When Sam, my now husband, and I started dating, everything was new and exciting. We were fun and playful; we were tender and excited to see if this was a forever kind of love. Already, I knew he treated me the way I wanted to be treated, but still everything was fresh. Nothing had been tested by adversity or arguments or inconvenience.

But within the first few weeks of dating, someone close to us tried to quite literally destroy my character in public and in ministry. Over the next few weeks and months, many questioned both him and me, and some even urged Sam to end the relationship. In a lot of ways, that season felt a lot like a Job moment; maybe not to the degree in which Job suffered since I still had my health, my home, and my family, but it was the kind of thing that felt like it hung over my head and caused grief that had to be dealt and re-dealt with. I lost friends from that moment in time, and a few trust issues developed. 

Emotions are tricky. On one hand, God has given them as a great help to us. They ignite our passion for the Lord and move us to give our lives to Him. They embolden us to share the Gospel that has changed us so completely. They contribute to convictions of the Holy Spirit in killing our sin and sanctifying ourselves to be more like Christ. When they are controlled and wielded righteously, they are a great help to navigating our Christian walk.

On the other hand, emotions are misleading and they are not irrefutable. They are still a part of the flesh-response in our fallen nature. They can lead us to sin, offend God, hurt others, and provide excuses for us to remain comfortable in our temptations and trespasses.

Growing up, I knew my dad was proud of me. Dance recitals, school awards ceremonies, you name it– my dad was either out in the audience or waiting in the wings with tears in his eyes. But nothing was more sure to make my dad well up more than seeing me or my brother do something in the church. Getting baptized? Leading worship? Forget it; he was sure to be a puddle wherever he was standing.

And there are some moments in life where pride is permissible: when it swells in you because of an achievement, or because of a close relationship. Feeling a deep satisfaction at a success or at watching someone you love excel at what they love is a positive thing. It’s one of life’s joys. 

I wear very few items of jewelry on a daily basis. One piece that barely ever comes off is a small chain with a set of wings given to me by my sister. She gave it to me as we read Let Me Be a Woman by Elisabeth Elliot during her engagement. Chapter 8, “The Weight of Wings,” resonated with us both, even at our differing stages of womanhood and marriage.

I have a books my mother in law bought me of famous hymns and spiritual songs, containing their hymnal sheet music, and the back story behind why the song was written. In one of the volumes of these books, there was a song that caught my eye: Lily of the Valley by Charles Fry.

Lily of the Valley is a pet name I have for my second-born daughter named Lily– who was born and lives in a valley town. Upon seeing the title, I had to flip to the song and pull up a rendition of it to hear.

“I have found a friend in Jesus, He's everything to me / He's the fairest of ten thousand to my soul / The lily of the valley and in Him alone I see / All I need to cleanse and make me fully whole”

There is some disagreement over what exactly Solomon means in Proverbs 13:23. It could be taken two ways: The first is that the poor, for their lack of work, leaves uncultivated ground untapped because they lack the work ethic to put in the labor it takes to grow and harvest food. This would, of course, make sense, if you have a field and choose to not plow the field, sow seed, water it, tend to it, and then harvest the food it brings forth, then the resource has been mismanaged and the field has gone to waste. It is an injustice to not steward that rightly.

I remember my first anxiety attack. I was in my freshman year at high school, and it was a few days before we picked classes for sophomore year. I had come home from school with the long course catalog and was sitting on the couch with it in my lap. My mind started racing, overwhelmed by all the choices of classes I had in front of me. I’ve always been the kind of person who gets panicky when I feel overwhelmed by a big-picture process. 

Compared to the vast amount of choices, it felt like my schedule wouldn’t fit them all. Suddenly, I felt like the choices I made would have a great impact on the rest of my life; like somehow if I made the wrong choice of classes, my whole path would be altered. I felt ill-prepared to make a decision so soon. I hadn’t thought about the course of the rest of my life at fifteen years old. 

Few things are as unique to the human experience as putting your foot in your mouth. Sometimes we do it unintentionally, carelessly. Other times, we lash out aiming to do the most amount of damage as is verbally possible. We all have the tendency and the propensity to do it, especially when not leaning on the Holy Spirit to temper our emotions.

