It had been too long since I’d last seen them, which means I definitely rambled incoherently way too much. But in my defense, my friends had a relative visiting who 1) did not know me and 2) was one of those people who mixes questions with banter in precisely the way that makes one (me, at least) want to carry on endlessly.

As our back and forth chatter took its detours, we waded into a series of grievances we each have with various Christian denominations, authors, pastors, and leaders. There is no shortage of material to lament, there.

Somewhere between a hearty eye-roll over the state of progressive Christianity and a comment I made without hesitation about how I would happily fist fight Doug Wilson in a Waffle House parking lot, Visiting Relative (after reminding me that if it’s past midnight, I wouldn’t really need to go outside the Waffle House to fight whomever I pleased) asked me why I am still a Christian.

It was an extremely fair question - since I obviously have major problems with just about every Christian denomination under the sun.

Naturally, I completely blanked out in the same way I forget every movie I’ve ever seen in my entire life the minute someone asks which one my favorite is. (Or what kind of music do I like? What is music? Help! As if I haven’t been obsessed with music and lyrics as far back as I can remember.)

I mumbled something about it being because of Jesus - knowing exactly how I sounded yet completely unable to form a full sentence. So much for St Peter’s admonition to “always be ready to give an account to anyone who asks you for the hope that is in you. With gentleness and respect.”

For someone who talks so much, I’m really not great at talking sometimes.

Obviously, that moment has passed. But I would like to try again. Welcome to my do-over. In which I make another attempt to articulate why I still claim Christianity even though I am an insufferable contrarian who is riddled with grief and anger issues when it comes to The Church.

First of all, I am riddled with grief and anger issues when it comes to, oh, every little thing and institution my fellow humans have glanced at (much less, BUILT).

Right and Left wing politics, public schools, private schools, homeschool orgs, higher level academia, the entertainment industry, the music industry, the sports industry, etc etc etc - I’ve got beef with all of it. I didn’t get an Oppositional Defiance Disorder diagnosis in 4th grade for nothing!

If being alive on planet earth has taught me anything, it’s that in every country, under every government, and in every facet of life - human beings will be power hungry, controlling, self seeking little biznays who ruin good things and trample the innocent.

I guess one might imagine The Church should be exempt from this because it’s allegedly a place people go to try to become good focus on grace (and still mess that up by succumbing to behaviorism or whatever), but I have some terrible news about all of that: The Church is also full of people. Wheat and Tares, if you will - and the wheat is still in a sanctification process, so. Humans are just messy, I don’t what to tell anyone.

And let’s not forget that I am a messy human, too. Lest it sound like I would dare to leave myself out of all this criticism. If only.

Alas. The cost of love is brutally high, but the cost of walling off from fellow humans is unimaginably higher. It is, I’m afraid, exactly as CS Lewis said it is in one of my favorite (if overplayed) quotes from him:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves”

But this doesn’t really answer why I am still a Christian, does it? Well, a little bit it does. Because part of still being a Christian is not abandoning the whole thing upon discovery that Christians can be awful. We can be. Of course We can be! More news at 10? People who claim to follow Jesus have been betraying Him since Judas. So what else is new.

I must also confess that I feel a certain pressure (probably self-imposed) to present every shred of evidence that has convinced me throughout my life that Jesus of Nazareth was and is the Son of the all powerful, all knowing, and all loving creator God depicted in the Hebrew Bible. That He is who He said He is and that doing my best to surrender my life to Him is the best and most reasonable way to live.

The high IQ, erudite thinkers closest to me have trained me to deeply value rationality and logic. So of course there have been many times in which I have nearly let go of all of this before I unearthed a satisfying answer to the doubts that surfaced. I am tempted to list them all out for you one by one along with the discoveries that made it impossible for me to let go, but:

1) I think you can and will find all of that type of information if you decide that you want to - and anyway, the likelihood that your sticking points (if you have them) are different than mine are high. It seems to me that everyone has their own specific objections.

And 2) At this point, frankly, I’m bored by that part. Let me explain with a story that will truly (finally) bring us to the point!

Sometimes I stumble across an important connection out here in the wilds of the internet. The ever elusive Internet Friend. But wait! How am I to know that said Internet friend is for real? I mean, have you seen the state of things? Bots, spam, and scammers abound! At this point, even if someone posts videos of themselves talking, how could we be totally sure it’s really them and not some more Ai generated slop?

Whatever, though! I am an xennial harkening to this hellscape from the days of LiveJournal. I have had nothing if not plenty of time to become properly discerning. My ability to tell what’s fake and what’s real in these spaces has honed and fine tuned as years passed and I observed the exact ways everything changed around me.

So, by the time Breezy Brookshire (subscribe to her page!) reached out to say hi and connect over a shared love of art - I had seen quite enough evidence that she was not only a real human person, but also the exact human person she claimed to be.

And!! Listing out the evidence for these facts would be so boring in the exact same way that listing out evidence for my faith is boring. Do you really want to hear me carry on about social validation through networking and how much one can learn about another via voice memos etc etc??

