It is the middle of September and you are already tired. It is scary isn’t it? This tired feeling so early in the school year. If this is what September feels like, how will we ever make it to Thanksgiving? How will we ever survive until May? There is just so much to do. So many new programs to learn, new formats to master, new IEPs and 504 Plans and accommodations to keep track of. It isn’t that you don’t want to do all of things, it is just. There are all of the things. All of the things all of the time, and every year it seems as though there is a new system in place. It will get easier, they say. Once you get used to it. You would like two years with the same program and the chance to get used to it all.

In the midst of all of this you have names, personalities, and needs to learn whether written down officially or just recently discovered. It is all you can do to keep it all straight. You remember what it was like to be sure that you could save kids one desk at a time, one lesson at a time. You remember, vaguely why you took this job. You remember the teachers who made school great for you. You still hope to be that for some of your students. You still hope you can make a difference; you just wonder if there is time to make that difference when you are so busy making lesson plans, and making sure your instruction is data driven.

You wonder if doing all the right things is really what it takes to do right by your kids. You’re tired, and you feel a little bad about that. You don’t want your students to have a teacher who is tired. You want them to have the best.

I know it is hard right now. But please remember, what you do matters. Desperately, you matter. I don’t want that to be one more thing that exhausts you. One more reason you do too much. Just showing up matters. You are doing a good thing.

Education is the quickest way out of poverty. It is still the best way to get a leg up in this world. 75% of prisoners don’t have a highschool education. The more success a kid can have from kindergarten all the way through high school, the more likely they are to avoid jail. I need you to remember that, you keep kids out of jail. Wanting to be there, showing up coffee in hand and a little low on sleep is making a huge difference in the world. You matter.

I know your classes are maxed out in a way they have never been before (and three years ago wasn’t even legal). I know the curriculum gets pulled out from under you just when you are able to stand on it without wobbling. I know that the paperwork is enough to drown in. I know. But I also know you matter. What you do is important. It saves kids from going to jail. I just want to make sure you know you make a difference.

Because I am a lucky, lucky girl I got to read Addie Zierman’s forth coming book. I finished it in two days (a serious deal when you have kids as young as mine) and then drove it over to my friend’s house because YOU NEED TO READ THIS RIGHT NOW! It is hard not to be jealous of Addie’s writing chops. Luckily she is super likable and maybe one day I will get to have a drink with her on one of our back porches as her two boys and my two girls run crazy in the backyard. I am very flattered to be featured on her blog today.

At the end of every shopping trip, after I have checked my list and made sure I didn’t forget anything, andbefore I see if our favorite cashier is working, I look in my cart to see what I can put back.

I’ve never gotten through the process without humbling wheeling my buggy down a previously walked aisle and carefully placing whatever it is back where I found it. I worked retail too many years to just abandon things all over the store, however tempting it may be.

I’m not sure when I started putting things back. Maybe it was when my husband and I started actively tracking our purchases and I discovered I was spending a few hundred bucks every month on things that were “just ten dollars.”

I love this one. Won’t you join me in the comments over at Addies?

The moon was waning last week. I don’t know that I ever notice stuff like that. But last week on Sunday, I noticed. The moon was waning. And I needed to rest. Even the moon was shouting from the skies that it was time for me to slow down, to pack it up, to rest.

I am admittedly terrible at resting. I over book myself, squeeze one more thing in, keep my kids out too late. All in the name of “it will be fun!” All in the name of “someone needs to do it.” It is part of my charm. (Just ask my husband. He looooves this about me.)

We were finishing up Bible study, taking prayer requests. I had read aloud what I had jotted down in my journal maybe ten minutes earlier. We were talking about what was and wasn’t the gospel. We were talking about the gospel, what it is, what it isn’t. Sometimes I grow so tired of talking about theology. I said I was most interested of the theology of ones hands, what we do with our hands tells a lot about what we believe in our hearts, despite what we comes out of our mouths.

Sometimes it takes a surprisingly short amount of time for my own words to bite me in my own butt. I was asking for prayers for me finding time to do everything when my Bible study interrupted me. “Aren’t you supposed to be resting?” My weak defense of my desires over what I know I need to do was interrupted again. “What are your hands saying Abby, what about the theology of your hands?”

It is strange to think of rest as a radical act. To not do anything when there are things to be done, to trust that your needs will be met even if you aren’t the one meeting all of them, to simply rest in the Father’s hands. It is a radical thing to admit with our hands that we can’t be and do everything, that we need or want. It is a radical thing to rest.

