I get jealous sometimes. I do. It isn’t a giant secret that I would love the opportunity to write a book, one that would get picked up and published. That hasn’t happened yet. Good things, envy worthy things have happened to me, and I am grateful for the opportunities, for getting to do a TEDx talk, for writing for the Huffington Post, for having people want to read the words I write and for emailing me to tell me my words matter.

But I still would love to write a book, and I live in a place where some of my friends get to do that, and sometimes that makes me jealous. I feel like I am maybe not supposed to say that on the internet but I know that I am not the only one. People get jealous sometimes. It is okay. Jealousy is a lot about what you want (so it is good to pay attention to it) and scarcity (that is the lying part that says if they got it, it somehow takes something away from me.

Celebration and sharing are the best weapons against the scarcity part of jealousy. If I am HAPPY for you. Genuinely happy for you because I think the work you are doing is really really important, then scarcity goes away and dies in the horrible pit of a cave it came from.

Here is the truth of abundance: No one else can do your work, and you can’t do anyone else’s work. You can’t write their book and they can’t write yours. So we should be celebrating each other’s successes. I am really excited to share with you some work that I think is awesome. I am grateful for these people doing their work faithfully and want to share it with you.

Sarah Bessey has a book coming out. Sarah has saved my faith more than any other person who I have never met. I am not the only one who says this. Women like me love Sarah because she faithfully does her work and it helps us. Here are ways to help her. Also, buy her first book Jesus Feminist.

Seth Haines has a book that just came out. It is different than any other book I have ever read about faith. It is sort of about alcoholism, but not really at all. It calls me back to freedom. Also, it is just really beautiful prose. Here it is.

Tara Owens and Erin Lane both wrote incredible books this year. Both could be nominated here.

Embracing the Body is about sex and bodies and spirituality. It is absolutely a game changer, like an immunization for all that bad theology we learned while reading I Kissed Dating Goodbye. Buy it here. 

Lessons in Belonging is about not beloning, and wanting to, and feeling like everyone else in church is just la-de-da no problems and you are a mess in the pews. This book brought me safely through our church transition and I could not be more grateful for it. Buy it here. 

Or ask you library to stock one or all of these. Or put one on your Christmas list.

AND THEN TELL ME! What awesome work are YOU up to? How can we abundant with each other?

I am really excited to share this next parable with you, because I am really excited to share Gayl with you. Gayl is the real deal, living just a day-trip from my house, I think of her house as a retreat. I just feel so loved there. I also love this post. It is rare that something literally makes me laugh out loud. Enjoy. You can read the whole series here.

The Kingdom of God is like a Surprise During Church

One recent Sunday morning I played the piano for our Anglican church. The piano is electronic and has buttons that will change to practically any style of music. For our purposes it is usually set for grand piano, which is nice for the hymns and musical responses.

What I did that morning was quite unexpected to me and to the rest of the congregation. Our minister said afterward that it was about the second most memorable thing that has happened in the history of the church, the first being when they almost burned down the building during an Ash Wednesday service.

We had moved into the second part of the service which is the Eucharist. During this time of preparation for communion we have a lot of prayers, and with some we sing responses. Every time I think about what happened I can’t help but laugh, although at the time it didn’t seem quite appropriate. (I’ll just say right here that in telling this story I don’t mean to be sacrilegious at all, but share an analogy.)

After praying a corporate confession of sins and hearing assurances of forgiveness from scripture, our minister leads us into the next part by using these words from the 1928 Prayer Book:

It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, that we should at all times, and in all places, give thanks unto thee, O Lord, Holy Father, Almighty, Everlasting God. THEREFORE with Angels and Archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious Name; evermore praising thee, and saying,

At this point we USUALLY reverently and majestically sing the following, also from the Prayer Book:

HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, Lord God of hosts,

Heaven and earth are full of thy glory:

Glory be to thee, O Lord Most High. Amen.

What happened instead was quite a surprise.

While the minister had been saying the introductory part, my finger accidently hit a button, changing the setting of the piano. I quickly tried to get it back to grand piano, and at one point it looked like it was. Instead, it must have been just scrolling through the different options.

