I saw my Christian kids flinch a little when I started referring to “The Jesus Story.” Apparently, the Mother Theresa quote on the wall, my stories about my oldest misbehaving at Church, or my copious use of biblical examples because those are the stories I know best have not been enough to clue the Christian kids in that we are both on Team Jesus. They either haven’t gotten the hint, or have been told they need to be vigilant in “defending their faith” one too many times, because I was about to get defended against.

I took that moment to call a time out. (Literally. I put my hands in a T and yelled “time out”) I explained to them that while some people may have church at school on Sundays, (we do) an English class was perhaps not the appropriate time to do so. But we can discuss literature and the Bible as literature, so that is what we are doing here.

What I really want to say is this: Of course Jesus Christ is a hero journey! Didn’t I just tell you that Joseph Campbell says that all cultures have them.  Doesn’t your Bible say that our hearts cry out for our redeemer?  

As I was teaching the hero journey this year, this is what has been brought to my attention. We tell the story of Jesus. We do, because it is what is in our hearts when we are born. We long for a story with a hero, for one who chooses the path to His own destruction, and survives anyway, someone with more power, more authority, a clean heart. We are born to tell the story of Jesus.

We tell it in the super-heroes, the batmans, the supermans, the x-mans. Those stories point to Jesus, JK Rowling and Tolkien were writing about Him too. Some do it on purpose, others do it because they long for the one great hero. We want to know that Simba is still alive and coming back. We want to know that there is a river that we can dip ourselves in that will make us live forever, we want to be worthy. We love stories of redemption because we long to be redeemed. We want stories where the old goes and the new comes, and when the old comes back the new defeats it. We need to hear those stories.

Of course I am talking about the Jesus story. He’s the hero.

I was out yesterday..Someone had to stay home and wait for the mechanicc to call. So, I took one for the team by going back to bed after the kids went to Elizabeth’s, watching copious amounts of netflix, reading an interesting article about Haiti in the mechanic’s copy of Roolling Stone, and meeting my man for lunch. I know, what a sacrifice.

Meanwhile, at my school, things were not running so smoothly. I had apparently scheduled a sub for only half a day, and then the sub did not make it to first period. So only periods two and three had an adult in the room. Those are the facts, the rest of the story has been cobbled together based on freshmen testimony.

First period decided they could watch what they wanted on tv and not do work if they were quiet enough, no one would know. They did just that. Second and third periods I had a sub. Fourth period was equally worried about me getting in trouble and them getting in trouble. So, they got out their notes, turned on the movie, and stayed quiet. That is, until they were confident they wouldn’t get caught, then they got chatty. I have a student in fifth period who is a junior. I have had her before and she thinks I am awesome. So, she took charge and attendance, turned on the movie, got everyone working, found an adult and told them there was no sub, and emailed me a report of all of this. Sixth period had a team teacher. So, it was covered.

The part of the story I should be focusing on is that most of my freshmen knew exactly what they knew they were supposed to do and did it. They did it so well everyone assumed there was an authority figure in the room to make them do it. This is a big deal, unheard of even. Apparently, I am doing something right.

But the right is what I am unable to focus on. It was the honest mistake that caused me to put in for half a day, not a whole that I can feel in the space between my lungs. This mistake is like a boulder that I carry underneath my sternum where it makes it hard for me to breathe, pushes the contents of my stomache to just below my throat waiting in the in between to ensure there is no “feel better.” Just wishing that I could throw up and go home, where I would undoubtedly feel exactly the same way about going home.

It is time to admit that I am depressed. Not the way we throw around the term when they our favorite show gets cancelled, or they run out of the flavor of ice cream we wanted three people before we got to the front of the line, but clinically (if mildly) depressed. I have struggled with depression on and off since probably middle school.

The strongest memory  I have of being depressed is my 17th birthday. I had missed school that day, and thus was not allowed to spend the night at my friend’s house. The girls that were going to be there called me from the band room to wish me a happy birthday, and  I started crying uncontrollably. Krysten’s mom called mine and twenty minutes later they were picking me up in the mini-van with a solemn promise to my mother that  I would go to sleep at a reasonable hour.

Pizza eaten, cupcakes devoured, we went downstairs to watch a movie. Halfway through “Save the Last Dance” I went upstairs for more fruit punch and found myself crying uncontrollably at the kitchen sink. When Tracey came to find me and ask me what was wrong, I said through raking sobs “I don’t know.”

