I take medicine for depression. 

Some people find this hard to believe. I am generally happy and outgoing. I smile all the time. I love Jesus and my faith is often characterized as strong, whatever that means. I just don’t seem like the type.

“The type.” Saying there is a type for depression is like telling someone you are surprised they wear glasses or contacts, or have cancer because they just don’t seem like the type. There is no type. Loud, smiley women sometimes struggle with depression. Even when they are cracking jokes about their rowdy toddlers and telling you life is delightful in the church lobby. We just do. 

…………

I’ve struggled with depression since middle school, but I’ve had glasses since the third grade. I’ve been told I needed to pray my depression away before we even had it diagnosed. I’ve been told it is a sign of weak faith. People who cling to the joy of the Lord hard enough should just stop taking those silly pills and trust God to heal me. No one has ever once suggested that I take off my glasses and trust God to give me perfect vision while I drive my children home from church. Not once have my contact lenses been sighted as a sign of weak faith. Me not wearing my glasses is as dangerous as me not taking my pills. 

Don’t get me wrong. I think that God is capable of healing both. I’m just saying that for me, He hasn’t. I’ve experienced miraculous healing. It doesn’t have much to do with my faith or lack there of. It is simply that God works mysteriously, and sometimes not at all. I’ve mostly stopped trying to figure it out, and instead decided to honor both sides of the story.

…………

As a christian, and a story teller I once believed that the only kinds of stories that honored God were the ones that told of great light. Those were, after all, the only kinds of testimonies that people gave at church. I once was lost but now am found. I once was blind but now I see. I once was sick but now I’m healed. I once was confused but now I am sure.

Even testimonies in the midst of things ended with a but. My child is wandering but I know they will return. I am sad now but joy comes in the morning. I am struggling but I know that God will bless me. 

I wanted desperately to honor God, so I sat quietly in the back and waited for my healing to come. Or I walked to the front and had people lay hands on me. Maybe this time I would claim it, and it would be real. You know what has been real? When I am taking my medication my sister who is also a licensed professional counselor does not ask me therapy sorts of questions, and when I am not she knows. She can tell by the tone of my voice and my inability to concentrate on anything that I have stopped taking my meds. That is real, and that is healing. 

…………

I sometimes have been told that my story of darkness, when the light has not yet come, does not honor God. I have mostly been the one telling myself that. No one wants to hear that you are struggling, Abby. No one wants to hear that this is hard. Great kids, great husband, great job, what could you possibly have to be depressed about? Suck it up and be happy, for Jesus. Jesus died for your sins, he doesn’t want to see you sitting around being sad. Good Christians get it together. And when they don’t have it together they certainly don’t tell anyone. 

That is the depression talking. It certainly isn’t the holy spirit. No, the holy spirit often prompts me to share the darkness, to tell people that this life is hard, even with the great kids, great husband, great job. The holy spirit often reminds me that darkness does not cast out light. My mother often reminds me of that too. Sometimes the holy spirit whispers in my mother’s voice. 

…………

I’ve written about it before, but it remains the best way for me to describe what I think the church is capable of. I was 13 and sick, but no one knew what was wrong. I was 13 and depressed, but we couldn’t tell if the sickness was making me depressed, or if the depression was causing the mysterious illness. I believed in a God of miracles, but every time I asked for it, I was not healed. 

And the more I was not healed, the more I questioned God. The angrier I became. Why not me? And that became a whole new thing to be ashamed about. Good Christians get healed, and when they don’t, they do not question God, they do not become angry with him.

It was my mother who pointed me to the life of King David, to the psalms of lament. It was my mother who asked me if I was mad at God, and then told me she was too. It was my mother who pulled me into her lap and held me as I raged and wept to and about a God who did not heal. It was my mother who promised me that God could handle it, that He still loved me and so did she. 

It was my mother who was the church to me, who taught me that darkness does not overcome light, who showed me that I was never too much for God, who held me for as long as I needed holding. 

…………

I think the church is sometimes afraid to tell the stories of darkness because they are afraid that those stories will somehow overcome the light. The darkness cannot overtake the light. It can’t. That isn’t how it works. But when you are depressed, it is certainly how things feel.

