The Average Pearl

In the Closet: Whittling Followers

The Average Pearl

In the Closet: Whittling Followers

00:00 / 6 min.

In the Closet: Keeping Secrets with God in a Not-So-Secret World

Essay 6: Whittling Followers

The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all of this and were scoffing at Jesus. So He said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is prized among men is detestable before God.”

Luke 16:15

As I mentioned in an earlier chapter, I kept our beautiful, solitary mountain experience silent. I reluctantly crushed my own dreams–I felt simultaneously foolish and faithful, but only as some foggy notion. If I’d known then I was in good company, what an encouragement it would’ve been.

The story of Gideon in the book of Judges has always fascinated me. He was a nobody, had nothing to offer, and was, like me, unsure of himself. Maybe he had a stern dad like mine, maybe he never once heard an approving voice. In fact, he must have been scared to death of his dad, because when the Lord commanded him to tear down his dad’s Asherah pole and turn it into firewood, Gideon snuck out to do so in the middle of the night.

Poor Gideon. Passive-aggressiveness hasn’t gotten much farther than a sorry kid like him, a sorry kid like me.
I read his story, and I feel the swell of bravery, the tiniest spark of faith. Sneaking in the dark to defy his dad’s idol worship, then still begging for a sign from God because this was all unfamiliar territory to a nobody. I can relate.
God did something with that mustard seed, and before he hardly knew it, Gideon had 32,000 men willing to follow him into battle.

Any influencer today would beam at his good fortune–he went viral, an overnight success! But then God immediately told him he had too many.
Just as soon as they had appeared, God sent 22,000 of them home. Furthermore, the Lord sorted out the rest of them, until there were only 300 guys left of the 32,000 who had come out in support of Gideon.

Pause for a moment and consider how this would hit anyone with a public platform today. It would strike fear and panic in their soul! The security of their success hinges on numbers. It is the one thing that can secure a book deal, the one thing that validates your worth, the one way I can get paid to promulgate my lifestyle and spread my message, become famous.

Why would God whittle down the crowd? The Lord told Gideon if he kept the 32,000, Israel would “become boastful, saying ‘My own power has delivered me.’” (Judges 7:2)
In other words, God would rather have our worship than let us have success. Popularity is detrimental to that quiet life He wants to live with us.

Followers mean nothing to God.

In fact, they stand in the very way of what God wants to do, powerfully, in your life.

Remember how Jesus’ brothers urged him to take his platform and go public, because “no one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret” (John 7:4)?
Well, Jesus didn’t care about becoming popular, like his brothers thought. He also wasn’t a popular guy, which is sometimes contrary to the charismatic, people-loving Jesus we paint in our mind.

After He laid out the “bread of life” metaphor, the one where He literally told the crowd he was “the living bread that came down from heaven” and “if you eat my flesh and drink my blood you will have eternal life”–the people began to look at Him funny. I can’t say that I blame them. If this were my ultimatum, I’d have to say I’d be on the verge of quitting the disciple gig based on gore alone.

And this is exactly the response Jesus got. John tells us that
From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. (John 6:66)

After this disciple-whittling conversation, John says Jesus kind of stayed under cover because the Jews wanted to kill him. It makes me wonder about his personality–how did he balance truth and grace so well? How was he loving and merciful, yet at complete odds with those who tried to stamp out his holy fire? How in the world can I imitate such a wild character?

One of the earliest instances we know of Jesus as a kid is the story of when his family accidentally leaves him behind in Jerusalem. After a few days, his parents realize (no doubt busy keeping an eye on Jesus’s wily younger brothers) that their oldest boy hasn’t checked in with them in awhile. They become frantic, searching within their group, to no avail. When they finally backtracked to Jerusalem, three days after losing him, they found him in the temple. Unfazed, he said, “didn’t you know I would be about my father’s business?” He was teaching the teachers in the temple. Without fanfare, we are introduced to the boy, Jesus, who already understood and valued His relationship with the Father above any earthly accolades, including the typical first son privileges and hanging out with his buddies in the caravan. He wasn’t being sneaky. He would rather be alone with His heavenly Father than on a journey with the family and other teenage travelers. He was twelve years old.

