Dreaming is for teenagers, people who have nothing better to do than lie on the hood of their beat up car and stare at the night sky. For people who can stay up late and not pay for it the next morning, with no one but themselves to feed breakfast.

Dreaming is for college students, for people whose parents still list them on their health insurance. For dorm rooms and coffee shops with acoustic guitars ever-present and couches pulled in off of street corners smelling vaguely like mildew and cigarette smoke.

Dreaming is for newlyweds, for couples holding mao-tai’s on a beach in Jamaica, or in their parents tent sipping a cheap bottle of gas station champagne as they talk about ten years from now when they will have a house and some kids and enough money in the bank for a real honeymoon the second time around. The grandparents will take the kids and the couple will fly to Hawaii, first class.

But dreams are not for me. The kids are in the patched up kiddie pool in the back as I stand at the kitchen counter typing with one eye on the splashing and shouting praying the duct tape holds for another 20 minutes, just until I can get the words out. They are naked again. Swim suits cost me too much time.

We are quickly approaching that ten-year mark, my husband and I, and even my body seems to be fighting the dreams. Dreamers don’t have muffin tops, or full-time jobs, or kids that need health insurance. Dreamers aren’t supposed to be interrupted by thoughts of responsibility and who will pay the light bill. I need to go to the grocery store and the Goodwill; I don’t have time for dreams.

It is my tenth week, my last week, in an e-course signed up for on a whim. On a whim I may have altered my life. (I know it sounds hyperbolic, but it truly has been one of the best decisions I have ever made.) Elora is asking us to dream. To put away the what-ifs and the how is that possibles. To simply sit, blank page in front of us and pour out the things that are hidden in our hearts.

I leave the TV on so I won’t become fully engrossed in this activity. I am afraid it is going to hurt. I know it is going to hurt. I think if I can distract myself enough I will be able to keep a part of myself protected. I underestimate the depths and volume of this calling of my heart, this thing they call a dream. It is loud, LOUD and big and a little scary. And now it is on a less than blank page, refusing to be ignored.

The first time I opened the email with this week’s instructions, I shut it immediately. Who has time for dreaming? Not me. I have kids to raise, dinner to cook, groceries to buy, a school year to prep for. I have a book to write. I do not have time for dreaming, I have a baby who won’t go to bed.

Moms aren’t supposed to dream for themselves. The dreams should be folded up and tucked away, replaced with onesies and swaddle blankets. For now at least, those dreams belong to your babies. That is the lie I have been believing: These dreams of mine have an expiration date; my dreams and my children cannot go-exist. My creativity must now belong to motherhood.  Here I am, two small children and a dream, none of whom will be ignored, all three shouting at me to be fed.

I write at the kitchen counter as the kids come in and ask for waffles for lunch. Waffles in the toaster, I realize we are out of syrup and spread some jam my friend made on top.  The girls clamber for more. Later, I am writing in the car in the parking lot of the grocery store, both of my children asleep in the back seat and I realize that while feeding my children and my dream I only managed to feed myself the bits of waffle my youngest threw on the floor. Will feeding my dreams will always leave me this hungry?

I’ve tried to pack away my dreams, to leave them folded carefully away in a plastic bin labeled, some day. I have tried to wait them out, to throw them out, to simply ignore them. It leaves me hungrier than coffee for breakfast and half a jam smeared waffle off of the floor for lunch. Like these girls I grew tucked safely in my womb, these dreams grown in my heart were given to me, and are demanding and impossible to ignore. It is part of their charm. I love all of them just like that. I’m a mom with a dream. I’m the mom of a dream.

Maybe dreams are for moms too. Maybe dreams are for people who go about their day at the grocery store, drive their kids in a circle in the mini-van until everyone’s head slowly drops to the side, maybe some days nap time is for dreaming cramped in the driver’s seat of the mini-van or standing at the kitchen counter just trying to get the words out. Maybe suppressing these dreams is a waste of my time and with everything on my to-do list I shouldn’t add that.

Maybe I don’t have time not to dream.