And yes, I am also speaking to myself.

I learned from my mama how to host a meal. When I was growing up, my mom opened her home for showers, birthday parties, Christmas Eve dinners, graduation parties. You name it, she did it. She even hosted my wedding reception in the middle of COVID and you never would have known the world was shut down. 

And you’d better believe that I was enlisted to help her execute every party she had growing up; whether it was folding cloth napkins and setting the table for Christmas Eve, or setting up tables and chairs for a pig-pickin’, or setting up decorations for a theme party– I was there. And I learned a lot.

“Don’t be a yente.” 

That’s how my mother would scold me when I was a child and being meddlesome or a busybody. It was always a funny word that made me giggle, but the rebuke was there even if it was made in jest. ‘Yente’ is a yiddish word for a gossiper, which from what I can tell, became a more popular term from the play Fiddler on the Roof, the actual name of the matchmaker in the show that arranges the marriages for their small, Jewish village in Ukraine. 

This should give you a better picture if you’re unfamiliar with the term: a yente is a meddling gossip, a known busybody, or a tale-bearer. She always has a story and always has the latest word on who’s who and what’s what.

We have a beagle/jack russel mix named Archie. When we got him, he was only about 8 or 9 weeks old. At first, whenever we got in the car, he was always skittish, probably expecting that he was either going back to the shelter where he was trained and cared at before he came to us, or going off to another family.

Every time we left him home alone, he would have anxiety; crying and crying and chewing up objects in a blind panic. Probably because he didn’t trust us to come back. Eventually, Archie got used to the idea: He was staying with us. We were his people.

At the start of the year, I tackled the task of being a sourdough mom. I purchased a dehydrated starter and set about trying to wake it up. After about a week, it was time to tackle actually making bread. There is so much that goes into it, but the best way to understand it is to jump right in, see the finished result, and then keep making tweaks from there until it’s exactly the way it should be. 

One of the tweaks I had to make was to start using warm water when I fed my starter and when I mixed the dough. Warm water will help the fermentation process much better because the temperature agrees better with the bacteria that causes the dough to rise. The warmth encourages more growth. Pair this with putting the dough in a warm place when it’s set aside to rise? Those are two tweaks that make for a more fluffy, delicious loaf of bread.

“Suddenly [the unwise man] went after [the adulteress], as an ox goes to the slaughter [not knowing the outcome], or as one in stocks going to the correction [to be given] to a fool, until an arrow pierced his liver [with a mortal wound]; Like a bird fluttering straight into the net. He did not know that it would cost him his life. Now therefore, my sons, listen to me, and pay attention to the words of my mouth. Do not let your heart turn aside to her ways. Do not stray into her [evil, immoral] paths. For she has cast down many [mortally] wounded; Indeed, all who were killed by her were strong. Her house is the way to Sheol, descending to the chambers of death.” (Proverbs 7:22-27, AMP)

Back when I used to be a youth leader, we would spend the summer nights out in the church parking lot. Kids would bring their skateboards, scooters, and bikes and ride all around the property. We’d set up big firepits and volleyball nets for some good, old-fashioned goofing off after the meeting was over.

One night, I remember I was talking to a couple people by the backdoor of the church when I heard a scratching sound that would not stop. I looked all around the back stoop until I realized the scratching was coming from the gutter downspout of the church. This downspout went from the eave of the roof and continued underground and must have gone into some sewer system with the town. 

Quickly, me and a couple other people worked to get the piece of downspout disconnected from the pipe underneath. The pipe went down a couple of feet, so dark that we couldn’t see anything but a pair of panicked eyes at the bottom and lots of squeaking. Shining a light down, we realized it was a squirrel. He must have been on the roof of the church and fallen down the gutter into what was a sure death if we hadn’t came along.

We tried a few ways to get the little guy out of the hole, and we ended up feeding a piece of rope down the hole for the squirrel to climb up.

Our sin will entrap us in the same way. Like a little squirrel falling down a pipe that was hidden under leaves, or a bird in a net, or an ox to the slaughter, we often don’t realize the depths of our sin until we have been caught in it. To follow it to its end is certain death and without a Savior is as inescapable as that underground pipe. 

