This week is Holy week. Last week was incredible and exhilarating, and I am grateful to you all for engaging in the conversation. But, it has left me feeling as though I have been shouting into a crowded room for a week. In order to honor Holy week, and allow my heart time to prepare for Easter, I will be posting here some poetry I had the opportunity to write for my church during lent.

He Is Lord

Jesus is Lord

Jesus is Lord

He is Lord of my Life

He is Lord of Creation

Hallelujah,

Jesus is Lord

I have seen them on the TV in their thousand dollar suits,

With their private Jets, His and Her Jaguars,

Front row seats at a Lakers game.

I have seen them proclaiming that God is sovereign,

That they have all of these things because Jesus is their Lord.

Lord over what? I wonder.

Surely this is not the same Jesus I heard tell

The last shall be first and the first shall be last.

I think about just how much he gave away,

When he had too much, it was all passed out

No one was thirsty or hungry that day on that hill so long and far away.

I wonder if that same Jesus could bless with money, power, favors

To be hoarded and spent on self.

I wonder if it is possible for a man to have Jesus

Be Lord over his heart…but not his wallet.

Jesus is Lord

Jesus is Lord

He is Lord of my Life

He is Lord of me Heart

Hallelujah,

Jesus is Lord

I see them with their picket signs, their angry faces,

their offensive slurs.  I see them

With their poster board covered

In constructions paper flames.

They tell me they are yelling because Jesus is their Lord?

But who is their Jesus?

Is their Jesus the one who quietly went to the cross,

the one who came not to condemn the world but save it?

Surely not him.

People who have Jesus as Lord in their life,

I just don’t think they would act like that.

Jesus is Lord

 Jesus is Lord

He is Lord of my Life

He is Lord of my Heart

Hallelujah,

Jesus is Lord

I got cut off yesterday.

The guy actually zoomed around me,

Honked until I looked over at him so he could flip me off

And then pulled in front of me so closely

I could see the dew still fresh on his bumper.

That dew made the Jesus fish sparkle in the morning sun.

It was right next to the bumper sticker proclaiming

The driver’s boss is a Jewish carpenter.

Can Jesus be the boss of someone,

But not the way they drive?

Jesus is Lord

 Jesus is Lord

He is Lord of my Life

He is Lord of my Heart

Hallelujah,

Jesus is Lord

These people I see are not the only ones

Who make me question the Lordship of Jesus.

Mostly I see the confusion in my own heart.

Jesus is Lord

How much to I have to give up?

If I am going to say that Jesus  is Lord.

Can he be Lord of my heart but not my body?

Jesus is Lord

Can he be Lord of my mind

But not my money?

He is Lord of my Life

Can he be Lord of Sundays when I keep

The work week to do just exactly what I want?

He is Lord of my Heart

If Jesus is Lord of my heart and my life,

Can I still be in charge of who I forgive,

How much grace to give out and the strings attached to it?

Hallelujah,

Jesus is Lord

If people looked into my heart

Into my bank account

Into the way that I drive

If people knew my forgiveness

My anxiety, the need to know what is next

My inability to love my neighbor

I wonder if they would think that Jesus is Lord

I wonder if I think that Jesus is Lord.

Or if I just proclaim it.

Hallelujah.

It is Spiritual Abuse Awareness week in the corner of the internet I travel. It is being hosted by some truly amazing people and producing some truly amazing posts. I am learning a lot, but I confess that initially, my reaction is not to sit and listen and hold the hands of the survivors, but instead to politely interject: Not every church is like that. Please, there are some great churches out there!

I suppose that I could say that it is simply because I love the church. But, if I am honest with myself, if I sit quietly and wait for the Spirit to tell me, it is because I am uncomfortable with how blessed I have been in this way: I have never been to a spiritually abusive church. I can unequivocally recommend all three churches of which I have considered myself a member. The truth is this, just because I haven’t experienced it, does not mean that it is not real.

I remember when my body was sick. When a friendly pat would feel like an angry punch. I remember how much more it hurt when someone rolled their eyes at the pain in mine and told me it shouldn’t hurt that bad. Maybe it shouldn’t, but it did. Denying my pain did not make it better. It only made me feel like my pain did not matter.

