!n our first Skype meeting, she asked me the question that has haunted me for years: What I want to know is, what would purposeful look like?

We had met in an online writing course, Esther and I, and were “randomly assigned” critique partner status. If it was random, it was darn lucky for me. We took a look at each other’s blog and offered our honest feedback. Both of us coming from very artistic backgrounds, we didn’t hold back.

We’ve been pacing each other ever since. But only a few weeks ago did I answer that first question. What would purposeful look like?

I was writing at the time, at Accidental Devotional. I was claiming a lot of things in my life were an accident. I didn’t know if I wanted to go to college, but I wanted to be on a speech team, and I “accidentally” majored in education, and was good at it, so it stuck. Then I moved to Atlanta and accidentally started writing, accidentally about God.

I was doing all the things, but I wasn’t owning any of them. I was telling the story as though my life was a thing that happened to me, not something I was creating.

You can read the rest right here.

I am terrible at asking. Like, just really really bad. I live sometimes in this fantasy land where I shouldn’t have to ask for anything. I live in the world where if I sit on my hands and am just good enough someone will notice and I will get what I need.

I know women who didn’t have to query agents for years before they got representation, who just got an email one day, Hey! Would you like to write a book? I wanted that to be my story. That isn’t my story. I pounded on that door for a long time.

I know women who were plucked out of their congregations or Bible studies, told YOU are a LEADER, COME SPEAK. And I sat on my hands and tried to not say one more thing but may have ended up saying two more things for years before I pulled my hands from beneath me and pointed at myself. Me. I am called to lead, to speak, to preach. I wanted it to be someone else, but it had to be me first. Here I am Lord. Pick me.

I ended up in the dean of student’s office ugly crying and saying, I needed more help. With a few clicks and an email I got it. I just had to ask. Then Christian got a job 7 days after the deadline I gave God (y’all, that maybe isn’t the best idea…). We are staying. Everyone has a school to go to. We looked at the budget and the assistance I am getting and realized we were still short.

I don’t need to make a lot, but I do need to make enough. Currently, I don’t. I pulled out the calendar and blocked off this time and that time and realized how little time I was about to have for my family, and for my writing. I have always hustled pretty hard, but this is a whole new level, one I’m not sure is physically possible.

So, I am asking.

I started a Patreon account and for five dollars a month, you can get an update from me about what seminary is like, and what specific shape my faith crisis is taking that month (I’ve heard that happens a lot. I guess we’ll find out together). For ten I will tell you before everyone but my mom any big news I might have (book! baby! new dog! who knows? hopefully not the baby though). For fifty I will paint you a picture. Every month.

Mostly, if I can get to even 500 dollars it would provide enough breathing room for me and my family that I could for sure keep writing at least a few times a week. I could engage with my followers, I could keep on keeping on. Please consider signing on.

Always, thank you. Thank you for walking with me. Cheering me on. Praying for me and my family. Your support of this blog, my thoughts, my gifts, have gotten me to seminary in the first place. I am so very grateful for everything you have already done.

Here is my patreon. If you can’t donate, please consider sharing?

By now you may have heard the story where Donald Trump first said a crying baby was totally fine, and then changed his mind and shamed the mother for thinking that it would be appropriate for a crying baby to be in the same space as him while he was talking.

Right at the point in my life when I thought I could not have anything in common with a woman at a Trump rally, I feel nothing but empathy for her. Because y’all, this is my absolute worse nightmare, or at least it was not that long ago. If you have been with me since the early days you remember the blog posts from when I had two very small children and a husband spending weekends doing graduate school work.

In those days, if it was an evening or a weekend the kids were with me. (A public school teacher and a graduate student don’t really have a line in the budget for babysitting outside of working hours.) Which meant I was always asking the question, Can I bring my baby?

Sometimes the answer is yes! Of course! And they mean it. Sometimes the answer is no, and you don’t go. Sometimes the answer is we have childcare! and you kiss a stranger. But very often the answer is, yes bring the kids, but the person saying the yes is into the idea of babies, not actual tiny humans at the event they have worked so hard to put on.

It is just really hard to balance is this or is this not a space for my baby. And I care about this because disqualifying babies often leaves mothers out of the conversation too.

It is the most mortifying thing to be told your kid is invited and then to be treated like you are a complete idiot who doesn’t know anything because you brought a baby there. I know because it has happened to me. It has happened at churches and restaurants and local meetings where I really really wanted to have a voice in the policies they were discussing. But the baby got fussy, and the same people who were patting the babies head and telling you how great they think it is that you brought your tiny darling are giving you the side eye and whispering to their neighbor just loud enough so you take notice that they cannot hear and they really wanted to.

