“It began on a long wooden pew.

I grew up on The Banner, Calvinettes (now GEMS), rolls of King peppermints, and the steadfast traditions of my Christian Reformed church in suburban British Columbia.

I used to believe that at some point all Christian Reformed kids had to spread their wings, fly the CRC coop, and explore the wider world of Christianity. We’d travel like vagabonds to charismatic revivals and Pentecostal worship services—finally, finally, experiencing the omnipotent God we’d learned so much about.

The moment my last high school bell rang, I hopped a plane to New Zealand. Eventually I settled in a prominent Baptist congregation in the heart of Queenstown, where my brother and I lived.

My memories of the church are sparse. I remember my brother, in a testosterone-induced flurry, scaling the church’s roof with his bare hands. I remember the calico church cat who’d comb through the pews looking for bored churchgoers’ attention. But the memory that stands out clearest is the particularly bright Sunday morning the minister read aloud the following passage:

Now listen, you say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. . . . Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that” (James 4:13-15).

Those words helped me, at the age of 18, first understand God’s bigger story. I could make my own plans, but ultimately God was guiding my path…”

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An excerpt of my piece in the October issue of The Banner. Read the full article here.

The birthday calendar is something of a Dutch tradition. The world over you will find important dates like birthdays and anniversaries lovingly jotted in something called the perpetual calendar and hanging in the powder room. I got mine in Gouda, Netherlands two years ago and since then many a visitor has commented on its practicality. 

It seems this little traditional calendar is making a comeback. Consider these online finds:

The Sukie perpetual calendar by Chronicle (complete with moveable day, month and weather wheels)

The vintage gold brass flip on Etsy

And of course, the Dutch-themed Birthday calendar also on Etsy

A fine investment, I can attest.

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Make your own!

Here’s how you can make your own perpetual calendar by hand:

1.   First, cut your paper to size. (I used 8.5″ × 11″ card stock cut in half.) 

2.  Then, draw your lines for every day of the month. (You could always cheat here and do this on the computer.) 

3.  Number each line. I chose to use my typewriter.

4.  Next, choose your theme. (I’m a sucker for snail mail so I used stamps.) 

5.  Finally, punch a hole through the top of the calendar and feed through a ribbon or twine. 

6.  Hang and begin jotting in your loved ones’ special days. (I recommend using a pencil. Mistakes happen.) 

Published today in catapult magazine

Daily, my body twists and bends, my new form growing in directions I did not have in mind these past few months as I acquired lovely frocks in Paris, London and New York. Portobello, Spitafields and Williamsburg will have to wait—my baby is coming.

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“NY fashions will have to wait—my baby is coming”

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Being six months pregnant makes me feel like the antithesis to aesthetically pleasing. These days the better part of my morning is spent combing through long-loved blouses, hand-sewn dresses and vintage skirts for the sole piece that won’t make me feel fat today.

I have often heard fashion gurus (What Not to Wear’s Stacy London, anyone?) say “dress your body now” (not the one you hope for), and I am doing my best.

In recent months I have mastered the art of the cinched belt: disguising my widening hips (or trying, at least) and accentuating my burgeoning belly. I’m donning oversized dresses, leggings and flats, shopping in my closet for creative ways to smile in the mirror. (An impending birth is not the time to splurge on personal style; the extra pennies are already being tidily tucked away in the mattress.) This, I am told, is a time to celebrate the female form! So, why would I be hiding?

Pregnancy, like any season of life, requires attention. With such rapid and obvious changes afoot, it’s been easy for me to notice the details. But, more than an outward metamorphosis, this experience has been a lesson in living. I need to approach my wardrobe and my life with the same intentionality, every day.

Over the years our frames change, both literally and figuratively. Just as a woman’s body one day makes room for a visitor, so our bodies shift and change as we age. We take desk jobs and, sadly, one day our metabolisms stop burning Peanut Buster® Parfaits like they’re fresh spinach. Our frames change, and they require daily adornment, so why not relish in the simple creative opportunity this affords us?

Creative dressing comes in many forms. The more ambitious types, like Alex Martin of the “Little Brown Dress” Project, don the same homemade dress for 365 days. More than practicality, it’s an anti-consumerist statement, and a beautiful one at that. Others, like Ryan Marshall of Pacing the Panic Room, take a more mainstream approach. Working from the racks of American Apparel, this photographer/writer provides a weekly chronicle of his wife’s growing baby belly and her creative means to cover it.

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“Chronicling pregnancy from the dressing room”

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There is a season for everything (even tight pocket books and broadening mid-sections), Ecclesiastes reminds us. Perhaps pregnancy is a time when we mothers—writers, professors, teachers, painters, carpenters, dancers, students, baristas—embrace our inward and outward selves in new and inspired ways.

And, as Mark Twain coyly aphorizes: “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”

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Published today in Comment

I had the opportunity to share my thoughts on marriage on the Listen Up blog today.

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A few weeks ago I read author Brennan Manning on needing proof of God.  He sure doesn’t let us off the hook and I found his directness particularly refreshing:

“Trust that is at the mercy of the response it receives is a bogus trust. All is uncertainty and anxiety. All is precarious.

In trembling insecurity the believer pleads for and even demands tangible reassurances from the Lord that his affection be returned. If he does not receive them, he is disheartened, frustrated, maybe even convinced that it’s all over or that it never really existed…

What the sincere Christian has not learned is that tangible reassurances, however valuable they may be, cannot create trust, sustain it, or provide any certainty of its presence.”

Particularly, in light of marriage, I welcome Manning’s view.

Himself, a retired Catholic priest now married, Manning has lived in fidelity to God, first, and his wife, second.

I think this is the perfect example for marriage.

I often reflect on how without my understanding of fidelity to the unseen - to God - I would be at a loss pursuing emotional and physical fidelity to my spouse. Only a year-and-a-half into marriage and I experience our commitment to each other as a daily choice to love, a choice, not an emotion, and ultimately love rests in trust.

Trust is only true if it lacks circumstance. From Manning’s view, if I require endless reassurances of God’s love for me, I will be the same with my husband, and it is not a true love but rather an affection lacking trust. This kind of insecurity on either of our parts will wrestle our relationship to the ground. And it does, with frequency.

The Bible says “Perfect love casts out fear.”

To live in love, to nurture our marriages, we must trust each other with abandon. We can’t hold back. I must look into my lover’s eyes and confess: “I am yours, body and soul, in sickness and health, in hardship and good times.” I must grab him in my most miserable moments and declare my love.

It’s counter to one part of our nature and life-giving to another, nourishing the spirit and annihilating selfishness. It feels backward in the moment but slowly, over time, it will become a new habit, a new way of being.

It’s the way I want to live.