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The Gospels

April 2, 2015April 2, 2015 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

It’s spitting rain outside right now. A dreary start to the week, but I don’t mind. The house is quiet, all three children, two of which are sick, asleep in their beds. I can hear the tapping of rain against the roof and windows, a quiet rhythm, a beckoning.

Quietly, I set the percolator back on the stove, the smell of freshly ground beans fills the kitchen. I make my way to the fireplace, to the desk. Normally I don’t allow myself such a luxury during nap time, but I’m battling this head cold too and my body is asking for rest. I’m relieved, grateful for the excuse. My soul has been so full lately, aching to spill out.

This season of motherhood is busy. It pulls me in a lot of different directions. Aside from that, our culture spins on the wheels of distraction. So many things vie for our attention and seek our focus. We have to protect our focus, friends. What are the main things? What can I simply not live without? What is my mission, my purpose, my calling? This is a process we return to again and again, we get out of balance and find ourselves exhausted, overrun, and numb. We go back to the drawing board, we go back to our focus and we pare down what has come in and choked out our time and energy. We pare down what might be good but not best. We remind ourselves to stay fully present in this present season, that other seasons may come when our time must be managed differently. But for now, hand to the plow, girls, hand to the plow.

“Don’t work for shortcuts to God. The market is flooded with surefire, easy going formulas for a successful life that can be practiced in your spare time. Don’t fall for that stuff, even though crowds of people do. The way of life–to God–is vigorous and requires total attention.”
{Matt. 7:13-14 MSG}

You may know by now that I’m a resource geek. I love finding + sharing helpful books and tools to spur myself and others on in our journey to knowing Christ better and in displaying His glory in our lives. And we certainly do live in an age + current culture of endless resources. There are always more books, bible studies, online communities, and great companies to support.

The voices can crowd in and get a bit loud.

That’s how I found myself at the start of 2015, looking for a quiet refuge. Feeling that my soul has gotten a bit harried. Hurried and harried. I love bible study resources more than any girl you know, but that still small voice that I’ve come to know and trust has been calling me to quiet down. To come back to just the pure Word. No other voices. Just His.

I found myself aching to spend time with Jesus. Of course, I know all of Scripture is God-breathed, all of it is His inspired word, all of it points to Jesus. But suddenly I find myself aching to walk with Jesus and hear His red-letter words, to study and become exceedingly familiar with the three years of His precious life that we find recorded in the Gospels. I find myself needing just to journey beside Him on His earthly journey. What was He like? What were His priorities? How did He spend His time? Did He rest? Did He celebrate? Did He laugh? I remember watching the Bible series that came out not too long ago on the History channel, and feeling the winsome pull of this Jesus even imperfectly rendered in the series. So much so that when He went to the cross (on the show) I missed Him. I felt the missing of Him that I imagine the disciples felt when He was just gone. I wept from the missing of Him and the longing for full fellowship with Him promised to us in glory that I can only begin to understand through His indwelling Spirit now. A foretaste of glory.

Looking back, I had the best college experience imaginable. I never saw it coming. You see, I fell in love with Jesus in the pages of scripture when I was 18 years old, living on my own in the rugged snowy peaks of Breckenridge, Colorado. Something shifted then in my heart, and although I had been a Christian since childhood, I was suddenly hooked by God’s word. I couldn’t wait to study it and I couldn’t get enough. It began in the Gospel of Mark. With a commentary in hand and a journal, I read and studied and devoured God’s Word. Shortly thereafter, in a strange turn of events, God interrupted my plan and brought me back to the gentle mountains of North Carolina to college at Montreat. I fell in love with God there and He renewed and reformed me there. My understanding of Him was so broken and He opened my eyes to the edges of His hugeness, the mere fringes of His glory. I studied Outdoor Education, but I took + audited as many bible courses as I could possibly fit into my schedule. One my favorites was a course called “Gospels” with Bill Cain. He was the college Chaplain at the time, and he made a great impact on my life. He was so winsome, so joyful. I had never read and been immersed in the Gospels before like I was during that semester. I remember reading Yancey’s book “The Jesus I Never Knew” and just falling in love with Jesus all over again. I thought I knew Him, but He was a beautiful mystery.

Now, I am thirty years old, as old as He was when He began His earthly ministry, when He turned water to wine. My husband just turned thirty-three, the age Jesus was when He went to the cross. It’s hard to imagine that He completed His work at age thirty-three, a work so revolutionary it would forever divide history into two eras: B.C. and A.D. Before Christ + After Death. We mark our entire human history around those three years.

And I’m thirty. It’s sobering. I am called to be the literal and physical hands + feet of Jesus to the world around me. I am equipped with the same power He had to perform the miraculous. In fact, He said I would be able to work even greater works than His. And so, I’ve been in Matthew. I know I’ll dip into some other studies over the course of the year along with my church family and as God leads, but all year long, I intend to walk with Jesus in the Gospels, all the while asking Him to make it new. To make me new.

I can’t even begin to tell you how precious and fruitful it has already been. It’s like standing beneath a firehose with an open mouth, trying to drink it all in. It’s hard to read the Gospels and not be struck by the shift in paradigm from the kingdom of men (constantly at work building our own kingdoms) to the kingdom of God. It’s hard to read the Gospels and not see all the incongruities of my life and the life that Christ exemplifies and calls me to. It’s hard to read the Gospels and not feel a bit uncomfortable with how comfortable I’ve grown in the world–how the constant barrage + current of the world system continually and daily pushes against me, tugging me to go along downstream, to go with the flow. The kingdom life will look + feel like constant resistance, constant work. A life surrounded by needy people — people who need hope, love, life, healing, forgiveness.

