I was in elementary school when my sister and I were dropped at my pastor and his wife’s house for an impromptu slumber party. Conveniently, they had girls the same age as my parents girls. Not so conveniently, someone my dad had become friends with through his day job as a street lawyer (think John Grisham but the million dollar case never walks through the door) had been attacked and needed a place to crash for the night. I don’t remember if the attack was ever fully explained to me. Rape? Domestic Abuse? I remember seeing her face on my way out the door, and that was enough for me to know I was glad my parents were taking care of her.

My parent’s decision to structure our family around the calling of my dad to the streets of Toledo Ohio, meant that I was exposed to a lot of things far before my friend’s parents were talking about those things to them. Drug addiction, sexual abuse, homelessness, poverty. All of these things came up at the dinner table, as my mom asked my dad how his day was and he told her the things he helped people with that day. I asked a lot of questions and my parents never shied away from the truth. “Well, Abby our friend Carey doesn’t have a job because he has some mental problems, so that mean he can’t have a house and has to sleep in daddy’s office.”

Their decision to face things more or less head on, gave me and my sisters age appropriate language to talk about some pretty serious things. I am grateful for that language. I am grateful they didn’t sweep things under the rug. When my friends were struggling with the darkness in the world, asking where God was in all of it, I simply shrugged my shoulders. I knew where God was in all of that, I had watched my parents as they became the hands and feet of Jesus to the least of these.

The terrible things of this world need talked about. How else are we going to know how to stop them?

Lately, I have heard grumblings that young adult novels are simply too dark. I hear that, I do. So many young adult novels are about cutting, drug use, sexual abuse, death. Do we really want our teens reading such dark material?

I have the privilege of teaching teens what are considered some of the greatest books of all time. These books may not be about teens, but they are just as dark. The tenth grade curriculum alone leads to conversations about power by way of simulated rape (thanks a lot Lord of the Flies) to mercy killing (courtesy of Of Mice and Men). Then there are the few weeks when we talk of nothing but death (Tuesdays with Morrie you’re such a laugh). This is what I know for sure, not only are these books not too mature for 15 year olds, but they are talking about this stuff anyway. At least this way, it isn’t whispers in the dark. At least in my room, there is an adult that can serve as a guide through these complicated issues.

I read Elora Ramirez’s Every Shattered Thing in two nights. It is nothing short of gripping. It is a tale of a girl, Stephanie,  caught in sex trafficking through no fault of her own. Starting somewhere in the second chapter I started rooting for Stephanie, and had trouble putting the book down. It mattered to me, whether or not she would be okay. Every Shattered Thing is one of those, “don’t read unless you have time” kind of books. You have been warned.

I worry about the other warning this book is likely to come with, the one that says “this may not be suitable for your teen” or “it is simply too dark.” This is the warning that is likely to make me mad. Because, while Every Shattered Thing starts in a dark place, the story has a constant backlighting of hope. Hope. That is the truly remarkable thing about this book, the hope is the heaviest part.

It reminds me of the hope of my parents house. The way that darkness was not hidden from us, the way my parents trusted my sisters and I to be able to see the light in the darkness as they guided us carefully through this world. Elora does that with her audience, she does not shy away from the terrible. She instead believes they will be able to see the light, even in the darkest of places.

Sex trafficking is becoming an everyday conversation topic. It has come up in my classroom multiple times, and not because I brought it up. My students have heard whispers in the dark, read an article on the internet. They want to understand, to shed light on the subject. This book, Every Shattered Thing, it helps people understand. I know there will be parents who insist that the material is too mature for their teens. I hope they think again. Hope is heavy, and teens are so very strong in the holding.

*Full Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book to review.

I am a person easily swayed by novelty. I think this is one of the reasons I get along with Freshmen so well. We will both try anything once. Cartoons, puppets, candy thrown into the crowd, tweeting as Romeo, singing Taylor Swift. My department head has learned to brace himself a little when he walks into my room and trust that I have the pedagogical chops to back up whatever fun I am trying to have in there, that learning is really taking place. (Have I mentioned lately how grateful I am for bosses that trust me?) Planning my first few months of instruction is like going through the mall on someone else’s credit card. Let’s try this! How about that!

