Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions by Rachel Held Evans.

I’ll be honest. When I first heard about this book (in 2010), I was scared to read it. I was already feeling tender about my new views on loving the poor and seeking/doing justice and reeling from the fact that I’d somehow missed this HUGE part of the gospel my whole Bible-reading life.

The last thing I needed was a memoir by some good conservative Christian girl who started questioning stuff she’d believed in since she was a kid. Especially a memoir with the words “evolving” and “monkey” in the title.

I’ve always considered myself SUPER grounded in my faith and SUPER well-versed in absolute truth (and secretly SUPER scared of reading/hearing something that might maybe possibly put the tiniest chink in my armor of definite certainty).

So I didn’t read it for awhile.

And then I thought, “What am I so scared of?”

And I read it.

And it made me s-q-u-i-r-m.

So I tucked it away and forgot it even existed. I’d read Rachel’s blog every once in awhile, but it always made me feel uncomfortable, so I mostly stayed away.

And then, evolving and monkeys aside, my own tension and wrestling got more intense.

I plopped myself in the middle of the Trayvon Martin case (because I realized my black friends really cared about it), and it kick-started an eye-opening exploration of racial issues in our country (in the past and n-o-w).

I shook my head at the strong, strong opinions we Christians have about what we wear to church and why.

I apologized to Democrats and started feeling super rubbed-the-wrong-way whenever I got forwarded e-mails from Christians spewing venom at the President.

I started re-writing Blushing Bride (to release as an e-book) and sat agape at some of the regurgitated Christianese and Bible verses I quoted glibly (and often out of context).

I asked myself if keeping gays from getting married would’ve been at the top of Jesus’s To-Do List while millions of people around the globe are starving (including some poor Cambodians I now know personally–and love dearly). And why the heck didn’t he ever mention homosexuality in one of his Mount Sermons or Temple Sit-Ins so we could know how to respond to this issue? Would that have been so hard??

I read some books about women (Half the Sky, Half the Church, etc), and I wondered if God really created us girls to stand in the background while men do all the important stuff?

And if I’m so stick-to-the-Bible like I say I am, why did I not think twice about speaking to (teaching? preaching?) 170 men about s-e-x back in October (when the Bible says women shouldn’t teach men), and why do I not wear a head covering when I pray, and why is my father-in-law’s hair longer than mine?

Am I picking and choosing (gasp!) which parts of the Bible to follow??

And then I read a book called The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible by Scot McKnight (just finished it yesterday), and for some reason, when I was done, I picked Monkey Town back up and read it from cover to cover again in about 2 hours.

And holy cow. Holy. Cow.

And I just felt this overwhelming urge to discuss it with my peeps (YOU).

Who Should Read This Book:

If you’re a Christian and you’ve ever doubted some things you’d consider Essentials of the Faith–and it scared you to death–you should read this book.

If you’re a Christian who is 100% certain about every single one of your beliefs, you should read this book.

If you don’t consider yourself a Christian and want a little more insight into us crazy folk, you should read this book.

Do I agree with everything she wrote? Nope.

Do I expect you to agree with everything I write? Nope.

Do I hope we can get a really cool dialogue going that engages all kinds of people in a constructive way? Yep.

The cool thing about Rachel’s story is that she went from certainty –> doubt –> faith. Her doubts didn’t lead her to walk away from God; they brought her closer to him.

Our God is big enough to handle our doubts and fears and questions. He really is.

Some Details (more to follow):

We’ll start the week of June 4th (probably Tuesday).
We won’t be doing Link-Ups (I don’t think). We’ll try to keep the discussion centralized.
Some chapters are super-short, so we’ll do more than 1/week. Hey, I read it in 2 hours. You can do it!

Any questions??

I’m so excited.

So tell me: Are you in??

(the title of my post is a line from the movie, if you’re not following my train of thought…)

Sunday was Mother’s Day. Mother’s Day is so hard for so many women who want to be mamas and aren’t. That kind of ruins the day for me, you know? I don’t like the fact that I get to be celebrated for something that I don’t really deserve credit for, that others so desperately want and can’t have.

It would be like celebrating the fact that I wasn’t born in a third world country and don’t have to worry myself over things like poverty and contaminated water and the agonizing decision to sell one of my children as a sex slave so the others can eat.

So, Mother’s Day.

It started out sucky and got suckier. Well, church was awesome (as usual). Our friends Sean and Megan dedicated their 2 little girls, Emelia and Ella, and 2yo Emelia gave me a little shout-out, “Hi, Ma-la!” from the stage during the prayer. And our pastor started a series on the book of Acts (my favorite), and it was just amazing.

And I’m not going to bother writing about the sucky. Fast forward to the end of my 2+ hour nap. Got up groggy, got some stuff ready for Gabe to grill, Nina complained and complained about her belly hurting.

