Writing | Suzanne Slagell

simply show up

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Resources for Springfield, Ohio

I live in a small town in Clark County, Ohio. When people ask where I'm from, I used to say the biggest city we lived near was Dayton,...

Suzanne Slagell

Sep 11, 20242 min read

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some thoughts on revival

photo: Sarah Thomas Baldwin/Asbury University 2023 The year I turned thirty was what I thought, at the time, the hardest of my life. We...

Suzanne Slagell

Feb 16, 20234 min read

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good day

Online browsing has its place, but nothing compares to the joy of finding a thing that you never knew you needed in a plant shop in a...

Suzanne Slagell

Dec 31, 20214 min read

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how to be a friend

Recently I found myself tensing up in a conference room office chair as I listened to an update about a child who had a traumatic, acute...

Suzanne Slagell

Nov 13, 20217 min read

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ABOUT SUZANNE

Welcome! I'm glad you're here. I believe changing the world can be as easy as simply showing up - for your family, for your work, for your community, and for yourself.

I hope that as I show up here for you that you can leave this little corner of the internet encouraged and challenged to show up every day right where you are.

Email: suzanneslagell@gmail.com

Never did I think I would spend my birthday getting my master’s hood, but the first picture is brought to you directly by the second. That’s my mama’s kitchen table with her Bible open on it. The same picture I could’ve taken every single morning of my life because it’s how she’s spent every single morning of my life.

My mama taught me to love learning and reading and above all else, Jesus. I was trained in spiritual formation long before I was formally trained in spiritual formation. This degree is not just the fruit of my labors but hers as well. Eugene Peterson calls this a long obedience in the same direction, and I’m so grateful my mama pointed me in this one.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mama!

If a family birthday wasn’t enough for one day, we also had a family art show. It’s cool enough to have a daughter-in-law, and it’s cooler still that she’s an artist. It was a delight to both see her work and surreptitiously watch others be in awe over it too.

Hannah, you’re amazingly talented, and your pieces were breathtaking in person. What a joy to have you in our lives. We can’t wait to see what’s next.

Happy Graduation!!

#theohiostateuniversity

Happiest of days to our TWELVE year old. One more year of childhood for the Slagell children, and this one has enjoyed her childhood more than any of them.

We frequently can’t find her, and it’s always because she’s outside. Every day, no matter the weather. She loves sports and music and talking on the phone with her friends and pickles. Always pickles. She had on a different shirt this morning, and when I told her it was birthday picture time, she went to change into her favorite birthday gift so far. (Made by her Aunt Jen of course.)

Mira, our lives all improved when you joined our family. You are joy and laughter, fire and passion. We love to watch you work hard at school (no other child we’ve ever parented has put in the amount of work you do) and play hard at sports (even if that means you made two bigger boys cry in the space of ten minutes at soccer earlier this year). Next year is a new adventure at a new school, and we can’t wait to watch you tackle it. Maybe your thirteenth year of life will be the one where you stop falling down so much. 😉

You’re our love, sweet girl. Happy Birthday Miracle! 🥳💜

Oh happy day.

Worship in three languages followed by siblings and cousins and grandmas and Easter baskets. Jesus is risen. God is good.

This nation’s leader has led with hate on this day, and it doesn’t change the fact that Jesus is risen. God is good.

My friends and fellow church members are facing imminent deportation (and what that means for some of them is death), and it doesn’t change the fact that Jesus is risen. Several of them led us in worship today, and we agree together: Christ is risen. God is good.

It doesn’t matter how dark our world around us gets. Christ is risen. There is nothing that is beyond redemption. There is nothing that Jesus can’t fix.

Oh happy day. Christ is rizzin. God is good.

May the banality of goodness mark my ordinary life.

“So let’s not get tired of doing good…” Galatians 6:9

Two months at once because grad school. Also please see the thematic elements in my non-fiction because, once again, grad school. Only ten-ish more weeks!!

Highlights:
Custodians of Wonder - this one was for book club, and I LOVED it. This book contains the stories of people who are the last of their profession. For example, the last Scandinavian night watchman or the last Inca bridge master. (Did you know they make bridges from GRASS? Incredible.) I hope someone is making these stories into a tv show - I want it to get the Netflix Chef’s Table treatment. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Peace Like a River - ok, this is cheating a little. This is one of my favorites of all time. I’m re-reading an old favorite every month this year, and this was my obvious first choice. This story of a Reuben and his family traveling across the Dakotas in search of a fugitive older brother is both about the journey and the magic they find along the way. I adore it. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

📖What are you reading right now?
📚 What’s up next on your TBR pile?
📘What’s one of your favorite books of all time?

