Juliet and Priscilla,

You played in the rain a few months ago. While everyone around you was huddled under the safety of the pavilion, you ran out into the open air and played in the rain. You danced with each other and laughed and laughed. Who wouldn’t want to play in the rain? You made it look so fun, a piece of me wanted to join you. A bigger piece of me now wishes I had. I got wet anyway that day, with none of your joy to show for it.

You exclaimed at the state of yourselves. My hair is wet! My dress is wet! The whole experience delighted you. The whole experience delight you so, that many a stranger were delighted with you, delighted in you. Those two gingers sure know how to play in the rain.

You kept inviting me to join you. You kept inviting everyone to join you. Playing in the rain is more fun when people play with you. I am glad God gave you two each other. I am glad you will always have a partner in crime. I am secretly glad you have each other for your shenanigans, and I am let off the hook. I can just watch from the sidelines. It is a joy of raising sisters, watching them take on the world together, without you.

I wonder if some days when you are teenagers, or freshly out of the house you will roll your eyes at your mother. Leave it to mom to turn everything into a metaphor. She was always doing that! Why can’t a new backpack just be a new backpack? You will secretly like it about me though, my propensity to see everything as a metaphor for life. And I hope you play in the rain forever.

May you always play in the rain my dear ones. May you always see the beauty of the water falling from the sky. May you raise up your face and open your hands and spin in joy at the newness it brings. May you shriek with laughter where others shrink away. May you always see the rain as an invitation to live life fully. May you always accept that invitation with abandon. My dearest daughters, may you always play in the rain.

All my love,

Mom

October was a whirlwind around these parts! I had decided to celebrate my 3oth birthday with abandon, and I certainly managed to! But now, now I am exhausted. I am very much looking forward to a November full of empty weekends, and a low-key Thanksgiving in Indiana with lots of food and even more naps.

So let’s recap this month the way it went down. Fast and furious!

Piecaken- Sometimes, if I really like you, I bake a pie into a cake. It is a lot easier than it sounds. People give you crazy props. And it is totally delicious. My friend Megan requested one for her birthday and I put a cherry pie into a chocolate cake. Then we were talking about it at work and my department-head’s eyes lit up with the possibility of an apple pie inside a carrot cake. He is the greatest boss ever, and his birthday is a day after mine, so we had a pie-caken for our department meeting.

Bangs- On the way home from Megan’s birthday with the cherry-chocolate piecaken I had the uncontrollable urge to radically change my hair. (It just happens to me sometimes, I can’t explain it.) Twenty-four hours later I hit the Google and came up with this cut your own bangs tutorial. I got them a little short initially, but two-weeks totally solved that problem.

Scarf Week(s)- If you follow me on Facebook (or twitter or instagram) you know I declared the first week of October Scarf Week and wore one the whole work week. Two weeks later one of my students asked if we could have scarf week again. I wasn’t about to tell her no!

Girls Weekend- For the first time EVER my sisters and my mom had a girls weekend. We met half way between Detroit and Atlanta in Corbin Kentucky. We had a “cozy cabin” which was a totally affordable and had electricity, a microwave and a refrigerator. Between the electric griddle my mom brought and the fire pit out front, meals were delicious. We went hiking at Cumberland Falls, went out to eat at the state-park lodge, sang songs by the campfire, and broke into a national park because the government was shut down but we wanted to see the natural arch! It was perfect. We are for sure trying to come up with a way to make this an annual thing.

New Car- On the way home from the perfect birthday weekend, someone hit and totalled my car. Everyone is fine but it was sort of pain, being stranded in the middle of Tennessee. I told God right there I did NOT have time to deal with car shopping. When I got back to work and told my friend I was needing a car, he suggested I buy his father-in-law’s 1996 Camry. So I did. If you have any mix tapes sitting around I will take them, because my car has a tape deck in it!

Visitors- When I got back from Cumberland Falls my in-laws were in town. It is always really great to see them and they love spoiling the girls. I do no cooking when my mother-in-law is in town, and I am grateful for that.

They day they left my friend Alison from Story Sessions came in for a whirl-wind weekend. We went to the pumpkin patch, we hung out by the fire, we went out on the town with our friend Jennifer, and laughed, and cried, and laughed. I cannot wait to see her again.

Then a close family friend sent a “I am in Atlanta for twelve more hours can I see you” text on the 27th. The answer was yes, and Betsy got to marvel at the fact that Priscilla is a walking talking person who has lots of her own opinions.