So you pack up yourself and your kiddos as quickly as possible, (How did they manage to strew everything in your diaper bag all over the floor in 3 minutes?) unfold your double stroller, plop both kids in without buckling and hustle yourself out of there as fast as possible. Inevitably one of your darlings squirms herself out of the seat you were just about to buckle her into and manages to bump her head on the floor. And then those folk really  hear a crying baby. Instead of attending whatever event was important enough for you to get three people ready and showered and out of the house before noon on a Saturday, you are going through the Dunkin’ Donuts drive thru and feeding everyone chocolate munchkins while all three of you cry in the minivan….or…you know….so I have heard.

But that hasn’t always been my experience. I have also had people notice that I was nervous and put a hand on my shoulder and tell me to stay . Tell me that a fussy baby did not disqualify me from having a seat at the table and a voice in the conversation. Once, while I was still nervous about calling myself a writer, the most respected person at the table told me to SIT DOWN when I was excusing myself because of some child shenanigans and the dignity it restored in me cannot be under stated. I was reminded that there was room enough for me, even with this very messy life I had.

I admitted to a friend for the first time in my life that I was called to preach after watching Jen Hatmaker at a woman’s event an hour from my home. The only reason I could attend was because childcare was provided. Otherwise, I would have been at home instead of watching a woman whose style reminds me of my own, totally own the pulpit. It was a game changer for me, and if my kids weren’t invited I would not have been there.

Child friendly policies in community meetings, churches, politics, and really anywhere else important conversations are happening isn’t about liking or not liking babies. It is about whether or not you are making your event accessible to women.

Gimme head with hair

Long beautiful hair

Shining, gleaming,

Streaming, flaxen, waxen

Give me down to there hair

When I was 15, I chopped off all my hair. Like really chopped it off. With one point of my finger into the glamorous book of choices at the hair salon, I went from medium, ponytail-length to a pixie. I hadn’t even told anyone. I just went for it. I loved it, and kept the same short haircut until I realized it would be a pain to maintain in college. I have gone back to that haircut a few times in my life. Each time I love it just the same, but that first time I really needed it. I really needed the change.

I am writing today at SheLoves about hair, but not really. More about being a woman and what kind we are expected to be. You can read the rest here.

I have been watching the DNC like I watch all political theatre, with my laptop open, tweeting away. Everyone lost their collective junk when Michelle Obama came to speak, and for good reason.

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How amazing is she?

Her speech was beautiful and heart-felt and made me cry twice. But there was a weird thing happening on my twitter feed that just really bothered me. Over and over again people were all “Hillary wishes she could be like Michelle.” “Michelle is so much better than Hillary.” “Hillary would lose (insert whatever made up competition) to Michelle.”

Um. Y’all. Michelle was there to endorse Hillary. She literally said “I’m with her.”

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And yet…people are still like OOH! FIRST LADY CAGE MATCH!!! And to be clear, this wasn’t super conservative women should stay in the home people. I don’t follow those people on Twitter. These are people who are claiming to be feminists.

Um. Y’all. The competition you have put these two ladies in? That isn’t real.

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There is no competition. They both want the exact same thing. They both want the democratic nominee to be the next president. They have both been democrats their entire adult lives. Of course that is what they want. But people don’t want to talk about how they are on the same team fighting for the exact. same. thing. Oh no. They want to talk about how jealous Hillary must be of Michelle, how Michelle is secretly smug about her approval rating. They want to turn this into some kind of First Lady pageant where Miss Congeniality wins it all.

I don’t care what you think about Hillary, or Michelle. This is the junk we do to ladies all the time. I know because I have two incredibly talented and beautiful sister who also happen to be very smart. While our parents were amazing at letting us all be exactly who we were, but that didn’t mean that other people didn’t want to ask who was the “smart one” “the funny one” “the pretty one.” Y’all we are all smart and funny and talented and pretty. I mean, just look at us!

Hello! Hotties!

Look, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck don’t have to put up with this garbage. No one makes enemies out of two men who are clearly rooting for each other. They are with each other, and everyone knows it and that is totally fine with the world. No one ever is like, man, Matt so wished he had Ben’s jaw line. Or ooh I bet Ben totally knows everyone likes Matt better. That isn’t how it works for them because that isn’t how it works for men.

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Yeah. It must be pretty awesome to never have to worry about there not being enough room for you. Because THAT is what this is really about. Pitting women against each other is really about saying, there is only room for one lady here, so y’all better figure out which one of you is going to make it, because there is only one seat at this table for the lady.