It feels like that again. I have better coping skills now, but the stone in my chest is growing to boulder size. My sister, (the counselor) tells me that depression is a very self focused disease. I hate that she is right, even though I recognize the truth in it. It is as though eyes of my soul are just a tiny bit crossed, so that the joy comes in fuzzy, the only things I can clearly see are my mistakes,  and the difficulty of the place I am in right now. And it all gives me a headache anyway.

I know that depression is an illness, that it has everything to do with the serotonin in my brain, and nothing to do with my personal moral failing. I am the first to advocate the “talky doctor” and believe in treating depression just like you would a thyroid condition.

But I also believe in miraculous healing. I was prayed over a healing from depression the summer of that 17th year. The man who prayed that over me did not know my name. I had not told him of the depression in my life. I believed that pray, and truly received that healing. I stopped taking my meds that day. Somehow 12 years and two babies later, my chemicals have reconfigured into the pattern I knew at 17. If I am honest with myself, I feel much like I did when I was headed up the stairs for more fruit punch and I still don’t know why.

It is easy for me to believe that it is because I am not spiritual enough. If I just read my bible enough, pray enough, cling to that promise of healing hard enough, I will be okay. If I am grateful enough, thankful enough, if I praise enough it will take the boulder out of my chest. I should be able to pry it out of there, cough it up, lay it at the cross, and dance away. But I cannot. Which only makes me feel worse, like I am depressed because I cannot get over what a spoiled brat I am. If I only loved God enough I would be healed. If I only trusted Him enough, it would somehow re-start the healing I already received.

These are lies. I know in my head they are, but they just feel so true. This summer I bought a jar of the St. John’s Wort that worked so well my Junior year. It took about three days for the boulder to loosen, if not completely drop away. Yet, I am struggling with taking it, as though those brown pills are evidence of my lack of faith. I should just be faithful, just keep going. But that should isn’t working…and my St. John’s Wort is. Whose to say God’s Mercies aren’t new every morning in the form of an over the counter herb? I guess we shall see…….

Disclaimer: St. John’s Wort works for me. We found that out based on the advice of a doctor. It interacts with quite a few things, so don’t just say “It worked for Abby” and down some.

The dance party at the front of the church was doing some serious rocking when a strange thing happened. My friends kid laid down. Right there in front he laid down his 4-year-old body, shut his eyes, and was still. A few came to join him, but they grew restless and got up. He laid their for the length of a song (an eternity in 4-year-old measurements) eyes shut, still before God.

My heart called for me to crawl up there with him. I wish I would have, chucked the rest of my pride and grabbed a piece of carpet. Today, this is how I will worship my God: on the floor, with my eyes closed, in the footsteps of a four-year-old. My eyes sting with tears of regret as I type this. I missed a holy moment there.

The school year has been going so fast that I feel as though I cannot get a breath. No talking about it, no figuring something out, just go go GOOOOOO! Head down, one foot in front of the other. It was one of the reasons I was so undone when my car broke down last Friday. I was hoping for a rest, and instead I got one more thing that I had to deal with, problem solve, fix. I could not do it anymore.

I was hoping this weekend when my sister came down that we would have a chance to catch up, to sit as our little triad of France girls and drink wine and be. I wanted to look at each other and marvel at where God has brought us, wonder at where He would take us next. But we were too busy, there were too many things that needed to be done. Too many mouths to feed and kids to put to bed. It is no ones fault, it is just where we are right now.

I have been begging God for a time of rest as I sneak extra burdens into my knapsack. Things like, worrying about when I will finally “make it” as a writer, worrying about where I fit in, wondering if I started too late. (Because the God who broke in and told me to start writing, He wasn’t in control of when He did that….okay Abby. That makes sense.)

The Lord has been gently telling me: The rest is now. The time is now. Wake up from the zombie like posture of getting through and lay yourself and your baggage all down in the middle of the craziness. Trust that you won’t get stepped on in the chaos. Rest in me right now.

When we got back from church the chaos was still there, and for a moment I tried to orchestrate it all. I may have given up halfway through and laid down in the grass, letting everyone else figure out how to get to lunch. It was restful in the chaos, and even without my hand swirling around, everyone managed to get fed and on their way. I did the same after lunch, I laid down in the grass. The Peanut came and rested her head on me. The Rooster slept in the van. The sun began to set. All of it resting.

