Okay, friends. I just want to take a quick time-out to acknowledge this apparent obsession I have with bathroom topics and references. For that, I’m sorry. As I ponder the inappropriately proportioned number of poop mentions I insist upon including, I realize that for far too long in my household, the only people I’ve had to talk to who can respond in language I understand are a teenage boy and his father—the latter of whom has informed me that, no, men never grow out of bathroom humor no matter how mature/successful/godly/influential they become. Yes, he says, it’s still hilarious. With this sage wisdom in mind, I bring you this chapter. I apologize to my female readers who live without a male under their roof. Poop happens.

I have this friend named Kelly. She is effortlessly beautiful, has five gorgeous kids, is laid back and cool, loves Jesus, and pretty much doesn’t sin. She loves the Word, old saints, spiritual heavyweight books, and she’ll preach your face off. She holds the line at home, where there are always forty-two extra kids running around, and she has the patience of Mr. Miyagi. She also has freckles and talks with her hands, so she gets extra points.

I was at the beach with her one day several years ago, sometime near the beginning of Daisy’s cancer treatment. Her youngest daughter, whom they had adopted recently, was playing on a blanket while our sons surfed. Said youngest daughter had a dirty diaper, and, as moms do, Kelly changed it on the blanket we were all sitting on without missing a beat in our conversation. Wham bam.

One of her boys had gotten out of the water by that time and came to sit down on the blanket for a snack. He realized there was a remaining smear of poop on one corner. Not a huge chunk—merely a smallish knob, but still, supergross. Kelly’s son vocalized what I was keeping inside (because I’m a grown-up and have learned that, unlike Shakespeare’s Rosalind, though I am a woman, when I think, I must not always speak).

“Ew, Mom, that’s so gross! Mom, the poop! There’s poop on the blanket! Gross, Mom!” He started making gagging noises and was writhing in exaggerated yet appropriately dramatized disgust. He was freaking out over the caca on the blanket, and—sorry, Kelly—I was right there with him in spirit.

Kelly, a teensy bit older but a heap wiser than I, waved it off with a flutter and said in her blasé way, “It’s fiiiiiine. You’re fiiiiiine. It’s just a little bit of poop”—as if there was absolutely nothing to worry about and her son was absurd for even pointing it out.

And since then, no eleven words have helped me more.

Honestly. You see, Kelly has lived some life. She has a passel of kids, is a pastor’s wife, has endured tough changes in ministry, moving, loss of loved ones, and has foster-parented kids with a range of emotional and behavioral difficulties. She has been a faithful follower of Jesus, living a real, un-photoshopped life, and she knows what is and isn’t worth worrying about.

Sure, poop is gross. But in the grand scheme, that’s all it is. Just a little bit of poop.

Since that day, my husband and I have used that phrase countless times. Traffic on LA freeways on the way to the hospital? Just a little bit of poop. Spilled coffee on the couch? Just a little bit of poop. Toddler with a hair-pulling problem, rendered completely bald on top? Just a little bit of poop. Basically, if it’s not cancer, it’s just a little bit of poop.

Just last spring the four of us went on vacation to Hawaii. As part of a surfboard-making family, and having had the privilege of walking alongside our dear friends who planted a church there, we know and love the north shore of Oahu. It’s the ideal place for relaxation, and it’s filled with Hawaiian family and great surf. The way the untamed Pacific meets the shore, wild and translucent, breeding life and warmth and the heady scent of salt and plumeria, makes it my favorite earthly indulgence. It’s a soul-healing place to be.

The second night of our twelve-night stay, we took some friends out to dinner at a lovely restaurant on a golf course. Palms swaying, tans glowing, laughter pealing out between our two families who love one another so, we basked in the sweet knowing that comes with having served Jesus in the trenches together. It was a gorgeous evening with incredible food and lots of love.