My Phone- I finally entered the technology age with my new smart phone. I have the galaxy 3   and really like it, though I am sure I am only doing about a third of what it is capable of. My students are slowly remedying that. I remember sneaking into my parent’s bedroom and hoping the dial-up did not wake them. I cannot believe I now carry the internet in my pocket. (The new phone is the reason for all the pictures in this post!)

Story 201/Editing- I have been taking the 201 class in Story Sessions. It has been amazing and I am really sorry it is over. I would not have been able to finish this round of edits without these ladies. When I got desperate, they would even monitor my Facebook usage and yell at me when I should have been editing and skype-date with me and just sit there so I wouldn’t have to do it alone. Elora is leading a Story Arc class in November, and if you want to do 101, let me know. I will send you the early bird link because I think it is going to fill up really, really fast!

So now I have an edited manuscript, which is terrifying because now what do I do with it?

My Birthday- The night before we had a party and were able to raise quite a bit of money for my friend Erin’s push to get girls educated in Nepal. She is now fully funded. She runs this weekend, be praying for her. Then on Saturday we woke up and had donuts, Christian bought me a t-shirt. That evening there was The Tattoo. The healing is freaking me out a little. It was so perfect that second it was done, I want it to look just exactly like that.

Halloween- The girls were a cupcake and an ice cream cone so Christian and I went as a baker and the ice cream man. The best dads rock pink stripes for the good of the family costume!

As always I am linking up with Leigh Kramer’s What I am Into post. You should do one and join me!

I struggle sometimes with the old testament, specifically as it relates to women. I mean, the Hebrew law treats women as property….because they were. I think Bathseba gets a bad wrap as a vixen. I was taught in Sunday school that she was probably trying to get David’s attention. Recently, I learned that Bathseba was probably doing her ritual cleansing and my mind was blown. Then an opportunity to write fiction for my friend Jamie’s blog. So here is me, trying to work through it all.

From A Broken Line

I need to explain some things to
you. About the way things happened, about the choices I made and the ones that
were made for me. I need to explain about the boxes I’ve been put in and the
pieces of my story that don’t fit on a felt board. It isn’t as simple as all
that.

You can read the rest here.

I was more nervous than I thought I would be when I walked into the shop. I have been thinking about this tattoo for twelve years and talking about it for the last two. Leave it to 18-year-old Abby to decide to wait till 30 to get her first tattoo.

I sat down on the table and Danielle got four lines in when I sat up. “Hang on, I think I am going to puke.” I’ve puked for every major transition in my life, both babies, my wedding, and now my thirtieth birthday. It was fitting in a way.

But I didn’t just puke. I had been having some stomach issues the entire weekend. When I puke, I lose total control. Like, total bodily control. You can probably guess whats coming. On my thirtieth birthday, in front of my husband, two very close friends and a tattoo artist (I guess now my tattoo artist), I hit a milestone no one ever wants to hit. I crapped my pants in public.  I pooped while I puked while I puked in a garbage can.

I suppose that could have meant I was out. I could have walked away with four lines on my foot and a promise to come back later. I don’t know that anyone would have blamed me. I mean, I crapped my pants in public. Instead I went into the bathroom and took off my leggings. I rinsed out my underwear and put them back on. No one cared. Everyone knew and no one cared. It wasn’t even that they pretended I didn’t, it was just that no one cared.

I feel like this is the lesson I have been learning forever. I feel like it is one that perhaps I finally learned on that table. No one cares about my messes as much as I do. People love me in the mess, but I have to let them. I have to deal with the mess, I have to move past it, but people still want to be there.

People can handle me, all of me. I just need to let them.

About a week ago, I responded to someone on Facebook: Sometimes Holy Ground make you shit your pants. Step on it anyway. God is so hilarious sometimes. In the next thirty years I hope he uses less of my words against me.

I don’t know how to explain everything that happened in my heart, as this image was carved onto my foot. But I feel like a lot of the lies that I’ve been grappling with finally died.

It hurt more than I thought it would. It hurt a lot more than I thought it would. But I did it, and if pushed could do it again (Although I have no plans of ever doing that again.) I sometimes tell myself I can’t do things because they are hard things. It is a lie I have been hanging on to despite the truth of my life, of my career, of my parenting, my book and now of the tattoo on my foot.

Abby does hard things. When things get hard she stays, she finishes.