I remember when my body was sick. I remember my dear friend and team-mate Sara noticing my smallest ticks, following me into the bathroom to check on me, and carrying my bag when she knew I could no longer carry it, but could not ask for help. She understood, even when she didn’t understand.

Last weekend I had the privilege of sitting across from a new friend as we drank coffee. She shared her story. It was a story totally foreign to me. One of power, where I had known only love, one of pain where I had known joy, one of rejection where I had known acceptance. I thought, as I was listening to these stories that were so clearly true, but foreign to me, that perhaps this is what it was like when I attempted to describe my once sick body to my healthy friends.

Spiritual abuse survivors: I see you. I am listening. I value and honor the stories you are telling. I am your Sister in Christ; I will carry these burdens when you can’t anymore.

Yesterday, the news invaded my classroom. I think the kids aren’t paying attention. I think the kids only care about the news as it relates to Justin Bieber. I think they aren’t listening or capable of advanced thought. Every single time I think one of those things, I sell out the ninth-graders that come traipsing through my room every day.

It started when I picked this poem to go over different ways to look at poetry:

Witness

Martha Collins

If she says something now he’ll say
it’s not true if he says it’s not true
they’ll think it’s not true if they think
it’s not true it will be nothing new
but for her it will be a weightier
thing it will fill up the space where
he isn’t allowed it will open the door
of the room where she’s put him
away he will fill up her mind he will fill
up her plate and her glass he will fill up
her shoes and her clothes she will never
forget him he says if she says
something now if she says something ever
he never will let her forget and it’s true
for a week for a month but the more
she says true and the more he says not
the smaller he seems he may fill up
his shoes he may fill up his clothes
the usual spaces he fills but something
is missing whatever they say whatever
they think he is not what he was
and the room in her mind is open she
walks in and out as she pleases she says
what she pleases she says what she means.

It is ambiguous. I suppose that is the point. The best literature for me to teach is the kind that gives the kids enough to be interested in, but they still don’t have a clear idea of what is going on. We spend the day looking at the poem from every angle we can find, or at least that is the plan.

Yesterday, pretty immediately, someone in the back shot their hand up and did not wait for me to call on them. “Ms. Norman, this poem is about rape.” It wasn’t a question. It is rare for a fifteen-year-old to speak about anything with this kind of authority, let alone poetry. A few kids chimed in to agree with the first student and I admitted that I often read the poem that way, even if you don’t have to. I was about to launch into an explanation of other ways this poem could be read.

“Ms. Norman” another kid called, “Have you heard about that rape case in Ohio? Those guys got convicted. They have to go to jail. They are going to lose their scholarships. They were going to D-1 schools!”

“Well…”I responded, feeling the heat crawl up my neck, “maybe they are going to jail for rape because THEY ARE RAPISTS!” I yelled those last three words at my kids and watched as some of them blinked in surprise. Apparently, the thought had never occurred to them that these athletes who were convicted of rape, were in fact rapists.

It is a strange thing about looking into the face of a 15-year-old, to really see who they are. You still see the small child that their mother sees. You see the man or woman they will be before they graduate. They are babies whose innocence you want desperately to protect. They are old enough to know better, even if no one has taught them.

I realized then that some of my kids were genuinely confused. “How can she be raped?” they asked, “She wasn’t awake to say no.” These words out of a full fledged adult would have made me furious. I did get a good few minutes in response on victim blaming and why it is so terrible. But out of the face of a kid who still has baby fat, those words just made me sick. My students are still young enough, that mostly they just spout what they have learned, and they have learned that absent a no, the yes is implied.

It is uncomfortable to think that some of the students you still call babies have the potential to be rapists. It is sickening, it is terrifying, but it is true.  It is a reality we have to face. My students have lived in a world for fifteen years where the joke “she probably wanted it” isn’t really a joke, they need to unlearn some lessons that no one will admit to teaching them.

Standing in front of my classroom and stating that a woman’s clothing choice is never permission to rape her should not be a radical act. But only a few heads nodded in agreement. Most were stunned, like this was a completely new thought. The follow up questions were terrifying in their earnestness. “Ms. Norman, you mean a woman walking down the street naked is not her inviting sex? How will I know she wants to have sex?”  A surprisingly bold voice came out of a girl in the back “You’ll know when she says, you want to have sex?!”