In Proverbs 7, Solomon depicts a young and inexperienced man that lacks the wisdom to turn from an adulteress. This adulteress tempts his every sense and beckons him to be with her. She lays her trap with a luxurious home and a sumptuous bed perfumed with oils and made with comfortable cushions and linens. She smoothly speaks to him and makes him feel desired. She tells him that their encounter will be full of love and delight– until morning. By the end of her invitation, the young man is completely allured and is persuaded inside. Solomon himself ends the tale saying, “He did not know it would cost him his life.”

Our sin separates us from God. It’s not a small thing. We can try to excuse it away or minimize it but if not confronted and given to Jesus, it will ensnare us. If not repented of and turned away from, it will consume us. We cannot claim to walk in righteousness and yet cling to our wrongs.

Solomon begs his son to listen to him and heed his warnings: Don’t let your heart turn to evil. Don’t allow your foot to even step in that direction. Remember, whatever is in your heart, your feet will eventually go. If your heart allows the temptation of sin to be entertained, if you do not guard yourself to be quick to identify the persuasions of the immoral, you will inevitably fall short. A mouse doesn’t usually sense the trap closing over its neck, they only see the bait. A crab doesn’t know it’s in a trap until the doors swing shut and the cage starts to rise off the sea floor.

If we lack spiritual, Godly knowledge, we will walk straight into the trap of our temptations. But if we gain God’s insight and listen to His word, we will be better equipped to be on guard against the sin that beckons us. Solomon warns his sons that the adultress’ home seemed inviting and promised delight, but that seemingly alluring home is the way to death. She’s led many others to it with the same smooth talk; that comfortable bedroom is a chamber of death.

Maybe today’s devotion doesn’t seem so encouraging. Maybe it’s blunt and a little heavy. But we need to be reminded of the egregiousness of our sin. Sometimes, we need to soberly take stock of where we fall short. Be encouraged. God’s Spirit desires to help you fight your sin. His wisdom is designed to help you root it out and live in a way that pleases Him. 

If our ultimate goal is to be spiritually wise and walk the path of righteousness, then we need to be quick to point out our struggle and allow God to transform it. The wise lean into instruction and correction so they can become more wise. The fool bristles against correction so that they can continue to ignore the ways they still need to mature.

Think of Godly wisdom as the rope we hung down into the hole to fish the squirrel out of the pipe. We had to try several times, feeding it in and out over and over before the squirrel finally caught the hint and grabbed onto the rope and climbed out. If we cry out to God for help and wisdom– if we seek the Lord and grab on to His understanding– we will find that wisdom is God’s hand extended to pull us up out of the trap of our sin.

It’s never too late to begin confronting the things we know we fall short in, to turn our direction back to a walk of faith and live a life in service and in the name of Christ.

Do you see God as a friend, or as a distant entity? Do you see His commands as necessities to your life, or as guidelines often ignored? 

The mark of a maturing Christian is the one who embraces the Lord’s teachings as life-giving guidance and turns to God in joy and exuberance in communion. When you see God’s counsel as if it were trusted advice from your best friend, you know you’re in a good place. You’ve drawn near to the Lord not as a wish-fulfiller or a militant box-checker, but as a sister or a faithful companion. 

Dear Lord,

Thank you for your Word. Thank you that you have given us so much of yourself in it. You are a God that doesn’t need to be guessed at or convinced to reveal yourself. We can turn to you at any time and you meet us. We can cast our worries on you and you are good and diligent to hold them all.

Last month, I was in Arizona for my sister’s wedding. She owns two horses, Paint and Splash. Being the maid of honor, I traveled a few days ahead of the rest of my family,  and got to spend a lot of time with her before her big day.

While I was there, she taught me how to ride a horse; something I haven’t done since I was a pre-teen on a youth group trip. Needless to say, I was as beginner as it gets! I was surprised at how much there was to learn– it’s not just getting up into a saddle and saying, “Giddy up!” Turns out, there is a specific way of sitting in the saddle, holding the reins, and positioning your feet in the stirrups. Then, add in all the commands the horse understands.