This past week has been an abundant gift from an abundant God. I am right now sitting in the cafeteria of St. John’s college in Minnesota. It is my last full day at a writing retreat that has been a gift I do not yet have the words for. An abundant gift from an abundant God, and still I can hear scarcity whispering in my ear.

I wonder sometimes about the snake and the garden, the woman and the apple. I wonder if scarcity isn’t what that snake was whispering to her. I imagine it to be. Eve, in the place of absolute of abundance, the garden of Eden, everything a person could ever want or need, there, right there all within grasp. But the serpent convinced Eve that it was not enough. That what she was gifted was not the best, and there was something else that was being denied her.

Even in the midst of this most generous gift of time and space for my words, I can hear scarcity whispering in my ear. There is a lot of time, but maybe not enough, these people do like you, but maybe not enough, there is space for your words, but is it enough? Don’t you need more? Don’t you need to try harder to get it? 

The truth is, I don’t. There is enough room and time and space and beauty. Being liked and loved is a bonus, but not the most important thing. And like and love is not a commodity that runs out. Someone else getting a whole bunch doesn’t mean I am denied even a tiny bit of my own.

I was struggling with scarcity thinking at the Target, twelve hours before getting on my plane. I quick left a voxer for Esther, (you know, the lady who started this #wholemama thing) and expressed to her all the anxiety I was having. She told me back all the truth of an abundant God and an abundant gift. Of my right to a place at the table, of the idea that just because I am there doesn’t mean I am denying anyone else any space. Later, I admitted on my Facebook page the feelings of insecurity and my friend responded, “you can’t talk about my friend like that.” 

Isn’t that the truth. I knew that the words Esther was telling me were the truth because I knew they were the truth when I had said them to other people. I knew I could accept the truth for myself, even when it didn’t feel true, because it is the truth I want so desperately for the people I love the most. This is why scarcity needs to be hunted in a pack. We need to echo the truth to each other until the whispers of scarcity are drown out by the truth.

This week participate in the Love Bomb! And say the thing to someone else you most need said to yourself

This weeks love bomb theme is COMFORT

The Short: Leave a comment here, I will email you the persons contact, say something nice.

The Long: So WHAT is a LOVE BOMB and how will I COORDINATE it? A love bomb is when we all come together to lavish a deserving someone with Tweets, Facebook likes, Blog comments, emails, and general social media shout outs. Imagine waking up to the amount of Birthday notifications only they are nice things about you for seemingly no reason. It would make you feel pretty good, huh? Yeah!

I hope one day to hear a woman preach about John chapter 3. If you were in Sunday school the same time I was you remember the felt board regardless of denomination, the dark sky flap and maybe the moon stuck up on the board to signify the darkness Nicodemus hid under when he went to go talk to Jesus. It is then that Jesus tells Nicodemus he must be born again.

I would like, one day, to hear a sermon about being born again from a woman who has participated in the birthing process from the mothers end. So many women I know feel as though they were also re-born in the midst of birthing their children. Birthing is a powerful thing.

I have heard a very many amount of pastors who have preached on John chapter 3, but they always seem to gloss over how deeply uncomfortable birthing is. I don’t just mean the labor pains. All other animals are born when they are ready, when they can function well and survive okay, they still need their moms but most baby animals are more developed than a human baby. (God bless the elephant mother, they gestate for almost two years.) Human babies are born when they run out of room. There just isn’t enough room for a baby to gestate the four trimesters doctors have decided would be ideal.

The discomfort is on both ends. The last weeks of pregnancy are impossibly hard. I am learning in this life that I was born again when I accepted Jesus into my heart in the mint green room, being lead down the Roman road by the pastor’s wife, but that I am also always being born again.

Most often, it is the discomfort that finally makes me move on. When I grow out of space and simply cannot abide being stuck any longer, it is then that the forces seemingly beyond my control, move me to be born again. I am learning to embrace the discomfort, to take it for what it is, a warning that the time is coming to be born again.

And I have never heard a sermon on John 3 that speaks of the waiting. Of the way that you just have to let the first contractions come, how you need to go on about your day, take a walk, or a nap. How the contractions at the beginning don’t mean you need to do anything but notice. That you need to rest because something is going to happen and you need to be ready, but that you don’t need to rush to the hospital or tell everyone on Facebook, that it is only a time of noticing that something is beginning. Maybe.