Long story short, she threw up at 6pm and didn’t stop for the next 12 hours. Added some nasty diarrhea. Very little sleep for either of us. Then a big reprieve from 6-12. Then started back up at noon. Gabe was out of town. Took Ava and Nina to Urgent Care. They immediately diagnosed her with possible appendicitis and sent me to Children’s Hospital ER downtown.

Awesome.

Fought traffic, walked a mile (not really) from the parking garage carrying my 54-pound child, waiting 90 minutes in the waiting room, made arrangements for Livi to go to our neighbor’s after school (before my cell phone died), waited forever in the room, got our insurance denied (we’re paying for COBRA but have no card). Diagnosis: nasty virus. Zofran to stop the vomiting.

Six hours later, we were home and watching Enchanted.

And I’m ready for an end to the (melo)drama. Because while it might seem that all of these trips to the dentist/urgent care/doctor/hospital/ER/counselor are a bit of an exaggeration, they really aren’t, because it’s really happening.

Anyway.

I have an announcement.

There’s a bit of a back story (which I’ll share soon), but I’ve decided to do a Summer Read-Along. I know everyone’s busy, so I’m going to do it a little differently, a little less involved. The book isn’t what I’d call “light” reading, but it’s a spiritual memoir, very story-ish, and easy to read (and no huge experiments to do or life changes to make). I read it (for the second time) in about 2 hours yesterday, so it’s do-able.

Details in a bit, but tell me:

Would you be interested in joining us for a low-maintenance, low-commitment, low-work Summer Read-Along?

Busy schedule, waves of exhaustion, fighting children, Gabe not feeling well, my glaring ineptitude in a million different areas. I blogged about my books yesterday and got almost no response and immediately decided that everyone hates me and everything I’ve ever written. (no need to tell me otherwise or purchase a pity book–I’m already almost over it)

Nina got off the bus yesterday (Thursday) and immediately got into it with Ava. Tears, yelling, everybody in trouble, Daddy’s heart rate elevated. A few minutes of peace, Livi gets home, and she and Ava start a fight that turns into 4 of the 5 of us (Nina hid out in the living room with Arthur and D.W.) angry and screaming.

And I think I’m going to homeschool all of them next year?

Great meeting at our place from 7-9pm with the Compassion & Justice team from church (the only meetings I’ve ever loved and not despised). It’s a good thing we were hosting, or else there’s no way we would have gone with all of our red eyes and racing hearts.

Girls in bed, enjoyed some time with Gabe, in bed at a decent hour, up at midnight with Gabe and a panic attack. He was convinced he was dying. I was so tired I wanted to die. I didn’t understand why God was allowing it all to happen again. Still don’t. All I could think was that we have a lifetime of this looming over us, and we will never, not ever, be able to go back to Cambodia, not even for a visit, and it broke my tired heart, and I just cried. And prayed over Gabe and scratched his back and at some point, we both fell asleep.

Then I missed the recycling truck this morning for the second week in a row and burst into tears. Seriously. It felt like the end of the world. Still does.

Why am I telling you all of this? Not sure. I think partly because I wrote in my journal through tears and opened my Jesus Calling (a gift from a sweet friend with troubles a million times tougher than mine) and the first sentence was, “Thank me for your problems.” (Jesus talking to me)

So I did.

“The very act of thanking me releases your mind from its negative focus.”

So I thanked him for all that stuff I just wrote about, and I’m slowly feeling the self-pity lift (sloooooowly).

And I’m determined to figure out how to find joy amidst/despite my circumstances. Happy times will come, but they don’t last, and more things will come along that have the power to disappoint, dishearten, dis-whatever IF I give them that power.

I don’t want to do that.

I want to fix my eyes on Jesus. Will you pray I can do that?

Thank you, friends.

I do have 2 copies of Is That All He Thinks About? up for grabs. If you want one, e-mail me.

And I have 3 2 copies of Expecting. I can mail them to a friend of yours TODAY and guarantee she’ll get it Saturday, just in time for Mother’s Day. Let me know if you’re interested.

I have 6 5 copies of From Blushing Bride to Wedded Wife, and then that book will be out of my life for good. EXCEPT that I’m totally re-doing it as an e-book, and I’m really excited about it. It’s going to have a new title, new cover (and I’ll be enlisting your help with both of those!) and tons of new content (plus all the stuff I don’t like taken out).

And here’s the cool thing: everyone who owns a copy of the original book will get the e-book FREE.

Let me know if you want one of the last “Collector’s Editions.” $3 + $3 shipping. E-mail me.

AND I’m all out of copies of Changing Your World One Diaper at a Time (FINALLY!!). It’s available used on Amazon or as an e-book. (Did you know you can click “Give as a Gift” on Amazon, and send an e-book to a friend for Mother’s Day via e-mail?? Fun! Easy! Woohoo!!)

