His name is Walter. You  know, the faceless guy who gives you minute-by-minute driving directions. The same one that announces, “You missed your exit. One moment. Redirecting.” Walter and I had made several trips together before this night, and he’d not given me any reason to doubt him before now.

Yet—as darkness settled down amongst the trees on either side of this narrow county road—heaviness settled on my shoulders. The beauty from the sunset quickly lost its glow for me as I realized I was alone on back roads that were strange to me. And growing stranger by the minute.

Walter broke into my thoughts, causing me to jump at the sound of his voice. “Turn left in 800 yards.”

I swallowed hard, glancing around me. I wasn’t at all sure that Walter was right this time.

Trees—tall and close together—were all I could see on either side of me. There were none of the telltale markers I’d been assured I would see.

I fought against the pounding in my heart and the uncertainty that taunted my mind.

At 800 yards…I turned. Walter had told me too, after all…

I drove on—in blind faith—for another three or four miles. Just as I was about to succumb to the fear and the anxiety, I began to catch glimpses of those markers. And then I heard Walter’s voice again.

“You have reached your destination.”

This jaunt down an unfamiliar country road  so closely parallels my journey through life at times. Just when I feel surrounded by unsurmountable obstacles, just when I feel isolated and alone, just when I feel I have lost my way…

I hear His voice.

Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. – Psalm 37:3

I may not always see the way clearly. I may not always maintain confidence in my path. I may not even make the trip without doubt or without fear.

My job is to continue the journey.

His voice has never given me any reason to doubt His direction before.

Blind faith tells me I will one day hear these sweet words…

“You have reached your destination.”

At the time you are typing the aforementioned sensitive information into your laptop (thinking of it as a sort of therapeutic exercise) it seems like you are just writing for yourself. No harm done. But then you look at the stats from the day and realize hundreds of people you don’t know and everyone googling “funny Wal-Mart stories” forevermore now know the embarrassing truth about your declining state of mind and the fact that there are just those days that you don’t have it all together. They know you are (gasp), REAL.

I have also revealed over the past few years that I suffer from a disease.

“Hi. My name is Staci and I am recovering from perfection-itis.”

Okay, so the disease is fake, but the symptoms were very real. Suffering from Perfection-itis years ago meant I based my contentment in life by how nearly perfect I could bring every portion of my life. How perfect my home was. How perfect my daily word was. How well-behaved my children were.  How well I could orchestrate all these things at once. And let me tell you – it was, like, um…never!

Over and over my expectations were dashed on the rocky cliffs of attempts and failure. Exhaustion and dismay kept me bound, held prisoner by the unseen hand of the impossible.

Cooking and writing and nesting are things I love. There is nothing wrong with being passionate about how God has gifted us. Creativity is a blessing and I am grateful for it every day.  But when the creativity became more of a burden and less of a joy, it was time to examine my priorities. It took a while (and some days I still have to “go to a meeting”) but I finally learned the important lesson that a happy mama makes a pretty perfect home. And time spent on the knees is what helps Mama get her happy on. And with a good dose of happy, the well-behaved children and the word count and the picked-up house all seem to find their respective spots on the list of priorities.

It’s a constantly changing list and – for each season of life – the changes seem to only grow. My system isn’t perfect, nor will it ever be. But I’m learning to to wholeheartedly embrace this one amazingly beautiful and imperfect life that I have been blessed with.

And that’s my random confession for the day.

“Hey Nana.” Kendall walked into the kitchen. It was the twinkle in her eyes more than her excited tone that captured my attention. “Can you come here for a minute?”

I dried my hands on a towel and then followed her into the living room. She walked to the shelves that now housed Mama’s salt and pepper shakers. I thought for sure she must have more questions about them. She reached one tiny hand out but – instead of fingering one of the sets – she pointed to the round tin with the letters S I M P L I F Y stenciled on the side that sat on the bottom shelf.

“Did you know – ” Her voice lowered to a bare hush “- that there’s change in there?”

I did know, but often forgot.

I had picked up the tin at a little store in Jefferson last year during our annual cousins trip. Mike and I had just entered Phase I of our Big Adventure and the message on this can was a ready reminder that everything we might be sacrificing in the short term was going to pay large dividends in the long term.

We placed it on this shelf and had gotten into the habit of dropping our spare change into it. Over the course of many months it had become quite the nice change tin. Particularly for a curious six-year old, who thought she’d just hit some major pay dirt.

Her words still linger with me – even now, a few weeks later. There’s change in here.

