I passed the magazine stand at the grocery store. It said something about a legacy leaving us and just for a second I thought “How did People Magazine know that my Aunt Jane died?” I took a closer look at the cover only to discover they were speaking of Shirley Temple Black. I don’t know Ms. Temple-Black personally, but I think I would take the legacy of my Great Aunt Jane.

I have heard that the world really turns on small things done with great love, and now I am sure that is true. My great Aunt Jane was notorious for doing things with great love. From the Thanksgiving dinners of 80 plus people, to the way she called all of her grown up grandsons, sons, and nephews by their diminutive names.  No one calls my dad Johnny. But my Aunt Jane did, and he liked it. Small things with great love, now that is a legacy worth a magazine cover.

Today, as my family makes the way to her funeral I find myself reflecting on the things I will miss most. The way she would smile when I walked in for Thanksgiving, even with 75 people already there, I was wanted I was loved. And the way she loved to grant the requests of her grandchildren, the way she would turn her head and smile at them and say, “Well, I think that would be alright.”

There are now more of my grandmother’s generation on that side of heaven than this. I don’t know about the rest of the country, but they are certainly my greatest generation. Full of farmers, teachers, nurses, everyday people who loved with a  love that was greater than love, who sent cards and baby blankets and hand carved salt and pepper shakers to the obscene amount of great-nieces and nephews because they wanted to, because they loved us.

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Recently, I made a bunch of banners out of old book pages. I sewed them together with a white and red thread and tucked them into the mail with a note on the back “the banner over you is love.” I sent them on their way and forgot about them. I did it because I like to keep my hands busy while I watch television, because I like to see trash become treasure with just a little bit of work, because I love the women in my online community and I like to presents and mail and surprises.

So, I sent out a bunch of banners, and didn’t think twice about where they might land. The craziest thing started happening. People started asking me how in the world I could have known. How in the world could I have known that a red thread was their thing? How could I have known that this is their life verse or that is their favorite book? How did I know that they were having a bad week or they were struggling to feel seen? How in the world did I know?

I didn’t know. I like making crafts out of abandoned objects and I happened to do that with love. The responses filled me in a way that re-tweets and blog stats never will. I am trying to hang on to that. I am trying to learn the lesson for myself that I have watched lived out for me my entire life.

Anything done with great love is worth doing. Loving is what leaves your legacy.

“Put down your sword sister, your seat is right here.”

It was me who said it. I was talking about someone else (not completely kindly, ahem). But the sentiment cut me straight through. To the core of who I am, to the core of what I am afraid of. That one flippant statement sliced right through me, hit all the tender spots, the ugly spots, the places that I am hiding, or ignoring, or both.

I am afraid I won’t get chosen. I am afraid I am not really wanted.

And then I make all kinds of qualifications for what counts as chosen, and what does not. I used to think that if enough people read my blog a day, I would feel chosen. Then I thought, if the right people noticed me, asked me to write a guest post, featured me in their link up. If I had enough or the right twitter followers, if I were involved in the right projects, if I were sought after to do this, or advertise that, then, then, I would feel as though I were chosen.

But here I am, on the other side of some of that, and….I still feel like I am fighting for my place at the table.

Put down your sword sister, your seat is right here.

I have been guilty of coveting the things I see in other people, their book deal, their audience, their reach, their re-tweets. I have been given some of the things that I am sure will satisfy me, and they are not enough. I have been using a magical measuring tape, like the one Mary Poppins pulls out of her carpet-bag. Only mine doesn’t say “practically perfect in every way” it says “this isn’t good enough” no matter how big I grow.

No wonder I picked up the sword, determined to fight my way to the top.

I spoke it about a different situation, but it pierced my own heart. Abby, put down your sword.

God sometimes does this thing with me, where he uses my children’s behavior, to show me the state of my heart. (Is there anything more perfect than a toddler, to manifest one’s primary emotions?) It isn’t humbling at all to see the deepest places of your heart are no more grown or mature than your two-year-old mid tantrum. Not, humbling at all.

My Rilla-girl sometimes looks at the thing she has and decides that she doesn’t want that. She wants the thing that her sister has. And I suppose I would understand this, but lately I have been buying and giving everything in pairs. Two strawberry yogurts, two apples identical in size, two cookies, two boxes of juice, two pink fairy wings from the Target dollar bin, two blue ones. But she doesn’t want hers. She wants what I gave her sister, and if we switch, she still wants the thing that is in her sister’s hand. The realization that I am guilty of this, happens at about the same time the apple gets thrown across the room.

