This is my third and final post for The Feminisms Fest. This is the most brilliant conversation I have ever been a part of and will be reading every single post here, here, and here. This week I also talked about my journey to feminism and how it isn’t just for girls.

It took me four years to find a doctor who could tell me what was wrong. From 13 to 17 my mom drove me to doctors offices where they poked, prodded, drew blood, ran tests, and eventually shrugged their shoulders. When enough people tell you they don’t know what is causing it, even you start to question whether or not your pain is real.

The day the doctor named what I had, was one of the most important days of my life. I cannot understate the importance of someone telling you that what you are feeling is real, that you are not the only one in the world who is experiencing this type of pain. By naming the pain that I was in, the doctor was also able to tell me for the very first time in his thick and beautiful Indian accent, “My dear, you are going to get much better.”

This same validation I found in feminism. People think the hurting came after the label. That somehow calling myself a feminist created the injustice in the world, created the injustice in the ways of the church and the pain I feel when I am hurt by it. I was in pain before anyone told me the name of my muscle disorder. I was hurting because something was wrong.

These posts, this conversation has reminded me, I am not alone. I am not the only one who feels like the way I feel. I am not the only one hurting. I am, in fact, not crazy. We still need feminism, it still matters. It matters because something is wrong.  By naming that pain: patriarchy, misogyny, sexism, inequality, injustice, we are able to begin to try to heal.

The healing has already begun. The thing that has surprised me the most about the Feminisms Fest is the hope that is now spilling over in my heart.  I hear the Holy Spirit calling gently to me.

My dear, things are going to get much better.

I can smell it on the wind, the change is coming, the chains are breaking, one heart at a time. Last night a woman who once told me she would never want a marriage like mine because it was too equal and she wanted a clear leader, and wanted to clearly follow, wore the word feminist. She has been trying it on in the closet of her mind, but last night she decided it fit, looked good even, and wore the label feminist beside me in my kitchen.

And let me not forget that the person hosting this third day of the feminism fest, I started reading his work before he was one. He is embarrassed by the opinions his archives hold, but I seem them as a testament to the power of the Holy Spirit. When God calls me to shout I will shout, when He calls me to whisper, I will whisper, whether He calls me to stay or leave, I will go where I am called. But it is the job of the Holy Spirit to change hearts, and can I tell you? The Holy Spirit does. The Holy Spirit does change hearts and reverse opinions. I have seen it on the internet, I have seen it in my kitchen.

Come close, I want to say this next part to you, look into your eyes, put my hands on your shoulders and shake you a little with the importance of it.

Feminism does not give you permission to be who you are. With or without feminism, you are enough. The gifts that the Lord has given to you, in the body that God has chosen for you are not an accident. You are beautifully and wonderfully made.  That is what God says; that is the truth. Feminism affirms that truth, encourages that truth, and (when necessary) angrily shouts that truth. But it is not the truth of feminism that makes you enough; it is the truth of God.

This post is my contribution to the second day of the Feminism Fest, a conversation on feminism, specifically Christian Feminism and what in the world that means. At the bottom of this post are the links and prompts to read more about this, or maybe even enter into the conversation yourself.

It was my husband who pointed out how messed up my thinking was. He does that often, questions my thoughts, asks me to clarify, wants me to explain how and what I think. He is in PhD school, sitting in a room discussing rhetorical frameworks and theories as I turn off Ponies and tuck our daughters into bed. They say that iron sharpens iron, as his ideas sharpen, I too am challenged to refine mine.

I was talking about our church. How much I love it, how it feels like family, and how hard it is for me that currently they do not consider women as candidates to be elders. I was talking about raising our daughter in a space where they are told they are unfit to serve in certain capacities just because they are girls. I was wondering if there would ever come a day when we would leave in search of a place that could affirm all the gifts my girls might have.

Perhaps it is me projecting. My girls are, after all, only one and two. But they are loud like their mama and unafraid to tell people what they think. They are bold and strong and (as my friend likes to remind me when I am about to lose it) strong self advocates. Already all of this at one and two. I worry that, like me, they will have a strong mother who tells them they can do anything, but internalize the subtle teachings of a culture that tells them they are not gentle or quiet enough.

