I didn’t know anything about food deserts. I didn’t understand that that was a thing. I only knew that my students ate a lot of cheetos. Especially the hot ones. Especially for breakfast. That didn’t make any sense to me.

I didn’t know anything about food deserts, but I did know that when I went to the gas station, my students asked me if I was going to the store. I remember thinking that was weird.

Then my car broke down and I started taking the bus, and it all suddenl. Why a person wouy became clear. I would buy food at a gas station instead of taking two buses and a train to get to the most MARTA accessible grocery store. How grocery shopping that way is pretty much an all day endeavor and you had better be fully-able-bodied or you aren’t going to be able to get your groceries all the way home.

But I still bristled when my students asked me if I was going to the store. No. The gas station is not the store. Except it was, for them anyway.

I don’t really have any answers. Just a lot more understanding. I grew up and only knew how to cook what my mother cooked too. But my mother had access to a real grocery store. So I knew how to cook what came out of a grocery store and not a gas station. We had access to grocery stores because it was profitable to put grocery stores in our neighborhood. The pendulum swings the other way too. Not profitable turns into no access turns into the gas station functioning as a store and virtually no vegetables in your diet.

I didn’t know that it was a called a food desert, but I did understand all my students had for breakfast was hot cheetos.  I used to blame them, think they should know better. Now I know better. Everyone is usually making the best choices they know how.

I’m hosting the spirit of the poor link up. We are focusing on access to food. If you don’t know much about it, start here and then let me know what you think by linking up below!

Over a week ago (which is a small eternity in internet time) there was a hashtag running through my Twitter feed. #IstandwithSGMVictims. So I tweeted it. Because I did. Because I do. Because telling someone about the abuse you suffered, and then not being believed, but instead  being slandered, being ignored is terrible. I am brokenhearted that any organization would do this, but I am sickened that it would happen in the name of Jesus. I want people to know that I do believe them, that I do stand by them, that I do care.

Probably, that was not the only reason I tweeted it. I don’t like the theology of Sovereign Grace Ministries. More than I don’t like it, I believe it is damaging. I think that the way they view God and the gospel contributed to the ways they reacted to the allegations of abuse in their ranks. Probably, I think of SGM as a them in the dichotomy of us versus them I tend to put everything in. If I am totally honest with myself, with you, I don’t just want people to know I stand with SGM victims. I want people to know I stand against SGM, and that I was right all along.

A midst the hashtag activism, a voice of reason piped up that the conservative side of the theological divide is not the only one dealing with sexual abuse and cover-up. There is an entire documentary about the abuse, and the purposeful ignoring of victims within JPUSA, an organization with theology that matches mine much more closely. In the us versus them dichotomy in my mind, JPUSA is an us. Notice I didn’t tweet anything about that.

But I am still thinking about it. Over a week later (an eternity of internet time) I am still shaken by my own heart’s willingness to ignore the horrendous behavior of an us, as I publicly call out the thems of this world. I want to stand for all victims. Period. I think I am that person, until I am confronted with the idea that I am not.

I think it has something to do with the way things are being framed. On the internet, yes, but also in my own heart. I think the cover-up at SGM has a lot to do with the things they believe about God, about the gospel. I think they are wrong and so of course terrible things happen. Terrible theology leads to terrible realities. I think that is real.

But good theology does not protect us from terrible things. And that is what I want to believe. I want to believe that if  people believe the right things (right things being of course, things that I also believe) then they will always do the right things. I want to believe that we can be saved by our theology. The internet isn’t helping this inclination. Enough time on Twitter and I really start thinking that the world can be saved by everyone thinking the right things, my things. I start believing that all good people believe good (read my) things. In all my talking about God and what we think about what He thinks, I lose track of what He did, and why.

For God so loved the world that He gave his only son, that whoever believes in Him, shall not perish but have ever lasting life.

I forget that it is Jesus who saves. Period. No more, no less.