If you want to keep teens from being rapists, you can no longer assume that they know how. You HAVE to talk about it. There is no longer a choice. It is no longer enough to talk to our kids about the mechanics of sex, it probably never was. We have to talk about consent, what it means, and how you are sure you have it. We have to teach clearly and boldly that consent is (in the words of Dianna E. Anderson) an enthusiastic, unequivocal YES!

What came next, when the idea of a clear yes came up, is the reason I will always choose to teach freshmen. They are still young enough to want to entertain new ideas. When we reversed the conversation from, “well she didn’t say no,” to “she has to say YES!” many of them lit up. “Ms. Norman,” they said, “that does make a lot more sense.” “Ms. Norman,” they exclaimed, “that way leaves a lot less confusion.” When one of the boys asked, well what do you want me to do, get a napkin and make her sign it, about four girls from the back yelled, YEAH!

What happened in Steubenville makes me sick, but we are kidding ourselves if we think that it is not representative of what is happening in basement parties after the homecoming game all across America. Our kids want to talk about it. They need to talk about it. We need to have conversations about consent that are not centered around what should have been done, but are instead centered on what will be done in the future. Our teens can handle it, I promise they can.

A strong understanding of consent as an enthusiastic and unequivocal yes is essential to reversing the culture that our teens have grown up in. The amazing thing is the way my students responded to the conversation. Our students want a better way, it is our responsibility to show it to them, even if it is scary, especially when it might make us uncomfortable.

Our students are paying attention. They do care about what is going on in the world. They do listen and are capable of advanced thought. I am done selling out the ninth-graders that traipse through my room every day. The news will no longer invade my classroom, instead I will invite it.

I like to paint. I don’t know that I would call myself a painter in the way I would now call myself a writer, but I do enjoy it. When there is a brush in my hand my mind quiets. I like swirling the paint on the canvas and watching something take shape. I don’t think I am great at it, and I suppose taking a class or two, or even finding the time to find good tutorials on you tube is in the part of my brain I put the list for “someday.”

I think it was last summer when I painted the picture full of orange and yellow swirls. I loved it right away and let it sit on the easel in my bedroom for months as I contemplated ways to move it to the next step, until one day it was done. But what do I do with this painting, this painting that I love that swirls and curls around a left of center ball that had in some ways become representative of my dreams. I let it sit in our bedroom, on the floor or next to the easel, occasionally I would prop it back up on the easel and look at it as I went to sleep. My dreams are forming, coming together as the rest of the world swirls around, it seemed to whisper that promise to me. 

Last Monday I bought a frame for the painting. I put it in the frame, and my husband hung it in our dining room. It is beautiful and though he wasn’t a huge fan of this particular painting before, he loves it in the frame. Something about the frame makes him see the beauty of the picture.

I am learning to put my words and feelings in the proper place, find a place for them even. Not everything I paint belongs on a wall and not everything I think or feel or say belongs in a public place. As I sorted through some ongoing conflict in my life, I realized that I had automatically linked conflict with me doing something wrong. If someone was angry or mad, then it must be my fault. Sometimes, even when you prayerfully and cautiously consider a situation, someone is not going to be happy with you. Sometimes there is conflict. I had been framing the conflict in a frame of shame. I don’t have to be ashamed by this conflict if I am not ashamed of my actions, if I really think I did the best I could.

I am learning to put my thoughts on justice and the way we represent people in their proper place. This last month I learned that sometimes my rant in the car or in the back about how that speaker said these things and boy was that offensive, need to be brought to the attention of the speaker. Sometimes they just didn’t know. If I believe what I think matters, I won’t always shove it in a drawer for everyone to see. I will frame it in a professionally worded email. In the context of that email, what I said was taken seriously. Suddenly my thoughts had an impact.

Finally (insert deep breath here) I am learning where to put the stories I long so desperately to tell. I have finally started working on my book proposal, and this time I think I mean it. If I really believe they could have an impact, if I really believe they matter, if I really think they could make a difference then I need to tell them. That telling belongs in a book. So it is time for me to propose one.

