It is that time again! September has flown by. Priscilla is officially two and knows it. Yesterday she took the big bowl of popcorn off the table and growled at Juliet and me every time we put our hands in the bowl.  We had an appropriate sized birthday party with a home made cake and two families for guests. She cried when we sang her happy birthday because she likes her sister to be the center of attention, and her the trusty side-kick. Then she opened her tea set from Grandma and got mad I made her share it. She didn’t want to open any other presents. After much persuading she opened her drum. We had a parade. I cannot believe that it is about to be October, MY BIRTHDAY MONTH! Specifically, thirtieth birthday month!

Here is what I was into in September

Revolution Doughnuts: Christian and I have made a deal where we take turns waking up with the girls on Saturday. Every other one, even-steven. Sometimes, it is my turn to get up I would really rather stab myself in the eye. I am t-i-r-e-d. On those days we go to Revolution Doughnuts and then my world is happy again. The live music, the little toy kitchen the kids like to play in, the not even being upset when my kid pees on the floor. It is parental heaven and  the doughnuts are the best I have ever had. Holy-moly, these doughnuts y’all. I started with the spotted-trotter, a yeast doughnut with a caramel frosting like the one my mom used to make and call penuche, topped with bacon sprinkles. Bacon Sprinkles. I didn’t think it could possibly get better from there. Then I had the crunchy mister. Lord. Have. Mercy. It is like the best breakfast sandwich you could ever imagine. I literally started drooling when I typed that out. And one morning Rilla woke her sister and I up at like 7 am, so I got there in time for a cronut. Cronuts are doughnuts made from croissant dough. Yes. It is as good as you are imagining. Their fall flavors are out, pumpkin cake doughnut, neutella cream puffs, lemon curd filled, y-e-e-e-e-e-s-s-s-s.

Grey’s Anatomy: I think I am going to try to stay current with this season, because I just watched the last season in about two weeks. My first year of teaching, (the one the manuscript is about) I would binge watch this season from DVD’s I rented from Blockbuster and episodes on ABC.com. And I would cry, for Meredith, and Izzy, and my students, and myself. I cannot explain how closely these things are linked to me emotionally. But it has been helpful to be watching the show again as I edit.

Fit for Lit: I ran (well about half ran) the Fit for Lit 5k which benefits the Literacy Alliance of Metro Atlanta. Y’all, people need to be able to read, like for real. You would be amazed at the sheer number of people who can’t and how hard life is when you can’t read. Anyway, the race benefitted that. It wasn’t too hilly. There were story book characters all around cheering us on. I got this awesome shirt that I wore to school that says “I put the RACY in LITERACY.” Then I found out my kids didn’t know what the word racy meant….and I felt old.

Ria’s Bluebird Cafe– After the race we had brunch at Ria’s and it was amazing. The nuetella stuffed french toast, the breakfast burrito, the eggs benedict with crab and steak. Everything that came to our table was so, so amazing. And the place is adorable, and eating outside by the fountain under the awning, it was just perfect. What we didn’t have were the pancakes, which the New York Times has named the best pancakes in the world. I will for sure be returning.

Music Together: My sister Emily is a music therapist. She does these amazing family music classes by a company called Music Together. So we get the CD’s for birthdays and such. I don’t mind them and the girls love them. Specifically, there is a song called Who’s Gonna Pick You Up, about how you stay different places but mommy and daddy and grandma and grandpa come back and it is okay and they love you. There is a part that says “sometimes you miss them” that Juliet always miss sings “sometimes you hit them.”  I would correct her, but I am too busy laughing.

The Jesus Story Book Bible (Still)- Sometimes Christian reads the stories to the girls and I hear him in the other room, and I cry because YES that story DOES point to Jesus. You need this kids Bible, even if you have no kids. I have it on my Kindle for me.

Story Sessions 201– We are two-thirds of the way done and I absolutely would not have been able to edit without these ladies. I don’t know that Elora is going to have another section of 101 (which I also took) until January. But the online community is ten dollars a month. I am in it and it is worth every penny. If you want to just test the waters she has a retreat coming up. There are no words for how grateful I am that this community exists and I am in it. If you sign up for any of that, tell her I sent you!