The beginning of summer is like that too. Perhaps this is why teaching suits me, everything is perpetually new. New school year! Christmas Break! New semester! Summer! Those first weeks of summer are always the best. When I feel like there is something new to be done every single day. Go to the park! Sonic happy hour! The pool! The Sprinkler! Out for Ice cream! How exciting. Always exciting.

Until of course, the novelty wears off. Like a cheap ring out of a quarter machine, that shiny patina of new and exciting lasts sometimes only moments. I teach 5 classes a day. By the end of the day it is no longer new to me. And did you know that summer goes on for twelve weeks! TWELVE WEEKS! In between ice cream and slides there are things like diaper changes, laundry, feeding the children who are hungry at least three times a day, breaking up fights over a cheap piece of plastic the other girl didn’t even want until the first one picked it up.

I call it the grind, the inevitable moment when the shiny newness wears off, and I sludge through the day thinking, “we’re doing this again?” Because as hard as I try, it isn’t always fun. Jonathan Martin, in his book Prototype, calls it obscurity. The space where you are hidden from the world, away from display, the seasons in your life when it is just you and God. He uses the example of King David, not yet king, sitting in the fields tending sheep. On my Sunday school felt board little boy David was always portrayed as perfectly clean, resting quietly by a tree, playing the lyre and loving on the sheep. He seems happy, and rested, like every day was some sort of country vacation.

Sheep tending, from my understanding, doesn’t work like the felt boards. It smells bad, you get dirty, it is heavy lifting and gross bodily fluids. And it is boring, the same thing every single day with same sheep who make the same stupid mistakes. They need fed, they need water, they need their wounds tended from going through the same thorn bushes and re-opening the same wounds every single day for weeks on end. It is boring, it is exhausting, but that is where God met David.

And increasingly, I am realizing that God meets me there too, in the grind. In the grind of the paper grading, the diaper changing, the pajamas and bed time every single night. In the mopping up milk from the spilled cereal for the third time in one morning. In the grind of my commute, in the grind of showing up to write every morning at 5:30. Sometimes, even the things I love aren’t fun. They just need to be done, and well. The grind is more important than I realized.

You always think this big God of ours is going to show up in a big way, at a big time. Why should God do anything in secret when He could miraculously change us in some showy public miracle? Until very recently there was a piece of my heart that was still waiting for that miracle everyone would witness.

I spent this weekend with my extended family, remembering my grandmother and my grandfather who passed away earlier this year. We keep talking about the little things, that are actually big things. The cooking, the sewing, the cleaning, the showing up to the baseball games and dance recitals, the school plays that were twelve hours away. We  don’t really talk about the public accolades they received (and there were many). That pales in comparison to the years they served homeless people at the open door, or the fact that they served meals on wheels well past their eightieth birthdays.

The grind. I used to hate it, to run from it, to complain loudly that it was boring and when was God going to show up and do something already. But the grind is the space where God meets me, shapes me, shows up every day and asks for me to join Him in his work. The grind is the touch of the potter’s hand. I have seen the way it shaped my grandparents. I am learning to lean into the grind. I am learning to embrace it. I am understanding that our God is big enough to reach us in obscurity, to hold our hand every moment of the grind.

What an Amazing God I serve, that He would care even about this. Hallelujah.

Kelley Nikondeha is a truly incredible lady who just happens to have a book club. Transit lounge (#transilounge on twitter) read Prototype this month. I highly recommend everything that was mentioned in those last two sentences. 

Today I am guest posting for Esther Emery. I cannot express how much I adore having her in my life. She is asking all the hard questions, and speaking light into darkness, and being generally amazing and prophetic every day of her life. We are partners in our writing class, and you need to be totally jealous of me because I get a glimpse of the early version of her book and it is stunning. I would be completely jealous of her talent, but we are on the same team! So instead I just root for her like a maniac.