This means that the writing might be a little sparse around here. Everything in the publishing industry says to build your platform, build your platform, so it is scary for me to think about posting and tweeting less in order to build the margins I need to write a book. But ultimately I know that this is what has to be done. I value y’all and your continual checking up on me through this space. I don’t want a lighter posting schedule to make you think I don’t.

Your prayers and encouragement are truly, greatly appreciated. Also, I know most of you have, but if you haven’t liking my Facebook page and following me on Twitter would help me out a whole lot.

“There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are these for so many people?” -John 6:9

But what are these for so many people?

I spend my working hours in front of 240 teenagers, in groups of 30, for 55 minutes at a time every school day. So many faces, so many papers, so many big stories in hearts still young. There are tests to prepare for and grammar to learn. There is discipline to be doled out, second and third and fourth chances to be given. Does this matter, does my presence in this place make a difference?

But, Lord, what are these moments for so many people, for so many needs?

I come home to as many in diapers as I have hands. There are kids to be changed. There are meals to be made. Dishes to wash. Babies to bathe. The toys are never completely picked up. The laundry is never done. Someone is always hungry. How could this possibly matter–the slow and exhausting work of parenthood?

But, Jesus, what is my work for so much tiny unending needing?

Read the rest here

It is always an honor to be posting with the beautiful community that is SheLoves magazine. Please poke around over there. You will be glad you did.

Today I am joining my internet friend Jenn Lebow, who has been having a rich conversation about mercy. This weeks prompt focused on why humbleness is thrown in there with justice and mercy in Micah 6:8.

There is always more than you think there is. There is always a different side. There is always an exploding knot of confused threads when only the slightest bump is showing on the front side of the tapestry.

I’ve been learning this lesson I think my whole life. I do not know as much as I think I know. I am not seeing all there is to look at. What looks like a shallow puddle is sometimes as deep as the sea.

I am glad I do not know the number of times I have written a kid off as lazy, only to discover he is hungry, she is taking care of her sick mother, he is hiding from the shame of not knowing, she is pregnant by her step father. I am sure the number would make me weep. I would rather not know.  You would think after six years I would have learned, but just last week I was reminded again. There is more to my students than what I can see.

I give second and third chances more freely now. I have decided that I would rather let a liar slide than punish a kid who was legitimately doing the best he could. I’m not sure if this is the right answer or not, it is simply the one I can live with in my classroom. It is the best I can do in this broken world.

I remember when I had all the answers. I remember when I was sure my classroom could conquer the world. Now, I often have to hold my tongue at dinner parties or fellowship events. Sometimes I have to simply walk away when the conversation moves to education. I am aware that it is my presence as a public school teacher that steers well-meaning seekers to this topic of conversation. I have discovered I cannot have pleasant dinner table conversations when you are talking about theoretical policy and I am talking about Theodore and Pam.

The more you learn about poverty and injustice, the more you learn you don’t know anything. The more faces you put to the problems of this world, the more you realize how heartbreakingly similar each case is, the better you understand how little you know, how unique each solution must be. The more you learn what you don’t know, the more you learn to listen.

When I humbled myself to hear the stories of my students, I was humbled by the stories they were willing to tell me. If you know you don’t know, what ears to listen can hear.

Walk humbly is not a command. It is a warning, a reminder. It nudges me toward the truth that this side of heaven there is so much I cannot know. It says to me, Abby, be gentle, talk less, look harder. There is so much you do not see.

There is always more than you think there is. There is always a different side. There is always an exploding knot of confused threads when only the slightest bump is showing on the front side of the tapestry.

If you want to read some other brilliant takes, here they are.

The hand that fills the crock pot….holds the power to change the world.

I distinctly remember the crock pot full of cocktail weenies that Mrs. Wyatt made. We had fellowship once a month with the long tables covered in all the church-ladies-offerings. Her olive colored crock pot was always at the end. The kids would always be reminded that there were a lot of people behind us, and four was really quite enough. I am not so sure Mrs. Wyatt thought that four was enough. She would smile at us from atop her brightly colored high heels and bring a second crock pot next month. Sometimes love looks like two more tiny hotdogs in a delicious red-orange sauce just because they make you so happy.