Good people do bad things, bad people do good things. Everyone thinks some wrong things about God, we just aren’t going to get it all right on this side. That doesn’t mean it isn’t important to try. That doesn’t mean theology doesn’t matter. I think it matters very much. I just need to remember it doesn’t protect us. I need to remember it is only Jesus who saves.

“I’m not reading a girl book.”

He said it to me looking me dead in the face, holding the book up with his hand, and nodding his head in the direction of the offending novel.

“Give me something else. I’m not reading this.”

My student’s don’t defy me. Ever. I try hard to make sure they like what we are doing, and in return they do it. The end. I take pride in the fact that my students enjoy my class.  The best card I ever received was from a 15 year old boy. “Dear Ms. Norman, You make English not suck.” A higher compliment I could not imagine. By the time the last book of the semester rolls around the kids expect to like whatever it is I give them. They almost always do. But not that day.

I handed out one of the best selling novels of all time, and the response I immediately got from this normally compliant boy was simple.

“I’m not reading a girl book.”

Notice he didn’t say another girl book. We hadn’t read any all semester. In fact, we had read what are traditionally considered “boy books.” Of Mice and Men, Lord of the Flies, Tuesdays with Morrie, all have no major female characters, all are written by men. I had taught nearly an entire semester of books by and about people this boy could identify with.

Some of the other boys in my class joined the protest. When they saw my jaw set they changed their tactic. “Come on, Ms. Norman, Don’t you want to give us a book we enjoy? Make an exception, let us read something else.”

They did not succeed in persuading me. We are currently 140 pages into Rebecca. Mostly, the kids like it. The book is a little creepy, and you can’t quite figure out whether it is about murder or ghosts, what isn’t to like? But there are about three boys who are simply refusing to read it, failing all their response writings. They have a point to prove.

I want to tell you all the things I told them. I want to give you my feminist rant, perfected by seven years in the classroom, but that isn’t the deeper story here. That isn’t why this story shakes me, two weeks later. It shakes me because I am sure,  in the hardest parts of my heart, I am the belligerent student.

I don’t do that. I’m not reading that. I will not consider that opinion. No. I do not have to hear that out,because it is not for me.

There are entire blogs, twitter accounts, groups of people, whole swaths of the world that I just shrug off. Those people have nothing for me. I could not possibly gain anything by reading their story.

That, is a girl book.

I don’t want to live my life with my head on my desk. I don’t want to miss out on a brilliant mystery, simply because I have a point to prove. It seems I still have a lot to learn.

I tell people all the time that they need to choose themselves. So I did, and wouldn’t you know it Zach Hoag said yes. Then I brought it. I said all the things I don’t say even when I want to.

I don’t want to be your white savior.

When I tell you about the schools I used to teach at, the ones that burn in my heart, the ones I cannot stop thinking about on my slow drive up to my current suburban classroom, it is not so you can be impressed with me and what I used to do. It is not so you can say how hip and with it I am. I am not some sainted super-hero. I am just a girl with a teaching degree trying to pay off her student loans.

I don’t want to be your white savior.

I don’t want to be the white-savior, in a story just so that you will suddenly care about it. I don’t want you to hear that “those people” have it all wrong, that they needed me and my white gaze. They didn’t. They don’t. They need resources, but whiteness isn’t one of them. The inner-city classroom needs people who are invested. Just like the inner-city neighborhood, the inner-city church. I suppose just like the suburban church, the suburban neighborhood, the suburban school. The suburbs have a whole support system of people with margin, investing in their community, this is the whole draw of the suburbs, isn’t it? Come be with people who have as many resources as you! Plus, it is convenient.

You can read the rest here.

warning: swears. Sorry, it happens when I talk about scarcity

I declared a hunt on scarcity. Because she was ruining my life. And wouldn’t you know it, that bitch came after me first. A few of my friends are doing some really cool and really brave things, and I want to celebrate and encourage them, but I am too afraid they are going to leave me behind.