Also. I have a list of Crisis Pregnancy Centers waiting for copies of Expecting to hand out to women who visit their centers. If you’re interested in sponsoring a book (or 2) for $8 each, let me know. Fun, easy way to bless a mama-to-be in need this Mother’s Day.

And of course there are always e-books, my new favorite way to read. The Husband’s Guide to Getting Lucky and Once Upon the Internet are both available for Kindle/Nook/iPad/computer for $2.99.

LAST thing: I have 2 fun books to give away (not mine).

1. Zealous Love
2. Simple Compassion

Both good books for someone with a heart for helping those in need. Zealous Love is a great overview (with gorgeous pictures) of needs around the world and how you can help, and Simple Compassion is subtitled, “Devotions to Make a Difference in Your Neighborhood and Your World.” I own copies of them both and really, really enjoyed them (and have referenced them several times since I read them).

For a chance to win, tell me:

1. Which book of mine is your favorite (or which ones intrigues you the most).

2. Which book you’d like to win.

So I stopped nagging and started trusting, and holy cow. SUCH A DIFFERENCE.

Can I share a silly example of God’s amazing provision? See, there’s something really, really cool about not having regular paychecks and having to trust God for financial provision pretty much every second. You get to see and experience things that would never happen if you were financially set. I’m not kidding. We experienced it at camp when we made $15,000 and had 2 kids. We experienced it on our Zoo Trip and every time Gabe has been self-employed. Like now.

So Saturday. Livi and I went on a little date. Thrift store, library, Target. For $36 at the thrift store, we got 5 bathing suits, 5 pairs of pants/capris, 3 pairs of shorts, and 5 t-shirts. But no (training) bras (and Livi needed some). Off to Target where she tries on a million. No luck. Until I “happened” to reach back to the back of a rack and pulled out 2 two-packs of a different kind. Instead of $7.99 for 2, they were marked down to $2.38 for 2. She tried them on. They fit. 4 bras for $4.72. Cheaper than the thrift store. And not even previously worn. All God.

Before that, I had told her I’d treat her to a (shared) frappuccino from Starbucks, because I had a $5 gift card from my sis. I ordered the biggest one, and she told me my total was $2.59. What?? Turns out that May 4-13 from 3-5pm is 1/2 off frappuccinos. We get Starbucks about 3 times a year. What are the odds that I’d save my gift card for 4 months and go on May 5 at 3:30pm and ask for a frappuccino? We got 2 gigantic ones. And our new total was $5.09. And I didn’t have 9 cents. So she took the tax off. And I still have 59 cents on the gift card. All God.

So last night. Remember Wes, the awesome guy who designs my e-book covers? A few weeks ago, he asked me if I’d come down to his church and speak to the womenfolk about s-e-x. Their pastor is doing a series on the topic, and they wanted to give the girls a chance to meet separately from the guys (the guys are meeting Thursday to talk about p-o-r-n).

So yesterday afternoon I drove 90 minutes south and spent a few hours with 30 awesome women, giving my little sex talk. They were INCREDIBLE. They made me feel right at home, laughed at all the right places, and were super encouraging. We met at someone’s house out on their beautiful deck (I think it was my first time to do a talk outside). At one point, I was sharing something kind of emotional. A couple of women had tears in their eyes, but several appeared to be laughing. (??) To each her own, I thought. I found out afterward that a cat had snuck up behind me and lapped up water from my cup while I wasn’t looking. Yum.

So, I made new friends (not the cat) and had a blast. And Kristyn and Sara (well, Sara “nudged” Kristyn to tell me) shared a vision they have of bringing JEN HATMAKER to Circleville, Ohio (google it) for this really awesome women’s event next spring or fall and asked me if I’d come speak at it too.

UM, YES.

Except EEK. Who in their right mind wants to speak at the same event as Jen Hatmaker?? NOT ME. But I’m dying to meet her in real life and will do everything in my power to get her here.

RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU’D COME HEAR JEN HATMAKER TALK IN CIRCLEVILLE, OHIO. Woohoo!!

While I was traipsing around in the southern Ohio countryside, Gabe was being an awesome dad, taking the girls to Taco Bell for Dorito tacos, playing soccer with them in the backyard, and then letting them stay up until I got home (10:15) while he worked on a website with our friend Kary (they hung out in the living room).

The girls did “Homeschool Interviews” while I was gone, asking each other questions like:

Why do you want to be homeschooled?
Do you like science experiments or math?
What subjects make you feel comfortable?
What are you excited for the most?
How do you like to end your school day?

They are so cute. I love my little family.

And I have about 5 minutes to get to Reading Buddies and haven’t even showered. Thankfully, our sweet little buddy doesn’t really get the concept of time (or days) and is thrilled whenever we show up.

