Food

Breakfast Quinoa– My mom has been trying to get me to eat breakfast in the morning since probably the 6th grade. But come on, nothing competes with more sleep. The fact that none of my clothes fit after christmas led me to decide it was probably time to switch up some of my eating habits. So I gave breakfast quinoa a try. Quinoa is a grain that is really a protein. I don’t really know, but it is good for you. Also, I can make five individual servings in mason jars with almond milk, honey and some berries. I gave it a week and found that I am not hangry (hungry and therefore angry) by third period. So, I am officially a fan.

Crock Pot Freezer Meals – You already know I have a deep love for my crock pot. One broke so I am down to one again.  Somehow I missed out on the fact that people are individually packing ingredients for one meal at a time in freezer bags. So, you wake up, toss the food from the freezer into the crock pot, turn in on low and leave. Dinner is already done when you are passing the pizza place on the way home from work. Dinner is already DONE so no need to grab something.

Bread and Wine- This cookbook interspersed with beautiful essays was the book I got for sisters and mom for Christmas. So far I’ve cooked the chicken chilli, a black bean version of that, the bacon wrapped dates, and the risotto. I have my eye on the steaks in the pan sauce.

Books

Bread and Wine– Yes, the essays are as good as the recipes. Essays about motherhood, and love of food, and in general having big feelings? Yes please.

Eleanor and Park- A story about a girl struggling in poverty falling for an upper-middle class boy through comic books and mixed tapes? Yes please. I especially love the way that the every day struggle of poverty is handled in this book.

Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares- What can I say? I love YA romance novels I guess. Loved the total fun of this book. Yes it is ridiculous, no this never would happen. But it makes a good story.

Style

Stitchfix I got my second fix this Wednesday and only ended up keeping one thing. But I still have high hopes for this clothes through the mail service. Weirdly, I have spent less on clothes since I signed up because I am NOT going to try on clothes with my children in the dressing room when I can wait for my box to arrive at my house.

Lipstick– I love lipstick. It makes me feel fun and pretty and put together in about three seconds. I finally finished the red lipstick I bought in college, and bought Revlon’s Love that Red. I do love it, very classic. I went looking for a purple-y color found a balm/crayon/lipstick by Revlon Colorburst. It was called whimsy, I was sold. It looks good with pretty much everything and it feels really good on my winter mouth.

Writing

On the Blog– My most popular post by far was the one about getting stuck in the Atlanta Snow storm. But the one that I am most proud of is probably Swimming in the Deep End about my nervousness in hosting the If gathering. (Which is next weekend! Eeeek!)

Elsewhere- I participated in an exercise with my friend Bethany where I wrote the truth of myself as I wrote the truth on myself. I was surprised at how cathartic it was.

Finally, I guest posted for my friend Sarah about darkness and how it has taken me awhile, but I am not afraid of it anymore.  I think the church does a really terrible job of guiding people through dark places. I hope I can help with that.

Book Writing Updates- I am trying to do another round of edits. Which is needed. I even found Alyssa to be partners with. But this time is hard and I have stalled out this week. Hoping to get started back soon. I am also querying agents, and as soon as I have news to report, you will know.

What I Wish I was into-

excercise Okay, I feel like there is no time. SO, someone help me? Think thirty minutes, nothing I need to buy, can be done in my own home. I need the internet to rescue me from my sedentary self.

This is an entry in a synchroblog started by my favorite yurt-living-lady Esther Emery. Once a month she wants to talk about the spiritual practice of environmental justice. She is light years ahead of me and my family, and she is so generous and gentle in her teachings that it makes me think that perhaps I could be better, that perhaps there is freedom in a better way. You can follow this conversation by checking out #spiritofthepoor on Twitter, or looking at the rest of the entries here.

I was thirty-years old before I ever took out the trash. I know, it is hard for me to believe as well. My dad always took out the trash when I was growing up. In both of my parent’s houses growing up it was a boy chore. We didn’t have any brothers around so my dad was stuck with it, he still is. 7 grandchildren later, there is still no one to help him take out the trash.I got married pretty young, we decided (well, I decided) in pre-marital counseling that Christian would be in charge of taking out the trash. Before that, I guess my roommate must have done it, because I am pretty sure I never did.

