A few years ago, I heard an author talk about seasons of fasting and feasting in our lives. In some seasons, we feast—gorging ourselves on food or social media or entertainment. We sit at the table and consume the good and bad and everything in between. But when the pain of our overfilled bellies becomes too much, we fast.

We eliminate and cut out. We hold back. 

And I think this is true. I’ve seen it in my own life and in those around me. We feast, and we fast. January—for me—has been about forcing the pendulum to swing from feasting to fasting.

Because I can’t hold anymore.
The good things are pushing out the right things.
The bad things are rotting my entire being.
I’ve been feasting too long.

It's Time to Realign

Many people reflect and reset, set goals and mark change at the new year. For me, January looks like realigning—intentionally saying no to good things because they’re not the right things.

And I don’t think I’m the only one who needs this realignment.

Noise dominates our lives, and we’re exhausted from it. Work and running to-do lists and big decisions hang in the air. Social media, the news, Netflix, become background noise because the silence feels too heavy. In the quiet, the weight of this world and the problems we face scream.

Excess spills out of our days—food and entertainment and distractions. We feast on social media or the news or TikTok or carbs or comfort food. Our bodies forget how to breathe deeply because our chests are weighted down by excess.

Anger, defensiveness, paranoia, or skepticism mark our interactions. Even as someone who is optimistic, I have found myself quicker to frustration, quicker to defensiveness, quicker to anger. Alone, these things aren’t bad, right? Even Jesus got angry. Whip in hand, He cleared the temple of thieves and corruption. Today, it seems more people are feasting on anger, resentment, dehumanization, and cynicism, and the Church is not exempt from it. Maybe we’ve forgotten the words in James 1:19-21.

Understand this, dear brothers and sisters. You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires. So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives, and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls.

We can’t keep feasting. We can’t keep gorging my body on noise and distraction and anger and excess. There is another way, and it saves souls.

What Realigning Means

Now let me be clear. Realigning doesn’t mean ignoring the very real challenges we face. It doesn’t diminish the urgency we carry to right what has been wronged. The Lord calls and equips us to be reconcilers, and entering a season of fasting doesn’t mean that we abandon this charge. It doesn’t mean turning a blind eye to injustice. 

Realignment—for me—looks like pivoting. It means recognizing where idols have taken over. And it looks like “looking away from the natural realm and fastening my gaze onto Jesus who birthed faith within us and who leads us forward into faith’s perfection.” (Hebrews 12:2 TPT)

Can I be honest? Realigning looks a lot like trying and failing and trying again. I’m nowhere near perfect. I struggle and mess up every day. And it’s in those moments that Jesus’ grace completely overwhelms me. Each morning He has reminded me of that His mercy, grace, and love are new.

So friend, how do you need to realign yourself? What has captivated your heart’s affection for too long? What do you need to fast from? Where do you need more silence? Where do you need more of Jesus?

We all go through seasons of feasting. It’s part of being human, and sometimes these feasts are true gifts. But I believe the Father wants to call us into a season of fasting and realigning. Because until we lock eyes with Jesus, we will feast yet starve our soul of what its true needs. 

So may we be honest with ourselves. May we recognize the areas of feasting that we need to fast from.

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. Let us realign.

The post Why You Need to realign appeared first on Kate Berkey.

After being in Little India for five months, here’s what I’m learning—my spice tolerance will never match my friends who lived in Southeast Asia, most parties are big and loud and colorful and all the things I am not, family is everything, and many of my neighbors carry sacred hard stories.

A few days ago I sat in a family’s home, helping the oldest daughter fill out a college application. In the middle of talking about her classes and gpa, her dream of becoming a pediatrician, and the struggle of online classes, I overheard another conversation happening in the room. In bits and pieces, I heard, “No birth certificate.” 

And then Bob told me the story. The girl I sat next to—born in 2004—doesn’t have a birth certificate because she was born at home. At the time, her family lived in Malaysia—a host country for refugees who are awaiting placement in a resettlement country. Host countries should protect the already vulnerable refugees—providing safety, security, shelter. But many host countries oppress rather than protect, criminalize rather than help. 

Not long before my friend was born, her aunt gave birth to a baby in a Malaysian hospital. Almost immediately, the baby was kidnapped, her aunt was arrested, and the family was forced to pay thousands of dollars in bribe money to free her aunt. They had to hire a woman to care for the newborn baby while her mother—the aunt—was tortured in prison for even crying for her baby. With the aunt's experience still fresh in her mind, my friend’s mom gave birth to her at home, and because of that, she doesn’t have a birth certificate.

A Community of Hard Stories

These kinds of stories litter the streets of my neighborhood. Our families walk around in them, feeling the weight of each memory on their shoulders. A family who received a death notice from ISIS. Another whose neighbor murdered her sister. Still others who had to flee for one reason or another. Most of our friends have survived terror and violence I’ve only read about on the news.

As I listened to the story of my new friend, I could see her aunt, cowering under the blows of the prison guards, police officers, and soldiers—those who should have been protecting her. I could feel a tiny slice of the anguish she felt as she stifled her tears at night to keep from being punched and kicked and hit. I saw her face—dirty and bruised. I saw her eyes—filled with tears, longing to cradle the baby she had carried for nine months. 