It was the most awake I felt in a long time.

I am linking up to She Loves Magazine. If you don’t read it you are seriously missing out!

Every single cafeteria I have ever sat in smells exactly the same. Like mystery meat nachos, old shoes, and pre-pubescent fear. Even in cafeterias that haven’t been cooked in for years, that smell lingers. The school cafeteria. No one wants to do that again.

I remember one of the only times I ever skipped in high school was during lunch. I was coming back from a week or so of school missed. I was not sure I had a place to sit, and I could not face it. So, I took my lunch and sat between the long forgotten trophies amidst the giant dust bunnies in the upper corner of the gym balcony. It was lonely, but at least I chose to exclude myself.

There are few things more raw than standing at the end of the lunch line with your hot tray searching desperately for a seat. You feel naked, begging silently for a smile, an invitation, even just an empty seat that no one will tell you has already been taken. You pray desperately that no one will notice your soul is not wearing any clothes. You just want someone to invite you.

There were a half-dozen kids in the kiddo-worship dance party this Sunday. They formed a circle each hand linked to the next and ran clockwise until they got dizzy. The best part of it was the fluidity of membership. There was always room for one more. Wherever and whenever someone wanted to break in…they could. No invitation was needed, because everyone was always invited. Just for a second I thought I saw a glimpse of heaven.

I may pray “as earth as it is in heaven” but my heart has been working like the school cafeteria and not the all-inclusive worship dance. I form clicks and insist that there are a limited number of seats. I hunch over my tray and sneer at someone approaching, “you can’t sit here.” I smile and wave at the girl who I have decided will be my new best friend. “Come sit with us!” I call, “you are invited.”

Deep inside, I  am as spiritually insecure as a thirteen year old with a third eye pimple and a bad hair cut. I just want to be liked, and I don’t know how to do that without someone else being excluded. I don’t know how to feel in without outs. If I am not better than someone else, than how do I know that I am good at all?

Inside my heart I have grouped people as in and out, out of fear. People who I fear will exclude me I quickly turn my back to, rush past their table without making eye contact. If  I am offered a smile or wave, I decide that they are disingenuous. I don’t want to eat with you anyway. I may even talk about you with my friends, just so I know that I fit in.

That attitude goes down about as easy as those mystery meat nachos. And it makes me sick to my stomach, living in fear that I will one day not have a place to sit, striving to get to the next great table, being willing to edge someone else out of their seat.

Mercy doesn’t work like that. Pardon means forgiven, and it is given to those I am attempting to exclude as it is given to me. You are excused, and therefore, invited. Period. Even with the third eye pimple, even if you are wearing the wrong thing, even if you smell funny. Pardon is miraculous. It is what turns the middle school cafeteria into the great worship circle dance, lead by 7 year olds who are too loud, and joined in by giggling two-year olds that sometimes fall down and mess everything up. They are invited despite that, because of it even.

My heart will not be bound by the striving of the lunch room any longer. Everyone is invited. Let’s head outside for the great circle worship dance. I want to live in mercy, and dance in pardon, and I want to invite anyone who will, to break in and circle around. We are pardoned, everyone. Let’s all celebrate together….and lets find something better to nourish us then what they are serving in the school cafeteria.

This is in response to the post for:

Dear Rooster-Head,

I look at you and it is a daily reminder that God knows best. He messed up your daddy and my plans of a 4 year break between kids, and I am so very, very grateful. Lovely, sweet and gentle, you are my old soul. Your eyes speak of things you cannot yet voice, and look straight into people. It is as though you see people for what they are and know inherently to be gentle with them. You seem to also know what they could be.

Your smiles and cheers are a little harder to earn when compared to your sister but they are well worth it. I am afraid you have inherited my laugh…big and sharp and loud. HA! It is so delightfully incongruous from you as well. No feminine giggle, you save it all up for the big one, just a little more tummy tickling…then….HA! Again, again!

You, my dear, are impossible to distract. I find myself giving in to the thing you want because I know you will eventually get it. If I put the remote control on top of the refrigerator, I am convinced you could find a way to get there. Bed time has gotten later and later (you are awake even as I write this at 10:30, you are playing at the coffee table) simply because if I do not let you stay up here, you will stay up in your bed. This both makes me crazy and admire you.

