April 2025

companion plants. interviewing my husband. the first quarter in review with link love and a poem

From the Garden

Spring is a tease in the low deserts of Arizona. Some days you get the cool, breezy, sunny 70’s, like today, and other days you get the sweltering 90’s. Spring in the desert is just winter glitching out and summer taking over. Like those scenes in movies where aliens interrupt what’s currently on TV with some sinister message. Summer keeps breaking through with its threats of deadly heat. 

But I'm trying to stay in the moment and enjoy these moderate days of cool mornings and evenings and days full of sun. The plants are sure loving it too.

I’m learning the benefits of companion planting as I move into my 6th year of learning from the garden. Companion planting is where you grow a variety of plants close to each other in a way that helps each plant grow. Like basil next to tomatoes-- helps keep the pests away and makes for an easy access to bruschetta for lunch. I’ve also found that if I grow sunflowers near my spinach, tomatoes, beans, cantaloupe and other plants they provide a natural trellis and shade to help them live through the brutal desert heat. 

I guess two are better than one both in the garden and in human life. We’re better together.

Marriage Thoughts

My husband and I have been having more discussions lately about marriage and our differences of belief because of a writing project I’m working on. It’s kind of neat to “interview” my husband about things that would normally touch a tender spot in me. Putting on an interviewer hat helps me hear him objectively. 

This week he shared that for much of our early marriage he felt pressured by me to conform to a certain Christian lifestyle that he didn’t want to live. I asked him to share some examples with me, because I truly want to hear his perspective. He couldn’t think of any specifics just a general sense of feeling pressured. 

He also shared his thoughts about why some Christians, like me, find it hard, or a burden, when their spouse doesn’t share their beliefs. He said he thinks it’s because people go into the marriage with a plan rather than a purpose. I asked him to say more about that. He didn’t go far, but said he thinks Christians like me got married with a plan for how their spouse would be and when they didn’t turn out to be that way it became a great disappointment to them. I pointed out that I think he’s right in some ways, but I don’t think it’s just the Christian who has to deal with disillusionment about the person they thought they married. I think we all go into marriage with a plan, whether we know it or not, and our plans usually don’t play out the way we hoped. 

It was a good discussion. 

I’ve heard it said that you don’t marry just one person, you marry many, because the person you marry will change, and so will you. It’s true. 

Facing the reality of the marriage you actually have, currently, is good and healthy. It may not be the one you planned for, but it’s the one you have. Just as I must face the reality that I live in the desert. I have to plant certain things at certain times. And if I pair certain plants together, they are more likely than others to help each other grow. In marriage if you don’t accept that your spouse doesn’t see life the way you do, or doesn’t do things you wish they would do, or wouldn’t do, you can’t take the next steps in growing a healthy relationship.

Accepting doesn’t mean doing nothing about it. But it does mean facing reality. Each person has to do their part in learning to understand where the other person is at, to know how best to come alongside that person for their good and their growth. 

My husband thinks I care too much about the fact that he doesn’t worship Christ with me. He thinks I shouldn’t care at all. But he accepts that I do. He respects that this is important to me. When he crosses boundaries that are offensive to me because of my faith and I ask him to step back and consider my faith, he does. He steps back. He considers.

I think my husband is resistant to thoughtful consideration of the gospel. I wish he wasn’t. But I accept that he is planted in this life with me, next to me. We are companion plants. I see God’s wisdom at work even in our unlikely pairing.

A Bullet-List Review of January through April 2025

One discipline that helps me process life is the use of a daily bullet journal where I can reflect at the beginning and end of each day. It helps me not be stuck in my head and to remember the good, true and beautiful. It helps me to see God at work in life.

Anyway, one of the ideas I picked up from Emily P. Freeman awhile back was the habit of reflecting not just daily, but weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly. Not in a deep essay kind of way, but just a bullet list. I thought it might be good for this newsletter to include a quarterly review like that.  So here ya go:

What I Read/Am Reading

• On Audible

  • Strange Religion by Nijay Gupta: This book will give you perspective and make you want to be a Christian who’s seen as strange in this culture for the right reasons.

  • Cultural Christians in the Early Church by Nadya Williams: I haven’t finished this yet, but I’m taking lots of notes! Christians have always been influenced by their culture and therefore there have always been cultural Christians. This book is making me think about the way Christ leads each of us in our current cultural settings. 

  • What Are Christians For? By Jake Meador: Meador made me think about my purpose in the world, in this time and culture. He made me want to slow down and live a hidden life that makes a public difference. 

