Ep. 15 – An Alternative to New Year’s Resolutions
This is the story about promises buried like Spring.
We recorded this episode on the 3rd floor of Maplehurst surrounded by the wrapping paper dregs of Christmas. And neither of us was ready to rush into the New Year just yet.
For all of us who feel like we’re back at a starting line when we only just crossed the finish of the old year here is an alternative to setting New Year’s resolutions.
Join Christie and Lisa-Jo as they spend some time remembering the ancient promises already waiting for us in the New Year. Let go the pressure to have to chart your own course perfectly. Here’s permission to believe that spring will come just as surely as those bulbs are buried in the dirt and uncertainty right now.
Out of the Ordinary
The podcast for anyone who’s ever felt the nagging frustration of wondering if her life is too small, too boring or too ordinary to make a difference. Lisa-Jo Baker and Christie Purifoy, longtime friends and bestselling authors, explore the surprising ways that cultivating ordinary life leads to extraordinary stories.
Visit our official podcast page!
Christie Purifoy
Co-Host
A writer and gardener, her favorite ordinary things include strawberry jam, homegrown flowers, and old books with someone else’s notes in them.
Find Christie’s books here.
Lisa-Jo Baker
Co-Host
A reader and writer, her favorite ordinary things include hot tea with milk and sugar, a good movie, her mom’s hand-me-down books and Sunday afternoon naps.
Find Lisa-Jo’s books here.
RECENT PODCASTS
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Ep. 14 – Does God Still Give Good Gifts at Christmastime?
This is the story of a Christmas baby.
This season is all about gifts. We give gifts to one another, and we remember the very good gift of God’s son, given to a weary world on the first Christmas Day.
But is God still in the business of giving good gifts?
Lisa-Jo tells the story of her own Christmas baby. It’s a story of how shame and sorrow gave way to peace and joy. It’s a story of good gifts freely given, no strings attached.
If you feel discouraged, if God’s goodness feels a little hard to grasp, we hope you’ll listen and be reminded that something as small and ordinary as a baby can change everything.
Out of the Ordinary
The podcast for anyone who’s ever felt the nagging frustration of wondering if her life is too small, too boring or too ordinary to make a difference. Lisa-Jo Baker and Christie Purifoy, longtime friends and bestselling authors, explore the surprising ways that cultivating ordinary life leads to extraordinary stories.
Visit our official podcast page!
Christie Purifoy
Co-Host
A writer and gardener, her favorite ordinary things include strawberry jam, homegrown flowers, and old books with someone else’s notes in them.
Find Christie’s books here.
Lisa-Jo Baker
Co-Host
A reader and writer, her favorite ordinary things include hot tea with milk and sugar, a good movie, her mom’s hand-me-down books and Sunday afternoon naps.
Find Lisa-Jo’s books here.
RECENT PODCASTS
#outoftheordinarypodcast is on Instagram!
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An Inconvenient Hope
Christmas is many things, but convenient isn’t one of them.
Especially if you are the one who bakes the traditional cookies, the it-wouldn’t-be-Christmas-without-them-mom! cookies, while running the bedding for the guest room through the laundry, while keeping an eye on a child’s letter writing to Santa, while affixing a gift tag to the wrapped book another child will take to the fourth-grade holiday party, the same holiday party for which you remembered to buy the book but have only just now realized you forgot to buy the apple cider.
“But, Mom, I don’t want to bring apple cider. I want to bring Shirley Temples! Can you buy the stuff for Shirley Temples? And can you come to my party and make them?”
Oh, Christmas.
A feast is a beautiful thing, but a feast is no convenient thing.
*
It is a regular thing, however.
Every twelve months here it is again, reminding us of things we might otherwise forget:
Children like peppermint candy canes and gingerbread cookie men more in theory than practice.
The Christmas story is as concerned with what happened, one day, long ago, as it is with what will happen, one day. Perhaps soon?
Christ has died.
Christ has risen.
Christ will come again.
*
Childhood is brief, time is swift, and it will always feel like we are putting up the twinkle lights five minutes after we last took them down. Despite how we sometimes feel on a lazy summer afternoon, we are not drifting in a sea of endless time.
We are waiting. Eyes wide open. We are hoping. Hearts cracked open.
We are waiting and we are hoping for the return of our king.
And hope like that is no convenient thing.
Hope like that is an earthquake.
… the hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here.
Romans 13: 11, 12