I read Matthew chapter 9 and I am absolutely floored by its end. I literally read it in tears:

“Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.” (vs. 35-38)

Can you imagine Jesus in the flesh preaching the Gospel to you? Oh, to have heard that. What a mess we were, and yet He was moved with compassion. He sees how scattered and weary we are, bumbling about like idiotic sheep, scrambling, looking, bleating for a shepherd.

Listen to it again, in the Message translation:

Then Jesus made a circuit of all the towns and villages. He taught in their meeting places, reported kingdom news, and healed their diseased bodies, healed their bruised and hurt lives. When he looked out over the crowds, his heart broke. So confused and aimless they were, like sheep with no shepherd. “What a huge harvest!” he said to his disciples. “How few workers! On your knees and pray for harvest hands!”

It’s nearly more than I can bear. I can’t wait to fall more in love with Jesus through the Gospel accounts and remembering what He was busy about when He was busy on this earth in the frail bounds of a human body. If you’re looking for a place to read, if you’re curious who this Jesus is, consider joining me? Grab your bible and a journal and read just a little bit a day and record what He says to you. Write down what confuses you, what questions it raises. Chase all the rabbit trails. Take your time. Let’s grow very familiar with Jesus together, friends. Let’s fall in love with Him all over again.

Stay the Course

March 30, 2015 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

“The first hour of the morning is the rudder of your day”

– Henry Ward Beecher

If the first hour of the day is likened to a rudder, then Monday seems like the rudder of the week. Here’s to a good Monday, friends, and to staying on course throughout this week! I pray we are diligent in our work, tending to it with all of our heart and with great energy. And when we veer off course? May we turn to the One who can guide us back and redeem even our missteps for His glory.

“I ask—ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ, the God of glory—to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally, your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is he is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for his followers, oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him—endless energy, boundless strength!”
(Ephesians 1:18-19)

Catching up

March 26, 2015 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

Well, I bit off a bit more than I could chew. I’m terribly behind in posting reviews on the last few books I received so I’m going to lump them together here.

The Beauty of Grace by Dawn Camp

This book was a fun read, something easy and encouraging, a great way to wind down before bed. It is a compilation of writings on various topics such as purpose, surrender, trust, + worship, written by some of today’s most popular writers and bloggers. Some of the contributors were old favorites of mine such as Tsh Oxenreider, Ann Voskamp, Lisa-Jo Baker, Emily Freeman. Others such as Kristen Strong, Kayla Aimee, Bonnie Gray, Leeana Tankersley, Maggie Whitley, + Deidra Riggs, were new to me. There were many other contributors, each offering a short meditation or reflection on the topic, along with a scripture. Since it was a compilation of writers writing on a variety of topics, I would classify it as more inspirational rather than instructional.

Some of my favorite features are the accompanying photographs and the brevity of the chapters, as well as the fact that it’s arranged topically so you can flip through it to whatever interests you.

(Thank you to Revell Publishing for a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.)

Worry Less So You Can Live More by Jane Rubietta

I was drawn to this book…. for a friend. Ha. Just kidding. Yes, I admit it: I’m a worrier. Rubietta is a new author to me, though as an author of fifteen books, she is certainly not new to the writing scene. I was initially struck and refreshed by her writing, which was poetic + depthy. She writes this book to share her own story of moving from worry to delight and encouraging readers to do the same, and yet her style is such that you are drawn in and lost in her words. It reads gently, more like a memoir than a self-help book. Probably my favorite feature is how she ends each chapter in an application section with scripture, some provoking questions, and then prayer, called Votum, and a response from God, sung back over us, a Benedictus, all written by Rubietta herself.

She covers how to delight even in our most anxious seasons, the dailyness of God’s presence, the way worry boxes us in when God invites us to live in wide open spaces, how our tears are tools, and our difficulties are gifts that give us empathy. Truly beautiful. One not to miss.

A little excerpt for you:

“I quit reading fiction–too frivolous if people are perishing. No more cracking jokes. Somewhere along the journey I stopped laughing, lost all perspective and balance. Everything seemed overly important, everything an issue, whether it was paying two cents too much for a gallon of milk or gasoline (Good Christian Women save money, and furrow our brows while doing so) or being two minutes late for a commitment.

But all this seriousness is killing me. It’s killing my heart, probably literally, but also figuratively. Joie de vivre–joy of living, of life–is not a reality, only a fun French phrase. Isn’t the root of such dreadful seriousness…worry? And isn’t worry a misunderstanding of the God who carries the whole world in his hands?…

Forgoing delight is like an emotional vow of poverty, based on a poor understanding of God. Will God love us more if we live our devout and holy life without cracking a smile or having our heart turn somersaults over the sunset or the erratic path of a butterfly? As though God were a great big Curmudgeon in the Sky, with furrowed brows and a tight fist. This isn’t God the Abba-Daddy, this is God the judgmental, finger-pointing, shaming miser. But looking around, where’s the evidence of a God like that on this globe? Enormous generosity blossoms from the earth, drips from heaven, appears at the lip of the world every single morning and every single evening. Unfailingly generous, it seems to me, is this God we love and serve and maybe try to keep a safe distance from.”

(Thank you to Bethany House Publishers for a free copy in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.)