Right when our much-anticipated dinners showed up, Fifi demanded to be taken out of her nylon high chair and to sit on Daddy’s lap. Britt is a softy and, this being child number three (we’d thrown so much discipline out the window by that time), he immediately acquiesced to her wishes. Not fifteen seconds went by before he noticed warmth and a smear on the upper thigh of his corduroy pants. A big, juicy, chunky, pungent smear, deep in the wales of his thankfully already brown pants. As he had picked her up, wanting to quickly get back to his hot dinner, he’d failed to notice that Fifi had had a significant bout of diarrhea in her high chair. Not only had it filled the hammock-like seat to the brim, but it had also soaked her dress and christened Britt. Soon the poop was all over both of our arms, splattered in forlorn piles on the floor, and stinking up what was supposed to be a picturesque sunset dinner with friends.

We quickly moved the baby to the grass of the golf course to tackle the situation. Out came the wipes, which methodically multiplied themselves like embryonic cell division. We promptly were surrounded by piles and piles of soiled, wadded-up casualties of war. Once Fifi was clean, I walked back to my seat bent over, slowly snaking through the tables looking for poop splatters like Sherlock Holmes looking for clues. Here and there I kneeled down by other diners’ sarong-covered sunburned knees to swiftly make a sludgy land mine disappear. Nothing to see here, folks.

After much water, enough wipes to make a significant carbon footprint, a quick change into a spare dress for the baby, and trying our hardest to endure the scent, sight, and very thought of Britt’s poopy pant leg, we cut our losses and tapped out. I gulped down my warm bacon spinach salad, the boys inhaled their coconut shrimp, and we called it a night.

Pulling into our friend’s house where we were staying, I was mildly irritated. Okay, Isaiah informed me I was snapping. All I had wanted was to enjoy a nice dinner for once, one that someone else had prepared. Was that too much to ask? Instead, right on the heels of our “fun” dinner, I was hunched over in the dark, desperately spraying off the sloppy, soaked high chair, scraping stubborn bits with my nail, muttering to myself about the situation like a madwoman.

Elbow deep in muck, my phone rang. Caller ID said it was our friend who was staying at our house while we were gone. She was a darling girl, full of joy and grace, and there existed a heart connection between us, two people who have lost dear loves. (Her brother had died in a diving accident a bit before Daisy.) She had been couch surfing and camping out for several weeks because her house had been flooded by a broken pipe, so we extended an invitation for her to have a solid place to stay for the twelve days we were gone. We wanted to give the poor girl some rest and a place to relax.

Normally, I would have loved to see her name on my screen, but on this night, I knew it wasn’t a good thing.

“Hello?”

Shaky, labored breathing.

“Are you okay?”

In a tremulous voice she said, “I’m okay. I’m okay.”

My imagination automatically ran wild. I pictured bandits holding her at gunpoint, feral and unshaven, pithy arrogance and spittle flying as they rudely disregarded her repeated pleas to get lost. I frantically asked what happened, feeling horrible about putting her in a place of danger, out in the country where our house isn’t close to neighbors, where it would take the police too long to arrive. I imagined her lying there bleeding, waiting for the ambulance to make its way up our windy road, her shoulder shot through by the leader of the dastardly pack.

But you know what actually happened? She had started rinsing a garment in our utility sink, gotten distracted, and left the faucet running while she went out to dinner. When she came back to our house later on, her heart sank as she immediately heard the telltale trickle of water spilling onto the wood floor. The utility sink had no drain on the side, only in the bottom; but she had plugged that one up and, therefore, unintentionally flooded my house. Actually, really, she flooded my laundry room, bedroom, and closet. But, yeah, there was a flood. The second one for her in a matter of weeks.

By the time she had gotten hold of me there was an entire cleanup crew in my bedroom. They were packing my things, sucking up water, and going hard after the damage. Within hours my entire personal life was in a storage container in my driveway, everything labeled accordingly: framed pictures, baby clothes, books, shoes.