  • Crucial Conversations by by  Kerry Patterson  (Author), Joseph Grenny  (Author), Ron McMillan  (Author), Al Switzler  (Author): This book made me realize how much work I need to do on how I communicate. It made me want to be better at communicating with my husband and adult sons.

  • The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence: I have read the paperback before, but listening to it was balm to my soul.

Books I Finished Reading or Re-Read

• Learning to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect by John Inazu: This guy is an attorney and professor and his interactions with law and his students about difficult issues and his thoughts helped me gain perspective about relating with my husband with our differing points of view.

• The Impossible Marriage by Laurie Krieg and Matt Krieg: Same sex attraction, and porn-addiction didn’t stop this couple from seeking God and learning to love each other. So good.

• Jesus Changes Everything by Stanley Hauerwas: I underlined and highlighted three-quarters of this book. It challenged me. 

• Hammer is the Prayer by Christian Wiman- I re-read this book of poetry because it’s so, so good. It will quake something in you. It will make you want to pay closer attention to how the conversation with God is happening in your everyday life.

Books I’ve Started 

• Elizabeth Elliot: A Life by Lucy S. R. Austen- Lucy sent this book to me as a gift when she published it, and I have been slowly making my way through it. (I have a problem. I can’t read one book at at time!) It’s been such an eye-opening read for me. Elliot was one of the “heroes” of my faith. I empathize and hurt for her and rejoice at her life as I read this.

• Commentary on 1 Peter by Craig S. Keener- Maybe I need to go to seminary, but I devoured this commentary. So many original sources. So good!

• A Bit of Earth: A Year in the Garden With God by Andrea G. Burke- This book calls my name every night. I see it there sitting on the top of my pile of books by my bed and I read a little bit and pray and fall into sweet sleep. This book is poetic and a comfort.

Online Mags/Podcasts

• The Way Back To Ourselves Literary Journal- Poetry and a community of encouragement for creativity.

• The Habit- I listen to EVERY episode. If you’re a writer you are listening to the Habit.

• The Bulletin- I refuse to watch network news, but I learn what’s going on in the world some here and also hear thoughtful engagement from a Christian perspective.

• Good Faith with Curtis Chang and Friends- Every guest on this podcast leaves me encouraged and hopeful about living out my faith in these times.

• No Small Endeavor- If you don’t know about this podcast, go sign up now. We need more conversations like these with Lee C. Camp.

Print Magazines

• The Surprise Independent- I recently started reading the small paper printed in the city where I live. I want more of this. I would like to write more on a local level.

• Common Good- I just started subscribing to this printed magazine. These are thinkers I need to learn from.

• Plough- I also just recently just started receiving this printed magazine. I love the down-to-earth articles and poetry here. My faith meets earth in this mag.

• Christianity Today- I love what CT puts out. This magazine makes me consider how my faith and community interact in these times. 

Notable Events So Far This Year

• lost three of my female goats (does) to coyote attacks

• I drafted and submitted my first book proposal!!!

• Started a bi-weekly Bible study with friends

• Submitted three poems that were rejected and 3 that were accepted

• Went to my first writer’s conference- Hope Words (HIGHLY RECOMMEND)

• Hatched 9 chicks in our incubator (5 have survived the hawks :()

• Acquired a Mini-Nubian buck for breeding

Planted

• Hollyhocks

• Cilantro

• Sunflowers

• Calendula

• Cantaloupe

• Summer squash

• Cow peas

• Milk weed

• Armenian cucumbers

• Basil

Harvested

• Tomatoes

• Spinach

• Lettuce

• Arugula

• Nysturtium

• Snow peas

• Sugar peas

• Calendula

• Cilantro

Poems

I am so honored to have three poems in The Way Back To Ourselves Literary Journal-- Gardner God, Consider the Snow Pea, and Under Winter’s Wings. I believe Gardner God will also be included in their first printed journal. So thrilled! 

This journal is full of beauty and goodness. You should take time to read it. I am taking it in very slowly.

Here’s a poem I heard for the first time as Christian Wiman recited it at the Hope Words Conference I attended this month. I’m going to try to memorize it. 

The City Limits

By A.R. Ammons

When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold

itself but pours its abundance without selection into every

nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider

that birds' bones make no awful noise against the light but

lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider

the radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest

swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself upon them,

not flinching into disguise or darkening; when you consider

the abundance of such resource as illuminates the glow-blue

bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming the dumped

guts of a natural slaughter or the coil of shit and in no

way winces from its storms of generosity; when you consider

that air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen,

each is accepted into as much light as it will take, then

the heart moves roomier, the man stands and looks about, the

leaf does not increase itself above the grass, and the dark

work of the deepest cells is of a tune with May bushes

and fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise.