It is a little late but I made it! 31 days of fighting scarcity..

You don’t have to be good at everything.

I know you know that, but I thought maybe you could use the reminder. You don’t have to be good at everything. I almost gave up this whole write 31 days thing before I started because everyone esle had a cute picture, and every time I tried to make one it looked terrifying.

When I went to Facebook to tell everyone that I was almost in tears over Canva and PicMonkey and trying to put some words onto a background. Everyone else I knew seemed to be able to do this. But I couldn’t. I was messing it all up. Then one of my friends offered to do it for me. And just like that Caris created my button.

It was fun for her, and I am still so grateful for it.

Scarcity tells me that if I haven’t mastered pictographs, periscope, snapchat, instagram, and the the next thing that hasn’t even come out yet, that I am not qualified to do what I am good at, the words part.

But abundance says I should do well, the things I am good at, and needing help doesn’t make me any less qualified.

What have you been waiting to do? Try it! Even if you don’t know how.

I am still here, blogging about scarcity. I started here. 

Yesterday my pastor preached about perspective. It was really really good to hear about.

Is it a duck or is it a rabbit?

I see a duck first, I always see a duck first. I see the rabbit if I make myself, but ultimately I see a duck.

The church has duck seers, and rabbit seers, and even people who don’t see either, or see something else. That is a really really hard things about being in the church. This is a really really hard thing about being in the world. This is a really really hard thing about being alive.

We don’t all see things the same way. And we want to, or rather we want people to see the thing we see so we don’t have to question ourselves. By we I mean me. I mean I do that. I mean it would make me feel a lot safer, and more secure if everyone could just see the ducks that I see.

Scarcity tells me that my perspective is only okay if everyone else thinks that, that a different perspective threatens me and my world. I have to fight for myself, for my perspective.

But scarcity is such a stupid liar.

Abundance says that I can really and truly try to see the rabbits of this world, but that doesn’t mean that the duck isn’t there. My perspective and understanding can grow and change, and everyone doesn’t have to see it that way. Abundance says God loves all people desperately, even if the people cannot even agree on what is right in front of them. Abundance says my perspective will not always be correct but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t seek to find truth anyway. Abundance says even though I am terrified of living in a world with multiple perspectives God can do good good work through it all.

I think I will go with abundance.

I missed yesterday, so you will probably get two today. It is the 18th and I am still in this thing! 31 days of fighting scarcity.

I went to the pumpkin patch yesterday. I went with my kids, my sister, her family and some of her neighborhood kids. I went to the pumpkin patch because I wanted to and because my sister wanted to go and because it was time. But I always forget it is time. I always forget because it doesn’t feel right. It isn’t cold enough to be pumpkin carving weather, and the leaves. Why are most of the leaves still green?

I have lived in the south for almost ten years and I am still confused by the seasons. I still sometimes almost miss peaches because they are ripe far sooner than I expect. I still get confused when my girls wear sundresses to the apple orchard and short sleeves to get their pumpkins.

And this next one, this is the craziest one, every year at this time I look at the pictures other people post of the leaves that are orange and yellow and red, and I am afraid that I have missed it, that the changing of the leaves won’t happen to me, in my neighborhood, on my trees.

I get scared that because the timing isn’t exactly what I expect, or what is happening to other people then the timing of the leaves means this part will just be skipped.

Y’all this is not how the cycle of the trees works. It makes no scientific sense. It doesn’t even make any social sense. In my head I am screaming, EVERYONE ELSE I KNOW HAS PRETTY TREES. But that isn’t true either. I know a lot of people in Atlanta who are experiencing exactly what I am experiencing. But scarcity makes me totally crazy.

There are a lot of things in my life that have happened on a time line that I was totally comfortable with. In fact, in this way I am very, very lucky. But there are a few things that I thought I would have by now that I am still waiting on.

Scarcity tells  me that if I don’t have it right now then I am never ever getting it.

But abudance, abundace gently tips my chin toward the warm setting sun and whispers, Abby, love, feel the warmth of a fall sunset in the south. Breathe the air still warm into your lungs. The changing leaves are coming my dear. But for now enjoy the gift of the angle of the sun on the patch of earth you are on this minute. The still green leaves come with their own gift.

Yesterday I promised you that you are better than your worst self. I know, it is a lot to take in but I promise it is true.

But that also means that everyone else is worth more, and loved more than their worst self. That person who totally jacked up your day, or your week, or your work? They are better than that thing that they did to you. or said to you, or didn’t do for you. They are better than that. That is how God’s kingdom works.

Even if they make YOU crazy, even if YOU are just so done, even if YOU can’t see anything good anymore, abundance says they are still a totally valuable, wonderful, amazing human being who deserves all the dignity and respect that any child of God would receive. Abundance says that even if you don’t see it right this second, you should go ahead and act on the wholeness and goodness and love-able-ness of the student who is right there because it is so, absolutely there.