I was lamenting all of these things and more at my dining room table, when my husband reminded me that he needs feminism too. That feminism doesn’t just benefit his wife and his daughters, but ensures everyone the space to be who God has designed them to be, how God has designed them to be. While women are explicitly kept from their calling and this hurts them deeply, men are also implicitly denied their complete image in God.

It is easy for me to think of feminism in the context of what it does for women. I am the youngest of three sisters, the mother of two daughters, the aunt of four nieces. No boys to speak of in two generations. Not just yet anyway. But I hadn’t yet considered the implications of feminism on the boys I believe are coming, or on the husband I already have.

Men and boys need feminism too. In a world where the woman is always following, the man has to lead, even when he doesn’t know where he is going. In a world where the woman waits for the man to speak, the man is expected to always hear from God. If he is always to protect, who does he lean on when he is scared?

As patriarchy draws boxes around the places girls can go, it discourages boys from space God intended for them too.

It is easy to assume that no one wants you to help in the nursery if you are never asked because you are a man. If you have never seen someone of your gender rocking a baby, it is easy to think you aren’t supposed to want to, even if your arms ache for the holding. It is hard to discover your God-given-gifts in the kitchen if you are shooed away in the name of ‘women’s work.’ If you desire things that are presented as lesser (though often with the words separate or different) it is not very many steps from wondering if you are less of a man.

I have some loud and opinionated girls, like their mother. What if I end up with some thoughtful boys, like their dad? Will they be told they are not enough if they play with dolls, or read books quietly? Much like I got the impression that I was not what God wanted because I did not fit a tight explanation of femininity, my husband was left to question if he could really call himself a man of God. Was I gentle and quiet enough, was he mighty enough? Were any of us enough for God? 

And that is why it matters. It is why we still desperately need feminism. Feminism says that you are enough, exactly how you are, regardless of who says what about the way you are supposed to be.

I think that is what God says too. He says we are enough the way that He made us, even when He made us to not fit into the boxes.

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Prompts and links:

• {Day 1} Feminism and Me: On Tuesday, February 26, link up at J.R. Goudeau’s blog, loveiswhatyoudo.com, and write about these questions: What is your experience with feminism? What’s a story or a memory or a person that you associate with that word? Why does it have negative or positive connotations for you? How do you define the term, either academically or personally? What writers have you read whose definitions you want to bring out? Or, if you don’t have a definition, what are some big questions you have?
• {Day 2} Why It Matters: On Wednesday, February 27, link up at Danielle Vermeer’s blog, fromtwotoone.com, and write about these questions: What is at stake in this discussion? Why is feminism important to you? Are you thinking about your children or your sisters or the people that have come before you? Or, why do you not like the term? What are you concerned we’re not focusing on or we’re losing sight of when we talk about feminism? Why do you feel passionately about this topic?
• {Day 3} What You Learned: On Thursday, February 28, link up at Preston Yancey’s blog, seeprestonblog.om, and write about these questions: What surprised you this week? What did you take away from the discussion? What blog posts did you find particularly helpful? What questions do you still have?

This post is my contribution to the first day of the Feminism Fest, a conversation on feminism, specifically Christian Feminism and what in the world that means. At the bottom of this post are the links and prompts to read more about this, or maybe even enter into the conversation yourself.

I call myself an accidental Baptist, I suppose you could call me an accidental feminist too.

I was raised in a home where abortion was occasionally a part of the dinner conversation. This was not because my parents were crazy and trying to scare me and my two sisters into abstinence, actually my parents were (and are) pretty awesome, and I was raised in one of the most sex positive christian homes you could find. My dad was a defense attorney and one of his client groups was the right-to-lifers. My dad defended the people who picketed abortion clinics. His work came up at dinner. I was very proud of him for this. I still am.

With three daughters and no sons, my house started yelling GIRL POWER long before Ginger Spice front-lined a group that included David Beckham’s future wife. You see, my mom made sure we were all in Girl Scouts. Maybe that stuff you have heard about GS USA having a feminist agenda isn’t totally false, if I trace my feminism to it’s girlhood roots, Girl Scouts is where those roots are planted. (Hopefully, this make you buy more cookies, not less.) My mom thought scouting was important because she wanted to make sure we all had leadership opportunities and saw those opportunities as more accessible if boys weren’t there. She wanted us to find our own voices, explore what we were good at, not be told no. Juliet Low is, to this day, my favorite feminist icon.

