You know how you sometimes can’t articulate a season of your life till you begin coming out of it? I’m having that experience. I feel like I’m waking out of a long winter’s night that began with the death of my beloved brother 18 months ago & began wrapping up about 1 month ago. It was characterized by so much mourning (multiplied with the death of our 5 year old cutest-thing-ever bird dog), bone-deep exhaustion & increasingly unbearable physical pain. I couldn’t write. I could study & prepare messages but not write. I tried hard but nothing would come.

This is a fairly niche tweet to any of you who are heads of ministries and nonprofits or are long time pastors of a church and you are nearing or well within retirement age. Assume that those who are working for you are wondering what your plans are. Don’t leave them hanging. Denial is not only unhealthy for you, it is extremely unfair to those who work for you. We who are in Christ ought not fear facing natural decline. We can say all we want that we still have the energy of a teenager and the gifts and calling of God to stay in the lead but for most

After your graciousness, I’ll share a couple of good recipes with y’all in a thread. I have to admit when someone has me beat and my friend Jan Morton’s southern cornbread dressing surpasses mine. The best, most consistent recipe for it I’ve ever tasted. granjansjoy.com/2016/11/dressi… This is my high school boyfriend’s mother’s (lol) recipe for chocolate pecan pie. Makes two so, of course, half the recipe if you’re only making one. It’s absolutely fantastic. The alternative at the bottom is mine. My problem is, I think everything is better with cream cheese.

On keeping our sanity (and whatever is left of our relationships) here on X-Twitter or whatever the heck it is until we can’t take it anymore. (Which admittedly may be today.)

Yet another person I really enjoy following left this platform yesterday. This on the heels of one of the kindest, most gracious, gentle-hearted individuals I know being driven off here last week or so. What a shame. I’ll quickly interject here that we will be held accountable by God, whether we believe in him or not, for the way we treat people including people on social media.

When I was in my late 20s, the Lord began to teach me a very simple but life-altering practice. What did I wish I had in him but lacked? “Ask me for it.” I was 27 when I sat in the classroom of a Bible doctrine teacher who loved the Scriptures more than he loved his next meal. And this was no small man. He loved his next meal. I couldn’t even identify what it was at first. I got in my car after class and cried out to the Lord, I don’t know what that was but I want it!

“Ask me for it.”

I did and did and did and did. Still do. And he gave it to me.

Something kinda dear happened yesterday. Several days ago, I came into my office and my assistant had printed out an email that had come for me from a very gracious pastor from my longtime faith tradition. I took it home and left it out for Keith to read but forgot to show him. I was at the sink in our bathroom washing my face, getting ready for bed when he walked in holding the letter with tears streaming down his face. “I needed this so badly,” he said in broken words. “I’ve hated them so much.” Grace him for that. It’s been a lot for my family.

Ok, a couple more thoughts on the Bill Gothard influence highlighted in Shiny Happy People. I’m only a couple of episodes in and never got into the Duggar reality show nor did I ever attend a Gothard seminar or read his materials though I constantly ran in circles that did. Here’s the convoluted part and what I was too tired to get into last night. If any of you have read my memoir, you know the name of it is “all my knotted up life.” Here’s a perfect example of what I mean by my knotted up thinking. Main reason I wasn’t drawn to BG or the Duggar’s?

Here’s the thing. Not a single one of us, no matter how well-meaning or how well read, is going to get it all right. No one among us will have a perfect record. All of us will make some poor choices and have regrets and wish we had done or said this or that differently. & here’s what I know because I’m old, have made all the mistakes, seen them made. We who judge others mercilessly— I don’t mean critique fairly & knowledgeably—& hold others to standards we don’t meet & are full of conceit will undoubtedly find ourselves on the other end of that.

Years ago at an event during a Q&A, a woman asked, Beth, what’s the knot in your rope? I thought it was the best question. In other words, what do I hold onto when I’m sliding down a rope, palms burning & blistering & all my formulas failing? I didn’t even have to think about it. The words of Jesus in John 15:9. “As the Father has loved me, so I love you. Now abide in my love.” Jesus follower, try to grasp the magnitude of what he is saying about you. In the same way God loves Jesus, Jesus loves you. Then he says, LIVE IN THIS TRUTH. IT’S HOME TO YOU.

Did I tell y’all Keith and @MelissaMoore77 went in together and got me a new bicycle for Mother’s Day? I just love it! I’ve decided a new bike was the perfect gift for this season of mourning. I realize while I’m riding it that I’m just smiling and smiling. Smiling’s my favorite. This is it! Isn’t it adorable? It’s tall, too! I have to stand on my tiptoes.

Whine alert. I could probably use a little prayer, my friends. I went for pre-op for my 1st of 2 eye surgeries yesterday, so anxious to get on with it, and they had to postpone it because my eyes are now not in good enough shape for surgery. Prescriptions and recheck in 6 weeks. No contacts and at this point even my thick glasses can’t fully correct my vision. Zero driving after dark, etc. I love being dependent on people about as much as I love a stomach virus. Difficulties are relative and there are far worse things but I’m so disappointed.