So, tell me:

1. What are you happy about today?

2. Wanna come hear Jen Hatmaker (and ahem, me) speak in Ohio sometime in the next year or so?

You may or may not have noticed that I took a few days off of blogging (and the whole internet pretty much). My friend Megan gave me the nudge.

She and her husband Sean lead our life group, and we’re doing Jen Hatmaker‘s 7 (and it wasn’t even my idea–I love these people!). We meet on the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays at our place, then the women meet on the 1st Wednesday for prayer, and the guys take the 3rd Wednesday for beer and hotdogs (and supposedly also prayer, but that didn’t make it into any of the Instagrams).

Anyway. Sean and Meg have been doing AWESOME at fasting along with the book for two weeks at a time, and they’re 12 days into their media fast at the moment. No TV, no Wii, no Facebook, no sports news websites, no “recreational internet.”

(But Meg is allowed to read blogs of people she knows in real life, because that’s “intentional community building” or something like that. Did I get that right, Meg?)

Holy cow. I had a world of good intentions about keeping this post short and suh-weet. I know myself so well.

So. I haven’t really been fasting from much of anything, but Meg encouraged me at prayer night on Wednesday to give the media fast a go. So I did on Thursday. And it was awesome.

I spent time with God, I spent time with Ava (helping her catch up/get ahead with her online school stuff), I got housework done. I was more pleasant, more attentive and available for my family. I was happy. It felt good.

So I did it again Friday. And this weekend. And while I peeked in a time or two on some stuff, I wasn’t constantly checking this, that, and whatever else. I was here in the moment with my fam. And I realized how much I haven’t been lately.

It’s hard when you “work” from home and you want to contribute to the family’s finances and the only thing you’ve got that’s worth something is your writing and you get less than $2 for every book/e-book people buy and the only way to get the word out is to hang out on the internet and plug it as un-obnoxiously as you can every chance you get.

(p.s. You would solve all of my woes just by clicking right here and buying my new e-book, which is finally available for the iPad, by the way. Woot! And, um, no that won’t solve everything, but it’ll make me feel good.)

So, the girls and I had a “Homeschooling Meeting” on Saturday evening. Holy cow. I can’t believe I’m really homeschooling my children next year. They are SO EXCITED, and frankly, so am I. (This is so crazy!!)

Let me just say two things:

1. We have no intention of being “typical” homeschoolers (take that however you want).

2. We named our school. Taviano Global Academy. I could just die. I want t-shirts. Gabe thinks I’m a freak show.

Okay, 3 things:

3. I have no lofty expectations of winning Homeschooling Mother of the Year, or Mother of the Year for that matter, but life is so often what you make it, and I want to make this good.

More on that later.

Last thing. I have some really amazing, godly friends. I’ve been struggling with something lately. A trust thing. As in, I needed to be giving it over to God instead of whining/nagging/pouting.

On Wednesday, I had lunch with my friend Karen. I talked to her about it some, and I expected her to be a little more supportive of me. Instead she told me that I needed to stop the nagging and trust God. Hmph.

Wednesday night. Prayer night at my friend Pam’s. I share again, and what do these girls tell me? Same thing. Hmph.

Friday afternoon. I go hang out with my friend Amy (mama of Abigail, Gregory, and Gracie, whose awesome story I share in my new e-book. hint, hint, plug, plug.). And I really expected Amy to be more sympathetic to my plight. She echoed what everyone else had said.

I really should’ve picked friends who would let me get away with sinful attitudes. Sheesh.

So, how am I doing with the Trusting-Not-Nagging? BETTER. Not awesome, but hey, give a girl some grace. And God has shown me some sweet provision this weekend. NOT AT ALL how I thought, but since when is that how God works anyway?

So, tell me: What do you need to give over to God today? (I’ll sic my friends on ya.)

Excited? Embarrassed? Offended? Irritated? Shocked? Amused?

I wasn’t at all surprised by the results (and yes, I appreciated all of your disclaimers–I already have the book! I love it! I’d be offended but then okay once I saw you wrote it!). Here’s an unofficial tabulation:

Amused won by a hair and excited was up there, but if you add up all the irritated + annoyed + offended + hurt, they blew all the other adjectives out of the stinking water.

Bottom line: no wife wants her husband to suggest (in such a blatant way) that their sex life isn’t anything to write home about.

But here’s the problem: for many (many, many) of us married folk, our sex lives are just that. Blah. Or worse than blah. Bad. Or painful. Or non-existent. For some of us, we know it’s like this, but we don’t know what to do about it. Some of us know, but we don’t care. Some of us think things are fine, because we’re having sex once every 3 months, and it’s working for us.

But what about our husbands?