This, of course, did not occur to me until my husband was at a conference and the trash cans were overflowing. Suddenly, it was up to me.Y’all. Those trash cans are heavy. And we have three of them. And they were full. FULL. From about a week of living. Three trash cans, full from one week of  our little family. Three full trash cans. I really had no idea.

Speaking of no idea, I don’t really have any idea where that trash goes after it leaves my curb, or who lives next to it, or if it gets shipped to a country with less rules about children wandering in trash heaps. I vaguely heard of that happening once and thought it was terrible. But I never connected that practice to my own practices.

You see, I am a chucker. There are savers, people who won’t throw out clothes that haven’t fit in years, or the last but of yarn. “You never know” they say, as they tuck away something that looks like trash into their already bulging attics or basements. Then there are chuckers. People who hate clutter and clean out their children’s toy boxes and shrug their shoulders when the kids ask what happened to the toy that found its way to the trash. (But seriously, does the plastic mate while I am not looking? Because I did not buy any of it, and yet, it multiplies.) I am a chucker. If it doesn’t have a place or a function, it needs to go. I hit the Goodwill at least once a month. No receipt needed, I just want it gone.

If I don’t have time for the Goodwill, I just put it in the trash. I don’t need it anymore, and it has to go. And it does. I put it in the kitchen trash, my husband takes it to the curb, and I never have to deal with it again. But just because it disappears from my life, doesn’t mean it disappears from the earth. I mean, I suppose I know this, but it had never really occurred to me before. And it had never occurred to me before because I never had to take out my own trash before.

But someone has to be responsible for my consumption, and the trash that it generates at an alarming rate. If I am not the one dealing with my own consequences, and you can bet that the people dealing with my consequences have fewer resources than I do. Shit rolls down hill. And that includes the shit I throw out because I am tired of looking at it.

It was Esther (the host of this link up) who introduced me to the idea that I need to be responsible for the things that I buy. Not just when I am using them, but also after I am done with them. I need to think about the consequences of my own action, at the very least I need to stop thinking that there aren’t any consequences just because I am not the one dealing with them.

Loving my neighbor means caring about the reality that my trash is ending up in her backyard. I need to learn how to be more responsible with my consumption, and for me, that starts with learning how to take out my own trash.

By now you’ve seen the photos and maybe even heard the mayor of Atlanta, Kasim Reed defending himself after being called out by Al Roker after Mr. Reed attempted to blame this mess on incompetent weather people, when in fact he had been given very accurate information.

If you are wondering how this all managed to happen, my favorite explanation for this whole thing is here. And if you are reading this just so you can get to the bottom and post about how everyone in Atlanta is just some dumb southerner who couldn’t make it a week in whatever snowy town you live in,  please be aware I grew up in Toledo Ohio and spent 23 years of my life driving to the Adirondack Mountains to chill with my family for Christmas. I know how to drive in the snow, I know about going slowly and not braking and the general bad condition driving rule “no sudden movements.”

I used to mock my fellow southern-city dwellers too.  I didn’t know that I didn’t know until I drove home Wednesday morning pretending I was a bob sled driver. It was the only way I could stay sane while maneuvering my 1996 Camry on what looked exactly like the outdoor skating rink just after the Zamboni went for a little spin. It turns out I am awesome at bobsled driving and totally deserve a gold medal.

So, if you have something snarky to say, please take it somewhere else. I’m just going to delete it anyway. I’ve been through enough and don’t feel like dealing with your ignorant and inaccurate but incredibly confident opinion that you are better at life than me. But if you are curious about what it feels like to drive 13 hours and make it 5.1 miles then I am your girl!

Monday afternoon students started asking me whether or not we were coming to school on Wednesday and if we were getting out early on Tuesday. It was total OHMYGOODNESS LOOOOOK! SNOWFLAKES ON MY WEATHER APP THAT I AM CURRENTLY NOT SUPPOSED TO BE LOOKING AT BECAUSE I AM IN CLASS SNOWDAYSNOWDAYSNOWDAY pandamonium. That I quickly put the kibosh on. No, we were not getting out of school, sorry kids vocab tests are happening as scheduled. Please calm down.