October Preview- I turn thirty this month, and I have managed to jam pack the month totally full. I am going to have the first ever France girl weekend with my mom and my two sisters. We are meeting half way in Corbin Kentucky in a little cabin in a state park. I could not be more excited if we were meeting at an all-inclusive resort in the Bahamas. A weekend with my sisters and my mom! Happy Birthday! Then I am coming home and my in-laws are going to come visit and Connie will clean my microwave and I will not have to cook for myself all week, and she will encourage me to go to bed early because I work hard and am tired (Yeah, I DO have the greatest MIL ever) and the day they leave my friend Alison is coming to visit! And we are going to laugh until we pee our pants and eat all the things.

The next weekend is my actual birthday. Friday I am co-hosting a party with my friend Brooke for 26 miles for 26 girls. Erin-Leigh is guest posting this week to tell you all about her amazing mission. I wrote about her first marathon here. But the girls need a second year of school, so Erin-Leigh is running a second marathon. Then on Saturday I have my last 201 call, my manuscript edits are due to myself, and I am getting my tattoo. Holy Crap. Thirty is going to be a big year y’all. I can feel it.

Then there is Halloween and I already let the girls run around the house in their costumes. They are going to be a cupcake and an ice cream cone and it is so hilarious and cute I just giggle when I see them in their little hats. We are going to ALL the festival things, because I want everyone to see them in their costumes. But just typing all this out makes me exhausted! I think it will be worth it. I guess we will both find out next month.

On the Blog- The Post To the Teachers Already Tired blew up, totally blew up in a way I was not expecting. But it made me realize that I am not the only one. We are tired y’all. The most amazing thing happened this month out of that though. I started asking my story session sisters to pray for me and my students. And they have, and I can totally tell. So, pray for a teacher, email them and tell them that you did. Ask if you can pray for the student who is the hardest to deal with every day. It matters so much.

Also, sometimes people drop prayer requests in my box and I am so very honored to pray for my readers. Please feel free to do that.

As always every month, I am linking with Leigh Kramer. It is the funnest link up ever! If you do it, let me know. I want to know what you are into too.

Teaching is an act of faith. I have to remind myself of this almost daily.

Teaching is an act of faith.

I am not responsible for this particular pearl of wisdom. My work wife said it from a stage a few weeks back when she was participating in a panel all about her new book. She said that teaching is an act of faith, that every classroom is a tiny church, and every teacher preaches what they know and believe from behind the desk or table, or spray painted podium and hope that it sticks to their congragation of students. It struck me as deeply true. She couldn’t make eye contact with me while she said it. We talk about teaching and faith and church a lot in our 2 hour daily commute. Maybe my CRV is a tiny church two.

Teaching is an act of faith.

I’ve been asking God a lot of questions. A lot of questions about direction and the future. I’ve been wondering a lot about what my next step is. I don’t always hear clearly from God. But this time I did. “Come sit by the fire that warms your soul.” I still don’t know about my futre or direction, or next step. But I know that teaching still warms my soul.

Teaching is an act of faith.

Sometimes we never see the fruit of the seeds we’ve planted inside a kid. Sometimes we don’t even know what constitutes as seeds. I got an email from a mom the other day. Her son told her I was hilarious (which makes that pretty much the best day of my life). He has never once even cracked a smile in my class, but my wacky brand of crazy makes the kid feel safe. Who knew?

Teaching is an act of faith.

A kid raised his hand in my class last week. A kid in my class that I have known for two years. A kid who is notorious for disengagement. He raised his hand in my class and answered a question correctly. A hard question. About Shakespeare. Then he responded to the follow up. There were over 200 days of me smiling, saying his name, asking him to respond and getting nothing but a blank stare. I wasn’t even sure he knew my name. He raised his hand. 

Teaching is an act of faith.