*Forgive the video quality, the sound quality, and everything that makes a video engaging and professional looking. Our Sunday morning services aren’t designed that way. We’re regular people meeting in a regular place with all that entails. This isn’t about production value.

This is about comfort after an incredibly difficult, grief-filled week.
This is about taking the bread and the cup with our family and neighbors.
This is about desperate prayers from both this daughter and her mama that are answered not all at once, but piece by beautiful piece.
This is about a God who is faithful and loves both the daughter and the mama - and you too.

I hope this is as healing for you as it is for us.

May we live faithfully. May we repurpose all of our weapons into instruments that might still break us wide open but only in pursuit of our healing and growth. May we all look more like Jesus day after day after day, and may we point people toward this Kingdom that is happening right now and not yet fully realized.

“They will beat the swords they used against each other into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. No nation will take up weapons against another, nor will they prepare for war anymore.”
‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭2‬:‭4‬ ‭

Amen.

20 years old. TWENTY.

Seeing this woman enter a new year with direction and continued healing is the best kind of celebration. Our charming, funny girl continues to both delight and enrage us. (I will refer you to tonight when one of her roommates told us she’s the cleanest roommate of the four - WHY NOT AT HOME, SWEET GIRL? 😉)

She’s smart and beautiful, strong and kind. She’s the favorite sibling of all the rest of them, and I’m still not sure what witchcraft she’s using to pull off that feat.

Maggie, you are loved. By us, by the rest of your family, by your workplace, by your friends, even by your roommates’ parents apparently. You are worth loving.

Love God.
Love yourself.
Love others.
That’s the whole thing.

*Also, put a blanket in your car and keep the gas above half full during the cold weather.

Happiest of happy days, bestest friend. I eagerly await your phone call tonight even though we just parted. 😘

I’ve been combining the last two months of the year for a few years. These two months comprised the end of one semester, the only four weeks of break I’ve gotten in the year and a half of grad school, and a lot of family time - a LOT of family time. Let’s just say that every person in our family is grateful for a return to routine that, after 26 days, will *finally* occur tomorrow.

I don’t have time to address all of these books here, but there were a few real highlights.

No one writes about joy better than Ross Gay. Inciting Joy’s meandering essays are a lesson in joy, and boy, it isn’t toxic positivity or even the church-y notion of “count it all joy.” Joy is complicated and challenging; without sorrow, it doesn’t exist. This is less of a collection of essays and more of a how-to. I loved it.

My favorite fiction book of the past two months is not a famous book club pick or literary fiction masterpiece, but it is the most enjoyable book I’ve read for months. An Academy for Liars is a perfect, quick-moving yet still well-developed fantasy about magic, lying, and manipulation, and well, it’s just fun. I highly recommend it.

Looking forward to 2025, I have one primary goal. I will re-read a favorite every month. I need to lean into joy, comfort, and beauty, and there’s no better way for me to do that than to revisit some of my favorites.

January’s re-read is Peace Like a River by Leif Enger—one of my top 10 favorites. I read the first few chapters and then had to put it down to savor it fully.

📕 What did you read in the past two months that you can’t stop thinking about?
📚 Have you read any of these books? Which was your favorite? Which did you hate?
📖 Do you have any reading goals for the next year?

Today I watched these two little boys and their little sister bang the gavel to finalize their adoptions after almost three years. This was objectively the worst case I’ve been a part of, and we literally almost lost one of them at the beginning.

It’s not as it should be.

The world is broken, and these kids are three of countless others who are the recipients of the damage.

The world is beautiful, and these kids get to see a piece of healing and redemption that most will never experience.

Today was joy. Long hugs and smiles. They’re thriving in a family that loves them. This work is hard, and it too often doesn’t end well. Today it did.

*If you want to advocate for kids affected by the worst this world can offer, please let me know! Our county CASA office lost ten volunteers this last year alone. Every child deserves a voice. Come join us!!

Birthday week is over, and it was the best of times. Fifteen is magical, and this girl is so loved.

It’s our girl’s 15th birthday today. She’s been our bright and shiny one from the very start. She has had the hardest school year of her life so far, but she continues to get up and walk out the door like the fighter she’s always been.

Raniah, you burn so bright, warm us all through your heat, and chase away the darkness through sheer will. I pray this year you learn how to let that fire kindle and protect those embers even when it’s dark and cold, even when there’s wind and rain.

I pray you remember your worth even when no one else around you seems to. I pray you know deep, deep in your soul that you are loved and you are enough. Live from that, and the rest will come.

Niah, you’re our joy. Always. It’s our honor to be a small part of your family. You are everything that’s good. Happiest of birthdays, sweet girl.