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If you are a person with a dream of writing, even just writing better for yourself or your students or your kids, if you are sure you don’t belong anywhere and need a creative community seriously consider Elora’s class. There is space for you, if you are hungry you will be fed there.

This isn’t totally without self-interest. If you tell her I sent you I get a discount on her 201 class, and can afford it. I would be very grateful.

This short break in my  coffee shop, husband has the kids. Why won’t the words come out NOW like I need them to, this book-writing idea is stupid, going to do it anyway. This rant is brought to you by Five Minute Fridays. I’ll be writing for five minutes. Let’s see what comes out, shall we?

Listen is the prompt. GO.

Listen. Are you listening? listen up please. Hey! You are not listening to mommy. That was good listening, well it is because you weren’t listening. That is danger! You have to listen.

Isn’t it always, perpetually the word that is coming out of my mouth. Listen. With a three-year-old and a not yet two, constant companions in this frenzied summer. LISTEN is not the soft and beautiful restful word that it is for others.

It isn’t that kind of word in the school year either. There is always something that has to be communicated, that day, that hour, that moment. Are you listening? This is important! If you don’t listen up you are going to have no idea what is going on! I need you all to listen!

But my children and my kids aren’t the only one I have been shouting listen at lately. Isn’t a query letter just a plea to beg someone to listen to you. Twitter is shouting into the world hoping someone will hear your voice. Blog posts written in the hopes that you have something worth listening too.

And the tragedies, inconveniences, frustrations, bizarre things that have been happening in a community I have become a part of making me rage at God. My sisters need help! Aren’t you listening! Are you hearing us, do you understand? We could use some help! Listen up already!

Is anybody listening?

STOP

Post Script- This is not meant as a plea for your validation. Please do not feel obligated to pet me. It just needed to get out.

Every Tuesday Stephanie invites us to reflect on a psalm. You can read the rest of those reflections here.

Psalm 59

For the director of music. To the tune of “Do Not Destroy.” Of David. A miktam.[b] When Saul had sent men to watch David’s house in order to kill him.

1 Deliver me from my enemies, O God;
be my fortress against those who are attacking me.
2 Deliver me from evildoers
and save me from those who are after my blood.
3 See how they lie in wait for me!
Fierce men conspire against me
for no offense or sin of mine, Lord.
4 I have done no wrong, yet they are ready to attack me.
Arise to help me; look on my plight!
5 You, Lord God Almighty,
you who are the God of Israel,
rouse yourself to punish all the nations;
show no mercy to wicked traitors.[c]
6 They return at evening,
snarling like dogs,
and prowl about the city.
7 See what they spew from their mouths—
the words from their lips are sharp as swords,
and they think, “Who can hear us?”
8 But you laugh at them, Lord;
you scoff at all those nations.
9 You are my strength, I watch for you;
you, God, are my fortress,
10 my God on whom I can rely.
God will go before me
and will let me gloat over those who slander me.
11 But do not kill them, Lord our shield,[d]
or my people will forget.
In your might uproot them
and bring them down.
12 For the sins of their mouths,
for the words of their lips,
let them be caught in their pride.
For the curses and lies they utter,
13 consume them in your wrath,
consume them till they are no more.
Then it will be known to the ends of the earth
that God rules over Jacob.
14 They return at evening,
snarling like dogs,
and prowl about the city.
15 They wander about for food
and howl if not satisfied.
16 But I will sing of your strength,
in the morning I will sing of your love;
for you are my fortress,
my refuge in times of trouble.
17 You are my strength, I sing praise to you;
you, God, are my fortress,
my God on whom I can rely.

I got up before anyone else this morning and went running. It was terrible. Hot and humid, like I was breathing steam. Apparently 8 is not earlier enough for an early run in the deep south in June. My lungs felt tight, screaming at me that they were not going to be able to get from this air everything that they needed. Especially if I kept up at the very, very slow pace I was going. Let’s just say it has been awhile. As I was running, then walking, then thinking about running, and continuing to walk I was listening to Jonathan Martin preach about the woman caught in adultery and the men throwing rocks.