Tuesday morning the kids were dutifully refreshing their weather apps and “using the bathroom” (read: going down the hall to poke their little heads out the window and see if it was snowing yet.) Southern teenagers are totally adorable when it comes to snow. Meanwhile, I turn into the crankiest-yankee in town. I opened both my afternoon classes with this announcement. “I am aware that you all love snow. You need to be aware that I grew up in Ohio and moved down here to get away from this stuff. The only thing snow means to me is that it is going to take me a million hours to get back into the city. Where I live.” Then I proceeded to lock down my classroom and only let the children go to the bathroom if they swore up and down and on their mother that they had to pee and it was an emergency. Just so you know, my students are liars and brought back snowballs to prove it.

Meanwhile they would not stop asking me about when school was getting out. Freshmen are adorable in that they still think that their teachers and parents have as much authority as everyone but God. We do not. Teachers, it turns out don’t get to make decisions about school closings. My class and I came to an agreement that they would stop asking me every 35 seconds if they were allowed to go home yet if I would keep the school district’s Twitter account open and continually refreshed. I thought that this deal was silly. Surely they would email the teachers before they would tweet about it. At 1:36 the school district put out a Tweet that schools were closing at 1:45. The announcement came minutes later and the kids did silent dances while I gave them the evil eye to be quiet so I could hear whether or not I was allowed to leave.

My work-wife/ car pool mate/ bff Megan and I left the school parking lot at two o’clock. It takes us 45 minutes to get to school on a good day. Due to the Atlanta Traffic you hear so much about, it usually takes us an hour and thirty minutes to get home. If traffic is terrible, it can take us as long as two hours. Three and a half hours later we had made it 3.6 miles and decided to break for dinner. We’d been staring at the Olive Garden for the last 45 minutes and unlimited bread sticks was just what the doctor ordered. We might not get home till midnight and we were going to need full bellies.

The Olive Garden was closed, so we jetted (read went very slowly over the ice-covered parking lot) to the PeachTree Diner, where we were served delicious steaks at a reasonable price by a very adorable waiter named Ken who was one of only two servers working there without any busboys because no one else could make it in to work. There we were surrounded by other people also stranded. Including the guy behind us asking the price of a cup of coffee so he could figure out if he could afford to sit on his table for another thirty minutes.

That’s the thing about emergencies and safety nets and having even just a smidge of margin in your life. Before you talk about how people should have just gotten a hotel room, there were a lot of people on the road who simply could not afford said (already booked anyway) hotel room. The  man didn’t get charged for his coffee, I know because Megan and I had the bill transferred to us and she tacked on a giant piece of chocolate cake that the man proceeded to split with the stranger next to him and thank out loud whoever bought him his meal. It was awesome. A totally selfish move on our part as it just made us feel really really good about our evening and we needed a boost before we strapped ourselves into my car.

We pulled out of the parking lot with the understanding that the first order of business was getting gas. We also pulled out of the parking lot to be greeted by the same distinct looking truck we split off from an hour and a half earlier. That was the speed of the traffic. An hour and a half to get the length of a shopping plaza.

Two hours later we managed to make it a quarter of a mile down the road to the gas station. Said gas station only had premium gas. I happily filled up, peed, bought a mellow yellow and some gummy bears and headed back out again. At this point we decided we could just wait it out. If everyone else gave up and we did not we could make it home. So we wouldn’t get home until 3 in the morning. So what? My Camry has a tape player and we had this amazing mix tape from Megan’s youth that was chock full of synthesizers. I don’t know how many times we listened to the tape and I am unclear as to why but I am totally sure that Marconi plays the mamba  while we built this city (we built this city) we built this city on Rock and Roll.

It felt like we were trapped in one of those absurdist plays they make you watch in the intro to theatre class you slept through in college. Hours and hours pass, as do all the pedestrians who are totally lapping you on foot, and you are simply there because there isn’t anywhere else to be. There were some things we saw that warmed our hearts and gave us something to comment on.

-The huskie mix who was being walked by his owner. That dog looked like he was in heaven. It was amazing.

-The Bichon Frise who hopped out of his owner’s VW beetle that was parked on the sidewalk (yup, just parked on the sidewalk) that hopped out and did a few laps.

-The hardworking mexican gentlemen standing outside their apartment complex pushing people up the hill.

-The hardworking mexican gentlemen with a case of beer tucked under one arm and an elementary school child tucked under the other on their way home from walking to pick their kid up from school. These guys never get a day off. They were going to enjoy it.

-The people walking up and down the street with bananas and water offering those things to any motorist who wanted them.

People were mostly very kind and patient and there was no honking. For that I am very very grateful.