If you know me much or you’ve read the book or heard The Sex Talk (most requested, by far, of any talk I’ve ever given), then you know I AM NOT PERFECT AND DON’T HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS AND STRUGGLE WITH THIS JUST LIKE YOU. If you’re married to me, you could add a whole heck of a lot more to that list. In all-caps even. (please don’t, dear!)

But here’s the thing: I’m passionate about husbands and wives being on the same page sexually and enjoying life in the bedroom (and out).

Now, I’m not passionate about it like I’m passionate about loving the poor and human trafficking and Cambodia, but it’s one of my very top “peripheral” issues, if you will. And I’ll say this: it’s hard to be united with your husband in stuff like service and ministry if you aren’t firing on all cylinders in bed.

So, let’s say your husband would love for things to improve in the bedroom but has no idea how to go about it. What would you tell him? If your answer is, “Meet my needs first, then we’ll talk about the sex,” then I have an e-book for him: The Husband’s Guide to Getting Lucky. The premise of the e-book is to convince husbands that there’s a lot more to a good sex life than sex. He starts being the husband you need and want, and he might get more of what he needs and wants.

If, on the other hand, you’re willing to put your Big Girl Pants on and say, “Okay, so why am I insisting he meet my needs first, when my Need List is Santa-Claus long? What might happen if I met his one, single, solitary need first, and then we see how it goes from there?”

If you’re willing to entertain that outrageous notion for even a minute, may I suggest that Is That All He Thinks About? is for you. But you’ll have to buy it for yourself, because it won’t be received well if he buys it for you.

And I warn him of that in this excerpt from the beginning of The Husband’s Guide to Getting Lucky:

Can I let you in on a little secret? You don’t really need to read this book. There’s a better (read: easier) way to get what you want.

Can I interest you, sir, in a shortcut to getting lucky?

I thought you might just perk up at that.

What if I told you I could get you some great sex with your wife in ONE simple step instead of six? Oh, you’re going to like this.

Step 1.) Buy her a copy of my book, Is That All He Thinks About? Step 2.) There is no Step 2.

I’m not even kidding. Why should you be the one to read the book and work on improving your marriage (and ultimately your sex life) when she can read a book while you sit back in your recliner and watch football?

The title of Is That All He Thinks About? (ITAHTA from here on out) is deceiving. She’ll start reading, thinking it’s going to justify her annoyance with you for wanting sex all the time. Instead, it will (gently) encourage her to change her attitude toward you—and sex.
And there you have it. S-E-X as easy as P-I-E.

I know, I know, you think there might be a catch. Okay, maybe just a small one. The whole “hand-your-wife-a-book-and-encourage-her-to-read-it” thing might kind of maybe backfire on you. No, it will backfire. The book works best when she takes the initiative and “discovers” it on her own. You can help her with that though.

Have the book sent to her anonymously, ask one of her friends or family members (NOT your mother) to give it to her, casually mention it as you wash the dishes or change the baby’s diaper or vacuum behind the couches.

You know what? This might be more complicated than I thought. I’m sorry. Maybe you should just buy this book after all.

See, I told you I knew the survey results before I even took it. Hubby buying you the book = fail. But you buying the book? Is win-win-win-win-win. (and if you buy it for an e-reader, it’s easier to hide. wink wink.)

Whatcha waitin’ for, friend?

If a book entitled, Is That All He Thinks About? How to Enjoy Great Sex with Your Husband, showed up on your Kindle/Nook/whatever, and you found out it was a gift from your husband for Mother’s Day/your birthday/whatever, would you be:

a. excited
b. embarrassed
c. irritated
d. offended
e. elated
f. some other adjective that starts with a vowel

Don’t worry about hurting my feelings. This is more a question about you than the book.

Thanks, friends!

Speaking of lies, Gabe was listening to a lot of them this morning while I was at the math testing center with Ava, and he had a ROUGH time. I came home to find him in tears, and I’ll admit, my first thought was, “How in the HECK am I supposed to blog Gabe’s victory story tomorrow with THIS crap going on?!”

I’m convinced the devil hates it that we’re sharing our story and demanding that God be given all the glory for it. Well, he can just SHOVE IT, because I’m not afraid of him. And GOD WINS.

So I left off yesterday with Gabe’s mom telling us she thought we needed to get rid of anything in our home that reeked of Buddhism, that the devil was using it to get a foothold in our home and in Gabe’s mind and heart. And Gabe didn’t take it super seriously. His mom knows a lot about spiritual warfare and has spent extended time in Africa right smack dab in the middle of it, but we just haven’t seen as much real, tangible evidence of it as she has.

Fast forward a week or so (it all blurs together now). Livi was on spring break, so she went with me to meet with our Reading Buddy on a Wednesday morning (March 28). We peeked into Dr. Hinds’s office (she’s the principal of the school and goes to our church) like I always do. She was on the phone but motioned us in. She asked how we were doing, and I ended up telling her all about Gabe.