I am a feminist who is a member of a Southern Baptist church, in the buckle of the Bible belt. I have big feelings about submission. Put me in a pew, the preacher mentions submission and I start checking for the exits. My ears listen to every syllable as the heat rises in my neck and my skin itches. If the wi-fi works I start scrolling through my twitter feed. What box are they going to shove me into today? Please, just make it stop. Why is it that the wives submit part gets preached far more often than the submit to each other part? Those two passages are on the same page, just inches from each other.

Maybe it is because the wives part is easier; it is more controlled and containable. If the husbands say and the wives submit, then the traffic only runs one way, and no one runs into each other. If we are all submitting one to the other who knows when to stop and to go? How do we manage that? Won’t we all be stepping on each other’s toes all the time as we both go and then halt and then go and then brake like a bunch of newly licensed teens at a four-way stop? If everyone is submitting one to another, surely no one will get anywhere. An accident is guaranteed. One way traffic means far fewer accidents.

Read the rest here. And then poke around a little bit. You will not be dissapointed.

My husband and I have worked out an unofficial system when it comes to getting a hold of me when he has our children at home to be in charge of and I have my students at school to boss around. If  he rings once, I can get to it when conventient. Twice means it needs to take priority. Three times is an emergency.

Today on my way out the door I dug the phone out of my bag for the second set of rings. I am glad I did. My husband was the one who told me that the school shooting that made national news was close enough to our house to re-route the traffic down our street. The school shooting that happened today doesn’t just strike close to home because I work at a school and believe so fully in public education. This one struck close to home because it is literally our home school. McNair Elementary school is our school. It is the school we are zoned for and are seriously considering sending our girls to.

I can’t quite wrap my brain around it. Someone walked into my neighborhood school weilding an AK47. Not a school, my school, my neighbors school. The school where the girl next door goes. The little girl who leaves homemade bracelets on our front step for my daughters and asks often if Juliet can come out and play. The school that our Bible study volunteers at, that is the school that is on the national news. Someone brought a gun into the school of the teacher who emailed me two days ago about the possibility of having some art packets pre-cut for her kindergarten classroom. McNair is the school we are talking about. A school that I belong to.

Is nothing sacred anymore? Is not even the place where a 5 year old sits on a rug to reads stories considered off limits to the violence? How do I send my girls to a school where a man with an AK47 once showed up? How do I show up tomorrow and teach the elements of short fiction with my door unlocked, or God forbid, open? How does anyone?

I don’t know. I don’t have the answers to any of those questions. I only have what my heart is screaming. Please don’t let one crazy gunmen mar the reputation of a school that is fighting systemic poverty and winning every single day.

McNair Early Learning Academy is a school that fights the good fight every single day. Those teachers are making water from rocks, just look at the way they handled the emergency and got every single student to safety. They didn’t sign up for a gunmen, or escorting their kids through backyards as they made sure everyone stayed calm and alive. They didn’t sign up for the stress and the triggers they will fight for the rest of the year. But they will show up tomorrow and the next day, because they are teachers, and that is what is best for their kids.

It feels so dark today, with the gunmen from my neighborhood invading my neighborhood school. I knew it was dark when far worse tragedies happened, and I felt the darkness there for a time. But somehow this, for me, is different. Maybe it is selfish, suddenly caring about tragedies that happen in my own backyard. Maybe it is normal. I don’t know. I only know how I feel, even if I shouldn’t feel that way.Maybe this is just my burden to bare.

I have a poster in my classroom, Martin Luther King is the anchor of my freedom fighters wall. It has on the bottom my most favorite MLK quote “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” I want so desperately to poke a whole in this darkness, to fill it with even just a pin prick of light. I can’t help but think of the teachers, or the year they now face, of the fear they will have to swallow as they fight that same fear in their kids. I want to love them, I want to paint them in light.

I’m headed to Dunkin’ Donuts tomorrow (Wednesday is donut day for this carpool) I am going to buy a gift card, just to drop off to the teacher we already know, just to let her know I am praying for her, that I love her and what she does with her students. I am well aware that five dollars isn’t much, but it is all I know how to do right now. It is the only hole I can poke in this darkness.

