I wake up in the sixes but it feels like the fives, this spring change still taking its toll. I think about Tokyo, entering into their evening. We fly through there in two short months. And a city that didn’t exist for me becomes matter and molecules and weather and people and real. Real.

I pray for the people there and feel ridiculous. I think about my day to come, my middle of the week writing day, and ask for the Lord to equip me to write this second book, equip me to parent these children, equip me as I prepare to speak to a group of women next weekend about grace and good girls and living in this moment. Equip me, Lord. And he gently says I already have. I cry a little.

I think of my sister-in-law who had her heart broken eleven years ago and who, in three short days, will marry the most beautiful, loving man. Their story is one of redemption. I think of how the ugly and the terrible turns into light and beauty. Hope refuses to drown even under the heaviest kind of broken.

He writes stories, and he works his moment miracles into them. Sometimes he lets us see them, and we marvel and we believe. But what about when he keeps his miracles a secret? When he works them small and quiet? What will we believe then?