Hello, Goodbye, Hello!

It's finally happened - Inherit the Sun is moving to a new home! Please find all future writing on my shiny new WordPress site.

I'd been considering the switch to a new blog platform for a long time (years, actually!) but kept holding off for one reason or another. Inspiration struck last night and behold, a new blog is born! (Well, actually the same blog, with some extensive cosmetic changes.) I'm loving the crisp new layout, but I do wish there was a way to not have my "author photo" pop up all over the page when you click directly on a specific post. Oh well, maybe I'll take a foray into the guts of the website and manage to figure out how to make some changes without causing the site to explode... What? Anything's possible, right? :)

From now on, all blogging will happen over at inheritthesunblog.wordpress.com, but I haven't yet decided whether to migrate all my old posts or just keep them here. If any of you have opinions or advice about that, I'm all ears!

Thank you for reading (especially those of you who have been here for the long haul!), and I hope you'll continue to find my thoughts just as ridiculous, relatable, and enjoyable as ever. ♥

All my love and best wishes for an excellent September,
K xoxoxo

As Summer Slips Away

As summer slips away, the days stay bright, but bittersweet with the knowledge that often accompanies goodbyes. An ending is about to take place, just on the doorstep, drawing ever nearer with each passing day, but with it also the possibility of renewal and change. So turn the seasons, so turn we all in the rhythms and undulations of life.

Like enjoying a magnificent symphony, I have appreciated the beauty and complexity of these past few months - the contrasts of industry and rest, the mad frantic chaos of social gatherings and the calm healing silence of solitary afternoons, the cool comfort of home and the warm embrace of the sun. Perhaps all of life is a study in contrasts and we simply strive to find balance in them all, alternating between extremes as notes on a scale and seeking the harmony that is often elusive but so incredibly satisfying when we get it *just* right.

      



















This summer in particular has felt like a gift, for which I am utterly grateful. There's always a temptation, isn't there, to want to slow down the best moments of our lives? To prolong the harmony, to just sustain it just a little longer and then just a little more, basking in beauty and unwilling to let go? But this is not how time works, and we all know it. And rather than chafing against its inexorable progression, I am trying to do two things in these moments: to give thanks for all these evidences of grace, and to recognize, in their passing, that they are opportunities to look ahead to a time of unending harmony and beauty that will never fade.

In the meantime, may I savour this season's final, fleeting days. For every ending is a new beginning and in the right light, bittersweet is beautiful, too.

P.S. I know I'm verging into I might be tiptoeing close to purple prose territory here, but I felt rather poetic tonight and didn't want to do another "boring" summer update. So you're stuck with my rusty attempt at creative writing, instead! ;)

Book Review: The Hiding Place

The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It's probably been almost 20 years since I first read this gem, and it remains one of the most powerful accounts of transformative, gospel-centred love I have ever encountered. Corrie's life is a testament to how the light of Christ really can and does penetrate even the deepest darkness. The wisdom found here has been formative in my own life and walk with God. One of my "desert island" books, so I give this beautiful memoir my highest recommendation. 5 shining stars!

View all my reviews

Favourite Quotes:

“We commented to Corrie about the practicalness of the things she recalled, how her memories seemed to throw a spotlight on problems and decisions we faced here and now. 'But,' she said, 'this is what the past is for! Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for a future that only He can see.'”  -p.12 (Preface)


"And so seated next to my father in the train compartment, I suddenly asked, 'Father, what is sexsin?'  He turned to look at me, as he always did when answering a question, but to my surprise he said nothing. At last he stood up, lifted his traveling case from the rack over our heads, and set it on the floor.  'Will you carry it off the train, Corrie?' he said.  I stood up and tugged at it. It was crammed with the watches and spare parts he had purchased that morning.  'It's too heavy,' I said.  'Yes,' he said. 'And it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load. It's the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger, you can bear it. For now you must trust me to carry it for you.'  And I was satisfied. More than satisfied -- wonderfully at peace. There were answers to this and all my hard questions -- for now I was content to leave them in my father's keeping." -p.42

“Whenever we cannot love in the old, human way, Corrie, God can give us the perfect way.” -p.60