If you would like to join me in loving on these amazing teachers feel free to email me or go to the school website and pick a teacher to send a thank you note to maybe even a gift card to an office supply store or coffee shop. 

My Grandma France passed away almost two weeks ago. I am still solidly in the denial phase of grieving. It is simply currently unbelievable that someone with that much life in her lungs could suddenly be “no longer with us.” I don’t really understand. When people tell me they are so sorry for my loss, I don’t know how to recieve those words.

I do know that she really wanted to go. I know it was time. She spent all of June in her hometown with her sisters, and July and the beginning of August hosting family at the lake that so clearly represented heaven to her. She handed all of her grandaughters the piece of jewlery that would be theirs when she was gone the day before I got on a plane to return home. She wanted to do it now so there would be no hurt feelings. She didn’t want stuff to get in the way of our relationships with each other.

I know in my head that this is for the best and yet…I have no grandmothers left. How in the world are you supposed to function in this world without grandmothers?

As I have been searching for ways to mourn I find my hands busy. If you knew her, I do not have to tell you how fitting this is. My grandmother, of the homemade christmas presents for all 30+ family members, of the baby quilts for all great-grandchildren, of the 100+ stolen to sell at the yankee peddler fair, of the wash the sink at 4 am because I woke up and it needs done, of the cookie porch. She took her sewing and knitting down the hill to the beach every time she went, just so she could get just a little bit more done. I keep picturing her in the pontoon boat, stuffing the arms of the raggedy anne and andy dolls she was making for the youngest generation.

When people talk of youthful excuberence, of child like wonder, I picture my grandmother. I think it was one of the things that made her so amazing as a grandma. She remembered what it was like to be a child. She felt your pain. When the dessert ran out before you could get upstairs and there was no icecream left in the freezer, she would stick her bottom lip out with you because she was genuinely sad, it was a tragedy of sorts. She understood.

I was 14 when she mentioned that she had planned on buying a  wake board. I had used my friend’s earlier in the summer and I really, really wanted to be able to wake board rather than ski behind the boat. I was desperately afraid that the time we had at the lake would run out, and it would not be there yet. Please, could we get it now? She could have scolded me, after all I should certainly be grateful for the lake houses, the boat, the skis, the knee board, the tube. She could have told me it was not that important. I think she made a special trip to the marina just to get me it. She had that red  wake board the next day at dinner. She saw how much I wanted it; it became important to her too.

I feel so blessed to be one of her grandkids, to have experienced the abundant love she poured out onto all of her grands. My cousin remarked, and it is true, “everyone knew that Grandma played favorites, if you were with her you were the favorite.”All 17 of her grandchildren felt distinctly favored by her. We all were special, each one was favored.

As my cousins and I have been sharing memories on Facebook for my sister Emily, the oldest granddaughter, to weave into a eulogy, more often that not the tears running down my face have been coming from laughing so hard. Grandma loved to laugh, and loved to make us laugh. She was pretty famous for her lead foot, and would coast down the hill as she covertly switched the digital speedometer to kilometers so the grandkids would scream that they were going 150 miles per hour. Once, when a few of us stayed home from skiing, she dared us to run around in the snow on the porch, and joined us in the crazy behavior. If it sounded like fun, Grandma was in, and she certainly hoped you would join her.

Grandma wanted everyone to join her all the time. When I broke the news to Grandma that it was too difficult for my family to head to the lake for Christmas she used it as a bartering chip to get me to spend two weeks out there in the summer. She was absolutely happiest at the lake, surrounded by her family. All of them, as often as possible. That was heaven for her.

My sisters and I are singing the hymn, Lord, You have come to the Lakeshore for the memorial service this weekend. And it is remarkably easy to picture her, at the eternal lakeshore surrounded by the ones who came before her, waiting patiently for the rest of us to arrive.