I don’t want that!

Because what she wants  is what belongs to her sister. And I am sure, as the apple thuds at my feet that I have done the same thing before God, slung my portion at His feet as I point at the exact same thing in someone else’s hands. What you gave her is better.

Put down your sword sister, your seat is right here.

I am learning, in this messy internet world where we fight for re-tweets and yell to be heard, that God isn’t very interested in the numbers we hang our worth on. And even now as I write it, I roll my eyes because, isn’t that the thing we used to say in Sunday School. God looks at the heart.

Sometimes there isn’t anything truer than the felt board.

God wants to know and love my heart.

I was sitting at a coffee shop when my friend started talking about stages. “I don’t know, Abby, if you will ever speak in front of thousands of women, but you have a stage right here, you have a stage in your backyard. People let you speak into their lives, why doesn’t that count? Why isn’t that good enough?”

And the answer is simple, because I am afraid that means I am not good enough. I am afraid that I will never be good enough, and I push that pain forward instead of dealing with the lies at its base.

That conversation won’t let me go. I have almost 200 students I speak into every day. I have people I love seeking my opinion. More people than I ever expected read this blog.

My seat is right here. I can put down my sword. The things I am fighting for, they have already be given to me. I am free to love and write and speak and sit, at my place at the table. The one that has always been here for me. 

Sister, put down your sword. Your seat is right here.

I am trying to teach you that words matter. I am sitting at my desk or standing behind my podium or waving my hands with the dry erase marker still in it.

Look at this author! Look at what she says here! Look at how he said that! Words matter! These words matter! I am trying to teach you the power of the pen in an age where you no longer need one of those. Finger tip to phone, your tweet is heard round the world before I even know you hit send.

Some people would say this ignorance of mine is a gross failure of me, the teacher, the authority figure in the room. They perhaps do not understand, that there is an entire generation of students who can look you in the face and text under their desk, all the while answering the questions you pose.

I am trying to teach you the power of words, of the words of the authors we study yes, but also of your words, your own words, but you are too busy texting and tweeting to notice.

Words are easy in your world, thrown out into the world without a care about what they really say or who might really read them. I would tell you I don’t know where you learned this, but that would be a lie. You learned it from the adults in your life, from the politicians on your tv, from the way the world works.

We aren’t very careful with our words.

I want to blame social media, and kids these days, but these word problems have been around since the beginning.

A girl in my high school took her life our senior year. She just couldn’t take the words. The ones that were flung at her starting in the third grade. She just couldn’t take the words anymore. I remember the announcement and the hush that fell over the room. I remember my friend turning around to face the girls who had been flinging the words since elementary school.

I hope you are happy. She said to them. Because this happened because of you.

I remember the hush that fell over the crowd then. They didn’t even bother denying it. We all knew it was true.

I am sure that the reasons were more complicated than that. Things are always messier than we want them to be. I am sure this girl was fighting demons none of us knew about. I am also sure the ugly words slung at her on a daily basis didn’t help. I still wonder about the second set of girls. I wonder what kind of demons they faced, as they realized what their words might have done.

They didn’t think it was a big deal.

They were just joking around.

And now? Now there is an app for that. Say whatever you want, whenever you want about whoever you want behind the shield of anonymity. I stand at the board with a marker still in my hand and make some public service announcements, about how the internet is forever, even after the delete button, about how you aren’t as anonymous as you think you are.

But really what I want to say is, your words matter. Your words are shaping your life, the lives of your peers, our future world. I want so desperately for it to be a kinder place for you.

You can hide behind the anonymity of the internet all you want and insist that it is just a stupid app and it isn’t real. But you need to know that if you’re not kind on the internet, then you’re not kind. And I have taught you for enough days now to know that on your good days you are kind, you are smart, you are ready and able to make this world a better place.

But I also know that you are human, just like the rest of us, perhaps even more so. At my most vulnerable don’t I also say I feel like I am 16 again? I know you are longing to be seen, heard, known, loved.

There aren’t enough up votes and likes to give you the love you are longing for. It will never be enough for you. The things that you are looking for, they don’t come from hits on an anonymous site. They come from relationships that are true and honest, authentic and grace-filled. What you are looking for comes from a life you can be satisfied with.