When I played the first chord, it burst out into a very loud polka with a drumbeat.

Needless to say, it really livened up the service, and woke up some people who were feeling sleepy. Our minister was having a hard time keeping himself from laughing out loud. I quickly turned the volume down, lifted up my hands and calmly said, “I don’t know what to do.” A couple of years ago, I probably would have panicked and gotten shaky, but I really did stay calm this time.

The other pianist came and turned it off, then back on showing me that in doing so it would reset. (I must have been shown that before but did not remember at the time.) Anyway we got it fixed and proceeded with the service as our minister composed himself and repeated the call to praise and magnify our great God.

The kingdom of God is like an unexpected polka.

In our church services we pray the same prayers and sing the same responses every week. If we are not careful in that routine, we might just go through the motions not even thinking about what we are saying. Sometimes we need a wake up call, like a blast of the unfamiliar.

There are also times in our everyday life that we just go through the motions. We don’t always think about God or other people or anything in particular. It’s as if we are asleep to anything outside of our own sphere. Sometimes God throws out something very unexpected to wake us up and put us back on the right path.

The unexpected polka reminds me that God’s love for me is not based on my actions.  

It was a big mistake but He doesn’t disapprove of me because I caused a stir in Church. He knows I make mistakes but loves me just the same.

Our minister also said something that made a lot of sense. I don’t remember the exact words, but something to the effect that when we all stand before God with the angels and all the host of heaven, we probably won’t be singing very quietly. 

We will be shouting and dancing in joy and praise much like that unexpected polka.

Gayl Wright makes her home in beautiful upstate South Carolina. She is a seeker of truth who looks for beauty in ordinary things. A self-taught poet, photographer and artist, she loves to capture what she finds using her talents to encourage others and glorify God.  You can find Gayl on twitter, Instagram and her blog.

Yesterday I wrote about finishing well. Today I want to counter that with quitting.

I know that you don’t want to be a quitter. I don’t want to be a quitter either. Ever. For any reason. You were raised to not be a quitter probably. Probably you were told that quitting is always the easy way out. I think that is sometimes true. I am grateful for many times, especially in my growing up years that I didn’t quit, that I did push through, that I showed up even when I didn’t feel like it and I pushed through even when it was really hard. Those are great skills to have.

But sometimes… sometimes we just need to quit. We need to say, I thought this was for me and it isn’t. I thought this would serve me and you but it is actually serving neither of us. I thought this was a good idea, but I was wrong. Let’s do something else instead.

I think there are times when it is okay to quit. It is probably the right thing to do. Sometimes God asks us to, to leave room for something else. Sometimes something is just really really hurting us. It is okay to quit sometimes.

Scarcity says: I am never, ever allowed to quit. I have to keep going KEEP GOING! Forever into eternity. Scarcity tells me that if I quit I will let everyone down. The work I did up to the quitting point will not matter at all. I will lose all credibility. No one will love me (Scarcity loves to tell us our worth is based on what we do and we will be unlovable. Unlovable isn’t even real you guys. It is such a lie from the pit. Jesus says you are lovable. Period)

Abundance says: You are more than your failures. Sometimes things just don’t work and that is okay to admit. Abundance says there might just be an even better way this could work out that is only available if you gracefully bow out. Abundance says sometimes quitting is the hard, right thing to do. Sometimes considering quitting is the only way to get to abundance (even if we don’t actually do it. I thought about quitting 31 days. But I decided that was scarcity and not abundance. It is hard to hear the difference sometimes. This month has really helped me.)

I have been fighting scarcity for 31 days. You can start here if you want to. I would love that.

The 31 days challenge will be over in 4 days. If I am honest I am ready. It has been really good for me to write about scarcity for 31 days, but also it has been hard.

I am an ENFP on the Meyers-Briggs personality type. If I know anything about that type, I know this, we don’t finish things well. We get bored with the same old same old. Whether that means we get tired of the same thing for breakfast or lunch everyday, or the same clothes, or blogging for 31 days in a row. We, as my daughter likes to say about herself, “get distracted by shiny things.”

