I wrote this piece for Cindy Brandt. She is AMAZING y’all. She runs a really good Facebook group on unfundamentlist parenting, has her own blog, and writes for Patheos. I am thrilled to be contributing. 

Here is the thing that I still believe from my purity culture days: The world has dangerous ideas about sex, and it is totally up to Christians to combat those ideas.

Here is the problem with purity culture: We fought bad ideas with equally terrible ideas, sometimes worse ideas.

I was raised in the height of the purity culture madness.The holy grail of the Purity Movement, I Kissed Dating Goodbye came out my freshmen year of high school, right when I was ready to give dating at least a full frontal hug. I have heard the sermons about chewed up gum and plucked flowers. I have been a teen who drew lines, and confessed and recommitted and re-drew. Instead of the sexy and sacred married sex we were promised, many of us walked into marriages and discovered that the shame that was supposed to magically fall away with our wedding clothes, didn’t. We were left in a new and strange land with no road map to navigate and a lot of extra baggage.

Is it any surprise that parents my age are searching for new ways to talk to our kids about sex?

Again, we are left with a road map problem. We know what we don’t want. We don’t want to heap shame and guilt upon our kids for natural sexual desire. We don’t want them to think that their worth rests soley in the choices they make with their body. We don’t want our kids to experience the massive amounts of shame we did.

But we have to say something. Purity culture was absolutely correct in teaching us that the world has it wrong about sex. The world teaches boys to constantly push boundaries, while teaching girls to say yes but not too much, and no, but not too much, and to like sexual activity, but not too much. I am confused just writing it.

You can read the rest here. 

As a white person raised in the mid-west I didn’t grow up having very deep conversations about race. But I moved to Atlanta almost ten years ago, taught at a majority black school, and learned I didn’t know a thing about race. I learned. I did the work. I read the books. I know unpacking my privilege is a lifelong journey but I am on that journey and actively trying to move forward.

But y’all, I am having some road blocks.  Sometimes things come up that I have no idea  how to deal with.

We are living in a neighborhood we love and sending our kid to a school we love. Our girl is one of the only white kids in the school  and I am encountering problems I am not really sure how to navigate. It is just my kid, at five and now six years old has questions about race I do not have answers for.

Question 1: Why can’t my hair go clack-clack-clak?

It started with the requests for braids. I put one small braid on the edge of her head. That wasn’t enough. I put two. I put the limit at three. She was asking for a whole head. LOTS of braids mom! With BEADS! When Trinity shakes her head it goes click, click, click, can my head do that?

No. I don’t think so. I mean….I don’t know. I struggle with the line between appreciation and appropriation and I actually am not sure if a tiny white child with reddish cornrows is okay or not. So…I just told her she can’t have them because her mom doesn’t know how to do it. This is technically true. Also, being tender-headed is real and my kid has that, she would cry and I do not want my kid to affirm the stereotype of white kids being soft in the middle of the beauty salon. So the answer is no…but would it be okay? I don’t know!

Question 2: Can I wear the police hat to school?

So another thing I am not sure about…What happens when the only white child in the class chooses the police hat for the pay a dollar wear a hat day. Not the soft police hat with the little bill, no. The riot gear one. The hard plastic round one with the all capital letters POLICE on the side. Is that okay? When there are protests against Police Brutality, and it seems like most of the issues are white police officers and black victims is it okay for your white kid to wear the police gear to school? Is it bad parenting to hide the police hat and make your husband convince your daughter that the yellow construction hat is really just as cool while you are driving to work and don’t have to deal with any of it? Is it okay to pretend I am asking for a friend?

Question 3: What is whiteness?

Okay. This one I am not asking for a friend. Last year my daughter told me we were white, and when I did the whole progressive parenting exploration thing and asked her “What do you think that means?” She roller her eyes at me and pointed at the skin on her arm. “It is this mommy, you got this too.” Yeah. That is all I really know. What the heck is whiteness anyway? From what I have read the Irish weren’t always considered white, nor Italians, Jewish people are only considered white sometimes. When do things change? What does that mean? Are you considered white when society as a whole decides to accept you into the majority so they can better discriminate against other groups? That seems pretty jacked up. How the heck am I supposed to explain that to my six year old?

Question 4: Why can’t we celebrate our whiteness?

So. Last year my kid learned with her class to recite  a poem that was the cutest thing ever. They did it at the Pre-K banquet. But also, it freaked me out, especially when she performed this verbal feat by herself, in public places. There was this line, about being proud of her race and I cringed every time. It sounded like I was raising an adorable, tiny voiced,  white supremacist. And the kids books I could find were no help. Every children’s book specifically addressing whiteness and what it meant was written by the KKK, so that isn’t really the angle we are going for.

Question 5: Why wouldn’t I be allowed to have any friends back in history?