This year has been so crazy, a true whirlwind of a year. I find myself spinning around asking, “how is it possible that a whole year has passed” and in the same breath “how is it possible that Rilla was once not with us.” It has been crazy, but goodness do you make it worth it. I love you, Happy First Birthday!

Mom

Tomorrow my baby turns one. I don’t know if this is the last time I will type that sentence, the last time I will speak that sentiment. Tomorrow, this space will be about her, but today I need to mourn. Because everything from here is just so foggy.

Adoption has been written on our hearts since before we promised ourselves to each other. Christian and I have always known it would be a part of our story. But that is all we know, where? how? when? Will I ever again have the privilege of escorting a soul on her first journey around the sun? We just don’t know. It is time for me to wait patient, and be a good steward of the amazing babies the Lord has given me. It is time for me to balance in that place between…..if this is all you have Lord, it is enough…..and Lord I believe the things you have spoken. It is a narrow space, and I need propped up often. It is too easy to get pulled from one side or the other.

I have been learning that mourning is a necessary thing for me. Admitting that I am sad things are changing does not mean I am not excited to enter into that change. I just will miss my baby girl. She is so sweet, and so relaxed. I will miss the way she says “mama” so full of hope and assurance that her needs will be answered. I will miss it, when she is not completely delighted by my expertise in peek-a-boo. I will be sad when she does not openly showcase her delight with a low hu-hu-hu, or surprise me with a sneaky back hug when I am on the ground. I will be sad when she needs more than a belly tickle to bring forth her booming baby laugh (sorry baby, you got that one from mama.)

It is strange, time. I am not convinced it was part of the original plan….only forward….never back. So here I will rest in the…I think I know…I do not know……I know that He is enough. Today I will hand these last hours to give to my God. What he has given me. It is enough. What He has for me is merciful….even if I am wishing for another week or so with an almost one year old.

It was my sister who first pointed out to me. My oldest sister, the music therapist, the one who has never met a baby she has not sung to. Emily seems to have inherited a larger portion of the rich musical heritage that comes to us through my mother. Her college professor begged her to become a music theorist, citing her near perfect ear. Her roommates used to play “how many songs will Emily sing” placing inconsequential over/under bets on the number of tunes that would flow from her mouth in a 24 hour period. They rarely went over.

Emily speaks song as her first language. She said to me once “I must be feeling overwhelmed, I keep singing songs about how God will carry my burdens.” Sometimes she says things like ” I wonder what it means. I keep singing about God breaking chains and bringing freedom.”

Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks….and sings. Em taught me that even when my brain does not recognize it, my heart knows what it needs. Before I realize that I have trapped myself in a prison of my own sin and expectations my heart will cry out “break every chain, break every chain, break every chain.”

I have learned to be aware of what my heart is singing, what manages to bypass my brain and come straight out of my mouth. When I wrote that post about selling my soul for a mocha, I had literally been singing “all who are thirsty, all who are weak” for five days straight. Come Lord Jesus come indeed (oh, and I got my mocha). The heart sings what the brain has not engaged.

My heart sings of my need for mercy even when I am not aware of it. It sings of God’s mercy already given when my mind has forgotten. It is a merciful thing to know what you need and to have a God willing to provide it. The happiest day of my teenage life was the day a doctor was able to diagnose my chronic illness. If you know what is wrong you are one step closer to being well. And this is true with the Lord and my heart. When I learn what is wrong, I am one step closer to the healing. Mercifully, the Lord often diagnoses my symptoms through song.

Tell me I am not crazy. I would love to hear about how the Lord speaks mercy to you. Anyone else receive revelation through song?

I am hanging out with Mercy Mondays again. Check some of my new friends out!

I woke up early this morning not so I could go put my grades in like I have been doing, but so that I could get a salted carmel mocha. I am aware that your facebook and twitter feeds have been blowing up with the words pumpkin spice. Your friends are wrong. The salted caramel mocha is the superior beverage for the fall. It is a fact. But I didn’t get to starbucks on time. I didn’t even get to school in time to teach my first period class. I ran out of gas.

This is the second time in two weeks that I have run out of gas. Perpetually running on empty is pretty much how we are running these days. Then on the way home from school my car died because apparently the filter gets clogged up when you let your car run out of gas too often.

