on death and rebirth

These pages are a celebration of many things, but they are not the whole story.

I stopped writing for a long season, once. It was a season in which I failed for a long time to live with courage and hope, indulging in fear. I neglected what I believed, and only now can I see that what was so very terrible about that season was not the overwhelming ache, but the fact that I lost sight of anything outside myself.

The central image of the Christian faith is that of death and rebirth. When you are young, when you have never seen death or had your heart broken, it is easy to think that the gospel is all about life and more life... hope, possibility and a clear bright future. And it certainly is all of those things. But when you face brokenness and loss, ache and anguish, you realize that death and rebirth are truly what its all about.

Learning to recognize rebirth requires changing the way you live. Unraveling and reweaving the way you understand life. All that is bitter. All that is sweet. You start noticing rebirth in a hundred ways, staring at you, season to season.

My story is not perfect, and its far messier than perhaps these weekly images suggest. But in spite of it all—before the dark season, through it, till now and always—God is faithful and sovereign and there much comfort in that hope. 

As a storyteller, I recognize that there is no greater story than that of Christ. It is endlessly fascinating and layered in ways that amaze me. And I give thanks for the strangeness and the beauty of it. The faith it takes to trust in it and the promise that with death comes rebirth. How faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see (Heb. 11:1).

In the end, its the whole story. 

And its all that matters.