One of the things I L-O-V-E about my kid’s school is that they talk about history and current events pretty frankly. The confusing part of this is that 5 year olds tend to make things all about them. So, when my baby hears that black and white children didn’t go to school together, she doesn’t hear that the white people were trying to keep the best things for themselves. Instead, she looks around the room, sees all her friends are various shades of brown, and thinks that segregation would have deprived her of her friends. That is why it is bad. That is all. The more I learn about white supremacy, the more I realize that I center whiteness in almost every narrative. This is what white supremacy has taught me to do. But it is also totally developmentally appropriate for my daughter to center herself. All kids do! At what point do I start the “this isn’t about you” mantra?
Even with these questions unanswered the benefits of raising our kid in a majority minority environment far outweighs the sometimes awkward and confusing conversations we have at dinner. Ultimately, our world is only going to be more diverse and I am (I hope) giving my kids the best foundation to tackle their adult world. But I could use the answer to these questions if anyone has them.

When I got the prompt for SheLoves this month I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I did a little of both. We could choose from DETOUR or WHAT THE HECK? Both felt appropriate but I had been yelling the latter into my phone at various people when describing my life for about two months. So, I went with that.

We moved to Atlanta 10 years ago, pretty much on faith. We just knew this was the way and every step up the way, things opened up like magic. If it wasn’t miraculous, it was at least remarkable. I think of the ways this worked out for us a lot. Sometimes it gives me hope. Sometimes it leaves me giving God the side eye. I mean…I know you can do it God, what are you waiting for?

It is June 16. I still do not have my future totally sorted out. We are leaning one way, but could be swooped another. Had you told me this would be my life a year ago. I simply would not have believed you. My God is faithful, and would never do this to me.

When I heard the term “ghosting” I was like. Yes. That is what it feels like God is doing. God just stopped answering my text messages, my emails, my phone calls. God is just….silent where there used to be a lot of direction and easy banter there is just…space. So what does it look like to believe that God is faithful even though God is not doing what you thought God would do? It is hard, and I am writing about it at SheLoves today.

I quit my job on faith (something I have written about for more than a year) and no new job has risen up to meet me. My husband set a defense date for his PhD, no job for him on the horizon. I was sure by June, we would be having conversations about our new town, or his new job, or the books I need for seminary. Instead, we are figuring out when each of our last paychecks will go in, when the health insurance will run out, when is the last day I can tell the seminary I am actually not coming without having to pay for the semester.

We are trying to figure out where the line in the sand is. At what point do we pull the trigger on putting our house up for sale and moving into my sister’s basement in Detroit? What kind of crazy is the life plan of starting a YouTube channel about four adults and six girls, 10 and under, living in one house? I’d call it Half a Dozen Cousins. I even have the beginnings of a jingle worked out. Is it like, delusional crazy, or is it this just might work crazy? I don’t really want to find out.

You can read the rest here.

Somewhere in the spring, when I was having a particular time saying good-bye to the life that I thought I would always lead, and hello to the one that has still not quite revealed itself (we are getting there, but any prayer for the final puzzle pieces to drop into place I will gladly take) I needed a distraction.

And it seemed that everyone on the internet had been listening to Hamilton. But there was one problem. Surprisingly, at 6 months in, I am still more or less following my ban on buying new things. And Hamilton is new. In the shouts of just how amazing it was, I had somehow missed the fact that you can stream it free on Spotify, or on Prime Music.

Alexa! Play Hamilton Soundtrack! I got Christian a fancy Amazon speaker for Christmas and that is, I think, the only thing we have shouted at it since May. After about a week of my obsessive listening, my husband sat down with me one night as we listened to the soundtrack and followed along on the Genius article. I came home the next day to a husband that had half the lyrics memorized. It really is as good as everyone says it is.

With the constant listening, and the small children who can come in on the chorus parts (LA-FAY-ETTE!) and the googling of historical revolutionary war heroes because you are trying to figure out if there actually was a guy named Hercules Mulligan or if that part was just made up (it is true) comes the finding of every clip on the internet that has Lin-Manuel Miranda’s face in it.

Every single clip I have ever seen of Lin-Manuel Miranda performing Hamilton, from the White House to karaoke car pool to the clip of them in a high school cafeteria, his face lights up. When Hamilton comes on, Miranda’s face lights up. You would think by now he would be sick of it. He wrote it, workshopped it, performed, performed, performed. And when he gets somewhere and they play it, he does not roll his eyes and say “oh this again.” He doesn’t say “listen, I have done this a million times and I don’t want to do it anymore.” His eyes LIGHT UP and he delights in coming in right on cue.

I guess you could say, of course he does Abby – do you have any idea how much money Hamilton has made him? (Not enough. It is a work of genius and we cannot put money on that.) And I guess you would be right. But as much as he is enjoying the money and the fame, I don’t think he wrote it for those things. I think he wrote it because it came into his brain and he was delighted by the idea. I think he thought the hard work of working it out was worth it. I think every time he hears it, probably for the rest of his life, he is going to be delighted by what he created.