It might look different for you, but for me, I can tell I am believing in scarcity when my breathing quickens and my chest clamps up. I get nervous and jittery and start refreshing my email because. What if I miss it? What if I miss my chance? What if I miss the boat? What if an email comes, a tweet rolls by, someone puts something on Facebook and I don’t do it and I should do it and I miss my shot? 

What if the boat comes and goes and I am standing on the dock with my bags screaming WAIT!!? What if all my friends are on the boat toasting each other and sailing away into the sunset and I am on the deck crying? WHAT THEN?

What then…. then, another boat will come. And if it doesn’t a bus, or a train, or a rickshaw, or I will walk if I have to. Or one of my friends on that boat will make the captain turn the boat around. Because my belief that I missed the boat is a belief in a scarcity of chances to get it right. But God is a God of abundance, abundant love, abundant chances. When I tell people that God’s mercies are new every morning, I need to know that is true of my art too. If I miss this boat, another one is coming.

Somewhere a long the way I heard and believed of this BIG GOD. But I somehow missed the part about his BIG GRACE. So I thought that mean that God cared about every single thing I did and I better get it all right. I better not miss any boat He has for me. 

But that is scarcity talking and IT IS A LIE! There are all the boats. I don’t have to worry when my friends hop on a really cool boat that isn’t for me. I get to send them off with a hug and a cheer and a peace that there are an abundance of ways! See you at the finish line lovely ladies! That boat wasn’t for me. That is okay. I don’t have to be afraid that no other boat is coming.

So, I have two AWESOME friends who are trying to flag down some cool boats. Will you help them? As a way to fight scarcity for me, but probably for you too?

Esther is trying to get Anne Lamott to endorse her book, or at least consider it. Y’all this is awesome. Go be a part of something outlandish and fun.

And Maritza is asking for votes for the Noonday Collection trip to Rwanda. We need a bi-lingual biracial tell the truth sister on that trip. Go vote for her!

What lies has scarcity been telling you? How can we help you fight them?

OH! and if you are afraid your way is wrong, Bethany can help you right here.

You would think when a girl writes this in September, she would brace herself for the end of the year. You would think wrong. Girlfriend did not have time to brace herself. She was too busy teaching her heart out, her buns off, like her hair was on fire. And now? Now girlfriend isn’t just tired. She is t-i-r-e-d. She is exhausted. She is typing in third person and she doesn’t even care, because she has 11 days left until she does not have to speak to or be in charge of a teenager for two glorious months.

You thought seniriotis was bad? I promise you the seniors have nothing, nothing on the way the teachers are feeling, and they aren’t allowed to organize pranks or walk out of class, or take a long lunch because they have never ever in their whole career done it before, and darn it they deserve it! No, we can’t do that. Because we have to be in charge. It is completely unfair. I mean, we have been the adults in the room every single day for 169 days. When is it our turn to act like the children?

Oh yeah. Never.

The only way I can think to explain the way that I am feeling, is that the giant toddler that lives inside of every one of us, is clawing to get out. I am about three seconds from letting said toddler be in charge. And everyone knows that is a terrible idea. You can’t put the raging toddler in charge of anything. You especially cannot put a raging toddler in charge of mostly grown, but seriously lacking in the frontal-lobe-development-departmet hormone surging teens. You may want to stand at the front of your room and just scream NO! nononononono! NO! at them, but as I tell my toddler, that is not a choice. So, how exactly does one loving teacher who is seriously at the end of her rope, manage to calm the toddler inside down long enough to keep her job for the clean slate that is next September, (ugh), August? By parenting herself, to the max. When the toddler is in a mood, everyone knows there is really only so much a person can do. And it IS that bad people, I am just trying to parent myself until I can get to beditme, I mean, summer.