I know what love looks like. I know because I was raised on it. I was raised on the smell of cupcakes in the oven for some sort of celebration. My mom was frosting cupcakes for the church picnic when she went into labor with my sister. One of my first memories is blowing out the candles on my train cake for my third birthday at the church’s annual fall festival. The whole sanctuary turned fellowship hall sang Happy Birthday to me. Loves sometimes looks like frosting and chocolate cake and everyone recognizing your accomplishment (even if it is, simply that you turned three.)

My summer memories are filled with elaborately decorated sanctuaries in the theme of that year’s Vacation Bible School curriculum. Rainforests, deserts, hot air balloon adventures, all created in my childhood house of worship. One year was The Wild West and someone made enough stick horses for the kids to get to ride them from place to place. One year was Outer Space and my mom spray-painted a refrigerator box into a rocket ship that the pre-k class got to play in. Our grass was silver for quite a long time, but I can promise you, it was worth it. In fifth grade I don’t remember what the theme was, but I do know that our teacher had us wear our name tags as ankle bracelets and we didn’t have to wear shoes the entire week. In church! The schoolboy with my name carefully painted on it that I won in kindergarten for naming the VBS mascot Hal. A. Looyah (my mother may have helped with that entry), I still won’t throw it out.

As an adult sometimes I have rolled my eyes at the time and expense put into those weeks where even the snack is carefully crafted to fit the theme. I scoff a little bit at the suburban church I grew up in and think the modest church plant I have chosen for my family does a much better job of allocating resources. But then, I remember how special those VBS weeks were, how excited I was every day to get to worship in the sanctuary turned underwater wonderland, and get my blue-jello snack with the gummy fish swimming through it. I remember that I felt special. I felt  cared for. I felt, loved.

The ladies who were in charge of the cupcakes, the fellowship hours, the Vacation Bible School planning. They were the first responders in times of crisis.

When my mom had a surprising interaction with an over the counter medication, not only did a woman from the church come over immediately to take my mom to the doctor, she stayed with her when they admitted my mom to the hospital, stayed until my dad got there, and then came home and made my  family dinner for the evening. She dropped it off around five. It was delicious.

When one of my dad’s clients needed to use our house as a safe haven from the streets because something happened to her that us girls should not yet be exposed to, my mom had to make exactly one phone call to find a place for me and my sisters to spend the night so that this woman could stay at our house. I believe this mom had us bring our dolls. She threw a spur of the moment tea party.

When my mom had a series of seizures and was no longer allowed to drive, she tacked a form for the week on the bulletin board on Sunday, and a mini-van with a person we recognized driving was always there when we were done with dance class, or needed to go to piano. This went on for months. I thought it was normal.

When my dad got into his car accident, it was a woman from the church who showed up at the hospital, pushed all the money she had in her purse into my mom’s hands so that my mom wouldn’t have to go to the bank for money for food and parking. It was this same woman who made sure I had a ride home from school and a way to get to the speech tournament the next morning. It was important to me, so it was important to her.

From the same women who taught me the wordless book and ten commandments, I learned the importance of bringing a casserole to a new mom, or family in crisis. I learned how to celebrate the good in each other’s lives. I learned to say yes, even when it was inconvenient because someone else really needed me to.

Sometimes when I hear a pastor explain that we are called to be “God’s love with skin on” I   nod in agreement. I know what that looks like. I was raised on that kind of practical love. Sometimes when I sit in meetings or read books that attempt to systematize missional living and loving our neighbor. I think about the web of women that taught me how to really be there for people, and long for them to show up in the darkest corners of our neighborhoods with a delicious meal and a quick fun craft for the kids.

I heard the women at my childhood church were throwing baby showers for women at the crisis pregnancy center and I was thrilled. I know these church ladies. They threw my showers. They bring the best food AND bring the best presents. They even make sure the wrapping is beautiful. They want you to feel loved. I found out the second year they did it,  more than double the pregnant women signed up to be showered. Word of the love had gotten around.

If nothing else was taught to me all those years in that suburban church, I was certainly taught this: The hand that fills the crock pot….has the power to change the world.

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This post is linked with all kinds of posts that celebrate women today! Go see the rest at Sarah Bessey’s place. Cheers!

I ran into my friend’s house yesterday. Not like I was driving around and I saw my friend’s house and people were home so I popped in.  I took a corner too close and scraped our van all the way down the passenger side, wheel well to wheel well on the side of my friend’s house. I managed to take a piece of white trim off the side of the house too. It fell out of the crack between doors and onto my driveway when I went to get the Peanut out of the van.

