Tonight I heard a woman share a most troubling, painful story from her childhood—the kind of story that, with one hand, crumples a naive heart and throws it in the wastepaper basket.

Still, she smiled as she told it; so I knew, even when it seemed unbearably sad, the ending would be good.

For forty years the ending wasn’t good. But just this month, thanks to the healing voice of God, it’s perfect.

I just finished Scouting the Divine: My Search for God in Wine, Wool, and Wild Honey by Margaret Feinberg. Good stuff. Great Title. I definitely want to be scouting divinity.

It’s the title that hooked me and the idea that kept me.

Feinberg explores Biblical imagery by visiting a farm, helping a shepherd with her herd, talking to a vintner about wine, and harvesting honey with a beekeeper. It’s a great idea well-executed.

I kept wishing I’d had this idea first.

I liked the sheep part best—just seeing how much love a shepherd has, how strongly a person can feel for an animal—so many passages come to life. I felt that moment when Nathan tells David “you are the man,” the story about the guy with one beloved sheep, I felt that scene so powerfully. I’d have reacted just the same way David did if the story had been about a puppy.

I understand sacrifices better, too—why God required certain things, the trust he was trying to engender. I had no idea how rare perfect lambs might be or how important that first born lamb is to the flock. A sacrifice required so much faith and provided such a great opportunity to make room for God’s miraculous power.

And, of course, I learned a lot about Jesus. I love Jesus.

So, check out the book. It’s a quick read. A good read. And a good preacher resource when you’re preaching through the parables.

When people find out I’m a preacher’s wife, they usually say one of two things. Either it’s a deep breath and then “Well, God bless you.” Or, maybe more frequently, “I could never do that.” And I understand the sentiment: Your life must be terribly hard.

But I’ll be honest, it’s not too bad. More often than not, being the preacher’s wife is a monumental blessing.

I think I feel this way for two reasons:

1. I’m not just any preacher’s wife; I’m my favorite preacher’s wife.

2. I’ve always aspired to the job, motivated by the example of one who did it admirably.

From childhood, I’ve wanted to be my Aunt Lou. She was an unusual role model for a child as she was already in her mid to late sixties when I was born, but even in her “retirement years” she was a stunning, strong, graceful, icon of a woman. A force.

My grandfather, her brother, talks about her beauty. He cries and smiles all at once, the memory overwhelming—like she couldn’t possibly have been that pretty. My mom remembers seeing a young Elizabeth Taylor on TV and saying “Look! That’s Aunt Lou.” To which my great grandmother responded, “No, honey. That woman’s not nearly as lovely as your Aunt Lou.”

Even in her early seventies, when her husband, my Uncle Buford, preached at our congregation in Pinellas Park, FL—even then she turned heads.

I remember her clothes. Perfectly put together, never gaudy and never frumpy.  I remember the sound of her jewelry as she walked with Buford down the middle aisle to the back of the church after the invitation song.

Mostly, though, I remember the way she could inspire an audience, a group, a class. Everything she said made you want to listen for what she might say next.

And the way she loved God. The way she beamed when she talked about Him.

I never heard my Aunt Lou insult my Uncle Buford, not one joking jibe, even though he sometimes deserved it. As strong as she was, I always thought she was submissive and supportive.

She genuinely seemed to love being the preacher’s wife. I don’t know if she did, but I know I love it partly because she showed me a woman could.

One night during a sermon Uncle Buford told a joke at her expense—innocent enough, I guess, but he was patronizing her. I looked her way and saw her get up quietly and walk to the back of the auditorium, head held high, calm and smiling.

She didn’t make a scene, but she certainly communicated a message. I don’t remember any more jokes after that.

I thought that night, “I guess it’s okay for the preacher’s wife to be spunky.” Thanks to her I have never been anything less than spunky.

Aunt Lou probably should have been prideful—being brilliant and magnetic and gorgeous—but I don’t ever remember even a trace of pride. You looked up to her, but she never looked down on you. She served every person humbly and attentively.

I remember most clearly the years she spent taking care of her own mother, sacrificing everything for love.

My Aunt Lou died today. It’s been years since we were close—we were very close—but the memories of the way she wore her role have always been on my mind. I often try to remember the way Aunt Lou handled a conflict or even the outfits she wore to speak at Ladies’ Days.

I don’t know if I ever had the chance to tell Aunt Lou how important she’s been—to thank her for teaching me to step into my place with strength, humility, and grace.