We do. We get distracted by shiny things, and in the age of the internet, where the news cycles constantly and anything could be trending on Twitter, but certainly not for longer than a couple of hours, it is hard to just show up to the keyboard for 31 days. It is also hard because of words like “passion” “calling” “doing what you love” I can sometimes believe that if it doesn’t feel good right now then I should just do something else.

Scarcity tells me that only the things worth feeling are the things worth doing. If this were the case no book would ever get written, or edited, or published. No lesson plans would ever get better, no surgeon would ever become a master at whichever kind of surgery they are an expert in. There would likely not be experts of any kind in any field and certainly no one would learn how to play an instrument. The doing doesn’t always feel good, and scarcity tells us that that is a reason enough to quit.

But abundance tells me to do it anyway. To show up. To finish. Abundance says that if you lean into the action the feeling will come if it is something you are supposed to be doing. Abundance says you don’t always have to feel like it. But you should do it anyway. The doing is worthwhile, that is what abundance says.

I am 32 and I like myself. Like, I just really think I am awesome.

I owe that, I think, to my search for abundance. I have always been confident, but I would say that this is the first year I would say I like myself, and then stop.

No caveat, no but I am working on, no but/and/plus I like you too.

Just, I like myself. I think I am pretty awesome. And that doesn’t preclude you from being totally awesome, it doesn’t even preclude me from thinking you are totally awesome. I don’t have to apologize for really liking myself, because it doesn’t take anything away from anyone in anyway. It just means I like myself.

For me, this has been the greatest gift of rooting out the scarcity in my life. There is so much more SPACE than there used to be. So many ways a person can be awesome. So much room to like yourself even though you aren’t “there” yet. There is just so much room.

So happy birthday to me, and may YOU find out just how amazing you are this year.

Scarcity says: You are only as good as your last work.

Abundance says: you are good. You are good.

I hope you found sabbath today.

I love hating on scarcity. You can start from the beginning if you want.

Monday is my birthday, so our family is celebrating today. This year I know it is going to be the perfect day because I asked for it.

I took the time to think about what I wanted and WHY I wanted it, then I asked for the things that would make me happy.

My friend Nicole (who is running her own series you should totally check out) taught me a lot about asking, and receiving. So this year I did.

We woke up and I am having coffee while my girls watch Inside Out. We are going to see a friend’s big art show after we get donuts. Then I am going to a wine bar with some friends, ladies who know the whole me and love inspite and because of those things.

Scarcity has been telling me, I think my whole life that if I ask for it then it doesn’t count. All the wants just have to magically appear.

Y’all THAT IS NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN! Scarcity loves to discount things, and I am so, so, so, over that. If you hear, in your brain “that doesn’t count because…” Y’all that is a lie, from the pit, that we hate.

In my 32nd year I want to lean into abundance. I get to ask for the things I want. I get to decide what counts. There are a million ways to have a perfect day. Today I will choose one.

I wrote a thing for the Huffington Post, about race and education. People read the thing and shared the thing. There was some backlash. I didn’t love opening my email for a minute. But we made it through. And now? Now people are calling me brave.

And I guess it was brave, I knew when I wrote it that it wouldn’t be universally loved. But I certainly wasn’t expecting the kind of attention I have currently recieved! (Hey new readers! The comments over hear are not scary. I promise.) But really I was just doing the next right thing for me.

What the heck does brave mean? And who gets to decide what that is? I think YOU get to decide. And I think that you are probably not giving yourself enough credit. Because I think you are probably being very brave.

Showing up is really brave. To your family, to your work, at a church or organization that is made of people and can therefore be sort of messy. You are showing up, and that is brave.

There are a lot of ways to be brave.

Scarcity tells us that you have to be a BIG deal and get a BIG chance to be brave.

Scarcity is a liar, and that junk is a lie from the pit.

Abundance says doing the next right thing is REALLY really brave. I am glad you are showing up to your own life. Abundance is real, and you already are brave.

