I had the Rooster and the Peanut in the bath about a week and a half ago. I don’t quite remember why. Perhaps dinner was particularly messy (it is more often that not) or maybe it was just witching hour, dinner had already been eaten and I needed to burn an hour on a day when my husband had class. The bath is sometimes a nothing left kind of place at my house. 

The Peanut likes to have the water running, to get the tub nice and full and occasionally stick her tongue into the stream. It makes me giggle too, and I try to say yes when there is no good reason for a no. I don’t remember now who did it, which girls pudgy hand reached out and pulled the lever so that the water no longer came out of the tub faucet, but instead came rushing out of the shower head, but out it poured.

Both girls were surprised by the water now raining on their heads. The Peanut, in normal Peanut fashion, was utterly delighted, the water on her head! The Rooster, not so much. She looked shocked until after I managed to get it turned off, and then burst into tears and begged for a towel. 

The Rooster hasn’t been the same about the bath since. She is tentative when we get near the bathtub and when her sister throws her clothes off and jumps in, she stands at the side of the tub shaking her toddler noggin. “No, no, no bath. No bath-tub.”

Friday I was home sick from school, the stomach bug the girls had acquired had finally caught up with me. Christian had somewhere to go so it was just me and the girls and I had still not showered. I left all the doors to the upstairs and the bathroom open, Ponies on the TV and told the girls where I would be and that I would be right back. 

It didn’t take long for the tiny pat-pat-pat of feet to enter my bathroom. “Mommy. can I come in?” I stripped down the Peanut and she started splashing around in the puddles pooling on the tile floor. The Rooster peered in from the door, but would not come in. I was almost done when she finally entered in, fully clothed. It took me another few minutes to coax her shirt off.

Eventually I got out, but the Rooster had only barely gotten wet. So I let the water run while I got dressed and dried my hair. Finally, she ventured in again. Finally she was ready to splash around, finally she was ready, but I had to let the water run. I had to leave the shower on to show her it was safe, to get her used to the idea.

I too have been caught in the shower of God’s mercy when I was not ready for it. I have been shocked when someone switched the flip on me and suddenly, mercy is raining on my head.

I wish I could tell you I am always the Peanut, I am always delighted by the mercies of the Lord. But sometimes, I am the Rooster. I am shocked, I am caught off guard, I am not ready and I am not sure I like it. At the least I need some time to get used to the idea. 

But isn’t there that line of that hymn that I love “streams of mercy never-ceasing?” When I am surprised by mercy, when it leaves me sputtering, my God, He leaves the shower on. When it is scary and intimidating he leaves the mercies on and waits for me to dip my toe in, splash around in, decided it is safe.

Our God is merciful. He knows that it is scary sometimes, to be surprised by mercy. Streams of mercy never ceasing, He leaves the water on.

This post is linking up with Mercy Mondays with Jenn Lebow. Mercy is one of those words that we spout often and rarely take the time to understand what it means. So one Monday a month we try. Join us?

“I hungry,” she says, “I hungry.”
The Peanut repeats it at least four times a day. She climbs into her seat and has strong opinions about food. (Apparently, strong opinions are genetic.) Sometimes it takes some coaxing for her to go from “I don’t like that” to “Mmmm, delicious!” Not offering any other choices has worked so far so good. Also, adding a little cheese on top makes anything edible.
“Eat, eat, eat” the Rooster chants, patting her baby belly in anticipation. Lately, when you open the refrigerator the Rooster runs around the door to peer in, maybe take out a condiment or two. When she is tired she will even coax you into opening that magic cold box and pull out the milk all by herself. “Bah-ll, bah-ll, yeah, yeah.”
My kids love food. It is a running gag in our circle of friends. “That’s a Norman baby, if she’s crying, feed her.” There is no problem that can’t be soothed by a sandwich. No boo-boo a bowl of ice cream can’t fix.

I’ve been hungry for something lately, a hunger a sandwich can’t soothe. The groan is in my belly and I can feel it growing.