The men throwing rocks. I stand accused as a rock thrower. I am by no means innocent of this sin. I have picked up rocks when I was supposed to extend grace. I have yelled and screamed but what about them! when confronted with my own wrong doing. But in this case, I have looked down, expecting to see the rocks I have been told I have, only to see broken shards of a relationship that perhaps I broke by clinging too tightly, not letting go soon enough.

It still breaks me. It breaks me to know someone so well, and not at all anymore. I am sure that someone would say the same thing. It breaks me to return the pieces of our lives, but cowardly, only at a time I know no one will be home. It breaks me to run across a driveway I once pulled into and blessed the Lords name, praying that I have successfully avoided an inevitably awkward interaction.

I cannot tell you how many times I have searched my heart, looking for the rocks that even I suspected I threw, only to find that while I am sure imperfectly, I have loved the best way I know how. But where does that leave me? With an email that hurls rocks of its own. Abandoner. False Friend. One who does not love like Jesus. No different from everyone else who failed. A stumbling block on someone’s way to the cross.

And with those words, a friend has become an enemy. Against me over and over again, at least within the confines of my own brain on repeat. And as I walk, limp really, slowly up the hill on my way back home, I hear what my podcast preacher is saying about the accuser, how it is often how we see God, but it is the first way The Enemy is described. And in my sweaty tired mess, annoyed that I can not run further or faster I yell to God exasperated, “Well that is all well and good for David, but what if the enemy was once your friend!”

Sometimes, even I am amazed by the depths of my ability to think that my problems are unique, that I am the only one who has been hurt this way. Didn’t David love Saul, sing to him in his misery, kiss his son and call him a brother? Doesn’t that make this psalm all the more heartbreaking? The mouths from which those words are spoken are ones that once blessed David richly.

And yet? In the morning David praises the Lord. Even when the attack comes from a place that has the capacity to completely cripple me, even when the words work into my head and I become my own accuser, the Lord is my Fortress. I will praise him in the morning.

I was twelve and headed into middle school. We were in the middle of the Appalachian mountains, at a Bible college in West Virginia. Rock climbing, rappelling, rafting for Jesus. I was in the middle of a log slung between two trees and the best way for me to get down, was to fall. Cross my arms over my chest, and tip my body backward. Trust that the rope was going to catch me. Racking sobs followed a very brave tipping backward. You have to trust that the rope is going to do what it is there for. You have to have faith in the rope. Then: Fall.

They don’t tell you, in the devotional around the camp fire when you recount your heroing tail, that in life you don’t get to choose when your falling. You don’t always get to steady yourself and take a deep breath before you pitch yourself over the edge. Sometimes you get pushed, sometimes the platform you were expecting is pulled from under you, sometimes you look around and realize you have been falling for a while. There isn’t always, before that fall, the chance to take a breath and decide that you do trust the rope, that there is faith that the rope will catch you.

But it isn’t in the fall or even the moment before the fall that you decide to put your faith in that rope. It is the moment, on the ground, before the adventure begins, when you hitch your harness to the rope and tell your guide you are ready. That is the moment you have chosen what you trust in when you fall.

I am linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker’s Five Minute Friday. Check it out!

I walked into the house with my sister already in the shower, pounding her feet on the floor and moaning a little bit. She had alerted me to the fact that her contractions were starting around 11. By the time I got there after school we needed another coping mechanism. So I did what worked for me, what worked for my friend earlier that month. We counted. Starting at one we counted until the contractions were over. 2…3…4…5… sometimes we made it until 60, sometimes to 100 only to start over until the wave of pain was over. We counted from 5 when I got there to after midnight when it was time to push.

It is tiring to stand next to someone and help them birth a baby, remind them that their pain is temporary and normal. It is draining to stand next to someone and hold their concentration with yours. But it is totally worth it, to get to be there to witness the very first glimpses of a life.

I was visibly tired at church on Sunday. I’ve been carrying my friend’s burden. I didn’t know I could have community, real community with people I have not yet met. But this woman who I love, she was promised joy and it was replaced with sorrow. More waiting, more hoping, more not yet. Again. My husband asks me what is wrong and we talk about how messy this world can be, how someones yes is so often the bitter no to another, how hard it is to sit in the ashes and wait for the beauty to grow into it, how I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else right now. I love her, even if it is hard, it is a privilege to help hoist this burden even for a moment, across the country, over the internet.

