Dear Thirty-One

August 22, 2020.Reading time 8 minutes.

It’s my birthday. Here are my thoughts.

I’ve maybe never been more thankful for life. This year has been a doozy, for all of us. We’ve all been drudging through a pandemic and we all have our “and also’s.” It isn’t even a comparison game, “well my life is harder than yours!” It just feels plain hard across the board. I could list so many challenging things that people close to me have faced. So many circumstances that have pushed us all to the ends of ourselves. And we live in a world that is so divided, our only interaction is on social media where we don’t have conversations we just yell at each other and share our apparently always-right opinions.

Listen, I’m too tired to be a jerk. We are too overwhelmed to be mean to each other. There just isn’t room for it. We have done such a good job at politicizing things that never should have been divisive, alienating groups that should have been each other’s allies, inflicting pain over and over and over again when what we need is to be healing each other.

Stay at Home Liturgy: To Lament our Brokenness

May 29, 2020.Reading time 2 minutes.

Like many of you, I’m sure, I have been wrestling through what to do in the face of tragic situations that have happened recently. I’m answering in the only way I know how, through prayer. No matter our backgrounds or beliefs, I hope these words ring true for us all.

Forgive us, Lord, for creating a world where atrocities like the ones we have seen can happen.
Teach us to see people through Your eyes, and treat people with Your kindness.

May we not be overwhelmed or paralyzed by our grief and sadness, but instead motivated to action, seeking change and reconciliation.
Keep us from moving backwards, guide us forward towards progress.

Help us recognize our own biases and privileges, and have the humility to do something about them.

Forgive us for finding excuses, for explaining things away, for allowing all the tragedies that we have allowed.

May we not be motivated by personal gain or political party or any other self-benefitting cause.
May we not begin to hate others as a response to hate.
May we be motivated by love and holy justice.
Protect us from creating more “us versus them” mentalities.

Transform us and our worldviews.
Come, Lord Jesus.

Heal our world from our sinful ways of treating one another.
Keep us from hurtful generalizations and dangerous assumptions.
Teach us a better way.
Forgive us.

What does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
Micah 6:8

Stay at Home Liturgy: To Eliminate the Struggle of Comparison

May 25, 2020.Reading time 3 minutes.

We all know how real the struggle of comparison is in our society today. With our lives constantly on display on social media, it is hard not to measure how well we are doing or how successful we are in comparison to other people. During this time where we all are simplifying, I hope that we can spend some time releasing the urge to compare ourselves to everyone else. I hope this can be a start.

Forgive us, Lord, for the time we have wasted,
trying to prove whatever it is we are trying to prove to one another.

Help us in this time of simplicity,
of cancelled plans,
less events,
quiet evenings spent at home,
to let go of comparing ourselves to everyone around us.

Whatever it is we are hoping to gain — likes, follows, admiration, status,
show us what matters more.

Stay at Home Liturgy: To Choose Prayer over Panic

May 22, 2020.Reading time 2 minutes.

I have needed to read this over myself multiple times this week. I found even in the midst of writing it how easily I run to anxiety instead of to the caring, safe hands of the Father. Praying for each of you that is experiencing any level of fear during this time, and I hope this provides a moment of peace for you.

Forgive us Lord, for being consumed by fear.
Forgive us for running toward panic as an attempt at control.

When circumstances are blatantly unknown,
when loved ones are in danger,
when hope seems so far away,
forgive us for choosing panic.

Help us choose to trust You confidently, rather than running to other things we think might give us peace: information, numbing, scrolling, hiding.

Stay at Home Liturgy: To Grieve with Purpose

May 18, 2020.Reading time 2 minutes.

I’ve been thinking a lot about grief throughout this season. We are all slowly moving through the grieving process — a loss of what we once knew — moving from denial toward acceptance. Whether your grief is very specific today or a general grief of what life should be, I hope today’s liturgy is a helpful way to connect with Jesus.

You are a God who grieves with us.
You, our mighty God, Creator of all good things, You hold space for our sadness and longing.
You understand more than anyone that “this is not how it was meant to be,”
because you created it all.
You spoke the earth into existence, with the intent of peace, beauty, community, love, and health.

