I had wonderful grandfathers. But by the time of this tale, both had gone to their reward. But God, who is rich in mercy, saw fit to bless me through PawPaw, the grandfather of my dear friend Meredith.

Step with me, for a moment, back to the summer of 2010. Instagram does not yet exist. In terms of viral moments, we are in between the Double Rainbow Guy and Lady Gaga’s meat dress. Shakira’s “Waka Waka” song is playing constantly as the World Cup goes on.

And somewhere in England, five teenage boys—Liam Payne, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan, and Zayn Malik—have made it on to the British version of the televised music competition The X Factor. Regrettably, none of these lads quite have it.1

Simon Cowell sums it up by saying to one of them, “You’re not as good as you thought you were, but I still like you.” With a spark of prophetic wisdom, Cowell moves all five through to the next round, shuffling them out of the solo category and instead combining them into a group.

These five kids sing together for the first time at a seaside mansion before an audience of two: Cowell and a lady wearing a talisman of some sort in the middle of her forehead. It’s a statement piece competing with Harry’s own inexplicably loose scarf.

Louis, one of the weaker singers who is relegated to simple “ooohs” for this first performance, has hobbled in with a swollen and red foot. “It was a sea urchin,” he explains, as if we’ve all been there.

They sing a cover of Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn,” and it’s like the shot heard round the world, but this time the British dudes win.

By the end of that summer it’s already clear: Cowell has created one boy band to rule them all.

I’m not sure how I first heard about One Direction. But at some point that fall, the boys had broken out of the UK and into my friend group in the suburbs of Dallas. We were 15 years old, and we were obsessed.

At some point in 2011, a “Bring 1D to the US” social media competition was announced, with various big cities vying to host the band for their first official American performance. The Directioners of Dallas clicked and shared and Tweeted and liked and uploaded—and wonder of wonders, we won. I can remember a girl at my high school running down the hallway during class shouting “WE DID IT!”

Soon after came the announcement of how to get tickets for the performance. If I remember right, a handful of malls were selected throughout Dallas to sell a limited edition of One Direction’s debut album. The first x number of fans to buy the special album would get a red wristband that served as your ticket and allowed you to attend an album signing.

The boys coming to Dallas felt like miracle enough. But to meet them? To get an autograph? Have you no compassion for my poor nerves? We were losing our ever-loving minds.

There were a limited number of wristbands, which meant that the thousands of other fans who had just been our teammates in getting 1D to Dallas were now our sworn enemies, contending for the same prize. We weighed the options and probabilities, and there was no other choice: we would have to camp out at the mall overnight.

But when the day of the sale was announced, I was devastated to realize that my family would be out of town on a Spring Break trip states away. And they would only allow one purchase and wristband per person.

Enter PawPaw.

Meredith somehow wrangled her sweet, elderly grandfather into camping out at the Stonebriar Mall. Greater love has no Pepaw/Poppy/PawPaw than this, that he sleep on the sidewalk to bring joy to his granddaughter and her best friend.

In solidarity, I stayed up all night, texting Meredith for updates. Early the next morning, she called me: they’d done it. Two albums, two posters, two wristbands. We were going. And PawPaw was heading home to nap.

Fast forward to the morning of the performance. (We can’t call it a concert. They sang four songs on a tiny stage at a minor league baseball field.) My older brother, Heath, was home from college for the weekend for some reason or another. He’s cool, he’s fun, we’re close.

I had barely slept the night before, dreaming of catching Harry’s or maybe Niall’s or maybe Liam’s or I couldn’t really decide who was my favorite’s eye, and them immediately falling in love with me.

“I like their songs,” Heath said, as we sat at the kitchen table. “It’d be funny if a guy their own age was there. Can I come too?”

“No,” I said, scoffing. “People camped out for these wristbands. PawPaw stayed up all night for me. You cannot come.”

He grabbed the paper wristband and eyed it. “I could just copy this on red paper.”

“No,” I insisted. “This is my thing with my friends meeting the loves of our lives and you cannot come and end up getting us arrested with your forgery.”

He considered this for a moment. “I’m going to try it.”

I tried appealing to our mother, but in the end she seemed intrigued by whether or not he’d be able to pull it off. I suppose a day comes for all parents where you must let your child fly the nest and/or lightly trespass into a closed event and see if they can face the consequences. Heath made the plan to drive separately and deny knowing us should anything go wrong.

Well, nothing went wrong. He copied the wristband, taped it on, and waltzed right in, full Frank Abagnale Jr.2

The lads sang their four songs, we screamed and shook and salivated, and then we waited in line for an hour or so for the CD signing. They were letting fans into a large room five or so at a time, and as we got closer to the door I was imagining that once we got in the room, the line would continue and there would be more waiting before we actually got in front of the boys.

In other words, I was assuming that there’d be a buffer of time and space, that I’d see them first 30 feet away, then 20, then 10, as the line inched closer. Like a diver ascending slowly, making safety stops on the way to the surface to avoid the bends.

Unfortunately, I got the bends. We made it to the door, it was opened, and boom—there was One Direction, immediately before us. No weird scarves or sea urchin bites to mar or diffuse what my teenage heart believed was perfection. I was frozen, agog, aghast. I watched, enthralled, as Heath and Meredith and our other friends interacted with the guys—talking with them, high-fiving them.

“This is extraordinary,” I thought. “Meredith is asking Harry to tell her happy birthday, and he’s doing it! Meredith’s talking to Harry Styles!” My mind did not comprehend that I, too existed in a corporeal body, that I was there and also could talk to Harry Styles.

Instead, I managed to do three things. First, I took a selfie.

Second, I made eye contact with Harry. After wishing Meredith happy birthday, he glanced at me, and I imagine he saw something like this:

Despite that, he smiled at me, and in response I made a sound that my husband just described as “someone surprising Mary Poppins.” You’ll hear it in a moment below.

Third, just as I reached the end of the signing table, I was yoinked from my reverie and faced with the reality of my situation: that I had just squandered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to interact with my celebrity crushes. I had not been charming, enchanting, beguiling. I’d been a mouth-breathing banana slug. As I was ushered away from Niall, the last of the lads, I decided to speak.

What could I say with just these few precious seconds? Was there something that would make him stop the whole event and whisk me away to dinner in a moody corner booth somewhere downtown?

If there was such a sentence, I didn’t say it. My million-dollar line was simply, “See ya Niall.” Worst of all, my body’s fight-or-flight response made the sentence come out in a cracking, “see ya nIaLl.” And just like that, I was pushed out the door and blinking in the sun, dazed.

Below is the footage taken from Meredith’s phone. She is the one talking about birthdays.3 You will be able to tell which sounds come from me.

For weeks, this day haunted me. People at school would shout “see ya Niall” at me in the hallway. Even the physics teacher brought it up one day. The truth was that PawPaw had given his all, and he deserved better from me.

Despite my failure, I am at my core a woman of hope. I believe in redemption.

And a few months later, a few hundred miles away, redemption dawned. One Direction was back for their first official US tour. My dad, through a connection with his work, got me into a meet-and-greet before the Houston concert, sponsored by a local radio station.

This time, there was a buffer. I stood in a line where I could see them from afar. I acclimated. I took deep breaths. I agonized over a Sophie’s Choice-esque decision of which one of them I would stand by for the photo. And when my time came, I said hello, I gave hugs, and overall I acted like a functioning human. Perhaps I was not beguiling. But I was at least sentient.

I know what you’re thinking: “So the moral of the story is you got a redo bc you’re some kind of a nepo baby whose daddy pulled strings?”

To that I say a hearty yes.

But allow me to pull a *youth pastor voice* meme.

You, my friend, are a nepo baby, too. There is a Father who holds all the strings, who gives abundant redos, who sacrifices more than even PawPaw.

Harry sings in a track aptly titled “Save You Tonight” from that debut album,

Sounds strikingly similar to the words of Jesus at the close of one of his parables about the kingdom in Mark 4,

“‘they may indeed see but not perceive,

and may indeed hear but not understand,

lest they should turn and be forgiven.’”

So allow me to land this plane by inviting you to see, and hear, and turn, and open your eyes to what’s under your nose. There is a life, a feast, that you are invited to enter, without need of buying (or forging) a wristband.

At the end of the day, the lads were right: we all need that One Thing.

“And you've got that one thing.”

For that, I praise God.

And with that, allow me to say howdy, and welcome to the fall edition of these sporadic round-ups. Every few months I will show up in your inbox with a smorgasbord that includes a bit of a life update, a list of my recent writings for your perusal, and some pieces I’ve enjoyed from others.

Since you last heard from me in July, life has been rich and full. In September, my daughter and I celebrated our joint birthday. I tried to make it “3 Going on 31” themed, but she disregarded her mother’s Canva prowess and insisted on wearing a Belle dress instead.

Right after our birthday, Daniel and I took our 5-month-old on a little flight across the Atlantic to meet up with some of my best friends from college in London—a trip that also featured a bonus hang out with and Paddington Bear. Fun fact: of my three college roommates, two of them live in Europe, and one of them lives in NYC and travels to London often for work. (Someone has to hold it down in the suburbs of Dallas, okay?)

It was a delight to see my gal pals and be London women in STEM: scones, trains, evensong, and mushy peas. Enjoy our scavenger hunt rainbow below.

Here is my foolproof travel hack: marry a guy with one arm, and bring a baby with you on all big trips. That is not sarcasm! You are ushered to the front of lines, you can get free tickets to museums—the world was truly our oyster. Try it if you can!

Now, time to confess. In the last round-up, I told y’all I started drafting a novel. In August, I rode a massive wave of inspiration and cranked out over 40,000 words in a single month. It was electric. But then we were on our trip. Then I got sick. Then we had some visitors in town, and then—worst of all—there have been a few evenings where I’ve sat down to write, but instead of opening my notebook I watched an hour of *whispers* YouTube shorts.

You all have permission to drag me into the town square, throw me in stocks, and hurl tomatoes at me.

But now it’s a fresh month. Windows are open. We’re moving on. Locking in. His mercy is new every morning.

Speaking of our merciful God, here’s my last thought. One day back in college, a dozen years ago, I thought to myself, “Well, I guess I should read the whole Bible.” So I did. And when I finished it, I thought, “Well, I guess I’ll just keep doing this.” So I did.

I love the Lord, and I love his Word, and abiding in his Word day by day helps me to know, love, trust, and obey him more. The circumstances of my life or the wider world can be crazy and confusing and heartbreaking, and there in the midst of it God meets me in his story of salvation and reminds me of lasting truths: He made me. He loves me. He is with me. He has saved me. He holds all things together. Hope is real. Love never ends. All will be well.

In August, I finished reading the entire Bible for the fifth time in twelve years. That’s not meant to be a flex. It’s meant to show that doing something every day for twelve years adds up. After that fifth finish, I started to think about mixing things up a bit, and I thought about how I am writing my novel’s first draft by hand, and I figured—why not go full medieval monk and copy down the Bible?

If I write a chapter a day it will take over three years. And let’s be real, there will certainly be days I miss. I already have! So let’s call it four years. But, if the Lord sees fit to give me decades more of my life here on earth, what better way to spend some of that time than storing up his words in my heart? Please don’t think of this as a prescriptive activity at all (although, if you wanna join, c’mon in). Instead, consider it a Further-Up-And-Further-In-Fun-Feisty-Yeehaw-Goal-To-Slow-Down-And-Savor-The-Living-And-Active-Word-of-God-That-Stands-Forever-And-Comforts-And-Strengthens-And-Guides-Me-And-You.

This has been a particularly rambly round-up so far. If you’re still with me, thank you. I hope you have a beautiful pants season, I encourage you to spend some time in God’s Word, and I pray the words you read here would draw you further up & further in to the true home you were made for.

Gratefully,

Han

My Latest Posts

and I teamed up to share some loose threads in our lives that need to be tied up. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll physically recoil with secondhand embarrassment.

A short reflection on when we hear “no” from God, inspired by mine and Jessica Lynn’s toddlers wishing they could have extra moms like their foster siblings.

A first look at the book I am writing. What I love most of all is a story, and there’s one I’ve wanted to tell for a while.

This one’s about turning 31, throwing myself a secret birthday party, and the gift of finding God bigger every year.

To Conclude: Cowboys Like Me

We’ll end with a rapid-fire rodeo of some fellow writers whose words have encouraged me, made me think, or if I’m lucky, both. These people feel like kindred spirits—cowboys like me!

• We’ve started letting our three-year old watch some Disney movies, and she really loves Aurora. I’ll admit I thought she (Aurora, not my child) was a bit boring at first, but this beautiful reflection from on Sleeping Beauty changed my mind.

• One day and I will hang out in real life and it will be the best. Until then, I loved reading What Is My Art?, where she explores what it looks like to live like an artist in the everyday.

• I can’t get over the creativity of some of my pals on here— look at ’s knitting and ’s home-grown flowers! (Maybe the key is to be named Megan/Meghan?)

• is another pal on here I love reading, so it was fun to find this excellent piece, On Not Getting What You Want, from her husband, . We love a writing power couple! The line “Life gets better the more commitments you make and keep” fits with the theme of my novel and has been giving me some great inspo.

• These three beautiful reflections from mothers to their sons have been braided together in my mind as I watch my baby grow bigger each day: ’s 316 Words for My Son’s Eyes, ’s Double Feature: College and Not Forget, and ’s Bees, Worms, Nanas & Papas.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. It means a lot to have you along for the ride!

I kicked the night off by essentially saying, “it’s my party, I’ll read five poems if I want to,” and in the two hours that followed, I did. I can’t recommend enough that you all pick a night and do the same.

Halfway through the evening, one pal stood up and read a few pages from Prince Caspian that included this well-loved exchange:

“Aslan,” said Lucy, “you’re bigger.”
“That is because you are older, little one,” answered he.
“Not because you are?”
“I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.

This is the idea that I’m reflecting on as I turned 311 earlier this month and am looking out into a new year of life. My goal with each passing year, with each passing season—be it marked by joy or sorrow or any combination thereof—is to gaze upon my God and see him as greater, grander, more beautiful and powerful and lovely. To bask in the riches of his mercy, new every morning. To abide in his steadfast love and find my truest home in his heart.

I want to live out the words of another poet we read on Sunday, George Herbert, who wrote in his riff on Psalm 23:

Surely thy sweet and wondrous love
Shall measure all my days;
And as it never shall remove,
So neither shall my praise.2

At 31, and 32, and 33, and any year the Lord sees fit to give me, I long to see him grow bigger and bigger in my heart, in my mind, in my days—not because he is changing, but because he’s changing me, graciously opening my eyes to see him more in all of his fullness, strengthening me so that I am better able to understand how wildly vast his love truly is. And as I grow and find him bigger, so too shall grow my praise. He is so very worthy of my praise, friends. He has been so faithful to me.

My ultimate hope here on the internet, and all the places in real life where I live and move and have my being, is that the thrust of my words and my life would draw you to praise our wondrous God.