Maybe this ought to hint at His personality–perhaps we might conclude that Jesus was an introvert and not a typical hormone-raging pre-pubescent. But if Jesus is God incarnate, I’d venture a guess that every picture we have of Jesus in his humanity is a reflection of the Father Himself. And He–God–desires intimacy with us. He wants us to be alone. With Him. There is nothing more urgent.

And He will whittle our own circle down, sometimes until we are very lonely. He will knock us down, sometimes over and over, until we realize we cannot do anything on our own. We need Him. We need Jesus, just Jesus.

In the Closet: Perpetually in Pursuit

The Average Pearl

In the Closet: Perpetually in Pursuit

00:00 / 11 min

In the Closet: Keeping secrets with God in a not-so-secret world

Essay 5: Perpetually in Pursuit

Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment…
Romans 12:3

I excitedly scanned the book proposal the literary agent emailed me. I knew exactly how to frame my pitch. I had researched comparable books, determined my audience, and written the chapters. But I was stumped. On the fifth page, it asked me about my platform.

How many Twitter followers did I have? How many hits to my blog? What kind of traffic were my Insta posts getting?

The fact is this: I’d recently quit Instagram out of a firm conviction I was spending too much time there, getting too much of a high off of the atmosphere. My twitter account, amounting to three tweets from nine years ago, was beyond neglected. Tired of silently judging from the backstage, I’d been culling my Facebook friends list down (kindly, though, in a block-them approach, not a snarky unfriend or unfollow way) to a couple dozen folks who shared either my maiden name, alma mater, or only posted gratuitous baby photos.
I know myself well enough, know the trapdoor to my soul. I derive energy and pride from lusting after information, and the internet is a big, sucking, muddy hole that constantly wants more and more of my attention.

Social media, I was assured, was the ticket.
Smart marketing, maybe. “It’s the only way publishers and readers will find you,” the literary agent promised.

I just couldn’t swallow it.

When I first joined Instagram, it filled me with joy. Pictures! Connection! An every-hour-of-the-day newsreel! It was the same with Facebook in the beginning, and Twitter, when I ventured there. It immediately gratified my nosy nature–I loved knowing things, snooping around, silently judging appearances and actions, the beliefs of online “friends”, and inevitably sifting it through my own superior thoughts.
I consumed and consumed and rarely produced, but when I did produce, I did it with integrity, or at least that’s what I told myself. When I found an audience of people who agreed with me, it sparked a giddiness inside. Human connection–who says that wasn’t what I was looking for? Who could deny me the pleasure of finding company in the safe, controlled internet spaces of social media?

As a wise person (doesn’t pride always sneak in dressed up as truth?), I flaunted self-control by limiting my posts to once a week or less. No one but my family knew or suffered the hours of being ignored by me, the time I spent looking at my phone.
One day I glanced up and saw my kids waiting patiently for me to put it down.

The self-control, by-the-book, it’s-just-social-media-not-porn! pharisaical I-am-technically-doing-everything-right notion swept right out of my mind.

My kids were watching: I was neglecting my real life.

Knowledge puffs up. It makes us feel important. I was as big as the michelin man, completely, one-hundred percent sure of myself. If someone had asked me why I thought it necessary to maintain a social media persona, I would’ve cited my dreams. This is just what I have to do to get my book published.

I gained nothing by consuming social media, nothing but excess knowledge and stress and indignation over other people whom I had zero control.

My best intentions, my most aware self, my integrity–it was all still fake, because I was under the influence of the world. I was a faithful servant to Distraction–a natural step for the worldly, but unnatural for the child of God.
I could see the ugliness of my idolatry reflected in the eyes of my kids. It needed to end.

In C.S. Lewis’s book, The Screwtape Letters, the fictional Uncle Screwtape, demon supreme, advises his young protege, Wormwood:
We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow’s end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.