What we do is sacred. Not all of it. Probably not the attendance everyday (but maybe, don’t we all like to know that someone noticed we weren’t their?). Surely not the part where you teach them how to bubble the dumb scantrons. But every day, we make ourselves known to our students; we seek to know our students. We teach. We throw our seeds all over the room and hope that some of them find fertile soil, that some of them grow despite the rocky ground. But it is so hard to tell what is taking root. Sometimes, we can’t even tell what are seeds. Sometimes a wind comes and blows the seeds who know where and a random rasberry bush many years later in the mind of a child who was never even in our room.

Because teaching is an act of faith.

We had an intruder drill last week. It shook me to the core. I can no longer pretend that people with guns only show up at schools very far away.  We tried to pretend that everything was normal, my students and I, while we locked ourselves in my classroom and ignored the banging on the door. We are now hosting drills for when someone comes to violate the trust of the classroom. We are preparing for a gunmen in the school, and we all continue to show up anyway.

Teaching is an act of faith.

I think of the sacrements. Holy communion, baptism, marriage. All are outward manifestations of things happening deeply inside. And all are more than simple representations of something happening deeply inside. Those sacrements participate in the things they represent. I don’t mean to sound egotistical or unneccesarily holy. But I am beginning to think of my classroom just a little sacramentally. Like maybe I will never know exactly what happens in my classroom. Maybe I don’t need to know. Maybe the mystery is the sacred part.

Teaching is an act of faith.

There is a story that my dad tells just the way my grandmother used to tell it. It is the story of a story that my great-grandfather Burgess used to tell.

Grandpa Burgess was a child, riding into town on the wagon. They needed some things in order to finish the harvest. I’m not sure what. That part is never told. The part that is told is the part where my great-grandfather’s wagon passed a family, sitting on their front porch in their Sunday best. In their Sunday best on a Saturday.

The wagon stopped and the inquiries were made. The people in their Sunday best on a Saturday were waiting for Jesus to return. They were sure it would be that day. They were waiting on the Lord.

The story goes that my great-grandfather, still a boy looked at his father, my great-great-grandfather asking what they were going to do about this new information. Well, came the reply, we are going home to plow the field. Jesus will just have to find us working.

There was a bumper sticker that was popular, when I was in High school. It said “Look busy, Jesus is coming.” And it bugged me. It didn’t bug me because it mocked the idea that Jesus was coming. It bothered me because, Jesus is coming” should be the reason that the church is actually busy. And not the reason we should be looking busy.

I went to a wedding today. It is hard to put into words how sweet today was. The beautiful couple met at a sacred harp singing, and thus all music was preformed shape note style. The bride walked into the hall, glowing and singing. She walked in singing. I am usually overwhelmed by the look in the groom’s eye, by the rush of romance in the air, the joy. And there was for sure all of that. But this time, the bride came in singing.

It made me think of the bride of Christ. I hope He finds us singing. I hope He finds us actually busy. I hope He finds his Bride, working in the fields.

Dear Sweet Priscilla,

At about the time I knew your name, I knew in my heart what the Lord spoke over you. “This baby brings change.” This one brings change. And you did. And you will. You, my sweet girl, bring change.

I’ve been told that an easy baby, often turns into a challenging toddler. You were an exceptionally easy baby. You are a delightfully tricky toddler. There is no battle you are unwilling to fight. No “no” you will not rage against. And boy are you good at that. Time out doesn’t work unless I carry you all the way to your room, and you can hold a grudge better than any two-year-old I’ve run into. Last time I picked you up from the baby sitter, you were refusing to make eye contact with her. She dared to make you put away the toys.

I’m not going to lie. The little change maker you are isn’t the easiest personality to parent. I know to choose my battles wisely. There aren’t any you won’t fight, and a lot of things you see as completely unfair. I love this about you, even as I am fighting this in you, I love this about you.

I don’t want to kill the urge in you to rage against the things that aren’t fair. I want to refine your sense of justice, so you don’t waste any of that tiny fight on the things that don’t matter. So you can be a force that changes the whole world. I am not going to be perfect at this. You are going to have to be a little patient with me.

