One of my favorite things is sitting on my porch in the cool of the evening while my boys play in the front yard.

Channing rides his scooter up and down the sidewalk. Royce wanders around with his toy fox in tow. My wife is there. I am there. Their two mothers are watching them play while the day cools off around us.

There are Christians who would look at my family and stop at the fact that I am a woman married to a woman. They might have plenty to say about what they believe that means.

But my boys are not thinking about any of that.

They are outside playing while both of their mothers watch them. They are loved. They are safe. They are enjoying an ordinary evening with their family. Their experience of that moment is no less whole because neither of their parents is a man.

And while someone else might be busy deciding whether my family fits inside their rules, I am sitting there thinking how lucky I am to be part of it.

I think sometimes people get so caught up in religion that they miss God.

They get focused on who is living right, who is doing it wrong, who believes the wrong thing, and who is loving the wrong person. Somewhere in all of that, the relationship can get lost.

I do not think faith was ever supposed to be primarily about keeping score.

My mother never made God seem far away. When she prayed, she talked to Him like He was already in the room.

If I was anxious, she might say, “Father God, please watch over your daughter Molly. Give her peace that comes only from you.”

I grew up listening to prayers like that. Nobody had to explain to me that she believed God knew me personally. I could hear it in the way she talked to Him.

Like He knew me.

Like He cared what I was feeling.

Like He was already there.

That is still how I think about God now.

I think He is interested in us, not just in some distant theological sense where He loves humanity as a whole, but in the ordinary details of His children’s lives. I think He enjoys us. I think He wants to be included.

That probably explains why I have always connected so strongly with the way God is portrayed as Papa in The Shack. Not because I think a novel defines theology, but because that picture of God feels familiar to me. Warm. Relational. Interested. Close enough to talk to.

And I think legalistic religion can get in the way of that.

It can turn faith into a full-time job of watching everybody else.

Meanwhile, your own life is happening. Your children are growing up. Someone you love needs you to listen. There is dinner at the table. There is laughter in the next room. There is a breeze outside. There are people to love and apologize to and forgive.

There is a whole life right in front of you.

If you believe God made this life, maybe paying attention to it matters too.

I am not saying behavior does not matter. I believe we should strive to become more like Christ. I also believe we are going to fail at that, because none of us is perfect.

If perfection were possible, we would not need grace.

So instead of spending so much time measuring everybody else against the rules, maybe we should spend more time looking at ourselves.

Am I loving the people in front of me well? Am I paying enough attention to my own heart before I start examining somebody else’s?

Those seem like more useful questions.

There are plenty of serious things in this world. There is suffering. There is injustice. There are things worth fighting against, and there are times when faith asks something difficult of us.

But I do not think seriousness and joy are opposites. I do not think reverence requires grimness.

And I do not think God gave us an entire world full of people to love, things to learn, places to explore, food to taste, ridiculous things to laugh about, and beautiful things to notice just so we could spend our lives worried about whether somebody else is breaking a rule.

Maybe taking God seriously should include taking joy seriously too.

Maybe it means trusting that He is big enough to work on somebody else’s heart without me appointing myself to the job.

My job is to work on my own relationship with Him. To keep trying to become more like Christ. To love the people in front of me and pay attention to the life I have been given.

Some evenings, I sit beside my wife on that porch and watch our boys play until it starts getting dark. Nothing dramatic happens. Nobody learns a lesson. It is just an ordinary evening with people I love.

But maybe that is part of what I am trying so hard not to miss.

My family is right here. My life is right here.

And I believe God is too.