Minutes earlier, I had been grumbling about some poop on a twenty-dollar high chair, completely missing that we were on a Hawaiian vacation. At a terrific restaurant with people we loved. And now I was receiving this news. Should I have erupted over the accidental flooding of my bedroom, oblivious to the fact that we had insurance? That the damage was covered? That it was being taken care of and all my pretty things were safe and out of harm’s way? The choice was obvious. It was time to adjust my view, to see things for what they really were. A little bit of poop among a world of blessing.

Britt and I have walked through a lot of poop together. Literally—baby poop, horse poop, pig poop, dog poop, chicken poop—and figuratively—ministry trials and house flooding, for starters. What we’ve learned through it all is that when you look at life and realize poop happens, well, you know that it washes off.

Some things can’t be washed off. Instead they wound and scar and leave you limping—like cancer, infidelity, or abuse. But the things that can be washed off? Don’t give them a second thought, because they don’t deserve it. Don’t miss the race because of peeling paint.

Perspective is a gift. It can save lives, alerting us to imminent danger, and it can keep us safe too. With perspective we can walk in confidence on an otherwise unsteady pathway. Without perspective, we can’t drive or walk. We wouldn’t be able to see properly—gauge size or distance—or experience the fullness of beauty. We may think we can see clearly, but without perspective we will miss important details.

It’s kind of like when Owl from Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day says, “Chin up, and all that sort of thing.” Eeyore could argue that we need to see it all, that we cannot ignore the darkness that seems ever present. He might say that happiness is fake and we just need to be honest about all the ways life sucks. After all, who’s kidding whom? Tigger is annoying.

I have spent some time being Eeyore, with his “realistic,” tell-it-like-it-is persona, and I have found that ultimately this mind-set doesn’t glorify God. Nor does it take into account the whole picture, the whole truth. It minimizes the goodness, provision, and plans of God that we may not see at the moment. But when we step back to consider the full scope of the story, putting things into perspective, we magnify God’s gifts and end up practicing gratitude. This does not diminish the reality of tough times, but it does open our hearts to acknowledge what God has done and is still doing.

The apostle Paul knew of what he spoke when he reminded us to give thanks in every situation, offered along with our petitions. There are needs and hardships, and he acknowledged them. But he also prescribed the way through the need, the trouble, the affliction: thankfulness.

So often when Daisy’s health and treatment got really hairy, Britt and I would comfort one another by casting light on what was true and lovely. When we spent our days and nights under the artificial lights of a hospital room and were surrounded by the cacophony of flashing and beeping machines, we reminded ourselves that we were blessed to have access to treatment. When the days dragged on, when the small square of sunlight crept past the solid stucco wall that was our only view, we thought how fortunate we were that I didn’t have to go to work and could spend every moment with Daisy. That perspective turned a wretched situation into a cherished opportunity to snuggle and bond more deeply.

Every time we sat in a stark, generic conference room and received life-altering news over a Formica table, or systematically were informed of all the side effects our girl would likely experience, or learned that she would be infertile, that she couldn’t withstand a stem cell transplant, and that she was going to die . . . we felt so thankful that we weren’t single parents. We were grateful to share the brunt of the whole horrifying affair, to cry in each other’s arms, and glad to be a team that could not be broken.

I hope all this glossy gratitude doesn’t sound trite or smug or overly pious to you. Telling God what we needed while thanking him for what we had was a hard-won endeavor, one fought on the battlefield of tears, confusion, and utter terror. And while I also realize I had more to be thankful for than some in our situation—a solid spouse, abundant support, and a flexible schedule—the struggle was real. It was not an automatic response to our situation, not something we didn’t labor to believe. It wasn’t something that once we figured out how to navigate, we automatically went back to, but something that was a fight each and every time—especially after Daisy breathed her last and we found ourselves on a completely different battlefield. But the victory was sweet. Since Daisy died, I’ve relearned to see the bright spots through the shadows. I’ve walked in remembrance, teaching myself all over again to be anxious for nothing, to pray for what I need with thanksgiving, to open my hands freely to what may fall into them, even while someone precious had fallen out of them.