I like to have a lot of people around me when I am doing the hard things, the things that hurt, the things I feel called to. I always thought this was because I am not as strong as the lone wolf. That lie died with the photos my friend Jennifer sent me. Two close friends, my sister, my husband, a story sessions representative and her husband. All of these people I love, all of them I want with me. It doesn’t make me weak, it is simply the way that I am built. I am a pack animal, I run in a pack. I tried to apologize to the tattoo artist. Danielle smiled back at me, “I’m the same way.”

My pack doesn’t make me weak, it gives me strength. I don’t need to apologize for the way I am built.

One mess, two hours and fifteen minutes, a lot of hand holding, and some deep breathing later it was finished. I carry it on my left foot. An owl, sitting in a dogwood tree, the dogwood blooming both pink and white. The dogwood of my youth is grafted together. It blooms both colors and we would have our picture taken under it for prom, easter, mother’s day. But the dogwood is also a symbol of the ressurection. The story goes that the cross was made from that wood. The symbol of a faith that is wholly mine and also inherited. And owls see into the darkness. There was an owl waiting for me when I got back from walking around my neighborhood when I was in labor with Juliet. It gave me great comfort, made me sure I could be a mom.

I got this tattoo as a symbol of who I am and who I hope to be: someone who lives life like an owl in a dogwood, grounded in the ressurection, seeing into the darkness.

Very special thanks to Jennifer Upton for the beautiful pictures, Danielle of Only You Tattoo who is clearly the best tattoo artist in the world, and the rest of my pack, Tony Upton, Megan and Mindy, my sister Jill and my husband Christian for doing this with me.

It is the guaranteed conversation killer, the “get out of this moment free” card.

“This is awkward.”

“I don’t want to talk about it, it is awkward!”

“AWK-WARD!”

Well, I am over it. I am over using awkward as a way to disengage. There are a lot of things that are a little bit awkward, but they need talked about!

So today, we are going there. We are talking about periods, menstruation, bleeding. We are going there because we need to.

I don’t know a lot about period-shame. I come from a father who has three girls. According to my memories, my sister Emily started her period when my mom was out-of-town. he had to handle that. So he did. I’m sure everyone would have prefered my mom be home, but it was handled.

I was not one of those girls longing for that moment.  I had seen my sisters lying on the bathroom floor clutching a hot water bottle to their abdomens. I wanted none of that.

But it happens, doesn’t it? At your grandma’s house on the way out the door, when neither sisters nor your mother has a pad and you have to drop by the pharmacy on the way to church. Your dad doesn’t make a big deal, nor does your grandfather, because it isn’t. Because the men in your family are strong and gracious and periods don’t have to be a big deal.

This not a big deal, this isn’t everyone’s story.

It wasn’t until college that I realized what a gift this is, what a gift it is to have a dad willing to walk the feminine hygiene aisle and pick up the different brands for his different girls because that is what needs done. I was in a linguistics class when I said the word “vagina” and everyone froze. Apparently that is a show stopper, I thought it was just a body part.

I didn’t know to be embarrassed or ashamed about periods and vaginas. I didn’t know because I wasn’t taught. It was probably modeled most often by my mom, but it was my father’s reinforcement that sealed the deal. We didn’t have to be embarrassed around anyone.

My story isn’t even close to the story of the precious girls I learned about in Gulu. For these girls starting their period means more than just terrible cramps and being paranoid about white uniform pants. (Okay, in my case a pale yellow spanish-dancing costume I had to wash out in the sink. Everyone knows I had no athletic-unifrom kind of problems.) It means they can’t go to school anymore. It means dropping out because they can’t afford underwear and pads and the shame of menstruation is so deep culturally they can’t go to school for a quarter of the year and they fall too far behind.

And people don’t fundraise for this, there aren’t any major campaigns because the branding is weird. No one wants to talk about girls being on their period. That is awkward. No one wants to lead the keep-a-girl-from-bleeding-on-her-pants walk. Periods aren’t sexy. But they happen every month, and for some this has permanent consequences.

SheLoves Magazine is raising money to keep a whole schools worth of girls in school! 40 dollars a month pays for underwear and pads for the whole year. If you would like to make a donation you can read more about this effort here, here, and here. Or you can donate directly here.

I know not all of us can donate. Talk about it, tweet about it, tell a friend. Talking about these things sheds light, and shame doesn’t live in the light.

When I was turning 17 and a Junior in High school, my mom made me a deal. If I went to school the whole week, I could go to the high school dance. It was on my birthday. My fibromyalgia was not yet diagnosed and my depression was completely out of control. I had dropped half of my classes and was only taking band and math.