When my third grade teacher had “concerns” that I was “very outspoken,” my mom told me it was a good thing. When I got in trouble at school for demanding a chance to play with the football like the boys, I didn’t get in trouble at home. When I inserted myself in conversations to tell people girls could do anything boys could do, I was not chastised. My mom sang the praises of title nine. Yet, the word feminist was never used. For my family that word meant accepting of abortions, or as I learned it: being baby-killers.

I went to college not because I was passionate about wanting to teach English at the high school level, but because I wanted to continue competing on a speech team. (Yes, competitive speech is a real thing. Yes, I got my varsity letter and minimal college scholarship money in it. No, I am not making this up. Yes, I am a giant nerd. Still.) There I found people who were exploring huge ideas, talking about theoretical frameworks, trying to tell a better story, craft a better argument. These were the smartest people I had ever met, and the majority of them were women.

Imagine my shock when I learned that most of the women I looked up to bore the label “feminist.” I was even more shocked to find out, that while vehemently pro-choice, they were also seeking to lower the abortion rate. I wanted fewer abortions too. Could there be middle ground with baby-killers?

Abortion wasn’t the only thing these women cared about. They were concerned about the way women were represented in the media as well as how the women on the team were representing themselves. They wanted to discuss the disparity of women in underdeveloped countries. They cared about the rape statistics on campus and the statistics on single mothers living below the poverty line. These women encouraged me to speak boldly and clearly. They taught me to research a topic and ask better questions. They literally coached me in finding my own voice.

Meanwhile, I was attending the largest christian organization on campus. They gave me a faith community and taught me how to study the Bible. They prayed for me and my new friends on the speech team. They loved me the best way they knew how. But at the same time these feminists I had met were teaching me to speak up, the Christian organization was telling me to pipe down. Let the men take their natural place as leaders. Wait until the boy asks to “define the relationship.” Don’t speak up too loud or too often. It wasn’t my place.

When I expressed my concern that lust was consistently represented as a man’s sin and I knew for a fact I wasn’t the only woman struggling with it and this representation was causing undue shame, the leadership laughed and asked me, “What do you want us to do, have a woman stand up and announce that she struggles with lust too?” My very serious yes was met with a few long blinks. Apparently, female lust was not something that was discussed.

Is it any surprise, at the end of my freshman year when I went on a summer mission trip with this group, that I ended up sobbing on the front porch, sure that I was not cut out to be a woman of God? I was met in that moment and given the stories of Deborah, and Sarah and told that God created me beautifully and wonderfully. This left me comforted, but also confused. I was never quite sure when it was safe to speak up.

It was always safe to say what I was thinking with my speech team. And many of the things I had heard about feminists proved false. When I got engaged at twenty and married at twenty-one my coach was supportive, even offered to host a shower for me. She knew it was what I wanted. She supported me making my own decisions for myself. These ladies didn’t hate men, they hated misogyny. And it turned out, so did I. Reading the Bible in the way the Christian group taught me revealed that God hated misogyny too.

In its simplest form I have heard feminism described as the crazy idea that women are people too. Every single time Jesus meets a woman in the story in the Bible, he affirms her personhood, despite the fact that her culture describes her as property. Jesus was a feminist too.

I didn’t come to feminism in any purposeful way. I didn’t wake up one morning and decide I was a feminist. When I looked at my God, my Bible, myself, I realized I already was.

Prompts and links:

• {Day 1} Feminism and Me: On Tuesday, February 26, link up at J.R. Goudeau’s blog, loveiswhatyoudo.com, and write about these questions: What is your experience with feminism? What’s a story or a memory or a person that you associate with that word? Why does it have negative or positive connotations for you? How do you define the term, either academically or personally? What writers have you read whose definitions you want to bring out? Or, if you don’t have a definition, what are some big questions you have?
• {Day 2} Why It Matters: On Wednesday, February 27, link up at Danielle Vermeer’s blog, fromtwotoone.com, and write about these questions: What is at stake in this discussion? Why is feminism important to you? Are you thinking about your children or your sisters or the people that have come before you? Or, why do you not like the term? What are you concerned we’re not focusing on or we’re losing sight of when we talk about feminism? Why do you feel passionately about this topic?
• {Day 3} What You Learned: On Thursday, February 28, link up at Preston Yancey’s blog, seeprestonblog.om, and write about these questions: What surprised you this week? What did you take away from the discussion? What blog posts did you find particularly helpful? What questions do you still have?