You can find enough information about how to tell if someone online is who they say they are (in the same way you can find Christian apologetics, too!) to be reasonably sure that this is not only a real person, but also a treasured kindred spirit.

I don’t want to dryly recite a bunch of Internet Friend Apologetics! I would much prefer to tell you that I know Breezy Brookshire is a real and lovely person because we are friends!

I would much prefer to tell you that a little bit ago, I had another very dear old friend to meet up with and a job to do with said friend who was temporarily in Nashville, and I needed a place to spend the night on very short notice. So I reached out to Breezy - trusting that she was both real and who-she-said-she-was and asked if I could crash on her couch.

And that’s how an Internet Friend became an In-Real-Life friend as we sat up to all hours excitedly talking over each other and sharing ideas, paintings, other various handmade things and the dreams we have for them. That’s how we spent the following day working alongside each other and a second evening trying to stretch the time as far as we could make it go before we had to say goodbye. Before I had to drag myself away to drive home in the thick fog full of the buzzing energy and encouragement that comes with genuine connection.

If someone asks me why I am still a Christian, I am wont to say “it’s because of Jesus” in the same way that if someone asked me why I still think I can make real friends on the internet, I knee jerk to an example like, “Because Breezy is my friend!”

I know how this will sound to the skeptic - I know. I hear it all through their ears as I say it, but the truth is that the skepticism I am met with over my faith feels exactly as absurd to me as someone insisting Breezy isn’t real when I know good and well that she welcomed me into her home and shared dried mango slices with me while she made us a cozy dinner and listened so well while I accidentally rapidfire told her one thousand of my life stories all at once.

Of course, I understand why and how personal experience offered as evidence for Christianity is easily hand waved away by anyone who doesn’t already believe in it and/or simply isn’t interested in changing or even challenging their current worldview.

Interestingly, I didn’t realize how hung up I am on all these reasons for unbelief that keep me up at night until a few days ago.

I was at a lunch table with the other moms at our weekly homeschool co-op meeting, lamenting the longstanding unbelief of some of my most treasured (and respected and admired) friends. Confiding.

I was carrying on about how brilliant they are. How practical and independent on the outside. How tender (nougat-y, even) inside.

And then - a standard refrain for me - a good bit about how our culture sabotages belief in the Christian story. And how Christians, ourselves, do some of the worst damage to it. How spiritual abuse can factor in. How many important words like “grace”, “redemption”, and even “love” are often misused so egregiously that they are stripped of meaning or imbued with the opposite of their true meaning when heard in a culturally Christian context.

One of the wiser-than-me mamas stopped me. “Sarah”, she said, “Any time anyone has a conversion that is real, it is always because they became aware of their need.”

The fact that it took me a minute to metabolize that is kind of hilarious in hindsight. It is one of the most basic and foundational truths that exist, and I had not actively thought about it in so long, I had practically forgotten that it is even a factor in the unbelief of others.

So I have been marinating about this ever since she said it, and it’s really fascinating to me to realize that for some people, seeing their need may be harder than finding enough reasonable evidence and/or overcoming the sharp edges of American Cultural Christianity. But I think she’s right - regardless of which part is hardest, the precursor to any of it is becoming aware of how desperate the state of our spiritual poverty is. Even when we think we are managing it all on our own just fine.

Because, why would anyone want to go seeking out evidence or putting up with churchy nonsense if they felt they have it all handled and are perfectly well enough off, thankyouverymuch?

I think there are a lot of well meaning attempts by my fellow Christians to try to force open the eyes of those who haven’t seen it yet. And I am, admittedly, distrustful of the vast majority of these attempts. I’m not sure you can convince anyone that they need a God they don’t even believe in, let alone trust by banging on about how wretched and depraved we all are at our core.

Those words probably sound pretty nonsensical to your average fellow citizen who makes an effort to show up for their friends and family and love to give to a good cause just as much as the next guy. The truth is that by and large, most people are doing their best (in the colloquial sense, anyway) and they’re not wrong to disallow anyone from gaslighting them out of knowing it. It’s not bad for them to put up a wall that would shield them from taking on inappropriate shame.

I had a friend a long time ago who converted to some lethal level of Calvinism and took up telling me I was going to hell every time I logged onto Facebook. I kept reminding him that I’m a Christian already, so he could consider chilling out? But he would just circle back to “have you ever told a lie? Then you’re a liar! Have you ever thought a mean thing about someone in your heart? Then you’re a murderer!” Etc etc and remind me that the Bible says liars and murderers are going to hell. And I would (obviously) say something like, “sure but for Jesus’s grace that covers us, right?” To which he would insist that I didn’t have access to that. It was very confusing. Ultimately, I had to block him.

One time (before I finally blocked him), he dogpiled on me with some of his street preacher buddies and somehow I upset them all so much that one of them lost it and shouted, “OKAY, JUST GO READ YOUR COPY OF THE RAGAMUFFIN GOSPEL THEN, YOU DAMN HIPPY”.

I had never heard of that book and it sounded promising, so I did go seek out a copy and I did read it. Bro meant it as an insult but it turned out to be an excellent book recommendation, so… win/win?