The Lord is impressing upon me this morning the necessity of the patient proclamation of the gospel. Talk is not only cheap these days. It’s virtually worthless. They don’t believe us and, generally speaking, rightly so. We all want quick growth. Flooded aisles. Big works of God. We all want to behold enormous demonstrations of the Spirit. We want to watch God work in crowds & he often has & does! I’m no cynic there. I’ve witnessed it! I just want to remind you this morning that we’re hitting that time of year now where our peak crowd, so to speak, has

Psalm 16 was in my reading this morning. Had to pause at several points and shake my head over the truth and beauty of it.

“I have said to the Lord, You are my Lord, all my good depends on you.” YES.

“You will show me the path of life; in your presence is the fullness of joy.” Whether or not I’m a decent Bible teacher is up for debate lol but I’m a teacher to my bones. One way to know you may be a teacher is that it’s not enough for you to learn something from God that really blesses, helps, frees, inspires, corrects or directs you. You want others

I kept thinking at our Maundy Thursday service last night how Jesus said he was deeply grieved to the point of death. We can’t fully identify nor can our finite minds adequately comprehend all that was crushing Jesus in Gethsemane, the Olive press. I think perhaps the garden was the place Jesus bore the crushing weight of the cross privately with his Father before he bore it publicly at Calvary. He emerged from it settled that the cup was his to drink and, drink, he would. While we can’t fully enter into the near-murderous grief of Jesus

Y’all. The weirdest thing just happened. Backstory: At our recent Living Proof Live event in Seattle, we studied the “Here I am” texts. When we centered on the phrase “here I am” in Isaiah 6, I asked the women who were willing to consider offering all that they are to Jesus. -> To symbolize the surrender of every strength and every weakness to him for his glory, the willing were to tear a blank sheet of paper out of their booklets, write on one side “Here I am” & on the other, what they were bringing. When they finished, they were to lay it on the edge

I spent so much of my life trying to figure out if I could trust my gut. Over & over I told myself I couldn’t because I was too broken. Too messed up. Too sinful. And, furthermore, too suspicious, I’d reason, and I just didn’t trust people when it was obvious they were godly. Please don’t hear me say I didn’t prove wrong about some situations and individuals. Indeed I did. Other times I’d never know if my gut was telling me the truth or lying. I’d have to just leave it to the Lord. But what I do want to say is this: over & over my God-given instincts

Trust the Lord and do good.

I think about these words from Psalm 37:3 so often. They offer a divine prescription for countless situations. For times of discouragement, times of unfairness, times when we wonder how so & so gets away with such & such. Times when we ourselves have blown it and want deeply to win back the trust of people to whom our talk has become woefully cheap. Times when we’re so tempted to give way to cynicism. Or sin. Times when our self centeredness has done its job and made us utterly miserable. Times when someone else giving up

TGIF, folks! Psalm 130, a song of ascent, was part of my Scripture reading this morning. Gets me every time. I read it in both the NRSV & NET. Thought I’d share the first 6 verses out of the NET with anyone who’d be blessed by it today. I’ll write it out then read on audio. “From the deep water I cry out to you, O Lord.

O Lord, listen to me!

Pay attention to my plea for mercy!

If you, O Lord, were to keep track of sins, O Lord, who could stand before you?

But you are willing to forgive so that you might be honored.

I rely on the Lord.

I’ll truly never be able to convey the depths of my gratitude for your kind words & compassion over my brother’s death. They ministered. I lost all my words so I read all yours to help process the grief. I didn’t get to see his body (in Rome) so I’ve obsessively pored over words: His own words in texts or music or on paper & anything at all I could find said of him online. I have work to get to. I’ll reenter the land of the living while still in mourning but isn’t this the task of life? The living & dying in constant concert? Songs of joy in minor chords?

My big brother, truest kindred, best friend, poet, pianist, conductor, singer, composer, foodie of all foodies, my lovely, funny Wayne dropped out of our lives yesterday afternoon walking to choir practice in Rome where he & my sister-in-law, Lisa, retired from musical theater. His gentle heart stopped. Just gave right out. I write this to you because I’ll need 4 or 5 days to find oxygen again & you’re kind enough to wonder where I am. I write this also for myself to stare at the words and let them sink in. “Wayne is gone. Won’t be texting you today

A thing I treasure about traveling many miles with Jesus is how a passage in my Bible reading not only has present instruction & consolation but pulsates with history from one long past. I’ll remember how I clung to that verse—held it like the women holding to the feet of Jesus after he’d risen as if to say, “Now that I’ve found you, I’ll never let you go!” Of course, it is he who actually does the finding. He who never lets us go. Psalm 103 was part of my lectionary reading this morning. It weighs heavy with history for me. I memorized it when I first