It doesn’t surprise me that much that Cara and I get along. She was once an English teacher and has been talking to me about her experience in youth ministry. Cara is vivacious and loving. I think you will love this one.

The Kingdom of God is like my  Little Lady

I call her my little lady.

She stands to the left of the kitchen sink, dressed in pearls and a sexy black dress. She doesn’t don heels, nor is her hair all done up, but she sees me in yoga pants and in rumpled, just-woke-up pajamas, in heels and in the same pair of skinny jeans I sport day after day. Together, she and I keep each other company.

I suppose it’s a little strange to give this much thought to an inanimate dish soap holder and the pearled black dress that clothe her.

But I suppose it’s even stranger to compare her to God.

To think her Spirit-like might be to start humming a chorus about how my sin, like the dishes piled high in the sink, has been washed away. I have been made clean and renewed, sudsy bubbles scrubbing every last speck – and while that may be true, to an extent, it feels a bit too individualistic, a revivalist’s visit to the campy King of my youth, complete with good ol’ Baptist songs belted around the campfire.

Likewise, I could expound on her watchful, all-knowing, all-seeing presence. She, like the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg, take in every last bit of activity and of restlessness, of household screams and broken tears and hushed moments, too. She looks over the valley of our small space: ashen dinner remnants stayed from the night before, the moral wasteland of our kitchen floors most certainly a swift ticket to hell’s fiery furnace. But like the sin-cleaner, an uninvolved, uncaring Great Judge isn’t the Jesus I know.

So who is she?

To me, she is Beauty.

And to me, Beauty is found in the most unlikely of places, where and when we least likely expect it.

I can hike a mile or two into the forest. I’ll come to a clearing, and I’ll look out over the cliff and I’ll be reminded that beauty is not hard to spot. She’s in the green and she’s in the blue, and she’s in the rise and fall of mountain ridges and ocean crests. If you’re really, really quiet, she is not just a thing that is seen, but she is a Real Heard Presence, wings flapping a thousand times a minute like her hummingbird muse.

But when Beauty isn’t the first thing I see, she seems to matter that much more.

When my three-year-old sports his Batman costume and cape, and runs around the house saving the day, I see his Fully Alive Self. I see the way he embraces the moment, and I see how he pauses to hug and kiss Baby Brother, and I see how his contagious smile lights up the room. And I think, this faith, this love, this LIFE is a gift from above, for this child shimmers in Christ’s beauty – and this Beauty changes me.

When we’re walking down MacArthur and up Lakeshore, through the streets of our urban neighborhood, and concrete and weeds and garbage seem to overwhelm the landscape, there is a lone daisy popping through the mess. So I stop and I stare. I pause and I give her a head nod. I tell her to keep on growing and to keep on pushing through the obstacles, for she is one beautiful, necessary, admirable being. And if I think this much of her, her whose petals fight for grace, how much more does Real Beauty think of me, of you, of us?

I am haunted and I am stilled by these thoughts. I am found in want, desirous that I may pry open eyeballs as to not miss a single moment of the Spirit’s gift.

So that’s why and how and where my little lady reminds me of God. For when I’m covered in suds and the front of my shirt is soaked and the pile of plates and cups and knives seems an overwhelming obstacle in and of itself, I see her. I see her and she makes me smile. I see her and am reminded that it’s all a gift. I see her, and my mind begins to dream of Beauty.

Because when Beauty finds me in the most unlikely of places, in my ordinary, everyday life, then I am changed.

A former high school English teacher, Cara was in full-time ministry for eight years before getting a Masters of Theology (Fuller Seminary). She now juggles her days as a writer, speaker and mama, and hopes to finish her first manuscript by the end of the year. Cara enjoys reading, the great outdoors and any excuse to eat chips and guacamole. A Seven on the Enneagram, she can’t help but find Beauty in the most unlikely of places. She and her husband, the HBH (Hot Black Husband) live in Oakland, California with their two young sons.

This is one of the first things I wrote on scarcity, and since it is okay that we already said that, I thought perhaps today it bares repeating.

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.