Think of someone who is far from God. Pray for them. Believe that they could know Him. You will know that it is a miracle, if you pick someone who is far from God and they still manage to find Him. At least that is what they told me at the conferences of my youth, when I wrote the names on a piece of construction paper and wore a wooden cross on a leather cord around my neck.

I have a friend who qualifies as far from God. She uses all the words the church is afraid of to identify herself. And sometimes, the things she says about faith and freedom, about the state of our souls, it takes my breath away.

When we speak of spirituality (and she is more interested in it then most of my Christian friends) I don’t ever think of her as far from God. Sometimes I am sure He is speaking through her. The truth that she has spoken, about my self, about my dreams, it doesn’t feel like something from someone far from my God. It feels like something straight from His mouth.

Does that happen? Is that possible? Isn’t there a verse in that book of ours “With God all things are possible?” Does He speak in the tongues of atheists too? He does sometimes in my car, through my friend who is far from God, He speaks directly to my soul.

Last semester I ran out of gas three times in the span of two months. Every time with my friend in the car. The friend who is far from God. I suppose she could have told me the truth of the depths of my disorganization. She could have chided me for not doing better. It just isn’t that hard to make the choice to fill my car up with gas and not leave her stranded on the side of the road. She could have told me the truth about myself, about my faults, all the reasons it was hard to be my friend.

Instead she told me the truth in love. The first time it happened on the way home and she told me she didn’t have anywhere to go anyway. This really was only a very mild inconvenience. The second time she told me (as she walked with me to the gas station) that the day was beautiful, that she needed the walk, that we would make it to school in time. She gently reminded me  not to overfill the gas can. I said of course and promptly spilled gas on my shoes. The third time she told me she was secretly glad to miss the meeting we were now missing, and then went inside and bought my coffee when we finally made it to the gas station to fill up.  A week later she told me of the system her wife devised to ensure I didn’t run out of gas again.

I keep hearing about people who are far from God, and I suppose I know some of those people. But they don’t feel far from God. God is certainly not far from them.

The best, and strangest piece of professional advice I have ever received was this: Stand in front of the mirror and cuss yourself out. Every adjective that goes with the word bitch, fat, skinny, f-ing, stupid, loud, whatever race you may be, go ahead and put them in front of that nasty word that people call women and wield them at yourself.

 Since most of you have never done this, let me explain to you what happens. It feels strange at first, but then you get into a groove. Your face turns red, your heart beats fast, it stings. You stutter; your palms sweat. But then, and this is the point of the exercise, repeated enough the insults becomes ridiculous and they don’t matter to you anymore. You have been called that nasty word enough times, by yourself, that you are able to shrug it off.  Congratulations, you are now sure this is not true.

 What the college professor who assigned that exercise knew, that I did not, was that if I taught high school for any length of time, one of the kids would call me a nasty name… to my face… in front of the rest of the class. He wanted me to be prepared for that moment so that I would not give the name-caller any power in my reaction. He wanted me to be able to ignore it, and I am grateful to him.

 I have taught High school now for 6 years, and been called that to my face at least 12 times. I am sure, behind my back, the tally is much, much higher. I say to my students, and truly believe, that if I please all of my students all of the time I am not doing my job. I am likely hurting my students by not holding them to a higher standard, I am selling them short. So, when someone calls me that nasty name, I assess if I have been fair to that student, if I have been kind, if I have spoken truth in grace, and if I have, I shrug it off and go about my day.

 There was a freedom that came the day that I faced myself in a mirror and used those names against myself. I was free from them, because when I heard them out loud they wrung of lies. I knew they were not true.

 On Tuesday, I had a guest post that got a lot of attention (at least in comparison to what I usually write.) It is so easy for me to clutch the stats like an Oscar and exclaim through joyous tears, “You like me! You really like me!” But, this is not always going to be the case.

