My 7-year-old still sings that it’s a “silent mid-night,” and perhaps she’s right. Perhaps it was in the stillest part of the night—the most unexpected hour—that the sky alit with blazing glory. The shepherds were certainly surprised. Their day had begun, routine and ordinary. The sun set softly, all the norm. Even as darkness came and the stars came out, all, all still felt the same. The same as yesterday. And the day before. And the day before.

Perhaps, as we enter the week of Christmas, you’re feeling a little like the shepherds too—like all the days blend into one another, like all the days are the same.

Listen in, or if you prefer to read, head on over to the blog.

More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

If you want to live on mission but don’t know where to start, check out my brand new devotional, Cultivating a Missional Life: A 30-Day Devotional to Gently Help You Open Your Heart, Home, and Life to Your Neighbors.

We inch ever nearer the gift of Christmas this week, count down Advent days on a calendar. Anticipation rises with the welcome of each new day. One more day—one day closer! Oh, that the joy of children would be reflected too in our hearts as we unwrap the greatest gift ever given: the hope of God here with us!

Emmanuel, we sing. O come, o come, Emmanuel. It’s a beckoning of expectant hearts for God to come near us. Because Emmanuel, I read, means “with-us God, or God with us.”

He is the “with-us God.” Here in even the smallest moments.

The ones that feel swallowed and unseen.

The ones in which we feel unseen.

Listen in, or if you prefer to read, head on over to the blog.

More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

If you want to live on mission but don’t know where to start, check out my brand new devotional, Cultivating a Missional Life: A 30-Day Devotional to Gently Help You Open Your Heart, Home, and Life to Your Neighbors.

“Hark,” that word we know from “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” it means to “to pay close attention to” or “listen.” It signifies action. The shepherds listened intently to the angels, then responded to glory revealed: “Let’s go! Let’s hurry,” they said, “and find this Word that is born in Bethlehem and see for ourselves what the Lord has revealed to us.” Then, the Scripture says, they ran.

Listen in, or if you prefer to read, head on over to the blog.

More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

If you want to live on mission but don’t know where to start, check out my brand new devotional, Cultivating a Missional Life: A 30-Day Devotional to Gently Help You Open Your Heart, Home, and Life to Your Neighbors.

The approach of Christmas was marked during my childhood by the smell of a snowmobile running warm in the cold of Minnesota winters. Every year my dad would ask who wanted to go with him to find a Christmas tree, and every year as the moment of pulling up the layers of wool socks and bundling up to the nose approached, one-by-one by siblings said no, and I again got to go. I would sit in front of my dad, my helmet bobbing against his chest as we shouted Christmas carols, and I savored the snow flying into my mouth. The search for the tree was as memorable as the lifting of newspaper to unwrap each ornament and place it on the tree.

But at Christmas we discover more than the perfect tree with snow to be brushed off before it’s taken in. We unwrap more than the ornaments, shiny and memory-laden. We unwrap Christ, discover Him over and again.

Listen in, or if you prefer to read, head on over to the blog.

More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

If you want to live on mission but don’t know where to start, check out my brand new devotional, Cultivating a Missional Life: A 30-Day Devotional to Gently Help You Open Your Heart, Home, and Life to Your Neighbors.

How do I conclude this journey of gratitude when the end is but the mere beginning? How do I put into words the difference it makes to hold as treasures the things given from God’s hand? This week we follow the ripple begun by practicing gratitude out even further to see how it touches our neighborhoods. Because gratitude, it doesn’t touch just one life, it touches many. Live gratitude and it will pull you deeper into God’s embrace. Live gratitude and it will open wider your heart to be a better parent, child, sibling, friend, colleague, and neighbor.

Listen in, or if you prefer to read, head on over to the blog.

More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

If you want to live on mission but don’t know where to start, check out my brand new devotional, Cultivating a Missional Life: A 30-Day Devotional to Gently Help You Open Your Heart, Home, and Life to Your Neighbors.

Link mentioned:

To receive the weekly story for Begin Within: A Gratitude Series in your email inbox, sign up here.

Gratitude gives me vision to see beyond the here and now—to see wonder in even the mundane, repetitious, and awaiting-completion. It helps me appreciate my various roles, lean into the ways they each grow me. It helps me to better listen and connect and engage—to live this one life of mine to the full.

Gratitude helps me welcome interruptions as gifts, see the good first in the people I love, and be present in today’s moments.

