The other day, I came across an interview with Ye (Kanye West) where he talks about everything from the music industry to faith. (It's a fascinating listen, although please be mindful the language is terrible, and I obviously am not condoning his views.)

Ye said, “I have my issues with Jesus. There's a lot of stuff I went through that I prayed and I ain't see Jesus show up. So I had to put my experience…in my own hands.”

We could jump to criticize Ye–but maybe he's voiced something so many of us have felt at one time or another. Maybe you're feeling it now.

I am a very goal-oriented person. I love making lists of things I want to do, day-dreaming about how I’ll be different 12 months from now, jotting down a vision for where I want to be in five years. Add to that a new planner (like this one that I can’t live without) with crisp, clean pages and a pack of high quality pens, and I am one happy girl. 

The only problem comes about a month later when I realize how unrealistic my goals were. The kids woke up extra early, so I didn’t write every morning like I’d hoped. A family crisis came up, so I ordered takeout instead of cooking my way through that one cookbook like I’d intended. My body decided to shut down and get sick, so I missed those workouts I’d planned to do.

Real life so often seems to get in the way of living my best life.

The needles on my Christmas tree are falling rapidly now. If someone runs too closely to it, a handful will come off. If you bump it, hundreds pour down. I’m dreading the vacuuming job required after we carry it out the door. I doubt there will be many needles left on the branches...just a bare trunk to be tossed to the curb.

In a recent newsletter, author, writing teacher, and podcaster Jonathan Rogers talked about the inefficiency of hospitality. He went on to discuss more about how to be hospitable to our own creative ideas, a practice I’m woefully bad at. (Read his newsletter here for more on that.) But his words about the broader topic of hospitality have really stuck with me.

I walked into Costco earlier this week, and my eyes bugged out of my head when I saw Christmas trees on display. Their twinkling lights led the way toward aisles filled with toys and reindeer lawn ornaments and holiday gift wrap.

Every year, retailers do this. And every year, it catches me off guard.

Years ago, after my husband and I had come out of a chaotic season and were finally enjoying a little more calm, I asked my counselor, “Why do I still feel so tired?” Our kids were sleeping through the night. I was able to exercise somewhat regularly. I finally got back into my cooking routine (for the most part, anyway). We were no longer functioning in survival mode.

But I was still completely exhausted.

“It’s like you just ran a marathon. At the end of a marathon, you’re still tired,” my counselor told me.

Duh. I should have known this. But sometimes you need to pay a therapist to remind you of the obvious.

She was talking about the writing life, but I think Anne Lamott’s words in Bird by Bird are true for all of life. She wrote, “You can’t fill up when you’re holding your breath.”

Are you holding your breath right now? I mean proverbially, yes, but even physically? 

So many of us are holding our breath, afraid of letting go because we’re not sure we can handle the tears or anger or overwhelm attempting to pour out from our bodies. We hold our breath because we’re bracing for what’s next, waiting for the other shoe to drop. We hold our breath because, ironically, sometimes keeping it all inside feels like the only way to make it through another day.

My phone alarm chimes loudly on the nightstand next to me, and I fumble in the darkness to turn it off. I sit up in bed, rubbing my eyes and then glance at the time. I only have about 20 minutes before the kids wake up. They’ll plod down the steps like zombies, still half asleep but awake enough to remind me they need breakfast. Twenty minutes, I coach myself. Twenty minutes to get something done. I do my own zombie-esque walk to the kitchen, pour my mug of coffee, and curse the fact that I’ve been trying to cut back on caffeine. This cup of half caffeinated coffee isn’t going to cut it today.

Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents. To be honest, before a few months ago, I’d never even heard of this particular feast day, but it’s one I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this Christmas season. 

The Feast of the Holy Innocents is a day to remember those–the young children, the babies–murdered by Herod the Great when he was trying to search out and kill baby Jesus.

I’ve always had a hard time with this story. Why did it have to shake out like this? Why did the coming of Jesus, our comfort and joy, our hope and light, have to involve such horrific darkness? Why couldn’t God have protected those children?

I was telling a couple friends yesterday that I am actually looking forward to my kids being home from school over winter break. I’m not sure I’ve ever said that before.

I read recently about how thousands of cattle in Kansas died due to heat stress. They didn’t die from one day of hot temperatures, necessarily. But the persistent extreme heat and humidity that hit many parts of the country–particularly this one region in Kansas–wreaked havoc on herds.

Cattle can usually adapt to the summer heat. Studies show they’re resilient animals, but as one article told me, when there are multiple stressors involved, the animal struggles to cope. Not only that, but cattle need the lower nighttime temperatures to bring their internal temperature down. When nighttime temps are too high, they don’t release enough of their internal heat, and it continues to build and build and build, causing major problems when that cycle persists. Eventually, they can’t carry the cumulative heat load built up in their bodies. “Right now, if we don’t have night-time cooling hours, the animal won’t be starting each day at thermo-neutral, so they’re more at risk on the second or third day,” one veterinarian said.

Okay, let’s acknowledge the elephant (cow?) in the room. Yes, I’m about to compare us to cattle. My metaphor obviously breaks down pretty quickly, but bear with me…

A few weeks ago, my husband and I went to see a play based on C.S. Lewis's (very trippy and often confusing but still profound) book, The Great Divorce. The script and the acting brought truths to light in a way I can easily miss while reading the book.

At one point, I had to pull out my phone to type out this line so I could hold onto it and ruminate over it a little longer:

“Either joy prevails or misery infects it.”

I've been turning that phrase over in my mind for the last week, and I looked up the full quote in Lewis's book. Here, the narrator's guide is leading the narrator around the outskirts of a sort of celestial space and explaining the meaning of what they're seeing. The guide says:

“Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves.”

There's so much to dig into there, and so much in the context of the book that's worth reading. But here's the simple truth I want us to hold onto: Joy will prevail.