So Many Hard Things Happened

And (somehow) that’s what made it good

We arrived in Cape Town, South Africa in January, the hottest month of their year. Our apartment had charm, comfortable beds, a great location, lovely view, and no air conditioning. We flung the oversized dining room windows open wide, turned on every fan, and Googled local swimming pools. Sleeping while sweating was the hardest part.

In the evenings a cool sea breeze made its way toward the mountains, shaking trees and lifting skirts and knocking over flower vases. It felt like the very breath of Heaven.

About halfway through our time in Cape Town we moved into an air-conditioned apartment, a tidy 2 bedroom with no wasted space and remarkable views of Table Mountain. It had air-conditioning! Did I mention it had air-conditioning? We hadn’t had air conditioning in 14 months. We felt ridiculously rich, pushing buttons to make ourselves comfortable whenever we felt slightly uncomfortable.

In the new apartment we kept our windows mostly closed—partly to prevent the wind from ripping in and knocking over vases and partly to keep in the cold we made with our magic box. It was easier to record good audio for podcasts in the second apartment, but we missed the sounds of laughing neighbors in the garden and giggling children playing games in the nearby schoolyard. It was nice to not be sweating at midday when the hot sneaks in and settles. But I had to ask Alexa what the temperature was outside before I dressed, and somehow I missed the earliest hints of autumn crispness in the air.

I was glad for the air conditioning. And sometimes I wasn’t. Sometimes I found myself willing to trade comfort for something better.

Years ago I heard this woman (was it a woman?) talking about temperature on an episode of the podcast 99% Invisible. The episode was about the way air conditioning had shaped the modern world, the ways it was changing architecture, the shape of communities, even politics. The host referenced Lisa Heschong’s book, Thermal Delight in Architecture, which I looked up and read because I dig architecture and because I am always up for delight.

Heschong, describing the human ability to perceive temperature, writes, “Our nervous system is much more attuned to noticing change in the environment than to noticing steady states.” What does that mean practically? It means, Heschong explains, “There is an extra delight in the delicious comfort of a balmy spring day as I walk beneath a row of trees and sense the alternating warmth and coolness of the sun and shade.” She says humans enjoy changes in temperature. It’s why we love the first few days of a new season (snow! sunshine!) and abhor the lingering last days of that very same season. It’s why we like to sit by a fire after a day skiing. It’s why we jump in cold water before the sauna, why we sun bathe beside the cool, refreshing sea. She says, “The experience of each extreme is made more acute by contrast to the other.”

And yet, Heschong notes, humanity has (in the modern age) chosen a “steady state environment” as preferable for everyday life: “The steady state approach to the thermal environment assumes that any degree of thermal stress is undesirable. A constant temperature is maintained in order to save people from the effort and the distraction of adjusting to different conditions.”

Did you catch that? Humanity has decided that “any degree of thermal stress is undesirable.” We’ve chosen to save ourselves from the “effort” and “distraction” of adjusting to changing conditions. How? By sacrificing delight. We’ve given up what’s affecting, alive, and wild for what’s easy, steady, and predictable.

Have we made a good trade?

-

Twelve months.

If everything goes exactly as planned and the house rents well on Airbnb and we make all the money we’re planning to make this year and if my book sells well and if we can cut our spending in half and only eat at home, we have enough savings to make it twelve months. We come to this realization at the dining room table. It’s made of solid acacia wood, the same wood used to build the ark of the covenant. We bought it a year ago when we moved into this brand new home. It seats ten and, hugged by windows, overlooks the park behind the house. The house has four bedrooms, navy cabinets, a marble backsplash, and air conditioning. We like it very much, but on this day we’re talking about leaving it behind.

We will leave it behind. We’ll leave, because God has given Justin a passion for new work, work that’s risky but deeply good. To make Holy Ghost Stories possible we leave everything (our jobs, our house, friends, America). At first we rent our house out on Airbnb. There are disasters and also God’s provision. Later new disasters force us to sell the house (a madly inconvenient process forcing us to live with friends and postpone our move to Africa, new airline tickets, new Covid tests, plus the pains of selling and moving), but that too will be God’s provision—pain and blessing intermingled.

