whitney dziurawiec

The world is fluttering around with snowflakes and it finally feels like winter. There is a slow Saturday ahead of us, and we are milking these last days for all they're worth. Two weeks away from adding an unpredictable, flailing, squishy member to our family who will surely disrupt all our plans and ruin every slow Saturday for the next decade. But we are ready (or as ready as you can be?) and for now we will snuggle for two hours after waking and then make cinnamon rolls and sit quietly by the window and watch the snow. There is a certain glory to these weeks that are stretching so long, where every pang in my stomach is met with anticipation. With no travel in our future (unlike the past three Christmases), we have settled into the quiet, slow, waiting where boredom is a luxury on the verge of extinction. And so boredom is not even boredom anymore: it is a calm thankfulness, a quiet breath, a watching the squirrel scutter across the street. The Christmas...

Everyone always asks me why Christmas is my favorite. I got married in December and it was one big Christmas party. My first date with Jon was to a gingerbread house festival. My daughter is due Christmas Eve. I consider it an accomplishment if I make it until November to begin listening to Christmas music. And it's true, I do love Christmas. (although a Christmas wedding was the easiest and cheapest way to do a wedding. I'm serious. We saved loads on everything from venue to decorations.) (and also it's not like we PLANNED to have a baby due on Christmas Eve?!??) (Jon and my first date was to a gingerbread house festival because it was free #iamcheap) I, like many, am drawn to the lights and the decorations. The baking in and of itself is enough to make me Christmas's biggest fan. And I know it is cliché to say that this Word made flesh, this transcendent holy baby is the root of my delight, I find myself drawing new, rich truths each Advent that keep me coming b...

Candles are lit, Jon is gone, Ella Fitzgerald's Christmas album is playing, and I'm picking at some leftover gingerbread so it's high time I wrote again. Everyone loves October, but for me November takes the cake. But literally, my birthday is in November, so that's when I get the most cake. And all of the other celebrations are looming ahead: the family birthdays, Thanksgivings, anniversary, Christmas, and then the newest celebration added to the calendar: the birth of my daughter who up until that point will have only been a kicking, prodding being in my belly that keeps me awake. But in a moment, she will no longer be a faceless baby in my head, but a real child in my arms, and if what I'm told is correct, I will never be the same. That phrase scares me and I'm grieving the life I have now that is close to ending. My wonderful, 40 hour-a-week job that feels so holy and exciting and fulfilling will become only a small part of my calling. I will trade in lo...

The craziness from the beginning of the year is slowing down, and I as a human being am also slowing down. Slowing down and growing large. I have a daughter who kicks and moves and this impending reality is becoming more and more real. We have named her, we have painted her dresser, and we prepare wildly for this child we have not yet met. What a time. This semester part of my role on campus is to help lead our athletic ministry which is a fun way to bring out any insecurities I thought I'd moved beyond long ago. I walk into our meetings as this pregnant, far-from-collegiate-athlete-level-fitness woman whose biggest accomplishment in the fitness world is my half marathon, which I use as my only validation for being there. I want to yell at every athlete "I HAVE RUN A HALF MARATHON IN UNDER TWO HOURS SO I PROMISE I AM RELATABLE" I suppose I will use this experience as a chance to embrace the cliché that God puts us in situations where we are wildly unqualified to show ...

And so we are back "home" (whatever that means), working and resting and preparing for the school year. We've had a little bit of a reprieve from the heat, which PRAISE THE LORD because body parts are starting to seriously swell on this pregnant lady, and I'm already craving all the fall comfort food so, autumn, you have my permission to arrive. The news is out now, and I'm flooded with the question: the " how are you feeling?" Which I don't particularly mind because I'm not exactly prepared to answer questions like how do you feel about being a mom? What are you going to decorate the nursery like? What type of birth are you going to have (which to this my answer is a confident, "Baby. I'm going to have a baby birth"). Of course, the only problem with this question is what I've found to be a common reaction among some mothers after I answer. "Well, my first trimester my hormones were out of whack and I barely slept a...

In many ways I feel worlds different than the last time I posted. I am wrapping up a summer of living in a staff communal house, with chaotic dinners and borrowed cereal and shared bowls of popcorn. Our room is a constant tornado of clothes, papers, books, and sand. Sand, everywhere. For the first time in a long time, I felt known. I didn't feel the need to smile when I was with them, which is how I define true friendship. I had four girls whom I discipled this summer and three of the four are criers. We're talking every Bible study, every discipleship, crying. Every time. I made it through somehow, helping them navigate their wild emotions and bridle them to be used by Christ, rather than being a hindrance to Him. And my prayer still is that 2 of my 4 women would go to the nations. The nations. God gripped my heart with His heart for the world this summer. He reminded me why I'm on staff with Cru. Not just to help students, not just to reach the students on my campus, ...