Follow your dreams–it comes straight from Satan’s lips. This is a trick from the tempter himself, to ignore the beauty right in front of our faces and instead busy ourselves with hope for a future revolving around, well, me. It is idolatry dolled up in Adobe photoshop–to never, ever quiet the ambition; to seek glory, here and now.

I know me. I know the dangers of self-inflation and the ultimate price of praise. My book writing, once conflated with marketing, selling, and the pursuit of dreams–it all had major potential to let my eyes slip off the prize.

I’d be constantly getting in my own way.
It wouldn’t be worth any book I could write.
I tossed my proposal in the trash.

VeggieTales, the number one animated Christian series where goofy vegetables bounce around singing “Silly Songs” and regaling Bible stories, was created by the mastermind, Phil Vischer. Phil had a dream from the time he was a kid to make movies and shows that elevated TV by inserting Bible-driven morals. It took him years of hard work, borrowed money, and tedious hours and days of graphic animation–sometimes as many as 30,000 frames per one half-hour show. He was committed to a goal, a vision he’d had from childhood, to produce a hilarious, captivating piece of art–and he did it. Finally, after years and years, he was on top of the game, beloved by children and parents alike. He was the king of a kingdom he himself created. Better yet, he had hundreds of employees that were impacted by his Christian influence. He made his dreams come true and didn’t once compromise. What a marvelous example of how to do it, right?

But what began as an honest dream to influence current culture with Biblical truths spun out of control. He envisioned a Veggietales “DisneyLand” of sorts and borrowed money to break ground on a new office space. His goals for Big Idea to function as Biblical truth in a needy world became watered down as Vischer hired people that did not agree with his original vision. Ill-prepared to run a massive business, he partnered with the wrong people and made some big financial mistakes. At the height of his game, he was a part of a bad deal that fell through and with little warning he was in court being sued for all his money, his little Veggie friends stripped from him.

Reflecting on this difficult time, Vischer wrote in his memoir, “The more I thought about my intense drive to build Big Idea and change the world, the more I realized I had let my “good work” become an idol that defined me. Rather than finding my identity in my relationship with God, I was finding it in my drive to do “good work.”

“The more I dove into Scripture, the more I realized I had been deluded. I had grown up drinking a dangerous cocktail–a mix of the gospel, the Protestant work ethic, and the American dream. My eternal value was rooted in what I could accomplish. My role here on earth was to dream up amazing things to do for God. If my dreams were selfless, God would make them all come true. My impact would be huge. The world would change.”

As it grew, Phil’s dream became influenced by other people and a self-inflated sense of purpose. By the time he realized it, the matter was quite out of his hands.

The memoir ends with a solemn exhortation:

“…I am very serious when I say this, beware of your dreams, for dreams make dangerous friends. We all have them–longings for a better life, a healthy child, a happy marriage, rewarding work. But dreams are, I have come to believe, misplaced longings. False lovers. Why? Because God is enough. Just God. And he isn’t “enough” because he can make our dreams come true–no, you’ve got him confused with Santa or Merlin or Oprah. The God who created the universe is enough for us–even without our dreams. Without the better life, the healthy child, the happy marriage, the rewarding work.

“God was enough for the martyrs facing lions and fire–even when the lions and the fire won. And God is enough for you. But you can’t discover the truth of that statement while you’re clutching at your dreams. You need to let them go. Let yourself fall. Give up. As terrifying as it sounds, you’ll discover that falling feels a lot like floating. And falling into God’s arms–relying solely on his power and his will for your life–that’s where the fun starts.”

(Me, Myself, & Bob, Phil Vischer, 2006)

God is enough. He is enough. He is enough here and now, and He is enough when you let your dreams go– and especially when you let them go.

In the Closet: Busybody

The Average Pearl

In the Closet: Busybody

00:00 / 8 min.

In the Closet: Keeping Secrets with God in a not-so-secret world

Essay 4: Busybody

Eleven years ago, in the great year of 2009, my husband and I were poor paupers, two years removed from the lower standards of living the midwest provided. We had moved to Denver a couple years prior, renting a one-bedroom apartment just barely on our feeble paychecks. Now I was pregnant and had quit my job, and we were moving to the southwest corner of the state so he could begin managing a store for his company.