I know that living is hard some days. I know that life is always messier than we want it to be, and sometimes you are just so hurt and tired it seems easier to participate in the destruction of it all.

Please, take what it took me an extra fifteen years to learn, you are already loved, you are already heard, I promise you there are people who see and hear and love you. I am standing at the board talking with my hands, telling you that your words matter, but what I am really trying to say is that you matter. YOU MATTER, your words and actions and thoughts and feelings are important and matter greatly to this world. Even the anonymous ones. 

You matter, you are loved, and you are better than the things you are saying about each other. You are better than the havoc you have been wreaking. Your words matter. Make them words you are willing to stand beside, no mask needed.

I am afraid you are about to spin out she says.

This friend of mine. She tells the truth, the whole truth and always the truth. She can’t help what she sees, and she just wants to let me know. I am headed perhaps for some black ice and I am about to spin out.

She wasn’t talking about my epic road trip. She knew at the time that I was inching along, but that is not what she was talking about. She wasn’t that worried about me making it home. She never doubts the homecoming, it is the state of the journey she is concerned about.

I am just afraid you are about to spin out.

I received the email because my car was inching along at a snail’s pace, my phone attached to a local mechanics guest wireless. Normally, I am pretty good about not checking my phone on the road, but the road was really more of a parking lot. I promise, it wasn’t hurting anyone.

She was right. She usually is. It is this book that I wrote, that needs re-written, that won’t let me go, that won’t let me forget. It is this advice that I keep being given from no one and everyone about platform building and blogging regularly and branding and making space and time like I can somehow conjure those things if I just had the right recipe. It is all the noise that I can’t. stop. hearing. It is that if I close me ears I am afraid I will miss something.

I’ve been spinning my wheels for a while. I don’t really know how to let my foot off the gas and I have been spinning my tires even when there really isn’t anywhere to go. My frustration has been leaking into my life-like that terrible burned rubber smell. Even after the spinning stops, the smell is still burned into my nose. Creative frustration is like that for me, it tinges everything else.

In the car, with the crazy synthesizer mix tape we were listening to on repeat I asked God to show me something, about my creative process, about this journey I am on, about the ways He is working.

Some people commune with God in nature, and others through quiet time and meditation, my sister most often hears God through song. I’m not picky about the ways God speaks to me, but it is most often for me in daily struggles, in mundane situations. It turns out, for me, all ground is Holy. Even the ground I am doing everything to get off of, is the place where God is interested in meeting me. Probably, especially there here.

I asked God to show me something about myself, about the metaphorical black ice I too could tell I was screaming toward. I needed to get home in more ways than one. Two hours later we got stuck on a hill, and a man told me that I better turn around. He told me that the time wasn’t right, that there would be a truck coming through in the morning and I needed to park myself in a safe space for a minute and wait for everything to re-group.

I’m pretty sure I already knew this about my creative life, that the time isn’t right, that I need more space to re-group, that I need to stop and rest for a minute and just wait some things out. I say that I already knew this, but I for sure wasn’t acting on it. Instead, I was putting the pedal to the metal, sending chapters to my critique partner, attempting unsuccessfully to burn the midnight oil as I stare at the screen and decide that writing a book was the dumbest decision I have ever made. Not having the guts to admit that to anyone, not even myself.

I asked God to tell me some things about this creative journey of mine and He told me to turn around and wait it out. To go get some coffee and find shelter in this storm. I think I was ignoring Him, I think I decided I would rather burn rubber and try desperately to get up this hill myself.

Waiting. I am terrible at the waiting. At the not yet, at the in between. That is the thing about letting God go before you, sometimes He doesn’t move when you want Him to. If God is going before you, the only thing left to do is follow. Let me tell you, you don’t always agree on the pace. I suppose this is the part is the part where I talk about how sweet it is and how special this time is, and maybe I will get there eventually, but currently, this waiting feels about like sleeping at the Home Depot and hoping for free and mediocre coffee.

It is scarcity again. It seems to always come back to that. I am afraid that if I go back for shelter, that by the time I get out it will be too late. I believe that there are only so many opportunities and if I don’t go get mine, that it will never come. I believe that there are only so many stories of dreams come true, and if yours just did than I am less likely to get mine. I need to be the first in line, because one day the dream river is going to dry up.