Letting go of the house is only the first step in what will be a wild ride:

We move abroad to cut costs (no one understands this, but practically nowhere is as expensive as an American city). We enter England during their Covid lockdown. We live alone in a cottage by the sea in a small British town for four months. In all that time we can’t enter a store or visit a church or talk to anyone other than our neighbor. We eat ramen every day (a brand we don’t particularly love). Our mattress is terrible. Justin sprains his ankle.

And also, there is no better place to spend a Covid lockdown than beside the sea with your family. We watch every Marvel movie ever made and take walks for miles and miles and tell stories and make chicken pot pie. We worship online with a British church and receive the Spirit in a British accent. When everything opens up we’ll make friends and take a trip to the Lake District and delight at the unspeakable joy of eating french toast in a restaurant.

Money things do not go as planned. Emergencies, natural disasters, etc. I dislocate my shoulder and have to pay for the emergency room visit with cash. Justin’s computer dies.

And also the bill is not as much as I thought it would be and friends pay to replace Justin’s computer and somehow the money in the bank account grows instead of shrinking.

In the states we’ll spend the night in fifteen cities in twenty days as we travel to teach parents about telling and living stories. Our backs ache. Technology fails. We fall asleep in the Chickfila drive thru line.

And also we get the chance to connect with God’s people all over the southeast, so many of them lifting us up, encouraging us. The very act of pouring into families, helping parents steward their children—it’s an unspeakable gift.

In July we miss the vaccine cutoff date by one day and can’t fly to Justin’s sister’s wedding in France. We rebook new tickets at great cost and sit in a cheap hotel eating ramen wearing the same clothes we’ve been wearing for days.

In France I turn over my kayak in a rapid and can’t get it flipped back because of my injured shoulder. I do not die, but for thirty long seconds I think I might.

Also in France we celebrate the love of God in a castle on a mountain, toasting, dancing, and feasting, laughter spilling into the night.

In Ireland a necessary change of plans will prove exhausting (energy, bank account). Also in Ireland we’ll meet people who will change the way we see God, people who’ll be friends forever.

In Croatia I’ll fight the devil himself as he does his best to convince me I’m entirely incapable of the work I’m trying to do. And in Croatia I’ll float in the Aegean Sea, reminded of the way God carries me.

Eve and I get a parasite in South Africa. Eve and I (and Justin and London) climb a mountain in the dark and watch the sun rise over the Indian Ocean.

The work is hard. Justin is constantly researching, writing, editing, composing, emailing, zooming, budgeting. He releases each episode into the quiet. He wonders, Is anyone listening?

But then we look at the numbers, the reviews pouring in, the emails from people who’ve been injured by church, abused by leaders, women who can’t read the Bible anymore without tears, teenage boys who roll their eyes at almost everything, all of them listening to Holy Ghost Stories, encountering Yahweh for the first time in a long time. Somewhere along the way Holy Ghost Stories finds its way into homes and cars and hearts in all fifty states and more than fifty countries.

It just goes on and on like this, highs and lows, pains and joys, everything all mixed up, every day a jumble of hardship and happiness, the climbs fueled by the momentum gained in the drops. Just two days ago I woke up in the middle of the night weeping. Last night I ate cake and rode a mylar piñata through the kitchen.

I don’t always post on Instagram about the money loss or about the self-doubt or about the many, many struggles of following Jesus, international wandering, and being self-employed. It’s not because I’m trying to hide it (I’d rather you knew my life isn’t perfect). No, it’s either because things are so hard I don’t have time to get on Instagram or because I’m experiencing deep delight and I’ve already forgotten how long and hard the path was to get here.

There is an extra delight in the alternating warmth and coolness… The experience of each extreme is made more acute by contrast to the other.

-

To be clear: My life is not so special (weird maybe, but not special). It’s honestly a lot like yours—hard and good, sad and happy, beautiful and wrecking.

My extremes (or yours) may be higher and lower, hotter and colder, sadder and happier, richer and poorer, but every life has its extremes.