 The only way to know that, when depression has settled and all you can see is darkness, is to talk about it, to tell someone, to share that it is dark and you are incapable of seeing light right now. You are sure, in that moment that you will lose your faith, your God, your friends. You are sure that not being able to see the light is a grave sin from which there is no recovery. 

But if you are lucky. If you have people in your corner who are really the church, they will hold you. They will be angry with you. They will tell you it is okay to rage, to cry, to not feel God. They will hold the light for you when you see nothing but darkness. They will love you well. And it will still be hard. It will still be hard to be depressed. It will still be hard to have faith. But is easier when you are held. It is easier when you know that you are not alone. Stories of darkness, they hold light too. It is time for the church to tell them.

The first four years of my teaching career were spent in a high-needs school. Most of the kids were under the poverty line. The kids needed more of everything and there was never enough to begin with. Not enough books or pencils. Not enough paper, not enough time. Everywhere I turned things ran out too soon or weren’t available to begin with.

So we made do. Teach 35 kids with 10 books? Handled. Teach a kid with a third grade reading level using your tenth grade text? Done. Learn to teach without running copies? No problem. 

And when we didn’t make do we supplemented. Every kid needs a pencil to take the standardized test? They aren’t that much anyway. Make copies of my final exam? If I just buy one ream I can make a class set. Teach a new novel? I wonder how much they are used on Amazon. 

It isn’t a secret that teachers shell out their own money to get the things they need in their classrooms. This study found that teachers spend 1.3 billion dollars of their own money for their job. Ten percent of teachers spend over $1,000 for their students. This seems crazy. I am a teacher and $1,000 is nearly half of my monthly take home pay. Why would someone do that?

Because they have to. Because there isn’t any other choice. Because schools are designed with the understanding that parents will be able to contribute and when there are no parents who are able, the teacher has to step up. 

Let me introduce you to what I call teacher math. (Even English teachers like myself do teacher math.) You automatically multiply what you need for each kid times the number of kids you have. A lab in biology that costs 50 cents per kid seems totally reasonable. Until you realize you have 35 kids in each of your 5 periods and running this lab will cost you $87.50. Many a projects are scrapped because of teacher math. You just can’t afford to do some cool stuff in your room. 

Enter parental help. See, I don’t work at a high needs school anymore. All I do is tell the kids we are about to do this cool thing and tell them what to bring. Then they bring what they need and we have a grand time. My teacher math days are over.

But Juliet’s teacher doesn’t have parents that can help. At least not very many. While our neighborhood is very safe and very clean, it isn’t wealthy. Many of our neighbors are barely making ends meet. You can’t ask parents who are already stretching their food budget as far as it will go to contribute snack for 22 little mouths about once a month. They don’t have it. And you certainly can’t expect 22 four-year-olds to make it through a 7 hour school day without a snack. Not if you want to avoid face-melting tantrums (Y’all it is a pre-k class, I am sure there are more than enough face melting tantrums happening without tiny hangry children.) What is a teacher to do?

Buy snack herself.When pressed (by my nosy self) Juliet’s teached admitted that In past-years she and her paraproffesional have provided snack every day for 180 days, for 22 children. If each day only cost 10 dollars, we are still looking at almost $2,000 in snack cost. This seems a little crazy to me. Mostly, it seems unfair. This teacher is already teaching a program we know for a fact does a huge benefit to the community. Why does she also need to pay to feed her students?

Well, governement feeding programs don’t include snack. And hungry kids don’t learn very well. The reality is that not all of Juliet’s classmates will be eating every night at home. The hungriest kids are also, usually the ones already further behind academically. A packet of goldfish crackers may not seem like a deal maker for education in America, but you would be surprised at how much it can help. 

Christian and I checked our grocery budget, and while we have the resources to provide snack about once a month, we also don’t have the means to cover snack everyday. Often my very generous readers ask me how to help when I talk about education. Here is one way to help. I started an amazon wish list with appropriate snacks for Juliet’s class. All you have to do is click click click and these items will be delivered to our house. We will be sure to pass them on. 

I am hoping to get all year covered. With just an announcement on my Facebook page I already have a month! I know that the fruit packets are a little bit more expensive, but I also know kids in poverty don’t get enough fruits and vegetables. If you have the means, those would be great. 

Would you consider sponsoring a day of snack for Juliet’s class? 