The first thing to do was find a place to live. We were a little horrified to realize it was going to be even more expensive to live in our new town, but we called up a local real estate agent and crossed our fingers anyway.

I don’t remember his name, but he had balding red hair and a defatigable attitude, promising us he’d find the perfect place for us. I sat in the backseat of his car and my husband in the front as the man showed us several hopeless options, from a house with dirt floors (two-hundred thousand dollars, a real fixer-upper) to tiny mountain cabins built as second homes for the wealthy (three-hundred thousand dollars and an hour’s drive from his work).

After a day or so of house-searching, I think our new friend realized we weren’t ready or even able to saddle ourselves to a mortgage, so we made the most of our hunt, chatting in the car, becoming the kind of fast friends whose two-day relationship was coming to an amiable close.

He mentioned we could find him on Facebook if ever we should wish to resume the real estate search. We had laughed–surely we could just call him on the phone! Surely he didn’t think his business had much to do with social media! Somehow, in our short encounter, he had divulged he was a Christian, and I will never forget what he said after that:

Facebook is going to change everything. It is going to change the way we do business, the way we do life.

He specifically mentioned he thought Facebook would, in the future, be the biggest tool the world has ever known for spreading the Gospel.

Eleven years later, I can see the first part of his prediction is true. Personally and professionally, social media platforms have become the arena where communication takes place, where proud homeowners pose in front of their new purchase, letting the whole world know. We can broadcast our life, make it a commercial for everything we think worthwhile. Everyone can see who has bought a house, how much they paid for it, where they bought it, how happy they are. It advertises a lifestyle and promotes the idea that success is within reach, that there is no higher pursuit than that of self-actualization. Our posts recommend and testify; they are the ultimate tool for word-of-mouth advertisement. We are glossier online, and everyone knows the advantages of making a good impression.

But as far as spreading the Gospel? What ground have we gained in the going-into-all-the-world command, the Matthew 28 instruction of Jesus? Has Facebook made our lives as Christians attract such attention that all the peoples of the earth are yearning to know Jesus? Has it broadened our worldview, has it opened our hearts to give ourselves generously over to the work of making disciples? Or have we, via the internet, “gone into all the world” and made nothing more of it than a show of our good side, the one that is internet-worthy?

I would counter that nothing is more anti-Gospel than self-promotion and giving the whole world access to every part of our lives, personally and professionally.

This is life as we know it, and yet it is a far cry from the life Christians are called to lead.

1 Thessalonians 4:11

Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands…

2 Thessalonians 3:11-12

We hear that some among you are leading an undisciplined life, doing no work at all, but acting like busybodies. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to work in quiet fashion and eat their own bread.

Paul exhorts–he urges the Thessalonians to make it their ambition, their dream, you could say, to put their hand to the plow and remain steadfast and single-minded in their worship. The word ambition in the Greek means something like a chief desire or something we yearn with eagerness to attain. It is a crucial marker of believers, that they find their satisfaction in God and no one else. They love living a quiet life.

How often have I checked out from this real life, let my hands slip to my device, looking for respite from the work to which I’ve been called? How many times have I made it my ambition to lead anything but a quiet life?

Don’t be a busybody, Paul pleads. Don’t you dare get in the way of yourself.

We’re to endeavor to live lives free of people pleasing, gossip, and strife by giving Loud a cold shoulder. Yet nowhere is this less apparent than in our very day in age!

As I wrote this chapter I was made aware of a promotion on Twitter for authors seeking representation for book projects. I hadn’t been on Twitter in nine years, but the opportunity intrigued me, so I logged on and pitched my book idea.
The entire day I obsessed over checking the analytics. I grew irritable when my kids tried to distract me from the event. I was discouraged when, ultimately, I realized my efforts were in vain. Not one publisher gave me even so much as a wink. I had, in the end, wasted my day and ignored my kids over a vague promise that my work “might” be considered. It would have been better if I’d spent the day writing (something I love to do) rather than worrying.

