Today at church the Peanut was in rare form. I suppose I should have suspected something was likely to go down when I was forced to wrangle her curls into a ponytail while she was playing the piano running herself and her hands up and down the keyboard. I may have threatened a buzz cut.

After the first song she yelled “All Done!” I was grateful it was a light crowd. As much as I want to let the minors be minor and allow my kid the space to be whoever it is she wants to be, there is a nagging suspicion that EVERYONE is watching you and EVERYONE is judging you and behind EVERY SINGLE smile from a mom who has been through it too there is actually a thought of Abby needs to get it together. That family is a mess, her daughter is unruly and she better step it up!

I am aware that this is not in fact what is racing through people’s heads…mostly…but in the moment it is certainly how it feels.

Anyway. We were singing Break Every Chain. I love this song. Normally songs with that much repetition make me want to die a little bit (In the early 2000’s did anyone else sing the refrain for “I could sing of your love forever” so many times you thought the worship team might be taking it literally?) but not this one. There is power in the name of Jesus. I need that reminder on a regular basis. Like as often as I need to breathe.

That song goes into the rotation exactly when I need it. I have sung those words as a declaration in my own life, over others homes, when I am fasting for change,  and even when I wasn’t sure I believed them. Quietly from my seat with my head down, loudly with my hands over my head I have sung those words. Break every chain, break every chain, break every chain.

But I have never sung those words, tears streaming down my face… from laughter. I am not sure what got into her this morning. In an attempt to get the Peanut to tune into the worship I was modeling some dance moves, hands above my head swaying, knees bending to the rhythm, even spinning in a small circle. Half way through the first chorus the Peanut takes the invitation to dance, grabs the seat in front of us and drops it like it’s hot. There was some serious booty shaking going on. So much so that me and her aunt had to cover our mouths we were laughing so hard.

As soon as that got under control the Peanut decided that the song was not up to par and began singing (loudly) all the verses to “The Wheels on the Bus” with motions and everything. I tried to redirect her but she took my clapping hands and made them goswish swish swishall through the town. And I was laughing so hard I was crying.

Still, in the background, me sitting on the ground laughing as my church cries out “There is Power in the Name of Jesus.” In that moment it was a realization. Today, those words were celebration. So my kid is a nutcase, my pants are wrinkly and I am exhausted from the party I threw for Christian’s birthday. There is Power in the Name of Jesus, and that power can be claimed right now in this moment. It is beautiful, it is joyful, it is beautiful right now. Just like my two-year-old.

It continues to be the year of Grace in my life. I am so glad that it is, but it has been humbling. The more I realize where I have NOT been extending grace, the more grace I need to extend to myself.

To Whom it May Concern:

I stumbled across this piece and saw my heart right there in bold.

This is the piece I have been holding onto. This is the chunk that has refused to release, the cold I keep feeling….because I am radiating it.

I haven’t trusted the Holy Spirit to do the work in your life.

I don’t love the choices you’ve made. I am scared for the collateral damage. But I need not insert myself in the dance between you and your God. If He loves you as much as I claim He does, He will pull you through. He always does. He always has for me. That is what God’s love does. It finds us, it pulls us back to Him.

God’s love is not about control, or sin management. It is about a relationship with Him. Somewhere along the way I got it flipped. I thought that God could not be around sin. That my sin, your sin could push Him out of your life or mine. But that isn’t the case. Sin is repelled by God. It is unable to co-exist with Him.

Maybe I was scared, that the sin would push away God, and then me. I am still afraid for the consequences. But I have seen the Lord redeem so many things, in the Bible, in my life, in the lives of my family. I know He can do anything, and I will rest in that. 

He knows what He is doing, even when we disagree about what is sin. I’ll let Him talk to me about mine, and you about yours. I’ll follow the convictions of my heart and trust you’ll follow yours. I will continue to pray for the alignment I crave, and act in the unity of Christ until that day comes.

It seems obvious but daily I am struck with the concept that if you want to be the kind of person who does something…..you have to make the time to do it.

