to be fictitious, something to be found inside the pages of an old book with tattered corners. Or maybe something that flows through the notes of a great symphony and falls only on the ears of pretenders. Perhaps love was nothing more than a movie, a scene, a story, an idea for actors to portray. Deep, true love had always felt just beyond the reach of my fingertips, and for so long I pretended to accept it’s intangible existence.

I longed for a love story, yet grieved it’s absence like only a true prodigal daughter could.

I’m uncertain of the exact stage of life that my longing for love began, but I think it may  fall somewhere between Robin Hood telling Maid Marian he would die for her, and Mr. Darcy’s profession of love to Ms. Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice. For years it masked itself behind false interpretations: she’s just boy crazy. It showed itself in less than desirable ways, and always left my heart longing for something deeper, something truer, or at least just something less false.

And so there were regrets, and tears, and heartache. And then for awhile, there was nothing. Just numbness. Numbness to everything and everyone because that was less painful (but not really). And then came my declaration of independence. If I couldn’t have more of what my heart longed for, then I would “gladly” seek less. So for awhile, I dwelled in the world of less, and I sank.

Then, one day in the midst of this pit of sand, I met a Man. He didn’t seem shaken by the numbness or the brokenness, and He didn’t shy away from my bruised heart. He whispered things about my loveliness in a way that no one had ever spoken of me, in a way that made me think He meant it. He didn’t speak of my shortcomings (though I reminded Him of them daily), He didn’t dwell on my past, but instead spoke of a promise for the future. I didn’t believe Him for the longest time, sometimes I still don’t believe Him entirely. But still, He pursued me. He even fought for me. Because there were days when I knew that there was a battle raging in me. A battle between Truth and the Liar.

The Liar had always thought he had won in the past, he even assummed I was his bride. All until the proposal. All until the Groom got down on his knee…or more specifically, spread wide his arms and laid down on a cross. The heavens fell silent in awe of the horror, the sacrifice, the love. It was finished. The battle was done, the proposal was made, and there Love stood victorious outside a tomb.

As it turns out, there was nothing fictitious about Love after all. Love is real, Love is alive, and Love got down on one knee before me. And when The Groom asked for my hand in marriage, I said yes. I said yes because He showed me I was not meant for a world of less, a world where the ground was sinking. He showed me I was actually created for so much more. I was created for Him, to give Him glory, to be His bride, and that He had come to lay his life down for me. And for you.

I never knew why I so loved a love story until I met Jesus. I was created and placed on this earth to worship the one who adores me. What a love story, complete with a Savior on a white horse, and a bride in a clean, white dress.

“Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and the bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear.”

Revelation 19:7-8

There is enduring romance in the truth that the Son has asked the Father for your hand in marriage. The King is down on one knee holding a ring that will never end. He has made His proposal. He has prepared a white dress for you, and you have been invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb. He patiently awaits your response, and longs to hear you say I do.

When you eat mint chocolate chip ice cream, do you like it white or green?

“If I pulled back the curtain to allow you to view heavenly realms, you would understand much more. However, I have designed you to walk by faith, not by sight.”  -Sarah Young, Jesus Calling

This morning my son woke me up with a pat on the back and a loud, Mommy, you can come up now. I had to smile at his choice of words. I immediately pictured Lazarus wrapped up in dead clothes and Jesus calling out to him to rise up and live. Sometimes it seems impossible to come up from underneath the heavy weight of disbelief. But the moment the choice is made, the burden becomes easy and light. The choice comes first, though, and that’s the hard part. If I waited until it felt true, I may have never believed.

So, for what it’s worth, you can come up now. I know you may not choose to, but you can. And that’s all I’ve got today.

Choosing to believe Love and Faithfulness feels absurd sometimes. It is the invisible fight that wears me out, this striving with all His energy. When I know it isn’t up to me, when I remember not I, but He, it is easy to believe. It feels natural and normal and right.

But there are other times when belief feels delicate, as if the smallest shift against it will send it shattering to the ground. It is in the uneasy belief where I think things happen; the unseen things of grace and trust. But just like those pink tulips in my yard planted by those who came before me, I can’t always see the results.

I didn’t work all week. I didn’t make one list. I didn’t write even one sentence on my manuscript. I barely did laundry. I happily ate way too much here. I read this book. We watched this movie. And this one. And this one, too.

The ocean water was freezing, but it didn’t keep them out. The pool water was colder, and even I got in. I didn’t see the ocean until I was 12. I’m so glad they are growing up with it.

It is rare to get even a Saturday with nothing planned to do, let alone an entire week. Still, it is good to be home. And now on this anti-Saturday, the challenge will be to find the bliss in the midst of the ordinary chaos. When you find yours, write about it and come back to unwrap it with us tomorrow.

Things feel as though they will always be the way they are now and will never change. Until they do. And then that becomes normal for a while. Until it isn’t anymore.

Maybe you are leaning heavy against the door of change, grasping for familiar furniture to push up strong against that door. Maybe you are in the middle of a field of change, spinning in circles to find your bearings. Maybe you are stuck in your fear of change so much that you have traded in living for hopes of a risk-free existence. Still, change comes. And we get to choose what we’ll do with it.

Edie writes about change with the house that found her.

Melissa writes of making plans on her financial journey, but of things not going exactly as she thought.

A trip down memory lane helps Emily and her husband see the good side of change.

Lysa writes about an opportunity for a different kind of change, the kind that calls you out from behind your predictable routine and gently asks you to listen to that dream you’ve always had.

I love and hate change. I long for it and resist it, I welcome it and push it away, I dread it then forget it when the next change looms. How do you feel about change?