“Mama's love had always been the kind that acted itself out with soup pot and sewing basket. But now that these things were taken away, the love seemed as whole as before. She sat in her chair at the window and loved us. She loved the people she saw in the street-- and beyond: her love took in the city, the land of Holland, the world. And so I learned that love is larger than the walls which shut it in. ” -p.64

“There are no 'if's' in God's world. And no places that are safer than other places. The center of His will is our only safety - Oh Corrie, let us pray that we may always know it!” -p.84

“My job was simply to follow His leading one step at a time, holding every decision up to Him in prayer.” -p.99

“And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.” -p.248

Book Review: 13 Hours

It turns out you can't access full reviews on Goodreads unless you make an account, so as of today I'll be sharing mine here as well! One of my goals this month was to read a new book from the library (yay, Overdrive!) and this was the one I chose. I've been on a bit of an autobiography/biography/memoir kick lately, so this fits neatly into that category as well.

13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi by Mitchell Zuckoff
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The story is compelling and the main characters (who are actual people, so "characters" might not be the best designation...) are real-life heroes who are at once easy to relate to and elite combat experts. This *should* make for a gripping, edge-of-your-seat, can't put down-able read, but I did not find the story-TELLING here to be particularly captivating. During the first few chapters I chalked this up to the necessity of quickly introducing a sizable quantity of history, key people, and geopolitical facts to set the scene, which is a legitimate writing challenge. I expected the pace to pick up and the intensity to heighten as I kept reading, though, and in this way the book definitely fell short of my expectations. I applaud the authors for wanting to keep this account completely factual, non-embellished, and as accurate as humanly possible (an expressly stated goal with which they bookend the account), but unfortunately that ended up making this read more like a textbook than a modern tale of heroism and bravery in the face of overwhelming odds. My first thought after finishing this title was, "I'm pretty sure the movie was better." (Although I'm equally sure the movie would be way too violent and intense for me to watch.) 2.5 stars.

View all my reviews

On Beauty

It probably makes no sense to use hashtags in a blog (captions for my previous photo update notwithstanding), but for this week's #tbt I thought it would be fitting to share a piece I wrote for a student blog about a year and a half ago. This post still has a lot of personal resonance for me as I have continued to reflect on and sometimes wrestle with considerations of beauty and body image and what it means to be a Fat Person living in a skinny-obsessed society (but that's really a post for another day). 

I remember feeling a sense of release when I first committed these thoughts to paper, but there have admittedly been many times since then when I have not felt that same freedom from a worldly preoccupation with my physical appearance and the (self) criticism of "not ____ enough." While I still have work to do here, I hope the following words are an encouragement to you! And if you'd like to read something written by someone much wiser than I am, I recommend this great article.

Much love to you all,

K xx

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Beauty

There are a lot of competing messages out there about beauty. Pass by any magazine rack at a checkout counter and they will be there, splashed across the glossy pages in all their designed-to-make-you-feel-inadequate, unrealistically-air-brushed glory. The media has no shortage of opportunities to remind us that if you're not young and sexy with flawless skin, voluminous lashes, and whatever bust-waist-hip ratio is currently considered desirable, life is barely worth living. Haven't we all internalized at least some aspects of this worldview? The Bible teaches us that “beauty is fleeting” (Prov. 31:30), but that doesn’t stop us from vainly struggling against that inevitability with special anti-aging serums, face creams, hair dye, and, in more extreme cases, elective plastic surgeries.

Doesn’t the world’s obsession with outer beauty feed our inner “comparison dragon” so that we get caught up from time to time (or maybe all the time?) in comparing ourselves to other women, usually those with a particular attribute we dislike in ourselves and covet in someone else? I can’t speak for you, but I know that is certainly true for me. Of course this blatantly flies in the face of godly wisdom which instructs us a) not to covet (Exodus 20:17), and b) that our beauty should come from our “inner sel[ves], the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit" (1 Peter 3:3-4). But I guess Vogue and MTV didn't get the memo on that and I must have missed that lesson in Sunday School...