It is no surprise that you came so close after your sister. You are her smaller, hilarious shadow. It is only in the past week that you have decided your name is Priscilla. Earlier in the year you were telling everyone that you were Juliet. Now you announce your name un-prompted every fifteen minutes or so. “I Rilla, I PRISCILLA!” I am so glad you know who you are.

You have your dad and I in giggle fits pretty regularly. There is no situation you can’t find the humor in. No time your dimples aren’t likely to peak out as you give notice you are about to have a good time. You are the life of the party my girl, even when it is just a party of one.

Your arrival was a bit of a surprise, and you continue to surprise me. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

I love you.

Mom

It is the middle of September and you are already tired. It is scary isn’t it? This tired feeling so early in the school year. If this is what September feels like, how will we ever make it to Thanksgiving? How will we ever survive until May? There is just so much to do. So many new programs to learn, new formats to master, new IEPs and 504 Plans and accommodations to keep track of. It isn’t that you don’t want to do all of things, it is just. There are all of the things. All of the things all of the time, and every year it seems as though there is a new system in place. It will get easier, they say. Once you get used to it. You would like two years with the same program and the chance to get used to it all.

In the midst of all of this you have names, personalities, and needs to learn whether written down officially or just recently discovered. It is all you can do to keep it all straight. You remember what it was like to be sure that you could save kids one desk at a time, one lesson at a time. You remember, vaguely why you took this job. You remember the teachers who made school great for you. You still hope to be that for some of your students. You still hope you can make a difference; you just wonder if there is time to make that difference when you are so busy making lesson plans, and making sure your instruction is data driven.

You wonder if doing all the right things is really what it takes to do right by your kids. You’re tired, and you feel a little bad about that. You don’t want your students to have a teacher who is tired. You want them to have the best.

I know it is hard right now. But please remember, what you do matters. Desperately, you matter. I don’t want that to be one more thing that exhausts you. One more reason you do too much. Just showing up matters. You are doing a good thing.

Education is the quickest way out of poverty. It is still the best way to get a leg up in this world. 75% of prisoners don’t have a highschool education. The more success a kid can have from kindergarten all the way through high school, the more likely they are to avoid jail. I need you to remember that, you keep kids out of jail. Wanting to be there, showing up coffee in hand and a little low on sleep is making a huge difference in the world. You matter.

I know your classes are maxed out in a way they have never been before (and three years ago wasn’t even legal). I know the curriculum gets pulled out from under you just when you are able to stand on it without wobbling. I know that the paperwork is enough to drown in. I know. But I also know you matter. What you do is important. It saves kids from going to jail. I just want to make sure you know you make a difference.

Because I am a lucky, lucky girl I got to read Addie Zierman’s forth coming book. I finished it in two days (a serious deal when you have kids as young as mine) and then drove it over to my friend’s house because YOU NEED TO READ THIS RIGHT NOW! It is hard not to be jealous of Addie’s writing chops. Luckily she is super likable and maybe one day I will get to have a drink with her on one of our back porches as her two boys and my two girls run crazy in the backyard. I am very flattered to be featured on her blog today.

At the end of every shopping trip, after I have checked my list and made sure I didn’t forget anything, andbefore I see if our favorite cashier is working, I look in my cart to see what I can put back.

I’ve never gotten through the process without humbling wheeling my buggy down a previously walked aisle and carefully placing whatever it is back where I found it. I worked retail too many years to just abandon things all over the store, however tempting it may be.

I’m not sure when I started putting things back. Maybe it was when my husband and I started actively tracking our purchases and I discovered I was spending a few hundred bucks every month on things that were “just ten dollars.”

I love this one. Won’t you join me in the comments over at Addies?

The moon was waning last week. I don’t know that I ever notice stuff like that. But last week on Sunday, I noticed. The moon was waning. And I needed to rest. Even the moon was shouting from the skies that it was time for me to slow down, to pack it up, to rest.

I am admittedly terrible at resting. I over book myself, squeeze one more thing in, keep my kids out too late. All in the name of “it will be fun!” All in the name of “someone needs to do it.” It is part of my charm. (Just ask my husband. He looooves this about me.)

