2019: a year of abundance.

I sit here on a sunshiney Christmas afternoon in the peace of our screened back porch.

We had a morning of abundance as four kids tore through the house and piled onto our bed at 6:30 a.m. (the appointed wake-up time), coffee was ground and brewed by bleary-eyed parents, grandparents arrived, gifts opened, lights twinkled, homemade cinnamon rolls devoured, and Christmas toys played with and built and read. The house was filled with laughter this morning.

It’s a fitting way to celebrate a whole year of abundance.

We’ve had some lean years, some exhausted years, some illness-filled years. And some just plain sad years. All of it makes the abundant years shine like beacons of light in the story God’s writing of our family.

I wrote here on the blog at Christmas last year that I wanted the season to just last and last as I treasured God’s gifts, our kids particular ages. I didn’t think I’d feel that way even more this year. But I do.

And so I sit here to tell you about our year of abundance.

2019 was a year of abundance for our church.

Columbia Presbyterian Church welcomed ninety new members in 2019 and had five adult conversions.

We give thanks to God for these new members, for not just the quantity of people He’s brought, but the quality.

We had college students and singles and young marrieds and families and empty nesters join us. And during both our membership classes — in April and in October — David and I looked at one another again and again and marveled.

Our new members’ stories astonish us — of coming to faith in Christ from a life steeped in sin, of marriages made new, of battling addiction yet another day, of learning to confess sins, of telling people about Jesus boldly, of giving money to the poor, of walking the path suffering faithfully, of wanting to lay down their lives for the kingdom of God in ordinary, everyday ways.

We are honored and humbled to serve God alongside the people of Columbia Pres.

We’ve learned that a truly healthy church is one who works to build God kingdom together — rather than becoming inward-focused on our own problems and preferences and dramas. It’s not Christian busyness to earn points with God; but it’s letting His Spirit transform our very hearts as we do community and worship together, so that we can in turn be a light to our city and beyond.

At the end of May, our church welcomed a Director of Life Group Ministry, Evan, and his wife and three kids. We watched them arrive in Columbia and face five solid months of one trial after another, yet roll up their sleeves and dive into ministry regardless. They let those trials humble and mature them from that first sultry, 100-degree Memorial Day weekend that they arrived, inviting us into the messy parts of their story. We love them all the more for it. Our whole church does.

And in these last two months of 2019, they’ve just begun blooming all over the place. I see them preach and lead life groups and go on play dates and counsel men and women and laugh across the breakfast table from us, and my heart overflows with joy. The Faireys are an answer to prayer — their son Gideon is also a very specific answer to prayer of our son Gabe for a friend at church his age — and they’re an example to me of our God of abundance, who blesses us far more than we ask or hope.

 

2019 was a year of abundance for me personally.

I grew up more in Christ this year.

Way back in 2010, I heard a sermon at a missions conference that changed my life. The speaker challenged us to begin praying each year that God would make us more free in Him than we were the previous year.

That challenge struck a chord deep in my heart — who doesn’t want to be more free? — and I’ve prayed it for the last nine years.

And you know what? God has been faithful to answer that prayer every single year. That’s how that one sermon changed my life. God’s answers often haven’t come in the way I would’ve chosen, but that’s okay. He knows best.

A lot of the freedom I’ve learned in Christ has come through being a pastor’s wife. Columbia Pres is six years old now, and I would not be the person I am today without the past six years.

This month I had the opportunity to speak to a group of full-time ministry wives about some things I’ve learned in our fourteen years of ministry, and one thing I shared with them is that ministry is hard. It will dig at you in your most vulnerable places, expose insecurities and sins you had no idea you struggle with. But if you submit yourself to God’s perfect plan to use trials to mature you, it will grow you closer to Jesus than you thought possible.

I’ve learned to not be scared when another one of those vulnerabilities or sins surfaces. God brings them into the light to free me — which, by the way, is exactly what I ask Him for each year.

Before I became a pastor’s wife, I was warned that the criticism of people — both directed at my husband, at me personally, and even at times our kids — would really hurt and sometimes make me angry. I was warned it’s a lonely road because there are so many things you carry that you can’t share with other people, and because you often grow close to people only to have them leave the church. I was told the heart can only bear so many wounds before it closes up in self-protection.

All those things are true. But when I talk to pastor’s wives, I make sure to add this: Don’t be afraid, dear heart. God is bigger than the hardships you experience as a pastor’s wife. When you face all of that stuff, rejoice, even if it’s with tears streaming down your face. He doesn’t waste one single thing.

If you’re like me, you have such small dreams for yourself. To be liked. To be affirmed. To be successful. To be comfortable.

Well guess what, Jesus was very often not liked or affirmed or successful in the world’s eyes (even the Christian world’s eyes). Jesus was not popular. Neither were the Old Testament prophets or the apostles or a whole host of people who’ve come before us who desired to live a godly life in Christ Jesus.