When I signed in at the front desk I was already shaking. I managed to walk all the way to the band room doors, pass in hand, before I could no longer control my emotions. I lost it. I walked all the way back to the counselors office, head down tears dripping onto the speckled tile. Showing up to school was harder than I thought it was going to be. Ten minutes in the counselors office and I was ready to try again. This time I made it all the way to the room, walked through the doors, and handed my note to the band director. But I couldn’t make it up the tiered floor to the back of the room. I walked right out, completely defeated.

My counselor called my mom when I returned to her office. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go to band, it was too hard. But then she said the important part, “Mrs. France I understand and respect the deal you made with your daughter, but she has shown up. She is trying as hard as she can to be here. Please let her skip math today and just go home. Please count this day as a success. She is trying”

My mom did count that day as a success. I went to Homecoming that week. I am sure I have the awkward pictures somewhere. Walking into that band room might be the bravest thing I have ever done. Showing up is hard.

I finished the latest round of edits on my book last night. I already know I’m not done yet. I got some really good feedback this morning and am anxious to jump back in already. Editing and writing are very different processes for me. I write frantically, just purging everything. Editing is slow and detailed oriented. It doesn’t play to my strong suits. I’m not good at not being good at things.

There is a big part of me that wants to tuck my manuscript in a folder and never look at it again. I wrote it, that is an accomplishment in and of itself. I kept the first messy 1500 words in a file labeled “reflections” for five years. Maybe that is where all this belongs. Some days it doesn’t even feel like I am doing anything, not really. I am just re-reading the words I have re-read for the past month or so. I am searching for had, and got, and that. I am deleting or replacing half of those. But I keep getting called back to my computer. I keep getting asked to show up.

Showing up is hard. Can we just admit that? Sometimes it takes all the brave we can muster up.

Showing up, really showing up, with my whole self, so I mean it, that is hard. Being there and with and really showing up is hard. It is hard to feel the things that make me feel, to listen to people, to try to understand. It is hard to show up because what if…

What if you show up and people don’t like you? What if you show up and you don’t fit in? What if you thought it was going to be a rodeo, and it turns out it was a black tie affair and everyone is really nice about your cowboy boots but it feels like they are laughing at you behind your back? Showing up, can be really scary. If you do it enough, you are guaranteed to be off sometimes.

But showing up is worth it. The joy on the other side is worth the brave it takes to get their.

We need you to show up. I need you to show up. I need someone to show up to the rodeo in her little black dress. And I need someone else to show me how to rock the cowboy boots at the ball. I know it is scary, and I know it takes all the brave we have some days, but I think showing up is worth it. And if you need me to, I will hold your hand and call your mom and tell her how brave you are, just for the trying,

Photo Credit: Jennifer Upton[/caption]

I was not yet sixteen when I officially heard the call. I don’t remember what the message was. I was sitting next to a boy that I was hoping thought I was cute that particular Sunday. How could I possibly listen to anything the pastor was saying? But I heard the call, the altar call. The call for those who had heard THE CALL, and I walked from one of the back pews to the front of the church, tears streaming down my face, Here I am Lord being sung by the congregation. I wasn’t just going to be a missionary, I was called to be one.

I became a high school English teacher by accident really. Being qualified to teach English makes you employable pretty much anywhere in the world. So, I majored in English education, and despite that fell in love with the profession. But I assumed I would go.

People who do big things for God, they go. He calls; they go.

I already had my house picked out in the perfect Indianapolis neighborhood, when a man we did not know stood up at the front of our college church and said that some of us were called to Atlanta. I looked at Christian and he looked at me. A week later we were telling everyone that we were called there. God called, and we went.

That is what people who do big things for God do. He called; we went.

If it weren’t for a car accident (where miraculously everyone is safe) in Tennessee, I would have been refreshing my browser like a maniac to get tickets for the IF: Gathering last Monday. The day it was announced I told everyone who might get me a present, it was all I wanted for Christmas. Just get me to Austin. God was moving, I could tell. I could hear Him in this, and I wanted in.

This is what people who do big things for God do. He was calling; I was going.

The tickets sold out in forty-two minutes while I was waiting on a rental car in LaFollette Tennessee. But my story sisters were renting a house. I could still go to Austin, I could still be in on it. People who do big things for God don’t worry about the cost of a flight.

This is what people who do big things for God do. He calls; They go.

It would be easier to go. I have shown these women in story sessions my whole heart. They still love me. I trust them. I long for the day I can see some of them face to face. A lot of them will be in Austin for the IF gathering. These ladies are my tribe. If they are all going to be somewhere, that is where I want to be.

