Ashes and Life All at the Same Time
My personal Facebook page has been a roller coaster lately.
At the beginning of February, things really started to come together with the production of my book, which is exciting and life-giving. Also at the beginning of February, a close friend’s younger sister died unexpectedly. Later in the month the same friend’s father followed. I finalized my book edits. On February 11th, Austin, a young, sweet, autistic man who had been attending our church went missing. We didn’t find out about it until almost a week later, because due to weather, church got canceled on two consecutive Sundays.
My book got a cover and went into printing. I created a book launch team. Paul and I went on vacation. While we were on vacation, Austin’s body was found. Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, and although our “mid-church” (not quite low-church) Baptist congregation doesn’t observe, I was highly aware of the day and feeling really all mixed up—just like my Facebook page, which has loads of posts about Follower: How Getting Close to Jesus Brings You to Yourself, interspersed with bereavement fundraiser shares, and posts about Austin.
Both the grief (and frankly rage) and the joy feel valid and necessary, but they’re very challenging to hold in tandem, and even more challenging to express appropriately, here in this season set aside for acknowledging our mortality and transience.
Which is probably why, more than the brevity of the month, I don’t have as much to recap for you for February (also why I’m posting this on Friday instead of Wednesday), but there was some interaction here, so let’s recap that, at least.
Sometimes Saturdays
There were only two weekend posts in February, and only one of them was paywalled. I’m realizing that there are an endless number of unpopular takes I could share with you in that series, but also that framing them that way puts me in kind of a bad mood, so I’ll be taking a break from them for Lent, except for one free post later this month. At church we’re reflecting on select spiritual disciplines, so I’ll probably write some short meditations on those for paid subscribers for at least this season. In the meantime, here are last month’s Unpopular Takes:
Notes on Pilgrimage
Sometimes the best conversations happen at The Listening Post:
A Hope Story
When we decided to work through the book of Ruth at The Listening Post, it didn’t occur to me that we would be looking at it during the week of Valentine’s Day. Even married, I’m not a big Valentine’s Day person, but it does seem kind of timely.
Writing About Writing
I figured out who I really hope reads Follower. Actually it’s you.
It's for You
In keeping with all the boundary-setting lessons I’m learning, recently I’ve also discovered I really do need to figure out who my reading audience is. That’s what people in the publishing biz tell you, and I’ve just never been good at nailing that down—not for my writing, not for the Pilgrimage, and not for church either. I c…
Recommendations
I gotta say, I don’t recommend all this death, even though I know we are to remember our mortality. I do recommend acknowledging it and grieving, though. I also recommend acknowledging the joyful things, and my soon-releasing book really is giving me great joy, as are the interactions I’m having around it with new and old friends. I really hope you’ll get yourself a copy.
Wow, I’m so sorry to hear about Austin. My heartfelt condolences to his family and everyone grieving this loss during such a difficult time. I pray that God brings them comfort and strength.
I’m so sorry about Austin. 🧡