Thanksgiving days.
1) Slagell cousins.
2) Moana 2
3) Fisher pies
4) National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

Find me thankful.

Nothing better to distract from election anxiety than to talk about books. I won’t be persuaded otherwise.

Fiction this month: I am in my Stanley Tucci era. Therefore, when my friends @kellimck and @katysammons recommended Conclave and told me Stanley Tucci was going to be in it? First up on my list. Kelli told me when I read the end, I would DIE, and I thought she was exaggerating. Which obviously she was, since we’re all still living…but not by much. What a book!!! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Non-Fiction: I fully anticipated I would be talking about Stanley Tucci here too. I re-read Taste in anticipation of his newest, and I adored both. BUT. Dinner For Vampires stole every moment of the Tucci thunder. INCREDIBLE memoir. As befits this month’s reading experiences, another friend, @lacyerinpauley, messaged and asked if I watched One Tree Hill, and I knew immediately it was because of this book. It’s a book that begs to be discussed. Listen to it, for sure. You think it’s going to be a typical celebrity memoir, but then there are encounters with God and truly good parenting moments and a section of lament that made me weep. It was beautiful. It’s not your typical spiritual abuse memoir either, even though it’s incredibly painful. All of it is something pretty special. Another ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.

📘 What’s the best book you read last month?
📗 What’s your favorite celebrity memoir?
📕 Do you want to join my Stanley Tucci fan club? It’s very exclusive.

#suzannereads2024

Today is my daughter-in-law’s birthday, and to be honest, I struggle with what to say because she’s so much cooler than all of us. Watching her live into her giftings has been so inspirational. It’s our honor to watch her shine. She’s talented and kind, dedicated and generous, and I will never love anyone more than the humans who love my children.

Hannah, you’re one of the best gifts our family has ever received. We’re in awe of you. We love you. Happy happy birthday!!!

Every year I forget about how much I love Halloween until we go. There is very little else in our world right now that brings a neighborhood together in quite this way. And now that our kids are old enough to do trick or treat fast? 👩🏻‍🍳💋

Grateful tonight for family and neighbors and bus drivers and teachers and friends with totes full of costumes and daughters with sore feet and cold fingers who had the very best time. Living in community is worth the effort. 🎃👻👾

“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”
- Frederick Buechner

I was never really taught to listen to my regular, everyday life, but it is a practice I am intentionally teaching my children. As Teresa of Avila (and John Calvin and many other theologians and mystics throughout history) teach us, the path to knowing God does not always lie up and beyond us, but rather sometimes in the deep and dark parts of our soul.

Life itself is grace.
Listen.

September reads were just mostly for school. But sometimes even an assigned reading is transformational.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- The Book of Forgiveness is the best I’ve ever read on the subject. Suitable for those in any faith or no faith. It’s something I’ll be thinking about my whole life long. What a beautiful gift that includes no cliches, recognizes the pain doesn’t always go away, acknowledges that reconciliation is often not possible (and there’s no shame in that), and that we can actively participate in our healing.

My favorite fiction was also assigned - Glittering Images by Susan Howatch. I have no idea why I’ve never been exposed to this author and this series in particular, but it reads exactly like a PBS Masterpiece Theater series. I will, for sure, be continuing on.

📙 What are you reading this month? What’s up next on the TBR pile?
📘 Do you love Masterpiece Theater as much as me?
📗 What’s your experience with forgiveness? What’s the best book you’ve read on the subject? What’s a practice that changed your perspective?

#suzannereads2024

I’ve gotten a lot of warnings over the years about what it’s like when your babies grow up and how sad it is. Not one person told me how much joy there is. I mean, just look at him. This is the best part.

Happy Birthday Ben! You’re the first one to have changed our lives, and your siblings should be grateful that you didn’t scare us off or they wouldn’t be here. 😉

We’re sorry that we had to grow up alongside you. If you wanted real grownups for parents, you’ll need to take that complaint up with someone above our pay grade. I promise we’re better people now.

It’s our joy to see you become such a good man in spite of us. Keep being kind and wise, thoughtful and loving. Love God. Love Hannah. Love others. That’s all of it.

*that first photo is all @hannahslagell. Ben chose her, and we’re all the lucky ones.

August reads: eh.

I enjoyed many of these, but only loved one surprising book. Colton Gentry’s Third Act presents like a straight fluffy rom-com, but it had more depth than that. Plus, it was written beautifully. Not that romance novels can’t be well-written, but I was surprised at the skill in this novel.

I was glad to finally finish Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes (it only took me months ), and I’m excited to read the follow-up Misreading Scripture with Individualistic Eyes. Great books if you’re interested in the Bible, its cultural background, and how it’s understood in cultures other than our western, American space.