I don’t know why I thought the one about the sabbath was the one of the ten commandments I could completely disregard. The sabbath is becoming the holiest thing I do. Not cooking dinner, having no plans, just hanging out. It is necessary. It is rest. And frankly, it is foreign to me. I don’t know how to do this not doing much thing. It scares me somewhere deep I haven’t quite figured out yet.

Rest is the giant antidote, for the lie of scarcity I have whole heartedly swallowed. There is never enough time! But rest says there is. It says there is less stuff that is important, there is less need and more should. It says some of the shoulds are kind of stupid. It says, if the yoke isn’t light it doesn’t belong to Jesus. Rest says I don’t have to be and do everything. Rest is about the theology of my hands, the fear in my heart, the trusting in a big and merciful God.

We showed up at your churches on fire for God, some of  us anyway. We may have even announced our entrance into your families  with bold phrases liked “called  here” or ”led by God.” That fire in our belly melted away all boundaries, if we even had any to begin with, and we were your go to girls and guys. Your guaranteed yeses. In the classroom of your sanctuaries we sat in the front with our hands raised and flailing. You need something done? PICK US! PLEASE! WE WILL DO IT!

Maybe we wanted to prove ourselves. Maybe we thought it would make God love us more. Maybe we wanted to do something BIG for the LORD like we were promised at those not so distant  teen rallies where we wept in the arms of our best friend in Christ. Maybe we just never learned to say no to the church. Maybe we never wanted to before.

But now? Now we are leaving , leaving the church we were once on fire for. Leaving the place we call home. And as we walk out the front door we are called whiny,  entitled,  self absorbed. And I don’t know, maybe we are. But maybe, like the baby boomers quietly leaving out the back, we are tired. Maybe we are just so tired. We have grown from the barely out of our teens  eager selves into mothers and fathers with very small children,  working parents (even if we didn’t plan it that way)  we are stretched too thin at work. We are constantly needed at home. We are tired when we get to you, every week. We are tired before we get there, and the last thing we need is someone or something else that needs us.

At one point it may have excited us, the new program, the fresh sign up sheet, and maybe it isn’t your fault we changed. But we have, and it seems to be at least partially your problem.  We don’t need another program, certainly not one that you are going to ask us to be a part of. We don’t need another night of the week where we are not around our own dinner tables.  We don’t need another book to scribble answers in in the car on the way to bible study because we don’t want to be the only one with blank pages. What we need  is to go to bed  early, or the babysitter for a date night.

We need to rest, need to breathe,  need to once be the one with the needs.   We need there to be room for that.  Need there to be someone to say it is okay to be the one who needs in this season,.

We have been volunteering n the church setting since  we were the only first grader able to memorize Mary’s lines.  We graduated to Jr. Deacon passing the plates around the congregation, to nursery duty and vbs assistant.  We have taught Sunday school and brought casseroles, sung in the choir and written prose. We have picked up people, and trash and canned goods for shelters.  And  though we are accused of it, we are not complaining about any of that service. We found Jesus in the grind, volunteered for all of that after all. We did so willingly. But when are we allowed to be  tired? When does someone pick us up? I wonder if we are leaving the church because what we need is to put on yoga pants and have some tea and really see each other. We need to spill the tangled mess of our harried lives to each other and just cry together.  Instead, what we are being offered is more programming that someone has to run. Maybe us.

Maybe, in the heat of the on fire for God that was our teenage years, our boundaries about volunteering for the church melted all away, and the church doesn’t know how to stop asking, only how  to use us until we are all used up. Maybe we are leaving to protect our families and fight for our marriages that the church taught us to hold so sacred in the first place.  Maybe we are leaving because we are tired. Maybe we need to have needs.

I set the alarm on my computer so I wouldn’t forget. My favorite mom of my favorite student mans the front desk on the last Wednesday of the month. When I got there, it became obvious that I was not the only one excited to see Bridget Brock in the building.

She comes in with a smile, a huge batch of homemade cookies, the largest bag of Jolly Ranchers she could find, a sweet tea for her daughter and a boy she needs to talk to, a desire to know every kid’s name. She stands at the desk and hands out her cookies to the students she already knows by name. There are many. More than I know maybe, and we have been in the school for the same amount of years.