If I want to be a writer I have to write.
If I want my kids to feel like they are heard, I have to listen
If I want to play the guitar I need to play it.
If I want to be a woman of the Word, I better read it,
If I want to be fit, I need to work out.
If I want to be loving I need to love.

At what point do I internalize those lessons?

My pastor preached his last sermon before his summer sabbatical on transitions, the one he had preached in January my first year of teaching. The last time he preached it there was one baby in the congregation, we had 6 born this year in our congregation and another on the way. It isn’t the only transition our church has gone through, but it is one of the most obvious.

In this second rendition of this most apt message he talked about the word transition in the context of child-birth. Birth is a transition for the baby, but also for the mother, really the whole family. First there is no baby, and then when the birth is over a new life.

Birth is a transition, but more specifically there is a transition within the birthing process. Transition is the point that your body moves from dilation to pushing. I’ve written about the spiritual birthing metaphors before. But the idea of transition struck me. I am not sure on what I am transitioning into. But right now, emotionally, spiritually, I think I am in transition, and perhaps my church is true.

In both births I have personally experienced when my body transitioned, I freaked out. With the Peanut I decided I did not and could not have this baby. No thank you. I was done. With the Rooster I simply called for the drugs, “give me an epidural” just like the movies. Everyone in the room laughed. I don’t know how funny it was in the moment, but I do know that both reactions weren’t what I really wanted. I wanted to have the baby, I wanted to avoid the giant epidural needle. (I am in no way saying you shouldn’t get the epidural if that is the informed decision you are making. I am just personally afraid of it.) But when everything started changing, the feelings, the job of my body, the position of my baby, it freaked me out. It freaked me out. Even the second time. Even when I knew it was coming.

Both my girls seem to be going through major transitions this summer. The Peanut has been cut off from the bottle, and no longer sleeps in a crib. Night time has been going nicely but nap times the Peanut is attempting to phase out. I suppose I wouldn’t mind, but when she does actually go down she will sleep for like 2 hours, leaving me to believe she does in fact still need a nap. She is just fighting the new system, the one without a mid-day bottle.

Meanwhile Rooster has decided that she is not having this semi-mobile thing and gets up on her hands and knees about once every twenty minutes and thinks about crawling. I get the distinct impression that when she figures it out she is going to be quick. I am not sure I am going to be ready for it. But so far her legs and arms are not co-operating with her trunk and she ends up on her face more often than not. My normally easy-peasy good-tempered baby has become a crank fest. She wants to move already!

I feel for them both. I think I am going through a bit of a transition spiritually. I know that my God hold good things for me, but I don’t know exactly what is being birthed out of this. There are days when my writing is more difficult (hence the lack of blogging). It is all muddled confusing, too personal, not personal enough. I am dealing with some hard emotions I think, and the way God has designed me to get them out is through writing, only I try really hard not to publish other people’s personal business on my blog…just mine.

There don’t seem to be any answers (I know it feels like you might want to, but it isn’t time to push yet!) and there don’t seem to be any on the way. If there are no answers what is the point of the publish? I’ve certainly found more questions.

In labor you don’t really have a choice. Eventually your body starts pushing. But as I learned the second time around, it works much faster if you decide to get on board and be really purposeful when it is time to push. But spiritually we do have a choice. I think that if I wanted to I could choose to not do this, choose to not work through the issues, live in the uncomfortable tension indefinitely.

I know people who have I think. They tell me that they just don’t feel comfortable, or Jesus isn’t working for them anymore. I’ve been there, heck I am there. But I’ve learned a few things about transition, like when in doubt keep doing what you are doing and you won’t miss the urge to push. If you are ready you will respond. But you have to keep breathing, keep prepping, keep doing what was working before. Cling to the things that made this thing do able, and don’t be afraid to look to the people around you. Sometimes they are the only ones who can see that you are doing fine, even when you don’t feel like you are.

I have been ignoring this transition for too long, I don’t want to be stuck in it anymore. I know that the pushing is hard, but I prefer it to this strange in between. It always makes me feel like running. I believe in the transition. I believe there are greater things coming.