You grieve with us.

Stay at Home Liturgy: To Let Go of being Impressive

May 15, 2020.Reading time 2 minutes.

During this season I have come right up against my productivity and what I have to “show” for myself. Maybe you can relate. What have I accomplished, how much am I doing, how impressive is my life? In a slow season where our lives have been simplified significantly, it seems like a beautiful opportunity to throw away any desire to be impressive. One less heavy thing to carry. Here is today’s liturgy to help us in this release.

When our social calendars are thrown away,
when our work looks entirely different,
when our trips are cancelled,
when our events are postponed,
when what we have depended on to feel worthy is stripped away,
show us a new way, Lord.

Circumstances have stolen our facades, the masks we hide behind to convince ourselves that we are doing enough.

Stay at Home Liturgy: To Hold Things Loosely

May 11, 2020.Reading time 2 minutes.

I don’t know about you, but the hardest part of this whole situation is trying to control everything and protect all the things I love. As I have written before I have come face to face in this season with how little control I truly have. So, here is a liturgy for living with open hands and leaving things in the trustworthy hands of God.

Our plans. Hopes. Loved ones.

Nothing makes us more aware that we are not in control than a time like this.
In fear and grasping for control we want to latch onto these things, grip them, hold on for dear life.
We think we can white-knuckle them into existence, or to keep them from changing.

We control almost nothing.
We have very little say, especially now, over what happens to our plans, our hopes, our loved ones.

Stay at Home Liturgy: To Be Okay with Silence

May 8, 2020.Reading time 3 minutes.

Today is the beginning of a new little project I have started, called “Stay at Home Liturgies.” Essentially, I am writing them to practice praying with intentionality. Come back on the next few Mondays and Fridays if you would like to practice them with me. I would recommend reading them out loud and slowly, only after you have taken a deep breath and are sitting down somewhere comfortable. A liturgy isn’t something to check off the to-do list, but instead something to digest and be transformed by.

In our mandate to stay at home, many of us have come face to face with an experience we try pretty hard to avoid: silence. We fill our days with any kind of activity or distraction to maintain a life that doesn’t have to deal with silence and what it brings with it. But there is so much good to be found there, so here is a prayer for all of us who are needing to embrace it…

Purpose in this Season

April 24, 2020.Reading time 8 minutes.

Anxiety got the better of me last night. Anxiety 1, Kallie 0, I thought, as I lay in bed late into the night after hours of continually waking up gasping for a breath.

This season is hard. There are days where I feel entirely fine, because I have grounded my thoughts in a higher Truth, or some, honestly, where I am most likely in denial. We have moved from a unity of “we are all in the same boat” to a new stage where we realize that some people’s boats have significant holes in them and some are self-sustainable yachts. I get exhausted by humanity’s ability to always find something to argue about. We all have different things we want to be true, me included, whether they are or not.

My biggest question for God recently has been what is the purpose of this season? I try to live my life with intentionality, setting goals and working towards personal and communal growth. So in a season where we are intentionally separated, slowing our lives down dramatically, and where I feel like I spend most of my time alone and not doing anything productive, I am asking the Lord this question. What is the purpose? How do we find purpose?

Life is a Gift

April 3, 2020.Reading time 6 minutes.

It is Friday! We have almost made it through another week of whatever this season has looked like for you – working from home, homeschooling, online class, still going to work…

I imagine soon, if it hasn’t happened already, the days will start to blend together and the weeks might feel slower and slower. Separated from our typical activities and relationships, the mundane might feel overwhelming in this season. The mess certainly feels overwhelming. And that leaves the miraculous – where do we find that in this season?

The miraculous right now for me is that I have almost never “needed” the Lord so desperately. The quotations are necessary because these circumstances have torn away the facade, the illusion, of our comfort and control. Of course, I have always needed the Lord just as desperately as right now. Of course, I have never had any real kind of control over life, I just feel it more right now. Our comforts have maybe never been threatened in this way — honestly it throws our privilege right in our faces.