Her daughter, Victoria, was in my tenth grade english class when I was hugely pregnant with Priscilla and still confused about the fact that I was teaching in the suburbs. My very first year teaching at that school was Victoria’s first year in public school. She felt in her fifteen year old heart, the Lord calling her to the huge school down the road, her parents decided to trust her. They have never looked back, since placing both her younger brothers in the larger schools that they once feared. They now love those places fiercely. Call many more kids their own.

My school is better for the presence of Bridget Brock. She lures the kids she does not know into her genuine smile with the hard candy. She learns their name. She tells them she hopes they do well in school. She means it. She brings a sweet tea for the good boy who made some bad choices and lets him know that his parents may not care, but she does. She believes in him.

This is not a love that melts like hard candy, that sweet tea is handed out with the understanding that this means she has a say in your life. This is the love of a mama bear. It is loud, it barks, it will not be ignored. She believes in people. Sees most of the students in the hallway through the mama lens she sees her own children through, not-perfect but deeply loved, worth every ounce of fight she’s got.

I’ve worked too long in some too dark places to believe that she will change every child she runs into on the last Wednesday of every month. But I have worked too long in some too dark places, that were dying for the light she gives off. Even if it is dark again when she leaves.  I wonder what it would mean to some of these kids if just one mama-bear was fighting for them.

I heard recently of a mom who found out her child was a drug addict and the same day she found out there was a two week waiting period for re-hab. She applied for emergency family leave at her job and became her son’s shadow. He was lying on the bed watching tv, she was lying on the bed watching tv. He went to go get something to eat, she went to go get something to eat. He went to the bathroom, she waited in the hall. Every moment for two weeks, she fought for him, even when he hated her for it.

I know that poverty is a huge problem. I know that it is complicated, and far further reaching than I understand. But I also know that it is dark in some places that are right next to the ones we are in. That the church is so often the light under the bushel, to our own communities, to the christian schools, to each other. When are we going to push the light into the darkness? When will it be time to also fight for the children of our neighbors?

We gave away our cribs today. I don’t know that we are done having babies, but I know that someone else really needed them, a pair of teenager sisters who are both choosing life. My husband and I talked about it, and decided they needed them more, and we have the means to find a crib on Craigslist when we need it.

It isn’t just the money, when it comes to being impoverished. It is that the people around you have nothing to share either. No truck to borrow, no extra diapers, no extra time. Everyone is stuck in the same place. That has been the most surprising things about teaching in the suburbs. The veritable mom with time army can work some near miracles, keep it cleaner, safer, warmer, just plain better than it would be without them.

I watch Bridget Brock as she loves on some kids. Even if it is only repeating their own name back to them, in a tone that tells them she is glad they are here. I watch as she tells them to take a few hard candies for the road, come back next time for a cookie. I watch her love well, and dream of an army of people who love well, wanting to bring light into darkness. I watch her fight for children that are not technically her own. I wonder where the rest of the mama bears are.  I dream of their light unleashed at my school.

We are supposed to be discussing, “what is the gospel.” We are supposed to be. We are always supposed to be discussing something, but leading this Bible study is always a little like herding cats. I am glad I don’t have to lead. We are supposed to be discussing the gospel. What is the gospel anyway?

We have already eaten together. Broken bread, fed each other. I can see the frightened look on the lovely lady who had volunteered to cook for the week as people no one expected enter into my home. She feels bad, unprepared, like her offering is not enough. But there is extra Thai peanut chicken in my fridge that needs eaten and it takes less than five minutes to heat and shred. Where one thought there was not enough, there was plenty, an abundance even. All were fed and there was more left over. We are nourished by one another’s hands. We have not yet started discussing the gospel.

We are laughing together when the dining room chairs are placed haphazardly around the edge of my living room. I sit on the floor. There is plenty of room and everyone has a seat they seem comfortable in. And we are about to start discussing the gospel. My oldest has already spread her arms wide and announced to me and her father that the guests in our home are “her people.” (If she ever becomes a dictator, she will surely be a benevolent one.)

We sit around my living room table. We cut out construction paper caps and apples. The kindergartener down the street are low on  parent volunteer hours. We talk about the good news, what it is, what goes with it, as we do a menial and unglamorous task for our neighbors.

We talk about the good news. We are the good news. I think about my husband bringing back the caps and apple. 62 of each, traced and cut in about an hour. There are projects and programs and complicated volunteer forms, and those things are good too. But an email to a teacher asking if we can help and a group of friends with seven pairs of scissors. It is really all it takes. And that is good news too. (Maybe not the good news, but good news.)