A lot of who I am—perhaps my being completely myself in a role that often dulls the colors of good, vibrant women—is because of her, because she lived colorfully and because she was the preacher’s wife.

Thinking today about The Bachelorette and why I sometimes watch it.

At first, I hated the way producers edited the show—so we see only the most dramatic moments, the crazy highs and terrible lows. But today I was thinking about how my memories are edited just the same way. I honestly don’t remember most of the ordinary parts of my life.

I was also wondering if my love life would be interesting enough for an episode of The Bachelor, or if it would be so boring they couldn’t even figure out a creative way to edit.

I’ve decided Justin and I could hold our own on one of those After The Rose episodes. Our relationship montage would be really good. Kleenex good.

Even if they only used clips from this week.

Which is funny, because I’m sometimes tempted to think our life is grayscale ordinary. You know, when I’m right in the middle of making dinner and doing dishes and he’s answering the hundred million text messages and emails he receives every day. I sometimes think, at that moment, is this what our relationship is?

But they’d never show that part on reality TV. They’d show the moment just before when we’d rolled on the floor with our girls—all four of us tickling and laughing—Justin and I sneaking kisses. They’d show highlights from our soul-feeding conversations at Starbucks. They’d show close-ups of me reading a direct message on Twitter and smiling embarrassingly big.

And while those are just snapshots of our love, together they make a pretty stunning collage.

I guess I sort of wish Justin and I had met on The Bachelorette—definitely not The Bachelor :) for one, and only one, reason: When Ali and Roberto start thinking “Maybe this isn’t as great as we thought it was” they have the blessing of a perfectly edited love montage. They can sit down next to one another, pop in the DVD, and watch themselves in their moments of most intense loving.

Saul’s story, the coming to power and quick fall from power of Israel’s first king, is perhaps one of the most disappointing in the Bible.

Saul starts out humble enough. He doesn’t ask for power. He hides from it, literally hides “in the baggage.” People have to go looking for him when Samuel announces the decision.

But then he seems to step up, to take the role seriously, to courageously lead God’s people. And his mistakes, those two infamous “sacrifice” moments—one before battle, the other after—seem small, at least to me, the outside observer. I see Saul recognizing the importance of sacrifice, wanting to give God the best.

But I know that’s probably naive.

Looking critically, I see Saul didn’t trust God. He kept trying to improve on God’s plans.

It doesn’t surprise me that he struggled with trust. (More on that in a minute.)

Let’s compare him to David, a man with trust oozing out his pores. David says toward the end of his life, “O Sovereign LORD, you are God! Your words are trustworthy, and you have promised these good things to your servant.”

I think a big part of the difference between Saul and David, the divergence in paths taken, is attributable to the way they came to be king. For Saul it’s easy. For David, well, never has the word “hard” seemed so inadequate.

Perhaps David trusts God because David needs God, because his own vulnerability and smallness were constant companions through those many years of hiding in caves. David saw God work in miraculous, glorious ways. David knew the power of God because on so many occasions David required the power of God.

Interesting that Saul is tall and handsome and just what the people would expect from a king. David, while handsome, is the runt of his father’s litter and a shepherd.

Saul didn’t trust enough maybe because Saul didn’t suffer enough, because he wasn’t starving or dying or running or disenfranchised.

Once again, the Bible reminds me that suffering is good. Pain, trouble, hurt, despair—they’re all working within me to create good stuff like faith and trust.

My daughter cried from the bathtub (suddenly she hates to be clean) as I finished the last few lines of Madeline L’Engle’s Walking on Water. I patted and shushed, trying to concentrate on words so delightful and satisfying both, these words:

“When Jesus called Peter to come to him across the water, Peter, for one brief, glorious moment, remembered how, and strode with ease across the lake. This is how we are meant to be, and then we forget, and we sink. But if we cry out for help (as Peter did) we will be pulled out of the water, we won’t drown. And if we listen, we will hear; and if we look, we will see.”

This morning one of my shepherds reflected on a past marred by feelings of inadequacy. He related another Peter and the water story, a story of Peter in the water. He said he sometimes felt like Peter after the denial and then the resurrection, the Peter who’s so bound to a sense of self-reliance, of doing everything the right way, that he puts on a coat to jump into the water, unwilling to appear before Jesus without it. Peter knows he’s not good enough, but he’s still trying to be.