On that theme, my last reading of the evening was the poem “Signposts” from ’s beautiful new poetry collection, This Way to Warmth. The poem’s final lines sum up what I’m trying to say here:

If I should bear the cold
and see life’s winter through,
then let my scars,
when I am old,
point travellers to you.

(Please go read the full poem and Kilby’s announcement of her collection here.)

I am admittedly a sucker for the fun little “31 Things I Know at 31”-type posts that people write around their birthdays. I can’t presume to know thirty-one whole things, so instead, I’ve given you these three snippets. Read them. Noodle on them. Host your own Reading Night that includes at least a page or two of Frog and Toad. And know that wherever you read this, I’m with you, praying that we may praise and point to him as we find him bigger and bigger, truer and truer, realer and realer, richer and richer in love, year after year.

For years of my childhood I wanted to be an Animal Cop. I imagined setting my cowboy hat down, sprinting after a wrongdoer, and laying him out on the ground. Maybe I’d have some line like, “Don’t mess with Texas. Don’t mess with dogs. Or you’ll have to mess with me.”

In the months where I have been pregnant and postpartum (read: the past year), I find myself aspiring to be a doula, midwife, or lactation consultant, some role that would help women feel strong and supported in a wild and beautiful season.

In the words of the esteemed Lady Catherine de Bourgh, “if you are speaking of music...it is of all subjects my delight. There are few people in England the suburbs of Dallas I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.” To put it another way, I have long been an aspiring pop star and surely would be famous had my parents put me in any sort of music class as a child. Alas, I never learnt.

And yet, there is another dream that lies below all the others. It started with reading—a dangerous business. From the soil of good stories grew a desire to tell my own. By first grade I had written my first book (which was also my first dabbling in plagiarism—better to get it out of your system early). It was titled If You Give a Mouse Some Queso. Laura Numeroff with a Tex-Mex twist!

What is the point of this long intro? Well first, I Googled Animal Cops and that photo was too iconic not to share. Second, I am here to announce that while yes, I love writing about the myriad of topics I have dabbled in on this publication, and yes, I love reading all your essays and think pieces, what I love most of all is a story.

And in the past few months, after birthing a human, saying goodbye to our foster daughter, and taking a week to breathe in beautiful Minnesota, I looked around and thought to myself: well, I suppose it’s time I write a book.

Over a decade ago, I was sprawled in the grass on a hot Texas golf course, gazing up at the clouds when I was told a family secret. Since that moment, the seeds of a novel have been tucked in the back of my mind.

To invoke the totally uncontroversial concept of a tradwife, my story idea was a jar of sourdough starter that I’d occasionally feed, watch bubble up, then place back in the recesses of the fridge. I’d never bake with it.

Well now, friends, it’s time to bake. To mix metaphors but stay in the kitchen, it’s time to let her cook. (I am her.)

Which brings me to my next point: I am me. This is what I have to remind myself when I read people on here say things like, “I’ll never deign to read a novel written after 1955” (the canon closed with Tolkien). On one hand, fair—the great books of history will most assuredly be better than whatever I manage to scrounge up. But on the other hand (I know, I know, some of the handsomest people among us have only one hand!)—not every book is for every person. My ideal reader is not a literary snob who only reads books that predate the telephone, it’s an everyday person looking for a beautiful story, well told. And who can take a joke.

So, what is the story? Let me be honest: I don’t know much about this whole I’m-trying-to-write-a-novel-and-actually-get-it-published process, but I don’t think I’m supposed to tell you the full premise quite yet. I’ll give you this: it’s loosely extremely tightly based on the real, wild, family lore I learned that summer day years ago.

At the end of June, sitting out by one of Minnesota’s ten thousand lakes, I started jotting down thoughts, ideas, a rough arc of what really happened. Over the course of a week or two, I spent about five hours on the phone, interviewing various family members and friends. It was a delight.

In mid-July, I started writing. While in Minnesota, I had shared this note, somewhat tongue-in-cheek-ily, after reading an excellent and encouraging piece from and .

But as I sat down to really begin, I thought, why not try it? Over the past year, I’d already gotten into the habit of writing my first drafts of Substack posts by hand. I’d found that it honed my thoughts in a way that typing didn’t.

So, I decided to do it. To write the dang thing out on paper, as God and Wendell Berry intended. Unsurprisingly, it’s been incredibly satisfying. I’ve been carried along at the speed of my scrawling, which, it turns out, is the perfect speed for my thoughts to run wild. Watching my hand move across the page, hearing the scratch of the pen, feeling the friction—it is doing something worthwhile to my words, something that a keyboard can’t replicate.

Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t chucked my laptop/phone out the window. Without it, I couldn’t call my dad once every twelve minutes to ask what song a person might two-step to at a Brazos Valley dance hall in 1981 and what exactly would a phone operator say when you called information and when did people really start wearing seat belts?1

And I wouldn’t be able to do important research, like the queries on the right, posed to friends and Google:

Further research has been conducted alongside my husband, where we essentially play nightly charades. “Pretend this is a car,” I say, standing over the couch. “How would you describe this?” I ask, performing some strange motion that I picture a character carrying out but can’t find the words to convey. Or, “How would you describe this sound?” I inquire, before doing the breathing-hard-out-your-nose-in-a-laugh-but-not-quite-laughing-out-loud-and-certainly-not-chuckling thing. (Someone, please help me describe what that is! We’re still at a loss.)

The first 20,000 or so words flew out in a joyful, brilliant flash of inspiration. I was a creative genius, having the time of my life. We’d put the kids to bed, I’d take a short walk in the park across the street—a way to move my body and cue my brain to shift gears—then I’d sit at the table and write and write and write until I finished what felt like a chapter. Then I’d transcribe the night’s scrawl into my computer (sorry Wendell), lightly editing as I went.2

It has now been a little over a month, and I have hit 45,000 words—halfway to my goal of 90,000. It may end up being a little shorter or a little longer, depending on where the story takes me. I have only spiraled and considered the whole thing silly and myself an unserious big dumb idiot 2-3 times. Please clap.

While my flash of brilliance seems to have slightly dimmed, my butt remains in the chair. I am excited to see what will emerge in the coming weeks, over the next 45,000 words. The question of, “what will I do when I finish the manuscript?” is for future Hannah’s consideration, not today’s Hannah. For now, the task is to write. And so I shall.

If you’ve made it this far in reading the update that no one asked for about the book that no one’s paying me to write, allow me to reward your time with a little bit more of a teaser on what the story’s all about.

It’s a tale that is—to steal Frederick Buechner’s description of the arc of the gospel—a “tragedy, comedy, and fairytale.” My prayer, if this whole thing is ever to make its way into the world, is that it would stir your heart toward the anchoring power of faithfulness, and to the beauty—and cost—of forgiveness, of redemption, of love. Ultimately, it’s the kind of story I think we need more of in the world. Here’s a friend’s response when I sent her my synopsis:

The story itself—real, and lived by my flesh and blood— is, in some ways, a miracle. My great hope is that I am up to the task of telling it!

I am not an Animal Cop. I am not a pop star. I am not an extraordinary, once-in-a-generation novelist of the 18th century. I am me. It is my story to tell. And in the end, that will have to be enough. Pray for me!

“Can I leave too?” my daughter responded after a while. “Like L?” I suppose I may have made it sound a little too exciting.

, a fellow foster mom I’ve connected with here on Substack, posted about a similar exchange last month. She wrote about her toddler bio daughter discovering to her dismay “that I am, in fact, her only mom, and she doesn’t get to go visit another one like all her siblings do.”

We can’t help but laugh and wince at these toddler proclamations. They don’t understand, with their limited perspectives, that being stuck at home with just one, loving mom is not evidence of lack, but of mercy.

Jessica posed a question that’s been tumbling through my brain the past month: How often does my Heavenly Father lovingly smile down at me, knowing that in my limited, human wisdom I do not understand that what He has given me is actually what’s best for me?

What no might I be hearing from God that feels like pain, but is ultimately protection? Could it be possible that his not letting me have all that I want, right when I want it, is actually a mark of his kindness to me? Dare I believe that—despite living in a world that tells me immediate gratification is my birthright, something to be grasped by any means necessary?

In our kids ministry at church, we teach simple definitions of various attributes of God.1 God is wise: he knows what is best. God is loving: he does what is best. God is good: he is what is best. There are more attributes we cover: merciful, faithful, just, generous, holy, on and on—but those first three, to me, are anchors.

He knows more than I know. He sees more than I see. And oh, how he loves me. He may not give me everything I think I want, but he has freely, fully, forever given me the thing I need deepest of all—the forgiveness, the life that is found in him alone. The life that he secured for me when, for the joy set before him, he endured his own unanswered prayer and walked the path to Golgotha—a million miles away from any sense of entitlement to ease or instant gratification.

None of this is to say that it’s wrong to ask God for things—on the contrary, he is a generous Father who invites us to come to him in prayer. And it’s not to say that the desires you’re bringing to him are so silly or clearly misdirected as a toddler inadvertently asking to be put in foster care because mom’s hyped it up to sound kinda fun.

It is good and right to come to him with our honest hopes and hurts and longings. Keep coming. Keep asking. Keep trusting. And keep daring to believe that a no given by a wise, loving, and good God—a God who’s given all for you—might ultimately be worth receiving with thanks.

A final note: after reading the thoughts of writers wiser than me, I’m falling on the side of disabling Substack’s Pangram AI-detector feature. It’s like John Mulaney’s “PROVE. PROVE. PROVE.” bit—I don’t want you to use the robot to prove that I’m not a robot. A robot does not know a thing about what I write about—love and grief and the embarrassment of poking someone’s toes in the public bathroom. Instead, here’s my proof: I scribble my words in a journal in random pockets of the day when I’m not working, nursing the baby, or being asked by my toddler to sing a “faster” version of Beauty and the Beast. In other words, I trust you and hope you trust me.

This story about a woman named Grace at the Cleveland Hopkins Airport recently went viral, and ended in success: she and the “dark haired maintenance guy” have met and are reportedly going on a date. To that, we all must say God bless Midwest airports, a peak romantic environment.

In my experience, there is a flipside to the missed connections coin. There are the strangers you come across who you do not wish to date, but wish to check in on, or give financial compensation to, because you have unwillingly tangled them up in your own foolishness, your own embarrassing moments. Chance steals them away before you have the ability to explain or apologize.

Well, no more.

What follows is a call to arms, an invitation into the internet void to help us find those strangers. These are stories that need closure, years later.

Of course, one cannot invoke the great state of Ohio without thinking of the Queen of the Midwest, the gentlewoman and scholar, the runner and chef, teller of jokes and thinker of theological thoughts, the thirty-something herself: .

One Ohio Grace found luck with her missed connection. I hope that by roping in my own Ohio Grace, this endeavor might prove more successful. Grace is a gifted writer, yes—but more central to the quest, she is a woman unafraid to laugh at herself on the world wide web.

And so, what follows are four of our own Missed Connections (Embarrassing Version™️). We’ve included key details we can remember: location, a general date, a description of the person we’re seeking. Please read, and share, and ask around in your friend groups, at your book clubs and bowling leagues. Help us reconnect with these souls, who may very well be scarred by the stories below. And feel free to add your own tales in the comments!

These are folks that need finding, and in the words of a recent PBS Kids campaign, Together We Can.

#1 Marathon Mum - Grace

Where: Inverness, Scotland

When: Fall 2019

What Happened: Faced with my first great romantic disappointment, I did what any young person does while experiencing a heightened state of emotional distress: I signed up for my first marathon.

As a lifelong runner, this decision was not entirely an abnormal one, but the location of the marathon was perhaps a bit unexpected: Loch Ness, Scotland. However, I had convinced myself it was actually a great idea to fly 3,500+ miles to Scotland by myself using a plane ticket I had originally purchased to visit my Scottish situationship: a young man I’d met at a wedding who boasted some swoon-worthy qualities, such as being tall and being Scottish.

The day before the marathon, I not only spent four emotionally distressing hours with my Scottish situationship, but I also spent four more emotionally distressing hours driving through the Highlands to Inverness, where I would be attempting to complete the most physically distressing activity of my life the next morning.

I woke up the day of the marathon to cold, pouring rain, congested nasal passages, and a spirit resolved to persevere through heartbreak and hills. And for 16 miles I did! Until I didn’t. Running 10 miles when every muscle in your body feels like it is trapped in a blood pressure cuff is a pretty unpleasant way to spend a morning, but at least it was beautiful.

After finally reaching the finish line of the marathon, I began to weep as if all the emotions I had ever experienced in my life needed to be expelled from my body. At this time, other fluids also needed to be expelled from my body, namely vomit. Unfortunately, a finish line warden–a bird-like woman wearing a fluorescent green vest–was not able to retreat from the splash zone in time. Her shoes took the brunt of the liquid assault.

Motivated by what could only be described as motherly resolve, this dear woman grabbed my sweaty, cramping arm and guided me to the end of the finish line area and to a tent where more volunteers were serving vegetable soup as an Ed Sheeran cover artist played “Galway Girl,” because, sure. She looked into my eyes and made sure I was okay, and I looked into her eyes and tried to make a joke about how I wanted my race entry refunded because I didn’t see Nessie even once! She smiled politely in a British way that also communicated pity that I had the unfortunate circumstance of being American.

Who We’re Looking For: Does the finish line warden remember the sweaty, crampy, vomiting American girl in a Pittsburgh Steelers singlet who tries to crack jokes anytime she is feeling emotionally vulnerable? Has she continued to volunteer at marathons, or did the experience motivate her to vacate the Splash Zone? Does she have any tall, Scottish sons I should meet? Did she try the vegetable soup?

She might be tough to find, because she looks like what I imagine every Scottish woman should look like: sort of severe, but in a way that assures you that she is fiercely protective of the vulnerable. She may or may not be wearing a fluorescent vest and have eyes haunted by the memories of October 6, 2019. I’d like to thank her, or at least replace her shoes.

#2 Let’s Get You Home, Grandma - Hannah

Where: Applebee’s, somewhere in North Dallas

When: Fall 2004

What Happened: My mom was, to put it simply, the GOAT.1 From my earliest days, I wanted to be just like her–personality, talents, and yes, even looks.

For my entire life, until her passing in 2014, I only knew my mother to have short hair. Imagine the shorter styles of Princess Diana, but without all the drama.2

Never did I see my mother’s hair at a length past her chin. As a matter of fact, she often looked down on those with long hair. “I don’t get it,” she’d say. “It just hangs there.” I’m not sure what her short hair was doing if not also just hanging there. But, whatever. The point is, at the ripe age of 8 or 9, I decided I too wanted a pixie cut.

“I want my hair like yours,” I told my mom one day.

“Are you sure?” she asked. “I think it might look a little different than you think it will.”

I was convinced it would look amazing, that I would look like her and be like her, and so I told her that I was indeed sure. That was that. Inches of my hair were chopped off by the end of the week. And frankly, when the hairdresser showed me the final result, I thought I was slaying.

The unfortunate reality was my mother was right. There were a few key differences between my overall look and that of my mom (and Princess Di for that matter.)

