Link love for the third week of January

Things I'm liking, loving, reading, watching, or thinking

After a not nearly long enough winter break from school, I opened my syllabus yesterday for my first class of my final semester of grad school and almost choked.

Last night at the dinner table Nate commiserated by remembering how light his last semester of undergraduate was and later I chuckled to myself remembering my last semester of undergraduate.

Despite my school’s design for their incoming freshman (to take all the general education classes and get them out of the way), I realized there was no way I’d be able to hold the GPA I needed to keep my scholarship if I took the requisite science and math classes in my first semester. Instead, I took all the classes I knew I’d do well in first and saved my science and math classes until my very last semester, when a falling GPA mattered less. Which meant, you guessed it, I remembered not a stitch of the math and science I would need to graduate and my last semester was therefore my hardest.

I knew when I signed a two-book contract with Brazos in 2021 and shortly after received an acceptance letter from my graduate school, that the next few years would be some of the fullest for me, but now I am here, on the precipice of it. I’m staring down a long winter, spring, and summer of research, reading, writing, and praying my brain doesn’t implode by August. It’s all a gift, don’t get me wrong, but even gifts can feel like a lot sometimes. I’d be glad for your prayers.

Of course, instead of researching, reading, writing, and praying my brain doesn’t implode, I’m sharing this little roundup of links with you. Call it a diversion.

▲ I appreciated this long piece on the surprising and beautiful turn-around of Barnes and Noble from

The Honest Broker

. If you love books, you’ll love it too.

▲ Speaking of loving books.

▲ Every winter I dig this video out from the mess of the Internet and never regret it.

▲ And I will probably make the viewing of this a regular part of my days and life, too. A beautiful example of performance art and a beautiful picture of what it means to fall forward.

▲ I'm on my regular January break from Social Media, which I usually love, but since my Sabbatical, I love it even more. I deleted my Facebook over the winter holidays (no regrets, not one), and my friend

Tsh Oxenreider

has written about leaving Instagram. A few weeks back, these two pieces were circulating a bit too, and they are both true and pertinent. A Requiem for the Twitter I Once Knew (by Hannah Anderson, who I met through Twitter) and Instagram is Over. I’d be curious for your thoughts, if you have any. Share them in the comments below.

▲ Nate read me this poem earlier today with a cracking voice and I thought some of my readers might also want to read it. TW: baby loss, abortion.

▲ One of the most painful experiences of the past decade of my life happened because of hospitality gone wrong (it seemed). I haven’t and won’t share about it but it scarred me so deeply I don’t think I’ll ever be the same. This piece on risky hospitality was a good and hard read from Plough.

▲ I am reading a lot about trees these days and this recent post came to my attention. I loved it so and thought maybe you’d love it too.

Some other things I’m loving or liking:

Office Board for Smith Brothers Coal, John Frederick Peto.

Writing notes to friends. I tend to be a very out-of-sight-out-of-mind friend, but my oldest friend and I were discussing ways I can grow in this area and she suggested writing more cards. So I’m trying that on for size. Who doesn’t love mail?

Lamps. I’m really into them these days. Maybe because it’s January, but I’ve just never been an overhead light sort of person. I’ve been scouring thrift store corners and Etsy for lamps to tuck in all the corners of our home.

Again, maybe because it’s January, maybe because this is turning into one of the fullest years of my life, but I’m into writing things down and making checklists these days. My desk is full of little pieces of paper with checked boxes and it makes me feel so good. Feeling behind already? Try it. You can even put down things you’ve already done and check them off too. Doesn’t it feel good? Don’t you want to check off something else?

Lastly, and this one won’t surprise you, but I’m really into books these days, as in book-length handlings of various subjects. I’m over blurbs and captions and blog posts (like this!) and articles. The New York Times recently wrote about poetry being dead and, while I’d disagree, I do feel meh about all the Insta-poetry that’s proliferating the timelines these days. I don’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade—it seems to be what the people want!—but it’s just not good. It’s saying complex things not poetically as much as flamboyantly, as though by alliterating a line or putting a paragraph break in the middle of a sentence, it becomes a poem. Anyway, that’s just me being curmudgeonly, I know. But I’m just more and more drawn to what can be said without all the paragraph breaks and forced alliteration, you know, like in a book.

What are you loving these days? What have you read or seen or listened to that’s tickling your fancy or sticking to your brain or heart long after you walk away?

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Winter Landscape with Skaters and Bird Trap

Have you ordered my newest book? A Curious Faith: The Questions God Asks, We Ask, and Wish Someone Would Ask Us. Available now, wherever books are sold: Amazon | Baker Book House | Bookshop

Also available: Handle With Care: How Jesus Redeems the Power of Touch in Life and Ministry

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