Based on Matthew 1:18-25 (with a little bit of Genesis 37 sprinkled in) and titled “Considering the Even More,” it’s all about the Joseph’s: Joseph, husband to Mary, step-father to Jesus, and a guy who probably said “You have GOT to be kidding me!” when he first learned of Mary’s “immaculate conception”; and Joseph, son of Jacob, who was sold by his brothers into slavery, endured years in prison under the false accusations of Potiphar’s wife, but somehow ended up right-hand-man to Pharaoh and The Guy Who Saved The People from Death By Famine.

It’s about how each of them, in otherwise paralyzing circumstances, were able – by grace alone – to pull back and ask, “What can’t I see? What don’t I know? What might God be doing here?”

I’ve mentioned this before, but names are significant, especially in Scripture. I only came to realize the power in my own son’s name, Elijah David – which means “The LORD is my God; I am His beloved” – after he was born. Not insignificantly, the name Joseph means “Yahweh Adds” or “Even More.”

Most of you know that after Elijah was born, I nearly bled to death and the bleeding was only stopped by removing my uterus. And thus, I can’t ever have any more babies. I am, by some odd flip of the coin, the one in 110,000 women who suffers such severe post partum uterine atony as to indicate emergency hysterectomy.

I have asked too many times, “Why me, Lord? Why not one of those crack head baby mama’s from the ghetto who has nine kids and counting? Why remove the possibility altogether, leaving no room to hope?”

I don’t know the answer to that question and I’m not sure I ever will. But, after hearing this sermon twice now (and I don’t believe it’s by accident), I’m inclined to think that’s probably the wrong question.

Instead, I am reminded to consider the Even More.

…To consider Joseph son of Jacob, who could have wallowed or taken revenge but chose instead to believe that Yahweh Adds, and in so doing “saved many lives,” including those of his brothers whose jealousy drove them to do the unthinkable.

…To consider Joseph husband of Mary, who could have abandoned her to the law and seen her, his pregnant-by-someone-other-than-him betrothed, stoned, but chose instead to consider the Even More that God was up to and in so doing NAMED the Savior.

And I am compelled to consider our own situation: What if, by allowing this certain tragedy in our lives, God is somehow saving more lives? Perhaps we are meant to parent some of those nine-kids-and-counting who would otherwise be fatherless?

I can’t say it enough: I don’t know and can’t begin to imagine what plans He has conceived and intends to birth in and for us.

But I know, because of Elijah, that The LORD is my God. And I know, by the Joseph’s, my God is the God of even more; He is the God who adds, who ever gives even when He takes.

And I can therefore anxiously await Even More.

“Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to the power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, throughout generations.” > Ephesians 3:19-21 <

I ran across this quote this morning. I pondered it. I thought about it along with something I’ve been considering for a few weeks now: that perhaps my fear and paralysis, my eternal worry about my professional life, is my own doing. My own responsibility. My own failure to believe and really internalize what is both simple and true… that I am meant to dream inconceivable dreams so that God can out-do them and so prove Himself bigger and better than I’ve ever imagined.

“Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” – C.S. Lewis

I’ve spent a long time being afraid I’m asking too much, expecting too much, wanting too much, hoping too much. I should know better. In one year – 2010 – I watched, in stunned jaw-dropped-ness, while God brought me home from Africa (where He taught me what it is to surrender) only to meet and tour with my two musical heroes, Jennifer Knapp and Derek Webb; then, for the first time ever, gave me exactly what I asked for in the exact context which I asked: I got pregnant “accidentally” and found out on my birthday.

So I ought to know better than anyone why we should ask for more than we can ever imagine having…because God is in the business of doing the inconceivable for those who love Him and ask it, with hope and expectant confidence.

But it’s taken so long to even recognize the concept, much less believe it. It is still a struggle for me to actively believe that God wants to give me amazing things. But if the Apostle Paul was telling the truth, then He has already planned the inconceivable for me.