1. I was a prepubescent girl.

2. I did not care about, nor wear makeup.

3. I dressed like a kid who wanted to run around and play, not dine with the Queen.

This all combined into a simple fact that more often than not, if you were just taking a glance at me, if I was not wearing a dress or the obvious pink, you might just probably would think I was a boy.

Fast forward a few months. Note that I still thought my haircut was very cool. My family was out dining at the fine establishment of Applebee’s (it very well may have been on a Tuesday night). I excused myself from the table to go to the restroom.

I, a female human, walked through the door that said “Women.” I jumped as an elderly woman at the sink shouted, “excuse me, the little boys’ room is that way!”

I turned around, to catch a look at who she was talking to. A full rotation later, it clicked—she meant me.

I froze for a moment, losing the power of speech as she continued to glare at me. Unsure what to do, I simply turned around and exited the way I’d come.

Back at the table, I promptly started crying into my mother’s shoulder. This had surely never happened to her, or Diana. And worst of all, I still needed to pee.

Who We’re Looking For: I’ve wondered about that grandma in the years since. Did she identify herself as someone on the vanguard of the political bathroom wars? Or maybe she just thought I couldn’t read? I may never know. But I’d like to tell her I’m sorry for scaring her, and let her know that I am indeed a fellow gal. Maybe I’d ask for my own apology in return.

As a consequence of the fight, flight, or freeze response, I don’t have much to go on in helping us find her. My brain processed nothing about her appearance other than she had white hair, and a screechy voice.

#3 Hillsdale Horse Girl - Grace

Where: Hillsdale College, Michigan

When: Summer 2002

What Happened: I went on my first college visit at age 9: a liberal arts university with admirable accolades such as being somewhere different than where I grew up and having a royal blue track. My family and I were accompanying my second brother on a visit to Hillsdale College, an institution my brother—an accomplished distance runner—was also interested in for its blue track.

I didn’t know much about Hillsdale, but I quickly picked up on the fact that this was not like where I grew up at all, namely due to all the people on our tour who were in skirt suits. I was definitely not in a skirt suit, but a pair of stretchy shorts purchased from the clearance rack of JCPenneys: a sensible choice, in case I wanted to run a lap on the blue track after the tour. (I did).

One skirt suit-wearer was a young woman who carried herself with an air of being the owner of a finely-bred horse—and she was! We found this out after her mother, who was also in a skirt suit, asked, “Do you have stables nearby where my daughter can board her horse?” I didn’t own a horse, but I did own a pair of gerbils, which I wondered if I could bring with me to college one day.

I was admittedly curious to know more about this girl’s horse, but I didn’t pick up on any social cues that she or her mother were interested in conversing with an adolescent girl whose legs were covered in bug bite scabs. Honestly, she was very unfriendly, which confused me because Hillsdale was supposed to be a Christian college, and I thought Christians were supposed to be kind and welcoming! But what did I know, I was just a kid.

I was hoping the tour would hurry up and end so I could sprint a lap around the blue track, but we had one final stop. At this point, I think my whole family was feeling that Hillsdale wasn’t our vibe, and silence slowly settled in as we shuffled through the stuffy dorm rooms. Until the silence was interrupted by: A FART!

To everyone’s surprise, t’was not I that tooted, but Miss Skirt Suit! While she could’ve easily tried to implicate me, a gassy 9-year-old, as the player of the trouser trumpet, Miss Skirt Suit’s mother produced a look of parental disdain upon her daughter that haunts me to this day. The look communicated such severe opinions of her daughter such as: we raised you better than this and what have you and your distressed gastrointestinal system done and you have ruined your future and I am going to have to shoot your horse now.

That day, I learned that pressure must always be expelled.

Who We’re Looking For: What ever happened to Miss Skirt Suit, I wonder, and more importantly, her horse? Did she end up enrolling at Hillsdale? Has she since gone to therapy to discuss the crippling weight of unrealistic parental pressure? Can she accept that farts are a part of being human and forgive herself for momentary lapses of perfection and flatulation?

I’m looking for a brunette woman who just turned 40-years-old and has a liberal arts education from an institution that has a blue track. She may or may not be wearing a skirt suit, and may or may not be riding a horse.

#4 The Trouble with Toes - Hannah

Where: Cinemark 18 Lewisville, Texas

When: Summer 2012

What Happened: It had been five years since Spider-Man had last flung himself across the big screen. Tobey Maguire was 37—his time was over. Tom Holland was 16—a child. But the blessed Andrew Garfield was 29—the perfect age at which Hollywood says “yes, please play a junior in high school.”

A gaggle of friends and I were excited to see The Amazing Spider-Man. We piled into my blue Ford Escape and drove to the theater the town over, connected to the mall. We had a system: bring your largest purse, hit the food court, purchase a Panda Bowl from Panda Express, hide it in said purse, and enter the theater. Yes, the smell of orange chicken was likely far more noticeable than we realized, wafting up to the rows behind us, but we were never caught.

My bladder is small3, so I always waited until the last second to go to the bathroom, as the previews rolled. My friend Evan (a girl, mind you) rushed out to go with me.

Something to know about Evan: we had a mild feud going on who had the better-looking toes. The answer was clearly me, but you’ll have to take my word for it (#nofreefeetpics). Evan and I had recently gone to get pedicures, where she had chosen to get her (less- aesthetically-pleasing) toes painted green. Remember that.

The theater bathroom was large, with probably a dozen stalls. I went into one, a few steps ahead of Evan. A moment later, a wadded up piece of toilet paper (clean, blessedly) hit the ground before me. Then, another. My mind reasonably concluded that Evan was messing with me, throwing TP from the neighboring stall.

I looked down, and saw her green toes under the partition separating us. Instead of retaliating with bath tissue, I chose to wield words.

“Look at your weird little toes,” I said loudly. I was compelled to reach my hand under the stall and poke her foot for emphasis.

“Weird little green baby toes,” I said again. The foot jerked back at my touch, and I heard an unintelligible mumble.

Done with my business, I exited the stall.

In front of me stood the impossible. Evan was there before me, crumpled toilet paper in hand. Suddenly, multiple truths collided at once.

Evan had been throwing the paper, but from in front of me, not the neighboring stall.

The person in the neighboring stall was still in there, green toes and all.

Therefore, I had poked—and insulted—a random woman’s toes in the public bathroom.

I HAD POKED A RANDO’S TOES IN THE PUBLIC BATHROOM!

I let out a scream. Evan looked confused, but instead of explaining, I sprinted out of the restroom and back to the dark theater. I didn’t even wash my hands.4

Back in my seat, my heart was racing. Something deeper than embarrassment oozed out of me. I bent my knees, tucking my feet under my bottom and sitting atop them, fully convinced the manager was going to burst in with a flashlight, my victim right behind him, demanding to see everyone’s feet so she could identify the perpetrator.

No such justice came. Instead, that poor woman and I were forced to carry on with our lives. It’s been over a decade, and I am still haunted.

Who We’re Looking For: I can’t hear Andrew’s name, or smell a Panda Bowl, or see a spider, without wondering: where is that poor woman? Is she okay? Can I send her monetary compensation for the trauma I caused? Has she given up wearing open-toed shoes because of my folly?

I’ve also pondered the possibility of her out there in the world telling her side of the story. Part of what birthed this post is this idea: what if someone ever heard both sides of the story and connected us? Could it be you?

For description purposes, all we have to go on is that for at least one day 14 years ago, she wore sandals and green nail polish (and her toes weren’t really even that weird).

So, there are our stories. Maybe it’s true that some stones are better left unturned. Maybe some people aren’t meant to be found. Or maybe, we—with the help of strangers on the internet—can be the masters of our fate, and together can right these wrongs.

As someone who once sat in a restaurant crying about the Founding Fathers and all they accomplished, I hope my fellow American readers had a fun and maybe emotional semiquincentennial.

To you new subscribers seeing me in your email for the first time: it’s me—the one who wrote about my speech impediments! You may be surprised to find that my writing ranges from potential skull-chopping surgeries into the realm of grief, hope, faith, and motherhood, and the ways that life continues to be funny even when things are hard.

“Faith, hope, and love” may feel like a cliche found on a calligraphied piece of Hobby Lobby decor, but those words—and the God who is the fountainhead of each—form the ground that holds me up. So while there will be more silly tales to tell (in the hopper is the story of meeting my favorite boy band and acting like a dead fish), at the end of the day it’s this good God and the faith, hope, and love he’s given me that really drive my words.

To all of you, thank you for being here and welcoming me into your inbox. Here is the sixth installment of my round-up, where instead of sending each piece as its own email, I lay out a table every few months of all I’ve published lately. Peruse to your heart’s content and take a bite of whatever strikes your fancy. At the end, I’ll share some work from others that I’ve been enjoying.

These round-ups are also where I like to give a little life update. Here’s a momentous one: I had a baby! Praise God! He is healthy and happy and very, very sweet. I long to show you his precious precious precious little face, but I also don’t because the internet is a weird place. So we’ll do this side profile instead.

Last round-up I asked the question: how many children will I have this summer? While that seems odd, as a foster parent it is simply a logistical reality. For about three months there, we were told our foster daughter would move on X date. Never mind, Y date. Scratch that, Z date. Then the alphabet ran out and we sat in limbo for a few more weeks, had a baby, then finally said goodbye early June.

It’s been a wild few months, but if I were to try and tie it all up in a bow for an email newsletter that only half of you will open I’d say: our foster daughter is a gift. My son is a gift. My book-loving toddler is a gift. You are a gift. It is good to exist. If you haven’t heard it today, know that God made you and loves you. He holds you with more care, with more strength, with more love and delight than I’m holding that squishy baby above. Rest in that.

And thank you, as always, for being here! I pray the words you read would draw you further up & further in to the true home you were made for.

Gratefully,

Han

Some reflections on another foster care goodbye. It’s now the third time I’ve watched part of my heart go live the rest of her days beyond my gaze. It’s a strange and real loss.

And yet, there is a gaze they will never go beyond. There is an Artist behind all the the threads, all the weaving, every start and stop and tangle and twist. He reminds me that any thread of love—however long or short the time we’re knotted together—is never wasted.

Nearly a decade ago, I had the most vivid, otherworldly dream of my deceased mom.

We talked, we hugged, we cried, and I told her some important news. It was mysterious and beautiful and nothing like it has happened since. Here’s the story.

A lore drop that is more or less about how the two-headed snake of Big Orthodontics+Big Speech Therapy want me dead. Comically, this is now my most-read post.

“They don’t want theology, they just want antics,” said my husband.

What does Jordin Sparks’ masterpiece of a song, an abandoned car, a tweet from a future influencer, a fist fight, and a possible theophany have to do with the week that my mom died? A lot, apparently.

Literary Feast: Poetry and Prose

Hospitable Poetry #16

If you are new to our series, here is the link to find the intro on hospitable poetry and the previous posts by Renee Emerson, A. A. Kostas, Brit McReynolds, Mark Rico, Esther Jane, Kilby Austin, Zane Paxton, Robert Charboneau, Nick Chapman-Jones, Rosa Lía Gilbert…

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4 months ago · 43 likes · 7 comments · Hannah Lang and Abigail

I had the privilege to be a part of my friend ’s Hospitable Poetry series and share about a poem that feels like a friend.

to conclude: cowboys like me

We’ll end with a rapid-fire rodeo of some fellow writers whose words have encouraged me, made me think, or if I’m lucky, both. These people feel like kindred spirits—cowboys like me!

• If there’s one thing I’m gonna do on maternity leave it’s sit on the couch, nurse the baby, and read and read and read. ’s Galahad and the Grail and ’s What Grows in Weary Lands stand out as two winners. I devoured ’s The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion last year, but over the past month have been listening to the audio book version narrated by Genevieve Gaunt. IT’S A MASTERPIECE. If you love Emma you must listen to them at some point.

• Feeding People by . Sarah truly feels like my long-lost cousin. I mean it as the highest compliment when saying that she and my Grandmommy and Granddaddy would be friends. Her writing is encouraging, and beautiful, and so real I can taste it.

• is another kindred spirit. Sometimes, you read someone’s writing and can picture them tucked away with their keyboard, wringing their hands and closing out the world in a quest to write the most meaningful, perfect words. Then there are people whose writing is beautiful because they’re simply living a beautiful life, and giving us a glimpse of it. Their hands are dirty because they’re out there in the world, living and loving and digging, and their words grow out of that reality. Sharon is clearly the second one. Read IVF: In Defense of Personhood, and all of the Garden Updates.

• Twenty Years and Forty Years by . Someone commented on this one, “I feel like I have been transported somewhere, reading this.” The perfect description.

• 7 Questions with . I loved ’s interview and am excitedly awaiting the arrival of my copy of Caitlin’s new book—Woven Well: A Christian Woman's Guide to Reproductive Health, Fertility, & Wholeness

• Rooted, Ruined by . I read this poem a few days after giving birth, in the middle of the messy foster care unknowns. It was a gift.

• Read ’s 21 Proverbs for the Digital Age and maybe tape them to your bathroom mirror. Don’t worry, I’ve encouraged him to write a 4-part essay on each proverb!

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. It means a lot to have you along for the ride!

Nobody imagines their mom’s funeral, I reckon. Especially not a teenager. And yet, despite what felt like an absolute lack of expectations, many things popped up that week that were, well, unexpected.

Tuesday

On the night your mom dies, you expect that you’ll have to call some people and deliver the news. Family, mom’s friends, your friends—the short list of folks you want to have hear it from your own mouth. Making it through them all is hard, but necessary.

What you don’t expect is for the popular cheerleader—who you hung out with a few times in elementary school, but now, at 18, are not close with—to tweet out: Coppell loses another great one. 🙏 Mrs. Heidtke 🙏

In fact, this will be so unexpected that you’ll record the stats of the clout-chasing-meets-grief-meets-breaking-news-update in your journal1: She got 50 faves and 8 rando RT’s? What even.

Wednesday

Ever the words girl, you expect to speak at the funeral. So you drive to the nearby park, sit in your car to shield yourself from the January cold, and spend a few hours listening to sad music and wrangling down into your journal an attempt at the small task of honoring your mother’s life.

You don’t expect, when the words and tears are wrung out and you’re ready to go, that your engine won’t start. You call your brother to help, but the WikiHow steps on “How to Jumpstart a Car” prove fruitless. You abandon the car and go get tacos. (You can’t believe that in the midst of everything you must continue to feed yourself.)

Thursday

Frankly, you’ve been to too many funerals for a teenager. So you know the drill—there needs to be a little slideshow with pictures from your mom’s life. You try not to think of the photos that will never be taken: her at your graduation, wedding, holding your kids.

Your expectation is crystal clear: the slideshow should be in chronological order. Don’t include many pictures of when she was sick and bald and terribly scrawny. Let’s focus on the good times instead. It’s a plan that seems very sensible to you.

You don’t expect your brother to want to do the slideshow himself, and do it wrong differently.

You don’t expect your attempt to guide said brother to align with your sensible plan to devolve into yelling at him eviscerating him. You aren’t ready for all of the emotions of the past few days, weeks, months to find their release valve here, in this moment.