The irony isn’t lost to me.

We’ve made a very deliberate choice to live a simple life. Making daily choices that bring us closer to our ultimate goal. A place we want to create for us and for our families, a place that will be the legacy we hand down to our kids.

The place where we’ll grow old together, sipping early morning coffee on a back deck and hosting family weekend dinners in our outdoor living area. It will be the hub of happiness and hope, where love is the constant that bonds us all.

But sometimes - in the midst of THE RIGHT NOW – when the issues of work and school and the busyness and craziness that comes with our schedules rears up…I forget.

I forget that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

I forget that life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

I forget that you have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need.

There is change in here!

I know this, and don’t want to forget. This morning it is fresh on my mind and newly imprinted on my heart.

There is change inside of simplicity. And that is what I am in pursuit of.

There was a time when I thought this road called Motherhood would one day become breezy.

One day when ear infections and middle-of-the-night stomach flus were a thing of the past.

One day when homework no longer required my assistance and lunches no longer needed packing.

One day when they’d shop for their own clothes and purchase the extras with – could it be – their own money.

Now I know differently.

There are no breezy sections on this Motherhood Road.

Whether our children are two, twenty-two, or forty-two, we feel their pain in a way that is so exquisite that there is yet to be a word created that would aptly describe it. It takes us to the very brink of all we think we can feel or think or experience…and then the very next day it surprises us all over again in completely new ways.

It has been said that pain is the best teacher in the world. And while a part of me really wants to balk at this, particularly in the case of motherhood, I find that I still agree with it.

The pain of motherhood – of loving this extension of yourself so much that your heart bleeds when they hurt – teaches us about what is good and right and truly important in this world. More and more these days, I am reminded of what is no longer fundamentally important to me. Instead I cling to what I know.

And I know that my purpose is to love and to nurture and to find joy in the simple things.

I came across this blog that I wrote quite a while back. Instantly, it took me back to a day when The Teacher gave a lesson that I didn’t necessarily want to learn.

Forty-eight hours ago, I sat in a doctor’s waiting room, nervously and mindlessly flipping through the worn and smudged pages of one magazine after another. For two solid hours I sat in that black vinyl chair, all the while my heart was somewhere in the depths of that doctor’s office, in whatever room Nate was in.

As a half-hour turned to one, then an hour and a half came and went, I gave up all pretenses of reading or people-gazing or anything else that one tends to do in those type of settings. I gathered my purse and moved to the edge of my seat, and was truly only a nano-second away from barging behind The Door and finding my son all on my own.

And then these words begin to spill through my mind in the sweetest possible way:

“Peace, peace. Wonderful peace.”

“Coming down, from the Father above.”

Just like that my twirling thoughts stilled and my pulse returned to normal. Even though I sat here, in the one place, facing the one thing that I feared most during my kids’ growing up years, I felt the peace of God. I wish that I could control heredity, that I could somehow shelter both boys from the pains and trials of life, whether it be physical, mental, spiritual, or emotional. And yet – just as I could only sit with them held firmly in my lap during those awful visits for shots, for ear infections, for chicken pox – now I could only sit in a lonely chair in the waiting room, knowing that my firstborn was on his own this time. Besides my presence and my prayers, I was helpless.

“Peace, peace. Wonderful peace.”

“Coming down, from the Father above.”

The lesson that day – and the one that I’ve had to repeat several times since – has been one on acceptance. Accepting what is and letting go of preconceived expectations and even plans and goals I may have had for my children. What I’m learning is that in letting go I am receiving something so rich and so full that my mother’s heart almost can’t contain it all.

I am receiving the fullness of joy that comes with true peace of mind.

And that’s pretty breezy, let me tell ya!

Carter:

Me: “Like…a zoo animal, or an animal in the wild?”  Because – really – wouldn’t that make a difference?

Carter: (shrugging) “Whichever. If you had the power to change into any animal, what would it be, and why?” He was persistent, I’ll give him that…

Me: “A monkey.”

Carter: ” Seriously. Seriously? A monkey. And why?”

Me: (suddenly doubting my choice just a tad but not able to think of a single animal on the planet I’d like to be…) “Um…because they are the most like humans, they are entertaining, and they are basically non-threatening. What about you? What would you be?”

Carter:  “A bald eagle.” His answer slipped quickly and easily off his tongue. “Because it is able to soar high above everything else, it is the national bird, and no one can touch it.”

Suddenly I felt this eight-year old was the wiser one in this conversation.