There comes a point in time where you have to lose track of time in order to not lose your mind. This picture was taken 12.5 hours in.

To put that into perspective, on a normal day we could have driven to Dallas in that amount of time. Instead, we hadn’t yet made it out of the suburb our school is in. About an hour after this photo was taken, we met a hill we could not get up.

So, I am not one to brag about my driving capabilities. With my lack of spacial awareness (I regularly run into the desks in my classroom because I can’t gauge how close they are.) and my difficulty telling where my body is in relation to itself (like, I can’t tell how far my hand is from my own face) learning to drive was as humbling an experience as parenting toddlers. I just wasn’t very good at it. But I can say this with certainty. I am AWESOME at driving in the snow. But I just could not get up this stupid hill. I probably would have tried the whole night but a man properly dressed for the weather came and knocked on my window.

“Ma’am if you can’t get up this part, the hill just around the corner is going to be impossible. I have been out here for 6 hours helping and people who have had to abandon their cars all night. Turn around while you still can. There is a Home Depot operating as a shelter you can stay at until the sand truck comes in the morning.”

You know when someone is telling you the truth about yourself. We headed to the Home Depot where they were serving Coffee and water and handing out anything they sold that someone could sleep on. Pillows for out-door furniture, carpet remnants, fat boards laid over upside down buckets, lawn chairs, all were being utilized for sleeping it out. I managed to snag a prime spot on top of a row of boxes where I laid out my carpet square and slept for three hours. We called a colleague stuck in the same mess and she joined us. This is me unable to control my giggling because, seriously? I am crashing at a Home depot? This is either hilarious or tragic and hilarious is clearly the better option.

Not so hilarious were all the poor parents who were there with their kids. Megan and I jetted out pretty early and a poor mom asked for our carpets to put over her kiddos because the Home Depot was really cold. Her husband was asleep in the scaffolding above her kids in the hopes he would wake up rested and ready to drive home.

At 6:30 Megan and I decided it was time to get back on the road. It took about 20 minutes to find a way out of the plaza that didn’t involve an insurmountable ice-covered hill. From there we essentially waited in a line to get up the hill that thwarted us three hours earlier.

That hill almost got me again, but luckily there was an amazing team of dressed for the weather civilians who were escorting cars up the hill. One in english and one in spanish. The spanish speaking gentleman tapped on my window to advise me while the english speaking one pushed, when it became clear I couldn’t understand him, they switched, and the spanish speaking gentleman pushed while the lovely man wearing glasses, a yellow ski jacket and blue snowpants coached me “soft like a whisper” slowly up the hill.

Dear Mister Soft Like a Whisper man,

If it wouldn’t have caused me to get permanently stuck, I would have stopped the car to get your phone number. While I am married, I have lots of beautiful and single friends that I would like you to marry and make lots of gentle babies with.

I told myself “soft like a whisper” the whole way home. Speaking of the whole way home. It was totally surreal. We managed to beat the crowd and most of the time we were coasting along at 15 miles an hour. It felt like we were FLYING after the parking lot pace we had been maintaining for thirteen hours the night before. It also felt like what my middle school self imagined being left behind post rapture would feel like. I couldn’t even make any Walking Dead jokes, because Megan has an irrational fear of zombies.

But I could pretend I was bobsledding. Which I seriously did, the whole way. I pretended I was in a low-speed bobsled. It was obvious from the feel of the tires under my foot on the gas, that there was exactly zero traction and we weaved through abandoned cars and ran red lights because there was no one on the road anyway and I was afraid that hitting the brakes would cause uncontrollable spinning out on my part.

We busted through the doors at Megan’s house at about 9:30 like a couple of football players who had just won the big game. Seriously telling her wife Mindy how awesome we were and refusing to take a nap because we were just too hyped because WE ARE AMAZING AND CAN CONQUER THE WORLD!!!

An hour, lunch, and a shared bottle of wine later Mindy found us both drooling on ourselves on their couch. By the time I was ready to think about getting back in the car it was getting dark, and frankly I still wasn’t ready.

After all the laughing and back patting, it slowly dawned on me that I was very very lucky something bad hadn’t happened to me. The cars were abandoned all over the road not because people were scared of a little snow, but because that was their very best option. If you are stuck in a snowstorm in the north, you just have to wait for the plows. The plows weren’t coming. We don’t really have any.