This is an extreme example, of course, but it’s a caricature of how Christians can sound to those completely outside our worldview. We know 1 Corinthians 13:1. We know “if I speak with the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I am only a clanging gong or a resounding symbol” - but I do so often have doubts about whether or not we really do know.

You don’t try to shout down someone you love or try to make them believe they are a walking piece of crap. That’s not how Jesus talked about people.

The wisest Christian I know told me it was Godspell that cracked the door open for her to surrender to Christ, because it wasn’t until she saw Him portrayed that way that she realized He (the real Him) is approachable.

And that made sense to me.

I don’t mean to brag, but I don’t think I ever had to be convinced of my need. Maybe it’s something about being corrected 20,000 more times by the age of ten than my neurotypical peers or the fact that I can’t ever seem to consistently be on time for anything or the abject horror show of intrusive thoughts conjured by my probably-misfiring brain or maybe it’s the acute awareness of the millions of ways I miss the mark day in and day out - and it’s not even just that!! It’s that I know I choose comfort over goodness often.

It’s that I am painfully finite. I have a limit. And that means sometimes people will either be hurt by my bubbling over of resentment and exhaustion if I white knuckle myself beyond my limits … or they will sometimes be hurt by the boundaries I impose to protect those limits. It means I don’t always know for sure where the limits truly are and I am susceptible to drawing those lines poorly while I try to figure out where they really need to go.

I’m not trying to turn this into a confession of all my overt sins - obviously I would be doing a terrible job of it if that’s what this was. Most of the examples I’ve given you could be explained away as “not my fault”. Just please believe me when I say that I have a long history of true screwups that were nobody’s fault but mine. Not something that can be excused by a disorder or fatigue - true fault. And my point is:

Any time I have ever heard someone say they can’t imagine what they would need God for, all I can think is, “oh friend I need Him before I even begin to factor in sin.”

I have spent the better part of my life clinging to Jesus the way someone who is severely drunk clings to their sober friend as they walk home together. Someone might ask me why I’m still a Christian and I think, “I can’t walk without Jesus.” I can’t walk without Him.

Speaking of which, I’ve heard the accusation that some of us are using religion as a crutch, and I would like to counter that with: Yeah? You sweet, sweet summer child? Wait until you find out that leg you’ve been hobbling around on all this time, crutchless, is just as broken as mine! Put a whole cast on that thing, dang!

In all seriousness, there are a lot of ways to think about spiritual poverty. I think most of my dear ones who are not here for it are pretty super-saturated in the culture of American Protestantism, to the point where a word like “sin” is already an offputting buzzword. They may have already even heard it said that the definition of sin is (as I mentioned earlier) to “miss the mark”, and even that simple definition has been soaked in shame-language at this point.

That ubiquitous verse about removing the plank from your own eye so you can see clearly enough to get the splinter out of your brother’s comes into my mind sometimes, because we can find such a brilliant analogy in there if we take a break from hearing is as a tired figure of speech. Have you ever had a splinter in your eye? Have you ever had a splinter in your eye that was so thoroughly evading all your efforts to remove it that you had to give in and ask someone for help? In my experience, by the time it gets to that point, you are in so much agony that it really feels like nothing else exists except your eyeball. You are just one giant suffering eye.

And have you helped someone remove a speck from their eye? Do you have any idea how tender, delicate, and careful this endeavor is?

Now that I think about it, the last time I had to help someone get a thing (a chunk of sharp sand, in this case) out of her eye, the only thing for it was to find some running water that could wash out what my hands could not begin to clear out on their own. Certainly not without causing more damage, anyway.

There are some things only water can fix. There are some things only Jesus’s Living Water can fix.

And so, my frustration with clumsy-handed attempts at fixing people made by each denomination abounds. But so does my enduring gratitude for the times when my brothers and sisters in Christ have led me to the metaphorical running water to help me wash the splinters out of my eyes.

There is a lot of learning and healing to be found in most denominations if you spend enough time around healthy communities within them and/or reading their philosophies.

If I recall correctly (for example) it’s primarily an Eastern Orthodox way of describing our human condition to note that distance from God is movement towards death vs closeness to Him being the thing that fills us with life. I think about this literally but also in general terms of entropy and decay.

So, again: why am I still a Christian? Because (among all these other things) I can’t rescue myself from my own sin and I can’t rescue myself from entropy and decay! I do believe that Jesus made a way for us - that by trusting Him and surrendering to Him, that we can boldly draw close to God and I want to boldly draw close to God. I need to.

The horribly, deeply unpopular truth is that we all do.

Pastor Tim Keller once said “The only person who dares wake up a king at 3:00am for a glass of water is a child.”

That’s the terms I need to be on with God.

So, where are we, in my answer to this question?

1: I am still a Christian because I am convinced it is true.

2: I am still a Christian because I know the depth of my need.

Now for part 3: I am still a Christian because of my personal experiences.

Don’t even get me started on the prophetic dreams that have broken into my reality. More stories for another time.

I really don’t think anyone believes because of signs and wonders. It does seem like that would be the thing, but you might be surprised at how adept people are at explaining things away or attributing them to some other worldview that better suits their priors.