I long to hear a sermon, about being born again, that articulates the strange and sometimes terrifying sensations that is transition. I want someone to mention the way your body finally gets used to one kind of contraction, one kind of pain, and while intense and difficult, you know how to cope and then this whole other thing is thrown your way. I want to hear the stories, from the pulpit, of the women who decide in that moment of transition that they are NOT having this baby, they would like to stand up, or sit down, or go home, or quit. How none of those things are really a choice but they all feel reasonable. I want to hear the stories of how you need to be talked down by your midwife or your husband, that this bizarre sensation is simply a marker that the next phase is on its way.

I wish that someone would mention, when speaking of being born again, about the numerous ways a baby can be born, c-section, epidural, water births, how each of these needs to be honored, all paths to spiritual re-birth are still about new life even if the circumstances aren’t ideal. I want someone to preach about how we can only really know our own stories, that traumatic births can happen in the physical and the spiritual, how the re-birth is still valuable even if it doesn’t go how you planned.

I appreciate the sermons I have heard on John 3, I just long to hear a sermon on re-birth by someone who knows what it feels like.

In an hour and a half I am meeting my best friend for burritos and I COULD NOT BE MORE EXCITED. Of all the things I lost and gained from moving from school on one side of the city to the other I didn’t expect to gain one of my dearest friends. When Meredith Bazzoli approached me to write about unexpected holy places in our lives I knew immediately I wanted to write about my Toyota Corolla.

“You keep saying that. You keep saying that if you got this job you would get your own chapel. What do you think that is about?”

This is what my car mate said to me about a week into my ultimately unfruitful expedition into career changing. I had interviewed with a church and was waiting for the call to come in to interview in front of the committee. If I got this job I would have a whole chapel that would be mine. Apparently that mattered to me, but I didn’t notice it until she pointed it out.

It didn’t surprise me that Megan heard what I was saying before I could hear it myself. We know each other pretty well. We should, we spend more time together than we do with anyone else.

If you want to read more about how carpool is more like church than church you can read it here.

MOM! she yelled, I have TWO THINGS TO TELL YOU! Priscilla peed AND it is NEAL’S BIRTHDAY! Both of those things were true, but the second one was for sure more important.

A friend of ours is staying with us for a few months and he had a birthday this weekend. Juliet loves a birthday, anyones birthday. She loves to sing to them and wish them a happy day. She likes that everyone has one. We once met a woman at the grocery store who responded, when Juliet told her that her birthday was May first, that is MY birthday too! Birthday twins, she is now on a hunt for them. What could be better than someone else having your BIRTHDAY?

Juliet was born with a spirit of abundance, and the world has yet to crack it with the lies of not enough. Scarcity has nothing on this child. I mean, I get a little annoyed when someone else shares my special day. It is supposed to be my day. Juliet just sees it as a reason to have a bigger party.

(Juliet, just making room.)

I want to be more like this. I want to worry less about me and my celebration and spend more time being amazed at how awesome everything and everyone is.

It is pool season at the Norman house. We are currently averaging three hours a day at the pool. While I am doing a better job of accepting my body as good and healthy and wonderfully made, I am sometimes checking out other moms to see how I compare. (Just writing that makes me feel gross, so I guess I will stop.)

Juliet is schooling me in abundance at the pool. A woman approached me yesterday. “Excuse me, is that your daughter, I have to tell you what she said!” When you have been Juliet’s mother for five years you brace yourself when someone says that. Apparently my daughter had turned around in line at the pool and told the mom behind her just how beautiful she was. Later I asked Juliet about that. “I did! And she told me I was beautiful too, and she said she liked my suit, and MOM! SHE MEANT IT!”

Scarcity tells you that there are only so many beautiful women at the pool, that you better figure out how you measure up, but Juliet knows about abundance. She knows that there is no scarcity of beautiful bodies at the pool, and the more you notice, compliment, celebrate, the more beauty you find the more room there is for your own.

This is how abundance works. It makes no sense. You subtract three spaces and wind up with seven more. You give away your seat only to find a fully reclinable plush chair for you to sit in. This is the beauty of abundance. There is always room, and letting someone take your space only makes more room for you. I don’t understand it, but I know it to be true.

When I am afraid that I won’t get mine, that no one likes me, I hold my compliments tight to my chest. If there is only so much love to go around then I better keep mine for myself. But scarcity is a liar and the truth is that the only cure for that smallness I feel, the fear that I will not be loved enough, is a radical generosity.