You don’t expect the brother who came to your rescue on Wednesday to try and punch you on Thursday. You don’t expect to deserve it.

Friday

You expect people to come to the funeral, but you weren’t expecting this many. You definitely weren’t expecting to see a cluster of your friends flittering and tittering about the fact that Cute Boys A, B, and C are in attendance—as if this was the Netherfield Ball, and there was not a casket front and center.

You knew mom wanted to be buried in her hometown, but you didn’t expect the conundrums that would arise when there’s a three-hour drive between the funeral service and the burial site.

Conundrum #1: Is it disrespectful to stop at Starbucks? Does it depend on what you order? Black coffee would match your black dress and the mood. But is a frappuccino inappropriate? It’s likely.

Conundrum #2: What the heck do we listen to? There are some things you don’t know until you know, and you quickly learn that “No Air,” with lyrics like:

Tell me how I'm supposed to breathe with no air
Can't live, can't breathe with no air
That's how I feel whenever you ain't there
There's no air, no air
Got me out here in the water so deep
Tell me how you're gon' be without me
If you ain't here, I just can't breathe
There's no air, no air

is not the right choice.

You were certainly not expecting Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown to make your dad cry in the passenger seat as you barrel down the highway, following a hearse. Quite the unusual road trip.

Later, after a few words given at the cemetery chapel, you don’t expect the funeral home employee to be standing so darn close to you while you take your final moments at the open casket. This woman is stationed what feels like a mere four inches away. You don’t know what to do—it’s your mom, but it’s not. She’s there, but she’s not. You reach out and gently touch her shoulder, one last time. It feels wrong in every way. The funeral lady can’t help but hear as you try your best to say goodbye.

Earlier

There was another unexpected moment, a few days before she passed. By then, her eyes had looked glassy for what felt like weeks. Between the tiny lesions in her brain and the wearing down of her body, her mind hadn’t been sharp and she hadn’t spoken much the whole month.

There were rare moments of conversation sprinkled throughout the days, each a tiny gift, the quickest flashes of normalcy, fading out almost as soon as they begun. None of it was the beautiful, wisdom-filled parting words you were hoping for. Nothing to hold on to once she was gone.

But all of the sudden, you notice her staring intently at the wall, eyes remarkably clear and bright.

“What are you looking at mama?” you venture, offering the question into the silence, knowing not to count on a reply. But her brown eyes stayed sharp, so you continue. “Do you see something?”

Ever so gently, she nods, letting out a noise of assent.

“What do you see?”

A slight pause. And then, in a quiet voice, she speaks.

“Jesus.”

She says it plainly, matter-of-factly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. As if his presence should never be a surprise, but something always expected. You suppose, after all, that it should be.

So you sit, side by side, content to rest in a hard to describe moment with an impossibly present God. A God who does not just show up after the mess, the conundrums, the surprising trials and tears of this broken world. But a God who was, and is there every unexpected day.

1

Speaking of the journal: perhaps the most unexpected, and honestly, psychotic piece of this puzzle is the fact that of all the journals I’ve filled in my life, this is the one that holds the day my mom died and the surrounding months:

Stay tuned for a future lore story about my 1D days.

Together, we celebrated Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and more. In our nightly family worship time, we’d laugh at her joyful, babbling rendition of “My God is So Big,” (BEEEEEEG!, she’d shout) and “Jesus Loves Me.”

It was not all sunshine and roses and singing—her case was complicated and heartbreaking and hard in many ways, and I was worn down and frustrated at many times—but the sunshine and roses and singing were certainly real.

Foster care is strange. On one hand, it is almost unnatural—giving yourself to a child not your own, who most likely will not stay long. On the other hand, love—especially love for a child—is the most natural thing in the world.

Last year, I read ’s essay “Overlapping Ribbons,” and this beautiful metaphor has been stuck in my mind ever since:

Think of your life as a ribbon unspooling along a timeline. You know when you began, but not when you will end. If you marry, at some point your two ribbons begin rolling down the timeline in tandem… If you have children, new skeins begin to unspool alongside your paired strands.

Her point is to encourage us, as far as it depends on us, not to wait for some perfect, future time to give our lives in love—to “tangle up” with others. Every moment, every inch of thread woven with those we love is a gift of infinite value.

The “overlapping ribbons” imagery looks a little different for foster families. The threads spill out, starting and stopping with no rhyme or reason. Colorful cords come and go, the result a riotous rainbow. Across the last three years, my husband and I have answered three late night calls asking if we were open to welcome in a little girl who needed a safe place to land. On three different nights, with a midnight knock on the door, a child was passed into my arms, and a new, beautiful ribbon began unfurling next to ours.

M was here for four months, unexpectedly leaving mere days before I gave birth to our firstborn daughter.1 All at once, one ribbon was tied off, and a new one began.

J showed up a year later, nearly the same age as our biological daughter. Off-brand twins, I called them. Watching their lives tangle and twirl together was a delight, til one night, while out at dinner celebrating Daniel’s birthday, we got a call saying J would be picked up and moved the next day. No notice, no time to prepare, just another goodbye, a skein that would unroll somewhere else.

L arrived last year, as spring turned to summer. We had a month where her strand stretched out with the three of ours, then she was leaving. But then, a few months later, her trail picked up again as we were asked if she could come back. We said yes, and picked up a new thread too—we learned we were expecting our son.

We’d been told for most of this year that L would move soon. Her mom was doing well, praise God, and it was only a matter of time before everything was cleared for her return. Certainly before your due date, the caseworker repeatedly said.

Well, if there is any certainty in the world of foster care, it is that certainty does not exist. Paperwork was missing, caseworkers quit, messes were made in a messy system, and in the middle of it all I had my son.

The threads of three children now braided together under our roof: a 2.5 year old, a 1.5 year old, and a newborn. “Don’t hit the baby,” was a common refrain of the last seven weeks. (He survived.)

Then, on Tuesday, we loaded L into a car and watched her ride away.

Three times, now, I’ve been left to watch part of my heart go live the rest of her days beyond my gaze. It’s not that these little girls’ threads are done unfolding—they’re just no longer rolling out beside ours. It’s a strange and real loss.

And yet, there is a gaze they will never go beyond. There is an Artist behind all the the threads, all the weaving, every start and stop and tangle and twist. He reminds me that any thread of love2—however long or short the time it’s knotted up with mine—is never wasted.

And now, as the ribbons of our foster daughters unfold in new homes, we find ourselves wrapped up together with their families. My daughter and son will grow up praying not only for their foster sisters but for M’s grandpa, J’s grandma, L’s mom. In a world that values independence and lightness, we’re charting a different path: tying ourselves up in a web of thick connections, drawn together by these little girls we’ve loved. I long for my children to have a wide sense of welcome, of care, of family.

Foster care is not easy. But I’d like to believe that our lives are all richer for having been woven together. There are children I love who I may never see again. And, God willing, there are children I will love who I haven’t met yet. At the end of my life, I’ll step back and see a many-colored, many-ribboned tapestry. A mighty, weighty web of love.

If you’re a pray-er, please pray for sweet L and her mom as they settle in together. And pray for the Lang gang as we adjust to our new normal here too! As always, if anyone ever wants to talk more about foster care, please reach out. I’d love to be a resource!

2

I collected (stole?) the phrase “thread of love” from my friend ’s beautiful post the other day:

Blessed Endurance

The Inconvenient Gift

This post is one of my most personal and details a quieter struggle of my first year in my current place and my pregnancy with my fifth child. I want it to be known that I do not hold anyone at fault for any difficulty I experienced. I believe it was simply the way things were, and perhaps had to be, according to God’s divine wisdom and love for me, and…

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5 months ago · 122 likes · 53 comments · Leah | Blessed Endurance

I’ll start by saying that none of this is my fault. Maybe my parents used the wrong bottles when I was an infant.1 Maybe they let me suck my thumb for too long. Maybe they didn’t give me an entire lamb shank to gnaw on when I was 7 months old, as the pediatric feeding specialists yammer on about these days.

Be it nature or nurture, my face became ground zero for a collision of errors in my jaw and teeth development. It all goes back to my tongue, which never quite knew where to go. The results? A narrow palate. A tongue thrust. And an open bite. When I was younger, I had a pretty exaggerated lisp, trouble with my Rs and Ws, and was a bit of a mouth breather.

There is a home video from sometime in early elementary school where my brothers and I are recreating a skit from that summer’s VBS. “Sam Shark here, investigative reporter,” I say to the camera. “We are coming to you live from the case of the counterfeit character!”

But it sounds more like this: Tham Thark heuw, investigative, weporter. We are coming to you live from the case of the countewfeit chawactew.

At a young age, talking like that is kind of cute. But after a while, your public school teacher flags you and you’re spending an hour a week with the district speech pathologist.

Week in and week out, from kindergarten through 5th grade, I sat with this kind woman who sought to set me and my tongue on the right path. Other children with my same sound struggles would join us, and we’d all R-R-R-R-R like a rooster. As the months went by, these comrades of mine would check all the necessary boxes, and the day would come where we’d celebrate their final session with a cookie. These brothers-in-arms would formally graduate from speech and return to normal class time. At 7 years old, it was the closest I’d get to saying goodbye to a buddy out on parole.

My situation, however, was more of a work release. I never officially graduated. Perhaps this is related to the fact that instead of actually completing my exercises at home with my mom or dad, I would occasionally have a friend forge my parents’ initials on my speech homework. (C’mon, initials? If a third-grader can forge something it’s too easy.)

So yes, even by 5th grade, I had not proven myself as the speaker I needed to be. I’d like to think I was meant to be born in Barcelona, where a little th goes a long way. But I was here in Texas, and the middle school did not have an on-campus speech pathologist, so they just kinda let me age out.

Fast forward to high school. One day I come home to a letter from Coppell Independent School District confessing that they had recently been made aware that the speech pathologist at my elementary was never formally licensed. (The guilt of my own dalliance with forgery was lessened in light of this revelation.)

This woman had been promptly fired, and a bonafide was hired in her stead. After much apologizing, this letter offered me the opportunity to drive myself—now 16—to the elementary school every week to take a speech class once again. This time, it would be sanctioned by the State of Texas. And maybe God.

I, ever proud, declined. I had pulled myself up by my bootstwaps bootstraps and was doing fine talking like a normal person, thank you.

I made it through college without being flagged by any more teachers or medical professionals, so I considered any speech impediments a thing of the past. I was an adult now. And I was employed!

Remember the obituary job? Yes, for a few years I read thousands of obituaries and summarized them for publication in my university’s alumni magazine.

In addition to the magazine publishing short obituaries for every deceased former student, Texas A&M also has a tradition called the “Worldwide Roll Call for the Absent.” You can read about it here—yes, it’s very special—but my point is not what the WWRC is, but rather that it is a phrase with entirely too many W’s and R’s for someone like me.

It took a feat of superhuman strength every time I was forced to say it—something possible only under extreme duress, requiring diligent focus.

All too often I would be on the phone with a sweet 90-year-old widow of a WWII veteran: “Yes, I loved learning about your husband’s service while reading the info you sent in for his obituary. We will include him in next month’s magazine and I’ll be sure to send you extra copies. And I also wanted to make sure you know about our…” — here I’d audibly gulp and drop to 0.25x speed—

“World

Wide

Roll

Call…”2

It was around the same time as this job that I began going to a new dentist. I told him—and he could clearly see—that none of my front teeth touch when my jaw is closed. I joked that this can make it hard to eat a thin crust pizza, for I can just pull it right out between my teeth. He seemed less than amused, but agreed that yes, I had a pronounced “open bite,” likely due to a tongue thrust.3

The dentist suggested that before we try to fix my bite with orthodontia, we needed to get my tongue under control. Back to speech therapy it was.

“Uh, I really only know a speech path that works with kids,” he admitted sheepishly. “But try her number and see if she’d help you.”

I did, and Deborah said she would have me. I asked if her license was real or forged. (It was real!)

When the day of our first appointment came, I pulled up to the address she’d given me, and found myself in front of an indoor playground. It turns out her office—if we can call it that—was in the closet of this children’s establishment, across from the ball pit and sensory table.

The bored teenager working the front desk looked surprised to see me as I walked in, a lone adult, no 4 year old in tow.

“Hi,” I started. “Um. I’m here to see the speech pathologist?”

“She’s in the back closet,” the teen told me. “But you need to take your shoes off to enter the play space. Do you have socks?”

I looked down at my sandaled feet. “No, I didn’t kn—”

She cut me off with a sigh. “Then you’ll need to buy our socks. They’re two dollars.”

Now two dollars poorer and with my bare feet covered, I walked the 20 feet to the closet. She was with a client so I waited in a child-size chair until the 5 year old she was working with walked out with his mom.

In case I haven’t painted a clear enough picture for you, here’s a screenshot from her website of what I, a twenty-something, was about to get up to:

I spent a few months with Deborah. I wish I could remember more of her idiosyncracies, more highlights from our time together. It felt like an SNL skit in our little chairs, the toys all around the room. The main thing I recall is how incredibly excited she was that I could…speak? Give feedback? Communicate like the adult that I was? “I’m so used to kids who don’t give me anything back,” she’d say.

Happy to help, ma’am. I live to serve.

Once again, I did not graduate, per se, from her tutelage. Instead, I packed up my socks, moved to Dallas, and abandoned Deborah to the toddlers.

After a year or so in Dallas, I found myself in a new dentist’s chair, giving him my spiel. I know I have an open bite and I need to stop my tongue thrust first before we can fix my teeth in any lasting way.

He nodded along, but suggested I go ahead and visit an orthodontist just to get a different opinion.

“This is the best orthodontist in Dallas,” he told me, handing me a card. “She’s incredible.”

I scheduled a free consultation, and by the time I was driving downtown to her office I had resigned myself to the fact that if anyone could make the best of adult braces, it would be me. I love a good bit. I love self-deprecating humor. And here was a chance to have a built-in-bit wired to my teeth? Peak comedy.

We would all laugh about it—there’s Hannah with the braces! She’s so funny!—for the year or two it would take to close my bite and restore my pizza-eating capabilities.

I was—quite literally—chuckling to myself as I got out of my car and walked into the office. Braces! This is gonna kill in stand up one day.

Well, the best orthodontist in Dallas had other plans. Psychotic plans.

This lady was—no exaggeration—rubbing her hands together in glee as she looked over my x-rays. “I know just what we can do,” she said, a menacing glint in her eye.

She sat at her computer for a few minutes, rapidly typing and clicking away, before turning the screen to face me. What I saw was a recreation of my skull, complete with my open bite. Nothing too crazy yet. But then she pressed play, and a little animation began.

It did not show braces being attached to my teeth. Instead, the first scene was the upper part of my jaw being detached from my head—my palate and top teeth completely popping off like a lego.

Here is a similar image I found on Google:

I wanted a funny little bit to joke about with the pals. She wanted to chop my skull!

The animation continued. Once my palate was free from the God-given confines of my skeletal system and feeling a cool breeze for the first time, it would be stretched to the right size. Then she would remove a few teeth that were “too small,” screw some new, fake teeth into this free-floating jaw of mine, then reattach it to my face.