Own Your Life by Sally Clarkson

Oh, friends. This one is a good one! A great one. Clarkson is a trusted source of wisdom, a biblically grounded woman with a heart heavily inclined toward discipleship, a seasoned mother of adult children, a gifted and engaging writer. Sitting with this book feels much like sitting with Clarkson in a cabin in the snowy Colorado mountains over a cup of steaming tea as she reaches hands across the table and takes your hand and implores + encourages you to own your life. We live in an age of incredible distraction. All of our technology has afforded us unprecedented levels of busyness. As women, we need a call to live lives of great intention + purpose, lives grounded in scripture where we find our identity, our worth, and the very reason for our existence. Clarkson’s book is just such a siren call, reminding, encouraging, exhorting, all the while pouring out from her own deep well of lessons learned and life lived. What will your legacy be? Are you living today with your legacy in mind? Are you living carried to and fro by the whims of your circumstances? Maybe you would be helped by Clarkson’s book. I certainly have been! Rather than heaping on further guilt or a heavier burden to carry, Clarkson writes in such a way as to inspire and gently instruct and gives courage that we really can fulfill the purposes God has for us individually while we walk out our time here.

A little excerpt for you:

“My counsel to all those crying out for help: in order to move from chaos to order, we must each make plan that will move us away from a never-ending flurry of activities toward God’s design for our lives. That plan begins by identifying the drainers and sources of chaos that steal our spiritual and emotional energy. To move forward, in other words, we must first recognize what is holding us back…Often there is a subtle confusion about how life ‘got’ this way. Nonstop activity is a cultural badge of honor that supposedly means a person is making progress. Busyness falsely promises productivity. Frankly, our culture encourages us to take on more and more, and busyness and distraction can be addicting. Yet we are drifting further from the life God designed us to live. Surely this is not the abundant life God promised. Is there a better way to find purpose and satisfaction?”

(Thank you to Tyndale Publishers for a free copy of the book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.)

Happy reading, folks! As always, I love to hear from you: what you’ve been reading and enjoying lately?

Keep Plowing

March 9, 2015March 9, 2015 MarthaKimball3 Comments

Every year I follow along with the Passion Conference via the live stream. Sometimes it’s just sheer piercing pain to follow along, to hear the speakers calling out to and calling up the next generation, speaking to purpose and destiny. For the past three years I’ve followed along while nursing babies, while recovering from birth in the hospital, while washing dishes in the sink and surrounded by scattered toys and laundry basket.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not complaining. I cannot express enough how much I adore this season of being a momma. It was always a dream of mine to be living THIS right here, babies and a house and just the ordinary work of the home. Maybe you think that’s a small dream, I don’t know. When Brandon and I found out our little firstborn was on her way, I didn’t have some big career I was leaving behind like so many of my momma friends. I had been working service jobs for some time since graduating from college. So it wasn’t a hard thing to switch to stay-at-home-momma mode. It has been the greatest joy of my life!

Still, you get a bit in the trenches of it and then you tune into something like Passion and the other ambitions of your heart, the other ambitions for great kingdom work around the world are stirred up again. They are remembered again. Oh yes, that’s who I used to be. I mean, that’s who I still am. Somehow and somewhere, buried under the piles of laundry, bills, dishes, and dark-circled eyes. Somewhere beyond this little world the big world is still spinning.

It’s hard to not be set aflame with great desire to see the nations glad in God when you watch something like Passion. And then you sit there amidst your four little walls and the temptation is to feel small. What is this that I’m doing here?

And then the dangerous question, the question that comes up so often in my heart: Is this enough, God?

Is this enough, in light of all You’ve done for me, Jesus, to just be here cleaning toilets, filling tummies, reading stories, teaching manners, nursing babies, mediating sibling rivalries, folding clothes, running errands? Is this a worthy way to spend my days? Is there more I should be doing? Something more important?

I think any momma who is honest will admit she asks herself that question.

Last night I watched + listened to Christine Caine speaking from 1 Kings 19. It’s well worth your time to go and read the account in its entirety. She was speaking about Elisha, how he got his beginnings in ministry. Did you know that second only to Jesus, he worked the most recorded miracles in Scripture? Elijah found him plowing, and he became Elijah’s assistant.

Did you catch that? Elijah found him plowing. There he was, just working his field, behind a long row of oxen’s rear ends. A place of anonymity. A place of slow progress and slow returns. God found him busy working. God found him. While he was being faithful in the mundane, the unglamorous + irreverent, the dirty, the small, the stinky, and anonymous work, God saw him. God came to him there and gave him a ministry.

Christine Caine was making the point that we simply cannot be resistant to work. We must be busy working, right where we are, wherever we can be. If we want to be greatly used in the kingdom of God, we simply cannot be afraid of plain hard work.

Are we looking for importance? For a big name? For a glamorous position? For esteem? Success? Money?

As I’ve gotten deeper into parenting (while, admittedly, I am still quite the newbie to parenthood), I’ve gotten better at learning what I can feasibly take on and what is going to put too much strain on the family. It’s still so hard to say no sometimes. Yes, there is pressure and guilt, whether real or imagined, from a culture (even the Christian culture) that places such a high premium on productivity, activity, and busyness.

There are a lot of opportunities that I would love to be a part of. Even hearing about global and foreign needs can make me so restless at home. Is this really enough, God, when children are starving? When children are being trafficked? When there are so many who are still unreached? It feels wrong in some ways to just be investing into my own home and children when the need is so great. Yet I know it is “my field” right now.