I only tasted dissatisfaction for one day, but the bootcamp lesson wasn’t wasted on me. I wonder if our whole trouble with “putting ourselves out there” is a matter of us getting in our own way.

I confess, I am desperate for the disciplined life. I want to make myself useful, productive. I don’t want to waste time, but inevitably, I do.
Those Thessalonians, those people who were looking forward to Christ’s return–they didn’t have a clue we would be here, thousands of years down the road, fighting the same battles with our flesh.

Some of them figured life didn’t matter too much, since Jesus would be back any minute.

Get to work, Paul was saying. No, seriously, get to work.

Work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
1 Thessalonians 4:11-12

We are to be quiet, and by being quiet, set an example. Our example will win the respect of outsiders.
And setting a quiet, disciplined example of how to live this life? Facebook can’t quite do it justice.

In the Closet: Pawns to be Tamed

The Average Pearl

In the Closet: Pawns to be Tamed

00:00 / 11 min

In the Closet: Keeping Secrets with God in a not-so-secret world

Essay 3

The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish woman tears hers down.

Proverbs 14:1

I kept a blog for nearly ten years before anyone ever read it. The settings were toggled to private, and only my aunt, a few friends, and one brother had permission to access my writing.

Over the years, as was typical in the kingdom of bloggers circa the 2010s, I posted my stream of conscience, day by day thoughts. I rejoiced, I complained. I posted pictures of my pregnant belly, kids and the funny things they say, silly stories, sewing projects and house renovations, recipes, travel recaps, musings on forgoing a career to stay at home, and veiled references to my struggling marriage (even silence speaks volumes, doesn’t it?). Ten years of this during naptime several times a week, because I loved to write, of course, but I also knew the seven people who read it were refreshing their screens and expecting an update from me. It was everything every other blogger was doing, except barely anyone saw it. Nearly 1,200 daily posts logged and my audience never included anyone I didn’t already send a Christmas card.

Daily I debated making it public. Believe me, I wanted to be known. In the midst of living a very lonely life on a mountain with a handful of kids (one whom we feared was showing signs of Asperger’s), I was afraid. I was timid and unsure. I was overprotective. I especially didn’t care to invite any extra interference and advice from distant and well-meaning relatives. But deeper than my insecurities of making myself known there was a sense that some things were meant to keep private, though I couldn’t explain it in words. It was an anthem to which I paid deepest respect: Not everyone needs to know everything. You have a right to remain silent.

The voice sounded like a wise old friend and I let it whisper over me as I typed out words that few eyes would ever see.

I printed these posts out on books. Whenever I pick them off the shelf and flip the pages, I am overwhelmed by the busyness of it. Like a diary, it packs almost too much incessant thinking and feeling and obsessive-compulsive recording of babies and tiny kids and their penchant to destroy my house again and again. It documents a thousand days of frustration with my living arrangements, relationships, dreams forsaken. I tried not to let my writing voice sound whiny, but it inevitably does, especially if you are reading page after page of potty training (and failing) episodes. It is nearly unbearable, and though I’d originally thought I’d pass it on to my kids as a fun memory book, I realize now I wish I hadn’t spewed just every old thought in black and white; much less printed it off. The writing that at the time was therapeutic is not endearing at this point. My voice–a mix I hoped struck a unique balance between Ann Voskamp and David Sedaris (beautifully poetic, sincere and ridiculously hilarious) –is mostly annoying and petulant. It is grating and loud–a well of bitterness mod-podged with self-deprecation. These are soul-bearing journal entries at best, no better than my elementary school diary where I swore I would be an Olympic figure skater someday despite living nowhere near an ice rink. I had better sense back then–I kept that miniature pink and white diary locked with a tiny key and well hidden from pesky older brother. Never did it hint at teetering on the precipice of something bigger.