Next, my jaw would be wired shut for weeks to heal. Then, and only then, would I get braces.

When the body horror animation stopped, she looked at me with a smile. “It’s really impressive what we are able to do now. I’d love to be a part of this surgery.”

I almost threw up.

Gathering myself, I posed a question: “And what would happen,” I paused and made sure I had eyes on the exit, “if I didn’t do this? What would eventually happen to my teeth?”

She shrugged. “Your molars will just get worn down as they take all the force of your chewing. You’d probably just need crowns eventually.”

“Ah. Okay. Thank you. Let me think about it and get back to you,” I said, already making my way out the door.

In the car I immediately called my husband— “She wanted to CHOP MY SKULL!” I shouted.

“I think you should go with the crowns,” he replied.

Later, when I rehashed the story with a friend, she mentioned that a girl we went to college with had had a similar surgery. I texted her to ask about it. Her reply was immediate, and this, too, is not exaggerated:

Hannah, that surgery was truly the hardest thing I have ever gone through physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It was excruciating. But I know sometimes it’s necessary. How much pain are you in right now?

I’m not in any pain. I texted back. I just can’t eat pizza and I look a little funny from the side.

FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD, DO NOT DO IT.

Okay, I replied. You don’t have to tell me twice!

The sadist orthodontist called me every few weeks in the months that followed, wanting to know if I would move forward with the plan. I fear she may have framed my x-rays and put them in her room. But after repeated no’s, she got the message.

It’s now a few years since the animation from hell. So, where are we now?

By God’s grace, my skull remains unchopped. I have not yet needed crowns, and my lisp only comes out every blue moon. Thin crust pizza continues to get a little wily at times, but nevertheless, she persisted.

I suppose it all comes back to the tongue. As always, in the end, we must return to the Bible. James was right when he wrote that: “every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”4

In other words, I’m toast.

It’s been three years since my mother’s death, and while the grief is always tucked in my back pocket, life feels lighter as summer stretches and spills before me.

I miss my mom. And I am happy. Yes, there is the glaring, painful lack where she should be. But everywhere else? Abundance.

I miss my mom. And every so often, she flickers through my days. I see the back of her head in a crowded room, slipping out the door before she turns around. I hear the sound of her familiar laugh, or her two-toned whistle. I catch the smell of her favorite lotion, just a trace in the air.

But mostly, I find her at night, in my dreams. Sprinkled throughout these three years, she has been there—a character in the background. No speaking lines. Rarely a full look in the face. But when I wake, I remember seeing her, feeling her there, and I am comforted.

But this Wednesday was different. This dream was different, unlike anything I’ve experienced before or since.

I am in a busy train station. I turn through the crowd, and there she is. Immediately, it feels different. Our smiles. Our relief. Somehow, there is an understanding—she is dead. This is not real. And yet here we are, standing in front of each other, both aware of this wild gift.

We walk together and soon come across my friend, a college girl I’ve met in the years since Mom died. I introduce them, and explain to my friend the impossible: that yes, this is my mom, the one who died, and no, we don’t really know what is happening.

We carry on and wander into a room with a couch and a TV turned to Aggie sports (one of her great loves.)

I wrap my arms around her, folding into her familiar frame. To hold her, to be held by her again—I can’t describe it. It’s arriving back home after a long and painful journey. It’s falling into a pool of clear, cool water after days in the desert. It’s finding what you thought was lost forever—for indeed, that’s what this was—finding, and being found again.

So I bury deeper, and the comfort that only comes from these arms, this love, courses through me.

It wakes me up to the fact that her love, full and strong, has always flowed beyond me as well. “We need to get the boys here,” I tell her.

I step away, pull out my phone, and call my brothers and dad. “You need to come here,” I tell them. (I’m not bothered by the fact that I’m not quite sure where here is.) “Now. Mom’s here. I don’t get it, but come. Hurry.”

I make another call—to Daniel, my boyfriend. He picks up and starts telling me about his day, but I cut him off and urge him to come too. “My mom is here,” I tell him, tears in my eyes.

Uttering the words brings it all home again. My mom is here. What am I doing wasting time on the phone? I hang up and run back to her side.

We talk a little while, I don’t remember about what. Too soon, she tells me it’s nearly time for her to go.

We both start crying. A train horn sounds in the distance.

“Wait,” I say, “I need to tell you one last thing. You’re not going to believe this.”

She looks at me expectantly.

“I’ve kissed a boy. Actually I’ve kissed two boys, but the first one doesn’t matter.1 But the second one, his name is Daniel, and he’s trying to come right now but I don’t think he’s going to make it in time. But,” I pause.

“I think I kind of love him.”

Here I must drag us from this dream to take a quick aside, back to June 6, 2012. It was another unexpected Wednesday. A much uglier one. On this day, my mom picked up the phone and received the results from the biopsy done on the “suspicious lumps” recently found in her armpits.

It was cancer. On that call, they estimated she had five years to live (they’d later bring it down to six months). There is much I could say about that day, but allow me to highlight one particular moment:

At some point after the call, after she sat us down in my brother’s room and delivered the news, after she cried while eating a sandwich and asked if any of us were going to say anything (we did not), after we’d all held the weight of our worries for a few hours, Mom turned to humor (for those of you who’ve been around a while, you see where I get it from).

“I can’t die in five years before Hannah kisses a boy!”

Yes, this really happened. There was a bit of a joke in the family that I was an early-onset spinster, or at the least would be late to the romance game. But to invoke the joke on that day of all days? Audacious.

This was why, in the midst of a supernatural dream, in my beautiful borrowed moments from beyond the grave, a top priority was to tell her that it had happened, and just under the five-year mark, to boot.

Now, back to the wonder.

“I do love him. I do,” I say, surer. Tenderly, she places her hand on my cheek.

“Oh, Sister,” she says, eyes shining, joy beaming.

We’re weeping and laughing and wrapping each other up once again.

Another train horn sounds, nearer this time. We feel the heaviness of the imminent goodbye. But there too, buoying and bearing us up, is love.

Our love for each other—sure and true, a mighty, rooted oak that’s stood through time and trial. And this new love—a tender shoot, just beginning, bearing whispers of what may one day find rest under its shade.

When we finally break apart, she wipes my tears. We say goodbye. I love you. I’ll miss you. Thank you. See you soon.

Then she is gone.

I walk over to a trash can and throw up. Even in dreams, the heart can only take so much, I suppose.

I wake up crying and immediately record an 8-minute long voice memo.

“Whoa, that was the most real dream I’ve ever had. And also, whoa, I just told Mom I’m in love with Daniel. Also, whoa—am I in love with Daniel? I think so. Whoa.”

Whoa is right.

Cancer did not just steal her from me, but from everyone I’d love after she was gone. She will never meet so many of my dearest people, not til glory. But that night, I got to look into her eyes and tell her about the man who would become my husband, the father of my children, my truest friend.

It’s been nine years since that dream, and I’m still not quite sure what I think about it. Are there some sort of theological ramifications I need to explore? Did I eat something too spicy for dinner that night, or some bad cheese? Was my subconscious just plagiarizing the King’s Cross scene from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? Maybe.

Or maybe, it was simply a midweek miracle. A gift to be received with thanks.

I hope that some day you might experience one too.

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I hope you had a joyful Easter and that this email finds you delighting in all the real and metaphorical goodness of spring (we have already hit the 90s a few times here in Dallas, so I’m personally pressing in on the metaphorical).

If this is your first round-up, welcome! And thank you for welcoming me into your inbox. Instead of sending each piece as its own email, I prefer to send these newsletter recaps every so often that let you peruse what I’ve published lately and jump into what sounds interesting to you. I also like to share work from others that I’ve enjoyed. You’ll find that all listed below.

Once this April missive goes out, I’m not sure when you’ll next see me in your inbox. I wish I could send a quick email to future, mid-summer Hannah and get an update on a few things—namely, how many children do we have?

We are in a…what should I call it…interesting? funny? mysterious? moment where I am nine months pregnant awaiting the entrance of our son, while also holding the news that our foster daughter, who’s been with us for half her life, is likely leaving before the month ends.

How will this timeline shake out?

Will our sweet girl actually leave? It sounds probable, but “probable” means next to nothing in the foster care world.

Is my son’s head really in the 98th percentile, or is that a hoax? Is a giant head why I’m peeing my pants (just a little, don’t worry, it’s very chill) most days?

How will all of the above impact our toddler daughter?

How many car seats do I actually need?

Inquiring minds would like to know.

Motherhood, and foster motherhood, and life itself, actually, now that I think about it, is an exercise in surrender. Surrendering to the fact that I will rarely get the answers ahead of time. Surrendering to the only thing I do really know for sure: that I am not in control. Surrendering and facing each day as it comes, trusting that I and my children are held by a loving Father.

I’ve been making my way through the Old Testament over the past few months, and recently read through Ezra-Nehemiah.1 I noticed a refrain, repeated around seven or eight times throughout the two books, that was some version of: “the good hand of my God was upon me.”

In this strange season, amidst all the unknowns, I can tell you that I have indeed felt the good hand of my God upon me.

It will be hard saying goodbye to our sweet foster girl if she does go. It will be hard to labor and birth and reenter the newborn stage. It will be hard to hold all the feelings of joy and sorrow at once, while also being on a hormonal rollercoaster and oozing various fluids.

I know it will be hard, because we’ve walked what seems to be this exact road before. As the title says, this is not our first rodeo: our first foster placement, the girl that made us parents in 2023, was unexpectedly moved exactly one week before our daughter was born.2 I wasn’t planning to make that a tradition, but here we are.

Hellos and goodbyes, joy and pain, grief and gratitude, these are all themes of my little life. Through it all, the good hand of my God has not let me go, and I trust that he will not let me go this time either.

If I may be so bold, please join me in praying for our foster daughter: that the Lord would bless her and keep her and make his face shine upon her and give her peace all her days. Pray for the family she will return to, that they would stay healthy and safe, that each of them would taste and see the Lord’s steadfast love and plentiful redemption.

Pray for my husband, for me, and especially for our toddler as we face all these changes: that the Lord would comfort us. Pray that our daughter’s memories of her foster sister would fill her with joy. “We’re sisters and girls,” she likes to say. Pray that we could model for her that loving and welcoming is worth it, even when it costs us.

And pray for me and my son as we tag-team this whole birth thing. That we would stay healthy, that it would all be safe and smooth, and maybe even that he wouldn’t have a mega-head.

Thank you for praying. And thank you for reading! As always, I pray the words you find here would draw you further up & further in to the true home you were made for.

Gratefully,

Han

three arms, one heart

In an unexpected twist, my somewhat-jokingly written, not particularly serious Valentine’s Day reflection on the early days of Han & Dan has become my most-liked piece. Sorry for all the theology and God stuff, I guess. Y’all just want arm jokes and awkward flirting between two across-the-street neighbors!

Like a psycho, I would peer through my front blinds to see if his car was home, before casually walking over and asking if anyone wanted to hang out. Didn’t know who was home, I’d say, very chill and cool, but wanted to see if anyone wanted to go to Chick-fil-a?

the foundation still stands

I’ve never felt more sure that I got my thesis across than when commented on this post saying: “A vague hit piece on Botox turned deeply introspective meditation on the meaning of Christian suffering was not on my bingo card for today, but boy howdy was this a wonderful read.”

I’m a hopeful gal. I believe we can change the perspective on what is truly beautiful, and I believe we can change the perspective on pain, on discomfort, on the suffering that comes for us all in various times and ways. As believers, we live in a better, more satisfying story. We can see the emptiness and fleetingness of the escape-hatch promises of the world. When storms come, we have an unshakeable foundation to stand on.

how to say goodbye

January marked 12 years without my sweet mama. As often happens that time of year, my mind wandered back to our final weeks together and what it looked like to say goodbye.

“Mama-”

Try not to hesitate.

“It’s okay.”

Every inch of you will scream that it is not, but you have to say it anyway. Tell her that she can be done, that she can stop, that she can let go.

Lie there, and unfold your life—tell her about all of the things you are going to do and introduce her to all of the people you are going to be.

to my son

As the day draws nearer to welcoming our first son, I’ve been wrestling with fears and hopes and prayers around what it will look like to raise a boy into a good man.

I pray for God’s help. I pray above all that I can point you to him. That you would see him as most beautiful. That the lies and false promises of the world would land on your tongue like ash, promptly spit out—because you know the real thing. You have tasted and seen that he is good.

He is so good, my son. He has been good to me.

to conclude: cowboys like me

We’ll end the round-up with a rapid-fire rodeo of some fellow writers whose words have encouraged me, made me think, or if I’m lucky, both. These people feel like kindred spirits—cowboys like me!

• One of my pals from college, has a new Substack, Stay at Home Friend, and it’s so fun! She is creative and joyful and talented. If you like Feeling! Magazine you will love Audrey.

• Everything has been sharing lately has been so deeply encouraging to me. In a way that is rare and beautiful, Leah’s words help me love and trust Jesus more. “Five Sons, Hope, and Reconciliation” and “The Cross of Fertility in Christian Femininity” have been on my mind a lot since I first read them.

• Two of my recent pieces got above 30ish likes, and while I hate to admit it, I truly was starting to feel a little bit famous. Then I read this note from and it brought me back down to earth with the most beautiful truth. Without being guilty of over-liking/sharing/admiring/amen-ing, allow me to say that the Welchers are wonderful. God uses them to bless me.

• Lastly, at the suggestion of my friend , I tore through (or whatever the equivalent of tearing through an audiobook is) a new memoir from called You’re So Strong: On Grief and Letting Go of My Favorite Compliment. Our stories of death are different—Leslie suddenly lost her husband and was left to walk through grief with two young sons, while my mom was sick for a year before dying when I was 18—yet so much of this book had me saying, “she is me. I am her.” It was sad and true and hopeful and hilarious—because yes, humor still exists when everything blows up. It’s left me feeling similar to how I felt after finishing Harrison Scott Key’s incredible How to Stay Married, which is to say, “I may just have to go and write my own terrible-things-are-happening-but-much-is-still-funny-and-also-God-is-good memoir.” I’ve got stories like stumbling across a 100-piece collection of bronze hands of famous people in the bowels of the hospital, or the time I got punched the morning of my mom’s funeral that won’t tell themselves!

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. It means a lot to have you along for the ride!

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You are nearly ready to make your debut. I praise God for your life and for the gift of getting to carry you, to be your home, for these many months that are soon drawing to a close. We already love you dearly, little one.

When asked about you, your big sister likes to say that she will “share her toys”—but frankly, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Although I feel you moving every day, I can still hardly believe that you are real, that you are here. That I am having a son.

On the day we discovered that you are a boy, I was excited, yes—but also nervous. If I’m being honest, I might even say I was scared.

What do I know about boys? “I feel a little ill-equipped to raise a boy into a good man,” I wrote in my journal last fall, “probably because I’ve never seen a grown man who wasn’t a clown at some point.”1

I see headlines about how men are struggling socially and in school, I hear the harrowing statistics around pornography, and—against my will—I learn terms like “manosphere.” At first glance, it’s not a rosy picture.