“Now I know exactly how to pray,” she said. And something inside of me just welled up with hope, because Dr. Hinds is just the kind of person you want praying for you–an older, black woman with the Holy Spirit just oozing out of her and not afraid to shout her praise to Jesus.

That was Wednesday. Late Friday night my sweet grandma died. Sunday was Palm Sunday. Our pastor’s father-in-law, John Thomas, was preaching. The topic? Healing.

He shared the story of his wife Karen (my beautiful friend Shalla’s beautiful mama) being healed of her thyroid disease that had plagued her for 15 years. The story would take a whole blog post, but it was stinking powerful. He shared verse after verse about God’s healing power, and then opened up the altar for prayer.

I’m on the prayer team, and that was my cue to take a spot somewhere around the outside of the auditorium (school cafeteria), so I could pray with people. Except I was sitting in my seat, tears streaming down my cheeks, begging God to heal my husband. I asked him if he wanted to go up for prayer. Yes, he said. How about Dr. Hinds, I asked. Yes, he said.

We went up, got in a little circle with Dr. Hinds. She had one arm around Gabe’s back and one hand on his chest. She prayed the devil away and claimed victory and healing for Gabe in the name of Jesus and by his blood. I don’t remember everything that she said, only that it was electrifying, and that she said she fully expected him to wake up in the middle of the night, completely healed.

We got home from church, and for the first time since Gabe went on anxiety meds, he went an entire day without taking his “take-as-needed” pills. He’s on two types of anxiety meds (along with his 6 heart attack/blood thinning/cholesterol lowering meds). One he takes daily in the a.m. The other can be taken up to twice a day any time he feels panic coming on. He’d taken 2 every single day since he got them.

I called my mama (we hadn’t talked much about Gabe in the past month, because she’d been spending all day every day with my precious grandma) to tell her about Dr. Hinds’s healing prayer for Gabe. She told me that my dad had spent 6 straight hours praying for Gabe one day recently. Wowza. That is a whole, whole bunch.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I was just waiting for Gabe to sit up in bed and yell, “I’m healed!” and start dancing.

It didn’t happen. And the next morning, he was so exhausted that he started to get anxious and took one of his pills. Sigh.

It’s now Monday, April 2nd. I called my mom to discuss the evening’s soccer game plans. She told me  Dad couldn’t sleep the night before because he couldn’t stop thinking about Gabe. He told Mom that finally he pictured putting all his worries about Gabe in a box, closing the lid, and putting it at the foot of the Cross.

I could barely speak after she told me this, because while I know my dad is a deep, deep thinker, I don’t always get to hear the things he deep, deep thinks about. He often keeps stuff inside, and when he does share, it’s usually pretty profound.

5:30 rolls around, and it’s soccer time. I was worried about Gabe and how he’d do coaching Ava’s team. You have to understand, the past two months had been a big long string of him not wanting me to leave his side even for a second, canceled meetings with people, only being able to be out in public for little stretches of time or not at all. Frustrating, disappointing, exhausting.

My mom and Gabe’s mom went with Gabe and Ava to Ava’s game. My dad, Livi, Nina, and I went to Livi’s game. I was riding in the passenger seat of my dad’s car and we were talking about this, that, and the other thing. And we were almost to the game when I said, “Thanks for praying for Gabe.”

“Well, I don’t know much,” Dad said, “but I keep coming back to one thing.” I had no idea what he was going to say. “I was raised believing that you shouldn’t have idols and other things like that in your house. I’m wondering about all the pictures of temples and monks and everything that Gabe has. I feel like it shouldn’t be there.”

I don’t remember what I said back to him, but I couldn’t think straight the rest of the night. HOLY COW. So, let me get this straight. Gabe’s mom prays extensively for Gabe and makes the Buddhist connection. My dad prays extensively for Gabe and comes to the same conclusion. And they didn’t talk to each other about it.

I prayed hard and waited until the girls went to bed before I approached Gabe. He was up in bed, on his laptop, and I said, “So, um, my dad said something crazy tonight. You know how he’s been praying a lot for you? Well, he told me that the only thing he can think of is that maybe we need to get this temple and monk stuff out of our house.”

“Go get rid of it,” Gabe said.

Excuse me, what? “Are you for real?”

“Yeah. Go get the photo book I made and the canvas. And the painting from Angkor Wat that’s down in the basement.”

People, I cannot begin to describe my shock. Stunned, I walked downstairs, grabbed all the offending stuff, and headed out to the trash can in the garage. I ripped and shredded and trashed it all, and prayed over and over for God to take it all away.

Oh, this is getting long, AND I STILL HAVEN’T GOTTEN TO THE GOOD PART.