In the four and a half years that I was a college student majoring in secondary education, I knew everything there was to know about education. I knew how I would run my classroom. I knew how to meet the needs of all my future students. I knew how to motivate kids. If there was a question posed about poverty and race and how it affects education I knew how to solve that problem. I knew how to fix it. I knew how to change the world.
I was passionate about my chosen profession. I believed what I had been promised, that if I only worked hard enough, dreamed big enough, wanted it bad enough, then I could be the kind of teacher they made movies about. I already had the answers, of that I was sure. I just needed a classroom to implement these brilliant ideas in. After that, Oprah would call. She always wants to interview the country’s best teachers.
The first inkling I had no idea what I was doing was the first day in my real classroom. I didn’t even know how to pronounce most of the kids’ names. I didn’t know how to fit enough desks into my classroom. I didn’t even know where to get enough desks. I struggled with relating ancient texts to the lives of my students. I remembered saying in a college class, “you have to show the kids why it matters to them, otherwise they won’t read the book.” Somehow, it had never occurred to me to ask how you were supposed to show them it mattered.

Today was my first day of my seventh year of teaching. I am claiming it as my year of Jubilee.  I have taught in three different schools with three very different student populations. In all of the knowledge I have gained, I know far less than I used to. But now, I ask better questions.

When my students disengage and their grades start tanking, I have learned to look a kid straight in the face and ask him, “Is everything okay?” When a student refuses to email me the assignment I know they are capable of, I have learned to ask them if they have internet access at home. I have learned to ask “What happened today? Who said angry things to you?” when a student lashes out uncharacteristically. I have learned the hard way that it is almost never about me.
It is the questions with the hardest answers that I am just now learning to voice. How can we support students who have no support at home? How can we create schools where success is expected, and success is accepted in a neighborhood where everything else is falling apart? I don’t have answers for these questions. I hope someday I will. Asking questions with seemingly impossible answers is so much harder than having the answers. Some days all it does is lead to even harder questions. How can we support a community? How can we change a neighborhood culture? How can we stop the bleeding out that poverty causes?

The answer to these questions is terrifying; the answer is, “I don’t know.” But I am learning to lean in to the not knowing. Not knowing forces me to listen better than I ever have before. It forces me to stop, to look, to really see what is in front of me. People who have the answers don’t really need anyone else.

It is scary to speak questions you don’t know the answer to. I avoided doing it for as long as I could. But if someone doesn’t ask the questions, how will we even know an answer is needed?

I am getting up earlier and earlier. I have been art journaling and working on contemplative prayer as a component of the writing class I am taking. I signed up for a writing class that started the same week I started school. I would tell you how I feel about that, but I am simply too tired.

This is a little crazy, this chasing my dreams. When I speak it out loud, it doesn’t sound any less nuts. I have two kids and a marriage to keep up with. I have a job I am good at, and most days really love. I think my work is important and it pays the bills. And yet there is this calling. This voice in the distance asking me to venture out, off the well trod path.

Who do I think I am? Why do I think this art I am making is important? Is anyone listening? Why bother. The questions can sometimes call so much louder than the voice. But when my heart is at rest, still it calls. And I suppose that is why I am doing this. The quiet in the morning helps me hear the voice. I can hear myself moving closer.

So, yes my schedule is a little crazy, and attempting to edit my way through a book during the first 12 weeks of school is a little nuts. But the voice is calling, I can hear it. So it is a little crazy, so what.

The comments started as soon as I started taking her out, which was about two days after I had taken her home. She is so tiny, she is so long, she is so skinny. And she was, all of those things. Her spindly little legs tucked tightly into the sling I wore and I caller her peanut in response to the label on the sling that held her snug against my chest: peanut shell.

Six months later just as many comments, this time in the opposite vein: look at that fat baby, look at those chubby thighs, somebody doesn’t miss a meal. Those chubby thighs had been pretty hard-earned by the both of us. Proof that God was faithful in all the early feeding problems that made me so desperate.

The comments have come back recently, regarding the way my daughter looks. Just three-years-old her hair spills down her back. The hair I worried would never grow has now formed into curls so perfect people want to know if I styled them that way. The sun has painted my daughter’s hair in to a gorgeous rainbow of strawberry-blonde, auburn, and truly red. I can only imagine how much money has been spent by women trying to gain the exact shade of my daughter’s hair.