We were finishing up Bible study, taking prayer requests. I had read aloud what I had jotted down in my journal maybe ten minutes earlier. We were talking about what was and wasn’t the gospel. We were talking about the gospel, what it is, what it isn’t. Sometimes I grow so tired of talking about theology. I said I was most interested of the theology of ones hands, what we do with our hands tells a lot about what we believe in our hearts, despite what we comes out of our mouths.

Sometimes it takes a surprisingly short amount of time for my own words to bite me in my own butt. I was asking for prayers for me finding time to do everything when my Bible study interrupted me. “Aren’t you supposed to be resting?” My weak defense of my desires over what I know I need to do was interrupted again. “What are your hands saying Abby, what about the theology of your hands?”

It is strange to think of rest as a radical act. To not do anything when there are things to be done, to trust that your needs will be met even if you aren’t the one meeting all of them, to simply rest in the Father’s hands. It is a radical thing to admit with our hands that we can’t be and do everything, that we need or want. It is a radical thing to rest.

I don’t know why I thought the one about the sabbath was the one of the ten commandments I could completely disregard. The sabbath is becoming the holiest thing I do. Not cooking dinner, having no plans, just hanging out. It is necessary. It is rest. And frankly, it is foreign to me. I don’t know how to do this not doing much thing. It scares me somewhere deep I haven’t quite figured out yet.

Rest is the giant antidote, for the lie of scarcity I have whole heartedly swallowed. There is never enough time! But rest says there is. It says there is less stuff that is important, there is less need and more should. It says some of the shoulds are kind of stupid. It says, if the yoke isn’t light it doesn’t belong to Jesus. Rest says I don’t have to be and do everything. Rest is about the theology of my hands, the fear in my heart, the trusting in a big and merciful God.

We showed up at your churches on fire for God, some of  us anyway. We may have even announced our entrance into your families  with bold phrases liked “called  here” or ”led by God.” That fire in our belly melted away all boundaries, if we even had any to begin with, and we were your go to girls and guys. Your guaranteed yeses. In the classroom of your sanctuaries we sat in the front with our hands raised and flailing. You need something done? PICK US! PLEASE! WE WILL DO IT!

Maybe we wanted to prove ourselves. Maybe we thought it would make God love us more. Maybe we wanted to do something BIG for the LORD like we were promised at those not so distant  teen rallies where we wept in the arms of our best friend in Christ. Maybe we just never learned to say no to the church. Maybe we never wanted to before.

But now? Now we are leaving , leaving the church we were once on fire for. Leaving the place we call home. And as we walk out the front door we are called whiny,  entitled,  self absorbed. And I don’t know, maybe we are. But maybe, like the baby boomers quietly leaving out the back, we are tired. Maybe we are just so tired. We have grown from the barely out of our teens  eager selves into mothers and fathers with very small children,  working parents (even if we didn’t plan it that way)  we are stretched too thin at work. We are constantly needed at home. We are tired when we get to you, every week. We are tired before we get there, and the last thing we need is someone or something else that needs us.

At one point it may have excited us, the new program, the fresh sign up sheet, and maybe it isn’t your fault we changed. But we have, and it seems to be at least partially your problem.  We don’t need another program, certainly not one that you are going to ask us to be a part of. We don’t need another night of the week where we are not around our own dinner tables.  We don’t need another book to scribble answers in in the car on the way to bible study because we don’t want to be the only one with blank pages. What we need  is to go to bed  early, or the babysitter for a date night.

We need to rest, need to breathe,  need to once be the one with the needs.   We need there to be room for that.  Need there to be someone to say it is okay to be the one who needs in this season,.

We have been volunteering n the church setting since  we were the only first grader able to memorize Mary’s lines.  We graduated to Jr. Deacon passing the plates around the congregation, to nursery duty and vbs assistant.  We have taught Sunday school and brought casseroles, sung in the choir and written prose. We have picked up people, and trash and canned goods for shelters.  And  though we are accused of it, we are not complaining about any of that service. We found Jesus in the grind, volunteered for all of that after all. We did so willingly. But when are we allowed to be  tired? When does someone pick us up? I wonder if we are leaving the church because what we need is to put on yoga pants and have some tea and really see each other. We need to spill the tangled mess of our harried lives to each other and just cry together.  Instead, what we are being offered is more programming that someone has to run. Maybe us.