(Scarcity is telling me that this isn’t enough, but abundance says sometimes it only takes a few words. You can read all of the series here.)

31 days! Half way there! Start at the beginning, I am housing this crazy month here.

I have been having a really hard week. Work stuff is hard, relationships are hard, and someone said something to me that only the worst parts of myself whisper to me, about me, when I am feeling very scared.

I missed an appointment I really wanted to go to.

I missed an emai I should have caught.

I missed a guest post of someone I have mad mad MAD respect and affection for (but seriously check it out because it is gooood).

I was late to work. My house is a mess. My kids are being particularly difficult.

I am still afraid that that thing that someone said is true.

Yeah, I am having a very very hard week. And scarcity has been going off like a siren. Scarcity is telling me that I am only as good as my very worst self. I am only as good as the worst things I do even if they aren’t purposeful, even if I am doing the best I can. Scarcity tells me that the best I can do does not always measure up, so I don’t measure up ever for any reason.

But I have been taking deep breaths and trying to find the abundance. Abundance is me saying that I am worthy. That I am worth loving even in the midst of my failures, that I am everything I think my potential might be worth and probably more, and you are too.

I am so SO thrilled to have Addie Zierman here today. Her book When We Were on Fire was like reading out of my own more eloquent high school journal. Addie tells the beautiful and difficult truth, always. I am a BIG FAN. 

The Kingdom of God is like a Squeaky Hamster Wheel

We accidentally-on-purpose got a hamster last week. His name is Hurley.

We got the hamster because the boys kept catching moles that had gotten trapped in the egress windows. Dane, in particular, had become devoted to creating habitats for these vile little critters with their sneering snouts and theirappetite for worms and grubs.

So we struck a bargain — release Squeaky the Mole, and we’ll buy a hamster.

Deal.

Hurley is a cute little Winter White from PetsMart who looked so docile and sweet in his cage.

But then, we got THE WHEEL.

Do they make hamster wheels that don’t squeak? If they exist, I have never met one.

It starts right when we put the boys to bed at 7:30. Squeak, squeak, squeak, the wheel goes as Hurley goes round and round, and it brings me straight back to my pink-wallpapered childhood bedroom and my loft bed, where I’d lie at night, staring at the ceiling while my own hamster, Sniffles, went squeak, squeak, squeak on his own wheel.

At ten o’clock, when Andrew and I turn off living room lights and come upstairs to bed, it’s still going. Squeak, squeak, squeak. “That little thing has to be running miles,” Andrew says, as we lie side by side in bed, listening.

At two in the morning, when I trundle out of bed to let the dog out, the hamster is still running, the squeak, squeak, squeak echoing through the middle-of-the-night quiet. I can hear it perfectly from the kitchen, where I lean my head on the cold patio door, waiting for the dog to come back in.

At five a.m., when my alarm goes off, and I lie in bed, blinking into consciousness, it’s that squeak, squeak, squeak that pulls me out of bed, because once you start hearing it, it’s all you can hear. It’s relentless and impossible to ignore, and it’s what I’m hearing when I open the prayer book I read in the mornings: The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime.

It’s the song behind me when I speak into the morning dark the first part of the Lord’s Prayer:

Our Father, who art in heaven

Hallowed be thy name.

Thy Kingdom come.

Thy will be done on earth

As it is in heaven.

The hamster wheel squeak, squeak, squeaks, and it occurs to me that the Kingdom of God has been at work all this time — that when I am asleep, when I am distracted, when I am unaware, it is still turning, turning, turning — God at work, always, in the world he created.

Listen, I am a whiz at believing that I am the center of the living universe, that the world begins and ends with my to-do list. That if I stop holding it together, it will all fall apart. But in the dark morning, the hamster wheel turns, and I am reminded of the on goingness of it all — that as I sleep, the Kingdom of God is growing and moving and changing everything, turning the world around.

That we wake into a Kingdom that is always already happening.

The wheel squeaks its relentless song, and the sun rises a little bit at a time, and we are invited to step into the healing, nonstop current of Kingdom living once again.

Addie Zierman is a writer, blogger and speaker.

She has an MFA from Hamline University and is the author of When We Were On Fire: A Memoir of Consuming Faith, Tangled Love and Starting Over — which was named by Publisher’s Weekly as one of the best books of 2013.

I am a GO-er a DO-er a recovering YES addict. And today, right this minute I am totally wiped. I learned when my babies were both under two, that the Lord would give me rest, but it didn’t always look like I wanted it to.

Scarcity. Scarcity says if it doesn’t look the way I want it to, it isn’t real. Lies. LIES FROM THE PIT!

Abundance says, take the rest and be grateful. Receive the enoughness. You are enough. It is enough.