Wouldn’t you know it, after I poured out the sadness into the Lord’s hands and set my face on what was true and good and lovely, I grew stronger. I had strength to get out of bed in the morning. Strength to survive the emotional holocaust of the suffering and death of a child. Strength to honor God in worship, to love well those whom God has placed around me. And true to what Paul said in chapter 4 of his letter to the Philippians, so came the peace washing over me, softly covering the skin of my soul like a balm, guarding my heart and mind in Christ Jesus.

We all know how capable we are of seeing the one thing we don’t have and becoming fixated on how we can’t possibly live without it. Whatever it is—healing or babies or love—it beckons like a siren call. I want it now. But if we look up from our daze of desire, if we stop and think for a second, we all know where that got Eve. When we think of Eve, we get all judgy and want to say, “Really, Eve? The one thing that wasn’t yours for the taking in the entire garden? How could you not see how ridiculous that was?” We shake our heads and roll our eyes and blame our menstrual cramps on her. But we are Eve. Every. Single. Day.

As a culture, as Westerners, we are blind. We are blind to blessing and blind to wisdom. We want the thing we don’t have. We want perfect triceps and shapely calves. We want homes that sparkle and grace the pages of a magazine. We want ant-free picnics, cloud-free beach days. We want someone else’s marriage, someone else’s life. And we want piles and piles of the shiny things we are convinced will make us happy.

It reminds me of my son, Isaiah. He was talking to one of the nurses at the clinic in Israel while we were there receiving treatment for Daisy. He was almost twelve at the time and had a miles-long list of gifts he hoped to receive for his upcoming birthday. Legos, mostly. He showed her the list and, dumbfounded, she said, “I can’t imagine ever giving someone a list of presents I want them to buy me!” She shook her head in astonishment and dubiously questioned me about such crazy talk.

It might seem a bit odd to those of us who grew up in the US that she’s never even thought about making a wish list, but you know what? She’s not the one whose perspective is off. Ours is.

Our hunger for more, better, sparklier will never be satisfied. We are the children who, surrounded by mounds of unnecessary and excessive articles of diversion on Christmas morning, say, “Is that it?” I’m talking to myself right now and all of Western civilization. More is not always more. Let the scales fall from our eyes so we can see the abundance that is already ours. The joys we don’t even consider, the pleasures we disregard. We take for granted our families, gifts, and abilities, and we fail to remember how we don’t deserve a thing, not even the breath in our lungs. All is the grace of a generous Father.

Whatever happened to reveling in the joy of holding your baby? Of being able to throw her up in the air and catch her on the way down as her curls lift and sway in the wind? What about the honor and privilege of carrying a child in your womb, the way every outgrown article of clothing is a sign of your baby’s good health? How about feeling spent after belly laughter at a bonfire, singing your lungs out at church, or sticking your head out the window while flying down a tree-lined street? And what about the feeling of sand between your toes, the simple thrill of your best friend sitting on the handlebars of your bicycle, or a tart lemonade on a hot day? The scent of sunshine on a sprawling tomato vine, the way clean sheets feel against freshly showered skin? The icy cold flesh of a dewy sweet watermelon, the sound of breaking suction when a toddler pulls her thumb out of her mouth in order to hug you? What about the sensation of a contented sigh, or the sight of a child smiling wide, showcasing the gap of her first lost tooth? My point is, we have way more than we realize. Our lives are abundant, overflowing with beauty we often overlook. Don’t miss it.

A few days ago I was in my husband’s study at around 6:30 a.m. He rises at four a.m. every day to study and pray, and when the baby wakes I like to take her in there and lounge on the couch for a minute while she climbs on his lap. She gives him morning-breath kisses and sucks the ink out of his highlighter markers. That morning I had gotten up at five to write and wanted to read to him what I had written. I not only wanted to read it to him but also wanted him to adequately feel the gravity of it—to narrow his eyes and nod slowly, to let out an “Mmm,” perhaps do a light fist pound over his heart. And then I wanted him to kiss me and tell me I was brilliant. This is important stuff.