“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind conceived what God has planned for those who love Him…” - 1 Cor 2:9

The only question, then, is what I find inconceivable. I’m beginning to believe that the less inconceivable it is to me, the  bigger God is allowed to be.

In all of this, my dreams are shifting. They’re not as much for me anymore, but for Elijah.

I may never change the world. But my son can. And the most powerful thing I can give him is a taste for the Inconceivable.

May Elijah ever know that the impossible is always possible; That he can literally be anything he wants to be, and do anything he wants to do; That what’s inconceivable to him is small potatoes to his Infinite God whose dreams for him are bigger than even mine.

And may I only ever empower and equip him with tools of courage, hope, faith, fearlessness, boldness, confidence, and above all love – for God and others – that he might dwell in the truth that no matter how small he is or may feel, his God is infinite.

“What we do in life echoes in eternity.” - Maximus

Oh, that he would echo.

10. We moved to Minnesota!
It’s a bit sad for me, because I do love and dearly miss Nashville. But moving made practical sense for our family, and in truth, I don’t *need* to be in Nashville for music anymore. It never really embraced me, and I’m not sure I embraced it, professionally speaking. I guess. Maybe I’m making that up. Either way, the move was BIG for all of us. No more gentle winters…except this one, of course. Because, as is perfectly predictable, THIS is the easiest winter in Minnesota’s memory. Anyway, it was still a big move. We’re now Minneapolisians, and loving it. And I’m sincerely looking forward to learning the musical terrain of the Cities and diving in, head first, to hopefully find my place here.

9. We bought a house!
Upon deciding to move to Minneapolis, and finding that rental properties were astronomically more expensive than buying, we took the plunge and bought our first house. It’s a quaint 19teen’s house with exposed beam ceilings, a built-in China hutch, its original wood floors, and as unique a floor plan as one could hope for from an early 20th century home with four bedrooms and a sun porch upstairs. It’s got a full basement AND attic just waiting to be finished and made into a media room and studio (respectively). And we got it for the bargain price of $70k from a woman who’d owned it since the 1960s and raised her whole family there. It was rife with old memories and ready for some new ones. So we pounced!

8. Um….

7. Uh….

Screw it.

8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and…

1. >>>WE HAD A BABY!!<<<
His name is Elijah David. He was born on May 6, 2011. And he, my friends, takes the cake.

Happy 2012, from my adorably perfect family (made thus by my incomprehensibly gorgeous 8 month old Elijah, and his charming 15 year old big brother Matthew, and only barely crippled by their silly parents, me and Paul) to yours. May it blow your mind.

———–
ps: in fairness, there were a couple more exciting bits about 2011: I wrote a few handfuls of amazing songs with brilliant songwriters Bethany Dick-Olds and Eddie Christy, and Bethany and I took our show on the road – along with Elijah – for two mini house show tours, in July and in September. Turns out my sweet boy is a road dog after all!

It was precipitated by the happy fact that a few weeks ago, Elijah started sleeping through the night, thereby ending our sweet, middle-of-the-night interludes. He’s growing up too fast.

Then, last Monday, Paul ran his hand over my belly, and like a shock wave it hit me that we won’t ever again get to feel a tiny growing baby dancing inside me.

Then, stupid Betty Draper didn’t want to be pregnant with her third baby.

Then, three friends had their second or third babies.

Then, a few more friends posted magnificent announcement photos of their brand new baby bellies, or new pictures of their ever-expanding, almost-ready-to-pop bellies.

And then, just for good measure, one more had her second baby.

Sometimes, it seems, the mountain literally crumbles when you’re already in the valley.

So, like a emotional champ, I skipped over to Google and typed in “emergency hysterectomy.”

(I’ve done this before. It rarely ends well.)

I read scattered findings – because there are no major, concrete studies that tell us anything conclusively about why or how many women’s childbearing days end this way – and came across one teaching hospital’s study at which 22 out of 110,000 women had emergency hysterectomies over a ten year period, all due to similar complications but otherwise for no discernible reason.