So, I didn’t use the words, but I wrote about scarcity and it is up at the Mudroom.

Join me there. 

Start at the beginning, I am housing this crazy month here.

I am writing 31 fighting scarcity. I will be collecting them all at the starting point. I hope you join me this month. 

I have been dumping my words out into the internet for a minute now. I started on another blog in 2010, and moved here a year later when I was on maternity leave with Priscilla.

Priscilla is four, sleeps through the night, and can get her own snack. I sometimes still think of myself as a newcomer. That isn’t even a little bit true.

I have been blogging long enough that some of my closest friends are bloggers, that we have met people from all over the country and housed people in my home that I had never actually met until they brought their bags into my house. It has shaped me in ways I never expected and I am deeply grateful.

But it is sometimes hard to put your words out there multiple times a week. Blogging has changed and there aren’t as many comments. But I love the discussions we have on Facebook and the interactions I have on Twitter, and I love seeing what you are up to on the daily via your Instagram feed. How cute are our kids? Almost as cute as our pets! Sometimes you have no idea what is happening with your post and whether or not what you are saying matters.

Scarcity tells me that my words only matter if the stats bar is higher than yesterday. Scarcity tells me that my words don’t matter because there were no private emails in my box saying they did. Scarcity tells me that only certain things count, and then as soon as I hit that mark it doesn’t count anymore.

Abundance tells me that saying it matters. That just the act of the saying is enough of a reason to do it, that the saying matters because it shapes me, and my shaping is enough, every person’s changing shape, changes the shape of the world. Even if just a little bit, that little bit counts. Abundance also tells me I never really know what my words are doing after they enter the world.

I was reminded this weekend of all of this. I received an email asking me about this post I wrote about why I stopped telling the stories of my first students. One I had written as a guest post for another blog a few years ago. Apparently this person uses it in a class that teaches teachers. I was flattered and encouraged that this piece of writing had shaped something I had no idea about. This interaction also reminded just how much this piece of writing shaped me. It was the first time I wrote about that life. It was the first time I talked about the things I had done wrong. The comments on the blog no longer even available made me consider that maybe I did have a story worth telling. I started my manuscript a year later.

I know the majority of my audience doesn’t blog. But I also know that most people feel as though the thing you are doing doesn’t matter. The diaper changing, the feeding, the laundry, the emails, the paper work, the driving. Does this thing matter?

Yes. It matters because you matter.

am writing 31 fighting scarcity. I will be collecting them all at the starting point. I hope you join me this month. 

This summer when Esther and I hung out we talked a lot about a lot of things, but we also talked a lot about blogging. Why do we do it? What are we doing it? What do people like? What has caught us by surprise?

I was doing the love bomb posts, so I was writing about scarcity then too. Esther was telling me how much she liked when I write about scarcity and I wans telling her that I was very very afraid I would run out of things to say, or people would grow tired of hearing me talk about it. She started laughing.

Right in my kitchen she asked me, what about preachers? What if you showed up to church and your preacher said, I am tired about talking about Jesus, so let’s do something else! Or Sarah Bessey (We both love Sarah’s writing.) What if Sarah stopped writing about breastfeeding, and ordinary life, the spirit meeting her there. What if Idelette decided she had said all the says about Sisterhood?

In this writing world, with all of the pressure to say something NEW and interesting and new. It isn’t okay to be struggling with scarcity two years after you start a newsletter about it. It isn’t delightful to still be delighted by the way the sune comes through the tress, as least not to write about it again, even if that is where you find yourself again.

But what if we decide we can’t write about the thing that is on her heart? What if we are afraid we already said that?

I think we should say it again. I think there is an abundance of rooms for an abundance of voices, and that sometimes God gives us one message, one thing to wrestle, one voice, and we should use it. Maybe I am not the only one who needs to hear something more than once.

I am writing 31 fighting scarcity. I will be collecting them all at the starting point. I hope you join me this month. 

I am afraid of hope. Our whole lives are up in the air for next year and I want to know where things are coming down. I have some opinions about what should come down where and how those things should stack up.

I have some very specific hopes I have set up for myself. I am trying to hold them loosely. I am maybe not very good at that.

Two days ago my youngest came up to me and beamed. I was a SURPRISE! I SUPRISED YOU! She isn’t wrong. Priscilla is my surprise. And she is my reminder that my hopes are sometimes two specific.

I hope sometimes in one good thing, in one right thing, in one certain way that people should shake out. I have a scarcity of hope, and I am slowly, s-l-o-w-l-y, learning to unclench my understanding of what to hope for. I am learning that I can hope in abundance. There are an abundance of good things, good ways, good places for my life to land.

I just need to believe in the abundance of that hope, in the delight of being surprised, of the lack of scarcity in the ways things are going to turn out.