Marking the time with someone, letting them know you are there. We don’t know how long it will last, but we are keeping track for you. Somehow the counting makes you feel less abandoned in the pain, it lets you ride from on top of the crest, and not underneath. It still hurts, maybe even as much, but it helps somehow to mark the pain, count the moments.

I was in a wedding this last weekend. There were bells and flower girls who behaved beautifully, and ring bearers who were just ornery enough to evoke an audible awwww from the guests. There were 5 other bridesmaids holding a beaded beauty high enough that the bride could step in and let the dress float down around her.

That dress, it held a story of its own. It was bought while planning a wedding six years prior, and after the ring was returned and the tears had dried, the bride told me she may not have found the man, but she knew she had found the dress. 22-year-old bodies and 28-year-old bodies are simply not the same. Even if the numbers on the scale were the same, the zipper wouldn’t budge, so a master seamstress doubling as a good friends mother put in a series of ribbon woven into the back and around the last button, and the dress was more beautiful than before. New panel, new story, a little more complicated, completely breath-taking.

We marked a lot of time in those six years, a major move and two babies for me, a trip to Hawaii, a summer in NYC, and a graduate degree for her, six schools between us. Countless cell phone minutes on our separate commutes, a hundred times I told her I would call her back and didn’t, answering my phone with a crap I am so sorry. But I did answer the text, “how soon is too soon to get engaged,” it seems fitting that I was literally in labor with my second.

I was not the only one to have marked time with this friend. She gives herself easily, and many had been rooting for this happiness for a very long time, counting the days with her. As they danced their first dance I looked around the room to see people who were overjoyed to be able to celebrate the first glimpses of their new life together.

I want to wrap this up in a neat and perfect bow. To promise to count with my friend until that joyful bundle finally arrives in her arms, to pledge to answer my phone when my single friend calls, to mark the days with her as our other friends change their facebook statuses to “engaged.” But isn’t that the scariest thing about these hopes and dreams we have? What if it never comes?It is so hard sometimes to believe in the ressurection in our own lives.

I no longer have the answer for those questions. I have learned the hard way to stop talking so much. You feel a wave of pain coming, just keep breathing. 1….2…3…4…If we get to 100 we will start again, and I will consider it a privilege to bear witness to it all.

I call her my naughty monkey. Not yet two, she likes to tell you what she is not supposed to do moments before she does it. “No hit mama” is quickly followed with a whack to my head when I am trying to lay down with her so she will go to sleep. She has monkeys on her ‘jamas and I rub her back as I hold her ribs because she is tired and can’t seem to sleep, even when her eyes are so heavy they remained closed. Her little heart beats in my hands as her crying stops, but only so long as my hand is rubbing circles in her back. Even as I am exhausted by the bending over the bed, I recognize this is as a privilege.

Hold ‘ja momma, hold ‘ja. She holds her hands up to me multiple times a day. Sometimes she cries it while I am already holding her. Hold ‘ja momma. She wants to be held a little higher, a little tighter, a little closer. I don’t think my arms will stop hurting until I go back to school. There are days when I need and take a break. But she is the closest I have to a baby at my house. Come here baby. I’ll hold ‘ja.

I pooped! Dipey change. She waits for me to gather the necessary supplies before taking off around the circle of our house. Pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, EEEeeeEEE! I tickle her and tackle her and up she goes again, Nakey Buns! hehehehehehehe. Who knew diaper changes could be this much fun? Who knew they could be this exhausting. I am generally doing something else when the race through the house begins.

I am busy when she brings me the mask. Chicken! chicken! (It’s a duck.) I keep trying to put it on her but that isn’t how this game works. Her dad has been donning the masks himself and chasing the girls around the house as he makes the animal noises and they scream in delight. I keep trying to ignore her, but she persists, putting the mask on my keyboard, chicken mama, chicken! Sigh….Quack, quack, quack, AAAAAaaaah! What’s one more trip around the circle?

I am trying something new and linking up with Heather for Just Write. I needed this excercise today.

