Plot Points #72 💌
Lenten fasts, Popcorn the gecko, enlarged faith, and the genesis of gender
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Hi friends! Welcome and happy Friday to you.
We’re officially in the Lenten season now. While I have practiced fasting during previous Lents, this is the first one in which I am praying for real transformation. Everywhere I look, it seems like God is inviting me to refine down to the essentials— remove the excess and streamline, so to speak—but not for the sake of productivity or checklists; for renewal from within and without. I welcome this season of “lack” because I am eager to walk in freedom from things that have held me captive.
I am fasting from two things in particular right now. The first is a corporate fast on Wednesdays from food during daylight hours. We are doing this with our church, as well as studying together. The second is—lol—a fast from nonessential spending. My no-buy year in 2024 triggered a sincere examination of my attachment to money and things. It’s easy to justify this attachment because it’s mostly just coffee and thrifting, but that’s the rub, isn’t it? On the surface, everything is totally fine. What’s a few coffees a week and a trip to Goodwill? Underneath, though, my heart is running away from God because it’s hard to be with Him sometimes. I don’t want to read my Bible or try. The recovering perfectionist in me doesn’t know how to make this work without performing, and so I buy another latte or purchase another secondhand book so I don’t have to sit with Him and ask the hard questions. But the excess is blocking my view of better things.
In fitness, there’s the idea of a person’s “set point” weight. This is the weight your body would naturally settle at if you were eating well, moving daily, sleeping well, etc. The set point is where your body wants to be. Over the last few years, I’ve experienced a shift in my approach to faith, health, technology, family, and home that mimics this idea. The Spirit is guiding me to a set point, where excess is trimmed and all that’s left are the necessities for an integrated, fruitful life in Him. This is my prayer for Lent, and for the days beyond.
Let me know how I can be praying for you during this season. Thank you for spending your time with me here!
Grace + peace,
Wendi
P.S. Please welcome the newest addition to the Nunnery family: Popcorn, Theo’s leopard gecko 🦎🍿.
Word of the Week ✍🏻
Seatherny: (n.) the serenity one feels while listening to the chirping of birds.
Point #1: “In the suburbs, everyone is a miniature aristocrat.”
This piece is delightfully astute regarding the nostalgia evoked by the suburbs of our youth, while also playing up the potential for suburban homeowners to really make something wonderful of their spaces. Now that we’ve lived in the suburbs for the past year, I have to say I wholeheartedly agree: “Suburbs, like cities and country, do in fact have a characteristic good. They seem so strange, so uncannily empty on the surface, because all their possibility is in their private underside — for adults as well as children. They are tiny fiefdoms, to arrange and order optimally and devote to your demented little experiments — space enough to make real decisions, on a scale small enough for democratic accessibility. In the suburbs, everyone is a miniature aristocrat.”
Point #2: Great Christian literary fiction is not an oxymoron.
This piece from gives a helpful framework for what constitutes Christian literary fiction, and the answers might surprise you. In addition to addressing “chronological snobbery” (one of my favorite C.S. Lewis quotes) about old books, she also discusses how important it is for readers to consider contemporary books with ecumenical approaches to storytelling. Authors need not be Christian in order to show us True things and Melody has a wonderful list of great reads here to help us on the journey.
Point #3: “I was led by my need, not to an abandonment of faith but to its unexpected enlargement.”
From the Vicarage—my fellow Anglican with OCD—is the kind of writer I hope to be one day. Her words here on uncovering the vast goodness of God inside our own turbulent moments ring so true to me as someone whose mental health diagnosis has turned out to be a surprising vessel for intimacy and joy with God. “I bring nothing to this Table and never have,” she writes, “for it is the Lord’s and he is the giver. And the gift he gives is himself.”
Point #4: I’ve donated blood a grand total of…four times.
Last week, an Australian man known for his “Golden Arm”—who had donated his rare life-saving blood every two weeks for a full sixty-four years—passed away at the age of 88. His dedication saved over 2 million babies…talk about a hero! Read this sweet story for some good news to start your weekend.
Reading in The Nook 📚
Guys, I am officially out of my reading slump.
I’ve had Abigail Favale’s The Genesis of Gender on my list for a year and finally snagged a copy last week. HOLY. FRIGGIN’. COW. I’ve never seen a more thorough, yet readable, examination of how we’ve reached this late-fourth wave moment regarding sex and gender than Dr. Favale’s rich, brilliant prose. Theological, philosophical, and analytical, Favale approaches this topic with both orthodoxy and tenderness, and I think I’ve highlighted something on almost every page. Reading Favale’s work is a breath of much-needed fresh air. I recommend it to everyone, particularly Christians who are attempting to navigate our choppy cultural waters with grace and wisdom. A new favorite, for sure.
I also finished the short and sweet Devoted: Great Men and Their Godly Moms by Tim Challies this week. I was struck by the power and importance of prayer for our children in the pages of this book, and feel newly convicted to be more diligent about that in my own life. Such a lovely read! It would make a great baby shower gift for boy moms, as well.
What are you reading right now? 👇🏻
(All Bookshop.org links are affiliates. Thank you for supporting The Nook with your purchase.)
“Do all the good you can, and make as little fuss about it as possible.”
—Charles Dickens—
Follow along as we read my latest novel, The Bluestockings!
Prologue | Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five
"The recovering perfectionist in me doesn’t know how to make this work without performing"... I feel this deeply! It can be so easy to turn Lent into a performance to prove myself to God or to others, while deep down hiding away from Him out of fear that He might see the ugly parts of myself that I don't want to give over to Him. It reminds me of the man in CS Lewis' "The Great Divorce" who is so hesitant to let an angel take the pesky lizard off his back, even though the lizard causes him great misery and agony. We become so used to our habits, fears, and sins that we hold them close and shudder at the idea of being stripped of them because of the change and pain that will have to take place. As the angel tells the man as he goes to destroy the lizard, "I never said it wouldn't hurt you. I said it wouldn't kill you."
Thanks for this piece and keep up the great work! :)
Hi Wendi! I just discovered your Substack, and wow, this really resonated with me! I particularly loved your comments on a "set point" and definitely feel that as well in my own spiritual life and stripping away more and more technological reliance, etc. Excited to follow you more! And I also have a son named Theo and have OCD and homeschool and loved The Genesis of Gender so... wish we were neighbors! ;) Peace be with you!