Kit Tosello's Blog
April 23, 2025
Jesus' Stories: The Gentle Knock
A bittersweet thing, Good Friday, as I consider that “greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
To think, he calls me friend. To even try to fully receive such a love… l’m overcome.
I took the opportunity earlier this week to disappear into solitude, retreating into the stillness of a rustic cabin beside a hurrying creek. Alone in deep-forest silence, but not in the least bit alone.
I’ve been reading The Scandal of the Kingdom in which Dallas Willard unpacks what the parables Jesus spoke reveal about life in Christ, and understanding, maybe for the first time really, why Jesus chose this technique for so much of his teaching.
If a heart is hard—as mine is from time to time—stories allow us to consider a principle on our own terms, as opposed to direct teaching that’s likely to fall on deaf ears.
Fear and pride gatekeep our hearts, and the knock that is gentle is often the one that gets a response, a slowly opening door.
Story stays with us in memory, and we may over time see ourselves in the narrative. We have a better chance of softening to the idea of change (don’t we hate change?).
This is why I find myself again before the Lord, asking for divine help to craft words and sentences into a meaningful story. In fiction I’m not called to overtly preach wisdom or grace or the beauty and hope of Jesus’ kingdom life. But I believe he can guide me as we co-create together in ways that are light-bringing and very, very needed.
Lord Jesus, I can never write anything of relevance and eternal value unless the ink is consecrated to you. Give life to the words that fall on the page in ways I don’t even need to be aware of. Soften hearts to know and love you more, through the power of story.
This I lay at your feet. Feet scarred for me and for those I love. Amen.
The Scandal of the Kingdom: How the Parables of Jesus Revolutionize Life with God
Available Now: The Color of Home
To think, he calls me friend. To even try to fully receive such a love… l’m overcome.
I took the opportunity earlier this week to disappear into solitude, retreating into the stillness of a rustic cabin beside a hurrying creek. Alone in deep-forest silence, but not in the least bit alone.
I’ve been reading The Scandal of the Kingdom in which Dallas Willard unpacks what the parables Jesus spoke reveal about life in Christ, and understanding, maybe for the first time really, why Jesus chose this technique for so much of his teaching.
If a heart is hard—as mine is from time to time—stories allow us to consider a principle on our own terms, as opposed to direct teaching that’s likely to fall on deaf ears.
Fear and pride gatekeep our hearts, and the knock that is gentle is often the one that gets a response, a slowly opening door.
Story stays with us in memory, and we may over time see ourselves in the narrative. We have a better chance of softening to the idea of change (don’t we hate change?).
This is why I find myself again before the Lord, asking for divine help to craft words and sentences into a meaningful story. In fiction I’m not called to overtly preach wisdom or grace or the beauty and hope of Jesus’ kingdom life. But I believe he can guide me as we co-create together in ways that are light-bringing and very, very needed.
Lord Jesus, I can never write anything of relevance and eternal value unless the ink is consecrated to you. Give life to the words that fall on the page in ways I don’t even need to be aware of. Soften hearts to know and love you more, through the power of story.
This I lay at your feet. Feet scarred for me and for those I love. Amen.
The Scandal of the Kingdom: How the Parables of Jesus Revolutionize Life with God
Available Now: The Color of Home
November 3, 2024
A Reader's Wonderland Giveaway
Hi friend!
Fall is the perfect time for relaxing and reading a good book, don't you agree? It's also a great season to soak in God's goodness and reconnect with him.
I'm excited to be part of a fun group of Christian authors who want to help you have a cozy and meaningful fall season by giving away FOUR AMAZING PRIZES! All you have to do is enter your email once, for four chances to win. That’s it!
I hope you'll take advantage of this opportunity, not just to win prizes, including my new contemporary novel, The Color of Home, but to discover some new-to-you Christian authors and their meaningful books.
Head over to my site for all the details and to easily-peasily enter!
xo -Kit
Now available! The Color of Home
Fall is the perfect time for relaxing and reading a good book, don't you agree? It's also a great season to soak in God's goodness and reconnect with him.
I'm excited to be part of a fun group of Christian authors who want to help you have a cozy and meaningful fall season by giving away FOUR AMAZING PRIZES! All you have to do is enter your email once, for four chances to win. That’s it!
I hope you'll take advantage of this opportunity, not just to win prizes, including my new contemporary novel, The Color of Home, but to discover some new-to-you Christian authors and their meaningful books.
Head over to my site for all the details and to easily-peasily enter!
xo -Kit
Now available! The Color of Home
August 29, 2024
What Color Is Your Longing?
This article by Kit Tosello was originally published at (in)courage as “Our Longings Are Signposts, Directing Us Home to More of Him.”
I once traded ten years of my life for a dream — a dream ten thousand sizes too small and altogether the wrong color for me. You’d think I’d have known better, given what happened to my dad. Given how things turned out for the family in which I grew up.