 People aren’t always going to like what I do or say. It is only a matter of time before someone says something nasty about me, about what I do and who I am in Christ. In a world with Facebook and Twitter and me with a personal blog that I am hoping grows, it is only a matter of time before someone says it publicly. I have spent far too long not saying what God has given me to say, not doing what He is asking me to do, because I know that someone will have something negative to say about it.

The truth is, they will. Someone will have something negative, even nasty to say about the dreams the Lord has given me. They may even drop their jaw and assert me unprepared, unqualified, maybe even that I am an hypocritical bitch just pretending to love the Lord.

 This year, with the word unashamed governing these 365 days, I said them to myself. Your writing does not matter, there is someone more qualified, that is ridiculous Abby, you did NOT hear God speak those words to you. The first time around they stung a little, but the second time around they revealed themselves as lies. And now they are lies I am free from. I am free to ignore them, shrug them off and go on about the work the Lord has given to me.

So let me pass on the best piece of professional advice that anyone has ever given me. Stand in front of a mirror and tell yourself everything you are afraid people are going to say about you. Do it today. Do it out loud. I promise those words will sound far smaller when they are out of your head. They will reveal themselves as lies. Then turn from your mirror and go about your life, free to do what the Lord has for you.

This post was originally published as part of the series Questions of Travel hosted at J.R. Goudeau’s blog Love is What You Do. There are some brilliant things being said, some great questions being asked. I would encourage you to check it out.

Why I Stopped Telling

I spent the first three years of my teaching career working at a school that is politely categorized as “high-needs.” What that really means is that 99% of the student population is minority, 99% of the population receives free lunch, and the vast majority of the students were unable to do the things the government says they have to do by the time they get to a certain grade. It means that there is never enough. Not enough desks, or books, or teachers, or pencils, or even toilet paper. It means there is not enough of anything you assume you will find in a school if you were educated in a middle- to upper-class public school in America.

Somewhere along the way I stopped telling those stories, the ones with the perfect punch line, the ones that made everyone gasp, the ones that people responded to by telling me how good I was. Somewhere along the way it occurred to me that those stories weren’t just entertaining, they were damaging. The way I spun those too true tales was disadvantaging my already disadvantaged students. The ones I was working so hard for. So I stopped telling them, even if they were true.

I stopped telling the stories of my most resilient kids, because I realized that people were getting the impression that because some of the kids were rising above their circumstances, it was okay to blame the rest for not being able to do the same.

I stopped telling the stories of my church donating cases of paper to my school, because I don’t want anyone to get the impression that it is ever okay for a school in America to run out of paper in October. The church should absolutely meet the needs of the poor, but the church shouldn’t have to supply copy paper for an entire school because the system is broken.

I stopped telling the stories of my most brilliant teaching, my most inspired ideas, because I did not want someone to get the impression that if I was just brilliant and inspired all of the time, I could save my kids. I only had them for 55 minutes a day, 5 days a week. Building the perfect teacher is like building the perfect Band-Aid. It needs to be a unique fit for each environment, and while Band-Aids do a lot of good, there are far too many wounds that need much more than a Band-Aid. Too many of my kids had too many problems that were too far beyond my ability to help.

I stopped telling about the time my friend’s car got stolen and she came back the next day, or the time someone was threatened, nothing was done, and she came back to teach the next week because when I told those stories I was giving the impression that the solution to the education problem is teachers who were willing to sacrifice everything. There is a reason that Michelle Pfeiffer’s character in Dangerous Minds and Hillary Swank’s inFreedom Writers both got a divorce and lasted a very short time in the classroom. We can’t continue asking our teachers to sacrifice everything, because too many of them already have.

I stopped telling all of these stories because the students that I loved have seen Freedom Writers and Dangerous Minds too. They too had been told that I could save them; they had been told they could not save themselves and they believed it.

People don’t want to hear about the system and how it is desperately broken. People don’t want to know that the same public school system that is benefitting them and their children, that is increasing their property value, is the same system that is failing a generation on the other side of town. They don’t want to know that the positive school experience that they remember may have come at the expense of shifting districts lines to keep out those with less.