But sometimes the Lord reaches into my day to remind me that He is not some vague concept that I have invented and completely understood, but rather He is a living Being with personhood and a will all His own. He doesn’t show up the way I would expect Him to.

He once startled me out of contentment with a warning that came out of nowhere and saved a life. I walked into my kitchen and saw a weird swarm of wasps, and felt Him tell me to call my several-states-away loved one - whom I hadn’t even been fretting over in the least until that moment. It was a critical moment.

Another time, I was standing in my kitchen, crying to my sister in law because I was missing far away friends, and she said “Sarah wait, wait” took my phone out of my hands to capture a picture, and handed it back to me so I could see the way the light shining through the window was making a heart on my cheek.

The God of the universe Who loves me even when I feel the most absurd kisses my cheeks with hearts when I cry and there’s nothing you could ever say to convince me otherwise.

It’s as real as Breezy’s dried mango slices.

He knows I receive hearts as love notes from Him, so He sends them. And yes - I know about the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon (the “frequency illusion”) which is basically a combo of selective attention and confirmation bias. Someone, please tell the insufferable nerds in my head they can dissect a tree frog if they really want to, but we will never hear it chirp again, so hush already!

This is not that, and anyway, I have never in my life been able to select where my attention goes in any sustained sort of way.

The hearts turn up when God knows I need them. At the pool when I feel like a slug:

Scratched into my driveway after a tornado knocked a tree onto our house:

And it’s not always hearts. Sometimes, it’s acorns. Sometimes, I am sitting outside in the absolute pit of despair wondering if I am completely unlovable (perhaps) and the Lord drops an acorn directly on my head. It is very sassy. I know I sound insane to anyone who hasn’t felt the presence of the “still small voice” laugh playfully at them, but this is just a fact of life for me. So is knowing it’s Him. ABBA Father, as represented through His beloved Son, Jesus.

If you ask God to develop a shorthand with you, He might just do it. You might have to forfeit your seat at the erudite table and you might notice a lot of Very Smart People becoming unable to take you seriously after a while, but for whatever it’s worth, none of that has ever held a candle to the glimpses I have gotten of what it’s like to walk around in this world knowing there’s a Heavenly Kingdom that is here, too, in some mysterious way that I can never quite get my head around. And that I get to belong to it.

And then there’s the Body of Christ.

Yeah there’s the tares, the wolves in sheep’s clothing out there being terrible, and the people still in process of becoming fit for Heaven - rough around the edges, the whole lot of us.

But there’s also the beauty of telling a friend (who also knows your Abba Father because He is hers, too) that this morning He dropped an acorn on your head to tell you that you are not just lovable, but loved - and immediately getting a text back from her about how acorns are also about growth.

“The Lord is reminding you that you are still growing.”, she’ll say.

She also sent me a verse that she had read earlier that day, from the ever-maligned Message translation of the Bible that I happen to love:

“How can we picture God’s kingdom? What kind of story can we use? It’s like an acorn. When it lands on the ground it is quite small as seeds go, yet once it is planted, it grows into a huge oak tree with thick branches. Eagles nest in it.” - Mark 4:30-32

It is a huge understatement for me to say that it gives me life to get to hear God in the stillness, through His creation, and through the connections made by friends who love Him.

To be prayed for? You’re going to spend time talking to our Abba about me? I cannot think of a sweeter thing.

One time, back in college, I was sitting on the floor between bookshelves reading something dry and boring to myself, and another young woman from the class I was studying for found me, so she plopped down to see if I could help her figure out some work we had in common. Our conversation eventually revealed our shared faith to each other, and as we chatted on through the rest of that exchange, I swear the library changed in a way that I don’t think I can explain without sounding ridiculous, but (out of love for you, dear reader) I will try.

It was as if the part of our world that is God’s Kingdom became higher resolution than the rest. And the part that is passing away faded into the background. I experience this around other believers sometimes.

Not usually in church, unfortunately. I typically don’t fit in at church. Sometimes it seems like there is an interpretation of how to be a Good Christian that boils down to being a good church goer by arriving on time in correct attire and participating in events and signing up to help with church things and throwing your tithe into the basket and having kids who sit nicely in the pews. And sitting nicely in the pews and listening well, myself.

I find all this comically incompatible with every temperamental bent in my nature. And though I think these things are respectful and good, I definitely don’t think any of them actually make it onto a list of top ten most important Christian virtues.

Though I notice Heaven glistening all over the world around us like a sugar dusting of November morning snow in connected moments with other believers, it is still stupid hard for me, sometimes, not to flirt with the idea of giving up on attending a local church.

But as long as I believe Jesus wants me to go (and I do believe He does), I will keep trying to go.

Because I love Him.

Because He loved me first, you know?

So there we go; I hope that answers the question.

As my life unfolds, I will always only be going with Jesus. “Further up, and further in” as He finishes the work He started in me, along with sweet Holy Spirit, just like He promised. Cause there is no way I’m doing that work without Him.

