You don’t have to justify your life.

I am in my bedroom, about to lay my head on the pillow, thinking about how this was just one more day that felt like so little had gotten accomplished. Or, perhaps, my expectations were warped in the first place? What did I really believe I could get done?

You don’t have to justify your life.

When I hear the Father’s words in my heart, I am disorientated, desperate for recalibration: Productivity. Expectation. Accomplishment. Time.

Father, yes, for most of my life, I have been sacrificing the miracle of the present for the future’s ever-elusive false promise of achievement. The gift of a moment lost when, for the sake of the future, time is something to conquer, manipulate, and control. The cost I’ve paid? Peace. Contentment. Love. To engage with God, I need, of course, to be where He is. I need to be right here….

The heat wave that has smotherd California for more than a week is less intense today. As I write this, I am sitting outside, the air cool in the morning shade. An Anna’s Hummingbird is singing in the olive tree behind me—and then zooms up from a fuchsia bush to the highest point of the magnolia tree. Huge black bees the size of a jack ball fly heavily, slowly from the tips of lavender blooms to the garnet gladiolas, heavy and swaying in the breeze.

This stillness is good for my heart. And then the upstairs window opens, and a paper airline tumbles out of it to the ground near my feet. I look up and hear Justin’s laugh, then see His smile as he leans out the window, cracking up. He intended the plane to sail gracefully to my lap, not tumble awkwardly like a drunken acrobat committing suicide. We are catching our breath, about fully moved into our home. It feels good to be here. I am less overwhelmed than I’ve been in a while. Less rushing around, things feel closer to peace.

It also has been helping me to dream.

In the chaos of the last 10 months—full of physical and emotional transitions—the rhythms of relaxing in the arms of my Father, seeking His strength, voice, and wisdom wanned significantly. I tried to squeeze in time with Him around all the other things I had going on—layering prayer and worship while doing something else simultaneously. Seldom did He have my full attention. Seldom did my heart receive His peace.

And then, in the throes of moving in, exhausted from carrying furniture and unpacking boxes, I felt desperate for Him. I missed Him terribly. His presence, His whispers to my heart. I was eager to be with Him, to pursue Him earnestly…(Click the link in the title to read more.)

You aren’t weak.

You aren’t incapable.

You aren’t unable to do hard things.

Come now. Listen for His voice with me. The one who calls you His treasure. The one who made you for amazing, beautiful-beyond-your-dreams things.

You can, you know.

But not alone. We can’t do these amazing things alone—all these acts of love. The thing He has in front of you to do? Yes, do that. But also let Him show you that other thing—the thing He’s dreamed up just for you but you haven’t realized fully yet. Know that you can do that thing too.

You see, God delights in equipping you to do hard things. He delights in the two of you doing all things (maybe especially the hard ones) together.

And when the doubt comes—because it comes like a charging bull, doesn’t it, intimating and thundering and fierce, crushing our confidence, making us convinced that we can’t do much more than simply get through a day—we have a few choices. We can buckle under. Or we can stay overwhelmed. Or, we can fight.

I am second-guessing everything. From my clothes to my food to my music to my time. Granted, it is spring, and the weather, even in easy-going northern California, is all over the place, and Justin and I work outside a lot—so each morning, depending on transportation (bike or car?) and whether it is rainy or chilly or windy or sunny, I stuff my bag with clothing layers, along with all the books or journals or tech stuff we need while we are out. What will I need? What should I expect from a day?

I tell my friends things are simpler living at my father-in-law’s house, with so much less to take care of. I realize how much time I spent, before we moved, cleaning and organizing—and, even, cooking. But now that the two boys have been gone during the school year, away at college, and it is just the three of us, plus Fulton—and now that we are living in tight quarters for a few months while our house is being renovated, there is less housekeeping to do. And that is good, in some ways. But in other ways, I have lost my footing. There is a cost, I think, to losing a sense of place.

The birds are singing out this spring day like they know what is required. They know what it is to be free, perfectly themselves, doing what they are made to do.

In the garden we are restoring, I am surprised by the number of birds that hop around, the soil their ballroom, under branches and bushes and leaves. I am sure they are throwing grand parties under the foliage, tasting the sweet soil as they forage and gossip and sing. I am surprised each time I walk through the path that intersects their (literal) stomping grounds, expecting birds to be gliding in blue sky, not dancing around, making the plants rustle like they are going to sway over to me, hands on hips, and threaten me to a duel.

Two weeks ago, after I gave up straining the fruit picker for the last remaining oranges from the robust tree holding court in the middle of the garden, (I have, I am sure, personally eaten at least 150 oranges since I started picking them in late fall) I sat in the back corner of the yard and read for two hours the book Justin got me for Christmas, a story of discovery and redemption for an English garden abandoned since World War I.

The trees are dancing. Rustling their fingers in the wind. I sit on a bench outside the library, and they hang their long arms down around me, letting their green finery sparkle with just as much dignity as a class of kindergarteners whose dried pasta necklaces, strung together with yarn, demand glee and celebration and joy.

Yes, you are fancy. Yes, I see you. Yes, you are some beautiful, glory-clapping trees.

Ordinary? This day? No way.

Just miracle.

Here. Here. Here.

Stop thinking.

My son shares with us what his rowing teammate sitting behind him says to him as they move their shell through the early morning waters of Marina del Ray.

Stop thinking.

Over the phone after practice he translates: Let yourself be present for the moment; be mindful of your movements but not self-critical. This will help you be more aware of where you are, whom you are with, what is yours for you to do.

Stop thinking.

He is emotional on the phone when he tells us those words’ impact—words delivered to him with kindness and encouragement, not judgment. For he is, he would tell you, in his head a lot. I can relate to the ache of being self-conscious, feeling anxious about whether or not I am the person I am supposed to be.

The skin on my fingers are covered in paint stains, even after scrubbing them. My hands are stiff with cold. I am brushing the empty walls of the new house with paint—pretty words like Bibliothèque, Ritual, and Côte d'Azur. Lots of splotchy squares. Watching light and shadow change each hue as it dries.

The next few weeks are ones of transition. Saying goodbye to a home of almost 16 years, walls that hold stories of my children’s laughter, sacred conversations with friends—so many prayers and arguments and dreams.

I struggle with sleeping most nights lately—the anticipation of moving, of completing all that needs to get done—leaving me restless in the hours when my mind and heart should be most at peace.

Justin encourages me to honor the emotions I am feeling. We talk about the challenge of the past two years, due to the pandemic—and the changes in our family as children grow up and do their best to be independent, preparing for the final moving away. So much moving and staying in one place.

I sit in an empty house, an outdoor teak table pulled inside, a temporary place to sit and prop up my computer, a place that is in a state of becoming, a place of dreaming, a place undeserved but accepted with shaking hands. We were given this new home in mid-October, a home less than a mile from the little 100 year-old bungalow where we’ve lived for the past 15 years.

It is house I’d noticed for more than a decade on my early morning runs, when the sky was still pink—and on walks with our dog or when running errands downtown. It is a block away from our old condo, the first home we owned and lived in with our three then tiny kids. A house inspired by its original English-style cottage built in 1934, with a garden out front that looked like magic and with leaded front windows that shone when light hit the diamond-shaped glass.

My father-in-law, for crazy and beautiful reasons, had been wanting to give us a gift—and, on a Thursday afternoon, when we saw that this house was offered for sale, he went with us to see it. Suddenly, a few days later, on a Sunday, the offer was accepted, and on the 18th, we got the keys.