I have been reading a lot this summer. Most of it is not worth telling you about. It is free on my Kindle for a reason. I suppose you get what you pay for. Quite a bit of it is just your average poorly written love story, and to be honest I am over the story arch these authors are selling giving away.

I am unimpressed with the grand gesture story of a man showing up at a woman’s doorstep because he can’t get her out of his head. Even if it is raining and he drove all night. I am especially unimpressed when his wife is at home with the kids. His kids. I can’t help it. Even when the author paints the wife as some kind of depressive manipulative mess he is chained to, I am still rooting for her. This attitude makes for a disappointing ending to everything I read.

I want to read about the time that he got in the car and despite feelings developing for another women he deleted her from his phone decided to go to GNC and buy the biggest bottle of St. Johns wort they have and a carton of Chubby Hubby at the gas station on the corner. He then comes home with both and this kind of sexy dramatic ultimatum: Honey I love you, but you only get this Ice-cream if you eat it with this herbal supplement that treats depression. I love you too much to watch you suffer, and I will be bringing you one of your favorite treats to bribe you into taking it until you are healthy enough to want the supplement and a therapist, because you are my wife, and I am choosing not to get you out of my head, my heart, my life.

These crazy stories of people seeing each other once, electric shocks of chemistry, making out in public and in closets, I get it, it is fun. But I don’t want all that mistaken for love. I mean, I suppose it is a piece of romantic love but I am tired of this one trope holding the primary spot over our love story telling. I think we are being sold a giant piece of chocolate cake and then wonder as we feast on nothing but chocolate cake why we have a stomach ache and occasionally throw up. I like chocolate cake for breakfast on all family birthdays and sometimes just because. But there is so much more out there. And most of it doesn’t cause diabetes as quickly as 24/7 chocolate cake.

I want to know why we are uninterested in stories of a man choosing to do the vacuuming every single time it is needed because his wife has a muscle disorder. Even though she has never told him she needed it. Or a man who moves back in with his parents so his girlfriend’s daughter can live in a house with a backyard until he is ready to get married. A house he owns and pays the mortgage on he gives to the woman and child he is falling in love with. No strings attached. I want that in a book.

I know that I am speaking from a place of privilege. I come from a loving home and I witnessed loving relationships from not only my parents but both sets of grandparents. I want those kinds of stories to be the ones my daughters take to heart. The ones they hope for (unless God designed y’all to be single then my girls more power to you!)

I just want more. I want to read about people who laugh at each other’s jokes every single day, people who do the dishes even when it isn’t their turn. I want stories of dream vacations paid for by children who were a witness to this love and just think these two people deserve it. Not dream vacations paid for by one person sweeping the other off their feet and they just have a lot of sex on the beach where no one gets any sand in any crevices (not likely).

My dad’s dad still teases my grandmother like they are in the ninth grade. My other grandfather remembered the first corsage he ever put on the wrist of my grandmother and made sure those same flowers were resting on her casket. That is love. That is the kind of love I want for my girls, the kind I am currently working on. That is the kind of love I am interesting in reading about. Where’s the poorly written free kindle e-book about that?

I like the way the shallow water feels. I dip my feet in and remember what someone once told me,, that the skin on your ankles is extra thin, or the veins are closer to the surface. This someone told me that the water on the outside somehow cools the blood on the inside and your heart pumps that cooler blood through your veins, cooling your entire body. I don’t know if it is true or not, but standing there in the shallow waters it feels true. I feel my whole body cooling off.

It is safe there in the shallow waters, and I am cool enough. I don’t even have to take my hat or sunglasses off. I can still hold my camera. My feet are steady on the sand and I do not have to think about my breathing. I just go about my business with my ankles in the water. Never fully submerged.

There are days when I have stayed in the shallow water the entire day. It just is the easiest thing to do. I don’t have to find anywhere to put my cellphone and keys, and I expend less energy that way.