I have but this one life to live. And so do you.

Listen in, or if you prefer to read, head on over to the blog.

More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

If you want to live on mission but don’t know where to start, check out my brand new devotional, Cultivating a Missional Life: A 30-Day Devotional to Gently Help You Open Your Heart, Home, and Life to Your Neighbors.

As we focus this week on what is true of us because of what’s true of God, we find we must press ever deeper into who God is. All that’s true of us is true because of who God is and what He’s done for us. Our identity, our value, our mission—it’s all found in Him. He pursues us, calls us to Himself, and invites us to join Him in His mission to make disciples all across the earth—in every little, ordinary corner of the earth.

Listen in, or if you prefer to read, head on over to the blog.

More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

If you want to live on mission but don’t know where to start, check out my brand new devotional, Cultivating a Missional Life: A 30-Day Devotional to Gently Help You Open Your Heart, Home, and Life to Your Neighbors.

The past couple days and through the next week we are focusing on attributes of God because it’s hard to live with a heart open to our neighbors if it’s closed off to God. Gratitude intwines so surely with missional living because when we give God access to our heart and life, giving our neighbors access to know us and do life with us becomes a natural overflow.

In the middle of the still-messy of 2020, I need gratitude to speak to the heart of what’s the matter on the inside of me and gently align my thinking with what is true. I need gratitude to open my eyes so I can see God more clearly. I need a deepened awareness of who God is so I can more easily see who I am in light of who He is.

Perhaps you do as well.

Listen in, or if you prefer to read, head on over to the blog.

More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

If you want to live on mission but don’t know where to start, check out my brand new devotional, Cultivating a Missional Life: A 30-Day Devotional to Gently Help You Open Your Heart, Home, and Life to Your Neighbors.

Links Mentioned:

How to Join the Uncommon Normal Gratitude 2020 Challenge (last week’s blog post)

The #uncommonnormalgratitude2020 gratitude prompts

The #uncommonnormalgratitude2020 FB group

My quarantine playlist on YouTube

It’s been there all along, but long months of uncertainty and social issues weighing raw and heavy have made it more obvious: we are discontent. Scrabbling for peace but coming up empty. Ready for change but not always sure of the right, the true, and the best ways to pursue it. Our lives feel more than shaken, our country far from perfect, and our purpose in it all a bit fuzzy. As we near the end of 2020, many of us might be apt to join a gratitude challenge to wrap a bow round the less-than-pretty before the end of the year. But this year I invite you to something more: a gratitude challenge that speaks to the down-beneath things that keep us fulfilling our purpose in our homes and neighborhoods.

I’m calling it the #uncommonnormalgratitude2020 challenge.

How to get the most out of the challenge

• Save the below gratitude prompt graphic to your device (see links mentioned)
• Participate (on any social media platform) in the challenge either with a photo, written response, or both
• Use the hashtag #uncommonnormalgratitude2020 on all your posts
• Follow the #uncommonnormalgratitude2020 hashtag to see others’ posts
• Invite a few friends to join you in the challenge
• Read or listen to the accompanying blog/podcast posts

Listen in, or if you prefer to read, head on over to the blog.

More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

If you want to live on mission but don’t know where to start, check out my brand new devotional, Cultivating a Missional Life: A 30-Day Devotional to Gently Help You Open Your Heart, Home, and Life to Your Neighbors.

Links Mentioned:

#uncommonnormalgratitude2020 prompts

Join my email tribe

“Begin Within: A Gratitude Series”

Submission guidelines for “Begin Within”

Worship song medley to encourage you

A glance in the direction of our front door as I was pulling into the driveway gave me pause. The teal-tinted burlap I’d just months previous pushed, pulled, and re-adjusted a few too many times was looking a bit yellow. Later that day, I took a closer look. Sure enough, the sun, which had begun to disintegrate the previous, natural burlap, was already fading the tinted burlap. And here, buried in the layers of burlap was a lesson for the finding: to create room for what will be, what is needs to be pulled away. To move forward afresh and renewed, we must let the layers unravel. To be redone we must first be undone.

Listen in, or if you prefer to read, head on over to the blog.

More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

If you want to live on mission but don’t know where to start, check out my brand new devotional, Cultivating a Missional Life: A 30-Day Devotional to Gently Help You Open Your Heart, Home, and Life to Your Neighbors.