In hindsight, I wonder how much time I wasted pursuing a weirdly private pipe dream of blogging. My writing did improve, I suppose, but maybe I should’ve been taking naps during naptime instead of stoking the fire in my bones to postulate and preserve posterity. God was a witness to these years, but at the time I was deeply unsatisfied with the thought. I wanted more attention, the type that would leave a comment and indulge my self-actualization. I wanted to document the difficult and the funny, yes, but I wanted witnesses that would attest to my becoming, to my forthcoming and well-deserved popularity. I secretly hoped I had it in me to be Pioneer Woman, who, somehow with a DSLR camera and a bit of free time, was able to re-popularize church cookbook recipes that called for apples, a tube of crescent rolls, and a can of Mountain Dew. I wanted to take macro photos of crumbs and spiders, spinning my own web of quirky, endearing snapshots-in-the-life. I wanted the internet to zoom into my humble life and shout out to the world, look here! She’s written a recipe you’ve never read before! She’s clever and witty! She manages to be creative and keep her house clean all at the same time! I wanted people to love me with comments and confessions– “in real life we could be best friends! You’re practically my twin!”

I wasn’t satisfied with my own gifts: the babies, the husband, the quiet life.

Now I feel ashamed to admit it: I wanted fame.

But I didn’t want to fail in public, and the small voice pestering me to not toot my own horn ultimately kept me silent and unknown. The blog, printed on five bound books, is a tome, my monument dedicated to a desire to be seen.

Obviously, I’m still a bit torn–me, the thirty-six year old mature woman who should be over it by now, grazing in greener pastures. I can’t lie: I’ll never know what could have been. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had made it all public. Would I have scored that book deal ten years earlier, would I have pursued my dream instead of interrupting it with the mess of extra babies and disguised blessings?

Looking back, at the time there were strained relationships in my life that needed mending. At the very least, they needed firm boundaries, and I was in no position to make my fake, fluffed up life a public service announcement to the masses. I didn’t really know who I was in the moment, only who I wanted to be. I constantly fought depression and self-doubt.

Since the era of blogging has sort of died out, taken over by social media accounts, I have discovered many of the authors I read at the time were also hiding secrets: crumbling marriages, obsessive disorders, suicidal thoughts, broken families. They somehow avoided certain topics altogether, and I bought what I thought was their honest-to-God truth, unaware of any slights of hand. I read their words and chalked it up to brilliant personal journalism. I ached for the connection and rapport my beloved bloggers had with their readers.

The voice persisted. You still have the right to remain silent.

It wasn’t fleeting. In fact, it stayed like an unwanted visitor on my front door. I was aware it might be Holy Spirit whispers, since it did sound so contrary to the spirit of the world, much like words Jesus would say.

Give to God what is God’s. (Mark 12:17)

It was heavenly wisdom that softly blew and fluttered the curtains of my soul.

I heeded the voice.

It’s only now I have finally come around to appreciating what it meant. Maybe the voice wasn’t trying to hush my ambitions of becoming a writer, but rather a reminder that recognition wasn’t what I ought to be pursuing, that maybe recognition wasn’t all it was chalked up to be. Let another man praise you and not your own lips, the wise proverb says.

Or maybe it was God Himself, the revealer of mysteries telling me to just wait. The Living Vine who hadn’t yet unfurled me as a branch because I was too immature in my convictions. I look back and thank Him for the whispers, not everyone needs to know. Truth be told, I was a fragile little thing. I was conditioning myself to put a positive spin on every minor detail, feeding myself and everyone else a waxed story. One gust of worldly encouragement, one word of praise in my direction could’ve well pushed me over the edge. In the throes of childbearing years and raising difficult kids my ears were perked up, my feet, flighty. I might’ve left my husband to pursue what I esteemed, might’ve lost more than I would’ve gained.

This is so counterintuitive to the culture in which we live. I think that’s why I recognized it as a supernatural voice–it is the opposite of what the world is telling us.

Want to build a following? Increase your influence, raise your voice? You deserve to be heard! Yes, every person has something to say! Find your own truth, live unapologetically! If you hustle, you can have it all.

But there is a price to pay for tweaking our story into a palatable PSA. Our desire to be known can easily morph into obsession to perform or to please. We risk becoming pawns to a world that wants to tame us–to become theirs instead of God’s.