This year has been about me trading my paltry dreams for His beautiful dreams.

I’m still a real person with real feelings. It still hurts to be criticized or be in conflict with someone. At times I do feel lonely. Some weeks I feel like I’m physically bowed under the weight of the terribly painful burdens that people I love are carrying. I feel the helplessness of not being able to fix it, crying out alongside them, “How long, O Lord?”

And all these things take me straight to the feet of Jesus, where I sit with Him awhile and have learned to let go of my burdens, again and again. I can be myself with Him, honest about how I feel — He’s not scared of my anger or stress or bouts of depression. He’s not scared of the sins I’m still struggling with or the mistakes I make or the times I fail to love and forgive like He loves and forgives. He helps me with all of it, for His glory.

As I do this, my hands open more and more in surrender to our church being God’s church, not my church. And the more my hands open and my hold loosens, the happier I become.

There’s such joy to be found in being a pastor’s wife. Such abundance.

Yes, there are secrets I have to keep, but David and I get a front row seat to the transforming work God’s doing in people’s lives — from big things like healing from abuse or addiction, to smaller things like a church member learning to confront someone in love. This fall we sat across the table from a grad student who prayed to give her life to Christ. This morning, I received a Christmas text from a church member who wrote, “I can honestly say I’m closer to Jesus because of yours and David’s ministry.”

Moments like those are worth every single hardship.

I’m not sure if this makes sense exactly, but these last couple years at our church have made me feel like nothing so much as a proud parent.

I look around at faces of people I love and do life with, and see them growing in Jesus, faithfully disciplining their kids for God’s glory, giving Him their dreams for marriage, learning how to share their faith with nonbelievers, choosing a lifestyle of gratitude during chronic illness, and standing up to peer pressure at the cost of popularity, and my cup runneth over. I have no greater joy than to see our church family walk in the faith.

The ministry life is a marathon, and so is the Christian life. I want to go the whole distance that God’s allotted for me.

I pray that in 2020 my heart stays tender and soft even if I get hurt. The self-protected heart is a small heart. I’m glad Jesus’ heart stays soft toward me. Like Him, I want to love people deeply and grow in my capacity for joy.

 

2019 was a year of abundance for our family.

Finally, 2019 was a beautiful year in the life of our family.

There’s a growing tenderness in our kids’ hearts toward Jesus, and as they get older, the conversations we have are richer. They’re learning that it’s okay to wrestle and doubt and question. That it’s a good thing to study God’s Word for themselves. And that they are precious in God’s sight and that He answers their prayers.

As David and I learn the incredibly humbling habit of regularly admitting our sins to our kids, telling them when we’ve wronged them or one another or just plain had a sour attitude, they’ve started doing the same thing.

We didn’t even ask them to; it’s just happening on its own. We’ve been amazed at our 12-year-old — who’s always had a bit of a sarcastic edge — regularly come back and apologize for the way he talked to us, saying, “I shouldn’t have spoken to you in that way. I’m sorry.”

Or our ten-year-old confessing, “I just get so angry at my brothers when we’re playing a game, and I want them to lose. But I don’t want to feel that way anymore.” Or telling us she struggles with selfishness and sharing her things.

I also attribute this tenderness to the ministry the adults in our life have with our kids — whether it’s grandparents or youth leaders or just friends at church. They get to see people that they really look up to confess sin and work on having a regular quiet time and talk about feeling really embarrassed when they shared their faith. And I can see that’s it’s growing their world wider. It’s not just Mom and Dad living this life — it’s people who look like them and don’t look like them, young and college-aged and old, people who are richer than us and people who are poorer.

After years — and I mean years — of tortuous dinner times with spilled drinks, smacking food, whiny attitudes over the mushrooms in the mushroom and kale pasta, and two kids whose eyes glaze over the moment a conversation is started, in this year (especially the last 6 months), dinner time has begun to feel enjoyable.

We serve ourselves buffet-style from the counter (because I’m all for having to wash as few dishes as possible), and sit down together, and Noah says, “Let’s say highs and lows!” We laugh. We talk about the sermon David’s going to preach on Sunday. We listen to a little NF.

Our family is growing in friendship, and one of the sweetest parts of this season of life is the things each one of them are teaching us.

 

 

Honestly, I struggled to write this blog post.

For a long time the words have felt locked up inside of me. I feel like it’s okay to write when I’m struggling; but to write when life is going well? Isn’t that just bragging? Other people are suffering. How dare I be happy?

But I’ve come to see that staying silent is withholding glory from God, who loves to bless and answer prayer.

Just as His grace is sufficient in suffering, it’s also sufficient in abundance. The Enemy comes to steal and kill and destroy; Jesus comes to give life, and give it abundantly. I honor Him when I enjoy the life He’s given me.

I give Him all the praise for His good gifts in 2019.

 

Remember not the former things,
nor consider the things of old.
Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

– Isaiah 43.18-19