I heard an advertisement on the way to school, for a local news program set to run at 5 that very evening. Jovita Moore, live on my television, discussing the recent run on bullet proof backpacks.
Bullet. Proof. Back. Packs.
Apparently I live in a world where there is a market for such things, where seven-year-old’s bring their own shields to school and practice hiding from the bad guys between art class and story time. I sat in my car weeping, broken for a broken world.
I cried, also, for my own brokenness, for the reality of my own heart. It took American kids, an American tragedy, a run on bullet proof back packs by and for Americans for me to weep for this world. I wonder if these school-kid-sized horrors haven’t been hocked in Israel and Palestine for years. I wonder what an Afghan mother would do to get her hands on one of these atrocities.
I wonder if this world is indeed redeemable, and why God trusted it to us in the first place?

This hunger in my belly, I think I am groaning for hope, for redemption. Thy kingdom come, they will be done, the longing in those words spoken in unison is finally wrapping itself around my heart. I want to feel the hope, to breathe the redemption, to participate in the kingdom coming.
SheLoves magazine is giving me that chance, us that chance. They are building a well for Valentine’s day, a SheLoves Well. You can read the entire article here, and I would encourage you to do so, but this is the part , when Kelley Nikondeha writes of the people she is working with, that spoke to me deeply.
“The Batwa people are the third and most invisible tribe in Burundi. They live on less than 35c a day. They tend to eat once every three days—a small meal of cassava, maybe some potatoes or beans. The only water they have access to, is dirty and takes a three-hour walk (to and then back) to get. You can imagine how hungry the kids get by that third day … Sometimes parents don’t eat, so there is more for their kids. But it never feels like enough. We are working to help change the story.

They are changing the story by building a well, clean water that is readily available. (Pause and understand that “readily available” is a well in the village and not a tap in the kitchen.) This means more time for food, for play, for life. They have asked 100 of their readers to form a “circle of grace.” And I volunteered. A circle of grace is 10 people who give 10 dollars right here. You can change someone’s life for the cost of a heart-shaped pizza.

I know that I have readers who don’t have 10 dollars, but you do have Facebook accounts, email addresses, relationships with people who have 10 dollars to give.

In the past I have been ashamed of sharing the good that other people are doing. I don’t want to be the girl who is always asking for money. But maybe, maybe I don’t care anymore. Maybe it is worth it if it means a SheLoves Well, a village with clean water, a mother who has an answer for a baby crying “I hungry.” 10 dollars. Right here. You have it, they need it.
Momma, I hungry. I know that cry. I hear it multiple times a day and sigh at the tedium of fetching a snack that would not be thrown to the dog. I am embarrassed by my privilege, sick over the injustice of cupboards full and mouths that sigh “there is nothing to eat” in the face of plenty.

I cannot imagine a reality where “I hungry momma” could only be answered with “I know, baby, I know.” I cannot fathom the heart break every time those words are uttered.

But I can imagine the hope of God’s people standing side by side, I can imagine the water springing forth from the ground, I can imagine redemption of a selfish heart, of my selfish heart and a hunger filled by the way God multiplies 10 dollars worth of obedience.

Won’t you join my circle of grace? Come dance with us on holy ground. Let’s join hands and hearts and prayers and dollars and influence. Let’s choose to do something good in the face of the terrible. Let’s choose hope. Let’s Love Well.

When you donate let me know, here, or through email, or on Facebook, or twitter. I want to know who I am dancing with and when I get 9 other dancers. 

Sometimes, you find a community that is doing a thing, and it works out so well, the year you choose grace as your word, so poignant, so perfect that you try it again for 2013.

Sometimes, your heart asks your God if you can have the word free and your God answers back, “I have something more specific than that.” And sometimes He gives you your word and it fits so perfectly it feels like a flesh-colored body suit, like wearing it makes you practically naked. You hang on to it in your heart, you don’t even tell your husband (even though he has seen you actually naked, even nine months pregnant and has always had nothing but nice things to say).

Sometimes, you take a deep breath and publish unashamed your word and your prayer. You speak a little bolder than you usually do and it feels good, if not a little breezy. You feel like 2013 is going to be a big year.

Sometimes, your very favorite christian-lady-speaker comes to a church near you and you really want to go. You would before shrug it off and figure no one else would want to come and remind yourself that your husband has PhD reading to do so he couldn’t watch your girls. But then you claim your word. So you tell him you want to go and discover they have free childcare. You post it on your church’s women’s group Facebook page and you end up spending some very treasured hours in a car with a neighbor and friend who has the same word you do.