Somewhere, woven deep in our fabric, we are aware of this sound wisdom. In the very beginning, in that hidden place, our Creator stamped His image onto us. He wrote His name on our heel, just like some Toy Story character. We belong to Him. It is a trap from the enemy to pursue other meaningless ends, and deep down, we know it.

In the Closet: Beautiful Things

The Average Pearl

In the Closet: Beautiful Things

00:00 / 4 min

In the Closet: Essays on Keeping Secrets with God in a not-so-secret world

Essay 2

Beautiful things don’t ask for attention.

-Sean O’Connell, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

My friend, Megan, likes to remind me I have an extreme ability to keep secrets. I had forgotten, but one time toward the end of my fourth pregnancy, I realized my little sister who lived two states away did not know I was even pregnant. I texted Megan for advice: Would you be upset if your sister didn’t tell you she was pregnant until she had a baby?

It was an unequivocal yes. Yes, she would be upset.

It might seem absurd, but to me there is something delicious about not sharing the tastiest morsel with just anybody. We lived for a time on a mountain where everything I did was a secret. For awhile, I considered regaling the beauty on Facebook. As I washed dishes in my kitchen sink, I looked out a window that framed a single peaked ridge, snow drifting down in perfect, fluffy flakes. It happened in an unending slow motion, a constant, breathtaking scene–God letting loose his storehouses, covering and purifying, bright enough to blind. The summer was no less magical–we stepped out onto a deck three hundred feet above the icy river which sourced our drinking water and sipped wine when the sun went down, listening to it roar over the boulders. Everything in creation was poetry to me, the pollen twinkling in the air mid-June, the fat yellow bees buzzing around my bed of flaming iridescent poppies, even the piles of poop the local bears left behind to remind us of our wildness. My kids were bred, born, and being raised mountain kids. We hiked sweet smelling mountains and splashed in the sparkling rivers, skied down our driveway, went sledding on marshmallow hills. In the evenings, with a bit of luck, my husband would get home from work early and I might go for a long run along the water at 8500 feet, sans strollers and kids. I revelled in it. It made the best kind of story that caught the most kind of attention–who wouldn’t be in awe of the wonder-filled life? Who could blame me for snapping pictures and wanting to share them? I could post a photo of the reservoir at sunset, the autumn aspens glowing and fruity pebble-reminiscent oak brush speckling the mountain, the still waters brushing the edges of the red cliffs, the silence of the thin air except for an eagle soaring a thousand feet above me.

It tempted me; it really did. If anyone had a picturesque life or reason to brag, I certainly did, no bokeh filters required.

But something kept me from spilling my secret life, the one that would have impressed all my highschool friends if I hadn’t gone off the record books for sixteen years. I honestly still cannot articulate it. My whys have never surfaced until very recently. All I knew was the intimate, giddy joy of keeping secrets.

The mountain life–cozy fires burning in the woodstove, majestic herds of elk crossing the twisty roads–I could tell everyone I know or I could keep it a secret to myself. The view from the kitchen sink? The bees and poppies and clear mountain streams? The truth is, they were bookended by some of the hardest years in our marriage. More than once I packed up my babies and toddler into their car seats and threatened to drive away forever. I might frame a great photo, but a liar I am not. I couldn’t bear the inauthenticity required to fake it. My photos, the proof of my perfect life, didn’t reflect the image of my desperate soul.

And so the joy and pain walked together, and slowly I learned I needed a shepherd and not an audience.

In the Closet: Coming Home to Someone

The Average Pearl

In the Closet: Coming Home to Someone

00:00 / 7 min.

In the Closet: Keeping Secrets with God in a Not-So-Secret World

Essay 1

…Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.

1 Thessalonians 4:11-12

In the middle of Missouri on a flat acre lot surrounded by fruit trees and poison ivy there sits a fairly decrepit house. The siding is mildewed. Green streaks run the length of the abode. Tiny saplings have sprouted in the gutters where helicopter seeds once landed and cozied into a trench of rotted leaves. They are a product of the midwestern greenhouse climate and an unhurried attitude of the dwellers below, a we’ll-get-to-it-someday approach often trumped by the more pressing concern of bushwhacking–er, lawn mowing.