Yes, the world is hard for women, too. But I feel like, as a woman, I’ve learned to navigate it. I had a wonderful mom who showed me the way. When I think about the problems your sister might face, I hold some confidence in facing them with her.

But you? I have never raised a son. I have never been a son.

And yet, here is what I do know: God made you. He loves you. The life that he will offer you is the truer and better and sweeter life that you were made for—the very life that this world is trying to counterfeit, contort, and sell back to you at a price.

At some point in these last few months, God has put this verse on my heart when I think about your life:

“Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” - Psalm 34:8

I do not know how many days or years we will have together. I have swallowed enough grief to know that nothing is guaranteed—not your safe delivery, not laughter and whoops of joy spilling out in triumph as you learn to ride a bike, not your graduation, your wedding. No dreamed-of day is promised, all is gift. Every breath, every moment.

And so I pray that God gives us a long life together, my sweet boy. And I promise you, that your father and I will wring out each of these days we’re given to give you chance after chance after chance to taste and see God’s goodness.

I am trading my fear of a world that is hard for boys, for an excitement at the privilege it is to give you every opportunity to experience the life that is truly life.2 My deepest desire is that you would know, love, and trust the God who deeply loves you. That you would obey him, even when it is hard.

I long for our family to grab hold of all that the Lord offers us—to taste, to see, to get dirt under our fingernails and sweat on our brows, to leave our hearts vulnerable because we are not afraid to love when it is costly. I want us to adventure through this stunning world God has created; I want us to struggle and win and lose and try again; I want us to build deep relationships within and without the walls of our home, where laughter comes easily and truth flows graciously and prayers come naturally.

I do not want you to settle for a half-life mediated through screens. I do not want you to aim for comfort and ease and consumption.

I do not want you to suffer, but I know that you will. I have learned many lessons through my own pain, and I pray that you may learn some of those same truths without the same wounds—but I also can’t help but believe that to shelter you from suffering would be to shelter you from the weighty hope that anchors the soul, from the comfort of the Savior who suffered for us.

The truth is, my fear is founded, at least halfway: I am ill-equipped to be your mother. I will let you down, sure as the sun. I will say one thing and do another.

And yet, I know in my bones, in my blood—where our very cells are now shared—that we were given to each other. I, in all my flaws, in all my sin, am your mother. You are my son. It is no accident nor chance.

I must rest in the fact that I do not have to be—and indeed cannot be perfect. And you are not a tower for me to build, following a blueprint. You are a human, a body and soul I have been given the privilege to love, to nurture, to guide.

I pray for God’s help. I pray above all that I can point you to him. That you would see him as most beautiful. That the lies and false promises of the world would land on your tongue like ash, promptly spit out—because you know the real thing. You have tasted and seen that he is good.

He is so good, my son. He has been good to me.

In the end, my prayers for you are not so different from my prayers for your sister, for your foster siblings here and gone, for your dad, for myself: that we, as a family, may grasp hold of eternal life.

“And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” - John 17:3

I love you, little one. I cannot wait to meet you soon.

Love,

Mama

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Ten minutes into the start of the stream, I sent my friend this text about one of the main speakers:

I’m not trying to rag on this one specific woman. Many of you on here are far outside my DFW-Protestant-Christian-bubble, and it’s likely you have no idea who she is. I truly do believe that she loves the Lord, and he has used her life in beautiful ways: she’s written books that point to Jesus, boldly spread the gospel far and wide, and now she was at this event, talking about how we can walk in freedom instead of believing the lies of the enemy.

But as I stared at her smooth face on the screen, all I could think was, “why should I believe you?”

It is hard to take the encouragement to rest in God’s promises seriously when it’s coming from the mouth of someone unable to rest in the skin God has given her.

It is hard to build the faith that allows God to change my heart when I cannot trust him with my changing body.

As I texted my friend, it does make me think.

What does it literally look like to trust? And what does it look like to not?

I know myself—I love a debate and a strongly worded essay, and I’d have a ball writing a Botox hit piece, it’s true.

I know many of my friends on here agree that cosmetically altering ourselves to fit some “beauty ideal” is not a meaningless choice, but a decision to reject the very body that God has formed, knit, woven, given to us.1 “Wonderful are your works,” we’ll say one moment, but our souls are quick to forget, and next thing you know, we’re trading a matchless work of the Creator for a work of men’s hands.2

So, yes, I could say a lot. Aging is a gift. Our bodies matter to God. Botox=bad. What message are you sending to your daughters? Jesus will do more for your self-worth than any cosmetic procedure. Yadda yadda yadda. With my persuasive essay and y’all’s agreeable comments, we’d definitely get ‘em this time. We wrinkled women are very cool and wise and mature and frankly, holy.

And yet, if we’re pinpointing the problem as a lack of trust, as the absence of acceptance in what God has given, as a desire take control and push pause (or rewind or change channel) on the life that the Author is writing for us, as an attempt to escape pain, then the pointed finger at the silly Botox women quickly turns back to me.

When have I wished that I could change or reverse or undo not the marks on my skin, but other threads that the same good God has seen fit to knit into my story? When have I thought, I know better than God?

There are hundreds of things that I can look back on, stretching across the years. Smaller things, from my younger days: why did those friends leave me out, why did I not get accepted into that club or program? There are many things I would have done differently if I were in charge. If someone offered me a shot in the forehead that would soothe and smooth those situations, would I have taken it? Probably.

But each disappointment left me with the opportunity to look around and realize that the truths are still true: God is still here. He is still good. I am still loved. The foundation still stands.

“Practice losing farther, losing faster,” wrote the poet Elizabeth Bishop.3 And I did—the stories I wouldn’t write for myself got worse. I took to my journal as an 18 year old, titling a page Bible Verses that Sound like B.S. When Your Mom Dies of Cancer.

They did sound like B.S. They did not feel true. But in the quietest place, after the accusing petered out and the tears dried up, I could still hear the song, ever faint. Even then, the truths were still true. God is still here. He is still good. I am still loved. The foundation was still holding me.

In the twelve years since I titled that journal page, many similar sentiments have been scrawled out.4 What are you doing? You say you are wise and just and merciful, but this situation is so hard. Help me to see it. Help me to trust you. Help me to feel my feet held up by the foundation of who you are: good, loving, near.

The world will offer us many shiny escape-hatches out of suffering big and small.

“Don’t like your face?” a neon sign flashes, “Come over here and try this chemical! You’ll finally love yourself.”

“Feeling lonely? Real relationships are hard. People are messy. Live your life online instead!”

“Mom’s dying? God must’ve got a little distracted. You deserve some distractions too! Come browse our menu of pain-numbing fare! He let you down, you can let him down a little too!”

But there is a catch: any attempt to climb out of my pain requires stepping off the foundation. And eventually, whatever I sought to soothe or save me will send me crashing back down. As I’ve quoted before, “the very things in which people attempt to find liberation frequently become the things that bring them harsher bondage.”5

I know that, in his mercy, I could never climb far enough where he wouldn’t be ready to catch me, to welcome me back with gentleness. But the fall hurts less when you never leave the foundation.

The skyrocketing popularity of Botox and cosmetic procedures is a collective action problem—one person opting out doesn’t make much difference on what’s normalized at the societal level. But cultural beauty norms can change when more and more women push back.

I’m a hopeful gal. I believe we can change the perspective on what is truly beautiful, and I believe we can change the perspective on pain, on discomfort, on the suffering that comes for us all in various times and ways. As believers, we live in a better, more satisfying story. We can see the emptiness and fleetingness of the escape-hatch promises of the world. When storms come, we have an unshakeable foundation to stand on.

What if we encouraged each other not only to appreciate our aging faces and to see beauty and blessing and meaning in our wrinkles, but to appreciate—or at least not rage against—our hard circumstances? It is right to grieve and wrestle and lament when things are not as they should be. And it is right to remind one another that through Christ, our pain is never purposeless, and that God is with us in all our questions and longings.

What if, right now, you took a deep breath and let these words from Isaiah 46 pour over you:

“Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been borne by me from before your birth, carried from the womb; even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.”

From before my birth, to my gray hair (and wrinkles!), the truth remains: God is still here. He is still good. I am still loved. The foundation still stands.

I have scraped my way out of his arms and been thrust back into them over and again. With each passing year I am learning a new tactic: resting. Accepting what comes from his hand. Trusting his goodness. Allowing myself to be carried.

What else can I do? Where else would I go?

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We do not have the same color hair. Despite that setback, it’s been nearly a decade since our first date and we’ve been choosing each other ever since. By God’s grace I hope we’re choosing each other for decades to come, til our hair turns white and finally is the same color.

I thought it would be fun to write something a little different for Valentine’s Day weekend and share a bit about my and my husband’s story.

Some people don’t like to write about their personal lives. Those people usually aren’t funny.

The Sighting - Fall 2014

I can still remember the first time I saw him. It was not love at first sight. It was not, I’m going to have that guy’s babies one day.

It was simply, Oh. That must be the one-armed guy in BCA I heard about. I think his name is Daniel.1

The First Real Conversation - Fall 2015

Sophomore year began, and we saw each other around more. We moved in the same wider social circle, and would give a nod or a quick hello if we crossed paths on campus. Two of my friends had worked at a camp with Daniel that summer and said he was great. I tucked that away.

My roommates and I lived in an old house a short walk from campus, and we’d heard that the house next door was being renovated, and Daniel and his friends were moving in that summer. Did we immediately joke about making potential matches with the new boys next door? Of course.

When I saw Daniel at a tailgate later in the football season, I struck up our first real conversation.

Me: So I hear y’all are moving next door this summer?
Him: What?
Me: I live on Welsh. Aren’t you moving into the house next to us?
Him: No, I think it’s a different house.

I smiled and blinked at him for a minute, waiting to see if he would give any attempt to keep the conversation going. He did not. I wandered off.

Later, I would come to find that technically, he was correct. He was moving into a new build across the street, not the house next door. Nevertheless, it’s fair to say this dismal exchange set us back a year.

Things Are Happening - Fall 2016

The boys moved in over the summer, and our two houses began spending more and more time together as junior year began.

One Saturday, a gaggle of us were gathered at a friend’s house watching college football. Daniel and I sat at the table in the corner, just the two of us, finishing a puzzle of Neuschwanstein Castle that had been left sitting out, half-done. By the time the last piece was put in place, it was clear: I had a crush on the one-armed BCA guy who lived across the street.

Like a psycho, I would peer through my front blinds to see if his car was home, before casually walking over and asking if anyone wanted to hang out. Didn’t know who was home, I’d say, very chill and cool, but wanted to see if anyone wanted to go to Chick-fil-a?

And yet, I was afraid. For whatever reason, despite the puzzle vibes, I was rather certain that Daniel did not like me like that. And how painful would it be, I worried, to peer through the blinds one day and see him taking another girl out?

One night a group of us were studying at Daniel’s house. I don’t study well with other people, I was just there to flirt. Meanwhile, a gal friend was feeling very existential that night about her future.

“I just want to do things that make my heart beat fast,” she said. Dreamy college stuff. We’ve all been there. We listened to her musings for a while.

It got late, so I said goodbye to everyone and walked the 30 yards home. I was in my jammies, pulling back the covers to get in bed when my phone lit up with a text from Daniel.

Hey, I know you just left but can you come outside for a second?

I dropped my phone on the floor. This is it, I thought. He’s going to say to my face that he doesn’t like me.2

I hurriedly got redressed and walked out my door into the dark. Across the way, his front door opened, light falling onto the sidewalk.

He began what can only be described as an awkward speed-walk towards me, head down and words spilling out while he was still yards away.

“Hey I just wanted to say that I think you are really cool and I’ve loved getting to know you more lately and Shanti said that we should do things that make our hearts beat fast and I kinda feel like I’m gonna throw up right now so I wanted to know if you’d want to go on a date sometime?”

Look down at your watch and count five seconds. It feels longer than you’d think. That’s about how long I stared at him silently, trying to compute what I had just heard.

He interpreted my shocked silence negatively (which, fair).

“Yeah, never mind, me neither, don’t worry about—” he started, quickly turning around.

“No!” I shouted, cutting him off. “I mean, yes! I’d love to go on a date with you. Thank you for asking me.”

An Interruption - Later in Fall 2016

Daniel’s college house was known for its roof, which you could easily climb onto through one of the back windows. It was one of the few two-story houses in the neighborhood, so sitting on the roof with Kyle Field towering in the distance made you feel very cool. (You were not, but our college town was not known for its thrilling vistas or towering buildings. We took what we could get.)

By the second or third date I had told him very sternly, “Do not try to kiss me anytime soon.”3 Weeks went by. Maybe a month or two? Things were going well. But eventually, he got brave.

One evening, we were sitting on the roof after going to dinner together. He asked if he could kiss me. Once again, my brain short-circuited, and I was painfully slow to respond.

Somehow, in that exact moment, one of Daniel’s roommates had been making his way onto the roof to hang out with us.

“Hey guys,” he said, as Daniel’s question still floated in the air, unanswered. “What’s up? I hope I’m not interrupting anything. Thought I could hang with y’all up here for a minute.”

We both sat silent, unmoving.

“What?” the roommate said. “You guys can’t hang out with me anymore since you’re dating? I can’t just sit with my friends on the roof?”

Gathering Data - Fall 2017

A year went by. We were falling in love. And I was taking notes on the kind of man this man was. Literally.

There are the things that matter most: does he love God? Does he actually live like it? Then there are things that are smaller, but still important: when a rogue bottle of mustard falls off the table, what does he do next?

We liked (and still like) sports. In college, my dad worked for A&M and we got to go on the field for football games. Pictured above was a big day for me—my first attempt at the “possessive arm” pose. This wasn’t just a guy, it was my boyfriend.

I was too nervous to fully commit, though, so I stuck with a simple closed fist to the mid-torso. Daniel describes his own posture in this photo as “going very still,” like a threatened animal. Over time, we got more comfortable.

It was weird to have my first real boyfriend without my mom there to meet him. Instead of a sweet, warm woman to welcome him into family functions, Daniel had to deal with three guys.

My brothers really ran with the no-arm thing. My older brother, unprompted, sent this to us one day, less than a year into dating.

Reader, I Married Him - Fall 2018

We got engaged in April 2018. Best of all, I didn’t even pause, shocked, for five seconds before saying yes. No one had time to interrupt. Our friends threw us a party, complete with a poster saying “Three Arms, One Heart.”

We said “I do” a few months after graduating. I had just turned 23, Daniel was still 22. There was a lot we didn’t know then. We knew enough, though.

I came across a beautiful post the other day from about Julia Child and her husband, Paul. She shared this quote from Julia:

“I knew that if I gave Paul my life, he would not drop it.” What a simple yet perfect thing to say about someone you deeply love.4

I knew that if my life was a bottle of mustard, knocked on the ground by challenges or chance, Daniel would pick me up and set me right. He has. Even when his hands hand is full.