I remember sitting in the college cafeteria in a pre-arranged meeting with a girl interested in “spiritual things.” When we got to the bit about Jesus being the bridge between heaven and earth she interrupts me. “That is good news!” she cries her face delighted with the idea of it all. She is right, that is good news.

It is gospel that we can be each other’s people. It is good news that we feed each other. It is gospel that we laugh together. It is good news that there is enough, even an abundance. It is gospel that we can change some lives, love well with just an hour and six pairs of scissors.

Jesus did the gospel, and Jesus is the gospel. And we can and should spread the gospel. And we can and should be the gospel. Hallelujah.

Today I have the deep honor of posting over at Tanya Marlow’s place. She is from across the pond (hence the u in honour) and is so dear to me there are not words. Tanya is housebound with M.E. and blogs deeply and honestly about everything including suffering. I wake up at 7 am on a Saturday just to skype with her. THAT is how great this girl is.

I spent a long time being sick. At thirteen I got mono. There is nothing less funny to a thirteen year old who has never even held hands with a boy, then bad jokes about the kissing disease. Unfortunately, that was the least of my troubles; I never got better.

I spent the years between 13 and 26 looking fine and feeling terrible. It took three years to find a doctor who would even believe me and another year to find a specialist who could give me a diagnosis and a piece of hope to hold in my hands. I will never forget the thick Indian accent and the kind look in his eyes when he held my hands and told me, “my dear, you are going to get much better.” He was the first person who could promise me that.

I am very proud of this piece. Read the rest here.

I am linking up with Leigh Kramer again, because she is awesome (see below) and getting to know all y’all a little better is awsome. 

Books

Every Shattered Thing by Elora Ramirez– A full review is here. You should read it. Three dollars on Amazon and it will mess you up in some most amazing ways. Buy it. Seriously.

The Jesus Story Book Bible– I have been reading this to the girls at night. It makes me weep it is so beautiful. I have had it in our house for a while but I am into it. It is likely I will be into it all year.

Early Autumn by Langston Hughes– I taught this for the first time last week. It about made me cry. Even the fourth time we read it. Oh the ending. Oh how I love it. My students loved it too.

This Assignment is So Gay – One of my dear friends edited this book of poetry. It is beautiful and hopeful and important. I never knew how much I didn’t know about being gay and teaching and how it makes everything more complicated until I started car pooling with Megan. This is the next best thing to being able to talk to her directly, two hours a day.

Look for in September, Reading Writing and Rising Up– I was reminded of this at the book panel for This Assignment is So Gay. It is the only text book I found value in in college. I need to dig it back out.

Thrifting

I have a new problem. Scouring thrift stores. I went with Brooke and Leigh when Leigh visited (see below) and now I can’t quit. A polka dotted dress, a desk, a chair, a loft for the girls (that both girls sleep in…) seven dollar cowboy boots, (I know!), a rought iron cross painted and distressed, two trunks that I took a phone call during church to get that sit at the foot of our bed, a cookie jar, a few funky lamps, a hammock. My husband says “I appreciate that you are getting a lot of good deals…but you are getting them all at once.” I am cutting myself off for awhile, but if you want to come over on a weekend, we can look for you!

Spray Paint

You know what makes your thrift store finds even better? Spray painting them some obnoxious color! Pink for the loft, light blue for my desk, turquoise, yellow, purple for things in my classroom. I have nothing left of mine to spray paint, but I would really love to help you make something bold and new. Seriously. Bring it over; I love spray paint.

Food

Candied Bacon- Megan’s wife Mindy had a birthday and loves bacon. So I decided to candy some for her. Bacon with a light sprinkling of brown sugar in the oven on a parchment paper covered lipped cookie sheet. 350 degrees. It took me three batches, but I have perfected it. The trick is to let it bake for 15 minutes and then sit on the kitchen floor and watch it for the last 5, because perfect turns to burnt very, very quickly. Also, cut the brown sugar with cayenne and black pepper. Then it is perfect. Don’t eat too much. Your mouth says more, but your tummy says enough. You need to listen to your tummy. Ask me how I know.

Crock Pot Thai Peanut Chicken-This has been on my “to try” list forever. But salsa and peanutbutter in the same pot? That has to be gross right? WRONG! In true Abby fashion I decided to try it for dinner for Bible Study. It was delicious. One jar of salsa, one jar of crunchy peanut butter, two limes juiced and some fresh grated ginger. All over chicken thighs that you slow cook on low for six hours. Over rice it is delicious. And easy. And delicious. I licked the bowl.