(If we get more than we need I am going to share with the other pre-k teacher who I am sure is in the same boat. If we cover both classrooms all extra will be personally delivered to The Dream Campaign, a non-profit in Savannah that serves underpreivileged kids and is always in need of after school snacks.)

So you have a secret dream in your heart. A book, a photography business, a magazine. You have a dream of a gallery full of your work or a dream of helping other people who are struggling through the same things you once did.

But you are not in a place to dream. People like you with a marriage, a career, a mortgage, mouths to feed. This is why your dream is secret. Dreaming is not for you. It is for people who have less student loans. It is for people who have more time. It is for someone who is not like you.

So, you carry your secret dream in your heart. You don’t tell anyone because you are afraid of being laughed at. You don’t tell anyone because you don’t think anyone would understand. You don’t tell anyone, because what if they believe you? Then you would have to do this thing you said you want to do. What if you can’t? What if you fail?

But the secret dream will not leave you alone. It sits in your heart and grows. Some days it is a day dream that feels warm and welcoming. Maybe one day…..maybe one day. Some days it is a cold stone, weighing you down. You feel lighter when you pick up the pen, the paintbrush, the camera, the dance shoes and you just feel heavy. It has been so long. And some days this dream is like an alarm that you cannot silence. It wakes you up, it keeps you up, it will not leave you alone.

What do you do? What do you do when there doesn’t seem to be a way, but not chasing the dream is becoming harder and harder. What do you do when the hole the dream has burned in this heart of yours is threatening to take over with every beat? What do you do when you don’t have time to chase the dream, but ignoring it is no longer an option?

You find a tribe. You find a group of people who look you in the face and tell you, “me too.” You find the people who do not believe that the kids, the job, the mortgage do not disqualify you from being a dreamer, an artist even. They tell you that your kids are charming when they show up on the video conferences. They tell you that you can do this. They show you by doing it themselves.

I remember when I found my tribe. These ladies thought it was charming that my mic had to be muted because my kids are as loud as me. They thought it was cool that I blogged during lunch and on weekends. They told me what I did mattered, and also what I wanted mattered. They told me I could. I could teach and write a book at the same time. I could apply for things that I wanted, that I was enough. They told me that what I had to say mattered. And I believed them.

A dream is hard to hold sometimes, and a tribe has made all the difference.

I can tell when I have been spending too much time on Twitter. I roll my eyes a little more often. I write people off a littler more quickly. I over-estimate my ability to know all the right things and underestimate anyone who does not agree with me as an idiot. I am short on listening and long on telling you why I am correct. About the Bible, about God, about the world and the way it should be run.

Yes I can tell when I am spending too much time thinking about all the things people do wrong, and how I do them right. We like to pretend that social media created this problem in human thinking, but even Cain wanted to talk about the problem with Abel. Abel was not his problem, “I am not my brother’s keeper.”

I know when it has been too long since I have met my brothers and sisters at the communion table.

Twitter may remind me where you and I disagree, but it is the communion table that reminds me of our similarities. Mostly, that we are broken. As they break the bread and pour the wine, a symbol of the humanity of Jesus, I am reminded of my own humanity.

This is Christ’s body, broken for me. Because I needed it. Because I need it. Because I will need it. Because I am broken.

This is the blood poured out for me. But also, poured out for you. Because the grace that I cling too is also extended to the people who think differently than me. Even people who think differently about God. Christ’s blood is poured out for you meaning me, but also you meaning y’all, every person on or off twitter.

So when we unfollow each other for everyone’s mental health, when we push back and disagree, when we are sure that there is no way that we are even reading the same scripture, may we meet at the communion table, and remember that the humanity of Christ, broken for our brokenness, poured out for all.

Let’s meet at the communion table and remember the brokenness that makes us whole.

I am sitting in my kitchen scouring my refrigerator. My daughters are hungry, but I am not even sure I have anything to feed them. We have just returned from almost a full month away. The milk was bad, the cereal was stale, there was no orange juice. What will I feed them?

There were, miraculously, five perfectly good eggs in the back left corner of the refrigerator. We had brought half a loaf of bread home from the lake. “Alright girls, who wants eggs and toast.”