This means that I am leaving for the retreat with my patient friend about an hour after we were supposed to GET there. I am so tired and burnt out that I don’t know that I could hear the Lord speak if he tried. Right now I would settle for a salted caramel mocha. How is that for trading in your soul?

What I mean to say is….pray for me this weekend.

Sometimes I am uncomfortable with what has somehow become the standard for a 9/11 reflection. My friends shared where they were when they heard, they remembered how they felt when they heard the news, saw the second tower hit. In past years I have marked another year passing in the same way. It is important to remember. It grounds me to that moment, makes me feel like it mattered.

Maybe that is the problem. In order for something to matter to me…it has to somehow be about me. Lately I have felt like maybe the story of that tragedy… maybe it isn’t about me. The story that I want to tell about that day, are the stories of how I saw so much good come out of people. That I saw a deep love of country and countrymen come out of my peers, that the reaction of some of my classmates was honorable. I don’t think it matters what I was wearing, or what the weather was like. I am not sure it is important, what the secretaries were googling when I signed into school. Even if I do remember it all.

And then I think about my parents stories. They were in middle school when JFK was shot. They have eerily similar stories involving some notriously bad kid coming in from the hallway and no one believing it. Somehow hearing them tell the story, their story of this major historical event, made it all real to me.

I am a blogger after all, and a memoirist in my dreams. In my deepest place, I long to be trusted with the priviledge of telling the stories of others. I search out true stories written in first person and essays about parenthood that my friend from work reads to me as we drive home. They make me laugh and cry at the same time. I believe deeply in the personal narrative, and believe I am doing my most political and holy work when I am teaching my students to hear other voices, and speak their own better.

But  I am fearful of this all being about me. I know more than most just how deeply I can mess it all up. How easily I can shrink something down to a pocket mirror that only reflects myself, when it was meant to be a sky, showing the face of my God in its stars.

Recently  I have begun writing again, about my experience teaching those first years. From the fire in my belly I know that those stories need to be heard. It is an ache in my bones, and they spill from my mouth because they long to get out. But I am weary of this telling. I was not the savior of those students. Not all pieces of them needed to be saved. Maybe it needs to be from a different perspective. There have been more than enough books made into movies about how the young white female teacher could save all those poor black kids.

But I want people to know the truth, of how brave and smart and interesting so many of those students are, of just how tragic it is when 14 year old are sent to operate the tight rope of the world with no net. Some of the same bad decisions that I made in high school are punished by literal and figurative death. I want people to be struck to the core that these circumstances could have been theirs,

What a strange place to get to, where nothing is about me, and I am all about Jesus. I can’t seem to find the map, if there ever is one to the promised land. How do you tell a story that is all about you, and at the same time has absolutely everything to do with Him.

I have watched as the people I love dearly wade back into the muck of waters that are familiar. I have watched as the students I poured into pass around the cup of sludge and drink liberally, smiling as though their thirst has been quenched, and maybe it has….for the moment. I wonder why they are settling for the dirty water of their peers. I wish that I could tear the cup from their hand, throw them over my shoulder, rush them to the clear and flowing river and shove their heads into the streams until they have no choice but to open their mouths. I wish that I could pump their stomach, force the poison out, make sure their blood runs hydrated and clean. But isn’t there a saying about all of that, about leading the horse but not forcing the drink.

I know I’m not supposed to…but I would force it if I could. Plug their nose till their mouth opened. Bribe them to drink the living water.

As I stand in the hall with my school spirit wear, I better understand the prophets in the bible. The ones who wore animal skins and ate bugs. Maybe if I started acting crazy, a few more people would turn their heads. From the depths of my soul I want to cry out, STOP! DON’T DO IT! THERE IS A BETTER WAY! I want to drown them in this living water of mine.

But waterboarding is not merciful. And living water if brimming with mercy. Living water that is forced down throats and up noses, it isn’t living water at all. Living water that is injected with sugar, so it will go down easy: it isn’t living water either. Somewhere along the way it loses its living quality and sits heavily in stomachs making people sick. The forcefulness, the anger, the righteous indignation. I infect the living water with those things….and it dies.

So I will continue my trek to and from the well, until my feet make a path that is easy to follow. I will bring buckets full and pass it out. I will guard against adding my own agenda, and I will invite you to drink.

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