I believe in a God who is as delighted by his creation as Lin-Manuel Miranda is delighted by Hamilton. I believe in a God who is as delighted in ME as Miranda is delighted by the score of his play. I believe in a God who isn’t annoyed by me leaning into my gifts of writing, speaking, teaching. I don’t think God thinks, oh MAN, this again! I mean I created her and she is pretty great but…can’t she do something new and different?  I think God is all, OH YEAH! THIS AGAIN! I am totally delighted by how amazing this person I built is!

I think it is so easy to assume we are annoying other people, or even God. I think that it is easy to say “Oh man, this again? I am doing this again, saying this again, all about this again. No one wants to hear this anymore.” But they do. We are Hamiltons, people. We are a really amazing work and God loves us every single time.

I got to see, and then write about someone I admire a lot, who has recently become a dear friend. If you haven’t read My Name Is Not Those People then you are missing out. Buy it here.

I first saw Julia speak in an intimate setting, after the other twelve writers and I read her book in preparation for a week long conference: “Writing to Change the World.” I didn’t have the book on me for her to sign because I had already given it away to my mother for her to consider teaching at the local community college.

The faster I hand off a book, the more you know I like it. Julia’s lasted in my home less than 24 hours after I finished it.

Her work is unique in that she is the only voice I have read about poverty from someone currently experiencing poverty. Usually we hear from those who work with people in poverty or those who were once in poverty but have since gained middle class status. I knew my mother’s students would resonate with the frankness from which Julia Dinsmore discusses her situation and the forces at work to keep her there.

Here is the thing you have to brace yourself for, if you are going to meet Julia Dinsmore in the flesh: There isn’t an ounce of shame on her. She tells you this in her book, but it is something you really have to experience. I don’t know that I have ever met someone so fully at peace with themselves. She laughs and cries and sings and tells stories with abandon. That first time I met her, the person who arranged the meeting asked me what I thought of it. I responded from the gut, “it is just so rare for me to be in a room with a person who has feelings as big as mine.”

Read the Rest Here.

Meet my friend Katie. Katie and I were sort of like ships passing in the night, I was joining a church just as her and her husband were leaving to go start theres. Katie’s encouragement has meant the world to me as I applied for seminary. I hope you enjoy her voice as much as I do.

The conversation has come up before with my husband or my mom who are also pastors. Maybe it’s a day one of us is discouraged, or it’s just a theoretical conversation about what is the hardest thing about ministry. I’ve read lists on Facebook which include such items as not having set hours and congregations expecting the world and the changing nature of the church, and while all of those things are true, they’re not the hardest thing.

The hardest thing about ministry is that God is all wrapped up in it, so when something goes poorly there’s so much more at stake. Let me explain — say you’re a dentist and it’s a bad week. Nobody asks you, the dentist, well how much did you pray this week? How’s your walk with God? How’s your devotional time? It is understood that for the most part your job is separate from your spiritual life. This is not to say you don’t pray about doing your work well or pray for your patients or that you’re not a witness for Jesus in your love for others, just that if you have a day you’re a sub-par dentist, your brain doesn’t jump to “well I must be a sub-par Christian.”

In ministry it is easy to make the jump — sometimes we do it ourselves, and sometimes other people do it for us — low Sunday attendance for a few weeks in a row? You must not be praying enough. Feeling discouraged in your job? You’re probably disappointing Jesus. And the problem is — it’s partially true. If I’m not spending time in prayer and study then my job as pastor does suffer. But it isn’t always true, and that’s the rub. I know very faithful people who’s churches are not ‘successful’ and who are often sent to hard places with few victories. We also see ‘successful’ preachers on TV who have personal jets and are millionaires, and who definitely aren’t reading their Bibles (or maybe just not understanding them — see personal jet comment).

So our walk with God is both connected and not connected to our ‘success’ in ministry — what do we do with that? How do we keep a hard month (or a hard year?!) from making us feel like we’re letting Jesus down? I don’t think there’s an easy answer (clearly), but I do think separating out our personal faith journey from our church vocation is probably the first step. Again, easier said than done because they are so tied up together. I think my first step is to continually remind myself that it isn’t my church — It’s God’s church.

I love the All Sons &Daughters song “Come to Save Us” which reminds me “Jesus, you’re the One who save us…” Simple. Direct. To the point. Because the Kingdom of God is going to come with or without me (probably sometimes in spite of me). My supervisor when I was a chaplain resident use to remind me that I could not single handedly bring down the Kingdom of God (some days I was legitimately concerned).