But our longings are our longings, aren’t they? And mine was for a house — preferably a lovely, wide-porched, cream-colored country home with plenty of room behind its charming exterior for our growing family to live a life of generous hospitality . . . for God, of course. But first we needed the right house, didn’t we? A settled, rooted place out of which to live said big, holy-purposed life.
And, given what happened with my dad and his house dream, we needed our house sooner rather than later.
Are such dreams valid? Is God in our longings?
I was around nine when Dad became gripped with a longing to plant our family of five in an A-frame chalet among towering redwoods. His dream took on the cinnamon hue of those velvet-barked, subtly fragrant giants of coastal California. I’m sure he foresaw the curl of woodsmoke rising into blue skies, no need for privacy curtains, years of family meals around the table, and peace.
Sure, he and Mom would have to work more and harder to pay for the dream. More of his time spent away from us, commuting to the college in the next county where he added both summer and night classes to his teaching schedule. More of Mom’s time was spent working inside and outside the home while riding the bucking bronco of perimenopause.
Tension and tears reigned for several years, as my siblings and I saw less and less of Dad and more and more of Mom’s fragility.
But everything was going to be okay, right? Because now the property was being excavated. Now the foundation was being poured. And now, at last, the sweet scent of sawdust bespoke a promise, as a maze of framing rose into the forest canopy.
Would things have gone differently if we’d known how soon Dad would be gone? That, ultimately, three of the four years we lived together as a family in that redwood oasis would be spent under the tarry-black cloud of his lung cancer battle?
At first I didn’t notice the parallel between my father’s longing and mine — my obsession with house plans and vacant lots, or the way I spoke to my children of the free and simple Jesus-life, all while privately harboring the farmhouse-shaped craving that owned me.
And then, at last, my husband and I had it — our cream-colored dream house in the pines! Welcoming porch and spacious kitchen. Hardwood floors and river-rock fireplace. Jacuzzi tub and even a bidet.
The washboard road of faith lessons it took to get here was behind us. Except that, within the span of a year, ahead of us lay a cliff. A terrifying health crisis for our oldest. Job losses for both me and my husband. My mother’s death.
Now here I was, shedding tears in my beautiful bathtub, as wrung out and hormonal as Mom had once been.
We faced a choice — go big or go home. Going big meant fighting to maintain our new digs, contending for bright and shiny (read: demanding) jobs to replace those lost. But what, we’d begun to wonder, might it mean to go home?
Frederick Buechner wrote, as published in The Clown in the Belfry,
“If we only had eyes to see and ears to hear and wits to understand . . . we would know that the Kingdom of God is what we all of us hunger for above all other things even when we don’t know its name or realize that it’s what we’re starving to death for . . . The Kingdom of God is where we belong. It is home, and whether we realize it or not, I think we are all of us homesick for it.”
To “go home” might mean our family could downsize. We could come to a full stop, listen for direction. We could make room for serving Jesus in the ways that moved our hearts.
Never had we been as sure about anything as this: We’d sell our dream house. Laughter bubbled up — we were free!
“I have come home at last! . . . This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. . . . Come further up, come further in!” C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle
For years now, a quirky, old 1300 square-foot house has provided a home base for discovering what it means to venture further up and further in. For stepping into the most satisfying and meaningful assignments this side of our eventual heavenly home.
The right color for my longings, I’m learning, is the crisp white of a blank canvas. An empty-handed invitation: Lord, paint me into your Kingdom wherever and however you deem good and beautiful.
To “go home” is to surrender our narrow ideas of home. It’s to say, I don’t care what lies ahead, if only God will be there. It’s to recognize our longings as signposts, ever directing us home to more of Him.
I’m in the very presence of God—
oh, how refreshing it is!
I’ve made Lord God my home.
(Psalm 73:28 MSG)
I once traded ten years of my life for a dream — a dream ten thousand sizes too small and altogether the wrong color for me. You’d think I’d have known better, given what happened to my dad. Given how things turned out for the family in which I grew up.
But our longings are our longings, aren’t they? And mine was for a house — preferably a lovely, wide-porched, cream-colored country home with plenty of room behind its charming exterior for our growing family to live a life of generous hospitality . . . for God, of course. But first we needed the right house, didn’t we? A settled, rooted place out of which to live said big, holy-purposed life.
And, given what happened with my dad and his house dream, we needed our house sooner rather than later.
Are such dreams valid? Is God in our longings?
I was around nine when Dad became gripped with a longing to plant our family of five in an A-frame chalet among towering redwoods. His dream took on the cinnamon hue of those velvet-barked, subtly fragrant giants of coastal California. I’m sure he foresaw the curl of woodsmoke rising into blue skies, no need for privacy curtains, years of family meals around the table, and peace.
Sure, he and Mom would have to work more and harder to pay for the dream. More of his time spent away from us, commuting to the college in the next county where he added both summer and night classes to his teaching schedule. More of Mom’s time was spent working inside and outside the home while riding the bucking bronco of perimenopause.
Tension and tears reigned for several years, as my siblings and I saw less and less of Dad and more and more of Mom’s fragility.
