A friend gifted me the book Surprised by Paradox, by Jen Pollock Michel, this past Christmas.

Given our culture’s struggle with triggering conversations lately, I was intrigued.

Division, dissection, and discrimination define the polarization that’s bathed our world in anxiety and hate this last year.

Though we try, hot topics don’t usually fall into black and white categories, because real life is a prism of complexity.

There is rarely one answer and one right way.

I was reading from the Jesus Storybook Bible during our morning homeschool time a few weeks ago when we came to a part that reflected on Jesus welcoming the children.

In these pages, we were asked to imagine how we’d behave around Jesus and how He would treat us.

My drama background took over and I decided to play the part of Jesus!

Each kid ran and jumped into my lap as I spoke words of affirmation over them, and offered silly compliments all with big exaggerated expressions. I was surprised by my joy and their delight. It didn’t matter the age, all six kids wanted a turn leaping into the lap of “Jesus” and experiencing His welcome!

I felt convicted.

The sun is setting on a year of change, loss, heartbreak, division, and depression as well as a year of resiliency, gratitude, healing, unity, and hope!

Individuals and communities pivoted, created, innovated, and grew through cancellations and restrictions.

I cried a little as we visited with friends on new year’s eve last year because I didn't have a ‘word’ for 2020 but mostly because I didn't know what I needed or what God had for the next year!

Last month as I engaged in our church’s commissioning prayer at the end of the online service and cried “here I am Lord” on the hotel room floor, I began to grieve for those unconscious on the battlefield—asleep to their purpose, drunk with addiction, dead to life, without vision.

Some of the very children who shone the brightest are under a dark cloud of deception.

Curveballs fly on the news, triggering fear but when one hits home we learn a new level of surrender.

Control is illusive—stringing us along until something snaps.

One year ago this Sunday, my husband Benj hit the pavement in the golden hour of the Costco parking lot and our son Gavin broke his femur. This is how Gavin (4) retells what happened:

"Daddy was running too fast with the shopping cart and it fell over.  I got hurt but Hudsy didn't.  I had a big cast on, that's all."

That's all and then that’s not all.

A decade ago, I left a short-lived teaching career and welcomed my first baby. Making a home-based life didn’t feel natural in those early months.

I struggled to grasp at elusive forms of control—a jail of my own making.

I anticipated birth would be a challenge I could conquer; yet, twenty hours of intense back labor and over three hours of pushing left me reeling (the hardest of six deliveries and the catalyst to midwifery care and home birthing).

After our trip, we started the process of unloading our travel trailer and I ran wild throwing kids in the bath, starting the laundry, ordering the dishwasher cleared, plants watered, grass cut, van vacuumed and everything put away NOW—anything to help me feel a sense of control after a season of change!

My inner baggage busted out with each new item thrown into the house. I was a mess and rather than accepting where my mind, body, and soul was at, and taking a pause, I kept pushing.