I immediately called my dad and Gabe’s mom (with Gabe’s blessing) and they were both excited (Dad in his reserved way and Janelle in her not-reserved way). Janelle said, “I still think he needs to get those pictures off his computer.” I told her to pray about that.

The next day Livi and I had some uninterrupted time together, and I told her about destroying the temple stuff. The two of us went around the house and ripped up some t-shirts (with temples and/or monks on them), tore up some postcards, and some other random souvenirs.

Fast forward to Thursday. I blogged this verse prayer for Gabe, then we spent the lunch hour fasting and praying healing Scripture. And then we went through Gabe’s hard drive and deleted hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pictures from our trip to Cambodia (any where the main object in the picture was a temple, idol, or monk). My heart ached for Gabe (man, he got some gorgeous shots), but it felt right.

The next day was Good Friday, and while God can heal people on any one of 365 days in the year, how awesome would it be to receive healing on the day we celebrate Jesus dying for us? By his stripes we are healed, amen?

It was a little after 11:00 a.m. Gabe had gotten up for breakfast but had laid back down. I went upstairs and opened our bedroom door to ask him if he was hungry for lunch. He had this startled look on his face.

“Did I wake you up?

“No.”

“What’s wrong?”

He stared at me for a minute, then, hand on his chest, “I just felt something go out of me.”

“Um, like something you need? Or you mean, like something bad left your body.”

“Something bad.”

Holy cow. I didn’t know even what to say. We prayed, and I made lunch. After we ate, Gabe went up to the bedroom again. A few minutes later, I found him sitting on the edge of the bed, staring out the window, tears streaming down his cheeks. My heart sank.

“Are those good tears or bad tears?”

“Good tears.”

Holy cow.

Then we did some crazy stuff like anoint Gabe with oil and thank Jesus and command the devil to stay the heck away from our home FOR GOOD, and the five of us went around our house and prayed in all the rooms. And everything was amazing until 9yo Ava refused to pray for her daddy, and the rest of us girls started crying, and long story short, she and Daddy spent 30 minutes alone talking while the rest of us cried and played a game and worried about her sinful heart.

And then she prayed too.

And Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday? Were filled to the brim with extended family time. Like 12-hour days. My sister was here from South Carolina, then all of my family was here for Grandma’s funeral. We spent Easter at Gabe’s grandpa’s.

And Gabe did amazing. I’m telling you, he went from spending most of his days in bed to going the whole entire day without a nap and being around PEOPLE. Not just any people, but LOUD PEOPLE. And driving hours and hours. And he only took his meds once or twice that whole time.

Friends, my husband has been healed. He’s still got a road ahead of him. The temptation to worry and fear and panic is something he still has to fight against. He still has moments where he’s convinced he’s going to die. It’s still hard for him to sit and work on websites for long stretches of time. He still gets tired more often than he used to.

But my husband is back. And he’s a new and improved version of himself. He’s physically strong and healthy, he’s closer to Jesus than he’s ever been in his life, HE’S STARTED READING. The Bible in particular.

The light is back in his eyes.

Do we know what we’re doing with our future? No. Heck, we don’t even know what tomorrow will hold. Are we excited that the hospital bills keep adding up, and we’re no longer getting regular paychecks? No, but God’s got this.

Am I doing a stellar job of being a supportive wife and attentive mother and trusting God for provision and our future no matter what my circumstances say?

I wish.

But I can’t deny God’s faithfulness. And even though his timing’s not my timing, and his plans aren’t my plans, I KNOW he knows what he’s doing. And he doesn’t have any intentions of letting us suffer through anything alone.

We owe him our lives. And whether we stay here or traipse off to Cambodia or wherever the heck else, he’s gonna get them.

I have some cool stuff to share on the Gabe front, and I’ve been putting it off, because there’s A LOT, and it’s overwhelming, and I had no idea where to start.

I still don’t.

How about October 29th, 2011? Many of you know that as the date my 34-year-old husband had a heart attack that nearly took his life. His LAD (left anterior descending) artery was 100% blocked. They call it the widow maker. And by God’s grace, I am not that widow today.

Here’s my little update from the hospital a couple of hours after Gabe’s life-saving surgery. And here’s the whole story so I don’t have to repeat it here. Here’s where we got to chat with the firefighter/EMT’s who took Gabe to the hospital and hear more about the whole experience from their perspective.

Before we left the hospital, Gabe’s cardiologist gave us the go-ahead for our 5-week trip to Cambodia (December 11 to January 13) provided that everything checked out fine at his follow-up appointment on November 28. It did. Glory hallelujah. And except for the one scare we had in Cambodia, those five weeks were relaxing and full of good health and good spirits for Gabe.

And now for some stuff you don’t already know (about time, huh?).