It was agreed that we would have eggs and toast only if the toast was slathered in butter. I popped the bread into the toaster and started cracking the eggs. I stared at the to do list my husband and I had made the previous day. Unpack the bags, fix the crack in the windshield, pick up the mail, go grocery shopping. Then there is everything that needs done before school starts. There is just so much to do.

I needed to get breakfast on the table right this second. Not because the girls were starving, they were already happily munching on their buttered toast, but because there was just so much to do. My house was a mess, I had a meeting to go to, school started for teachers the next day. I needed to shop and clean and organize and launder. I needed to do all of those things yesterday.

As I began hurriedly cracking the eggs into the frying pan, I head a little voice at my elbow. “Can I help?” “Yeah! Me too! We want to do it.” There wasn’t time. Didn’t my girls know I had a chore list to tackle? Didn’t they notice we could not sit on the coach in the living room because of all the stuff?

I sighed and let them each crack an egg. I watched as they clapped and told each other good job. Then I did something radical. Rebellious even. I turned the burner on to low. Eggs taste better when cooked slowly and carefully, but who has the time? I usually cook them on high. Instead I decided that the time I have and the things I get to would have to be enough. Because I am enough. And I cooked my eggs on low, because food is meant to taste good and this life is meant for enjoying.

Awhile ago I declared myself the scarcity hunter.

That feeling that there is not enough, that you better hurry up and get yours because whatever it is you are after is going to run out? The idea that if someone else gets it then you can’t have it to? Yeah. Scarcity is her name and I hate her.

I hate scarcity, and I had been working hard to build barriers in my life to keep the scarcity from getting in. But it wasn’t working. It wasn’t good enough. Plus, the scarcity barriers could only keep the scarcity from bothering me and maybe my girls, and I just hate scarcity so much more than that. I am not okay with letting scarcity snatch the abundance of life from anyone. I needed to go on the offensive.

So I did. I declared myself the scarcity hunter and asked anyone who wanted, to join me. I am a pack animal by nature (my spirit animal is a labrador retriever), so of course I hunt in a pack. But scarcity went on the offensive too. And this time, she caught me alone.

You can read the rest here. And if you haven’t signed up for my scarcity hunter emails you can here. New one comes out on Monday!

I have a friend we have started calling The Beauty Queen. At not quite 5 feet tall I don’t think Nicole Romero ever expected to wear that title. But she is, a beauty queen. The Beauty Queen in my book. But it isn’t what you are thinking. Nicole is like the queen of a kingdom where she is constanly inviting everyone to come and take their place. 

Nicole was leading a session on beauty at a retreat in Austin. She was tucked into a chair when she said something that simultaneously sucked all the air out of the room and let us all breathe easier.

“You don’t owe anyone you looking a certain way in order to be see and heard. You simply deserve to be seen and heard.”

You would think that a group of women who choose to publish their opinions on the internet would not need to be told that they deserve to be heard, women who regularly publish selfies would not think of it as news that they deserve to be seen. But we were all sitting their dumb struck at the truth. We don’t owe anyone a certain kind of look before we are taken seriously. We don’t need to ask forgiveness for taking up space.

I’ve been thinking about my brand a lot lately. I guess that is sort of a dirty internet word, but all it has meant for me is thinking about what I love and what makes me get all shouty and excited. What is it that I love about writng, about learning, about life?

I love when the physical meets the thoughtful. When the spiritual meets the natural. I tattooed the truth onto myself and the embodiment of it has been very real to me. I think anger breaks more easily when we break a bottle or to. I am sure that lies have less of a hold when we physically burn them.

If I really believed that I didn’t owe anyone any particualr experience, what would that mean in my practical space? It means I would wear lipstick whenever I wanted.

 It means I would wear lipstick whenever I wanted. 

I like lipstick. The brighter the better. Love that red. Wild Orchid. Purty Persimmon. Fuschia Fusion. But I save it for special occasions. For weddings and the first day of school, for days when I have time to do my hair or moments when someone has invited me to speak up. I wear bold lipstick at the times I know I deserve to be seen.

But what if I believed I deserved to be seen all the times I wanted to be seen?