I pull her hair into a fake bun. The kind where you pull the ponytail through the rubber band not-quite-two-times and it sits on the top of her head and the ends poke out in a set of gorgeous curls that make it look like it was all on purpose.

She is wearing a red dress with tiny white polka-dots all over it. She got to the closet before I could shut it and grabbed the hand-me-down, “This one!” She would not be deterred. This dress is cut in a halter-top, that single strap around her neck makes me nervous. It just looks so grown up. She will not hear that the dress is too big, so I pin the strap behind her neck to make everything sit right.

With the top knot, and the red halter dress I am a few mascara swipes away from Toddlers and Tiaras. It catches me off guard, and it terrifies me. My daughter could grow up to be remarkably beautiful.

Remarkably beautiful, as in, people are likely to have a remark about her beauty, to continue remarking about her body. And I am afraid of how she will handle it. I am certainly afraid of having to handle it myself. I have seen too many women, succumb to the power of what the world had to say about the way that they look.

I have seen women eaten alive by their own beauty. The constant compliments giving way to the expectation of constant compliments. The remarking leading to an understanding that if they were not remarked about they were not worthy of the space they took up, the air they breathed. I don’t want that to happen to my girl. There is just so much life in those lungs. So much more fire than the fire that can be pulled onto the top of her head.

I have seen women chased by their own beauty. Their desire to remain un-remarked on sending them into clothes that are too big, hair that hangs in front of their chiseled face, shoulders caving in on a near-perfect body. I have seen the way they learned that all that attention was somehow their fault, when no one actually taught them that. I don’t want that to happen to my girl either. I don’t want her to hide any of herself. She is simply too exquisite.

All of her is wonderful, but not because it pleases other. She is fearfully and wonderfully made. Of course my daughter is beautiful. May she grow up to rest in that beauty, to identify the beauty in others, to love her locks and be willing to shave them all off on a whim (even when that would make her mother cry). May she know that she is beautiful regardless of remarks. May she continually call out the beauty of this world.

The Greeks. I suppose we owe a lot to them, the democracy and all. At least that is what I learned in High school. And now, I am teaching High School and the ancient Greeks as we run through Oedipus or read Antigone, you can’t really understand a piece of literature if you don’t understand the culture (where is the Sunday School unit that teaches that?).

So we talk about the gods, and the way the Greeks interacted with their gods, and I lead the class in shaking my head and poking fun at the silly Greeks and their silly beliefs about Mt. Olympus and its inhabitants. Those crazy Greeks with their crazy ideas about getting and avoiding the attention of the gods, how could anyone believe that? What an antiquated idea!

But the more I teach about Zeus the more I learn about Zeus, and the more I learn about Zeus the more I find him in my heart. As the democracy and literacy were passed down, so were the ideas about who God is.

I always think of theology as something I am not very interested in. I associate theological discussion with naming names and pointing fingers, drawing lines so it is clear who is in and who is out, letting people know that they don’t belong at the table. At its worst I have seen theological discussion boiled down to telling people that they aren’t even Christians. I get physically fidgety when someone wants to talk theology.

While I claim to hate theology, I am desperate to know God. And isn’t that what theology is all about, knowing the ways of my God? In the past I have been afraid that wrong theology will put me at the wrong table in the proverbial religious cafeteria. But I am starting to understand that my theology, what is in my head, has so very much to do with the way my heart responds to my God.

And all to often, it is Zeus in my heart. When I find myself asking God what else He wants me to do, what other hoops He wants me to jump through before He will hear my cries. That isn’t God I am thinking of. When I think I can somehow fly under the radar, that if I don’t draw attention to myself then God won’t notice, that is Zeus in my heart. When I think that God is withholding good things until I finish some near impossible quest, when I am afraid God will change His mind about promises, that isn’t God I am thinking of at all, that is Zeus in my heart.

It is Zeus that forgets and ignores, who is far away. God is with us, and doesn’t withhold good things. When I think that God will punish me with a flat tire, a broken washing machine, a lightning bolt, it is Zeus I am mistaking for my God.

Zeus is fallible. God is love. Perhaps I am more interested in theology than I thought.