People don’t want to know that as they fight for a spot to volunteer in their child’s kindergarten class, the school down the road desperately needs volunteers of all kinds. In a school full of the children of the working poor, no one has time to be the room mom the teacher so desperately needs.

No, no one wants to hear about the system and how they can and should right the disparities that are raging in their city. They want to hear about me and my colleagues, the outrageous and crazy situations I have been put in and how I handle it. They want to hear about the kids who are resilient enough to fight back. They want to hear these stories, of the bigger than life savior, of the brave and worthy victim who rises above.

I stopped telling the stories I used to tell, because when I started telling the stories in a way where people were not merely entertained, but were challenged to take responsibility, they didn’t want to hear them anymore.

It was a few weeks back. I was loading the kids into the car with the hopes that enough trips around the block would put them to sleep. Christian had been reading all day and I was about to hit the moment where my whining far exceeded my children. Luckily we had somewhere to go.

Earlier that day I had agreed to meet my friend on her run so she didn’t have to carry  her Gatorade. Brooke is training for a marathon, something she has loudly and boldly spent the last three years proclaiming she would not do. Brooke has been a runner for as long as I have known her, but she has always categorized herself as, not crazy nor dumb enough to run a marathon. But, Erin-Leigh managed to bully her into it. Erin-Leigh who was in no way classified as a runner, decided she would run a marathon for the education of girls in developing nations and roped Brooke into it.

I think the breaking point may have come a few moments before small group. They were talking just before Brooke was to arrive and she walked into my house and said “Erin-Leigh just said to me, she said, How bout this. You run the half marathon and I will run the full marathon and just imagine how you will feel when we meet at the finish line. Jerk. Now I think I have to do it.” There may have been a little pouting involved that evening.

Isn’t it always our closest friends who know just what to say to get under our skin, to prod us to bigger things?

And this left me loading my children into the van to meet Brooke in a random parking lot and hydrate her. I had gotten the Rooster in, despite her arching back and yells of protest, and was rounding the back of the golden tail gate when I heard the Peanut ask me. “Where we going.” “We’re going to meet Miss Brooke.” (I am raising my kids in the south, this is how we refer to adults.) “Why-y-y?” came the whiny question from the two-year-old who doesn’t nap, but still needs one. “Well, when people do things that are Brave and Strong we help them.”

Sometimes truth comes out of my mouth, and I don’t know how true it is until my ears have heard it. When people do things that are Brave and Strong, we help them. It has become the best rule I have ever invented; (no wrestling in the bathtub is a close second) it has become a new way to structure our lives. If our friends are doing something brave and strong, we make it a priority to help them.

It is brave and strong to decide to run a marathon. It is brave and strong to pair the training effort with a fundraising effort you have no way of completing on your own terms. It is brave and strong to let the state of 26 girls halfway around the world creep its way into your heart as you dare to not just run for these girls, but love them.

Can I tell you that this is what has happened? That it started as a thing that these two ladies were doing something to check off their bucket list but it quickly became so much more than that. Erin-Leigh and Brooke became invested in the idea that educating girls can in fact change a community, and a nation. They began seeing these 26 girls that they are trying to get sponsored as sisters in this world. The future of these 26 unnamed girls who will benefit from an education they otherwise would not have become very, very important to these marathon runners. More important than the number of miles in a marathon, the number of steps they have taken in their training, the number of dollars they still need to raise, these girls have become more important than all of that.

Somewhere along those training runs these girls became dear to Brook and Erin-Leigh. I watched as Brooke explained what she was doing to our monthly women’s Bible study. I watched as she choked up attempting to explain how her heart had gotten all tangled up in the hearts of these girls. “I know it sounds like they need me, but really we aren’t all that different. They are just like me. I need them too.”

It is brave and strong to live your life in a way that entangles your heart with the hearts of others.

Dreaming of going to school when no girl in your family has ever gone is brave and strong. Getting an education is scary when none of your friends are doing it, doing it anyway is brave and strong. Learning a way that is different from what your mom and grandmother and aunts have done, one that will increase the chances of your entire community, is brave and strong.

It seems as though Brooke and Erin-Leigh had already discovered my new rule. When people do things that are brave and strong, we help them

Would you take a minute to pray for Brooke and Erin-Leigh, for the rest of their training and the marathon on March 17th, for the remainder of their fundraising efforts. If you would like to help them do this brave and strong thing you can donate here.