Strangely, the perfectly safe drive this morning to get from Megan’s house to mine was the most traumatic. Every curve and semi icy spot caused me to cringe and hit the brakes, every other car was definitely on its way to hit me. But then I got home. And was greeted by this.

I understand that the rest of the country thinks it is crazy that all the schools are closed tomorrow. I am just grateful for a little bit more time before I have to get in my car again.

“I want to unfold. Let nothing in me hold itself closed. For where I am closed, I am false. I want to be clear in your sight.” – Rilke

Abby tells stories that are true.

When you ask me about my writing, the blog posts, about my manuscripts, the books in my heart, the ones in my dreams. If you ask me about the thread that runs one book to the other, it is the only answer I have.

Abby tells stories that are true.

I don’t know why this is it for me. Why some write holy and broken, and others tell of our bodies and the beauty. Some are given suffering, and other are give a radical life for a radical message. Me?

I write stories that are true.

That is really all I’ve got. Perhaps that is why I have been struggling with the blogging as of late. My unfolded story, the story that is true? Right now, it isn’t pretty.

I’m dreaming again. I don’t try to do it that often, because it is just too risky. I am getting big ideas, figuring out what my next step is. I am querying agents again and getting rejected. I am re-writing, and re-thinking, and avoiding all of that by stuffing my face full of delicious carbs because I eat my feelings and sugar and white bread is what they are made of.

Dreaming always breaks something open inside of me. A longing for something that seems to constantly remain just out of reach. Hope hurts sometimes, as I pull it in and hold it close. It hurts to cut away the dead pieces. And it is even harder to let it all unfold in front of everyone.

But isn’t that the true part, the messy part, the part that never gets told?

I love the beautiful endings, the things so right they could only be orchestrated by God. I love the beauty of the final product. But isn’t the confused middle so much longer than the end everyone wants to talk about?

More and more I long for the truth of the middle of the story. I find myself googling words and phrases to get me to the diary pages of Madeline L’Engle or J.K. Rowling in the midst of their 100 combined rejections.

Abby writes stories that are true.

The truth is, I am grieving again. The death of my grandparents hit me in raw and unexpected ways this week. No one tells you this about grieving, that you are also grieving the part of yourself that is lost with the person that is gone. That it isn’t just the grieving of the person, but the kitchen you remember them in, the bench that was worn down soft by the butts of you and your gang of cousins, the way the light reflects into the window while you listen to your grandmother press the bacon  and holler about how much your boy-cousins are eating even as she makes sure there is enough bacon even for their seemingly unfillable bellies.

The truth is that these moments were buried with the ashes in the small-town cemetery, next to the cousin who was born the same year as you. All of those things are gone, and it is not enough to have these things exist only in your mind. But that is it. That is all there is, and the truth of it all is weighing heavy on my heart today.

I don’t want to write this, because it just feels hard. And really, I fear that people aren’t interested in my hard. I feel called to the unfolded life, and I am afraid of the unfolding. Even as I am continually affirmed in it. Even as I long for it. Even as I write through it.

This is the story that is true, I am afraid of the unfolding, I am called to the unfolded. I long for the unfolded life, but the unfolding is the hardest part.

A woman I like to refer to as my “digital pastor” has started a series on her blog. She is wrestling out some of that stuff we always hear in the church. She has invited me to join her.

“What’s with this ‘more of Jesus, less of me’ stuff?”

I have toddlers and I teach teenagers. I know just how selfish a human being can be.

“Hey, can’t you see that you made your sister cry? Why is she crying?”
“I hit her because I want the dolly/camera/cardboard box.”

Sigh. At least they are honest.

My teenage students sometimes aren’t much better at the empathy part, just much better at the lying about the motives part.

I relate to them, I do. Sometimes what I want is what I want is what I want, and I just want it. Everyone else be damned.

I think it is a slow and holy work to teach a child to see beyond their own plate, their own circumstances, their own feelings. A very slow and holy work.

I understand the importance of teaching that sometimes your needs need to get in line behind your neighbor, (or your sister as the case may constantly be in our house). But I worry about that phrase.

I have seen the heart of it twist and turn until it is knotted into a lie that says “don’t do anything you want to do. If you enjoy it, it isn’t from God.” I have seen it in my own heart the part that says “Don’t pick yourself, don’t pick your dreams, if Jesus wants you to do the thing you will love, someone else will ask you to do it.”