My husband and I recently went on a little “visioning” date for the New Year and over the course of a few hours worked through Jennie Allen’s “dream guide” and then discussed it together. One of the things I am most convicted about afresh this year is to be wholly given and devoted to my primary field, which is Brandon and my children. I’m often busy mentally at home with girlfriends, fellow mommas, this blog space, and responding to needs in these spheres. While that’s all so good and important, it can’t be that I’m neglecting my kids in order to “minister” elsewhere. I’m so convicted that, as for me, the very best and firsts of my strength must be given to my immediate family (1 Tim. 5:8). If there are scraps of time and energy and resources left, then of course, I am eager to invest it in others as much as I am able. For me the struggle is often getting that backwards, and the result is a husband and children who are getting the scraps and leftovers.

But if you’re like me do you ever wonder, what, then, do I do with these burning desires in my heart to participate in these other kingdom works? When I’m aching to go to Africa but have no means? When there are needs at church that I simply cannot logistically work out a way to help with?

Maybe it’s not revolutionary to you, but the realization hit hard last night while watching Passion. “PRAY the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.” (Matt. 9:38) Send the workers into the harvest, Lord! My field here right now may be very small, very tucked away on an obscure little anonymous and unseen plot of land. But I can pray. I can pray the Lord of the harvest to equip and send workers out into the field. I can pray for souls to come to salvation, for all nations to be made glad in Him. I can pray for daily opportunities to plant seeds while I’m plowing this little muddy field. I can trust that at some point, I will be the worker He sends into that field. But in the meantime… this right here is the field I’ve been sent to: For the one so desperately wanting to contribute, you are contributing to the work by raising children up in the fear + admonition of the Lord. God has entrusted you with these children, these precious lives, and you, in all the world, are the best equipped to love, to suffer long with, and train up these little lives. That’s why He gave them to YOU. If you don’t invest in them, who will?

Don’t miss this precious and most important work right in front of you because the global need is beckoning and your former freedoms haunt.

With that said, let’s not discredit prayer as a major contribution. But, see, it too is unseen. It feels small. It feels unimportant and, once again, anonymous. God sees. God hears. The God who beckons us to pray for Him to send out workers, He will honor that prayer with a harvest. A harvest of workers in fields where we cannot work.

If we are not willing to grow smaller in our labors for Him we can never expect to be used greatly by Him. It is the humility of our plowing the prepares us to serve Him in more public endeavors with humility. You see, while we are busy at our plows, He is also turning the soil of the hardened ground of our hearts, breaking up the hard clods of pride there, making us soft, broken, pliable, ready, available, open. Preparing us, accustoming us to decreasing, that He might increase.

What an incredible God we serve, who both calls and enables us to co-labor with Him. What an incredible God, who always reminds us that the servant cannot be greater than his Master (John 13:16), who takes us from one place of serving to another. In the end, no matter what plow He has sovereignly placed in our hands, let us serve Him there with great humility and joy. Let Him find us working!

The Discipline of Play

February 20, 2015February 20, 2015 MarthaKimball5 Comments

Somewhere along the way I traded exploration, creativity, imagination for utility. Somewhere along the way I decided usefulness trumps play. When time is short, and the reality of the darkness of our world creeps in, and work threatens to suffocate, who has time for art? Who has time for recreation? Who has time for pleasure? When my Christian brothers + sisters around the globe are losing their heads for their faith, how can I justify sitting idly and losing mine in a book?

I think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great theologian and pastor in Germany during the Nazi regime, desperately fighting against the dominance of the Nazi mindset and theology, its putrid sectarianism creeping into Christ’s very church. What a time to live in! Believers during that time were facing intense persecution and the daily knowledge that their time was short, their lives were at risk. Hardly was there time to waste when doctrines must be fought for and upheld, lives must be rescued.

And yet, even in the midst of this time of war, Bonhoeffer, who led + taught a seminary, regularly included recreation as part of the seminarians disciplined life. Did you catch that? He made sure they had time to P L A Y. Who could possibly think about playing in a time of such great risk and suffering?

But the reality is, who can think at all if one doesn’t have the release found in play?

One of Bonhoeffer’s students said,

“Bonhoeffer wanted a genuine, natural community in the Preacher’s Seminary, and this community was practiced in play, in walks through the richly wooded and beautiful district of Pomerania, during evenings spent in listening to someone reading, . . . in making music and singing, and last not least in worship together and holy communion. He kept entreating us to live together naturally and not to make worship an exception. He rejected all false and hollow sentiment.” (I Knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p.155)

Sometimes when the world is spinning crazy and threats of war overwhelm, we must remember our humanity, we must still honor the creativity with which our Creator instilled in us. He made us to be creative in His image. He made us to be moved by music, to be triggered by the beauty of nature toward mediation on His divine attributes. When we are tired and weary, we must discipline ourselves to play.

We must make art in the face of war.

And even in the weariness of our regular work, we must sabbath and refresh our souls.

Something God has been teaching me lately is to honor His creativity in me, the desires I have to pursue the arts. It was more natural to me as a child; I have journal after journal of poetry, drawings + scribblings, and stacks of songs I had written from my younger years. Then I “grew up” and gave all of that up in the name of maturity, adulthood, in the name of pursuing God. Somehow I separated “creating” from true spirituality, no longer seeing it’s use in the Kingdom work.

But God is calling me to be a child again in my creating. To honor the longing to write, to get back to the work of play. Plain and simple play, play that isn’t for any purpose other than play. No agenda, no hoped-for-outcome. For a utilitarian like myself, this is a discipline!