📗 How was August reading for you?
📘 What was your favorite read of last month?
📙 What’s next on your TBR?

#suzannereads2024

After 18 consecutive years of elementary school, the Slagells bid adieu. Happy 1st Day of 6th grade!!

If you’ve been keeping count, yes, not only are our kids at three different schools, but they’re in three different DISTRICTS. Thoughts and prayers for our schedules accepted.

In the slowest first day of school roll-out ever, another one went off today to a new year at a new school.

Happy first day of junior year!!

First day of 9th grade, and everyone’s feeling so high school. Open house completed, water bottle filled, lunch account loaded, new shoes on, and she’s off for another year! 💛

Texas grabs hold of you and never lets go. Less than 48 hours on the ground this weekend, and somehow it still feels like home. Watched a favorite get married, hugged our other favorites, and ate my required allotment of beef.

I cried on the way there because I wanted to go so badly yet I knew we were leaving our kids at an extraordinarily bad time, and then I cried on the way home because I didn’t get to stay longer.

Right decision confirmed when I returned home to the summer that just won’t stop giving - overnight burglary of our property while the kids were here alone. Fortunately, not much of monetary value was taken even though plenty could’ve been. If you live in Medway - heads up.

Pray for my scared children tonight. They need sleep, and since I got exactly 2 hours last night bc of a late wedding and early flight, so do I.

July was a HUGE reading month for me. Honestly, it’s my primary coping mechanism, and this was a month I needed to cope with.

My 3 favorite fiction:
South of the Border, West of the Sun: I came across this book quite serendipitously, and I loved it. If you loved Past Lives (prob my favorite movie of the last year), then this book is also for you.

Sandwich: Catherine Newman is a favorite now. I loved this story of a middle-aged mom with adult children. Catherine Newman portrays real life with such emotional accuracy.

Husbands: this magical realism book was ridiculous AND ridiculously enjoyable. When faced with an unlimited amount of husbands, how do you choose? How do you decide when to stay or when to go? Those questions sound more serious than this book actually was, but I loved it.

My favorite non-fiction: The Shell of Things by Jacob Stratman. Jake is a classmate and a friend, and his (mostly occasional) poetry is beautifully incarnational. A celebration of the sacred everyday. I also highly recommend his first book of poetry: What I Have I Offer with Two Hands.

📗 What was your favorite read of July? Let’s build our TBR lists with recommendations!
📙 What are you looking forward to reading in August?
📘 Do you also cope with hard times by escaping into a book? If not, what’s your coping skill of choice?
📚 As always, ask me about any of these books! I’m happy to share my opinions - even if they’re negative (there might be a couple books I’m specifically thinking about here 😉)

#suzannereads2024

Nerd level unlocked: being able to use the oldest book I own - first printed in 1565, but regretfully I only own a tattered copy of the 1869 edition - to write a paper with a much more modern means of publication. This is a dream.

Challenge: it’s hanging on by a thread. Literally. It’s sewn together with threads.

What a weird week. What a beautiful week with our family. It was a strangely devastating week for us compounded by a complicated work travel schedule and a missed fair experience, and all of us are feeling some kind of way. Down bad. Crying. We’re just not at the gym.

But.
Our kids worked hard for no real reward. Our family showed up for, once again, no real reward. (Copey’s hams salad aside) We smoked some wings. That was a TANGIBLE reward. And in the middle of minor financial and emotional devastation, we are held. And loved. And grateful.

My Hobby Lobby caption: Grateful. Thankful. Blessed.
No one was hurt. Everyone who has a license still has a vehicle they can drive. It’s possible our camper isn’t totaled, and we gratefully weren’t scheduled to move it to fair tomorrow as would’ve been the case on a normal year. We have good and faithful friends who don’t hesitate to come over on a Monday to help.

My real life caption: redacted.

This kid is SEVENTEEN years old today. He is kind and funny. Generous to a fault. He is incredibly insightful, and I recently heard him break down an adult-sized issue with nuance, absolute clarity, and extreme compassion for both sides.

He gets up early every Thursday he isn’t in school to serve with our church’s food truck ministry. Just yesterday we were talking about a nuanced theological issue (we’re a barrel of fun in our house), and he said he didn’t know but he was just going to try to be more like Jesus every day. It’s not more complicated than that, and that’s your gospel message for today.

What a kid. What a man he is becoming. We wouldn’t be us without him.