Yes more Jesus. Always, more Jesus, my oldest used to pray “Jesus, Jesus, more Jesus.” It has become the prayer of my heart. But only because every time I experience Jesus, I become more of who I am supposed to be, I feel more like Abby then I ever have. I feel like a better, truer, purer version of me. BECAUSE Jesus, because more Jesus means more dreams, more vision, more hope, more freedom, more love.

So yes, more of Jesus, but also more me.

Deep Breath. This parenting thing is hard. Exhale. There, I said it. This parenting thing is hard.

And not in a smiling way right now. Not with a caveat, but so, so worth it (insert squeezing of happy baby here).

Yes. I am grateful for my children and the joy they bring, and yes I am overcome by the smallest moments with the tiniest hands sometimes.

But right now? If I am totally honest. It is just so hard. And I am struggling. I write a lot about purposefully raising girls that are wild and free like the God I hope they one day love. And I am still doing that, at least, I am trying. But if I am honest, there are days I would trade the wild and free for quiet and polite just to hear my husband while we attempt to have a conversation on our way to church.

I’m a yeller. I know this comes as no surprise with my inclination to use ALL CAPS ON TWITTER. I think it is genetic, though I don’t remember being raised in a house where yelling was the norm. I do know we were loud. It made my mother crazy. Sometimes, in the car she would put her hands over her ears just to hear herself think. My grandmother used to take her hearing aid out because we were all just too loud. It was her that taught us to yell to be heard. That one was a cycle we could never seem to break. I seem to be continuing the cycle in my own home.

But I also know, that the yelling was done mostly out of joy and being boisterous, that the hard teaching moments my parents passed to me came in quiet voices, sometimes both of us crying. (I’m looking at you dad.) I know that the lessons out of anger never stuck, and the ones out of love, I can quote them verbatim. (“We don’t hit people, people who hit people go to jail” He was a defense attorney, I figured he knew.)

I’ve been yelling too much and crouching down to see their situation too little. I’ve been hurrying too often and playing not enough.

Please don’t tell me that I will one day regret wishing away these moments. And please don’t tell me that mothering is my most important job. I am awesome at shaming myself. Trust me.

I am afraid to admit that this thing is hard. A room full of thirty-five teenagers and the six functions of a noun? Bring it on. An auditorium of a hundred people and a Bible passage, I would love to! But a two-year old, a three-year old a dress up box, and a reminder on my phone that I need to take them potty every hour and I am undone, checking the clock relentlessly as it slowly marches to bedtime.

Am I allowed to say that? Can I tell you that it is hard and frustrating and sometimes I meet screaming with screaming because I can be louder?  Having a three-year-old look you in the face and tell you “please don’t talk mean to me” is a wake up call I would rather not experience again. But I probably will. I probably will need her reminder.

The more I bury this part of my life, that I am afraid you will hate or judge or shame, the more I smile and tell you I am fine and they are fine and there are no struggles because I am too busy being delighted by the fact that they find magical shapes in everything including their own poop, (Seriously, what is with that?), the more I yell and hurry, and not use my words to love them.

The more I try to hide my shortcomings as a mother, the more they rule my time at home.

I don’t think I am alone in this, in this space where it is so.hard. but I pretend it is so.good. and not the hard-good that it is but all rainbows and butterflies and glitter (oh have mercy my house is covered in glitter) and magic. It is. It is all of those things, but sometimes it is hard. So danged hard. And sometimes I need to hear that I am not alone. That I am not the only one who misses her kids through the day and comes home and wishes for bedtime. Not every day, not  all the time, but some days, and sometimes there are three some days in a row.

I guess what I am wondering is, am I alone? Are you struggling through this to? Does it get better? Do your kids turn out okay, even if you have to apologize to them on the regular?

I just need to know I am not the only one.

I am aware some people think I am obnoxious. I prefer to think of myself as exuberant.

I met my high school sweet heart when we were in elementary school. He showed up at my house with his big cousin, my big sister’s best friend, and I was hyper and yelled HI! too close and too loud and he literally sprinted out the door. My sister and his cousin had to go find him while I cried embarrassed in my bedroom.

I know I am too much some times. I have been pulled aside more times than I can count to be told while people appreciate my encouragement, it is too loud, too much, too critical. (I can’t help it, when I get really jazzed about something, I just want to make it BETTER!) Could I settle down?