So, yesterday, after the kids were napping and my household tasks were mostly done, I sat down with a paintbrush + paper. I’ve never worked with watercolors before, never really painted much before. It was humorous to me how many times I got nervous about what I was doing, afraid to “mess it up,” and literally had to say out loud to myself, “This is just play. Just fun.”

This was the outcome (and, not pictured: a restful, happy me):

Let’s take time to play, let’s discipline ourselves to play when all the world is telling us that only what is profitable, only what is measurable is valuable.

Who knows what we could create? Who knows what beauty we might bring forth?

The Fringe Hours

February 17, 2015February 17, 2015 MarthaKimball3 Comments

“The glory of God is man fully alive.”
St. Irenaeus

It was the first hike we’d been on in awhile and it was fresh air to my soul. I had had a hard labor with my second born and also a very slow recovery. I was fully wrapped up in my newfound role as “Mommy” to my two precious little ones, and the days were full. But on that hike, I remember hearing a quiet whisper in my soul, like the whistling whisper in the pines: “Remember who you are.”

I snapped a picture of our chacos, my husband and I, to remember. We met leading backpacking trips for an outdoor program, but we had spent little time nurturing that part of our hearts since having kids.

Fast forward a few months…

It was “that” time of day again. You know what I’m talking about, if you have little ones. The bewitching hour, the 5 o’clock melt down. I was hurrying to get dinner on the table, while my three-year-old daughter and one-year-old son squabbled and whined around my feet. I was pregnant with our third, and it had been a long day. One of those days where you are literally counting the minutes until your husband gets home. And banking on the fact that when he walks in the door, you are beelining it to the bathroom for a quiet moment. Or twenty.

Hot steam from the oven rising in my face, waves of nausea rolling over me as my body was telling me dinner needed to be ready soon, and of course, the phone rings. My husband calling, saying he would be late again. The realization sinks in that I’ll be wrangling these two wild ones into the bath and pajamas and bed on my own again, another night. In that moment, it’s hard to hold back the tears. But I surrender to the inevitable and get back to work.

A few hours later when my husband is finally home and we’re catching up about the day, he’s asking me if he can go on a sailing trip that weekend with his dad and that’s when I sort of have a break down. Alone again with the kids? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I adore my children! But the hard thing sometimes about being a mother is your job doesn’t end at 5pm. You don’t get to leave the office and come home. You are always on-call. Even in my sleep, there’s a part of me that’s listening for anything out of the ordinary, listening for that child who might need me.

That’s when I had a break down of sorts. That’s when I realized things were just sort of out of balance. With my husband training for a marathon, he was leaving for long runs early in the morning, sometimes as early as 4 am, and then sometimes not getting home until the kids were already in bed. I felt like a single parent some days. But as soon as I felt the words, “I need a break!” rising like a scream in my soul, I felt something even stronger rise up: guilt. A break from my kids? What kind of mother says that?

I didn’t begrudge my husband for what he needed to do and for the responsibilities he was juggling. I just began to realize I needed to start protecting a little bit of time for myself to get away and turn off the constant “ON” button in my brain.

When all this began pouring out in a hot mess of tears, my sweet husband was more than happy to accommodate. He agreed, it was important for me to have some time to step away and just do what would reenergize me. We began working some things into our schedule, and he was persistent in asking me if I needed some getaway time on the weekends. At first, I continued to feel guilty taking this time, whether it was just to grocery shopping without the kids, or go out for a cup of coffee with a friend.

I couldn’t shake this sense that I really needed to be there for everything. Like it was wrong for me to not be there every night to tuck them into bed, or to not be there when they got up from their naps. I couldn’t shake the sense that I felt like I needed to “please everyone to the point of emptiness” (Fringe Hours, p. 41). But we pressed on.

With practice came more freedom. It became easier to let go, to see that my kids really enjoy having some time alone just with Daddy. It was amazing to see how a little time away refreshed and reenergized me to jump back in to my tasks at home. It felt like I was coming alive again, enjoying my family more instead of being irritated at everyone for always asking for more.

You see, I believe Jesus teaches us that we are to serve from a place of overflow, not emptiness. We are to be so filled up in Him first, and then from that place, we pour out to others what He has given to us (Luke 6:45, John 4:14). Even Jesus, in His perfection, pulled away frequently from all others to a quiet place alone with His Father for refreshment. If the Son of God needed to refresh Himself in order to best serve the world, how much more do we?

This is why I think Jessica Turner’s book, The Fringe Hours will be a wonderful help to many women who find themselves worn down, weary, never making time for themselves, and often drowning beneath the effort to please everyone to the point of emptiness.

I can’t tell you how many friends have talked with me about this particular struggle, the struggle to find time to do the things they love. Many believe that we simply have to forego those hobbies or passions during this season of motherhood, and while I agree that different seasons of life allow for different freedoms, “we must not confuse the command to love with the disease to please” (Fringe Hours, p. 45). I think sometimes we wrongly assume that Christ’s call for us to serve others means we should be haggard, depleted, always giving and never resting. I think sometimes we think the more worn out we are, the holier we must be, and we wear our exhaustion like a badge. God made us whole people, with a body, a mind, a heart, a soul. We are to tend to these aspects of our being out of reverence to Him and as part of worship to Him (Romans 12:1).

What are we teaching our daughters? I look at my now 4-year old girl and I wonder what her mother looks like in her young eyes. Does she look like an empty shell of a woman, always bedraggled, wearing yoga pants, exhausted, and slaving away over chores or running the kids around to various activities? Or does she see a woman who is enjoying life while being a momma? A woman who is still herself, still loves the things she always loved, makes time to play guitar, to hang out with girlfriends, to pursue creativity, making things with her hands? Does she see a woman who is bubbling over with life? A woman who is fully invested as her mom, but still has passions and ambitions? Or does she just see a tired, irritable woman?