Happy Birthday Brenden! You’re our favorite youngest son, and it’s our honor to be in your family. Here’s to another year of you failing to convince us that we should allow you to get a tattoo! 😏

Finally getting around to posting my June reads - they ended up surprising me greatly. Summer is not typically when I read high quality books that make my best of the year lists, but here I am in June with five star reads.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - The Bee Sting. Wow. This is likely to make my best of the entire year. It’s for sure the best I’ve read so far. A beautifully written story about an entire family, with sections both present and past from each member’s perspective. It takes place in Ireland, and fair warning: it’s LONG.

I was also incredibly caught off guard by how much I loved Nancy French’s Ghosted. Nancy was a ghostwriter for several conservative political figures, and her husband, David, is a well-known NYT conservative columnist. Her story is bold and unapologetic but told with tenderness, care, humility, and humor. Perfect memoir reading.

Other highlights:
Field Notes for the Wilderness. Sarah Bessey writes with a pastor’s heart, and it just feels like safety every time I read her.
Black Liturgies has been one of my favorite instagram follows for years, and this book did not disappoint.

And to close up: that Abby Jimenez book absolutely caught me off guard. I never thought I’d say I’d need content warnings for a romance novel but this one needs a heads up for trauma and neglect and adoption and all the things that make me sob uncontrollably in public. Just be prepared if you pick this one up.

This month’s tip: read any or all of these books. I actually quite liked all of them, and I’m happy to discuss them at length with any of you.

#suzannereads2024

This week has been exceptionally hard. I’m not dealing well (please don’t ask my daughters about this or what might have been said when I couldn’t fix the shelf in my cupboard today), but we live in the summer of Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan and Billie Eilish and today is blue skies.

What’s on your summer 2024 playlist?

It was a weird week, but this morning put me back together. As with most church-goers, church does not always feel joyful to attend or even a safe space to be some Sundays. Some weeks you just go because it’s a thing you have to do. I know there will be Sundays like that again.

But for today, on this specific Sunday, I am held together by the bread and the wine, the fellowship of the saints, and the goodness of God.
I’m all in.

A tribute post to my son still at home. May he take fhe example of his father and his grandfathers and become the kind of man who his offspring/mentees write loquacious Father’s Day posts about. We have no expectations and everyday is a gift.

Tonight we watched The Bear together, and everything is not at all what I expected yet more than I could’ve ever hoped. And it’s in thanks, in large part, to the men who are pouring their time into our son: Wendell Slagell, Travis Barnhouse, Lloyd Fisher, Warren Slagell, Eric Bettelon, Dustin Gilroy, Kevin Sprinkle, Carl Ruby, and COUNTLESS others.

Strong men raise strong men. Good men raise good men. That’s the future we want for our boys. Strong, good, godly men. It’s not too hard of an ask. So let’s raise the bar!

May: birthday books + cottonwood season = lots of indoor reading time.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Go As a River by Shelley Read. This book was recommended to me by two different friends which is why I didn’t read the content warnings. Had I read the content warnings, I wouldn’t have read it. Had I read the content warnings, I would’ve missed out on my favorite book of this past month and one of my favorites of the year so far. I almost put it down at the hardest bit but couldn’t leave myself in the darkest moment. Boy, am I glad I stuck it out. This novel - one woman’s story throughout the mid-1900s- is a debut, and I cannot wait to see what she writes next.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Salt on your Tongue: Woman and the Sea by Charlotte Runcie. This book was everything I hoped it would be and more. This is the kind of writing that transports. You can feel the salt in the air and taste it on your lips while you’re reading this book that is a combination of pregnancy essays, history, myths and legends, and travel guide. I fell in love with the Scottish and British wild seaside even though I’ve never been.

I also adored Funny Story, my favorite of Emily Henry’s since Beach Read.

Sociopath is the most fascinating memoir I’ve read in awhile, but my thoughts are very mixed. I’ve discussed it at length with a couple of friends already. It would be a GREAT choice for a book club, but ours read a totally endearing book about “lady astronauts” this month (Calculating the Stars).

Honorable mention to Being Elisabeth Elliott, the second of two authorized biographies of her life. I grew up hearing her story, reading her books, and listening to her on the radio daily. While I have complicated feelings about her legacy of work, this second book, in particular, has been cathartic for me to read in many ways. She was strong, brave, complex, and much more nuanced than her public persona projected. If she intersected your life in any way, I recommend these biographies.

📕What was your favorite read from this past month?
📗What’s up next on your to-read pile?
📘Is there a memoir *you* have complicated feelings about?

#suzannereads2024

A tribute post to my girlies. Who have no respect for personal space and insist upon entering my bedroom at all hours just to chat, sometimes alone, sometimes en masse. I hope they interrupt me for the rest of my life.