Since I can’t think of anything better, I hope you will forgive me for always being out here believing it for you, too, even if you’re not in it yet. If I know anything at all, I know that goodness and mercy surely do pursue us all the days of our lives.

I hope all the traffic lights you hit this week are green and I hope the books you are reading are about to get really, really good. Thank you so much for reading this little manifesto. All my love to you, my friends!

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I wrote this many months before the (currently as of the writing of this disclaimer) 2024 US election as I grappled with anxiety over how it was going to turn out. 

There was a Chinese Folk story I used to read to my kids when they were very wee, about a sweet old man who lived out in the country somewhere. The two loves of this man’s life were his horses and his son. 

The story starts out with everything going swimmingly. But one day a servant leaves a stable door open by accident, and his favorite stallion disappears into the mountains. Everyone is distraught over this bad luck, but the old man is basically like, “Is it bad luck, though?”

He prefers a bit of a wait-and-see approach.

And sure enough, in a few weeks or so, the stallion comes home, with a rare and valuable mare trotting along behind him. Again, his neighbors and friends are jumping to react, but this time, it’s to rejoice over good luck. 

And again, the man is essentially unmoved. “Maybe it’s good luck”, he tells them, “I guess we’ll see.” 

(I would note here that this is obviously a story with a call to stoicism, and it has a strong point - but I, for one, would never advocate holding back on rejoicing when something goes right. I think that not only is it possible to rejoice with abandon without becoming too attached to outcomes, but that it is downright important and good for the soul.) 

So then, one day the man and his son are out riding together, and the son falls off the mare. He breaks his leg so badly that it is permanently damaged, even after it’s healed. Bad luck? 

Two years later, there’s an enemy invasion, and the son isn’t called upon to fight because of his bum leg. Good luck?

You get the idea. Life is like this, isn’t it? 

Something goes right, only to open a door for all sorts of trouble. Or (you know what I’m about to say), on the flippity flop, something awful happens only to unexpectedly cascade into beauty that would have been out of reach forever, otherwise.

And since life is nothing if not deeply complex, and we are all connected to each other, everything that ever happens splinters off and goes branching in another direction. Truly, who knows what tomorrow will bring? 

So, okay, why am I talking about this? 

Because every so often, Americans are put through an election and I (being American) have noticed a pattern. Have you? Does it seem like every election you have ever lived through has been “THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION OF OUR LIFETIME” and “THE OUTCOME WILL DETERMINE WHETHER WE HAVE A COUNTRY ANYMORE OR NOT!!”? 

Every. Time. 

Hey, maybe this time it actually is different. Maybe if the wrong candidate wins, this time we really do vanish in a puff of smoke. Maybe it would be really unlucky. 

Or would it? 

Maybe if the right candidate wins, our crushing government-inflicted agonies would be relieved, at last. Maybe it would be really lucky. 

Or would it? 

All I’m saying is that perhaps we could learn a little something from the elderly stoic in the Chinese folktale that I used to read to my children. Perhaps it would serve our mental health well to stop trying to predict the outcome. Stop pre-grieving. Stop hanging our hopes on the ever-fragile spider-silk-thread of things that are determined by majority public opinion. 

What if we could, instead, love a God who has promised us that He is a Good Father? What if, instead, we could meet Him morning after morning as we rub the sleep out of our eyes and wonder, with a stubborn hope, how all the anxiety fanfics of our lives that we have written in our heads will be proven wrong today?

What if we practice trusting that when bad things happen, the God Who promised to make all things work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose - will do what He said He would do? Not in a platitude way. Not in a throw-pillow way. But in a way that is real and meaningful and personal?

Fortunately, unfortunately. Fortunately.

I am writing this, as I write anything I write, for myself. If you need to hear it, too, then we are in the same boat. 

I hope we can unclench our fists and let the anxiety become a curiosity that dissolves into trust. Trust, not for election outcomes, not for a pendulum swing, and not for the policies we favor. But trust for the Father of Lights. The Good God who loves us and Who is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. 

The One who isn’t moved or bothered by any possibility of luck, good or bad. 

The Escape Hatch (by Duckie Louise) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

To be able to naturally gravitate towards communities and friendships where people are like-minded seems so cozy. Rejoicing together in uncomplicated wins. Grieving together through easily definable loss. Ranting at the sky in collective rage with near perfect agreement. 

Echo chambers sound like a relief. 

Alas, though, I have never been able to squeeze myself into a political box without betraying my internal grounding or sense of integrity. The result of this has been that every election cycle since I was old enough to have any sort of grasp on the gravity of it all - I have spiraled out, hard.

Every election cycle. No matter who won. 

Because (for better or for worse) I have never shielded myself from the dire laments or concerns of those who felt they had lost. 

I don't know if you have noticed, but fear is sticky. It’s contagious. 

And that’s not to discount people who are in a state of elation because they feel they have won! As I listen to the laments of the hurt, angry, and scared - I am also always standing (uncomfortably) with one foot in celebration with the elated, hopeful, and relieved. 

The result of this is that I typically experience an overwhelming compulsion (both from within and from without, I’m afraid) to go on a frenzied search for knowledge in times of general public distress and conflict. 