Jessica Turner, the lovely lady behind the popular lifestyle blog The Mom Creative, didn’t just write this book from her own intuitions about women and how they use their time. She surveyed over 2,000 women and conducted research, and then drew from her findings to write this book. The Fringe Hours is meant to help women take back pockets of time that they already have and utilize them in order to pursue the things they love.

This book is super practical with tons of tips and ideas for how to better manage your time and also to discover creative ways to fit your passions into your day. For example, research shows that every person waits on average 45-60 minutes per day. Jessica discusses ideas like planning ahead and keeping a book with you, a needlework project you’re working on for a friend, or notecards to write encouraging words to a loved one while you wait. She discusses barriers to self-care such as guilt, comparison, and self-imposed pressures. She helps you identify some of your old passions and gives many ideas to encourage you to continue pursuing those things, even if it looks entirely different in your current season of life. She also discusses ways we can identify areas in our lives that need more attention

One of my favorite features of the book was that it was interactive with journaling sections peppered throughout each chapter, causing me to respond and record my reactions and goals as I read.

If you find yourself sort of drowning beneath the waves of busyness in your life, this book will be a great help and advocate for you to spend your time well and invest in what truly matters so that, ultimately, you can better glorify God.

Here’s a little trailer from Jessica! Also, you can find out more about the book + read the first chapter HERE.

F O U N D

February 12, 2015 MarthaKimball2 Comments

“I waited patiently for the Lord;
And He inclined to me,
And heard my cry.
He also brought me up out of a horrible pit”

{Psalm 40:1-2}

Morning came so slow. The dark lingered so long. The silence of it all was deafening. We cried out to God, reached for Him, we waited. We didn’t hear Him speak. We asked Him if this would be it, if this would be His time for us to come home. He didn’t answer. We clung to each other, kept each other awake, too afraid to fall asleep and wake to find the other one of us frozen to death. We did math equations and quizzed each to check each other’s lucidity. We both seemed to go in and out of being clear-headed. The weakness we each felt was terrifying: we knew now that we would not be hiking out of this canyon. We slowly acknowledged that we would have to wait for rescue. We prayed and hoped others were already looking for us. We talked about what everyone was probably doing at that very moment. We talked about how hard it would be on mom and dad if we didn’t make it out alive. We wondered if they’d ever find our bodies.

Sometime in the middle of the night, we both began to despair. We were already feeling so labored in our breathing, in our shivering, so weary of the cold. We began to feel like we didn’t have much more time. It was at this point that we began to hear the faintest sound, no, actually we could feel it, too. The faintest hum of a motor. The slightest hint of vibration in the ground. The sound grew louder and then would fade out again. It was a shot of adrenaline! We knew that sound: snowmobiles! They were looking for us. We yelled a few times from a small hole we made in the roof of our snowcave. We yelled when we heard the motor stop. Then we’d hear it again. We clung to that sound. It was the faintest whisper of hope, but it kept us going. It literally sent a surge of warmth through us every time we heard it. We’re going to be okay. It’s only a matter of time now.

Just before dawn, the sound stopped. The weariness set it again. All I wanted was to get off the snow, to get off the constant life-sucking, warmth-sucking ice beneath me. I could feel my skin prickling with freezer burn against the constant wet cold.

The faintest hint of light seemed to filter through the snow above our heads. It seemed to only get colder. I began to fade a bit, whether from sleep-exhaustion, whether from cold, I don’t know.

Sometime around that point we began to hear the distant chop-chop-chop of a helicopter. It was so faint and muffled, and I was in such a fog mentally I couldn’t identify it at all. Jennie began to get excited again, sure that someone was looking for us, and telling me it was a helicopter, but I couldn’t grasp it. I had no idea in that moment what a helicopter was, all I could think of was “cold…. cold… cold.”

We heard the helicopter here and there, sometimes louder, sometimes not at all, and I couldn’t even tell you for how long. I didn’t care at that moment. Then suddenly it was close. Louder, louder, louder and Jennie began yelling, “Martha they’re going to find us! They’re right above us! They need to see us!”

The sound was deafening, and she burst through the roof of the snowcave, waving wildly and screaming at the helicopter that was then circling just a few dozen feet above us, just above the trees, so close we could easily see the pilot + scout smiling down at us, grinning from ear to ear and making hand signals, telling us they’d be right back. Then they flew off.

Within twenty minutes or so, we heard some whistling in the trees, and two men snowshoed into our clearing. We couldn’t stop beaming and laughing. “Do you believe in God? Because He is definitely looking out for you,” one said as he came into the clearing. “YES!” We cried. We talked with them about what happened, as they quickly checked our fingers and toes and looked us over, handing us each a snickers bar to eat. The other rescuer looked down into our small burrow in the snow, our shabby snow cave, and paused. “That’s what saved your lives right there,” he said, as he snapped a couple pictures of it. We then hiked down with them to a bigger clearing that the helicopter could manage to land in, and we jumped in and were whisked away from the wilds and back to civilization. Back to safety, to family, to warmth, to the unexpected surprise of several news agencies waiting to interview us as we stepped off the Flight for Life helicopter at Summit County Hospital.

It was all over.