Neither Wendell nor I grew up in a neighborhood. It was never our dream to live in one. We thought we were rural people. Land. Just our family. All of that.

That’s not where we found ourselves. For all of our marriage, we have always lived in neighborhoods, and there is nothing I’ve grown to value more.

Every time I talk about this, people tell me, “I’m not that kind of person.”
Me neither.
It turns out that we learn to become the sort of people we should be, and that’s what has happened to me.

Yes, I have strangers in my yard petting my dogs.
Kids on my trampoline at 10 pm.
Children UNEXPECTEDLY outside the bathroom door when I get out of the shower.
A neighbor’s friend pitching the kickball for a rowdy Saturday night game.

This how I know God is with me.
Because we are with others.

Last year, I preached about this at our church, and I closed with a blessing. Maybe this blessing is for you tonight if you don’t believe God is with you. Or you don’t know how to be with others. Or you don’t *want* to be with others. Believe me, I understand. 😉

“May you, every single one of you, know that God is with you.
May you know God is with you when you brush your teeth, when you do your dishes, on the way to school, in the drive-thru, at the ballpark, in your office…all of the everyday, ordinary places we go.
May you know God with you, no matter your age, race, gender, sexual identity, marital status, occupation. God is with you.

May you be with others.
May you go to coffee.
May you show up early or stay late.
May you start a conversation.
May you sit your chair next to another person at the ball game. And sit next to that same person the next game. And the game after that.
May you learn to love your front porch more than your backyard.
May you make the call, send the message, share your stuff. May you go first.
Say “Me too” and “I KNOW” and “Say more about that” and “I’m here”

May you show up with intention.
May you put the work in.
May you be vulnerable.
May you be open.
May you reflect Jesus.

May the Lord bless you and keep you.
May He make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you.
May the Lord turn His face toward you and give you peace.”

It is the made-up tragedy of my life that my favorite holiday (my birthday) falls in the week of my least favorite holiday (Mother’s Day). I turned 45 last week anyway, in spite of my feelings about the impending doom of tomorrow’s holiday.

Everything about this week was ordinary, and many things were hard and many things were beautiful, and isn’t that the story of getting older? Life is ordinary and hard, beautiful and good and true.

The beautiful: Mother’s Day flowers from Ben and Hannah and the northern lights, even if only seen through my phone camera.

The good: A new book to read. Even though I have no hopes of seeing the ocean again anytime soon, books can transport and delight.

The true: It is something to become who you are. Getting older is pure gift, and I’m grateful. (Ok - also my hip hurts inexplicably and I feel hot all the time and I now need reading glasses at night, but other than that? Pure gift.)

It is quite evident to me when I look at these books that I finished last month that I had no capacity for serious fiction after finishing my required reading. There are seasons like that for sure, and this is one of them. I do miss more significant fiction choices, however. Maybe soon!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - The Wood Between the Worlds by Brian Zahnd. I don’t think anyone writes more accessibly and more humbly about atonement theories than Brian. He is a gift to the church, and I really loved this book.

No five-star fiction reads at all this past month, but I did really enjoy both The Leftover Woman and Check & Mate. I have quite a few fiction books waiting for me at the library, so hopefully May reads will be stellar!

📘 What was the best book you read in April?
📗 What kind of books do you read as an escape if you’ve been reading too many hard or heavy things?
📕 What’s next on your TBR pile?

#suzannereads2024

Almost 10,000 graduates walked at Ohio Stadium yesterday, and ours was one of them. We might not have gotten to see him walk with his high school class, but 60,000ish people got to watch him this time.

What an insane event.
What an awesome achievement.
Happy graduation Ben!
We are the luckiest to have gotten to be your parents.
We’re so proud of you, son. You did it! 🎓🎉

Our grace note is eleven years old today. She’s pure gift, and not one of us could imagine life without her.

Mira, you are becoming who you are, and it’s our honor to watch it.

You are the most “kid” of any of your siblings yet - you spend nearly all of your free time outside and you were the first to really love toys. Yet every day we see how fast you’re growing up, and that’s just as fun to experience.

You work hard to accomplish your goals without us pushing, and you’re diligent to learn things correctly rather than take shortcuts. (That’s a quality your mama should take notes on. 😉)

You have jokes and happiness all day long, and it’s all joy. However, we’re equally as grateful that you’re letting us in to the more difficult emotions now too. You are strong beyond measure, but you’re learning to show us the softer side as well.

Stay strong. Stay brave. Stay tender and kind.

You were born to change this life.
You were born to chase the light.

We’re ever so grateful you were born.
Happiest of birthdays to our favorite youngest child.
Please enjoy your pickles.