In a nutshell (because this post will be 60,000 words long if I don’t nutshell a few parts of it), I’d say I’ve had a bigger heart for Cambodia than Gabe if you were to lay our hearts out side by side on the table. I’ve wanted to take a trip there since our old church first started sponsoring the orphanage through Asia’s Hope. Gabe didn’t really have a desire to go, so I prayed about it. A lot. And one day in 2010 Gabe asked me if I still wanted to go, I said yes, and away we went (nutshell version).

Then I wanted to go back, and he said okay, and we saved up a lot of money and sold a bunch of stuff and went again. For five weeks. With our kiddos. And in the back of my mind (and sometimes the front), I’ve always thought, “I would love to live in Cambodia.” But I knew it was more my baby than Gabe’s, and I knew it wasn’t God’s plan for him to be a trailing missionary husband.

This all has to do with the update on Gabe, I promise.

Three weeks into our stay, I was over Cambodia. Yeah, God, I’m glad you didn’t talk Gabe into moving here, because, wow, this would be a hard place to live. I think I’m probably cut out more for life in America. It was fun to think about for awhile though.

Except I couldn’t shake the feeling that God was saying, “I want your family in Cambodia.” What the what?? I had just told him I’d changed my mind.

It was a Saturday night, New Year’s Eve actually, Gabe was asleep, I was typing journal stuff on his laptop, praying, and crying. Gabe never wanted to move to Cambodia, and now I didn’t want to either, so why was I feeling this strong, strong sense that God wanted us here?

The next morning, we were getting dressed for church, and Gabe says, COMPLETELY OUT OF NOWHERE, “I know what I could do if we moved to Cambodia.”

Excuse me, WHAT??

He went on to explain his idea of taking teenage boys who basically have no future and training them to do web design and photography, getting clients from the States, and paying these boys a living wage, keeping them from a life on the streets and inevitable poverty. He had already had the opportunity to work with a couple kids, and it just felt so right to him.

Holy cow.

Our last two weeks in Cambodia were filled with many, many discussions about this new direction our life seemed to be taking. When we landed on snow-covered American soil in our flip-flops on January 13, our plan was to pay off the rest of Gabe’s school bill (our only remaining debt besides our mortgage), sell our house, and move to Cambodia.

Two weeks later, we were in the emergency room. Gabe was having chest pains. He knew it was a heart attack.

17 hours and a few thousand dollars (that we still haven’t paid) later, they sent him home with no idea what was wrong with him. Two weeks later, we were back in the ER. I asked the doctor if it could possibly be anxiety/panic, because he’d been so, so anxious and scared and worried lately. She said that’s absolutely what it was.

Three days later, we were at a crisis center, a free alternative to the ER (yes, please) for mental health patients. Three days after that, Gabe started counseling. Then he took 3 weeks off work.

The next 8 weeks were just one dark day after another. Lots and lots of panic attacks (which mimic heart attacks, so imagine if you’ve already had one of those for real). Lots of anger and crying and exhaustion and worry about how we were going to make it through this alive.

Someday I might give you a little peek into my journal during that time, but I can sum up all those thousands of words into two: NOT PRETTY.

We received an outpouring of love and encouragement during that time, boatloads of advice (much of it conflicting), and tons of offers to help (but we really had no idea what we even needed). I didn’t blog about it a ton, but here I talked about Gabe crying, and here’s a post he wrote himself.

And here’s a post I forgot I wrote: my right-now story where I shared a bunch of stuff I just wrote up ^ there. Coulda saved myself some words.

We really just felt overwhelmed. We prayed for complete healing, and when God didn’t immediately choose that route, we knew we had to take some action steps ourselves (while continuing to cry out to God). Gabe took his medicine, saw his counselor, read his Bible, quit his job (a story for another time–basically, they asked him if he was 100% on board with the company, he answered honestly that he wasn’t, he quit out of fairness to them and because he felt God telling him to).

And I begged God to please, please, please give me my husband back.

Cambodia? No longer on Gabe’s radar. And understandably so. He just wanted to get better. I went from resenting Gabe for “ruining” our plans to being mad at God for letting it happen to accepting that his plans are better than mine and surrendering the whole thing to him.

At some point, Gabe’s mom threw something out there, and I wasn’t sure what to think. She said that she thought there was a connection between Gabe taking thousands of pictures of monks and Buddhist temples (even having a canvas and photo book made) and his anxiety. She sensed a spiritual attack above and beyond the post-traumatic-stress/anxiety that often affects heart attack survivors. She said that God has big plans for Gabe and his camera, and the devil had used that same instrument for evil.

“You need to get all that stuff out of your house,” she said.

I knew Gabe would never, ever go for that. His photography was a big deal to him. Those photos were art. And really, really good art. We talked about it a little, but then dismissed it.

Until…

(See you tomorrow for Part 2. It’s, um, really good stuff.)