As beautiful as this moment is—Peter’s jump into the water splashes of devotion and passion—it’s sad. Because not even for a moment does Peter think, looking at the sea, “I’ll walk.”

L’Engle says “The impossible still happens to us”—to us, in us, through us. Never by us or because of us. But the impossible still happens.

I spent the afternoon yesterday working on an artist bio for a photographer friend of mine. Who knew ten sentences could be so difficult to craft? But then, cramming an identity, a round, complex self, into ten sentences—well, yes, that sounds difficult.

Anyway, reflecting on photography and on what makes portraiture so fulfilling, I wrote this, which did not make it into the final cut:

A good photographer sees things in you that you don’t always see in yourself. You feel tired, unattractive, or boring but the camera sees something beautiful, joy-soaked, distinguished, exciting, or free. And those photos, the tangible evidence of your best self, are priceless.

While I was still a student at Freed-Hardeman University, way back in 2001, Justin and I purchased our first piece of art, a perfectly beautiful and absolutely huge painting. Not that I knew it was being purchased. I just knew I loved it.

I’d been wandering around campus when I discovered a makeshift gallery showcasing work from the Painting I class. It was fine, lots of not-quite-right-but-a-good-try stuff. But, on a wall all alone, one painting dwarfed every other in the room (in all the ways one painting can dwarf another, including size). I stood in front of that painting for probably 15 minutes.

I wanted it.

I don’t know what it is about me and art but I’m rarely satisfied with just looking at it. If I love it (I mean really, really love it), I want to bring it home. I want to sit on my couch and stare at it. I want my children to grow up with it as the wallpaper of their family memories.

I feel this way about Miro paintings, and wouldn’t be surprised to awake one morning in an art gallery dressed in black with a stolen canvas in my hands—sleep art thieving.

Anyway, seeing this painting awakened something in me and, made me crave something beautiful, something permanent for the nest I was building.

Still, I was a broke college kid, even if I was married. Buying the painting seemed out of the question.

I brought Justin to look at it—maybe every day for the next week. He loved it, too. We looked at it together holding hands and I thought even if I couldn’t have this painting I had this man—a man who loved beauty and who could stand still in its presence.

The “showcase” ended at the close of the week, and I was happy to have seen something so rare—a painting (by a Painting I student no less) that had stirred my heart.

You can imagine how I felt when, months later, I opened the door to my living room and found it sitting on my couch.

The lengths to which Justin went to buy me that painting are heroic. Let’s just say he found, applied for, received and spent a Bell Tower scholarship. It was a huge chunk of money—the kind of money we needed to pay tuition and whatnot—but he recklessly spent it on beauty.

Eight years later, Laura Wilson’s portrait of her father hangs above my dining room table. Every time I look at that painting, I love my husband more—because of who he is and because of how he loves.

Happy 10th Anniversary, Justin.

Wild at Heart by John Eldredge is, as much as a Christian book can be, a cultural phenomenon. It seems everyone has read that book. I know people who loved it, crafted a way of living because of it. And I know people who hated it, disagreed with almost every word between the covers. So, when I saw it on the free books for bloggers list at Thomas Nelson, I snatched it up immediately.

This new edition is “revised and expanded” although I suspect that’s just publisher speak for “Look, something you thought was old is actually new and shiny.” But since I haven’t read the first edition, I can’t prove my hunch.

Wild at Heart is based on the idea that men are really, well, wild at heart, that they yearn to be unshackled from the tedium of nice-guy living, to roam the plains bucking like the broncos God made them to be. I don’t intend even a smidgen of sarcasm there. I feel like that’s exactly what Eldredge is saying, and, to a certain extent, I agree.

This book was written for men and as I’m not a man there are certain judgments I’m not equipped to make. I can’t verify the validity of his sweeping assumptions about men—I can, however, say the assumptions are sweeping and perhaps too categorical to fit every kind of man.

Honestly, I was far less interested in Eldredge’s comments on what makes a man than I was in his thoughts on women—thoughts I was shocked to find especially close to my own heart.

I have NEVER considered myself to be a stereotypical woman. I’ve dismissed many traditional gender assignments and wriggled in agony during my fair share of women’s conferences and events. So, when Eldredge starting talking about saving the princess I wanted to gag. Until I realized I was a princess needing saving.