I can’t. Not really. I can’t really settle down.

I never thought I had the gift of encouragement. That was for girls who had less opinions, said “go team!” and “great job!” on cue and in unison. Like actual cheerleaders. I am a little too pushy. Sometimes I pick up the dreams people abandon and hand them back to them. Sometimes they would rather leave them behind.

I know my brand of exuberant isn’t for everyone. I know people sometimes think it is obnoxious. But sometimes, people need pushy, if it is out of love. Isn’t another word for encouragement, a well placed kick in the rear?

I am linking up with Lisa Jo Baker for Five Minute Fridays. You should really check them out.

We say we want vulnerable. We say we want mess and guts and realness. That is what we say anyway.

We say we want something not so slick.

Can I tell you I have my doubts about that? Can I tell you that I have learned the hard way not to trust people at their word, when they ask me to hand them my entire heart?

I learned it at first, or maybe the first time it really set in, at a campfire in Tennessee. Around this fire we were asked to tell the truth about what was really going on, what was really going on with each other, what was really going on with our hearts. I went first.

I was tired. The work was hard. I was worried we weren’t going to get it done. I was tired of hammering nail after nail while others in the group spent hours on end chatting with the lady inside and sipping lemonade. No one was stopping it. I was tired. I was lonely.

Earlier that week we had signed a group covenant, that we would all tell the truth, that we would all tell each other when our feelings were hurt, when something needed to change, that we would work it out. I was one of many, who solemnly signed, but I may have been the only one who meant it. I told the truth that night. I told the group that I was overworked and worried about the completion of the project we had promised to this lovely old lady who was letting fourteen-year-olds work on her house. I told them I felt lonely and abandoned. It was full of tears and snot and “I am sorry but’s”…but it was the truth, and it was what we had promised we were going to say to each other.

I went first, and no one followed. No one. It seemed everyone else was having no problems with their group. They were all getting along great. But good job Abby, thanks for sharing. That was brave. Everyone else was quiet even as everyone else knew what the problems were and how to go about fixing them. They just nodded and smiled and told me I was brave. I didn’t feel brave. I felt alone. I felt like an idiot.

******

I don’t have a low gear.

I was talking with my friend about her new small group in her new church. “I don’t know,” she said,“we are still at the point where all of our prayer requests are for a friend.”I laughed and responded, “Yeah, I don’t do that.” She laughed too. She has been in a small group with me. She knows I only know how to lay it all out there or say nothing at all.

I don’t have a low gear. I don’t swim in the shallow end. If you ask me how you can pray for me, I will tell you. There is a fifty percent chance I will cry. I say, “yes, we’ll try it, that could be fun.” And you know what? I like that about myself. I like that I am all in. I like that I take you at your word, volunteer to go first, tell you how I am really feeling. But I am all too familiar with the burn that sometimes leaves.

******

I am about to jump into the deep end again.

I am hosting an IF gathering in a month. There was a call, to invite local women into your lives and homes. I said yes. I volunteered. I was called to stay. The words the conference was using spoke to me. I am longing for something different, something real, something messy and vulnerable. Something not so staged.

In less than a month I am inviting people onto my coffee stained couch. There is a chance my children will be there, and pee on the floor. Both of them. I want it to be real, I want to be real, and I want it all to be vulnerable and messy. There will be a fire pit for escape, a smoking section, maybe a stack of plates to break, just in case someone needs to.

And I know what people sometimes say when they call for the messy and vulnerable and then get it. I know, because I have been the one doing the saying. We like the idea of messy and vulnerable, but we don’t always like the reality. “That could have been better organized. I chipped in for food, and then they ran out. The kid was loud during the quiet time. I can’t sit on the floor that long.” Or the uglier,“Was that really an appropriate place to share that, I just met her. People should not be smoking at a Christian conference. Did you see what she was wearing/how her children behaved/what she served? Did you hear what she said?”

For some of us, staged is comfortable. We know where to sit and when to stand. We know when to speak and what to say. We know our part and we stick to it and we don’t get freaked out because we know what is coming.  We say we want real, we say we want vulnerable, and we say we want messy. But then we complain when we leave the place with dirt on our hands and stuff splattered on our shoes.

I mean it when I say we. I am chief sinner among us.