On the other hand, in the #bodypositive/we are all beautiful/anti-airbrushing camp, a different segment of society preaches that we deserve to feel beautiful and that we should focus on loving ourselves. On the surface such messages about loving your body no matter whether or not it conforms to society’s current (fickle) standards of beauty sounds like a much-needed antidote. However, to be blunt, this message is simply not true either. The Bible has a lot to say about what we all deserve and, sorry ladies, it's not to feel and be treated like goddesses. Check out Romans 1:18-32, Romans 2:5-11, Ephesians2:3, and Matthew 13:40-42 if you don't believe me. And there's a word for what happens when you make self-love your highest aim; it starts (appropriately enough) with "I" and ends with "dolatry."

By the way, in case any of this makes it sounds like I have all this body image/self-esteem stuff worked out and don't have any insecurities of my own, let me just say this: I am a fat woman living at a time when the "obesity epidemic" is currently considered the scourge of North America. I have plenty of baggage when it comes to body image. Girl, you don't have to tell me that times are tough! But I am here to tell you that it doesn't have to be these two extremes.

We don't have to choose between self-love and self-loathing. Christ has provided us with a better way, a narrow path, and it leads directly to Himself. We need to get our eyes off the scale and fix our eyes on the One who died for us. If we are covered in His blood it has removed our weight of sin, which is the only weight that really matters. We have to stop staring at ourselves in the mirror and cataloguing our so-called flaws and spend more time fixing or eyes on the Lord, the Creator of heaven and earth.

Psalm 139 tells us that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful, did you hear that? The way God designed you is wonderful. Don't you go denigrating His creation by despising your body! Then, as if to reinforce this point, David repeats himself and immediately says, "your [God’s] works are wonderful, I know that full well." Like, "in case you missed it the first time, ladies, I want to be clear that the proper description for the way God made you is WONDERFUL, not 'needs airbrushing' or ‘could stand to lose a few pounds’."

Do you want to know why you really are beautiful? It's because you were personally designed (or "knit together") by a beautiful God, and He made you in His image.

That's it, right there. It's actually not about you at all, it's about the One who created you, who ordered your DNA, who made you wonderfully unique in order to image and reflect Himself. And not only that - it gets better! When that beautiful image was marred by the ugliness of sin, as it is for all of us since Adam's rebellion, God still regarded you as so precious that He sent His own Son to die for you so that you could be made beautiful again by the righteousness of Christ (Romans 5:6-11, Ephesians 1:4-8).

So the next time you catch a glimpse of yourself or are struggling with feeling less than beautiful, I hope you can remember what really makes you beautiful. The world's definition of beauty is ever-changing, but God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and His fingerprints are all over your beautiful self if you only have the eyes to see them. Less of us, more of Him. Less of me, oh Lord, and more of You. That’s where true beauty lies. ∎

Going Public

It's time to take the plunge.

After over four years of blogging with my "secret" audience on my password-protected "private" blog (although how private is anything you put on the Internet, really?), it's high time to just get over it and dive in. Since I strive for transparency and honesty in my daily life (in the real world), I figured it would be good if I could say the same about my life in the virtual world. Not that I had a fake persona or anything beforehand, but there's something appealing about just living out loud for all the world to see. And if I ever want to legitimately call myself a writer, new customs dictate that a blog is mandatory, preferably a blog that more than three people have the chance to read.

I mean, honestly. I’m not discussing any top-secret government conspiracies, posting scandalous photos, or putting my bank statements online. The only reason my identity would be worth stealing is because I belong to Jesus, and that can’t really be stolen, so I don’t think the security issue is a big concern. Plus, let's face it, the design options are infinitely better if your blog is public.

So, in a show of pomp and circumstance calmness and quiet words, I welcome you all to read along through the sunny and rainy days of my life. If you don’t know me, or don’t know me too well, or think you know me but are just curious, you should check out the “Who” page. If you know me well enough that you could have written this section yourself, perhaps you should check it out as well, just to make sure I didn’t leave out anything important.

P.S. For the handful of you who have been reading Inherit the Sun since the beginning, thank you! Should you feel in a nostalgic sort of mood and find yourself with time on your hands, you can still access all my previous posts at www.inheritthesunarchive.blogspot.com.