To make matters worse, (because hitting your friend’s house with your car is not bad enough) when her husband came out to check on everything, because you know I HIT THEIR HOUSE, he was totally awesome and assured me that if I had to hit their house, I certainly took it at a good angle, and I proceeded to act like an idiot and tell him to “just let me know how much it was” like he was a stranger and I was used to throwing money at my problems and I hit houses all the time. Then I peeled out  of the driveway because, apparently, even though I am almost thirty, I would still rather act like an ass than cry in front of a middle school gym teacher.

I wish I could tell you that this is the first time I have run into something that does not move. I have a long and storied history of poor spacial awareness. I regularly have bruises on my legs because I cannot gauge how far away from the student desks my body is as I wander about the classroom. My dad had to pray over me repeatedly as I learned to drive. I had a lot of trouble figuring out where the gas and the break were in relationship to my foot and used to hit the wrong one. Until I had children I was responsible for schlepping into the store, I just played it safe and parked in the back away from everyone.

When I emotionally vomited about this on twitter and pleaded for someone to make me feel better, my high school friend came through. 

@accidentaldevo This won’t get the paint off of your car, but it always makes me laugh: youtube.com/watch?v=3qqE_W… #betterthannothing?

— Laura (@darthsnuggles) March 5, 2013

and I laughed. How can you not? Mostly though, it made me feel better because it reminded me that I am not alone. It reminded me that when I was getting my license and crying in the back of the band room because “I would never get my license. It was just too hard, and it made me feel so, so stupid.” I remember this girl, who was so smart no one else even bothered trying to be valedictorian in her class, I remember her saying, “Me too. Abby, I struggle with that too. And it makes me feel stupid too.” Maybe I wasn’t sure that I was not an idiot but I was sure this girl wasn’t and that “me too” left me a little less alone.

Lately, I have been confronted with all the ways I am screwing it up. But mostly, I have been confronted with all the ways I do not pour those screw ups on the altar of my God, and trust that He loves me enough to want those too. That He is big enough to redeem even my inability gauge how close I am to the things around me.

Here is a secret about me in my classroom. I get the learning disabled kids. I understand them. I know what it feels like to stare at the words in front of a page and have no idea what they are saying as everyone around you interprets them flawlessly. I know this, not because words have ever been a challenge for me, but because the exact same thing happens to me when you put a map in front of my face. I know what it feels like to have someone talk to you like you are stupid just because your brain cannot interpret certain symbols in certain ways. I know how hard your brain has to churn for a work around, and when my students find one, I am so glad. I am so proud. I celebrate with them and for them because I know what it took. I know what it means, because really, me too.

So you feel like you aren’t good enough, me too. You are unable to ever put the laundry away and wade through the pile in the laundry room and decide that your two-year-old’s socks don’t need to match anyway, me too. Twitter makes you feel like the awkward girl in the cafeteria who occasionally gets a seat at the cool table, but only if someone is absent that day, me too. You are sure that God cannot use all of you because all of you occasionally take turns too close and run into structures that never move, me too.

That last one is a lie, friend. He wants to use all of you. He wants to use all of me too.

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Want to see this occasional disaster play out in real time? Look to the right and in the sidebar, like me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter. It would make me feel better. Thanks!

A few weeks ago something terrible happened in my classroom. My student who has some physical disabilities sat in a desk that is not rock solid. When he pushed on the front of the desk to get himself upright so that he could walk to his wheel chair, the desk flipped over on top of him. In front of everyone. (If you have ever been fifteen, you know the implications of that last sentence.) Then, he had to tell me that he was physically unable to right himself. In front of everyone. I was grateful we were watching a movie and the lights were out. I could hear the embarrassment in his voice and was sure it was written, blazed across his face.

A few weeks ago something wonderful happened in my classroom. One of my other fifteen-year-old students quickly and quietly helped his classmate up, and dusted him off. “You okay, man?” With that sentence they were just two fifteen-year-old boys. Dignity restored. Then the student switched the desks so that he was sitting in the rickety and uncomfortable desk. He now checks to make sure the desks don’t accidentally get switched. It isn’t a big deal; it took me a while to notice. He just does it because he cares, because he has chosen to take responsibility for the welfare of his classmate.