Choose Your Battles – As I sing to my kids on a regular basis, You can’t always get what you want. I know you want to function like the fully grown up person that you almost always are, but right now, we are in survival mode. So, (as our van currently plays on repeat) let it go. Feeding your kids cereal and yogurt on the back porch and letting your dog lick them clean will not kill them. Your kids will love it. Wearing those pants that are pajamas but can totally pass as slacks is totally allowed. Drive-thru to get coffee four days this week, even if you and your car-pool agreed that was a Wednesday only activity. You can only tell the toddler no, so many times. Only say no to the desires when said desires will get you fired.

Check Your Schedule – Everyone knows a well rested toddler is a happy one. Take all unnecessary appointments out of your schedule. Re-schedule for June or July. For the love of all things holy, treat bedtime as sacred ground and keep it. Lie to yourself and tuck yourself in a half hour early for your own good. You really need it and it is in everyone’s best interest.

Make The Toddler Giggle – Sometimes, when you get ragey, the only thing left to do is distract yourself. Do whatever it takes to give yourself a laugh. Watch that video you love (again! AGAIN!). Do a dance, listen to your favorite song, run a lap naked and giggling around your house after bath time. Getting the toddler to giggle makes said toddler forget all her previous woes. When something stops working, try something else.

When all else fails, Bribe the toddler – Sometimes you have to, you are at a wedding, you are in public, you need them to take their medicine. EVery parent knows that sometimes you  just need to bribe your kid. Take this parenting advice and apply it like no tomorrow. Wine, ice cream, cold press coffee, access to Twitter, just bribe yourself. It is fine. It isn’t forever. Just until grades are due and you don’t have to worry about saying something that might get you fired. (For every hour you manage to not say anything questionable, go ahead and give yourself five m&ms.)

Pull it together fellow teachers. We are almost done. We can do this. We can be the adults for eleven more days. Then we can bribe ourselves with as much wine as summer can handle. Cheers.

I believe in your dreams.

I’ve started this post about three hundred times, with metaphors, with snark, with manifestos and open letters. But there it is, that is what I really want you to know.

I believe in your dreams. 

I know that you have a lot going on. What other people are telling you are excuses, you see as your reality. You can’t rent a cabin, take vacation days, stop answering your phone. You would love to be able to prioritize your work above all else, but there are tiny people in your house that need to be fed multiple times a day and you are in charge of that.

You can’t just not go to work. There are bills to pay, and unfortunately, right now you aren’t getting paid to do the thing you love. And your pay checks are just barely covering the bills. I know.

I believe in your dreams, anyway. I still believe in them. I still believe in you. It probably isn’t going to be picturesque, a couple of people are going to call it crazy, but I think we can make it work. I believe your current reality can also have space for your dreams.

Let me tell you why.

I believe in your dreams, and I want to help. I am offering coaching sessions through the Story Unfolding. The website isn’t quite ready to go, but I just want to make sure you know that you can do this. 

Call it the “No Cabin In The Woods Special.” Right now, I am setting up half price coaching, for anyone who doesn’t have the funds for a cabin in the woods. For $45* (normal price 90) you get an hour with me. We will explore what you want to do, and how you are going to fit it in to your life. I’m warning you right now, it may not be the idyllic experience you dreamed of, but maybe your dream is worth doing anyway. I promise, there is room in your life for everything you are meant to do.

If you don’t have a cabin in the woods, and you are ready to figure out how to do this thing anyway, I am your girl. Email me at accidentaldevotional(at)gmail(dot)com and we will set up coaching. You are worth it. So are your dreams.

*But Abby, I took a cold hard look at my budget, I don’t have that either. Email me anyway. We will work it out. 

It is Teacher Appreciation week. I know because yesterday I got the annual reminder that the “dessert bar” will be open in the teacher’s lounge all afternoon. I am grateful I got the reminder yesterday, because I needed time to dig out my stretchy skirt for the occasion. When my student’s ask me smiling “did you try the thing my mom baked” I want to be able to answer them honestly. I am just that committed to my job. Hey, I do it for the kids.