Two weeks ago, I wandered a labyrinth, not quite knowing why. In and out, around and around, until I could put a name to what I was feeling. I had to walk out the mystery of that stone spiral to discover what was truly going on inside me. I had to find the words to name it.

I had mostly forgotten about that experience until tonight when I was reminded by someone of some painful pieces of my story from years ago. He just flat out named it right there at dinner. I initially felt exposed and vulnerable as if I had betrayed something about myself inadvertently. Maybe I showed too much emotion at the time. Maybe I didn’t react the way I should’ve. Maybe…suffice it to say, it was some significant self-examination.

It took me a minute before I remembered my labyrinth experience. Sometimes it’s a long circular wandering before we can name something, and sometimes it’s even longer before we can say it out loud to someone else. What had happened to me was harmful, and it’s ok for this person to have named it as such. I had come to terms with some of it in my own processing, but it hit different coming out of someone else’s mouth.

To name something gives you a certain amount of power over that thing, and to be honest, power makes me incredibly uncomfortable. But this is the piece God is teaching me right now.

I’m trying to name difficult things with strength and boldness and to accept it when I hear those names out of someone else’s mouth. I can’t say I’m doing it all that gracefully, but I’m learning.

Name your hard things.
Say it out loud.
Be bold.
And then: be free.

“Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. By walking one makes the road, and upon glancing behind one sees the path that never will be trod again. Wanderer, there is no road– Only wakes upon the sea.”
― Antonio Machado, Campos de Castilla

Three weeks ago we went to Oklahoma City to visit my father-in-law in the hospital and my Aunt Judy in skilled nursing. Our hotel was midway between their respective facilities, all on the same road. Those five miles or so between the two are burned into my memory now.

Springtime comes whether or not we’re in a difficult season, so we grabbed beauty where we could, even if it was the airport landscaping.

Tonight, my Aunt Judy is resting with Jesus where she’s no longer in pain and where beauty is eternal.

Better is one day.

March is yet another month of grad school reading - prep yourselves for another 13 months of this. Feel free to scroll right on by those slides if you’re singularly uninterested in seminary reading. My fiction takes a bit during these months, so I’m looking forward to the end of this term.

⭐️Favorite Fiction read:
Laurie Frankel is one of my favorite storytellers. Her books have literally changed my perspectives on some issues. Family Family was not one of them (due to my personal experience with the topic), but I did truly enjoy reading about this family both bound together and separated by biology and adoption. Laurie makes nuanced discussions seem easy by just including them as part of a family’s story.

⭐️Favorite non-fiction read:
Emily P. Freeman is a perennial favorite of mine (and now one of my lecturers in grad school). She continually has put out content that uncannily echoes my own life. How to Walk Into a Room is no exception. At the same time she was living this book, I was living a very similar journey. I wish I could’ve read this book before I lived it, but I read this book with a relieved sigh. We are, in so many ways, living singular experiences in this world, but in equally as many ways, we are living the same stories as others. I recommend this book to anyone wondering if they should stay or go from a particular place or situation, and I recommend it to everyone because I don’t think there’s a single being in this world who will not, at some point, have to leave somewhere and go somewhere new. Emily walks you through the process and the decisions you may face with grace and generosity.

📕What was the best thing you read last month?
📘What’s up next on your TBR?
📗Have you ever had to leave somewhere and go somewhere new (whether that’s literal or metaphorical)? What helped you during that process?

#suzannereads2024

This spring break looked different than what we had planned. On Monday, in the space of about an hour, the three youngest and I decided to fly to Oklahoma City to spend time with Wendell’s dad who is in the hospital for the 4th time in two months. Our hotel happened to be midway between his hospital and the skilled nursing facility where my Aunt Judy is fighting cancer. Our time with both was far too short.

It wasn’t the week I had planned, our trip there was a nineteen-hour ordeal that felt like three solid days, and there were far more tears than our spring breaks usually contain. But always, always, there’s beauty to behold and gifts to count.

1) I got to come home to an Easter morning with all of my children.
2) My father-in-law sets such a good example as our kids (and us) watch him navigate this last part of his life. Mira, especially, noticed. I’m so immensely grateful that of all the fathers-in-law I could’ve gotten, I was blessed with this man who loves his family, loves Jesus, and (if I can be a little selfish) loves ME so very well.
3) I’ve never had a kid that loves sports as much as my youngest. She didn’t start playing soccer until this past fall, but there is rarely a day, no matter the weather that she isn’t outside practicing. And when given a library full of free in-flight entertainment, she saw that NWSL games were streaming live and that was it for the flight. She didn’t even look twice at movies or TV shows.
4) The tulips were in glorious bloom at the OKC airport.
5) I have the best of friends who send me just the right things at just the right time, and this song was my constant companion this week:
“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I don’t have to fear no evil for I know that You are with me.
With oil of blessing, You cover my head.
You fill me to overflowing, my cup is overflowing.
And Your goodness and Your mercy will follow me
All the days of my life.”