But everything was going to be okay, right? Because now the property was being excavated. Now the foundation was being poured. And now, at last, the sweet scent of sawdust bespoke a promise, as a maze of framing rose into the forest canopy.
Would things have gone differently if we’d known how soon Dad would be gone? That, ultimately, three of the four years we lived together as a family in that redwood oasis would be spent under the tarry-black cloud of his lung cancer battle?
At first I didn’t notice the parallel between my father’s longing and mine — my obsession with house plans and vacant lots, or the way I spoke to my children of the free and simple Jesus-life, all while privately harboring the farmhouse-shaped craving that owned me.
And then, at last, my husband and I had it — our cream-colored dream house in the pines! Welcoming porch and spacious kitchen. Hardwood floors and river-rock fireplace. Jacuzzi tub and even a bidet.
The washboard road of faith lessons it took to get here was behind us. Except that, within the span of a year, ahead of us lay a cliff. A terrifying health crisis for our oldest. Job losses for both me and my husband. My mother’s death.
Now here I was, shedding tears in my beautiful bathtub, as wrung out and hormonal as Mom had once been.
We faced a choice — go big or go home. Going big meant fighting to maintain our new digs, contending for bright and shiny (read: demanding) jobs to replace those lost. But what, we’d begun to wonder, might it mean to go home?
Frederick Buechner wrote, as published in The Clown in the Belfry,
“If we only had eyes to see and ears to hear and wits to understand . . . we would know that the Kingdom of God is what we all of us hunger for above all other things even when we don’t know its name or realize that it’s what we’re starving to death for . . . The Kingdom of God is where we belong. It is home, and whether we realize it or not, I think we are all of us homesick for it.”
To “go home” might mean our family could downsize. We could come to a full stop, listen for direction. We could make room for serving Jesus in the ways that moved our hearts.
Never had we been as sure about anything as this: We’d sell our dream house. Laughter bubbled up — we were free!
“I have come home at last! . . . This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. . . . Come further up, come further in!” C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle
For years now, a quirky, old 1300 square-foot house has provided a home base for discovering what it means to venture further up and further in. For stepping into the most satisfying and meaningful assignments this side of our eventual heavenly home.
The right color for my longings, I’m learning, is the crisp white of a blank canvas. An empty-handed invitation: Lord, paint me into your Kingdom wherever and however you deem good and beautiful.
To “go home” is to surrender our narrow ideas of home. It’s to say, I don’t care what lies ahead, if only God will be there. It’s to recognize our longings as signposts, ever directing us home to more of Him.
I’m in the very presence of God—
oh, how refreshing it is!
I’ve made Lord God my home.
(Psalm 73:28 MSG)
June 18, 2024
When a Book Chooses You
I hear people say, “I’m a mood reader.” I say this myself!
I wonder if what we mean is that we gravitate toward books that speak to where we are at in the moment. And I wonder if much of this happens deep in our subconscious.
Maybe subconsciously we need to cultivate courage. So we pick up a WWII novel.
Or we feel unequal to life’s hard decisions so we’re drawn to a story with a confident, decisive heroine.
Wanting to approach our circumstances with a better sense of humor? We grab a rom-com.
Or maybe, desperate for hope for our own imperfect family, we read about how a far-from-perfect fictional family navigates trouble and heals.
And let’s not exclude the possibility that the Spirit points us to a certain kind of story in order to help prepare us for some bumping and bruising in the road ahead.
Being so entrenched in my first-world lifestyle, satiated with food and freedom aplenty, can leave my spirit surprisingly dry. But my heart is revived through reading a story that stirs my compassion, reminding me of what matters and bathing me in gratitude.
Most often, and without thinking about it, I’m drawn to books that reinforce the reality of hope. Because when God co-authors each of our individual stories, yours and mine, redemption is the ink in his pen—if we’re open to it.
Ever feel like a book chooses you?
I wonder if what we mean is that we gravitate toward books that speak to where we are at in the moment. And I wonder if much of this happens deep in our subconscious.
Maybe subconsciously we need to cultivate courage. So we pick up a WWII novel.
Or we feel unequal to life’s hard decisions so we’re drawn to a story with a confident, decisive heroine.
Wanting to approach our circumstances with a better sense of humor? We grab a rom-com.
Or maybe, desperate for hope for our own imperfect family, we read about how a far-from-perfect fictional family navigates trouble and heals.
And let’s not exclude the possibility that the Spirit points us to a certain kind of story in order to help prepare us for some bumping and bruising in the road ahead.
Being so entrenched in my first-world lifestyle, satiated with food and freedom aplenty, can leave my spirit surprisingly dry. But my heart is revived through reading a story that stirs my compassion, reminding me of what matters and bathing me in gratitude.
Most often, and without thinking about it, I’m drawn to books that reinforce the reality of hope. Because when God co-authors each of our individual stories, yours and mine, redemption is the ink in his pen—if we’re open to it.
Ever feel like a book chooses you?