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No. NO! I reject your preposterous position that there is only one seat for HALF THE POPULATION. That is crazy talk. No. There will no longer be just one seat for the ladies. LADY is not one kind of person. We can have Michelle, AND Hillary, AND Elizabeth Warren, AND Ivanka Trump. While I won’t vote for her dad, there is no denying she didn’t kill it at the Republican Convention. Girlfriend is good.

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So PLEASE stop with the Hillary vs. Michelle, Sister vs. Sister, pit women against each other because they couldn’t possibly be for each other garbage you are pulling. It is an old and tired story, and it simply isn’t true. I will not raise my daughters in a world where there is only room for one of them, and I will not sit at a table if that means my sisters lose a seat. You can keep that table. There is room for all of us.

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I started Accidental Devotional 5 years ago. I was going back to work after our second baby in two months. My husband was less than a semester into graduate school and the people I trusted most were beginning to suggest that writing was something I did, but perhaps a writer was something I was. I found the name in a comment from a dear friend, Abby reading your blog often turns into an Accidental Devotional. I loved it. It was perfect.

And it was. I spent 2012 blogging five days a week and following people I admired on Twitter. A few of those people have become my dear friends, and while I am not totally proud of every single post I wrote that year, writing is like running. You only get better if you do it. Like all of life, you have to show up. And I did. I did show up over and over again.

Slowly I began to show up other places. On a place called Mercy Mondays. To the FaithFeminisms conversation. As a guest poster on a blog no longer in existence about why I stopped talking about my inner city teaching experience. I showed up to online writing groups and a few conferences. I just kept showing up. Sometimes people ask me about how to go about blogging, and really this is the only piece of advice I have. Show up. Keep writing. Keep tweeting. Keep posting.

Slowly I found that I was writing about more than the ways God showed up in the middle of my messy life. I started talking about race, feminism, parenting. I started talking about the questions I was having about my faith, my profession, my privilege. Every single time I thought I was bumping over the boundaries of what my readers wanted from me, I discovered there was more than enough room. Over and over I thought, this is it. I have gone too far. I have said too much. Over and over again my readers said me too, we love you, we are with you. I cannot believe the community I have found, here on the internet. It has been such a gift.

There is a lot of new happening in my life. Next week all my colleagues will go back to school. I will not. My husband will (in two weeks God willing) go from being a PhD candidate to a PhD. Period. My baby is going to pre-k. I am going to seminary. It is a lot, but everyone is more than ready. Everyone is sure that this is our next right step.

We got our back to school hair cuts last week, the girls and I. I took eight inches off my head before we even started talking about styling. New haircut lead to new head shots lead to new banners lead to new website. I still own accidentaldevotional.com and that is probably how you got here, but I am ready to show up as my whole self. I have moved on over to AbbyNorman.net and all of my social media places are @abbynormansays I should have my email abbynorman@abbynorman.net up by the end of the week.

Of all the changes happening in my life, this is the one I am most bittersweet about, changing my url. Maybe I am a millennial. I love Accidental Devotional. I love everything it brought me. I love everyone it brought me, but it just doesn’t quite fit anymore. It is like growing out of a favorite dress as a child, or realizing that the couch you love dearly is about to collapse under the weight of your dog. These things have served you well, but it is time to move on.

I am excited and ready to move on, but I want to pause here and say thank you. Thanks for finding God with me at Accidental Devotional. Thanks for giving me the space to grow into myself. I am sure I would not have made the decision to go to seminary without this space. Thank you for giving me the space to grow and cheering me on in that growth.

Here’s to just being Abby Norman. All of her. All the time.

I am at Off the Page today, talking about the cost of me not wanting to do the uncomfortable work of talking about race. Sometimes, people ask me why I talk about race as much as I do. I seem to bring it up a lot. Why should it matter? Why do I always have to think everything is about race?

I bring up race, I retell the story of my own awakening to my own internalized racism because the cost of not is too great. My brothers and sisters of color are paying too high a price for my wanting to stay “safe” and “comfortable.” They don’t have that choice. If the only work that I can do is to re-tell the stories of my own awakening then I will tell them. If you have been reading for awhile some of this will likely sound familiar. 

We live in a society that perpetuates racist thoughts. What I have watched and listened to my whole life has encouraged my mind to think one way. The wrong way. I don’t like admitting I have racist thoughts.

It was really, really uncomfortable for me to realize I had some internalized racism. It was really hard for me to look myself in the mirror and face the fact.

But you know what’s worse than me having to face that about myself? My friend’s fear that her husband and son will be killed by the police, or a vigilante, or otherwise harmed by someone who fears them because they are black and young and therefore seen as a threat. I do not have to tell my children to operate a certain way in the world in the hopes that they will be treated fairly, but she does.

You can read the rest here.

I wrote this when Michael Brown died. I have updated it. This is my heart.