A sentence or two into my satisfyingly dramatic homily, Fifi started to babble and talk. Really loudly. It would have been so cute except she was drowning me out and completely ruining the moment. And since it’s all about me, I stopped and rolled my eyes and hushed her. And you know what Britt said to me?

“She’s alive.”

That’s it. Those two words, just like, “It’s fine, you’re fine, just a little bit of poop”—they pack so much freedom for me. It’s a silly illustration, I know, but the perspective it affords is not a bit silly. She’s alive! My messy teenager who left the hose running for two days straight? He’s alive! My husband whose hunting obsession leaves me for days on end with a two-year-old and a looming deadline? He’s alive! And suddenly, at the fork in the road, where you can either turn toward pity or party, well, break out the streamers because there are people to be loved and thanks to be given.

Perspective is a giver. Comparison takes. Perspective is generous. Comparison pares down the loveliness of your life until it appears a thin shred of its former glory. Perspective carries us through life laughing. Comparison evokes cursing and frowns and grumbling.

Perspective says that I got eight years with the dearest little fairy a mama could hope for. Comparison says I got ripped off. Perspective says going to Israel was a gift to our family, the magic of extra time away together that melded us closer as a family amid every bite of hummus, every impatient honk and Hebrew profanity aimed at us, every car ride through pockmarked villages. Comparison says the three months we spent in Israel heaped hardship upon hardship, needlessly stretching paper-thin nerves. Perspective says we are blessed that Daisy didn’t die in obscurity but with the support of thousands who prayed and loved and sacrificed for her, who felt our pain and remember her beauty. Comparison says I don’t care if your kids learned compassion through her story; your kid is still right there with you and mine is gone.

One night in early November, just a week or so before we left Israel, Daisy and I were lying in bed together. There we were, under the thin borrowed covers, two bodies pressed into one another like spoons. Her form was so small, so spindly. Her hair was about an inch long, a fair, silky fleece she worked so hard to grow. In the stillness, we had late-night discussions of things an eight-year-old should never have to think about. And we breathed, together as one body, as if she were still in my womb, covered by my heartbeat.

We had been staying in a rental home in a hilltop town called Zikhron Ya’akov, a half Orthodox and half Gentile, good old-fashioned heathen town. We were nearing the end of our time there and Daisy didn’t seem to be getting much better. We had watched the sky metamorphose from dusky tan, melting into the land without border, to a more vivid blue, dotted with clouds pregnant with the necessary elements to bring life to the earth. The dramatic clouds were bold and fierce and full of emotion, much like every sabra in Israel, much like us toward the end of our journey there. And those clouds let loose.

Thunderstorms in Israel during that time of year are breathtaking. They are loud, torrential, electrifying. As we lay in the darkness together, the room lit up. The storm was over our heads, and the decibel level was more than I’d ever experienced. The rain came in sheets through the black night, violently entering the atmosphere, piercing the cracked earth. It was the thunderstorm of thunderstorms, a display of the magnitude that is creation, contrasted with the frailty of humanity.

That night was a gift to me. The tears, the bravery of my shattered daughter, the way she melted into me—all of it a gift. I had no assurance of anything other than the God of heaven, his sovereignty, his fearsome might. And so I chose in that moment not to shrink from the lightning but to see the beauty in its potency. To not lose the magic of the moment by agonizing further about my daughter’s declining health. I chose to feel the warmth between us, to see the artful images the shadows on the wall were creating, to connect with the gift that was my firstborn daughter—who was still very much alive, still able to be enjoyed.

That terrifying yet wondrous night was like so much of life. Sometimes a few smudges mess up the shiny days, but other times the most priceless gift exists smack-dab in the middle of the worst. A clarity of vision, seeing the bigger picture painted by a generous God, makes all the difference. Just as I learned all these crucial things during the fight for Daisy’s life, I have learned to carry this over into my post-Daisy world of grief. It makes the sad days bearable and the average days magical. Life blooms radiant in the times I choose perspective over comparison, when I see poop for what it is and let the storm wash it clean.