I think at the end of the day, there is truth and ego tied up in the hardest part of ministry. Truth that my walk with God matters. It matters for me, and it does effect how I lead my sheep. But also, that it doesn’t matter in the big picture as much as I feel like it does because the outcome of my specific congregation or the church universal does not rest on me (Thank God!) If ministry isn’t going well or it’s a rough week, it does still mean I could probably pray more but not because God is waiting for me to earn back all my bonus point before I unlock the Holy Spirit in my church, but because my soul needs it.

It all comes back to the story a rabbi once told — that we are to hold in one hand that it was from dust we were made and to dust we shall return and to hold in the other, that even for you, the universe was created. The hardest part about ministry is that it is (not) about me. The hardest part about ministry is that what I do both matters greatly and yet God can move in spite of me. The hardest/easiest/best part about ministry? It’s all wrapped up in God.

Rev. Katie Lloyd is a pastor in The United Methodist Church in Kentucky. She also happens to be a pastor’s spouse and pastor’s kid. When not doing church stuff, she and her husband like to run, camp, garden, and play with their muppet dog Wendell. She blogs at http://reluctantprophets.com.

This one is from the archives. I did some light editing. I needed it today. Maybe you too?

Dreaming is for teenagers, people who have nothing better to do than lie on the hood of their beat up car and stare at the night sky. For people who can stay up late and not pay for it the next morning, with no one but themselves to feed breakfast.

Dreaming is for college students, for people whose parents still list them on their health insurance. For dorm rooms and coffee shops with acoustic guitars ever-present and couches pulled in off of street corners smelling vaguely like mildew and cigarette smoke.

Dreaming is for newlyweds, for couples holding mai-tai’s on a beach in Jamaica, or in their parents tent sipping a cheap bottle of gas station champagne as they talk about ten years from now when they will have a house and some kids and enough money in the bank for a real honeymoon the second time around. The grandparents will take the kids and the couple will fly to Hawaii, first class.

But dreams are not for me. The kids are in the patched up kiddie pool in the back as I stand at the kitchen counter typing with one eye on the splashing and shouting praying the duct tape holds for another 20 minutes, just until I can get the words out. They are naked again. Swim suits cost me too much time.

We are past that ten-year mark, my husband and I, and even my body seems to be fighting the dreams. Dreamers don’t have muffin tops, or full-time jobs, or kids that need health insurance. Dreamers aren’t supposed to be interrupted by thoughts of responsibility and who will pay the light bill. I need to go to the grocery store and the Goodwill; I don’t have time for dreams.

And, then someone asks me to dream. To put away the what-ifs and the how is that possibles. To simply sit, blank page in front of us and pour out the things that are hidden in our hearts.

I leave the TV on so I won’t become fully engrossed in this activity. I am afraid it is going to hurt. I know it is going to hurt. I think if I can distract myself enough I will be able to keep a part of myself protected. I underestimate the depths and volume of this calling of my heart, this thing they call a dream. It is loud, LOUD and big and a little scary. And now it is on a less than blank page, refusing to be ignored.

Who has time for dreaming? Not me. I have kids to raise, dinner to cook, groceries to buy, a school year to prep for. I have a book to write. I do not have time for dreaming, I have a children who won’t go to bed.

Moms aren’t supposed to dream for themselves. The dreams should be folded up and tucked away, replaced with onesies and swaddle blankets. For now at least, those dreams belong to your babies. That is the lie I have been believing: These dreams of mine have an expiration date; my dreams and my children cannot go-exist. My creativity must now belong to motherhood.  Here I am, two small children and a dream, none of whom will be ignored, all three shouting at me to be fed.

I write at the kitchen counter as the kids come in and ask for waffles for lunch. Waffles in the toaster, I realize we are out of syrup and spread some jam my friend made on top.  The girls clamber for more. Later, I am writing in the car in the parking lot of the grocery store, both of my children asleep in the back seat and I realize that while feeding my children and my dream I only managed to feed myself the bits of waffle my youngest threw on the floor. Will feeding my dreams will always leave me this hungry?

I’ve tried to pack away my dreams, to leave them folded carefully away in a plastic bin labeled, some day. I have tried to wait them out, to throw them out, to simply ignore them. It leaves me hungrier than coffee for breakfast and half a jam smeared waffle off of the floor for lunch. Like these girls I grew tucked safely in my womb, these dreams grown in my heart were given to me, and are demanding and impossible to ignore. It is part of their charm. I love all of them just like that. I’m a mom with a dream. I’m the mom of a dream.

Maybe dreams are for moms too. Maybe dreams are for people who go about their day at the grocery store, drive their kids in a circle in the mini-van until everyone’s head slowly drops to the side, maybe some days nap time is for dreaming cramped in the driver’s seat of the mini-van or standing at the kitchen counter just trying to get the words out. Maybe suppressing these dreams is a waste of my time and with everything on my to-do list I shouldn’t add that.

Maybe I don’t have time not to dream.