This summer I will be the LOVE BOMB COORDINATOR for the #wholemama project Esther started. (You can read about the #wholemama summer here.) It is a place where we bring all of ourselves as mothers AND creatives. And sometimes the best self-care you can give is to make room for someone else. It gives you a reminder that there is room for you too.

So WHAT is a LOVE BOMB and how will I COORDINATE it? A love bomb is when we all come together to lavish a deserving someone with Tweets, Facebook likes, Blog comments, emails, and general social media shout outs. Imagine waking up to the amount of Birthday notifications only they are nice things about you for seemingly no reason. It would make you feel pretty good, huh? Yeah!

Each week will have a theme. All you have to do is leave me a comment that you are in. There are an abundance of spaces. Make sure to tell me by Thursday because that is the day I will email you the person and all their social media places. Then, on FRIDAY you will go lavish love via tweets, Facebook posts and messages, and blog comments. Maybe even give them a like or a follow.

Our first love Bomb is a BEAUTY BOMB and trust me when I tell you, you are going to love loving this person. Comment to come to the party, and remember don’t tell ’em. It is a SURPRISE! If you still aren’t sure how radical generosity can really alter your experience, then just give it a try. It won’t cost you that much, and I am telling you there is nothing that fights scarcity better than this.

The greatest gift teaching has given me is that I see all kids as my kids. I’ve taught a wide variety of students and I claim all of them as mine. I have a pretty open door policy in my classroom. If you have ever been on my attendance list then you can come calling. If you need something come see me, but I reserve the right to holler at you in the hallway when you are acting a fool. You are mine. You are my kid until you graduate and often beyond.

When I saw the video of DaJerria Becton wearing a swimsuit with a grown man brutalizing her in the name of justice, what I saw was my student, what I saw was my kid. I teach freshmen. 14 year olds going on 15. I watch the way the girls twist in their seats and try out new outfits.I watch them take their first steps into being a woman, complimenting a new lip gloss or a particularly funky t-shirt. I watch them and remember how awkward and exhilarating having a newly shaped body can be. I remember who vulnerable it felt to just be walking around in my own body.

I remember being 14 and in a bikini, proud of my shape and terrified of people looking at me. I remember hoping someone would notice. When I looked at that video all I saw was a child with a grown man on her back, and I shuddered at the thought of a man touching my 14-year-old skin.

How did this happen? Maybe this is the part where you want to tell me that this happened because of a bad seed, that the man has been fired and suspended and we should just move on. There was a time when I told myself that too. I am not racist. I can’t be. Not possible.

It is uncomfortable to dismantle the lies we picked up from the world around us. But my discomfort is worth the dignity of DeJerria Becton. If it takes me getting uncomfortable to make her and all other black children safe, then it is time to get uncomfortable.

There is a long and uncomfortable history of white people reading groups of black teenagers as dangerous. There is a long and uncomfortable history of white people teaching other white people that groups of black people are dangerous. I wish I could say that this has disappeared, but I have heard too many comments about my neighborhood, about my child’s school, to pretend there aren’t things still said to make a person afraid of black children.

Most white people see a black child and think that they are much older than they are. Part of it is cross-cultural misidentification. Part of it is simply what our world has taught us. When I read the studies about black children consistently being identified as older and more aggressive than their white peers (even if their behaviors were exactly the same) I recognized this as true because I know that I have done it, seen a group of black children as a danger simply because they are black. I’ve written before about my own gross assumptions, about my students. I have admitted before the unwarranted terror I had to unlearn when it came to black children that looked to me like dangerous adults.

I don’t talk about it out of a sense of guilt or a way to absolve myself. I tell you so that we can uncover the lies together. I tell you because seeing all children as mine, as God’s, as ours together has made my life better and more beautiful. I tell you to invite you to do the same.

With the recognition of this uncomfortable history, comes the power to dismantle it. I can see more clearly the dignity and humanity of all people, in ways I didn’t even know I was blind to. And my blindness wasn’t just an unfortunate circumstance for me. It was hurting my students, my neighbors, my friends. Our discomfort in seeing our own prejudices is worth the dignity of all people. DeJerria Becton is worth that much to me.

This past semester was, outside of my first year, was just really really difficult. I am still working through the details of that. But mostly it just seems like a major transition period where the transition is never quite over. I am over at She Loves today, talking about what it feels like when your pants and your life don’t fit.