4

The Inscapist

Love Like a China Cup

When Julia Child fell in love with her husband Paul, she said this: “I knew that if I gave Paul my life, he would not drop it.” What a simple yet perfect thing to say about someone you deeply love…

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9 months ago · 69 likes · 12 comments · Denise Trull

I thought about how I want to die.

It was not that I want to die—I very much love my life and hope God gives me many, many more years—but how I want it all to go, when the time comes.

The end of this month will mark twelve years since my mom died of cancer. I’m sure that’s why thoughts of my own eventual death were bubbling beneath the surface, waiting for a quiet moment to emerge. January comes around with its dark and cold, and my subconscious remembers what this month once held.

As I sat there, unexpectedly imagining my final hours, I pictured singing.

I hope I am surrounded by loved ones, and I hope they are singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs over me.

A gift of cancer—if we can be bold enough to use those two words in the same sentence—is that you typically have some time to die. The offramp can be long, creating space for final moments.

On January 6, 2014, over a year since her diagnosis, my mother was given a few days to live. She ended up taking 22.

A 22-day deathwatch is not easy for anyone, much less three teenagers. We did not sing at my mom’s bedside for three straight weeks (and not simply because we went to a non-denominational megachurch and didn’t know enough hymns.) I didn’t sit there, unmoving, in prayer.

I went upstairs and watched a few rom-coms. I left the house and met some friends for dinner. I yelled at my brothers for leaving a bowl of milk on the table after breakfast. I stared at the ceiling and wished I had a boyfriend.1

But mostly, I was there, lying next to Mom. And mostly, it was terrible.

And yet, like the candles flickering beside me as I write this, there were moments where light broke through.

Family and old friends visited one last time, the urgency of death bringing to the surface things long left unsaid. My mom was mostly past speaking—but she listened, and her room brimmed with words of grace and forgiveness, with prayers and tears, and yes, with song.

Eventually, I felt it was my turn to offer what strength and hope I could as we were swallowed up by the shadow of death.

I wrote about that moment later, in 2018, four years after she was gone.2 I’ll share it with you here:

Heaven, and Saying Goodbye

You have to tell her she can go. That you know she’s tired, that you know it hurts, that it will be okay and you will be okay. You’ll be lying—but say it anyway. Truth is, you have no idea how tired she is, how much it hurts to have your body betray you from the inside out. You’re only eighteen years old and to say you understand her is ridiculous. You don’t know a thing about what drives a mother to stay and fight and scrape out breath after breath to be there for you. She does it all for you.

And that’s why you’re here. That’s why you have to tell her.

You know she loves you, but damn it, she told you herself that you’ll never know how much until you’re holding a baby of your own. It’s hard to picture a warm bundle in your arms one day, hard to swallow the idea of being a mother without your own. You can’t think about that now.

No. There’ll be time—plenty of it, years of it—to think about those things. Those hoped-for, bright and future days, every beautiful thing that she’ll miss. But today is not hoped-for. It is not swathed in warmth and joy and the promise of something new. You are laying next to her in bed right now because you have a job to do, an important message to deliver.

So look at her, and try not to hate what you see. It’s hard. You take in the sunken face, the broken front tooth from last month’s fall, the wasted legs that you could wrap your fingers all the way around. It never looks this bad in the movies. It’s not something you can fake for a screen.

Lie there beside her, watching her chest shakily rise and fall. There was a time when a scene like this was reversed, you imagine. Her, tired and overwhelmed but so in love, nuzzled next to you, eyes tracking the rhythmic breathing of her newborn baby girl. Even when you were older, a teenager who let ‘I hate you’ slip out one too many times, she would still come into your room at night, perch on the edge of your bed, and slowly rub your back, feeling your breath fill your lungs. That image: a darkened silhouette, a warm palm, a whispered “I love you,” and the quiet click-close of the door when she slipped out. In the morning you wouldn’t remember if it was a dream, her coming in and softly telling you goodnight. Today it sure feels like all those nights had to be.

“Hey, Mama.”

You exhale, roll onto your side, curl up next to her, clutching yourself tight. Her eyes flutter open, revealing that faraway look that’s been there these past few weeks since she came home from the hospital. With a sharp intake of breath, you begin.

“Mama-”

Try not to hesitate.

“It’s okay.”

Every inch of you will scream that it is not, but you have to say it anyway. Tell her that she can be done, that she can stop, that she can let go.

Lie there, and unfold your life—tell her about all of the things you are going to do and introduce her to all of the people you are going to be.

With your words, take her to high school graduation, the first family vacation planned by Dad, moving into your college dorm. Remind her that you chose your major because you love it, and she’s always encouraged you to chase what you love (even though Dad would love for you to follow his footsteps). Thank her.

There is so much to thank her for. So much of you is her. And laugh, because not all you got from her is good. It’s okay to laugh.

In that dark, quiet room, with the pounds of equipment bunched into the corner, with the January sun setting early outside the window, unfurl your dreams. It doesn’t have to be that pretty eloquence that you work hard for, and it doesn’t have to all make sense—but in a steady and sure voice tell her of all the things that you’re hoping for. She needs to know that you’re still hoping for things, that you’ll keep hoping, even after she’s gone.

You’ll have to say it more than once, again and again, this statement that you will be okay. That you all will be. Your brothers, your dad. Let her know that you’ll keep ‘em in check, that you’ll keep the house clean and the dogs fed, that you’ll dance with the boys at their weddings when they play the Mother-Son song.

Assure her that there is a difference between giving up and letting go, that none of you will ever see her as anyone that “lost” to anything.

Talk about heaven.

There’s a story you never told her, from that high school expedition trip she let you go on two summers back. She was diagnosed right after you got accepted to go, and she didn’t know if she had months or years left. But she sent you off anyway, wanting you to experience a new slice of the world. So you went. You were fifteen years old and four thousand miles from family for the first time, desperately homesick. Tell her how the first morning came and you woke up alone in a vaulted white room with four girls you’d just met, and your groggy eyes opened, surprised by the light. As the early sun poured in the window, in too poured the rich sound of an organ, and you thought for a second God himself was coming back before you realized that just beyond the glass was an old cathedral starting Sunday service. You laid there, the room awash in dazzling light, and calm settled on you like a dove. In the radiance that pierced through that quiet morning, your only thought was, “this is what heaven, this is what glory, is.” Tell her about the peace of that moment, about the song, about the light. Tell her she can go there and rest. Tell her that it will be beautiful.

You have so much to tell her, so don’t forget you have time, the two of you in that room. Say you will never, could never, forget her. Say you love her with all of your heart. Say she will always be your mama. Say how grateful you are that God gave you to each other.

Until you both believe it, say that it’s okay. Give your mother, your mama, permission to go. To enter His rest. To be healed. To go home.

She’s too sick to talk. Don’t expect a response. But she’s been listening, and after a few moments she asks you in a soft voice to tell her the story again. The one about the light and peace and heaven.

When you finish, her exhale says it all.

Thank you.

This scene wasn’t our final moment together, it was simply a glimmer of grace in a month of darkness. The days of watching and waiting carried on a while longer, until the final ember of miracle-hope was snuffed out.

Finally, the watch ended. The hospice bed and oxygen tank were disassembled and rolled out the front door.

The dream of an eleventh hour healing was gone. We were left with a different hope, a deeper hope, a harder and heavier hope—the only hope that can, wonder of wonders, never be extinguished. It’s a hope that’s lasted twelve years and will last the next twelve and the next and the next and the next.

Today, so much of what I said to her that afternoon has come to pass. All three of her beloved children are married. She has four granddaughters, and a grandson on the way. Oh, how she would love them.

Now that I am a mother myself, I find my heart pulled outward—from my experience as a daughter losing her mom, to her experience as a mom saying goodbye to her babies.

I know what it felt like for me that day, but what did it feel like for her?

What was it like to be told to let go by the person you most want to hold on to?

What was it like to be told that all will be well by the one you were made to comfort?

What was it like to be reminded of the hope, of the depth of God’s love by the person you prayed for years to know and experience that love?

I imagine it was heartbreaking, and beautiful, and freeing. Bitter and sweet.

I hope it was, at least.

Because when I picture my own daughter, grown, speaking God’s love over me at the end of my life, I think that may be what this whole thing is all about.

To build a life on the love of Jesus—to receive that love and give that love, to trust in the goodness of God, to practice faithfulness day after day, to serve and to apologize and to pray and to hope and to sing, even and especially through tears, through loss, through pain—to plant and tend those seeds over years so that this fruit would one day grow and show up here, at the end of all things.

That’s what my mom did. That’s what I’m aiming for.

In those final 22 days, Mom was so sick that she could give nothing back to us. No final wise words to live forever in my heart, to carry and comfort me every January. No, she could barely even look us in the eyes.

But she had spent her life teaching us how to love, pointing us to the One who is Love.

And as she laid there, she let us love her back. She let us love her home. She let us sing.

God willing, the last page of my story will look something like that, too.

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I truly hope that you have all had moments of encountering Christ this holiday season. The beauty of a God who came to be with us is always so comforting to me, and I hope you experienced that comfort and joy as well.

If you are a new subscriber from the last few months, then this is your first email. To you I say welcome and thank you for being here! Please note that 1) the use of “howdy” is serious and not camp, 2) the cowboy Kermit cover photos are camp, and 3) instead of sending each published piece as its own email, I prefer to send these newsletter recaps every so often that let you skim over what I’ve been sharing and jump into what sounds interesting to you.

This time last year, I started my Substack publication and brought over a lot of my old writing, but mostly spent the winter lurking, admiring many of you from a distance, and trying to figure out what the heck this place was and how I wanted to use it.

Now, a year later, I am so grateful for where I have landed. I have learned from and delighted in the beauty of so many of the words that have been shared on this site. I have connected with people from states or countries away, partaking in thought-provoking discussions, and giving and receiving encouragement, prayer, and memes.

Thank you to each of you who have chosen to follow along and welcome me into your inbox. Maybe you subscribed because you too are on a journey with suffering and hope. Maybe you’re interested in our experience with foster care. Maybe you’re tracing the conversation threads throughout this site about why our bodies matter in all their mess. Maybe you liked the picture of my kid literally bowing down to the Christmas tree.

As I wrote throughout the year, many posts seemed disconnected—I was simply sharing things that stirred my heart or struck my fancy (or frankly, pissed me off).

But as I look back at the start of a new year, I do see a thread woven throughout my words: God holds me, in my joy and pain. He holds my children, controlling what I cannot. He holds my body, and honoring it honors him.

He is worth trusting in all things. He loves me. And oh, how I long to love him more, to trust him more in the year to come.

My hope of hopes is that the words you read here would open your eyes and stir your heart to the truth beneath all truths: that he holds you, too.

So thank you for subscribing. I pray that 2026 will be a year that draws each of us further up & further in to the heart of the Father.

Your pal,

Han

reflections of an obituary connoisseur

Come for the unique title, stay for the surprise life announcement.

Here is the thing that reading 2,000 obituaries will teach you, if you let it: You are going to die. In light of this, many things don’t matter. And in light of this, some things do.

we resemble what we worship

My most-read piece of 2025, inspired by the many smart and lovely people here who are pushing back against the mindset that: “I should be able to have what I want, and my body should not get in the way.”

It is tempting to listen to the world that tells me I can sidestep or steamroll the limits of my body, that I can take a shortcut through my pain and get what I want (and that I should, because this is America!).

But the God who took on flesh tells me there is purpose and meaning and dignity in my body and its limitations, as painful as they may be.

the worst of times

A love letter to good literature—the stories that help us remember that we are not alone, and that there is a hope stronger than death. And a special shoutout to Mr. Kerr (the best teacher of all time) for helping me with this one.

My friends—bless them—did not always know what to say. But no one can accuse Charles Dickens of lacking words. Like the seamstress, I think Sydney Carton may have been sent to me by heaven. This pair’s final moments raised my thoughts to Him who walks with us into death, and out through the other side.

strange Christmas

A short reflection on a burning bush, burning skies, and burning hearts as the Twelve Days of Christmas wind to a close.

“I will go over and see this strange sight” is a phrase that dances in my mind. A recognition of the remarkable and a desire to draw closer.

and on The Remarkable Ordinary: Saying Yes to the Unknown

I had the chance to write for another publication, sharing about the faithful foster moms I get to walk this wild journey with.

The mothers in that room have made me braver because they point me to the God who is worth trusting.

Thanks again for being here. It means the world that people would want to read my words. May your January be filled with joy!

I will go over and see this strange sight is a phrase that dances in my mind. A recognition of the remarkable and a desire to draw closer.

I love the use of “strange.” It feels like the right way to describe this Christian life—something unusual, surprising, mysterious, and worth exploring. And in our curiosity, in our drawing nearer, we find ourselves led to holy ground.

This Advent season, that passage came to mind as I read the story of the shepherds in Luke 2. The angel makes his extraordinary announcement, the glory of the Lord shines around the most unlikely audience, the heavenly host appears and praises God’s glory. It’s fear, beauty, and awe like they’ve never known. It’s the strangeness of the burning bush, now stretched across the sky.

The heavenly declaration is impossible for the shepherds to ignore. The sign—a baby, a manger—hovers in their hearts and echoes in their ears. They, like Moses generations before, go and see.

“When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.’ And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger.” - Luke 2:15-16.

Years later, at the end of Luke’s gospel, the baby that once lay in a manger has now been laid in a tomb. And strangest of all is the story that reaches two of Jesus’ followers on the road to Emmaus. They tell the stranger who approaches them:

“Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.” - Luke 24:22-24

On this walk from Jerusalem, it is not a bush or sky that burns but hearts that are set ablaze as two men encounter the risen Christ, shrouded at first but then revealed in resurrected glory.

“When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?’ And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, saying, ‘The Lord has risen indeed...’” - Luke 24:30-34

In the course of their walk they are transformed from being “slow of heart to believe,” to experiencing hearts set aglow by the Light of the World. They rush with the haste of the shepherds to go and tell the others the spectacular things they have seen and heard.

I believe that even now, there are strange sights we will stumble upon. Moments of invitation, where we can choose to step closer, to go and see, or to turn away, back to distractions or screens or the comfortable ruts we’ve worn for ourselves.

I want to be a woman who encounters the King who came and is coming again. I want him to set my heart burning.

We are about to celebrate, as John Piper put it, “the dawning of indestructible joy.”1 God—Creator, Sustainer, more great and glorious than we could ever imagine—born as a vulnerable, needy baby. He came not to seize power, but to serve and suffer and save. In love, he laid his life down for us. In authority, he took it up again. It is strange indeed.

I pray we may all step closer this Christmas and experience the wonder of I AM come to be Immanuel.

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Many a think piece has analyzed the ways our society is attempting to sidestep or subdue or snowplow our pesky little mortal bodies and their tedious limits.1

We are all this Bilbo meme, holding dazzling technological advancements in our hands and asking: “After all, why not? Why shouldn’t I [get an entirely new face, get a vasectomy, create multiple embryos and screen them for IQ, and on and on]?”

