Hey Friend,

Just wanted to remind you that You are Much More than this messy moment in time.

This moment when you’re hurting and your feelings are colliding and you are inching along, these days when your carpet knows your tears and your  fists know the sky and your steering wheel squeezes the tight grip of fear.

You have a new chapter ahead of you and I see a soul moving ‘cross fields.

This new normal is gonna feel … different .. and different can be so, so good. No more shackles ’round those ankles of yours, no more shattered mirrors tearing your tender heart, no more taunting voices that say it can’t be done.

Just today I remembered the mustard seed — how all it takes is a teensy tiny minuscule seed of faith for great things to grow — and seeds die before they can build big branches where others nest in their shade. You are a seed, remember, you are small, but you are that big, and we all need your shade when our stormy days come.

Take this year and run with it, eyes fixed on the one who smiles when He sees you coming. Hold that mustard seed in your heart and run like it’s all that matters in the whole wide world — run like that.

I have this painting in my office, of Jesus holding Martha’s hand — or Mary, or mine — and I look at it a hundred times a day when I’m at my desk thinking about all who read this, all who this ministry is for, why I’m doing it, and how I can go on.

And the thing about this painting is the way Jesus’s eyes behold the one he’s seeing, the way he looks at us with assurance, adoration, love; with this belief in who we are and what we can do together with Him. The way He looks at us is so big — bigger than all the branches in the world can hold, bigger than the shade, bigger than our hearts and much, much bigger, a million times bigger than our mistakes — and bigger than the tiniest seed on the planet, the mustard.

But all He wants from us is the teensiest tiniest faith that He’s gonna do big things through this big mess we’re in.

In 2016, if we could all take our messy lives, our broken and lost pictures of perfect, and plant that mustard seed deep in our little hearts and run, I’d say no matter what comes, He’s smiling at us — yes, right at us — we who fought for More, who believed for More, who Knew We Were More.

Here’s to a New Year with a new vision, a new commitment to journal, and new horizons for us all.

Your Friend,