I was asking God to help me lose weight. Instead He made me buy bigger pants.

You see, I had been praying to God that my pants would fit. Not those words exactly, but for sure I had been praying all around that topic. God give me more discipline, more will power, help me to resist the cookie, give me good rest, help me to wake up early to run. God, PLEASE let the number on the scale be smaller than it was yesterday.

I really needed my pants to fit. They weren’t not buttoning or indecently tight, but they were making me uncomfortable, these size eight pants of mine. I had to suck in to button up. I had marks on myself at the end of the day. My pants just plain didn’t feel good, and y’all, I want my pants to feel good. Because my pants weren’t just making my skin feel bad, they were making me feel bad.

Read the rest here

Ten days ago marked the beginning of ordinary time. I wasn’t raised in a litrugical tradition so I didn’t know about ordinary time. The time between Pentecost, the end of Easter and the beginning of Advent, this is ordindary time.

I was the painter for church for Pentecost. I stood next to the stage and moved paint across canvas as I listened to the songs, the prayer, the scripture, the sermon. I had signed up for Pentecost Sunday on purpose. Some days all I have is the groaning of the spirit. I am drawn to the mystery, to the things that can’t be explained. I don’t have any more explanations, and I don’t really need any either. But man, could I go for a miracle.

I marked pentecost, paint on canvas, by using only ordinary objects, child toys and kitchen utensils, a mascarre wand and my own two hands. Isn’t that what the spirit came to do, to baptize with tongues of fire and claim all things as holy? God doesn’t just want the paint brushes, the things He is supposed to use. God wants to come and claim all things as His, worthy and loved.

I spent the 40 days of Lent praying for dreams to come true. I spent the 50 days of Easter praying for something to break. I think the thing that finally broke was me.

The way painting works at my church is you need to come to a stopping point between services, so that everyone can take communion in peace. I managed to get all the texture in at the first service. The second service found me staring at the canvas wondering how to gently was bits of this canvas with color that would draw out the texture and not overpower it. After putting the brushes away so I wouldn’t be tempted by the traditional, I was left with only my hands.

I was left with only my hands, and slowly as the message was preached and the baby was baptized in the name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit, my hands were baptized in dripping color. I was reminded that I am the tool God has chosen to use for His work.

I am praying for signs, for wonders, for a miracle. Instead I am given ordinary things, ordinary time, isn’t that just like God.

I am learning to stop looking to the sky. Don’t get me wrong, I will keep praying for a miracle. But I will also fix my hands to the textures I feel and think on the work that can be done with my hands. I am looking for ordinary tools in this ordinary world. I am stepping into the miracle of ordinary time.

I don’t have anything to teach you today. It is just me. My mess, my doubts, my confusion. I have a few clever stories about my very clever girls. I have my exhaustion from the end of a very heavy school year. I have questions. I have a lot of questions and maybe a new crock pot recipe.

But I don’t have anything to teach you.

I hope that is okay. I hope it is okay that there are no a-ha moments or big revelations today. I don’t even think I have any gentle reminders, just a huge stack of papers needing entered into the computer and a mostly empty Styrofoam cup of almond flavored coffee.

I have been slow to show up here recently. I have a half dozen blog posts started, but I just wan’t sure what the point was. Somewhere along the way I got the impression that I had to be sure and pointed and point you to something beautiful right there, second line from the end. I don’t want to show up without anything valuable for you. I like my readers. I don’t take it for granted that you show up here sometimes.

But I don’t have any big lessons, or any particular beautiful moments. I just have me, showing up, opening the doors to show you that things have been hard lately.

I have nothing to teach you. And I am choosing to believe that this is enough, even with my hands empty, even when it doesn’t feel like it.

I have nothing to teach you, but I am here, and you are here, and we are broken, and bruised, and beautiful and beloved.

I have nothing to teach you today, I am learning how to be.

I know it has been a couple of weeks, but I still love the internet. I love it for a lot of reasons. Here are a few.

Without the internet, and Kelley Nikondeha I never would have known about what is happening in Burundi, or that these amazing women had a singing, dancing, glorious protest on Mother’s day.

So on a quiet Sunday morning 300+ women walked the winding roads of Bujumbura right into the heart of the city. They prayed with their feet. They sang. They danced. They defied the no-protest order issued by the government just the day before. -Mother’s Day in Burundi

Esther and Emily got real with each other and everyone is better of for it.