But it is not the same thing as swimming. As filling your lungs up and diving deep below. Staying in the shallow waters does not give you that free feeling with your hair swimming all around you, and everything is quiet. You do not get to move the space around you to make a way for yourself, feel that space move past you like silk bed sheets. You do not experience the warmth and brightness of the sun, or the rush of air back into your lungs.

When you stay in the shallows all day you do not feel like you could be floating that night as you lie in bed. Every muscle exhausted and satisfied with the effort exerted. Your food does not taste better that night, seasoned with hunger. Those are prizes you cannot grasp with the tide swishing away at your ankles.

It isn’t as safe out there in the depths. You become breathless sometimes, there is nothing to protect you from the waves. Sometimes, all you can do is float on your back and wait for the calmer water to come. It can be dark and cold and for a split second you cannot figure out which direction you need to swim to breather.

But it is worth it, away from the shallow waters. The weightlessness, the freedom, they are found in the deep end.

I put the pajamas over her head and hope that the word sprawled across her chest is true. Dreamer. IIs my Peanut a dreamer? I wonder how we got the pajamas in the first place. I buy almost nothing for the girls, have been ridiculously blessed by hand me downs and doting grandparents. The PJ’s she is wearing are baby gap, so I am sure I did not buy them myself. Are you a dreamer? Does God speak to you in dreams?

I want to believe that God does not withold dreams from a two year old simply because she is two. I want to believe in a God who gives beautiful, marvelous, even prophetic dreams to a two year old, simply because He loves her, and she would think they were wonderful. Surely God knows that about my baby. He made her after all. 

Lately the Peanut has been playing with a co-conspirator or two. It is either a monster named Grrr, or Monster, and Grrr. Either way he shows up mostly in the car and is always blamed for taking of the Peanut’s shoes. While we were on vacation he sang an entire verse of Row, Row, Row Your Boat for our entertainment. It was delightful and hilarious. Imagine a two year old attempting to sing in a deep growly monster voice all the way through a song. 

We know that she has an incredible imagination, but is she a dreamer? I hope that she dream dreams that are bigger than her tiny self. With players that are beyond her tiny scope. I want her to dream the things of God, and live them here on earth.

Perhaps those pajamas were merely hand-me-downs. But I will choose to believe that prophecies can be worn on someones chest, and found in a bag of pre-worn clothing. 

When you are in charge of making teenagers do things they would not otherwise do, you get apologized to frequently, very very frequently.

Sometimes it is in response to a raised voice, a sharp calling of their name. Sometimes in response to a raised eyebrow. Sometimes it is is seconds after they have done whatever it is they just did, which they know they are not supposed to do, but somehow they could not resist.

“I’m sorry” I hear it every day I think. “I’m sorry Ms. Norman” I’m really sorry.

Those words almost never means the repentance they promise to me. Instead that phrase means something else entirely. “I am sorry you caught me doing this.” “I am sorry this thing I am doing is against the rules.” Sometimes those words mean “please don’t punish me” or “please stop yelling.””Please don’t make me suffer consequences.” But rarely do they mean that anything is going to change. The offender has every intention of continuous offense.

Like an overused eraser on a worn  opening line someone is trying to get just exactly right, I’m sorry is often used until it rips through my patience and renders itself completely useless.

“If you were sorry you would stop” I tell the offender who has been caught/with his phone/talking to a friend/ late to class far too many times. “If you were sorry you would stop.”

Jesus doesn’t tell the woman at the well to feel bad about her behavior. He doesn’t tell her she must feel bad. He tells her to go and sin no more. He does not desire from her a weeping and wailing. He desires from her a changed heart, evidenced by a changed life style.

Coming face to face with Jesus empowers this women to change, not to feel bad, not to be sorry. I am coming to the conclusion that when face to face with Jesus, when confronted with my own sin, I have made the mistake of simply being sorry I do something. Sorry isn’t repentance. Feeling bad is not what my Lord desires of me.

He wants me to stop. He wants to empower me to go and sin no more. He knows the truth in the phrase I sometimes spit at my students in frustration. My changed life can speak for the change in my heart. If I was really sorry, I would stop.