February 22 D.L Mayfield wrote a column about bullying that I have been mulling over ever since. Her words have been going round and round in my mind. She ends the column by saying that is does get better, but not because of age or maturity, it gets better because of Jesus.

As these thoughts were slowly circling the interactions I have, every day with my students, they collided with this thought, retweeted from Luke Harms, but originally from Jonalyn Fincher: Parents expectations for youth group graduates: Sober Virgins #aimhigher.

I have written about it once before, about the day the Holy Spirit got a hold of me in the Jr. High cafeteria. About the day giving a kid someone to sit with at lunch gave him a reason to show up the next week. I said much of what I want to say then, but these two things collided in my brain, and there seems to be an aftermath of this explosion.

We, as a church are selling out our teenagers. In most high schools in America you will find a christian organization, in almost all churches you will find an organization for teens. Christian teenagers are everywhere. Yet, where is Jesus in the cafeteria? In the hallways when someone is getting their head bashed in? Maybe you won’t find a Christian teen doing the bashing, but you will likely see one watching silently near by.

It is okay for us, as adults to preach the wild ways of the cross, to even let some crazies (Jen Hatmaker, Shane Claiborne) encourage us in living more like Jesus, but we will not preach that message to our teens. We are afraid. We are afraid our teens will face opposition, will lose friends, will not be invited to prom. We know that the teen years can be fraught with pain, and we want to do everything we can to keep them from hurting. We are afraid that if we challenge our teens with a faith that will cost them, they will reject that faith entirely.

We are afraid of the implications of teens who have agreed to deny themselves and follow Jesus, about the mirror it may hold up to the holey gospel we have been giving and receiving, and so we preach abstinence, of many things, and define Jesus lover in “we don’t do that.” 

They are listening, our teens are listening and have learned that following Jesus is what you are doing if you are not doing certain things. If you don’t smoke, and drink, if you don’t get into the backseat of a car at night, then God is happy with you. If you are not the one slamming head into lockers, or writing insults on Facebook pages, then you are following Jesus. Bonus points for wearing a t-shirt with a Bible verse.

Our teens are better than this. They are better than this shell of a gospel and they deserve more. They deserve to be fed the whole gospel. They deserve to be challenged with the sacrifice of Christ and the wild love for people no one else likes.  If we fed our teens the whole gospel, their insatiable need for love and acceptance would be filled, even over-filled and out of that abundance they could feed their peers.

Can I tell you our teens are hungry for justice? Can I tell you freshmen are capable of having deep and heart wrenching discussions about privilege and popularity?  The teenagers we are sheltering from the gospel are bursting to talk about it. When we give them the chance to do better, so often they do.

So many of our teens are tired of an easy gospel, hungry for a more sustaining word. They long to believe that their life makes a difference, they are hungry to be a part of the “Thy Kingdom Come” everyone keeps reciting before football games.

The answer to school bullying is already in the schools, sitting in the desks with mission trip t-shirts on. The answer to childhood cruelty is unleashing the love of Jesus Christ through the bodies of the peers of the victims and bullies alike. The answer to the hate that we are trying so desperately to shield our teens from, is the promise that the sacrificial love that Jesus requires is worth it. The love of Jesus can turn the teenage popularity kingdom upside down too.

But we don’t tell them it is worth it. We don’t tell them it is worth it, because we are not sure it is.

Maybe you are headed to work like you always are, listening to your favorite radio program, maybe it is the weekend, you are headed nowhere in particular but hope to land some place special. Maybe you are driving around and around your block because the baby in the back seat refuses to sleep any other way.

It doesn’t really matter where you are driving, what you are doing.

You hear the siren somewhere in the distance–and you wonder if it is coming for you.

There are days when I am on my way to work, and the siren of anxiety can be heard in the distance.
It sounds like a faint police car wail that I am pretty sure I can ignore. Weee-oooo-no-good-you-are-fail-ing. On the good days it remains in the back of my head. A faint sound that can be drowned out by the daily activity that is my life.

Other days are not so good.

The anxiety siren comes closer.

I am grateful to have the opportunity to post at Renee Fisher’s place today. Would you join me there?