I did not always have ears to hear. 

When people told me that young black men were sometimes shot in this country by police, I would respond with a small shake of the head. How sad. But in my heart I would not really believe. That could not possibly be true. Police are here to protect us. This is America, this is the twenty-first century. People do not simply get gunned down for being black. That is history. That simply does not happen anymore. In my heart of hearts, I am very ashamed to admit, there was a tiny whisper: Surely they did something to deserve it. 

I did not always have eyes to see. 

People tried to tell me that this lens I see life through is a white one. But what did they know? They did not know about me and my struggles. White kids could grow up poor too. I was disabled for goodness sake, okay. I knew about teachers treating me poorly just because of my body. I knew about having it rough. How dare someone tell me my life was privileged. Didn’t they know just how hard I worked?

I did not always walk humbly

I knew. Okay? I got it. I was an inner-city teacher. I was saving the world. Racist thoughts, racist ideas? Not me. I was better than all of that, and I proved it every day by teaching at a black school. I was down.

But then

But then my husband got a job coaching speech at a historically black college. And when I traveled with the fine men of Morehouse, some of the brightest in the country, I got asked if I was okay. More than once I got asked if I was okay. Because surely a white woman traveling with a bunch of young black men is in danger. Because surely young black men are dangerous.

But then I started working at an all black high school. And when my darkest, dread-locked student went to grab a pencil, there was something in my mind that told me I was in danger. For a split second I was sure it was a gun. Because somewhere in my own mind and heart, something told me that my black boys were dangerous. Something no one had ever taught me. Something I had never wanted to learn.

But then a student came to tell me that her brother got shot. By a cop, on a rural road in Georgia, and he bled out on her white dress while the cop sped off. She had to call 911 and comfort him as he died in her arms while the ambulance came wailing to her aid. There was never an investigation.

But then I got an email a few days before school started that one of last years students had been shot. And there was no news story or vigil. There was no call to action or call to arms. Just an email. FYI one of your students has been shot. It happens sometimes.

But then I moved into a predominantly black neighborhood and some of my friends expressed fear of my neighbors. The neighbors who sat on their porch and fed my dog all day when we left our front door wide open. My neighbors didn’t want to shut my door, just in case we wanted it like that, so they watched it instead. The neighbors who have mowed my lawn, invited me to their birthday parties, held the packages that came to my house. And some people asked why I would live in the ghetto, and wondered aloud if I was concerned for the safety of my kids. Not because of the crime report (my neighborhood is very safe) but because they assumed that black people are dangerous.

But then we put our daughter in the neighborhood school, and people want to ask me about her safety. My four-year-old in a classroom of other four-year-olds. Who did they think was going to hurt her?

And I began to hear.

I began to hear that there was a distinct danger you face every day, if people just assume that you are dangerous because you are black and you are male. And I began to hear the stories of police brutality, of unnecessary aggression, of my sophomore boys being treated like criminals simply because of their bodies.

I began to finally hear, that just because it didn’t happen to me did not mean it did not happen. 

And I began to see.

I began to see that my skin granted me access to pretty much anywhere I wanted to go. I began to see how no one ever starts out aggressively toward me, because I am never seen as a threat. I began to understand that my students, my colleagues, my neighbors were not granted the same access, the same pass.

I began to see the injustice of this world, and the ways in which I was purposefully ignoring it.

And when I look back at how much it took to have my eyes open to see and my ears open to hear, I am ashamed. 

I am ashamed that I did not seek to understand until I had to. I am ashamed that I did not choose to see until it was right in front of my eyes. I am ashamed, that until I had people that I loved who were being affected by racism, I was completely oblivious to its existence.

My heart was hard. I was only concerned with injustice when it was hurting people I loved. It should not have taken someone I know dying for me to care that innocent people were dying. It should not have taken me knowing them personally, for me to believe that they were innocent.

I was blind, I was deaf, I was proud. 

I am praying the people of this country have softer hearts than mine. I am praying that we are broken over all the lives that have been turned into hashtags and that brokenness is only a beginning. I am praying we listen when we are told that this is only one of many. I am praying we hear when brown mothers tell us they fear for their babies’ lives. I am praying we do something when our eyes and ears are opened to injustice. I am praying we speak out, we reach out, we educate ourselves. I am praying we care. 

I am praying for eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts that are moved into action. 

It is not enough to stand with Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Alston Sterling, Philando Castile. It is not enough to feel bad about the black men and women being killed because they are presumed dangerous. It is not enough.

We need to open our eyes. We need to stop and listen. This is not the first time this has happened, and this is not the first time we have been told. May this finally be the over due catalyst for our hearts to move into action. May our hearts be heavy that it has taken this long.

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.