Who wouldn’t want to soar above it all, secure in the knowledge that they cannot be touched?

I was up late. My mind was wrapped in reflection. My heart was swathed in grace.

I was twenty-four years old – broken in spirit, weary in flesh, and heavy in heart- the night I discovered grace for the first time.

Grace wasn’t a foreign word to me. I had grown up on church pews. I had listened for years to Sunday school lessons that expounded on the magnificent grace of God. I had heard what could quite possibly be called the greatest sermons ever on the attributes of grace. Of how, though undeserved , grace flowed to God’s children, bathing their lives in unmerited favor.

I believed this. I trusted this.

But I’d never felt it.

In actuality I didn’t really even know there was anything to feel. As far as I knew, my walk with God was as good as it was going to get. Wasn’t I doing everything I knew, everything I’d been taught to do?

If, at the end of each day, I still felt empty and alone, then it must be a flaw within me, right? I looked around and saw other friends, family, and fellow church members with smiling faces and happy lives and I knew I must somehow not measure up.

Not that anyone ever knew I felt that way.

You see, I desperately wanted to be that happy, sold-out to God, smiling, “life is good and so am I” type of wife and mother that I felt others expected of me. I had grown up in a household where serving God was first and foremost. You attended Sunday services, mid-week Bible study, and any other special services that came along. In short, we were there any time the doors were open.

I’d been a memeber of the same church congregation all of my life, and my church family was an extension of me.  I used them as a mirror, a way to guage my walk with God, a method of seeing how I was doing in this faith walk of mine.

There were certain things expected of people like me. I’d been taught to love God with all my heart, trust Him for everything, withhold nothing. So I prayed, I read my Bible, I even taught a room full of eight and nine-year-old children every Sunday morning.

On the outside I had it all going on. I looked the part. I played the part. I was in a marriage that appeared healthy, the stay-at-home mother of two adorable toddler boys, extremely close to my family, and I had many friends.

I talked with these friends and family. Laughed with them. Played with them.

I did everything except share myself with them.

My real self. The part that hid inside of me like some frightened child who was more comfortable in the safety of a darkened closet than out in the light where the sun can shine on her face. I hid my fears. I hid my insecurities. I hid my problems.

I hid the truth.

The truth was that I lived most days waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for the next bit of bad news that would send our family’s existence spiraling even further. I learned to stretch a dollar, stretch my sanity, and stretch the truth – each one a futile attempt to hang by my fingernails to the version of reality I thought I was supposed to be living.

I was a child of God who’d never strayed, shouldn’t life be easier? I’d been tithing since I was a twelve-year-old babysitting for the neighborhood children, so why was a mere trip to the grocery store for the bare necessities such a challenge? I’d been taught that God was the great healer and yet sickness lived in my home, slowly, bit-by-little-bit, robbing me of the dream I’d once thought was mine to claim.

I was twenty-four years old, but I felt like an old woman. Me, the girl who’d been nominated the Most Likely to Succeed by her senior class, now watched as her dreams began to disintegrate like a dandelion that is clutched too tightly. My passionate spirit and zest for life began to slowly fade to black-and-white as my techni-colored dreams now seemed secondary to the basic efforts of mere survival.

I continued to paste the smile on each morning, though, because to do less than that would be to show the world my imperfections. It would be admitting that I, who on the outside seemed to have it all going on, was in reality a scared and hurting woman who was watching every security in her life slip away one-by-one.

And then one day I couldn’t do it anymore.

I woke up that Monday morning and couldn’t find the smile to plaster into place. I cared for my kids with mechanical motions. I moved through my day with wooden emotions. As dry and hollow as I was, I knew my survival depended solely on me. I had to find a way to crawl to a place of healing and restoration.

I knew I could no longer do it on my own. My mumbled and routine morning prayers just weren’t doing it for me anymore. The scriptures I read each day were now just words. It was like when a sick person takes in food, but the body no longer knows what to do with it. The nutrition is wasted, rejected by the very body that needs it for survival.

I made myself go to that Monday night prayer meeting. I pulled into the church parking lot with a nervous flutter in my stomach, got out of my car with legs that threatened to drop me, and walked into the side sanctuary entrance of the old church.

I didn’t talk to anyone on my way in. I didn’t look around to see who was there. For the first time in my life I didn’t try to keep up any pretenses. I no longer cared if those around me got a glimpse of my imperfect life and my imperfect reactions to that life. I was hurting, I was alone, and I knew that if there was anything in this life for me I had to find it that night.