******

I have heard the calls of more real, more vulnerable, less safe. I have heard them from the women in my community. I have heard them from my own heart. I am doing this crazy thing in less than a month, where I invite all the people in my life who are usually carefully separated, to come and commune on my couch, at my table, in my backyard.

And if I am totally honest I am scared that by the end of the weekend, if my online people and my real life people and my I signed up for this on a whim and now I am here people all hang out, that no one will leave liking me. I am afraid that I will disappoint all the people. Because the only way I know how to do the messy, vulnerable, really for real, not staged thing, is to jump in.

I guess I am praying I don’t swim in the deep end alone.

I have all these friends, who are mystics and artists. They do things every day that set them free. They color their hair and burn lies on paper and brake plates and howl at the moon. Like litterally. They howl at the moon.

Most of the time I scoff and shrug. If it works for them, that is great, but surely that won’t work for me.

Bethany writes on herself. She takes a sharpie to her own skin and writes the truth she needs to remember, about our God, about the world, about herself. Cool. It works for her.

Then she invited me to try it. What? Me? I write on blogs, not on myself. But what if I did? Coudl it help me remember too?

I tried it. I think I like it. You can read about it here.

The girls were running around the house. I was doing dishes and the girls would pass every thirty seconds or so, patpatpatpatpat S-C-R-E-A-M. patpatpatpatpat S-C-R-E-A-M. My children are always screaming. High pitched wails. Howls of “It not FAIR.” Sheer delight. They punctuate their life, and mine, with very loud vocals. I have learned to take note and then continue whatever it is I am doing.

It was the growling that caught me off guard.

Thump THUMP thump THUMP thump THUMP

ROWWWWWWWRrrrrrr

My husband came around the corner, headed for our oldest. Apparently, he was the monster.

It didn’t take long to figure out the game, even though my back was turned, and I was doing the dishes, back turned toward the whole affair. He would go after and catch one of the girls and the other would yell at him, “YOU LEAVE MY SISTER ALONE!”

“Fine,” he would reply a deep growl in his throat. “I’ll go after you then.”

More shrieking ensued. On and on until the dishes were done and it was almost bedtime. This was a new game for them. In my kitchen,  my girls, they were yelling at the monster, defending their sister, only to have the monster turn and attack them.

But this wasn’t the first time I had seen this game played out.

The first time I can remember was when I was on the bus, and I told a kid who was about my size to pick on someone his own size. You can imagine how that turned out.

In the middle school cafeteria, I again learned the hard way that the best way to get a monster after you, is to stick up for someone who is being torn apart. If you want to be left alone, you keep your head down and mouth shut. Two things I have never been very good at. I don’t know anyone that didn’t learn that lesson in middle school, either on the cafeteria or on the bus.

I wish I could tell my students that this is just a phase. That somewhere in the no mans land of highschool graduation and 25 we learn a better approach to fighting the monsters in our lives. But we don’t. I haven’t seen it anyway, not often, not enough.

I have seen this game played out practically everywhere.

It doesn’t much matter the community or the medium. I’ve seen on twitter, I’ve seen it in face to face meetings. I’ve seen at work and with friends and at church. I have been guilty of it in all of these places, probably in every way possible. I have been guilty of putting my head down, of shutting my mouth, because I didn’t want the monster to come after me. I didn’t want to get involved because I didn’t want to be attacked, because sticking up for a person or an idea might make the monster come after me.

The monster isn’t people.

It isn’t a particular person or group. It is…an attitude, a tone, a way of interacting. It is defensive and angry and IT IS NOT A PERSON. The monster has used me like a puppet, and maybe you too. It seems like it is always attacking someone, inhabiting someone. It is always on the prowl.

Fine, it growls, I will go after you then.

Self preservation teaches you to let the monster have that other person, to leave it alone, to keep your head down and your mouth shut.

It was already past time for bed and I was wondering when the game would end. It seemed to be on a pretty solid loop. At almost that exact moment, one of my girls changed the game. She growled back.

She growled back at the monster.

She stopped the cycle by growling back, by looking the monster dead in the face and growling back.

I learn from those screaming ginger-headed babies. I am learning from them. I don’t want to keep my head down and my mouth shut. (I don’t know that I could even if I tried.) I don’t want to let it take my sister, just so I can be scared.

I want to look the monster in the face. I want to growl back.