Sometimes, in the spirit of unashamed, you admit to your friend that every single time you have ever seen a christian speaker, even a great and entertaining one like the one you just saw, your heart whispers I could do that. I could be that good. You had never spoken it aloud before, you assumed these thoughts were prideful, you were a little bit ashamed. 

Sometimes, when you choose to be unashamed of your heart whisper your friend tells you that no not everyone thinks that. She tells you that she is un-surprised, she thinks you could be that good too.

But it feels so confusing. How do you even start a speaking ministry? It isn’t as easy as starting a blog. You have to be invited. You have to have an audience, and you go to a church where theoretically women can speak on Sunday, but practically speaking there has never been a woman in your pulpit. Even if they are consistently over half of the congregation.

You have BIG feelings about all of this. You want it to be easy and feel easy. Conflicted is not how a Christ follower is supposed to feel about her church, especially a church she loves, that loves her. But your BIG feeling remain, and you attempt to embrace them, unashamed.

Sometimes, you make a speaking page as a part of your blog and hope someone who needs a speaker stumbles across it. Sometimes, an internet shot in the dark is all you know how to do. You know how to talk to your pastor too, but those BIG feelings keep getting in the way.

Sometimes, the holy spirit intervenes and you tell your pastor you are being called deeper into ministry. With 2 in diapers and a PhD husband, a full-time job you love and a blog that is picking up Facebook likes here and there you don’t really understand the timing, but you decide to tell him, unashamed.

Sometimes, your pastor clears his schedule and meets with you at 8 on a Thursday because it is the only time you have available. You sit at your dining room table and put on Ponies for your daughters and spill all but the speaking part. Sometimes the Holy Spirit convicts you the second he walks out your door, and you send a weird email and he receives it graciously.

Sometimes, on a Wednesday right after work, you load your husband and babies into your minivan and drive through the rain into the hipster part of town. Sometimes your husband wonders out loud if you are having an early mid-life crisis. Your teacher gear and gold minivan do not fit in at the piercing place with the funky African decor. Your husband waits outside with the girls in the car listening to a children’s cd and feeding them happy meals. You pick out a pretty blue opal-y stud and lay down on a table and in one breath in and one breath out you get your nose pierced.

Sometimes you wanted to do something for a very long time, but it was never quite the right time. You convince yourself that girls like you don’t do that. Even though you want to. Sometimes you are afraid that other people will think it is silly and stupid, so you convince yourself it is.

Sometimes, you finally reject the lie that things that you want are silly, petty, dumb. Sometimes you stop caring that you are 29, a mom of two, a suburban teacher, an academic wife. You just want to live unashamed. So you get your nose pierced as a flag on the place where you decided that if it was important to you, than it was important, even if other people think it is dumb. You look in the mirror and you think that you look just a little bit more like you.

Sometimes you ask for the word free, your God gives you unashamed, and at the end of the first month you feel more like you than you ever have before.

I linked up with Only a Breath. Join us?

I was furious with God when I got the email. My school district had crunched the numbers and I was no longer needed in the gritty inner-city school I had hoped to spend the next thirty years. I was needed in the plush suburban school fourty-five minutes north. Righteous indignation does not begin to cover it. Why would God move me out of a place where I was caring for the poor? How was I supposed to do justice at a rich white school?

I had grown used to teaching in classrooms where everyone got free lunch, where mine was the only white face in the room. Now, I was attempting to navigate a classroom where kids who did not have enough food to eat were sprinkled among kids who wore 300 dollar boots and brought their iPads to school. In some ways my poor kids in the suburbs had it worse than my students in my inner-city school. When everyone is poor, you don’t have to try to hide it.

Today I have the distinct honor of guest posting at In a Mirror Dimly, Ed Cyzewski’s blog. In all the shouting of the internet, Ed is a gentle and gracious voice of truth. Please join me there.

I showed up to college with a ring on my left hand. I had bought it at a Jaci Velasquez concert for 10 dollars. The ring said “I Promise” on it and my speech coach noticed.

“How are people going to know that you aren’t married, how do you get dates with that thing on your hand?”

“The boys I want to date,”  I replied, “they already know what it means.”

I suppose you could say that the answer was cocky, that I was underlining the us and the them. Maybe it was, maybe I was. But that wasn’t my intention. I found security in that ring, in the conversations it brought on with people not in the know. It just put everything out on the table; I still prefer things that way.