Maybe, in the heat of the on fire for God that was our teenage years, our boundaries about volunteering for the church melted all away, and the church doesn’t know how to stop asking, only how  to use us until we are all used up. Maybe we are leaving to protect our families and fight for our marriages that the church taught us to hold so sacred in the first place.  Maybe we are leaving because we are tired. Maybe we need to have needs.

I set the alarm on my computer so I wouldn’t forget. My favorite mom of my favorite student mans the front desk on the last Wednesday of the month. When I got there, it became obvious that I was not the only one excited to see Bridget Brock in the building.

She comes in with a smile, a huge batch of homemade cookies, the largest bag of Jolly Ranchers she could find, a sweet tea for her daughter and a boy she needs to talk to, a desire to know every kid’s name. She stands at the desk and hands out her cookies to the students she already knows by name. There are many. More than I know maybe, and we have been in the school for the same amount of years.

Her daughter, Victoria, was in my tenth grade english class when I was hugely pregnant with Priscilla and still confused about the fact that I was teaching in the suburbs. My very first year teaching at that school was Victoria’s first year in public school. She felt in her fifteen year old heart, the Lord calling her to the huge school down the road, her parents decided to trust her. They have never looked back, since placing both her younger brothers in the larger schools that they once feared. They now love those places fiercely. Call many more kids their own.

My school is better for the presence of Bridget Brock. She lures the kids she does not know into her genuine smile with the hard candy. She learns their name. She tells them she hopes they do well in school. She means it. She brings a sweet tea for the good boy who made some bad choices and lets him know that his parents may not care, but she does. She believes in him.

This is not a love that melts like hard candy, that sweet tea is handed out with the understanding that this means she has a say in your life. This is the love of a mama bear. It is loud, it barks, it will not be ignored. She believes in people. Sees most of the students in the hallway through the mama lens she sees her own children through, not-perfect but deeply loved, worth every ounce of fight she’s got.

I’ve worked too long in some too dark places to believe that she will change every child she runs into on the last Wednesday of every month. But I have worked too long in some too dark places, that were dying for the light she gives off. Even if it is dark again when she leaves.  I wonder what it would mean to some of these kids if just one mama-bear was fighting for them.

I heard recently of a mom who found out her child was a drug addict and the same day she found out there was a two week waiting period for re-hab. She applied for emergency family leave at her job and became her son’s shadow. He was lying on the bed watching tv, she was lying on the bed watching tv. He went to go get something to eat, she went to go get something to eat. He went to the bathroom, she waited in the hall. Every moment for two weeks, she fought for him, even when he hated her for it.

I know that poverty is a huge problem. I know that it is complicated, and far further reaching than I understand. But I also know that it is dark in some places that are right next to the ones we are in. That the church is so often the light under the bushel, to our own communities, to the christian schools, to each other. When are we going to push the light into the darkness? When will it be time to also fight for the children of our neighbors?

We gave away our cribs today. I don’t know that we are done having babies, but I know that someone else really needed them, a pair of teenager sisters who are both choosing life. My husband and I talked about it, and decided they needed them more, and we have the means to find a crib on Craigslist when we need it.

It isn’t just the money, when it comes to being impoverished. It is that the people around you have nothing to share either. No truck to borrow, no extra diapers, no extra time. Everyone is stuck in the same place. That has been the most surprising things about teaching in the suburbs. The veritable mom with time army can work some near miracles, keep it cleaner, safer, warmer, just plain better than it would be without them.

I watch Bridget Brock as she loves on some kids. Even if it is only repeating their own name back to them, in a tone that tells them she is glad they are here. I watch as she tells them to take a few hard candies for the road, come back next time for a cookie. I watch her love well, and dream of an army of people who love well, wanting to bring light into darkness. I watch her fight for children that are not technically her own. I wonder where the rest of the mama bears are.  I dream of their light unleashed at my school.