We managed to come out of it with very mild hypothermia and minor frostbite on our fingers and toes. Helicopter Pilot Pat Mahaney informed us that we were his first live extraction in 25 years of search + rescue. We were shocked. We began to hear the stories from the other side. We told the rescuers how much it meant to us through the night to hear them sweeping the bowl on the snowmobiles, how it seemed to literally keep us alive. They looked at us confused, and said, “No one was searching through the night. We began searching in the afternoon after we received the call (from my brother Andrew), and had to call off the search through the night because of weather conditions. We never used any snowmobiles. In fact, the whole pass road was shut down to any traffic, so you wouldn’t have heard any motorized vehicles.”

We still have no explanation for what we heard. But we both heard it, we felt it through the ground ever so faintly. And it was a big part of what kept us alive and fighting.

We later found out the temperatures dropped that night -21 degrees with windchill. If we had chosen to keep hiking instead of hunkering down in the snow for the night, the story would have ended very differently.

There were many other details we learned from the rescue teams that were searching for us that night that cemented for us the certainty that God’s hand was all over this, that He was working in the smallest of details to ensure our survival.

In the immediate months that followed, life looked different through my eyes. As a teenager, you truly do think you’re invincible, and our experience shattered that. I knew with a certainty that I wasn’t just here by accident, but that God had given me the gift of life again. That He wanted me to know He had a plan for me. He wanted me to know that I was alive on purpose. He wanted to save. Reading back through my journals, I didn’t speak or write much to the whole experience. Only one little blip about feeling it all bottled up inside and not knowing how to process it.

And then today, it’s hard to believe 14 precious, full, lovely years have passed. I have been given all this time. I’m more aware than ever what a gift it is. And these three precious miracles:

“I sought the Lord, and He heard me,
And delivered me from all my fears.”

{Psalm 34:4}

L O S T

February 11, 2015 MarthaKimball2 Comments

February 11, 2001.

It looked much like this when we set out that day. The wind was raging wild gusts, threatening to just pluck us off the ridge and send us into oblivion. That’s what drove our decision to hike up the peak behind the bowl, the peak in the background that you see pictured here.

The further we hiked on our usual route around the Loveland Pass bowl on the Continental Divide in Colorado, the more tracked out and ice-crusted we realized it was, so we headed to the peak behind the bowl. It looked fresh and promising and untouched. We wanted a hard workout and we wanted a sweet ride back on our snowboards.

That decision, that little decision could have ended our lives that day. I was sixteen, my sister, Jennie, was twenty.

We rode down that peak after climbing as close to the summit as we dared, given the strong winds. The sun was stretching low across the sky, we had gotten a late start that Sunday. We strapped in to our boards and had a sweet few minutes making our lines down that peak. We soon reached the bottom and realized it was much flatter than it had appeared from the top. We couldn’t ride any further, so we unstrapped to hike back up to the Loveland Pass bowl.

Unfortunately, the snow was much deeper than we had anticipated. We were post-holing up to our waists, sometimes our chests. We quickly realized it would be impossible to hike back up where we had come from against that kind of snow with the equipment we had (which was only our snowboards). So we attempted to follow the slope downward, hoping to meet back up with the Pass road on the other side. The hiking was slow plodding, we were exhausted, wet, hungry + thirsty. We had a few ounces of water between us and our uneaten lunches were waiting for us back in our brother’s car. He and a friend were riding close to where we had parked at the top of Loveland Pass.

The sun slipped behind the peaks and within minutes our situation began to worsen. Temperatures immediately began to drop, and we began to realize we had a long way to go and very little daylight. We had now hiking below treeline and came to a clearing where we were able to look out and get our bearings. We were expecting to see the white peaks on the other side of the Loveland Pass road, believing we were in the trees just above the road. Instead, we saw a tree covered mountain ahead of us, between us and the road. Even fourteen years later, that image is burned in my memory.

Thats when a panicky pit formed in my stomach as the realization hit like a punch: there was no possible way we would make it over that mountain and down the other side in the approximate hour of light we had left.

It was terrifying and devastating. My sister and I were both in tears at this point, but not panicking. We quickly shifted gears. We had a little light left and we needed to make some sort of shelter before it was too dark and cold to do so. We began digging/burrowing a hole down into the snow and making a sort of opening big enough for us to fit in. A snow cave. Jennie had heard about it on some survival movie she had seen.

While she worked on that, I trudged out a large S O S in the snow in the clearing we had stopped in, trembling from the fear as much as from the cold. We stuck our brightly-colored snowboards up in the snow just in case someone would see them. It was strange, but instinctively we already knew we would be needing rescue. We were saying our plan was to get up and keep hiking at first light, but we were scrawling our pleas for help in the snow. We hadn’t had food or water now for about 12 hours and had fully exerted ourselves hiking in the deep conditions. We now realized we had at least another 12 hours of waiting to drink water. We knew our brother and friend, as well as our family would soon realize we were missing (we had planned to meet back up with our brother earlier that afternoon to drive back down to Denver together). We figured they may begin looking for us. We hoped.

The temperatures dropped. Dusk was settling in. All was quiet. Silent. We could barely look at each other for sake of the gravity of our situation, and the weight of the realization of how foolish we had been. We knew once we crawled in that hole in the snow, we were committed. We would be spending the night in our sopping wet gear with no food or water in the frigid February backcountry snow of Colorado.

We crawled in head first. We pulled some branches over the opening of the snowcave and packed snow around the piney fronds until we could basically seal the opening shut. We could see a little light through the snow above our heads but mostly, it was dark.