But this time, God isn’t calling me to go. He is calling me to stay.

If I am honest with you, staying is a whole lot scarier. Instead of joining like-minded women whom I already love, I am offering to lead an IF local. I am opening up my house and inviting you (like literally you) to come sit on my coffee stained couch and watch the IF gathering stream live onto a sheet I am going to hang from the wall.

I know my politics and theology don’t always line up with yours. I know some of you are struggling with who Jesus is and how He fits into your life. I know I have big feelings about big ideas and I am a total disaster sometimes. But I want us to be sisters-in-Christ. The real kind. Not the “let me say that because I just said something totally rude but true so lets pretend it was in love” kind. I want us to do little things that are big things because God is big and God is love. I want us to sit together and weep together and learn to love each other so that we can really love our city, together, in spite and because of our differences.

Sometimes, God calls people to stay.

God called me to Atlanta. He has broken my heart for this city a million times over. Now He is calling me to stay. I don’t know what you think about women in the ministry, or how to raise your children. I don’t know how you interpret the Bible or what you think about the word feminist. I just know that God is love, and Atlanta needs some more of that. I know that God has called me to stay that weekend, and I hope you will join me.

_____________________________________________________

Registeration for IF local is currently open and pay what you can. They were serious about this thing being accessible to everybody. Sign up and then leave a comment on here or email me that you are coming. I will email everyone my adress in January. If we get too big for my house, I will let God solve that problem for us. This is His show anyway.

It is a strange thing being a High school teacher. No one tells you how often you are going to run into the memory of your 16 year old self. No one tells you that you maybe won’t like her. No one tells you that you will figure out what a huge pain in the ass you were. That is the thing about being on fire. Sometimes other people get burned.

They sit in my room on fire. They are wearing youthgroup t-shirts and missing whole weeks of school to go on mission trips to Mexico. They talk about their summer week in Uganda or Haiti. They cringe when I use the term “Jesus Myth” to explain how the hero journey relates to Jesus. They don’t like it. They don’t cringe when they say something mean to the kid without any friends, or when they say something terrible to someone on Facebook. But they cringe when I refer to Jesus as a literary hero in the same vein as Batman. They are on fire, and they want to burn down my whole lesson.

I could be mad at them. I could be, if I wasn’t them once. I cannot imagine the holy wrath I would have poured out onto a teacher who dare call my Jesus a myth. I cannot imagine the indignant tone I would have used to explain all the proof for a historical Jesus. I am sure I would have given that teacher The Case For Christ for Christmas. I am sure I would have thought I was doing the right thing. I have no idea about my reasons; they were certainly justified in my mind at the time.

I use the student restroom and see “Jesus Loves You” in permanent market on the toilet paper dispenser. Once upon a time I would have praised the Lord for the boldness of that act, done privately and secretly in a bathroom stall. I would have vandalized school property for the Glory of the Lord. Now, I pray for other bold acts to happen at my school. I have spent too many days waiting for one of those Jesus girls to invite the weird kid to be in their group. They never do. I suppose I could be mad at the Jesus girls who don’t invite the weird kid to the project group or the lunch table. But I was that Jesus girl. I never thought about the weird kid either. I was too busy being on fire for Jesus.

Being a teenager is hard. I want us to remeber that as we talk about the crazy evangelical nineties, the strange we did for and because of our fire for the Lord. Being a teenager is hard.

I did some stupid things. I made enemies of a biology teacher who had the nerve to try to teach me the state mandated evolution curriculum. I was unduly offended when my teacher very occasionally dropped a swear. I hated any sex education that wasn’t abstinence only education. I wasn’t quiet about those things. I wanted to be for things, I wanted to be against things, I wanted to be loved, I needed to feel special. I wanted to be worthy.

I wish someone would have told me what I am just learning now. I am special and loved; even when I don’t feel like it, I am worthy.   I am for God, and God is love and I don’t have to be against anything. For love is enough. I wish someone would have told me that I won’t regret the abstaining from in Jesus name. But I won’t have to define myself in the things I do and do not do or believe, that I will simply be beloved.

I see the girls who could have been me, in my own room, rolling their eyes when I accidentally drop a swear. I want to tell them so many things, about life, and love, and God. But right now, they need to be on fire. It makes them feel safe. They need to be for things, against things.

I just pray that no one gets burned.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

This is part of Addie Zierman’s synchroblog for When We Were On Fire which I got to read early and cannot reccomend highly enough. You can buy it today here. Keep your eyes open on my blog, I am giving a copy away to celebrate my birthday at the end of the month.