When I think of every trial and hardship I have faced in my life, I am able to count at least one or two products of redemption that the trial grew into. Oaks of righteousness that have grown from seeds of suffering, a small forest of them from my short life. They have bored the words of Romans 8:28 into my soul, the hope for good, the heart-check of "do I truly love Him?", the waiting in anticipation. But, honestly friends, there is one seed from which I have yet to see redemption grow. It started terrorizing my innocent 10 year-old self, who beforehand had no idea that sleep could be something so unattainable. A whole year of staring wide-eyed into the darkness. I realized at that age the loneliness of late hours while the rest of the house breathes in slumber. I prayed because they told me to pray. I was prayed over. I remember shifting from the futility of waking my parents each night to bearing the sleeplessness on my own. And at ten years old, I was forc...

All through high school and college we find our friends in our surroundings. We look to our left and right at the desks next to us in Algebra. We find them down the hall in the dorm. From elementary school to college, we experience our life changes alongside our friends. We started puberty and endured the hormones together. We got our licenses in the same year. We talked about classes and homework and everything was the same, no wonder it felt so easy to make friends--we had the same lives with the same timelines. And I somehow assumed that's how it would always be. I first began to feel this disconnect when the first bestie got married, right after our sophomore year of college. As someone who could not have been further away from marriage, there was a foreignness of watching one of my best friends experience this major life change with which I could not also partake. I remember something actually stinging inside me as I watched her walk down the ai...

The sun shines and my coffee grows cold and of all the thoughts swirling around my head on this Good Friday morning, the thought of barrenness is what comes to mind. This theme throughout the Pentateuch of God intervening in women's wombs, His insertion of new life where before there had only been barrenness, is at the head of Jesus' genealogy. The wives of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob:  Sarah. Rebecca. Rachel. Barren, barren, barren. All three of these could not in and of themselves produce the new life they so longed for. These women cried out with anguish for life to grow inside them, life that they could not themselves create. For these women, new life was only possible through spiritual intervention. This is not coincidence. This curse extends beyond infertility, it bores into our hearts. With death as humanity's curse, barrenness is the sign of our inadequacy: we cannot produce new life on our own. We are dead, we are barren, we a...

My arms feel flimsy and floppy from a makeshift workout because I'm boycotting outside until I don't need three layers to go running (even though I am well aware of the reality that people who go outside more enjoy the weather more, and I do not care). The semester is half over, so I'm 3/4 done with my first year of full-time ministry. More than anything, more than skills or relationality or hard work or charm, I have realized my need to be full of Him, absolutely bursting. To seek and thirst and drink up all of the Living Water from the Word before I walk on campus. I've realized the war that is waged on the souls who have given their lives to full-time ministry. The wars of doubt and fear, the anxiety that is living on support, the gifts and talents that we lean on more heavily than Christ. There is a tension we walk in each day as we trust Him for our manna in more literal ways than we ever have before. He has given me a heart for the world. Because let's be ...

Spring is sneaking up, melting the gray snow, making our days golden once again, sunlight dancing around the living room. We await eagerly but soberly because this is not our first rodeo and we know there will be at least one more snow as winter continues to grasp at its last straws. The wind whirls around as the branches shake with the anticipation of new life. Yes, new life is on its way, but there are no traces of it yet under the wet, dirty snow. Perhaps underground the seeds are taking root, the buds are beginning to awake, but I forgot that spring isn't all flowers and green grass. Spring begins with the mess and the mud of melting snow. It begins with the days we are too optimistic to wear a coat and end up shivering all day. The beginning of spring can be more frustrating than the whole winter, as it teases us, ruins our shoes, surprises us with snow. As the miracle of life that grows from death begins, here we all are: frustrated, muddy, shivering, impatient. Sloshing we...

I'm a little disappointed by the lack of representation of blogs by people like me. Almost all the blogs that exist are ones either written by single women or moms. And don't get me wrong--both of these groups of women are people I admire, but I do wonder where are all the married women who don't have kids? I know these blissfully wedded, childless years are often so short that there are indeed less of us in number, I understand that. But it seems like once we get married, we distance ourselves from social media in general, only to emerge 2-3 years later with daily pictures of our baby. Why does this happen? Where does everyone go for these few years? Where is everyone like me? I am quite enjoying this phase of life and am in no hurry to rush into the sleepless, exhausting, yoga pant, stretch mark, droopy-boob phase. I know it will probably come with its stickiness and snot, I know I likely can't dodge the phase entirely. I have accepted that. But th...

I suppose it's time to mull over my year in sentimentality and nostalgia, time to plan and dream of the adventures that await. In past years I have anticipated the coming year with either hope and optimism or let the midnight bring darkness and fear. This year should have been the most adventurous. We went on our honeymoon to Boston, we hiked up a mountain, we started over and moved to my favorite state, we began the ministry we feel God has called us to do, we shared the Gospel more than ever, we watched Him provide for us and lead us into what our next steps of faith are. And all of that felt like a adventure, yes. But I'm not sure true adventures really feel like adventures while we're in them. The world tells us that adventuring is visiting a new city or starting a new job or a new hobby or a new relationship, but it doesn't tell us the angst that is inevitably laced throughout every true adventure. And what's up with this word? Why does everything have to b...