Internet Friends in Real life

Leigh Kramer came to visit me. She wrote all about it, and didn’t even tell the whole world that she had to sit in my driveway for two hours while I took Juliet to urgent care because staph infections are like some kind of Old Testament plague. Lord deliver us! It was so fantastic, and she loves the Dekalb Farmers Market as much as I do, and what can I say besides she is as true and lovely as her blog, perhaps even more so if that is possible. She didn’t even tell y’all how crazy my kiddos are, gracious!

I was hanging out at the Decatur Book Festival to celebrate This Assignment is So Gay (see above) when Jennifer Upton walked by with her husband. She is a story sister, I know her heart because we are both in Story Sessions (ten spots still available! Just do it!). I yelled her name like a crazy person and ran through the shrubs to get to her. Just so I could squeeze her. I love that community, and the women in it, and how Jennifer has a deep love for things that others abandon that she knows are beautiful. I put three old window panes that were propped up against a dumpster into my van because I want to make them beautiful. This is because I know Jennifer, because she is shaping my heart.

Things that started

School started this month. So, officially crazy town has been entered. Three tenth and two ninth sections. Two team teachers, lots of kids. I think it is going to be a great year.

Also, I drafted a fantasy football team for the first time in a few years. Any hot tips welcome.

So that is my life…what about you?

I was in elementary school when my sister and I were dropped at my pastor and his wife’s house for an impromptu slumber party. Conveniently, they had girls the same age as my parents girls. Not so conveniently, someone my dad had become friends with through his day job as a street lawyer (think John Grisham but the million dollar case never walks through the door) had been attacked and needed a place to crash for the night. I don’t remember if the attack was ever fully explained to me. Rape? Domestic Abuse? I remember seeing her face on my way out the door, and that was enough for me to know I was glad my parents were taking care of her.

My parent’s decision to structure our family around the calling of my dad to the streets of Toledo Ohio, meant that I was exposed to a lot of things far before my friend’s parents were talking about those things to them. Drug addiction, sexual abuse, homelessness, poverty. All of these things came up at the dinner table, as my mom asked my dad how his day was and he told her the things he helped people with that day. I asked a lot of questions and my parents never shied away from the truth. “Well, Abby our friend Carey doesn’t have a job because he has some mental problems, so that mean he can’t have a house and has to sleep in daddy’s office.”

Their decision to face things more or less head on, gave me and my sisters age appropriate language to talk about some pretty serious things. I am grateful for that language. I am grateful they didn’t sweep things under the rug. When my friends were struggling with the darkness in the world, asking where God was in all of it, I simply shrugged my shoulders. I knew where God was in all of that, I had watched my parents as they became the hands and feet of Jesus to the least of these.

The terrible things of this world need talked about. How else are we going to know how to stop them?

Lately, I have heard grumblings that young adult novels are simply too dark. I hear that, I do. So many young adult novels are about cutting, drug use, sexual abuse, death. Do we really want our teens reading such dark material?

I have the privilege of teaching teens what are considered some of the greatest books of all time. These books may not be about teens, but they are just as dark. The tenth grade curriculum alone leads to conversations about power by way of simulated rape (thanks a lot Lord of the Flies) to mercy killing (courtesy of Of Mice and Men). Then there are the few weeks when we talk of nothing but death (Tuesdays with Morrie you’re such a laugh). This is what I know for sure, not only are these books not too mature for 15 year olds, but they are talking about this stuff anyway. At least this way, it isn’t whispers in the dark. At least in my room, there is an adult that can serve as a guide through these complicated issues.

I read Elora Ramirez’s Every Shattered Thing in two nights. It is nothing short of gripping. It is a tale of a girl, Stephanie,  caught in sex trafficking through no fault of her own. Starting somewhere in the second chapter I started rooting for Stephanie, and had trouble putting the book down. It mattered to me, whether or not she would be okay. Every Shattered Thing is one of those, “don’t read unless you have time” kind of books. You have been warned.

I worry about the other warning this book is likely to come with, the one that says “this may not be suitable for your teen” or “it is simply too dark.” This is the warning that is likely to make me mad. Because, while Every Shattered Thing starts in a dark place, the story has a constant backlighting of hope. Hope. That is the truly remarkable thing about this book, the hope is the heaviest part.

It reminds me of the hope of my parents house. The way that darkness was not hidden from us, the way my parents trusted my sisters and I to be able to see the light in the darkness as they guided us carefully through this world. Elora does that with her audience, she does not shy away from the terrible. She instead believes they will be able to see the light, even in the darkest of places.