I knelt between two pews instead of at the altar. Hot tears began to sting my eyes and face as I got honest with God. The pain, the betrayal, and the lonliness that I’d held bottled up inside of me for so long exploded into the air around me as I surrendered life as I knew it.

All the broken pieces of me that I’d so carefully hidden finally broke free for good, drying up and crumbling into fine bits as I lay face down on the floor in between the pews. I have no idea how long I was there, or who came and went around me. But when I could cry no more, when no more words would come, when the screams of my spirit were now just whispers, I felt it.

Grace.

With a quiet reverence it moved through me – body, soul, and spirit. All my preconceived notions of grace and what it was or wasn’t were immediatly displaced. Never had I known such peace or tranquility. The fact that it descended into that pit of darkness, found me, and then relentlessly rescued me was – and is – the greatest single moment of my life.

I’ve never been the same since that Monday night.

I have lived life differently from that moment on. I’d like to say that my troubles disappeared, I no longer hurt, and all sickness ran away, with tails tucked between their legs. But that’s not grace, is it?

Grace is feeling the peace of God in the midst of those troubles. In the depths of that hurt. In spite of all sickness. It’s the realization that no matter the baggage, no matter the time you’ve walked with God – whether it’s two days or two decades – life has a way of dealing you cards you’re not prepared to play. It’s then that grace intervenes…if we’ll let it.

Grace dwells in imperfections. In brokenness. In the pieces of our souls that we discount the most, grace can do the most good.

It was Tuesday night and my deadline was today at noon.

I’d already typed in a zillion-and-one different thoughts over the course of the day, only to go back later and delete them all. I stared a blank computer screen and tried to focus.

No, this wasn’t for a story idea. Or an article for a magazine. Or even a blog post for Faith Lifts.

What held me in the throes of agony was a speech.

In just four short days I would stand before the 2010 graduating class of NCCA and tell them -

Tell them what?

It wasn’t that I didn’t have ideas. Oh no! It was more like I had too many.

How do you stand before a group of excited kids and try to impart a bit of the knowledge and wisdom you’ve gleaned along the way? Can that kind of advice/revelation/sharing really be done in a fifteen minute speech?

I finally decided that I wasn’t going to find the answer that day. So I went to bed.

And, as I do every night before I drift off, I deliberately shut out all the other things in my head and on my heart. I turned them all over to Him and began to relax as the stresses of the day slipped off my shoulders.

My last thought as I went to sleep was that I wished I could share this with the graduates.

The next day I knew what to say.

Life is either simply complex or complexly simple. I like to think it’s the latter.

And so this afternoon I stood behind the podium, looked into the eyes of the graduates, and said this:

“ I would ask of you today that you always listen for One certain voice. As you move forward into your college years, your careers, or your  ministries, you’ll hear a lot of different voices.

Voices that will vie for your time, your energy,  and your loyalty. At the end of the day – as your head touches your pillow and your eyes close in exhaustion – there is only ONE voice that truly matters.

If you can keep the voice of God as your focus in the big middle of everything else you have going on, your life will be a very simple, very happy, very productive one.”

It’s a lesson well learned.

It really is that simple.

Though we read about their shortcomings, their weaknesses, their failures, it is almost always the moral of the story – or the end result – that we walk away with. These are the parts of the stories that we tuck like nuggets into that secret place in our souls where we capture the essence of what it is we think we are supposed to be. Or supposed to do. Or supposed to accomplish.

The reality is much more human, and it is that element that I think about this morning.

I love how Moses’ story ties into this. God heard the cries of the Israelites and He desired their freedom, so God invited Moses to join Him. It really didn’t matter what Moses thought the plan for his life was. What mattered most was God’s plan for Moses’ life.

So many of us today have a preoccupation with knowing God’s will for our lives. I know I’ve struggled with this before – some days, I still struggle with it. There are some areas where it is very evident that God is at work (like with my family), but there are other areas where it appears God is silent (like with my writing.)

What I am trying to remember is that God’s focus has always been on getting His people to come into line with His will and with what is on His heart, so that we (I) can adjust our lives (my life) to Him, rather than having God design His plans around us (me).

And what is God’s plan? God is, and always has been, actively drawing people to Himself.

This should liberate me; should free any reckless, nervous thoughts about the future. Because this alone means that I do not have to come up with plans for God, or design ways to achieve kingdom goals.

He is at work, and when I join Him – right where He is, I am in perfect alignment.