Lipstick to the grocery store. Lipstick at the coffee shop. For sure lipstick in my yoga pants. Maybe I would wear lipstick today, when my eyes are tired and my children misbehaving. Maybe I would wear it on the beach, when my suit is ten pounds tighter than it was last summer. Maybe if I wore lipstick more often I would be reminded that it is my humanity that makes me worthy of being seen. Not an invitation or a special event. If I really don’t owe anyone a certain look before I deserve to be seen I would wear lipstick whenever I wanted.

I think I will start today.

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If you would like to join me head on over to instagram and make sure to tag your post #BeSeen plus some other popular lipstick tags like #redlips or #lipstick. If you don’t have an instagram email your photo to my amazing friend Jennifer who has been teaching me about the holiness in seeing, in seeing yourself through your own lens. She will put it up for you (jenniferuptonphotography@yahoo.com)!

I picked my word over a year ago. Like a lot of people say, it kind of picked me. be here. Be here now. Be present, and hear. I was working on my schedule for the semester when out of nowhere I wrote on the top of january’s page: It’s always messier than we want it to be.

It’s always messier than we want it to be

I’m a black and white thinker. I don’t know if it is deeply wired in me via genetics or parental guidanc, but I just think that something is either right or it is wrong. I am trying hard to grow out of the idea that people are either good or bad. 

I am mostly trying to believe that last part about me. 

Good people sometimes do bad thing Bad people sometimes do good things. Mostly we are (as my dear friend Nicole says) we are just toddlers, trying our best, but lashing out, pulling each other’s hair, hitting people we love. We are stumbling, confused, wonderful, inspired, and just plain messy.

This life is messy. Being a person is messy. And being a person in relationship with other people is beautiful, and messy.

It is all so much messier than I want it to be. 

I’m a pack animal. You’ve heard me say it before. I am. I like to do life with people. So inevitably, I dissapoint people, and people dissapoint me. Mostly, we do this, when we put each other on pedestals. It just hurts everyone a little bit more when we fall from those unnatural heights. Sometimes I put people on them, sometimes I climb right up there myself, and sometimes, sometimes I fall off a pedestal I had no idea I was even on. 

I wonder how many times I have done that to people. Made them a little less human, a little more perfect, so that they more easily fit into the ideas I am still clingy too about the simplicity of this world.They break you know, the statues you put on pedestals. The real people inside the china-doll casing tip themselves right over the edge. Your idea of them is shattered, they walk away bruised, everyone gets hurt.

It is always messier than I want it to be.

I have already dissapointed my two-year-old, more than once I am afraid. This time,  I painted my toe nails blue. She preffered the red-orange color I had been sporting for a month or so. After a distinct minute of consideration, she decided to “do my piggies” anyway, even if they were the wrong color. 

This piggy went to market. This little piggy had ROAF BEEF! This piggy went wee wee wee, all the way home. 

Afterward she asks me, again, why my “poes are blue.” She lets me know (again) that she likes them red. Almost a month is a long time for a two-year-old. I wonder how long it will take for her to adjust. Knowing Priscilla, she may never get used to it. What feels like a personal afront to her, was just something I felt it was desperately time for. 

One person’s, it was just time for a change, is someone else’s why would you do that. One person’s, I may have spoken too harshly is another’s I wonder if I’ll ever recover. One person can drop something carelessly and watch as someone else gets impaled by it. 

It is always messier than I want it to be.

I went to the tenth anniversary of my church a couple of months ago. There were speakers,and a slide show of everything you would expect to see. Baby dedications, Easter services, Christmas Eve and baptisms all streaming happily onto the front screen as we ate dinner. It was nice to see my smiling face at the first retreat I ever attended. It was good to see the preaching pictured, and the worship songs sung. But I was sad there were no picture of people crashing on our pastors black couches.

When we were new to the city, and Christian had to leave every weekend to coach his speech team. Before babies and a house of our own, I used to get desperately lonely on the weekends. But I had a tiny almost three-legged dog to take care of. I’m not quite sure how it happened, but enough that it was a semi-regular occurrence. Me and my funny little dog would sleep over at my pastor’s house. Because I was lonely and they knew I needed people.

I think I’m the only one to have slept there with my dog, but I am not the only one to have slept on those couches. People who worked late in the city, but lived in the suburbs, would sometimes crash their after a midnight shift. There were at least two different halves of various married couples that slept there for a week or two while still engaged but in between leases. Someone slept there for a month while she house hunted, I think.