Happy Resurrection Day friends!

I don’t have a ton to say about the non-fiction portion of this past month’s reading except “welcome to rbe first part of my spring semester of grad school.”

While all of the non-fiction was assigned, I was grateful to read all of it. Even the books I hated. (*cough* Friedman *cough*) Best of the bunch was Nouwen, but it is impossible for me to ever pick someone over Nouwen. Be sure to figure that bias into any book review I ever give.

Two of the fiction reads were extremely enjoyable:
Mercury was a solid four stars. It really hit the sweet spot for me between plot driven and character driven. There’s a family business, a teenage girl interloper, a dead body, and a full examination of what it means to be a woman and a mother. Perfect read.

Anna O was another great novel, but more traditionally plot driven. Can someone who is sleep walking commit murder and if so, are they liable? That’s the essential question this novel was formulated around.

The last highlight for this month is a book of poetry that I recently finished. One of my classmates is an English professor, and as it turns out, a published poet. This is a book of mostly occasional poems written to his sons. Jake is talented and kind. I’m grateful to know him, and I eagerly await his second book of poetry due to be published soon.

📕What was your favorite read from February?
📗What’s next on your to-read list?
📘It’s one of my favorite things to be friends with people who have published works. Do yon have any real life friends with books? Share them here! Not for any celebrity-adjacent vibes. Simply for the joy of supporting those who put their hearts on the line for their creative work.

#suzannereads2024

Sometimes seasons are very hard. This is another one of those for us. So, as I always do, I come back again and again to count gifts.

• a daughter who calls me every day for no reason and every reason
• a friend who remains a good friend even though I love troubled marriage memoirs and hate Lord of the Rings, and he loves Lord of the Rings and hates troubled marriage memoirs
• eating breakfast with my son (and all the other college kids eating Sunday brunch with their parents) at Hangover Easy
• a friend who not only knows, but SEES my kids and texts me when she suspects something’s up. And then helps arrange a phone call so I can give some needed connection to a struggling kid
• being in the imperfect, yet exactly right, spaces with the imperfect, but exactly right, people
• a five-star Michelin brunch to look forward to tomorrow. Yes, Michelin stars only go up to three, but that’s how good this sausage gravy is going to be. What I’m saying is that not all church small groups are created equal.

and more than anything:
• a daughter who ecstatically opened her backpack before bedtime to give me this book she checked out of the school library specifically so I could read it

I am seen. I am known. I am loved. Maybe not in all of the expected ways I thought it would come, but in all the very best ways it can exist.

What gifts are you counting tonight?

This is our baby and her daddy. We’ve already been tagged online and I talked with Niah about it, so I feel both free, and also a little compelled, to share. This is HER story. HER life. I’m grateful to be a part of HER story. Six years was a long time to wait for both of them, and there is no more sacred moment than when we walked that sidewalk to get that long-awaited hug. I purposely did not record that piece. Some things are too holy.

Lest I paint too rosy a picture, it feels important to say this is complicated. For everyone. And yet, it’s real. It’s family. It’s worth the hard parts. ALL of us have complicated feelings on how this all came to be, but, and I’m speaking for only myself right now, it’s worth it.

I am grateful that my daughter has a dad that shows up, that wants her, that loves her. I don’t ever want every detail of what adoption means to be available to all of you. But this is something I hope you all can understand just a teeny piece of.

Family matters.

It’s quite popular to talk about “chosen family”. I’m not here to say that isn’t real. It is. Family is more than blood but IT IS ALSO BLOOD. Those are the facts.

Here’s to our daughter. And also to her dad.
We’re here for all of it. Pain and joy alike.
I’m not here to say we’ve done it all right. I’m not here to even say that we absolutely agree with how our sweet girl came to be our daughter. One of our family values is honesty, and one thing we’re honest about is that we didn’t and couldn’t control what happened in our children’s lives. Our job was, and continues to be, to be WITH them. It’s weird and hard and complicated, and I’m just continually grateful to be along for the ride.

Good lord, is our (collectively- adoptive and bio family alike- we all get to claim her) girl amazing.

What an incredible week. That, for OUR family, included the supports we’ve built for our kids. Thank you, BY NAME, to Eric and @tambet48 and Mark and @findingmichelle2022. This is a community thing. We need you, and we’re grateful.

Our hearts are full. Our hearts are broken. Our hearts are full. It’s all of it.

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