His three questions that every woman asks had me crying: “Will you pursue me? Do you delight in me? Will you fight for me?”

I loved this paragraph, too:

“If masculinity has come under assault, femininity has been brutalized. Eve is the crown of creation, remember? She embodies the exquisite beauty and the exotic mystery of God in a way that nothing else in all creation even comes close to. And so she is the special target of the evil one; he turns his most vicious malice against her. If he can destroy her or keep her captive, he can ruin the story.”

Thing is, I’m not positive this is totally true—I felt that way a lot while reading this book. But I like it.

Whether or not Eve is the prime target, I think Eldredge would benefit from seeing himself in the princess role, too. He envisions men as warriors (which sometimes they’re called to be—and sometimes I’m called to be, too) but I think he misses their role as a part of “the bride of Christ.”

Still, this chapter is packed with good stuff—his description of sex as a spilling of one’s strength is awesome and his argument that women want “a lover and a warrior—not a really nice guy” is too easily proven to even be debated. This chapter also has super insightful info on spiritual warfare.

The next chapter “An Adventure to Live,” is even better. It’s all about embracing risk, living freely and dangerously—which, as you start to see from the buckets of scriptures he incorporates, is totally Biblical. Right now, I’m flipping through the chapter looking for a quote to give you but I’m finding so many I can’t pick one. You need to read this chapter, even if it’s just this chapter.

What Eldredge does so powerfully in this book is to inspire his reader to live a bigger, more cinematic life, to embrace adventure and stop sitting in front of a television. Not to manufacture drama but to see what life is really about. While I don’t agree with everything he says, I do think this lesson is important. For goodness sakes, we are at war. And we’re sitting around tweeting about what we ate for breakfast.

Read the book. Skip the first few chapters if you want—maybe even the first seven—but let the scale of Eldredge’s passion inspire you to live big and to fight.

For the first time ever I decided to talk to Satan this morning, to tell him directly (with and by the power of Christ) to butt out of my life.

What I found most disturbing about the experience was my reluctance to tell Satan off. I found myself being, of all things, respectful. Which is gross, but maybe to be expected.

I tend to deify Satan, to confer abilities on him which I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have. I think of Satan as Jesus’ arch nemesis, like the bad guys in comic book movies—astoundingly powerful but not quite as powerful (or ingenious) as the good guy.

But that’s not the way it is. Satan isn’t just a little less powerful than God. He’s no where near as powerful as God—even comparing them is stupid. Most of the power he has in my life is power I’ve handed over to him. He’s NOT a demigod, or an almost-god. I can beat him. Maybe not alone. But I can win every time when I’m channeling the power of God inside me.

So, I’ve decided to talk to Satan like the lying punk he is. I don’t get the chance to chew people out too often, not too godly. But I have a feeling God might like this…

After reading about all Rachel went through to have a baby, knowing she never stacked up to Leah, knowing she died giving birth to one of only two, I understand better the image of Rachel weeping for those babies in Bethlehem. Nothing could be more precious to a barren woman than a baby. And to see so many beautiful gifts never fully unwrapped, no wonder she’s described as wailing from the grave.

I recently took that online quiz “Who Do You Write Like?” I provided a sample of my own writing (a long blog post), clicked the “enter” button and waited to see Virginia Woolf, Michael Chabon or Dave Eggers flash onto the screen—my writer self is elitist. Instead I saw Stephen King. Yeah, that’s right, read it again: Stephen King.

I did not opt to “publish” my results to my twitter feed.

But then this week I was reading some of King’s columns for the magazine Entertainment Weekly. And I thought, “Wow. This is so readable and fun.”

Lately I’m trying to silence the me who only reads award-winning, slightly depressing novels, the lit professor me. While I can satisfy that self with reading material, my writer self just isn’t of that type or caliber. When I read my own writing I think, “Eh.” Honestly, I’d probably heckle my own writing if I weren’t the one writing it.

Back to Stephen King. Stephen King is what most authors aren’t—approachable AND pretty stinkin’ good. He mixes entertainment with content. People read Stephen King. Lots of people. And since he has such a large audience he has an enormous amount of influence.

I am NOT Stephen King—far from it. But I’d like to be a writer like him. Not in the writing about creepy stuff way, but definitely in the writing for the everyman kind of way. It’s not glamorous, but it’s probably the kind of writer I am. And I’m slowly realizing I don’t have the choice to be something else.