Even as she walked into the store and away from my view, I had a feeling I had not seen the last of her…

My dad is the kind of neighbor everyone loves. Sometimes I can’t help but be entertained that – at near 70 – he’s constantly mowing the yard of an elderly neighbor or sitting on the porch of a much younger one, taking a little advice. The business of age seems to mean nothing to him; he sees people, not their mile markers in this life.

My great aunt is a woman who listens to God’s voice. If she feels God stirring her heart she jumps in the car and just GOES. Many, many times I’ve had a hard, challenging day and she would just shows up. In recent years, it’s been the phone call…the one that often lasts a looooooong time. But it’s the ending of these phone calls that I know I’ll always remember: “Okay, hon – I’ll talk atcha later.”

I’m surrounded by people who consistently minister to others. I marvel at them. Admire them. Want to see this same thing in me. These are folks who aren’t afraid to pray with people, and – when seeing a heart that needs a lift – simply don’t care about anything else in that moment except doing what they can to meet it.

Their plans don’t matter in comparison to God’s plans.

From the outside it looks effortless. But I know that there was a time when moving in these realms must surely have required that they move outside the borders of their comfort zones. Even the most confident, self-assured person has fences and borders that protect the raw edges that we don’t want anyone to see or touch. And yet people with a heart for God’s children don’t derive their confidence from their own abilities, talents or even their own personality. They absorb what’s being funneled from the hallways of Heaven and put it to use on Earth’s dusty pathways.

I’m trying to be like that. I’m trying to listen and just do what I feel God’s asking. I’m also learning to be brave – to pray with a friend RIGHT THERE. To make the call. To write the words. Daily, it seems, there is something – either a person or a situation – that challenges me to step beyond the point of personal comfort and venture into another’s life. If I have learned anything over the past few months it is that I want to do as I’m asked.

But I can’t say that it’s always easy for me…

I wasn’t at all surprised last night when – in the ladies dressing room – a fitting room door opens slowly and the elderly woman from the parking peered out.

“Can you help me?”

I stepped inside.

My new friend may have thought the next ten minutes were about someone lending her an extra hand, an extra eye, a great conversation – but I knew the real truth. She was helping me. Helping me to venture further from my place of safety on the sidelines, and to walk bravely into a world that is not at all about me.

But ALL about Him.

Tonight was a quiet evening. We sat in our (now) small living area – Mike in his chair, with his computer (doing sales call reports) and me in my spot on the sofa, with my computer (doing homework.) It was just a few minutes before nine when there was a knock on the door.

I think it startled us both. In the couple of weeks we’ve been here, we’ve not seen many people, let alone knocking on our door.

Mike set his computer aside and went to the door. Even though he was less than twenty feet away, I could neither see nor hear our visitor. I could only hear Mike’s side of the conversation.

“No, thanks, we don’t really need any this time.” He closed the door and locked it. “That was a local high school girl selling cookie dough for—”

He stopped mid-sentence and I can only guess it was because I had sprung up from my seat and was at his side when he turned around.

I opened my mouth and tried to find a voice for the overwhelming pull that had propelled me upward in the first place. I spit and sputtered, uttering words that seemed to come from out of nowhere. I’m pretty sure that ‘community’ and ‘witness’ and ‘part of the plan’ all came out of my mouth in that brief twenty second period, but I don’t know that it made any kind of sense at all.

Mike unlocked the door and stepped out into the breezeway outside our door, looking down the hallway for the girl. She was at the next apartment.

“Hey, I think my wife wants to buy some after all.” Mike beckoned her back.

I spent the next five minutes introducing myself to Kenesha, a striking African-American teen with the most beautiful blue eyes I think I’ve ever seen, and buying the white chocolate-macadamia cookie dough that – truly – we did not need. Even as we chatted, I was almost mesmerized by her personality, and I even had the briefest of seconds when I thought – again - how unlike me this was, to be so involved in an animated conversation with a complete stranger.

But there was an unspeakable pull toward this teen that began while I still sat on the sofa, before I’d even laid eyes on her, or heard her voice.

After I handed her the fourteen dollars for the cookie dough and then shut and locked the door, Mike chuckled from his chair. “Think we’ll ever see that cookie dough?”

I was silent, still kind of in awe at what had pulled me from my spot on the sofa in the first place. Somehow I knew it wasn’t really about the cookie dough at all. We sat in total silence for about five minutes. And then Mike spoke.

“Do you ever get the feeling that we’re here for more than just the reasons we think we’re here?

Yes. Yes. Yes.