We were shivering, talking, crying off and on. Talking about our plan for the morning to get up and keep hiking as soon as it was light. We were praying. We were quiet. We worked at staying warm and staying awake. We sang hymns. We cried out to God. We waited. It was dark.

Beauty

February 9, 2015 MarthaKimball2 Comments

Is there a purpose in beauty? Why are we naturally drawn to it, inclined toward it? Why are we moved by it? Science has proven that an infant’s eyes linger longer on a more attractive face, long before socialization would play a role in their preference. In other words, even before we could be “taught” to enjoy beauty, we do. We inherently do. Is this a result of sin? Or is this a part of the image of God stamped on us? Could it be, as N. T. Wright calls it, an echo of a Voice? A beckoning within? Given to us, implanted within us, to draw us toward Something? These questions matter to me because I think often about the way I respond to beauty, the effect it has on me, my enjoyment of it, and the purpose of it all. In my opinion, how we answer these questions may seem inconsequential, but in truth has a great impact on the way we live out our faith before the Lord.

I love these words by N. T. Wright:

“The Christian tradition has said, and indeed sung, that the glory belongs to God the creator. It is his voice we hear echoing off the crags, murmuring in the sunset. It is his power we feel in the crashing of the waves and the roar of the lion. It is his beauty we see reflected in a thousand faces and forms.

And when the cynic reminds us that people fall off crags, get lost after sunset, and are drowned by waves and eaten by lions; when the cynic cautions that faces get old and lined and forms get pudgy and sick–then we Christians do not declare that it was all a mistake. We do not avail ourselves of Plato’s safety hatch and say that the real world is not a thing of space, time, and matter but another world into which we can escape. We say that the present world is the real one, and that it’s in bad shape but expecting to be repaired. We tell, in other words, the story we told in the first chapter: the story of a good Creator longing to put the world back into the good order for which it was designed. We tell the story of a God who does the two things, which, some of the time at least, we know we all want and need: a God who completes what he has begun, a God who comes to the rescue of those who seem lost and enslaved in the world the way it is now.”

{N. T. Wright, Simply Christian}

What do you think? Does beauty matter?

ps. If you haven’t read Simply Christian, it is one book you should definitely read in your lifetime. Period. Probably on my list of top ten books I’ve ever read.

the birthday boy

February 2, 2015February 3, 2015 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

Every baby, every life, is a miracle. But this guy? He is a MIRACLE.

He was a fighter from the start. Born three months early, weighing only 3 lbs, he came out screaming. That his lungs were formed enough for him to scream was the first sign that this little guy was going to be a fighter and was probably going to be ok.

He spent weeks in NICU fighting to get the start in life that most full-term babies have, and the next two years fighting one scary illness after another (such as viral meningitis and emergency surgery for an incarcerated hernia) to catch up to the health and growth that full-term babies have.

It seems so much was against him from the beginning, that something wanted to snuff out his existence before it even began. And yet his young parents fought for his life on their knees and in the community of believers, praying him through those first two exhausting scary years. They can attest to a number of miraculous times that God healed Brandon in those first two years of life.

We have an enemy in this life who lives only to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). Jesus tells us the devil was a murderer from the beginning (John 8:44). He is pictured by Peter as a roaring lion, roaming about seeking whom he may devour (1 Pet. 5:8). He is an opportunist, a smart + centuries-practiced adversary, an expert in human beings after years of studying and working to wreak havoc and destruction. Like a lion, he would seek the weakest and easiest targets to devour. What is weaker, what is more vulnerable and defenseless than a baby?

In his adolescent years, the enemy of his soul made other attempts to destroy him, to wipe out his joy, his effectiveness, his confidence. He was successful for a season and inflicted some deep wounds. Yet God’s hand was on Brandon’s life and over the course of the 10+ years I’ve known Brandon, I’ve seen God at work in him, pursuing, healing, guiding, restoring. It’s been the privilege of my life to get to peek in on that process, to get to share in it and pray for him, knowing some of his private battles better than anyone else on this planet (as of course, he does the same for me in my own struggles + brokenness).

And now? He’s one of the strongest guys I know. I tease him that his legs are shorter because he was a premie and just grew sort of funny. 🙂 But he really is incredibly strong. I’ve never known anyone like him when it comes to endurance. Being that we’ve led multiple backpacking trips together and have been in some hairy situations, I’ve seen him persevere at great lengths and I’ve never seen him quit. When more is asked of him, I see him consistently rise to the occasion. When all of us are sick at home, typically he is the only one who doesn’t get it. In fact, I can probably count the times he’s been really sick on one hand. I tease him that he had to fight to survive from the beginning and it made him super strong. There is always this part of him that was curious if he could have been a Navy Seal or a Ranger, wondering just what limits his endurance has. He can go without sleep and without food and still be a normal, functioning human being. He does not drink coffee (I know, see? He’s crazy strong). He is the primary one to get up in the night with our kids, and is often up early running long distances, training to run a marathon. I repeat, he doesn’t drink coffee. And not because he’s a snooty purist, he’s the least snobby person I know. He just doesn’t like it.

I am so thankful for him and honestly can’t imagine doing life with anyone else. Sure, we can drive each other crazy sometimes, as only people who passionately love each other can. But we can have a lot of fun together, too. He is such a sweet daddy, imperfect and growing, but his love for his kids runs deep. He has always loved me even when I’ve been unlovable, always willing to give me the best.

So, happy birthday to this dude. Just wanted to tell you a little about how special he is! And a special thanks to his parents for doing such a stellar job raising up such a fine man.

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