After wading through thickets of anger, regret, and crossing the inevitable “What if it was my fault? What if I had just waited for Eli to come on his own, instead of inducing labor and starting this ball rolling…?” river, I reported these findings to a dear friend who shared my experience. And her response was, “When you do the statistics it sucks – 1 out of 30,000 or something – really couldn’t I win a really good raffle? Or the lotto?”

It sounds funny, but it’s a healthy reality check too: This can’t possibly be my – or anyone else’s – fault, ’cause massive postpartum hemorrhaging leading to near-death and the consequential life-saving emergency hysterectomy is, as Marilyn pointed out, about as likely as winning the lottery.

That to say, there’s no point in wondering where blame lies, because it doesn’t. This kind of thing just doesn’t happen…at least, not to more than a couple dozen in one-hundred-and-ten-THOUSAND women. When it does happen, it’s a classic fluke. The terrifying exception to an otherwise predictable rule.

So…where do I go from here? What do I say, and how am I to feel, when part of me is truly rejoicing with my friends for their healthy new babies and perfectly normal wombs, and the other part is screaming “WHY!?!”

I mean, where does the 30-year-old widow turn when her friends are celebrating one anniversary after another while she grieves another year without her husband? Where does the almost-mother turn when others are celebrating birth after birth while she grieves the loss of her stillborn daughter?

To where does anyone turn when the most senseless devastation befalls her, and there simply are no answers for the questions burning the last shreds of her faith?

To Hope.

To the One who is so intimately acquainted with grief and sorrow that He knows the best – and only – thing to do is invoke the all-knowing groans of the Spirit who so perfectly and adequately pleads the Father’s mercy on our behalf.

To the peace that lies solely in the bittersweet company of the Knowing few, who can grieve together.

To the Comforter who promises that all will be made right, in the end.

but even still
the dark is not the gift
nor even the light that seeps
into it
but the knowing it
cannot stay dark
forever
though a cloud may
ever hang

Maybe it’s inherent to motherhood. Maybe it’s inherent to beginning my thirtieth year, or my fourth decade of life.

But never have I experienced so much grace, and never have I needed it more.

When I’m driving down the interstate in another state (or city…or my own, for that matter…) and not at my road-worthy best, I just wave at others and say “Give me grace! Please, give me grace!”

When Elijah is having a meltdown, and I’m on the brink of my own, I just beg the Lord for grace accompanied by some mercy that I might be filled with patience I don’t have.

And when friends call or text or email with stories of new wounds and heavy burdens…oh, it’s all I can do not to fall on my knees and groan, willing the Spirit to join me.

I suspect it has something to do with the simple fact that I experienced real, true, tangible salvation this year when God brought me back from the brink of death to be Eli’s mother and Paul’s wife. I don’t know that I’ve ever been so aware of Christ’s presence in and around and for me as I have been these last five months, since He saved me.

I don’t know if I’ve ever been so fully consumed by the knowledge of prayer’s power for those around me, since seeing how God interrupted so many others’ lives to plead for me and Eli. I have prayed and prayed that He would interrupt mine, that I might be part of the mystery and miracle in a similar way for someone else.

I do know I’ve never been this awe-struck by the weight and depth of the struggles we daily face, or by God’s hugeness in comparison.

And I have never been so keenly moved by the small beauties that transform…well-written songs, powerful prayers spoken by tiny lips, baby coos, and falling leaves.

And so every day, for something or someone new, I’m drawn to my heart’s knees if not my actual knees, pleading for grace, and grace, and grace in the world around me. For my friends whose marriages are deteriorating; for those who are facing injustice upon injustice; for almost-orphans and their dying mothers; for my family in Africa and Nebraska that I miss so dearly; for close ones facing the shock of aging in sudden illness. Grace and grace and grace, that I might hold tight to the life around me, grace for everything dying, grace for the eyes to see it coming alive.