It is just so freaking hard. The waiting is, but it becomes desperate when I believe that the scarcity is true. I’m just sort of waiting, on the time, on the distance, on the words to come, on the door to open. I am waiting because it is the only thing to do, really. But I am also waiting as an act of faith, that I believe in a God who does not withhold good things for me, that the things I do matter, regardless of how many people see them.

It is the waiting that is the hardest part, but the obedience that is the most important part.

When we got back on the road there was a different man on the hill. He had me roll down my window and told me confidently, “soft like a whisper.” (Incidentally, my friends have been fighting over this man on the off-chance that he is single. So, if you know the man in a yellow ski jacket and glasses who was helping people up the hill on Holcomb Bridge outside of Park 83 apartments, and he is single, please let me know.)

Same hill, different time, different advice, better circumstance. It was time. Soft like a whisper. Easy does it Abby.

I think this post might be a mess. But I recieved a prompt I couldn’t ignore from a community I love. If you would like to join us there is always room.

Food

Breakfast Quinoa– My mom has been trying to get me to eat breakfast in the morning since probably the 6th grade. But come on, nothing competes with more sleep. The fact that none of my clothes fit after christmas led me to decide it was probably time to switch up some of my eating habits. So I gave breakfast quinoa a try. Quinoa is a grain that is really a protein. I don’t really know, but it is good for you. Also, I can make five individual servings in mason jars with almond milk, honey and some berries. I gave it a week and found that I am not hangry (hungry and therefore angry) by third period. So, I am officially a fan.

Crock Pot Freezer Meals – You already know I have a deep love for my crock pot. One broke so I am down to one again.  Somehow I missed out on the fact that people are individually packing ingredients for one meal at a time in freezer bags. So, you wake up, toss the food from the freezer into the crock pot, turn in on low and leave. Dinner is already done when you are passing the pizza place on the way home from work. Dinner is already DONE so no need to grab something.

Bread and Wine- This cookbook interspersed with beautiful essays was the book I got for sisters and mom for Christmas. So far I’ve cooked the chicken chilli, a black bean version of that, the bacon wrapped dates, and the risotto. I have my eye on the steaks in the pan sauce.

Books

Bread and Wine– Yes, the essays are as good as the recipes. Essays about motherhood, and love of food, and in general having big feelings? Yes please.

Eleanor and Park- A story about a girl struggling in poverty falling for an upper-middle class boy through comic books and mixed tapes? Yes please. I especially love the way that the every day struggle of poverty is handled in this book.

Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares- What can I say? I love YA romance novels I guess. Loved the total fun of this book. Yes it is ridiculous, no this never would happen. But it makes a good story.

Style

Stitchfix I got my second fix this Wednesday and only ended up keeping one thing. But I still have high hopes for this clothes through the mail service. Weirdly, I have spent less on clothes since I signed up because I am NOT going to try on clothes with my children in the dressing room when I can wait for my box to arrive at my house.

Lipstick– I love lipstick. It makes me feel fun and pretty and put together in about three seconds. I finally finished the red lipstick I bought in college, and bought Revlon’s Love that Red. I do love it, very classic. I went looking for a purple-y color found a balm/crayon/lipstick by Revlon Colorburst. It was called whimsy, I was sold. It looks good with pretty much everything and it feels really good on my winter mouth.

Writing

On the Blog– My most popular post by far was the one about getting stuck in the Atlanta Snow storm. But the one that I am most proud of is probably Swimming in the Deep End about my nervousness in hosting the If gathering. (Which is next weekend! Eeeek!)

Elsewhere- I participated in an exercise with my friend Bethany where I wrote the truth of myself as I wrote the truth on myself. I was surprised at how cathartic it was.

Finally, I guest posted for my friend Sarah about darkness and how it has taken me awhile, but I am not afraid of it anymore.  I think the church does a really terrible job of guiding people through dark places. I hope I can help with that.

Book Writing Updates- I am trying to do another round of edits. Which is needed. I even found Alyssa to be partners with. But this time is hard and I have stalled out this week. Hoping to get started back soon. I am also querying agents, and as soon as I have news to report, you will know.

What I Wish I was into-

excercise Okay, I feel like there is no time. SO, someone help me? Think thirty minutes, nothing I need to buy, can be done in my own home. I need the internet to rescue me from my sedentary self.