I try to bury myself deep in every type of information that I could possibly need while crossing my fingers that I may avoid succumbing to a deluge of increasingly paranoid what-ifs. 

Can I ever know enough to be sure that I understand everything with the certainty it would take to confidently prescribe solutions to the myriad problems faced by a country? 

I mean. If I’m honest, I struggle if I have to plan a birthday party, so maybe I’m not meant to be someone with a big opinion about how the department of transportation ought to be run or how geopolitical conflicts between countries with intricately complicated histories should be handled. 

And I’m not about to try to make a case against research or becoming informed! But in this Information Age, where we could easily engage ourselves in several research projects a day just trying to get our heads around everything that keeps happening (and happening and happening and happening), I would like to propose instead that perhaps it may be better to take a beat and have some gratitude for the fact that we are small. 

In the first book of C.S Lewis’s sci fi trilogy (Perelandra), the main character (Ransom) was feeling the incredible weight of his responsibility towards an entire planet. Honestly, it’s been a hot minute since I read that book, and it may have been more than one planet.

But, to get to the point: a character who was an angelic figure says to Ransom, “Be comforted, small one, in your smallness. He lays no merit on you. Receive and be glad. Have no fear, lest your shoulders be bearing this world.”

This is a quote I am inclined to remember often, as it applies to each of us so fully. We get to be small. Thank goodness. 

So - since there is so very much that is thoroughly outside of our control, I’m going to suggest that we not work ourselves into a daily anxiety attack due to geopolitical events or the policies that are forever changing and being passed down. 

I am really ready to beg everyone to take ten slow breaths and step outside for a half hour. Unplug yourself from the news for a week. Yes, I said a week. I dare you. 

Because here’s the thing. As I said, I have fully gone into the pit of despair every single election cycle. And I gotta say: Zero out of 10 stars! I don't recommend it!

It:

* Did not make the world better

* Did not stop any of the scary things I was worried about from happening 

* Did not cause any different/better things to happen

* Did not keep my friends and family from fighting or disowning each other

* Did not keep anyone from being mean to me if they sensed anything less than perfect agreement if/when I failed to match their energy

But it did:

* Give me chest pain

* And stomach pain

* And totally killer anxiety

* Shut down every last one of my creative processes

* Nerf my mental health into oblivion

* Steal time that rightfully belonged to my kids and my husband 

* Put me into survival mode where I gained like 20 lbs

* Undermine my sense of humor

It also seems to me that sometimes there’s a phenomenon that vaguely mimics the guilt people feel when they are grieving the loss of a loved one. 

That guilt that can come when they have a happy/joyful moment but something tells them they should only be feeling sad. Like they’re dishonoring the person they lost if they so much as let go enough to genuinely laugh at a well timed joke. 

I think there’s a tendency to do something like that with political angst. A stubborn clinging onto that  burning anxiety, resentment, terror, and/or anger because of a foundational suspicion that it would be wrong to let go and feel good? Maybe a fear of dishonoring the people whose suffering we see as being worsened by the current political powers.

As if we control the political weather with the weather of our moods. As if the suffering aren’t always with us no matter what. 

As if our suffering does a single thing to alleviate theirs. 

And I look back on those times and all I can think about it is that really, I could have just not. All the doom scrolling and outrage and upset and worry was just not worth it. 

Even fretting about what people would think about the decisions I made for my family during covid times did nothing to help anyone. 

In the end, I look back and think that we really must do whatever it takes to climb up out of the cave and refuse to be our own psychological terrorists. 

Horrible things will happen. It’s a guaranteed fact of life. 

So maybe we shouldn’t make it worse on ourselves, you know? 

Unsettling political times are the times to fight the urge to disappear into our algorithms. Now is not the moment to become ghosts. 

Are you scared that a government policy or a new law is going to saliently impact something in your tangible life? 

Stop torturing yourself reading articles and conversations online and speculating about it! Go to the people in your local community who work at the hospital or the school or whatever it is, and ask them directly what’s changing. 

We are not blaming our political opposition, our neighbors, our friends, or even the fallen state of the world for the positions we may find ourselves in. 

Acknowledging obstacles and frustrations and the limitations of ourselves and others is good and right and necessary, but we aren’t going to sit down in that mud pit and make it our home. 

Eternal mud-squelching isn’t going to make our own lives better. 

No. We are taking achievable, small, practical steps towards whatever needs to happen next. Even if all we can manage at the moment is shift our gaze from the muck to the cross.

It should be no surprise (to my fellow Christians, at least), that we each have one of our own to carry. And we are called to carry it. 

Swirling around in the ethereal vortex of current event social media scroll-a-thons is so last season. It’s out. 

Grounding ourselves in immediate reality is IN, okay?

We are meeting-in-person, going-outside,  cleaning-our-houses, good-night’s-sleep (or at least taking-naps-if-we-need-them) maxxing. 

We are done staring at outlandish headlines in horror until they ruin a perfectly good day. 

We are not (personally, this is going to be the hardest one for me) internalizing the big hairy feelings of our loved ones about any of this, either.