Grace and grace and grace, that it might be made right, that life might bloom and I might watch it. Again and again.

Why?

As ever: because of a song.

I was listening to Plumb’s “In My Arms” (which is FREE at Noisetrade right now, along with 5 other pieces of musical honey) for the first time since having a baby. I used to think that song was a little cheesy. But now I’m a mom. I get it. And there’s no cheese about it. Except maybe the sweet, cream cheese icing kind of cheese.

Anyway. It’s going so fast. Too fast. Elijah is rocketing skyward. He’s talking and giggling and – I swear – holding entire conversations with me and others in a language that can only be described as Screech. And before I know it, he won’t want to talk to or be around me anymore, and after that he might want to, but he won’t need to. He’ll be a grown man, showering his own beloved wife with kisses and diapering his own babies’ perfect little butts.

How do mom’s do this?

A few days ago I was wondering if music is done with me. Now I’m not entirely sure I’m not done with it.

No, I’m not done with it.

But it is, at best, a back burner love these days, a tool I’ll use only as often as needed to say to this boy what no other form of communication can convey.

I just don’t want to miss a second of Elijah’s fleeting days. I want to soak in every one.

I love house shows because even when I enter the home of someone I’ve never met or even spoken to, I leave with a few new Great Big Family members. I have new friends I know will listen if I need an ear, and who know I’ll listen too.

There are plenty of artists out there who would prefer to do big stage shows, who don’t do a lot of intimate interacting with their frands* and I get why: some are huge and famous and it’s just unrealistic; for others, they simply prefer to keep their professional and personal lives very separate. That’s just not me. My music is a pretty major expression of who I am and what goes on in my head, so sharing it with people is inviting them into a deeper place anyway. Why not make it even more Real by making it a shared, listen/listen experience, rather than a one-sided singer/audience one? You invite me into your living room, I’ll invite you into my writing space. You feed my belly, I’ll try to feed your spirit.

Anyway, that to say I’m looking very much forward to another round of House Shows with one Ms. Bethany Dick-Olds in a few weeks. We’ll be hitting some spots again, like Spartanburg, SC and Asheboro, NC, and a few new ones as well, like Greensboro, NC and Philadelphia, PA. If you’re anywhere nearby – or somewhere along that route – give me a shout. We’d love to come share with you!

*Frand:
Noun.
1. A fan of one’s professional artwork who has become a personal friend.

Take tonight, for example. I was browsing Jeremy Cowart’s unbelievable photography, clicking through gallery after gallery of people famous, beautiful, and/or rich enough to hire him. (Oh, that I had the money to pay him to make me look like a celebrity. Ha!) A small seed of jealousy set in and I began to think, “Why can’t I be important enough for someone to become my manager and make me famous and hire Jeremy to take my picture for a magazine or an album cover or something very cool that would show the world how truly unique and important I am? Woe is me; woe is me indeed.”

Yes, I confess: I am addicted to myself, and sometimes it’s rears its head like that one really scary scene in Lord of the Rings when the elf queen lady Galadrial gets that wonky voice and looks like a skeleton and starts talking about ruling the world…you know, when Frodo is practically sleep-walking? Anyway, that’s how I look when I get like this.

Anyway, so back to the point: Tonight, I was doing that…looking at amazing photos of disturbingly beautiful and famous people and wishing I was like them and wondering why I’m not, when I skipped to the next gallery – the “Voices of Haiti” gallery.

After the devastating earthquake of 2010, Jeremy took a team down to Port-Au-Prince, where they documented the aftermath. He says in the gallery’s intro, “After the 7.0 earthquake rocked Haiti on January 12th of this year, I was deeply moved as most of you were. For days I watched as the television flashed images of gloom and doom… dead bodies, crumbled buildings… It just felt like a heartless display of numbers and statistics. ‘How were the people feeling?’ I wondered. I was tired of hearing endless reports from strangers that just arrived to this devastated nation. So I decided to go to Port-Au-Prince myself and ask them directly. My question was simply ‘What do you have to say about all this?’ This photo essay reveals the many answers to that question.”