Eventually, I stopped wearing it. Maybe I didn’t need it anymore. Maybe I realized that the people who knew me knew what I was about, and the people who didn’t, didn’t think about me anyway. But I stuck it in my jewlery box and eventually my ring tan faded.

I was lucky to be raised by parents who were frank and honest about sex and was thus saved from much of the weirdness and shame that I know comes with the True Love Waits campaign. After all, I was the one who bought myself that ring, it wasn’t bestowed on me at a fancy ball. I never signed a pledge for anyone else to display. It just was, my decision, one that I am still glad I made.

There have been a firestorm of posts about sex and purity, waiting and redemption and the messed up things that shame can do. People are talking about sex and boundaries in honest and beautiful ways. If nothing else let this list of links serve as conversation starters when my babies get bigger.

I am damaged goods by Sarah Bessey

Virginity New and Improved and Am I being “soft on sin?” by Elizabeth Esther

When it should be about love by Preston Yancey

Do Christian’s idolize virginity? by Rachel Held Evans

Damaged goods, sex and Jesus by Rachel Pieh Jones

Why virginity is not the gospel by Carolyn Curtis James and a critique Same stuff, Different Day by Dianna E. Anderson

Everyday Radical: To the Last Virgins Standing by Emily Wierenga

The Day I Turned in My V-card by Emily Maynard

Red yarn, purity, and my misplaced worth by Leanne Penny

The Morning After by Leigh Kramer

When There’s Always Another Story by Elora Nicole

Consent is the First Step by Dianna E. Anderson

I am hoping this list grows in the future. Please let me know who I missed.

May we be marked by our meetings over the communion table, may we break bread together, may we pour out our cups, may we see Christ in the face of those we disagree with.

When we are sure there can be no bridge long enough to reach us both. When we are sure we are sure there is no more common ground. Let us meet at the communion table, let us commune together.

When we have traveled the circle of theological argument until the path we tread lightly at first becomes a trench we can no longer see above, may we stand on the truth of the bread and the cup and look our fellow brothers and sisters in the eye.

May we give the bread to those we fight with, freely and without strings. May we receive the cup from the ones we are sure are wrong. May we commune together as brothers and sisters. May we allow the bread and cup to cover us both.

May we be people marked by communion. May we depart from the table, humbled and changed. Let us commune together.

Michael was waiting for me when I came in to school. His normally bright and happy face looked sad. “You know that thing you are going through … with your g-g-grandpa?” he stammered emotionally. “Well, I am sort of going through the same thing.”

Michael knew that our class had been interrupted the day before for me to take a phone call—the one in which I would say goodbye to my grandfather. We went into the other room so he would not cry in front of his friends. The freshman boy ego is a delicate thing. He told me his great grandmother was dying in the hospital.

I am honored and humbled to be featured today at She Loves Magazine. Their work this whole month has been incredible. Won’t you join me there?

My mom once gave my aunt a Christmas gift of bubble bath, a french press, and some good tea. The card read “let there be Peace on Earth and let it begin with ME!” I was 9 and didn’t understand why that was so funny, but they both laughed like it was hilarious.

Now I know. I have two children, one and two, who are what we would call “verbally advanced.” I understand what it means to want nothing more than an hour in a bubble bath with a cup of hot tea.

Here’s the thing about that present, it is great as a joke, but too many of us are earnestly seeking ways to feel peace, when we are called to make peace. We need to get out of the bubble bath and put down the cuppa, because peace making is not about me and how I feel.

Justice and mercy breed peace. Where oppression and inequality exist, peace cannot reign. If you want to be a peacemaker, then it is good and necessary to call out oppression, speak up against inequality, fight for justice and mercy. This is often uncomfortable for those who are perpetuating the inequality even if (and perhaps especially if) they aren’t perpetuating the injustice on purpose. Blessed are the pot-stirrers, for they are making peace.

This is usually how it goes down (at least online)

Statement: What they did/said/insinuated is hurtful to this group in this way.

Reaction: They didn’t mean it like that! You are singling them out for no good reason!

Reaction: The way you responded isn’t grace-filled! Unity in Christ, Unity in Christ!