At the school I now work at, the PTA organizes a dessert bar that the Golden Corral would be jealous of. Not only do they stock the teacher’s lounge with an artfully arranged pile of homemade treats, they also have at least three lovely moms telling you they are grateful for the work you do. You get to stuff delicious treats in your face and commiserate with the parents about how their kids are worthless less than thoroughly motivated this time of year. I go back at least three times, and one of my colleagues and I compete to see who can eat the most kinds of brownies. Really, everybody wins.

I am grateful for the awesome dessert bar and the shout outs on Facebook. I am completely burned out right now and I need all the help I can get. I have gotten free coffee from my Dunkin’ Donuts app twice this week and I see it as nothing less than manna from heaven (Hey God, that appears every day, right? Because, real talk, I have no idea if I am going to be able to make it til May 23. Amen.) I have worked really freaking hard this year and I do need someone to tell me that my job matters. Because seriously, it is May 6 and some kids are still surprised that we are reading every day. In English class.

This out pouring of treats and words of parental affirmation have not always been the case. My first year of teaching, I learned that it was about to be teacher appreciation week because someone came around asking for a donation. Yup, all the teacher’s were expected to give five dollars so that they could be appreciated. My second and third years I was sent an email reminding me that all teacher appreciation funds were used to buy us each a membership to the PTSA that exactly no parents joined so we could get some sort of 100 percent participation badge the principal felt was really important. It was weird, and I still don’t get it.

So today I am thinking of friends who work at schools where no one has the time or resources to set up a dessert bar or hand them a gift card to Starbucks. In order to have business partners to give your teacher’s freebies, you have to have businesses in the area that are thriving. Teaching at a high needs school is the kind of hard that you just have to experience to believe. And likely the only thank you these teachers are getting is attached to an “exciting opportunity” to buy supplies for their own classroom at a ten percent discount.

Here’s to you, teachers who have been buying their own pencils since October, to those who laugh out loud when a guest speaker suggests applying for a PTSA grant. Here’s to the teachers who buy granola bars for the end of the month when the food stamps have run dry, who have figured out how to teach their kids how to make award-winning art projects out of garbage and creativity. Here’s to the teachers who keep the tragedies they read in their children’s “what I did today” journal close to their heart, to the teachers who keep up with the current hip-hop music so they can make new lyrics about the cell every.single.year. because “that song was soooo 6 months ago.” Here’s to the teachers who are not being appreciated this year with a treat, or a note, or a gift card. I know that teaching is its own reward, but I also know how tired you are, how hard you work, and how much you just want someone to notice. I am noticing. You are appreciated.

I remember being told, in Sunday school while sitting on those olive green chairs the exact size of my small backside, that I was called to be a witness. I was to witness to the power of Christ. I remember being told about what a witness does in court. A witness tells what they have seen. A witness tells the stories of the things that happened to them, of the things they saw happen to others. 

Can I get a witness?

Later, working in the inner-city some of my students would sing praise songs during study hall. They liked to “have church” right there in the back row, whether or not it was sanctioned by me. (It almost never was. I really just needed them to be quiet. But there they were, singing whatever they pleased.) Sometimes they would really get going, hands in the air. 

Can I get a witness? 

One of my friends, in her infinite wisdom, often just says “witnessing” in the comments section of particularly hard and vulnerable semi-private Facebook posts. Witnessing, I am bearing witness. Liking a post about how someone is having a terrible time seems strange, so we have re-named it witnessing and the little thumbs-up numbers climb. I see you, I see that this is hard, I am witnessing your darkness, your journey, your pain.

Can I get a witness?

I had been following the story of the Nigerian girls kidnapped from their school through Twitter. This is officially how I get most of my information; I stay surprisingly  I thought it was terrible. I thought it was sad. I did not speak up. I do not think I even managed a re-tweet. One more thing in a terrible world. Of course it was terrible, but still I did nothing. It was far from my home, it seemed to terrible to wrap my head around. What am I going to do about it anyway? The only excuse I can muster is that my heart had hardened.