It is Valentine’s Day and love is in the air. I work with 15 year olds, you could cut the hormones with a knife. Flowers, balloons, candy, teddy bears holding hearts that say kiss me, Cupid has barfed all over the hallways and it is seeping into my classroom. It isn’t all bad. I had about 15 pieces of candy and a brownie before 10 am. I remember 15, the rush that the students are after. I remember when extravagant love looked like a 7 foot teddy bear with my name on it, roses that I could carry around and everyone would know I was special to someone.

It is Valentine’s Day, but also it is Thursday. For the Norman house Thursday looks like the kids at the sitter until I go and get them, and a hungry and brain dead dad coming through the door right as the kids are being tucked snuggly into bed. I had bought fancy groceries and was planning on putting the kids to bed early so that when Christian got home they would be asleep and we could eat a nice dinner and sit down together to a TV that is showing something besides My Little Ponies.

The Rooster started puking yesterday. She was up all night, feverish with her little hands held out, “hold you, hold you.” Neither Christian nor I got much sleep last night, her little body resting between us. Yesterday, Christian took one for the team and called in a favor so that his classes would be covered and he could stay home. Teddy bears and floral arrangements I suppose have their place, but right now in our lives, this love is extravagant. I will stay home, I will get puked on and carry around a baby for two days straight because I believe what you are doing is important. I value your job too.

My female students, with their candy in hand, have been asking me what I got for Valentine’s Day. I point at my nose, to the tiny turquoise stud that marks the point in my life that I claimed “unashamed.” It is even more special to me because Christian isn’t a huge fan. He didn’t completely hate the idea, but he didn’t love it either. But he loves me, and when something is important to me, it is important to him too. So, it was his gift. True love sits in the mini-van with your daughters while you do something you’ve wanted to do for a long time.

It is Valentine’s Day, and I am not sure if the baby will let us put her down for the amount of time it would take to cook and eat a nice dinner together. There is a distinct possibility that when I get home Christian will need to leave for two hours to recover what sanity he has left. But today, I know that I am loved well, and for that I am very grateful.

Defending your faith is the second most popular topic for conferences for good christian teens  (the first being keeping your pants on, of course). I can’t count the number of times someone has raised their Bible over their head and declared that THIS IS THE ONLY WEAPON WE NEED. How many times has it been noted to me that there is only one weapon in the armor of God, that there is nothing to protect our backs because we are not expected to run?

In Sunday School they called them sword drills. We used to hold the Bibles over our head and wait for the verse to be called out. We would rush to see who could flip open to the correct book, chapter, and verse first. Table of contents, pshh that was for beginners, we memorized the order of the books of the bible when we memorized our address and telephone numbers. I learned my weapon well.

Somewhere along the way we lost the line that the sword was only meant to be wielded against the devil and the lies that he tells us. Like giddy 8-year-olds with new plastic swords, we got excited to test out our new toys. We  ignored the warnings of unity, gentleness, grace.

I have heard it said with a hammer in your hand, everything looks like a nail. I think of my teenage self, ready to do battle for God. I had in my hand a sword, and thus I could find my enemy everywhere. In my health teacher, my science book, my friends who believed but not the exact same way I did, on the secular radio stations. With a sword in my hand, what else would I see?

I have grown weary of the fencing Christians do with each other; borne witness to the blood spilled by these sessions. I have a few holy scars myself. When people are handed swords, they do battle. I long for a better way.

I have read in Isaiah, in Micah, in Joel, in the books of the prophets I learned the names and orders of so long ago, that God promised Israel he would turn their swords into ploughshares. I wonder if that promise could still be good today.

My heart is yearning for a time when we look at the tool in our hand and see it not as a weapon to wield at each other as we stand face to face, clash into each other. I long for the day when we see a tool; something we use as we walk beside each other, working the fertile ground at our feet into something productive and nourishing.

If we have ploughshares in our hands, could we help seeing promise in the land all around us? Would see each other as workers with the same goal, as partners in this world?

I long for the ancient promise to be true.

Lord, could you turn our swords into ploughshares?