It is summer. There is no breeze on this day, no relief from the humidity. The air is thick. The heat, relentless. In the house sits a woman, middle-aged, her head bent over the corner of a cluttered table. She is writing letters, paying bills, licking and stamping envelopes with an efficiency suited for an office receptionist. There is no air conditioning in her home, and an old oscillating fan slowly rotates its breeze in her direction, causing her short brown hair to lift slightly from her neck. She pauses, closes her eyes and arcs her back for a moment, enjoying the briefest respite.

She is my mother, and even 700 miles away I can see her in my mind. Nothing has changed for her in nearly thirty years. The bald cypress trees in the backyard are bigger, and there is a new puppy. But she makes the same trip to the clothesline on a beaten path every morning. She treads the same dewy grass, pulls the same old clothespins from the same old cutoff detergent dispenser, and hangs up the same old tea towels she’s always used.
Mom isn’t fancy. She doesn’t seem to need the things other people require for living. If pressed for an explanation on her simple life, she giggles, shrugs, blushes. To whom could she expound the benefits of burying dreams in the ground in pursuit of greater glories? Who would even listen? How could she possibly explain to the refined, climate-controlled, busy go-getters that she is content with a small teacher’s salary and summer poison ivy battles along the back fence? How could she begin to describe the thrill that comes from writing monthly checks at the kitchen table, giving money away instead of investing it in home improvement projects and the gaping, hungry mouth of self-indulgence?

How can she express the heart’s peace that comes from leaning into quiet, a life hidden?

It is a secret–this life holds more joy than can ever possibly be contained. Anyone who has ever had a grandma with a swinging screen door, pie on the counter, and a warm hug, arms open wide knows the fallacy in living loud. How could we walk away from Love, quiet and unassuming as it is? A wealthy man would sell his soul to be able to enjoy the menial, the anonymous.

Solitude. It is being home with oneself. It is coming home to Someone who wants you there, arms wide and welcome. It is a home you’d hate to leave. It is disdain for greener pastures.

I have been watching my mom live it for nearly four decades. It really is something fantastic and peculiar. Physical discomfort is her discipline, self-denial is her offering. Homebodying is her worship. To the casual observer it is unfamiliar. But I know exactly what it is: my mom radiates Jesus.

There came a point in the life of Jesus that he began hiding from the Jewish leaders. They wanted to kill him because he said outrageous things that undermined their know-it-all politics. But Jesus was popular with the nobodies, and so they followed him around to see what miracles and other tricks were up his sleeve.
As Jesus began to withdraw from the spotlight, his own brothers urged him to get out of Galilee and make a scene.
“You ought to leave here and go to Judea, so that your disciples may see the miracles you do. No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.” (John 7:3-4)

They were only brothers egging him on. They were humans pursuing human endeavors, and in their humanness they assumed Jesus was after what the rest of them wanted: popularity.

If they had been paying closer attention, they would have known his motivation for laying low. He told them,

“The right time for me has not yet come; for you any time is right. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that what it does is evil.” (John 7:6-7)

I am always blown away by how Jesus didn’t give a rip about what people–even his brothers–thought of him. He rebuked those folks who tried to distract him, deter him, or otherwise diffuse his God-talk. He was always talking about his Father, and how “if you knew me, you would know my Father also” (John 8:19).

He was always talking about Home. His mind never strayed from the Father. He was comfortable bringing it up:

I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.

John 17:4-5

His brothers couldn’t understand his longing for solitude, His desire to be Home.
Many people won’t.

But I have seen it in my own mother, in her simple satisfaction. She walks to the clothesline, unimpressive and inconspicuous. She sweeps her old floors, mows the same lawn, gives money to the same charities. No one knows. It’s doubtful she will find glory here on earth, because she wasn’t made for it.

But someday there will be glory for her.
She is keeping secrets with God.