Can I get a witness?

My heart thawed quickly last night, when someone began tweeting the names of the girls who are missing. Their names. With their names I can no longer pretend that they don’t belong to the same world I live in. With their names, I am reminded that these girls are people too. Not just some tragedy I lament over, not a 140 character news story. I am reminded, with every name, that these are people. Women with hopes and dreams and families that are frozen in fear for their girls. I was reminded. I finally saw what was right in front of me.

Can I get a witness?

I’m thinking about the message in Sunday school. I am remembering that I am called to be a witness. I am feeling my heart ache as it softens for these names I have finally read. I am understanding, just a little bit, the magnitude of the responsibility, to be ready to testify to things of this world. 

Can I get a witness?

This month was busy. I know I keep saying that, I promise I will stop as long as it isn’t true anymore.

Spring Break!- I started this month with Spring Break! I am grateful I picked a profession where you still get one of those. No, I didn’t go Wild at PCB, I did something far crazier. I took a 2 and 3-year-old on what is usually a 10 hour trip to my parent’s house, (wait for it) by myself. My kids are awesome, we stopped for ice cream half way through and there was a bottomless snack bar of individually packaged goldfish/popcorn/fruit snacks/capri-suns. If you need someone to poke a straw through a juice pouch at 80 mph I am totally your girl. 

First Stop- Toledo where I hung with my parents, went to the church I grew up in, and saw a close friend from High school. 

Second Stop- St. Clair Shores where I hung out all day with my nieces and my own kids (five girls under ten my spring break was cra-zy) partially at my sister’s house and partially at the Burger King with a play place and free wi-fi. We hung out until we got the call that my sister had her baby (grand-daughter number 7 with no boys if you are counting) and we all piled into the mini-van to meet baby Anne. 

Third Stop- Festival of Faith and Writing, after I saw the new baby, I dropped my kids back in Toledo and headed to my friend Leanne’s house where I crashed for the Festival of Faith and Writing. She and her husband are lovely and her babies are totally charming. We kept it real with each other in all the best ways and sister can cook. Mmmmm. I met a zillion new people and affirmed how lovely so many other people were. I talked a lot about education and poverty, and was deeply encouraged to keep trudging with my writing pursuits. It was great and I certainly hope my spring break lines up again in two years.

Fourth Stop- Home. I got to my parent’s house at 1 am, finished talking to them about the Festival at 2:30 am (My friend Emily and I are shooting a video about this #extrovertproblems this summer.) and drove my children home the next day. On the way home my oldest explained to me that Bucky (that is what she named our mini-van) was sad because he couldn’t sing the Frozen sound track like her cousin’s mini-van. So, one small stop later and we listened to the soundtrack from Cincinnati to Atlanta. I got home at 1 am and taught the next day. I told you my spring break was crazy. 

Frozen- Due to the emotional pressure of my three-year-old to make Bucky happy, we now listen to Frozen any time we are in the van. Any time. From the beginning. The cutting part.

Food- At home I made an amazing meal Polenta casserole. It is easy, lean, and my Bible study LOVED it. My sister made it. She loved it too. I also made a delicious Easter dinner with Dr. Pepper glazed ham. I didn’t know, but now I know. Perfection.

While out on the town with my friend Jennifer, we has a truly amazing meal at the cutest french cafe ever (minus the ones in Paris). Brie on pretzel bread, Beef Wellington, Creme Brulee and champagne. Yes Please. It was seriously perfect. 

Friends- I had an incredible time at FFW mostly because of the friends there, and I would list them but I know I will forget someone. On the home front, my friend Vanessa took 2 hours out of her day to teach me about the rosary. I will post on that next month after I try it out for awhile. But seriously y’all, it was a gift worth mentioning.

I am linking up with Leigh Kramer (who I got to see again at FFW) go see what everyone is into!