As I scrolled through the photos of homeless, broken, lost, and abandoned men, women, and children who’d lost house, home, life, livelihood, and family members, I was struck again by the simple truth that while we know almost none of their names (except, perhaps, Jeremy & crew), these people and their five-worded-statements had the power to profoundly change their photographer and doubtless countless others…like me.

Theirs is the reality I want to be part of. Theirs are the lives in which I want to invest. Theirs is the hope I want to see flourish. Theirs are the futures I want to see become. They are nobodies. They are everybody.

And they are, I’m quite certain, first on Jesus’ mind and heart.

These people don’t know me, nor I them. They aren’t famous. They aren’t modelesque in beauty. They are – according to their own country and most of ours – incidental and forgettable at best. There are millions of people just like them in Haiti, in Uganda, in India, in Cambodia…all over the world, people in dire need of help whose best hope is a guy like Jeremy taking their pictures and showing it to us, that we might be moved enough to see them as Real and equal, and do something.

Even if all we do at this moment is recognize their inherent, incomparable value, and our brotherhood with them.

So yeah. I guess my choices, if I want to be photographed by Jeremy Cowart, are to either a) become sickeningly beautiful and famous, or b) move to a rundown, third-world city too few care about, and live among unnamed masses too few have heard about.

Jeremy did his job tonight. He made me fall in love with the face in the photo. He made me want to live among them. He made me want to be part of something bigger and infinitely more important than celebrity and wealth and influence. He got me out of myself.

And he made me desperately miss Gulu, and ever more anxious to return to the only place I’ve felt I truly belonged.

—–

I’m gonna go ahead and say the thing I think a lot of women (in my experience) are afraid to say:

I am a supporting character in the story. So is my husband. But in our marriage, I’m the supporting character, the Helper. He’s the leader, I’m the Helper. Which I used to think was bad or somehow inferior, until I realized the only other Person to whom that title (“Helper”) is given is the Holy Spirit. I don’t mind keeping company with the Holy Spirit, who was sent to be my Helper. It’s pretty exclusive company. And that makes for a fairly interesting story.

Whether I like it or not, I am defined by my sexuality, past, marital status, and body. …And a lot more. But those are elements I can no more abandon without abandoning my self (and becoming something altogether different) than a fish can abandon its gills and still be a fish, or a bird its wings, or a shark its dorsal fin. And I think all those definers make for a fairly interesting story.

I have cried into my pillow, waiting for someone else to give me purpose and direction in life. And when I’ve done it honestly, God has appeared more visibly and audibly – more powerfully – than ever before. I’ve learned to cry into my pillow often, because God likes when I’m weak and vulnerable, at the end of myself and finally willing to hear Him. He did it in Africa and it change my life forever. And that makes for a fairly interesting story.

I do fit into some of the predictable roles well-meaning Christians have prescribed for me as a woman, mother, wife, artist, and Believer. I’ve been pretty passive, at times, expecting and then allowing God to do things I didn’t try to do because they were beyond my comprehension, much less my action, and have seen some pretty amazing things form thereafter. What makes it interesting is the fact that those well-meaning Christians (and their counter-parts who defy those roles & prescriptions) didn’t actually expect me to do it (neither did I, for that matter), and I’ve done it much to their chagrin, because I’ve done it within – but without – their parameters. I’m an artist who would rather be a stay-at-home mom, but takes her baby on the road anyway. I’m a wife who loves being her husband’s Helper, despite that I’ve been told I should take offense at the very idea. That can be pretty interesting in conversation.

And all of that makes for a story that transcends race, gender, nationality, socio-economic status, family and creed. It makes for a story whose characters are single, married, celibate, gay, young, old, male, female, rich, poor, powerful, and weak, and of which I am only one, but a significant one within the ever-relational community. And stories about relationship are always interesting.