But we didn’t have any pictures of those magical black couches in the slide show. Because we take pictures of the big things, the baby dedications, the weddings, the special services. But we don’t take pictures of the little things that pile into the big things. The crashing on couches, the shared meals, the welcoming of a lonely lady just moved to the city and her funny little dog.

I love the pomp and circumstance. I think the big days are important. But I know to not neglect the every day. I love all the pictures my family has of christmas eve, of easter, of dance recitals and prom. But can I tell you that the best-loved I ever felt was when my mom would come home from her night class with a TCBY ice cream sandwich for me? When my dad made popcorn in the giant bowl, when we went to the video store and my dad let us rent A League of Their Own…..again. When my mom would read from a chapter book just out of our reading reach, just me and her.

I don’t want to de-value the important days, but I wonder if we might be taking pictures of the wrong things. When we look through the scrapbook of our lives, I hope those moments are there on the page, not just in our hearts.

1.

It is a strange thing the way ordinary words become hot and sell-able. I suppose it would make more sense if I was talking about t-shirts and new cars, about blow-out sales and low low prices. But I’m not. I am talking about the church. The way we co-opt words and repackage old concepts into new books with smiling authors on the back. I joke often that my parents were missional before Francis Chan had a name for it. Back then they were evangelizing, before that their parents were just being good Christian’s. Now we call being good to our neighbor’s “missional living” and we talk about community in all of its forms.

We are a community, we are in a community, we do community, we have community. we need community, we look for community, we find community. We are in community groups and participate in community initiatives. We pretend that this is some sort of new focus as we plant our churches next to 80-year-old places with community in the name. We have neglected these places, written them off because they “don’t have the same values as us.”

2.

I think a lot of people want to have community, but they don’t want to be the community. By a lot of people I mean often times, me.

3.

My mom tells a story about me that I have probably already repeated here. We were at Girl Scout camp, discussing what it means to be a sister to every girl scout. She asked a group of first grade girls what the word sister meant. Having two older ones I was a bit of an expert on the matter. The story goes that I shot my hand in the air and announced. Sister means you are STUCK with each other so you may as well make the best of it. I don’t think it is an accident we are described as sisters and brothers in Christ.

4.

I spent a glorious four days in the foothills of Austin with a group of women I call story sisters. There are over 100 of us now, only a small contingent showed up at our in-person retreat. I led a session where we broke bottles, yelled into the hills, burned our lies. I pray that those lies remain ashes as the brave women go on to lead their beautiful and mess-filled lives. I am We are a community, an artist community still in the early years. I don’t think it is an accident we call each other “story sister.” Every day we choose to be stuck with each other.

6.

I spent a perfect three days in the Tennessee mountains. It was a speech team reunion. We all not only chose to be stuck with each other, but chose to depend on each other, to create with each other, to win and lose with each other. This all while we were between the ages of 18-22. Not the best for decision-making. There were days when we hated each other, but what were we going to do? We were on the same team.

I wanted to hop in a time machine, and have a little chat with my 19-year-old self. I wanted to tell her some things about these people she loved, and drove crazy, and was driven crazy by.

I know this part is hard. But these people, they really see you, especially at your worst, and they still think you are pretty great. You only have four years with them. And then you will all move away, get married (some of you to each other), have kids, and when you re-connect eight years later all the bad will have melted away, but all the good will still be there.

And suddenly you are sitting at the foot of a bed in the middle of the Smokey Mountains, as your husband’s old roommate explores a children’s book with your three girls (two belonging to your family, one to his).

“Which hat is your favorite hat?’

“Why do you think that bird is despondent?”

“What do you think scarlet means?”

His desire to explore every facet of everything that interested him made you absolutely crazy sometimes at eighteen. The conversations would never end, he would beat entire video games before anyone else could. (You never really cared that much about this, but it made the ginger-headed boy you were dating totally furious.)

But now? Now you can see how valuable this thing that you used to try to wish away is. All three daughters are completely engaged. What does that mean? What will happen next? How does that work? What a gifted dad he is, partly because he is interested in exploring every facet of a thing.

I want to tell my twenty-year-old self that we are all so much better at thirty. I hope my forty-year-old self has the same good news.