I have never made an overture to connect with Emily Freeman, even in these two and a half years of being a blogger and reading her stuff. I have never bothered to show her my face, let alone gift her with my wisdom or my true things. I have already decided for her, that she wouldn’t like me. Before she ever had a chance to decide for herself. -Sitting on a Bench with Emily Freeman

When I read her post, I saw her words as a vulnerable gift, as they reflect a soul that’s similar to my own even though our lives are different. I do what she does, too. I form other people’s opinions of me for them too.

I shut people out and lock myself in even though I know better. –What Everybody Ought to Know about Self Reflection

Shawn Smucker gives it to us straight. I have paid for writing communities, and don’t regret that decision, but I do think people often offer more than they have to give. Be careful, if people could guarantee your publishing dreams, they would likely charge a lot more than a few hundred bucks.

Here’s the point: There are a lot of people out there who KNOW that this is what you want. They also know what to say to make you feel validated, make you feel important, make you feel like the writer you are. And because they know the right things to say, too many of you are following blindly. You’ve swallowed their message hook, line, and sinker, and now you’ve got your wallets out and have your credit card ready. -A Short Note To My Fellow Writers: Be Careful

The internet is forever; sometimes that is awesome. If you haven’t read this oldy but goody from Jen Hatmaker, do it.

So, Mom out there sending Lunchables with your kid, making her wear shoes with holes becausewe’re.almost.there, practicing “auditory reading” with your 1st grader, I got your back, sister. We were awesome back in October; don’t you forget that. We used to care, and that counts for something. Next year’s teachers will get a fresher version of us in August, and they won’t even know the levels of suckage we will succumb to by May. Hang in there, Mama. -Worst End of School Year Mom Ever

And lastly, I love the internet because it gives one of my students a fighting chance of getting a violin. He has a viola and is SO talented, but a violin would allow him to get more paid gigs. His family could use that. Oh, and it would help his Julliard chances. The deal was that if he figured out and produce a good looking campaign I would share it. Every dollar AND every share helps.

My name is Jachai Wilmont. I’ve play the viola for six years and the violin for two, but at the moment, I only have a viola. I would truly love to have a violin to enable me to expand my musicality. It’s been a struggle to know that I have the potential to be a successful violinist and to not have a violin to practice and get better. I am so intensely into the passion of playing the violin and viola that I never stop thinking about it. Jachai’s Violin Fund

He is already preemptively grateful.

You would think, as a Jesus blogger, I would write and write and write about that time I got miraculously healed. I mean, miraculous healing, that is some good click bait right there. A year and a few  months ago I had a publisher tell me they would be interested in that book, the one about my miraculous healing and how my feelings about it are more jumbled and complicated than I ever expected. I should at least write the proposal. And I meant to. I did. I meant to write the book proposal about waiting and waiting. About the grace in between. About the teeny tiny miracles of good friends and understanding teachers that sustained me. I meant to write the book proposal about the ways other healing stories were used like weapons against me, how I hold mine close so that no one can be hurt by it. I meant to, I mean to, I want to. But it isn’t just messy inside that story. It is tender and raw and just feels so precious and precarious. But I think it might be time. This story is leaking out bits at a time. It is very dear to my heart, as is this piece I wrote for the Mudroom.

“Wondering what it means to follow a God who points to his scars as a sign of resurrection.” – Antonia Terrazzas

It is the Thomas part that they always harped on in Sunday school. Thomas, the guy who was doubting, the guy who didn’t believe. It was not the Jesus part, and it certainly wasn’t the scars part.

But if we believe, as Thomas believed, once the proof of the resurrected body was in his hand, then we must believe that our savior was resurrected, scars intact.

Scars intact.

I was twenty-six when I was miraculously healed. Five years free of fibromyalgia I am still trying to learn how to function in a body that is no longer broken. I had spent so much time shutting down the mis-fires that I still have trouble knowing when I have to go to the bathroom, or when I am totally exhausted. I still push my limits too far, because I think I must to survive.

I was just one year healed when the son of a friend was diagnosed with chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. I could not believe how angry I was. All the rage that I thought I had expended on the lap of my mother in high school exploded in my living room. Him too, God? Really? I found myself red faced and weeping in front of a Facebook status asking for prayer.

I may have been healed, but there was still plenty of evidence of where I was once wounded. So deep I could put my hands into them, the places I had been pierced.

You can read the rest here