Reaction: 1st Corinthians 12:21! Eye shouldn’t tell the hand it isn’t useful!

Here’s the deal: Just because you didn’t mean to say something racist/sexist/un-Christlike does not mean that you didn’t. I only know this because I’ve done it, said something that was completely jacked up and been called out on it. I understand the desire to gasp and yell, that is NOT what I said! That is NOT what I meant!

We live in a world that is jacked up, so it is completely unsurprising that most of us have some ways of thinking that are just plain messed. It very well may hurt when someone points out our wrong thinking. It can be embarrassing, we can get defensive “but I’m not a bad person.” But if we want peace to reign than that means eradicating unjust thinking. Even if it causes dissonance in the thinker.

But Abby, what about Unity in Christ? Speaking out against what someone says is NOT the same as saying they are not a brother or sister in Christ. As I once told my mother at a Girl Scout function, “sister means your stuck with them.” Just because I speak out against the way John Piper characterizes the relationship between a man and a woman doesn’t mean I don’t think we are not brothers and sisters in Christ. We are. Just like I am still related to that one crazy tuther cousin  regardless of the stuff he puts on Facebook (but I am entitled to block that junk.)

Also, nice and grace-filled are not the same things. Martin Luther King had a lot of things to say that were not nice. They weren’t nice, but they were gracious and true. “You are being racist” isn’t nice. “That statement excludes half of the church from their identity in Christ,” isn’t a nice thing to say to someone. Grace means there is space for the perpetrator to do better. When God grants me grace, it is not to remain where I am, it is grace to be free from living under the power of lies.

When I started working in an environment where I was the minority, and my privilege was pointed out by my colleagues, it wasn’t nice, but it was grace-filled. It allowed me to do better, to live better. It didn’t feel peaceful, to have to confront my own privilege, but it has turned me into a peacemaker.

Finally, put the hand eye verse away (because seriously, people are using it everywhere). Using the same metaphor, when the hand is hurting the eye, the eye is allowed to cry “HAND, STOP POKING ME! HAND PUT THE STICK DOWN!” This is completely different than, “I am better than you!” which is the sentiment that verse is talking about. In fact, the reactions to someone saying something is wrong can often  be summarized as “I am better than you and your petty calling out of people.”

Some people are called to encourage believers on their blog to tell simple stories that point to a greater truth, some to talk theology, some simply to write beautiful things and some are called to call out the ugly undertones that run rampant in churches, the wrong theology that is hurting believers, the oppression. In fact much of what we call “the new testament” are letters to churches telling the church they are doing it wrong, they are oppressing brothers and sisters and they need to stop!

Injustice and inequality are not going to go away on their own. Ignoring misogynistic or racist thoughts is like ignoring the hole in the roof. It will only get worse until we fix it the pot needs stirred. Much like many of Paul’s concerns when he was addressing the new testament churches: it matters because wrong teaching misrepresents to the world who Jesus is.

Folks, Jesus is our only chance at peace, real peace. Not just peace for an hour till the water runs cold. Not just peace for whoever fits in the tub.

When I pulled into the driveway the other night the Peanut was soundly asleep in her seat. I unbuckled her sister and took my bags in. I tried to shut the door as gently as possible, so as not to wake her. I wanted her to stay asleep. It had been so long since I had last carried her sleeping body into the house.

I got everyone situated and tiptoed back outside. I peeked into the window to stare at the little face, tilted to the side, still fast asleep. She looked so very much like the baby I used to hold. I opened the door and slipped off her shoes. I unbuckled her and hefted her onto my body. Her long legs dangled down my side. How did she get so very big?

She sighed and snuggled into my shoulder. I could feel her breath in my ear. I walked quietly into her bedroom, slipped off her jacket and tucked her in. I kissed her forehead and smiled. She will, of course, always be my baby, even if she is big.

I remember when I was 5 or 6 or 7.  I remember the car pulling into the driveway when I was almost asleep, not quite awake. I remember closing my eyes and softening my face, making my breath slow and even. I wanted to be carried in, to have my jacket pulled off and be tucked softly into my bed. I thought then that it was a burden, that when my dad carried me in it was out of a sense of obligation. But it struck me last night that I wasn’t fooling anyone, that my dad wanted to carry me into the house and tuck me into my bed. That he saw it as a privilege, to love me well.