Sex trafficking is becoming an everyday conversation topic. It has come up in my classroom multiple times, and not because I brought it up. My students have heard whispers in the dark, read an article on the internet. They want to understand, to shed light on the subject. This book, Every Shattered Thing, it helps people understand. I know there will be parents who insist that the material is too mature for their teens. I hope they think again. Hope is heavy, and teens are so very strong in the holding.

*Full Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book to review.

I am a person easily swayed by novelty. I think this is one of the reasons I get along with Freshmen so well. We will both try anything once. Cartoons, puppets, candy thrown into the crowd, tweeting as Romeo, singing Taylor Swift. My department head has learned to brace himself a little when he walks into my room and trust that I have the pedagogical chops to back up whatever fun I am trying to have in there, that learning is really taking place. (Have I mentioned lately how grateful I am for bosses that trust me?) Planning my first few months of instruction is like going through the mall on someone else’s credit card. Let’s try this! How about that!

The beginning of summer is like that too. Perhaps this is why teaching suits me, everything is perpetually new. New school year! Christmas Break! New semester! Summer! Those first weeks of summer are always the best. When I feel like there is something new to be done every single day. Go to the park! Sonic happy hour! The pool! The Sprinkler! Out for Ice cream! How exciting. Always exciting.

Until of course, the novelty wears off. Like a cheap ring out of a quarter machine, that shiny patina of new and exciting lasts sometimes only moments. I teach 5 classes a day. By the end of the day it is no longer new to me. And did you know that summer goes on for twelve weeks! TWELVE WEEKS! In between ice cream and slides there are things like diaper changes, laundry, feeding the children who are hungry at least three times a day, breaking up fights over a cheap piece of plastic the other girl didn’t even want until the first one picked it up.

I call it the grind, the inevitable moment when the shiny newness wears off, and I sludge through the day thinking, “we’re doing this again?” Because as hard as I try, it isn’t always fun. Jonathan Martin, in his book Prototype, calls it obscurity. The space where you are hidden from the world, away from display, the seasons in your life when it is just you and God. He uses the example of King David, not yet king, sitting in the fields tending sheep. On my Sunday school felt board little boy David was always portrayed as perfectly clean, resting quietly by a tree, playing the lyre and loving on the sheep. He seems happy, and rested, like every day was some sort of country vacation.

Sheep tending, from my understanding, doesn’t work like the felt boards. It smells bad, you get dirty, it is heavy lifting and gross bodily fluids. And it is boring, the same thing every single day with same sheep who make the same stupid mistakes. They need fed, they need water, they need their wounds tended from going through the same thorn bushes and re-opening the same wounds every single day for weeks on end. It is boring, it is exhausting, but that is where God met David.

And increasingly, I am realizing that God meets me there too, in the grind. In the grind of the paper grading, the diaper changing, the pajamas and bed time every single night. In the mopping up milk from the spilled cereal for the third time in one morning. In the grind of my commute, in the grind of showing up to write every morning at 5:30. Sometimes, even the things I love aren’t fun. They just need to be done, and well. The grind is more important than I realized.

You always think this big God of ours is going to show up in a big way, at a big time. Why should God do anything in secret when He could miraculously change us in some showy public miracle? Until very recently there was a piece of my heart that was still waiting for that miracle everyone would witness.

I spent this weekend with my extended family, remembering my grandmother and my grandfather who passed away earlier this year. We keep talking about the little things, that are actually big things. The cooking, the sewing, the cleaning, the showing up to the baseball games and dance recitals, the school plays that were twelve hours away. We  don’t really talk about the public accolades they received (and there were many). That pales in comparison to the years they served homeless people at the open door, or the fact that they served meals on wheels well past their eightieth birthdays.

The grind. I used to hate it, to run from it, to complain loudly that it was boring and when was God going to show up and do something already. But the grind is the space where God meets me, shapes me, shows up every day and asks for me to join Him in his work. The grind is the touch of the potter’s hand. I have seen the way it shaped my grandparents. I am learning to lean into the grind. I am learning to embrace it. I am understanding that our God is big enough to reach us in obscurity, to hold our hand every moment of the grind.

What an Amazing God I serve, that He would care even about this. Hallelujah.

Kelley Nikondeha is a truly incredible lady who just happens to have a book club. Transit lounge (#transilounge on twitter) read Prototype this month. I highly recommend everything that was mentioned in those last two sentences.