It’s time to let them have their feelings without confusing those feelings with our own. 

You also don’t have to engage in heavy political discussions. No matter how much urgency people come at you with. You don’t have to solve this for them. (Spoiler: you almost never can, anyway.) 

Silence is not usually violence. You are allowed to protect your peace. 

And don’t forget to give it all to God. We aren’t built to do any of this without Him. He has not forgotten you, your loved ones, your family, your country, or your home. 

We are more than overcomers, friends. So let’s go overcome. ❤️‍🔥

We are also still finding our groove with the way the podcast flows.

But it’s all coziness and joy as we go!

Every episode, we are bringing you something from the way we experience the tangible world through each of the 5 senses. We are looking for God in all of it. Come take a break with us from the horrors that persist. Get cozy and present.

I hope it inspires you to engage with your life right there where your feet are a little more every time.

Cheers, friends!

I was on my knees in the shallow end of my city’s most popular pool this weekend, cheering my youngest on as she practiced getting comfortable with swimming yet again. My best friend was laughing with me over how it seems that as parents we stress and fuss over how quickly our children learn to swim, only to watch them lose the skill over the cooler months and then have to relearn it summer after summer.

The Escape Hatch (by Duckie Louise) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

She gazed reflectively into the distant bright sky and sighed, “You know, they’re looking for [the career her husband has] in New Zealand right now. What if we moved there?”

And a familiar feeling settled over me. That heartache at the thought of potentially losing the physical proximity with a beloved friend which quickly (though reluctantly) gave way to a parade of vignettes which played through my mind. I imagined her gardening with fewer bugs, sending her boys to a school she had in mind out there, and generally thriving in a hundred little ways that she mayn’t be able to where we currently are.

Since one can’t actually love another person if one would long to hold them stagnant just for one’s own comfort, I began that critically important heart-work of moving towards acceptance. Just in case.

And listen, it is unlikely that she would actually go, but I’m telling you this because it was the catalyst for the train of thought I’m currently on.

We live in a country (at least here in America, where I live) and a period of time when human relationships often feel so utterly transient. Even the closest ones.

More than once, I have lamented to my husband that sometimes it really seems as though my favorite people are always moving away. Often, it has been us who picked up and left. And it stung every single time.

When I was in my early 20’s, I loved moving. I loved exploring. I loved gathering new friendships around me. A pastor who meant the world to me in college smiled warmly at me once and said, “You really have a gift for setting up shop wherever you go. You move all the way in and put down roots whether you may have to yank them up one day or not.”

It feels surreal to look back on, because I cannot relate to my past self in this way anymore. I hate moving. I grieve that everyone I love the most is so spread out that now it is physically impossible to be local to all of them at once. I am just so tired of starting over with all new people and the time it takes to even begin to know and be known.

Are you tired, too?

How are we all doing out there? Are we trying to fill that human need for community with arguing online? Are we all out here folding laundry, cutting up the apples to put next to the grilled cheese sandwiches, toting the kids around, laughing, crying, struggling, and pressing forward every day mostly alone?

I have a love/hate relationship with the idea of embracing this byproduct of atomization by viewing it as if our homes were a monastery of sorts. It’s true, and it’s beautiful. So: love. But some of us are mothers out here and we were not made for this much aloneness, okay?

I also doubt we were made to live in this bizarre state where the way you see other people in a way that nourishes relationships is mainly via intentional planning. Packing food, getting everyone in the car, rushing to arrive on time. Canceling plans again and again because someone’s toddler is sick, someone had car trouble, someone had a commitment and they accidentally double booked.

So many of us are lacking the ever illusive third spaces. The town squares where you may experience the delight of simply bumping into friends spontaneously. We aren’t surrounded by our peers anymore like we were in our youth. We aren’t swimming in time anymore.

What do we do, now? How do we keep ourselves from clinging to our loved ones lest the dread of loneliness settle back in?

I’ve been mulling this over and over, and I think the answer is that we have to look around at the place we live and decide to love it. We have to accept the people who are there and never presume connections can’t be made.

If you’re a Christian, but theologically complicated like me, it means picking a church you can work with even if you feel a little outside of it all when you start.

If you want to dance, but your favored form isn’t available locally, it means jumping into whatever is.

It means overtly deciding to do the things that scare you and push you outside your comfort zone over and over again.

It might mean asking your neighbor if she would ever like to go for a walk.

I have been listening to John Delony’s podcast a lot lately, and he keeps encouraging people to “go first” and “make it weird”. Doesn’t that make you want to crawl back into bed and take a nap? Or is that just me?

But I think he’s right. I think we have to fight the impulse as we age to settle into the warm bath of complacency. We have to snap out of it and remember that relationships, people, and life are all messy. There’s nothing for that but acceptance.

We have to reclaim our open hands and remember that going with God means we always have roots. Because He is the roots. And He is the One Who sets the lonely in families. He’s The One Who said if we seek, we will find.

All of this is terribly inconvenient, but it’s hard to be inconvenienced if we figure out how to walk in a deep understanding that neither our time, nor our homes, nor our resources, are ours at all - but are His.