But sitting in my friends home, I looked across the street, and I saw this same aunt’s house in Chicago. I remembered the engagement party I went to for her other daughter. I remembered the warmth and care she and her family have cultivated in their home. And I remembered that although she and her family carry stories of pain and hardship and unimaginable oppression, they are much more than the painful stories they bear. 

Sacred Hard Stories Carry Hope

Sipping Thai tea on this cold Monday afternoon, Bob asked our hopeful college friend, “If you had one dream, one thing you do without any obstacle getting in your way, what would you do?” 

She paused, looking at the ceiling, thinking hard. “I don’t know if this answers your question. I wrote this the other day, and I can’t stop thinking about it,” She paused again, and then said, “I want to lend a hand to those whose hands are tied.” 

Friend, her words wrecked me. Because those are the words of a world changer, a culture shaker. Those are sacred words spoken in the most ordinary of circumstances. 

Sipping Thai tea.
Writing a college essay. 

"I want to lend a hand to those whose hands are tied."

Like her aunt.
Like her cousin. 
Like her mom. 
Like the thousands of Rohingya around the world.
Like oppressed and persecuted people all around us. 

There is something so beautiful in all of this that I’m only beginning to understand, because her desire to lend a hand, to free the oppressed, to offer love and support and justice, to be a voice for the voiceless is something I’ve heard a million times. It’s the kind of thing I’ve said before. But in that moment it felt like we we standing on holy ground. Even now, I write her words with honor and love because the ground still feels sacred.

“I want to lend a hand to those whose hands are tied.”

Yes and amen. 
So do I. 
Let it be. 

Carrying our own Sacred Stories

Friend, we all carry stories. We carry struggles and hardships and obstacles. Some of us feel the weight of oppression and racism and a kind of evil that is difficult to put into words. But we are more than our worst stories. We are more than our worst days. We are more than our most challenge circumstance. And maybe, just maybe, the Father longs to take those things that feel heaviest and turn them into sacred, beautiful, divine gifts—like lending a hand to those whose hands are tied. 

My sweet friend is going to do incredibly well in life. I have no doubt. She might struggle in college. She might not become a pediatrician. But she will be an incredible woman. She already is, because she sees the sacred in her story. She sees hope. 

May we do the same. 

The post Seeing the Sacred in our Hard Stories appeared first on Kate Berkey.

So many eraser shavings. 

These pencils and sharpeners and erasers have called me back to another lifetime—one where I did long division and found common denominators before adding or subtracting fractions. I’ve written more math equations on looseleaf paper in the last two months than I have since I was in middle school. And I’m remembering why I stopped enjoying math after fifth grade. 

A Place of Resiliency

All of this happens at Homework Center four days a week. As many kids as we can fit in the Center crowd around tables with their Chromebooks and notebooks, scribbling math problems, painstakingly writing the letters of the alphabet, asking how to spell word after word. This is my world for about two hours nearly every day of the week. 

Kids come into the center with their backpacks and brothers in tow. “I have three homeworks,” they tell us.

Three homeworks. It’s become my new favorite way to talk about assignments. None of us bother to correct the kids. They have three homeworks, so we will help them with all three homeworks. 

After six hours of online school, kids login to their computers again for their homeworks. If you want a case study in resiliency, study the kids and teachers and school administration who are doing online classes day after day after day. You’ll see creativity and problem solving and tired eyes. But you’ll also see kids who are trying to understand. You’ll see the ones who come to homework center as many days as they can because they want to do well. You’ll see the ones with their tongues out, concentrating on writing their ABCs because no kindergartner asked to do school like this. 

People of Resiliency

A few weeks ago, I sat with a group of girls, each doing different assignments. Some of the assignments went quickly. Others took awhile. And as I sat with one girl in particular, I was blown away by her determination. After being in America for about six months, she and her siblings started school in Chicago—online. Now she is working incredibly hard in fifth grade—working to improve her English comprehension while her teachers talk about more complicated subjects like fractions and the solar system. 

In an hour and half, she and I had filled up page after page of fraction problems. Adding, subtracting, finding the common denominator. 

“What’s 7 times 1?” I asked. 
I watched her squint at the ceiling, her brain forming words she could wrap her mind around. “7 times 1,” she repeated. 
A pause.
“7!” She said, hitting her forehead. 

For an hour and half this fifth grader worked on problem after problem. We both let out a sigh of relief when the fractions already had a common denominator, and we high-fived when she completely crushed particularly challenging problems. With every push of the “return” key, a new problem appeared, and she blinked a little longer. She counted on her fingers and on the imaginary board she must have seen in her mind. 

Choosing Resiliency

I want to choose to rise to the occasion with every new problem.
Persist without exception. 
Stay in the struggle until it’s over. 
Live like giving up isn’t an option. 
I want to sharpen my #2 pencil one more time and fill up one more piece of paper, because that’s what resilient people do. 

Of course, not every day is like this. Some days kids just want the answers, because these kids are human. And some days they have five million homeworks. And some days, I pull out my calculator because long division is hard. 

But more times than not, these kids teach me more about beautiful resiliency. Their resiliency might even be more beautiful than the grade on their report card, because at the end of homework center that day, this girl hadn’t just finished a homeworks. 

She persisted. 
She succeeded. 
She developed a little more endurance and grit. 
And I like to think she learned how to add and subtract fractions a little better. 

Friend, may we be people who persist. Tongues poking out slightly, may we engage in the struggle a little more until the very end. 

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