This is a post in a series, Jesus At the Blackboard, a place to come and share our stories about educational choices in order to broaden the conversation without making parents feel bad about themselves. You can find all of the posts in this series here.

How much do I love this post by Lisa Bartelt? It is so honest and so, so true. It captures the way we have this discussion and they way we need to be having it. I am so excited about sharing it with you!

Jesus at the blackboard: choose wisely

There’s a scene toward the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where the ancient guardian of the Holy Grail advises the greedy Nazis and the archaeologist/adventurer to “choose wisely” when picking from a room full of possible cups.

In a way, deciding the education path for our kids has been like that scene: one wrong choice and we’re doomed.

Before we had kids, the “holy grail” of education was homeschooling. We had friends who did it and loved it and made it sound so appealing, and my husband and I were sold: We would home-school our children, if and when we had them.

Then, our daughter was born. And her social needs outpace my capacity to meet them, and I found myself quickly abandoning any notion of homeschooling. Then another child came along, our son, and I couldn’t imagine trying to teach my kids and care for a house and be a writer. (And I’m still in awe of women who do all of these things!)

Now our daughter is five and starting kindergarten in the fall. And school choice is no longer hypothetical but an actual decision that has to be made.

Some time ago, we decided that public school was the way to go. My husband and I both attended public school (I’m not sure either set of parents had much choice in those days) so it’s a place that’s familiar to us. What sealed the decision for us was the built-in community nature of public school. We moved our family 800 miles from our hometown so my husband could attend seminary, and now that he’s graduated and we’re about to move again, we need a place that will offer us a way to connect with people.

Public school provides that opportunity. And our daughter will thrive being with other kids and a teacher all day. At least that’s our hope.

Even with the public vs. private vs. homeschool decision behind us, choosing where to move based on the schools has been another weighty decision. We’re moving to a city where the schools have a bad reputation because of poverty and ethnic diversity (I think) but rent is low, and where the rural schools are better overall but rent is higher. I’ve dismissed the city schools as not good enough for my daughter because I’m afraid she won’t be challenged the way she needs to be.

But God has been softening that stance, forcing me to face the sources of my fear. That she won’t be safe. That I’ll be counted among the poor and marginalized. That she’ll act out if she’s not challenged enough.

Choose wisely.

I’ve been making school choice a life-or-death decision, as if where we send our daughter to kindergarten will shape the rest of her life. As if God can’t—or won’t—meet her in the classroom, wherever it is and meet me where I’m at in my fear.

The choice, then, isn’t about where we send her to school or what type of school it is. The choice is whether I’ll trust God to be God wherever that school is.

Like Indiana Jones finds out, the wisest choice might surprise me yet.

I know it has been nothing but guest posts around here, and I appreciate your patience. We are making the grandparent rounds, so writing time is a little scarce and has been pretty much dedicated to the book. I know it is sometimes annoying to have to continually click links. I do value so much all of you who show up to see what I have to say, thank you.

This post is written for Mixed Up Faith, a really interesting series about inter-faith relationships. This post is particularly close to my heart, as is this relationship.

From the outside looking in, we could be a sitcom: Baptist mom who blogs carpools with Lesbian agnostic Jewish poet. Hilarity ensues. The only thing it looks like we have in common, is that we work in the same English department in the same high school. The same people sign our paychecks. Even our co-workers are taken aback when they realize how close we are. To be honest, it snuck up on us too.

I grew up versed in apologetic techniques. I have canvassed public parks and asked people if they were 100% sure of where they were going if they died, or if they really thought they were good people, even if they did one thing that was bad. The thing about those questions, is it doesn’t matter what the answer is. You still go on about your script, “and if there were a way to be 100 percent sure you could go to heaven, would you want to know?” I still believe in assurance of salvation, I just no longer believe in questions as a means to an end.

You can read the rest at Alise’s place, and be sure to look around. She has a unique and needed voice that I have really enjoyed getting to know.

I adored making this list for my friend Sarah. It is a long over due update on my word for the year, and it will make you laugh at least once, hopefully until you pee your pants. Thirty Things I have Decided to by Unashamed Of.