So maybe we don’t go ahead and panic every time the landscape of our relationships changes. Mourn the ends of all the chapters, yes. But don’t roll up in a ball and waste away.

Look for the next assignment and look at the

people around you and then go love them. Send your memes and heart emojis to the ones who have left your local sphere. You can always keep praying for them and cheering them on.

And yes, I will probably be hissing and spitting for a while like our family cat when we took him home from the trash can we found him in and gave him a flea bath over how expensive travel is until I figure out how to fund that. I wouldn’t blame you one bit if you’re prone to the same.

But, you know, I watched my oldest learn to swim again every summer. Then, finally, he reached an age where the practice served him and officially, really, and truly, he had that skill on lock. He’s got it. Every year now, while the younger ones repeat the timid process of easing into the water, he heads straight for he high dive without batting an eye.

I guess it may be similar for many of us. The time comes again and again to build out our roots, and if we never give up, one day we may look up and realize that we got pretty good at it. That our comfort zone is finally wide enough to encompass the social high dive of all that “going first” and “making it weird”.

**A little addendum - eventually I will start only doing voiceovers for paid subscriber posts, but not yet. This one was a little scratchy here and there (only a little!), but I’m about to go outta town, so I’m gonna leave it this time. Promise I’ll sort that out in the future! Love to all of you!**

The Escape Hatch (by Duckie Louise) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

A note - if it sounds like we are responding weirdly fast to each other now and then, it’s because we had some seasonal allergies (so festive 😂), and I was trying to edit out the coughs. I’m still learning the editing program. Thanks for listening to these early episodes in which we are still finding our sea legs! We appreciate each of you so dearly!

Here’s what we talked about:

* Prayer for you

* For the Hearing segment: band/music recs and Julia tells us about going to an impactful concert and how it inspired her

* We talk about parasocial relationships and the awkwardness inherent in giving real compliments + telling people how they have impacted you

* Julia tells about a meteorologist that was important to her family

* I tell a tornado story and a funny/embarrassing story from childhood

* Julia’s Bible Verse is Matt 6:33 + we talk about seeking the kingdom of God

* My verses are all from Ecclesiastes + we talk joyfully about sadness and dying 😂🤷🏻‍♀️

* For the Book Segment: Girl’s Club by Sally, Sarah, and Joy Clarkson

* For the Smell segment: We have late autumn haikus

* For the Sight segment: Something I learned through my tiny babies

* For the Taste segment: Thanksgiving menu talk

* For the Touch segment: Lemme talk about old friends, highschool reunions, and being uncomfortably sentimental

* A Thanksgiving Benediction 💜

1hr 4ish mins

In this episode, we talked about:

>> the sadness inherent in being human

>> Julia tells a story about a comically harrowing moment she had as a teen

>> I tell my middle child’s birth story

>> Julia has an insight about protection

>> I had an insight about connectedness

>> I tell a weird story about my Dad’s dentures and the Lord’s provision

>> We have a haiku for smell and I talk about a scent that reminds me of an old friend

>> Julia tells you how to find the best breakfast burrito even though we are not sponsored 😂

>> The worthiness of live music and community service

>> books mentioned: Prayer by Von Balthasar, The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

>> Scripture about grace

The books we mention are The Divine Mentor (Wayne Cordiero), The Toxic War on Masculinity (Nancy Pearcey), The Weirdies (Michael Buckley), and The Princess and the Goblin (George Macdonald).

Log off and settle in with us and take a break from whatever hysteria and sensationalism is going on outside at the moment.

We will keep you company while you do the dishes 💜

Welcome to the relaunch of my lil podcast. I pulled the ones we had recorded before because sometimes creativity is an iterative process. I knew I had a lot to share, but it didn’t have a structure to exist in.

This has been remedied.

I realized I have a hard time, typically, staying in touch with the present moment. Kind of standard for an ADHD brain.

In high school, I used to pass a notebook around and let friends write favorite quotes on it. One of my friends wrote “Wherever you are, be all there.” - Jim Elliot.

This was pre-smart-phone, mind. And even then, I could not relate to this quote. I wanted to! But I would look down at my notebook in class and see it and think “Ew, gross, I don’t want to be here!”

I wanted to be in the deep comfort of my rich inner world. The escape hatch of daydream was always available and endlessly appealing.

But I knew it wasn’t healthy to disappear like that so constantly.

If you can relate to that, this pod is dedicated to you.

I also see that there’s a lot of intentional rage mongering going on out there, and while I can’t promise there won’t be any spice at all in this pod - you can rest assured I am not here to provoke anger intentionally.

My intent is to honor the experience of being logged off. Logged off of the internet or just logged out of the never-ending daydream.

To look up and look towards Jesus.

Sometimes it will be my little sister in law, Julia, and me. Sometimes it will just be me.

If I really get my act together, we will get to hear some stories from some others, too.

But no matter what, chances are it will all come to you with a sleepover vibe, because apparently that is my default setting.

If you make time in your day to hang out with this podcast, thank you so much! I hope it blesses you.

And I hope today is full of surprises, but only the good kind.

Grace and peace!