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.

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.

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.