We’ve discovered this in the age of global connectivity, all of us aware of everything. In one day someone dies, someone’s born, someone gets a promotion, someone gets fired, someone’s kind to her neighbor, someone rapes his niece, a nation wages war, a nation welcomes five million refugees, someone falls in love, a couple gets divorced, a man shoots thirteen people at the grocery store, cherry blossoms bloom.

Air conditioning is a charade.

We know that now. But that doesn’t mean we don’t miss it—those days when we felt safe behind our fences and bank accounts and blankets. Sometimes a lie is more comfortable than the truth. That’s why we lie. And why we believe lies. They seem easier.

What would happen if we embraced the truth of this up and down world? Perhaps even leaned in, bravely confronting what’s hard for the sake of what’s good?

In my experience, a lot of crying. Oh, and also, communion with Christ and deep, deep delight.

-

The Apostle Paul writes to the Romans, “Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory” (8:17).

He says to the Corinthians, “For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ” (I Cor. 1:5).

To the Philippians: “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings” (3:10).

Peter writes something similar: “But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed” (I Peter 4:13).

In each passage sharing in or participating in the suffering of Christ has a similar outcome: glory, comfort, joy, resurrection.

What does it mean to “share in” or “participate in” the sufferings of Christ? I don’t know exactly, but I think it has something to do with recognizing that some joys are worth the pain.

-

A few weeks ago a friend messaged me about a picture I’d posted on Instagram—a shot of my family standing on the summit of Mt Sinai. He said, “That’s it. That’s what I want.”

I looked at the picture again.

All four of us are smiling. Justin and and I both wear shirts I washed in the sink in our small, un-air-conditioned room the day before. They’re soaked with sweat. My hair, too. All of us are, to put it delicately, dewy. Behind us, desert. Not a single speck of green anywhere. No water either. No rivers, no springs. Everything is sand and rock. The mountain God claimed as His own is the same mountain others called Mount Horeb. Translation: “Mount Desolation.” “Sinai” isn’t any brighter. It means “thorn.”

To get here, at this spot with these smiles, we have given up so many things. Specifically, we’ve driven three hours through one of the most dangerous regions of the world and hiked up this mountain in the dark for four hours doing our best to avoid camel dung and not fall off the side of a cliff. Generally speaking, the girls haven’t had an in-person conversation with another teenager in a month.

What is it about this picture that makes a grown man with a job and a mortgage say, “That’s what I want”?

Possibly, he misunderstands. He sees the moment on the top of the mountain and forgets the cost and climb. He thinks, “I want mountain top moments” from the comfort of his couch, soda in one hand, remote in the other.

But I know this man, and I know that isn’t what he means. I think he knows in his bones that humans aren’t made for a steady state environment.

What he wants is the climb, the shared risk and shared reward. He wants to gather up his family and do something so hard and good it makes them sweat and smile like exhausted, delighted fools watching the sun rise over the desert. He wants to participate in the suffering, knowing where it leads: a front row seat for the revelation of God’s glory.

-JL

---

I’m back!

Hey friends! I know, I know—it’s been too long. I’ve had a hard, glory-soaked summer, and I’m thrilled to be back with you exploring, discovering, and trumpeting the goodness of God!

A bit of an update: Due to a sad turn of events (the Ukraine war and the impact millions of refugees are having on European VISA offices), my family will be unable to spend the year in Ireland as was our plan. Instead, we’ll be landing (at least for the next several months) in the states. It’s disappointing. Truly. But we’re welcoming the disruption as an opportunity to see what God might have planned.

One thing God might have planned: If you’re interested in having Justin and I come to your church or retreat to lead a Storied Family workshop, we’re suddenly in the position to book fall or spring events. Message me and I’ll give you all the details.

Is the podcast still a thing?

Yes! Well, maybe? Here’s the plan: I do intend to continue recording episodes of Look to Love, walking with you through Scripture, looking to love our good God. But, because I begin writing my next book this coming week, I also reserve the right to take as much time as I need with each episode. I may need two or three weeks to get one out. Bear with me.

However, I can promise I’ll have a new one up by next Wednesday. We’ll be in the book of Isaiah (a favorite of mine), talking about how Yahweh differs from idols. I will definitely cry. Come cry with me. :)