Here I will paraphrase paraphrasing Pope Benedict XVI, and echo many who have diagnosed a key problem facing modern culture: our bodies are seen as something to be mastered rather than something that has been given to us as a gift, and is designed to to be given to others in love.2

The desire for control is not new. Yet, for most of human history, the ability to dominate our bodies was simply not on the table. These were dreams reserved for the realms of sci-fi or fantasy.

But in 2025, we’re being sold the idea that near-total control of our pesky bodies—control of our fertility and ability to procreate, of our aging, our weight, our dying, and more—is finally within our grasp.

Allow me to sound an alarm: this quest for mastery will not end well. Just like the One Ring, what we think will save us will only enslave us. We reject the God-given boundaries of our bodies at our peril.

After all, why not? Bilbo asks in the scene above. G.K. Beale provides a simple reply in his short but powerful book Redemptive Reversals and the Ironic Overturning of Human Wisdom: “when you worship idols, you will become like the idols, and that likeness will ruin you.”3

Our mad quest for control will only control us.

A Fun Little Look at Idolatry

I’ve been reading 1-2 Kings these last few weeks, and it is messy. Almost every king continues the cycle of utterly rejecting Yahweh. They forget that he’s saved them and the promises he’s made to provide for them. They ignore and disobey his laws, which he has made clear are not trivial burdens cast upon the people all willy-nilly, but guardrails that will lead to life.

By the end of these chapters, the normalization and celebration of worshiping things other than Yahweh brings both kingdoms to ruin.

It is not a hot take to say that we live in a culture that normalizes and celebrates the worship of things other than the One True God. Just like these two kingdoms cast off God’s ways, even those in Christian circles have allowed their imaginations to be formed by a culture that sees radical autonomy as the highest good. With this malformed mindset, even God-ordained designs—say, a monthly cycle for women—can be quickly dismissed as meaningless and worth suppressing if it gives us more of the control we so desire.

This idol of control, of “I should be able to have what I want, and my body should not get in the way,” is deeply ingrained in our society. (Example: I was talking with a family member about my opposition to surrogacy. I said that, “it is not a right to have a biological child,” and his response was, “but this is America!”)

We Resemble What We Worship

Here is a reality the Bible makes clear: we resemble what we worship. A few quick examples:

• 2 Kings 17:15 tells us that the people of Israel, “went after false idols and became false”

• Jeremiah 2:5 says they “went after worthlessness, and became worthless”

• Psalm 115:4-8 talks of idols made by human hands who cannot speak, see, hear, or feel, and that “Those who make them become like them;

  so do all who trust in them.”

Beale pulls on these threads when examining the infamous golden calf in Exodus:

It is no coincidence that after Israel worships the golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai (Ex. 32)… [they become] as spiritually inanimate as the idol that they were worshiping…Just as cattle are hard to steer because they are “stiff-necked,” break their yokes, go out of control, veer from the desired way, and need to be regathered and led again, so similarly did Israel.4

Beale puts it simply and alliteratively: what you revere, you resemble either for ruin or restoration.5

In other words: worship a cow, become like a cow. And not in a fun way.

Our culture is enthralled by the idea that we can turn our unruly bodies into machines, simply entering desired inputs to achieve desired outputs: let’s get a new face. Let’s lab-grow a baby, made to order. Let’s even die exactly how and when we want.

But if we worship a robot, we’ll become like a robot. And not in a fun way!

When we push back against our limits, when we strive to stamp out our humanity in all its mess and mystery and meaning—we will be changed. We’ll become what we’re besotted with: Robotic. Technologically tidy. Streamlined and sterile. Efficient, but emotionless.

This may seem like a win at first, but it is indeed ruinous.

When you invite the “ideology of machines” (to quote quoting Neil Postman) into your very body, you cannot easily keep it contained. It will leak out like spilt oil, dripping into to our heart, soul, mind, and strength, transforming what we think our bodies are and what they are for. Simply put: these choices form us.

Don’t get me wrong, many times these technologies do work, and you very well may get the outcome you were looking for. But when you continue to place your faith, hope, and worship in the body-as-machine, you will become like a machine, all the way to the ultimate, unfettered, unfortunate end: someone who is unable to love and receive love, never to experience the awe and mystery and meaning woven into our weakness, or to understand the blessing and freedom that comes in surrendering to the fact that we are not God.

We saw this clearly in Ross Douthat’s interview with Orchid’s founder Noor Siddiqui. Towards the end of their time together, Douthat tearfully reads an excerpt from Galway Kinnell’s poem, “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps,” a piece of art that exemplifies the beauty, depth, and wonder of the link between sex and procreation. He is deeply moved.

Across the screen, Siddiqui blinks unfeelingly back at him. It’s the expression of a woman who has spent years being transformed into the likeness of the machine, trading away her ability to engage with the meaning, miracle, and mystery of the created world.

Douthat asks if she thinks anything will be lost if the link between self-giving love and the gift of new life is broken.

“What do you mean?” she replies.

It was perhaps the most distressing part of a deeply distressing interview.

The Cost of False Worship

You become what you worship. And worse still, as Beale points out, “the very things in which people attempt to find liberation frequently become the things that bring them harsher bondage.”6

When you worship control of your aging, you lock yourself onto a hamster wheel of never-ending, expensive, time-consuming anti-aging treatments. Your freedom only lasts as long as your latest Botox injection.

Similarly, when you worship creating a child at any cost, you forfeit the fundamental understanding that “you are their parent, not their author.”7 You can spend thousands of dollars to hand-select the “healthiest,” most optimized embryo, but as you raise your child you will realize quickly you cannot protect them from every danger, and you cannot force them to fulfill the “destiny” that was sold to you by their high IQ screen.

Your freedom to love your child as they are is stunted, or at the very least, something they might question later in life.

I imagine a family using Orchid, whose lucky winning embryo grows into a teenager who gets in an accident that leaves him disabled. Will he feel ashamed, or fear that his sonship is at risk? “My parents paid thousands of dollars for me to be healthy, and now I’m not,” he may think. “They got rid of my siblings because they weren’t healthy, and now I’m not ‘healthy’ either. What do they think of me?” I am not saying this child will not be loved, I simply think it will be reasonable for the son to have questions about how love shifts from conditional to unconditional. One generation’s quest for freedom can lead to bondage for the next.

False worship comes at a cost not only to you, but to those around you. An important theme revealed in 1-2 Kings is the reality is that worshiping anything other than God “always leads to mistreating other people.”8

To those worshiping control over their aging, everyone younger becomes an adversary, an offense, or the source of blood you want to inject. You can no longer appreciate other’s beauty for its own sake. You will find it difficult to love, serve, and honor those who have what you so desire.

With assistive reproductive technology, the good and beautiful longing for a child gets distorted, and a human life becomes a commodity. Is it right to freeze those you love? It’s a question we were never meant to ask, or answer. This is the spilt oil, leaking into beautiful places and tainting them.

But—thank God—there is a better way.

We Were Made to Worship

We resemble what we worship, either for our ruin or restoration.

There is something—someone—we were made to worship. Someone deserving of it. Someone who will not drain or stain the deepest good within us but further clothe us into who we were meant to be. Someone who will not enslave us, but set us free.

It is not a fluke that we are transformed by what we worship. That was always God’s design. He just wants us to worship the right thing: him.

2 Corinthians 3:17–18 says, “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

When we orient our lives around the Lord, when we surrender to the fact that he is in control and he is good, we are transformed into something more glorious than we could ever reach in our own striving.

As Beale’s subtitle says, this is truly an ironic overturning of human wisdom. We chase fleeting beauty, while God promises unfading beauty and inner renewal. We force a family to fit our desires, when God promises a hundredfold family to those who follow him. We desire longevity, when God freely offers eternal life to all who believe.

God tells us that surrendering to his control—not manufacturing our own—will lead to freedom.

God Has a Body

Having a body is annoying. What sets the Christian story apart is that God himself knows this. It is what we are about to celebrate—the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us.

It is tempting to listen to the world that tells me I can sidestep or steamroll the limits of my body, that I can take a shortcut through my pain and get what I want (and that I should, because this is America!).

But the God who took on flesh tells me there is purpose and meaning and dignity in my body and its limitations, as painful as they may be.

Please know that I am not trying to lump all these topics into the same bucket in terms of their weight—surely the heartache of infertility is different than the insecurity of someone who wishes they had more or less buccal fat in their face. And surely there are ways to seek healing from brokenness and sickness that does not fall into idolization of the ideology of machines.9

But I do believe that whatever problems or pains we find in our bodies have the same answer: placing our hope not in the technologies promising to deliver us, but in the only one who can truly set us free.

I am not God. Neither are you. This can feel like a truth to rage against or try to conquer. This grasping for control of our bodies is an ultimate attempt to become like the sovereign God—to have the power, wisdom, and authority to do anything we choose.

But the redemptive reversal is that the more I keep my eyes on him, the more I accept my limits, the more I surrender—the more of him I find and the more I become like him.

What are we seeking beneath our attempts at control? What is the thing beneath the thing? Comfort? Strength? Affirmation? Love? Peace? Wholeness? Joy? Freedom?

All of these things are found fully, freely, and forever in Christ.

After all, why shouldn’t I become a robot? Here is the answer: because I don’t need to. Because of Jesus, I can face this life, with both the tiny annoyances and deep pains of my limited body.

And here is the better question: Why should I live as a human? Because he made me one.

I trust him, because I know him, and I have tasted and seen that he is good. And my body, in all its limits, is held by him, as George Herbert wrote, “all my sour-sweet days.”10

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2

Read ’s latest,

Paging Dostoevsky

Bodily Integrity

I recently came across this brilliant piece by father_karine assailing the modern beauty-industrial complex. As father_karine notes, it is becoming normal for young women to inject, chisel, and otherwise modify their bodies in service of an imagined ideal. This trend has caused many a beautiful woman to discard her unique features to embrace a look of m…

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a year ago · 35 likes · 8 comments · Kelly Garrison

7

Other Feminisms

If Sex Isn't For Babies...

All through August, you’re invited to play Mutual Dependence Bingo. Get a bingo in any direction, and on September 1st, I’ll send you a pdf of the first chapter of The Dignity of Dependence. Two bingo-scorers will get the whole book as an advance reader copy. I’ll have a thread this weekend for you to share bingo-chasing stories from the first week…

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a year ago · 89 likes · 76 comments · Leah Libresco Sargeant

Let me explain: for a few of my early postgrad years, I worked at the alumni association of my alma mater, Texas A&M University.2 I was on the communications team, writing for the magazine that was published every other month. One of my responsibilities was the final section of each issue: obituaries.

My task was to read every obituary of every Aggie who had passed away. A computer program (that I never fully understood) made me a daily list that included links to the memorials published in local papers, on websites, or sent in directly by the families of the deceased. I would read the full version, which could be pages long, and then condense it into a concise, 20-50 word summary that would go into the magazine.

It’s important to know that there are many Aggies in the world. Texas A&M is consistently one of the top three largest universities in the nation—fall 2024 enrollment was over 79,000. In a low estimate, I read three or four obituaries a day. Multiply that by 5 days a week for 51 weeks a year for 2.5 years, and we’re easily over 2,0003.

“I’ve read thousands of obituaries” is a weird flex for a 30-year-old. When I had this job, I was in my mid-twenties, freshly married, taking seminary classes at night, and margaritas were only $4 in our college town. The world was our oyster. Anything was possible!

But I was also uniquely reminded every weekday that one thing is inevitable: death. I did not need an artsy-angsty skull on my desk as a memento mori. My daily digest of the deceased had me covered.

Here is the thing that reading 2,000 obituaries will teach you, if you let it: You are going to die. In light of this, many things don’t matter.

A quick list of things I never saw listed in an obituary: your weight, how wrinkly your skin was or wasn’t, your net worth, your follower count, the square-footage of your house, the name-brands in your closet. I never saw children grading their late mom’s or dad’s exact parenting philosophy—no, “I wish dad had given me a few more wooden Montessori toys,” or “mom was great, but if she had tried a little harder at the baby-led weaning my whole life would be vastly better.”

Don’t get me wrong, many obits will list the PhDs and the awards. I read many stories of accomplished men and women who served heroically in the military or built a booming business or, if memory serves, set a record traveling the world via helicopter. Those are impressive accomplishments, surely.

But what struck me, and continues to shape me, were the lives clearly rooted in faith, hope, and love. The people who left a legacy of showing up for their family, their community. The stories of generosity and welcome. The surviving family writing their memories of everyday acts of love, rippling wide over a lifetime.

There is one phrase from one obituary that I remember clear as day, about a husband and the wife he left behind. This couple “enjoyed being married and spent much time smiling and chuckling.”

Imagine that for second. You die, and your family doesn’t simply say that you loved your wife, or that you lived a good life. You weren’t just “happy”—you clearly delighted in your wife, in your life. The sound echoing in the hearts of those who remember you is not a raised voice or a hot take uttered in pride, but chuckling, and lots of it.

It’s beautiful. It’s ordinary. It’s miraculous.

It’s been a few years now since we moved and I left that job. This week, my husband and I celebrated our seven-year anniversary. We got married young, and are still young, and in many ways—despite rising margarita prices—the world continues to be our oyster. It has been a gift to build a life together, to grow our family, to settle into a home, and to continue to dream of all that may come. Maybe one of us will set a helicopter-related record. My bet is on me.

I am certain there will be unexpected joys and unexpected sorrows. And I believe that as long as we both shall live, we will spend much time smiling and chuckling. Not because nothing will go wrong, but because we know the One who hold us—the One who is over all and through all and in all.

We know we will die. We know we will rise. We know that in light of this, many things don’t matter. And we know that in light of this, some things do—that the greatest of these is love.

Love for each other, love for the children God gives us, love for our family, our friends, our church, our neighbors. The love given, and the love received—that is what lasts.

Here is a joyful update buried at the bottom for the faithful readers: after many months of prayers, and after the loss of a precious baby who we will not hold until heaven, I am pregnant! Praise God! We made it through the first trimester juggling both nerves and hope.

Then, just the other week we received a call asking if we’d be open to welcoming one of our previous foster daughters back into our home, to most likely stay with us through my spring due date and potentially much longer.

We don’t have to pretend: three children under three sounds like a handful, particularly when, as you may have observed in the photo above, my husband only has one hand.4

But after a few days of prayer and discussion, we said yes. Of course she can come back home.

God’s timing may not actually see the three under two come to fruition. I do not know what will come, and know I am not in control. But we do not fear a future of hands full of love. We trust the nail-scarred hands that hold us all.

I hope that God gives me many years as a wife and a mother. One day, though, I will go home.

My prayer is that if obituaries are still being submitted to Texas Aggie magazine when that time comes, that a young communications worker might one day read about a woman whose life was shaped by the love of Christ. A woman who believed in his life, death, and resurrection—a story that gave her freedom to love boldly, to delight in her ordinary days, to face brokenness with hope. A woman who—by God’s grace—enjoyed being married and spent much time smiling and chuckling, no matter what she held in her hands.

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